The candy man can

While the girls were experimenting with some of the temporary transformations and having fun, Nick stepped aside. It was nice to see everyone getting along, but he was drawn to something in particular. A large fixture in the center of the shop.

It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. It was a pillar that reached up to the ceiling, lined with colorful tubes standing side to side, wrapped around the center. Each one a different color, and practically glowing. Beneath each tube was a nozzle.

“What’s that?”

Nick turned to see Dani staring curiously at the machine. He hadn’t noticed her come up to join him.

“Oh, it’s nothing… just another reminder that Dakota designed this place, that’s all,” Nick said, trying to laugh it off.

Dani stared quietly at him, then looked back at the machine.

“Want to talk about it?” She asked. She tilted her head back to the other girls, who were still busy. “Beats what’s happening over there.”

“Not a fan of candy?” Nick asked, noting that the yellow was fading out of her hair.

“Never really got any when I was a kid,” Dani said, rubbing her stomach. “My mom always said it was bad for me. Only time I got candy was on Halloween, with the other kids.”

“Well, at least you had that…” Nick murmured. “Dakota didn’t get a lot of candy growing up, either. Only it wasn’t because her mom was concerned about health…”

Dani winced. Her face turned sour. She didn’t like the way Nick still cared about Dakota. But at the same time, she could understand it.

“Dakota’s mom never cared about her enough to buy her candy,” Nick said, keeping his voice quiet enough where the other girls couldn’t hear him. “But she got some from my family every now and then. I remember… when we were kids, my parents invited us both to an amusement park. And at the end of the day, because we were so good, they bought us all the candy we could carry.”

He reached out and caressed one of the tubes of the machine. Dani saw tears flecking the corners of his eyes.

“There was a machine there,” he murmured, remembering it well. It was a replica of the one in front of him right now. “It was a ‘make your own pixie stick’ machine. Dakota didn’t even know what pixie sticks were, but she loved faeries so she wanted to try it.”

He reached down and slid out a clear plastic tube from the basket beside the machine, about the diameter of a child’s finger. It was about a foot long, but there were longer ones. “It let you pick whatever flavors you wanted. Of course, neither one of us had any self-control. So we got the two-foot-long ones, and we got every flavor we could get. It was amazing, like a layer cake. Strawberry, lemon, blueberry, chocolate, grape, cherry, as many flavors as we could fit inside until it looked like we were carrying rainbows with us. After that day, whenever my parents would take us to the amusement park, we’d always do the same thing. Get as many flavors as we could.”

“Nick…” Dani said quietly.

He turned to her and smiled. “…Of course, we never did manage to finish them,” he said, his tone changing into a pleasant one. “That stuff was pure sugar, it would have made us sick to eat that much of it. We never got close. And the pretty layers, well, they only lasted so long before the shaking and jostling eventually blended them all together into a disgusting powdery hodge-podge of flavors. Then we had to throw them out. But we still went back and did it anyway…”

It was a nice memory. But those perfect days were long gone. He set the tube down, gazing wistfully at the machine one last time before closing that door again.

“…I get it,” Dani said softly, placing her hand on his arm. “When we care about someone… even if they do terrible things… we still remember the good times. And that can make it hard to move past what happened, huh?”

Nick glanced at her quizzically and then she gasped. Her face turned red.

“That’s… I mean… never mind!” She said quickly, shaking her head. She turned away from him, and froze in her tracks.

The other girls were all looking at her with expressions that ranged from concern to confusion to amusement.

“Well, sharing a nice, tender moment are we, my girl?” Sylvia teased, leaning forward.

Dani’s stunned expression quickly shifted to a scowl. “And what exactly are you imply by that?!” She demanded, storming over to Sylvia. “I can’t talk with my best friend without it becoming a problem, is that it?”

“Hey, come on, Dani, that’s not what she’s saying!” Carly quickly stepped between the two of them, doing the best she could to calm Dani down. “…Okay, well, that’s what she’s saying, but she’s just playing around. She’s not trying to be serious.”

Carly glanced warily over her shoulder and at the former host. “…Right?”

“I was just teasing,” Sylvia said vaguely, not exactly assuaging Dani’s feelings.

The tomboy scowled and ground her teeth together in frustration.

“…Whatever,” she finally relented, backing off. “Sylvia, please, stop it with the jokes like that. I don’t appreciate them.”

“Okay,” Sylvia nodded. She didn’t exactly want to get on Dani’s bad side either.

“Can we go now?” Dani asked, walking over to the door. “I’m not exactly thrilled to be spending time around all this candy. I thought we came to the Amusement Park to have fun?”

“I’m with Dani,” Rose nodded. “Can’t eat too many sweets, or they might affect my girlish figure!” She tittered.

Everyone stared at her for a second.

“But… you’re the one who wanted to come here,” Holly reminded her.

“Yeah, you pointed it out…” Morgana nodded.

Rose shrugged. “I love the ambience of a candy shop,” she replied. “Doesn’t mean I have any interest in buying anything.”

She glanced at Nick and batted her eyelashes. “Chocolate-covered strawberries are an exception, of course. In case you were thinking about presents.”

“I wasn’t,” Nick said, shutting her down mercilessly.

Rose gasped and held her hand over her chest.

“Oh, my heart,” she moaned exaggeratedly. “How painful… I’m dying inside!”

Nick rolled his eyes, and he wasn’t alone in that.

“Let’s just go check out the rides,” Dawn said, agreeing with Dani. The candy store was nice and all, but she wanted to have more fun than this.

“Okay, good plan,” Nick said, nodding. “Let’s check out the rides, sound good?”

Everyone left the candy shop and headed deeper into the Amusement Park, actually going to look at some of the rides. Dawn snapped up a brochure from the kiosk and scanned over it for a couple seconds before handing it off to Morgana.

“Okay, I’ve got everything,” she said, her tail twitching in anticipation. “What were you girls thinking of doing first?”

“There’s a log flume ride,” Carly said, folding open the brochure and pointing at it. “Nothing like that to beat the heat!”

“It’s still the morning though,” Kim pointed out, grabbing a brochure from the kiosk herself. (The kiosk she was manning at the moment.)

“Good point,” Dawn nodded. “It’s not hot enough out yet, even if we are on a tropical island.”

“I don’t want to do that one,” Mary said, holding her arms over her chest. “These are the only clothes I can wear, and I don’t think I want to spend the rest of the day with them wet.”

“You could always take your shirt off,” Gina pointed out, licking her lips.

Mary stared at her, scandalized.

“Come on, Gina, who do you think she is? Kim?” Sylvia laughed, glancing at the girl behind the stand.

Kim wasn’t amused by the question, and crossed her arms over her chest indignantly. Of course, this drew the attention to her perky breasts, and the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“I’ll have to pass on the log flume for now,” Dawn said, shaking her head. “You guys think wet clothes are a problem? Try a wet tail.”

“It’s fine, Dawn, you probably won’t be tall enough to ride it anyway,” Carly teased, earning her a deadly glare from the vet.

“I could go on the log flume rides!” Dawn huffed, stomping her foot. “It’s just… only the roller coasters they wouldn’t let me on.”

“And the Scrambler,” Nick pointed out.

Dawn sighed. “…Yeah. And that one.”

“And the one where you sit in a chair and it drops you from really high.”

“Yes, Nick, I think they get the-”

“And the Viking Ship that goes back and for-”

“Yes! Yes! You’ve made your point!” Dawn snapped, glaring at him. “Look, I can be plenty of fun at an Amusement Park! Just watch!”

“We could always go to the Hall of Mirrors and get you a little height boost,” Sylvia pointed out.

Everyone turned to her in shock.

“Are you serious?” Mary gasped.

“Sylvia, that’s completely out of the question,” Nick snapped.

“Do you really want what happened last time to happen again?!” Dawn demanded. “NO, absolutely not! I’m not going there! Right, Morgana? Never again!”

“Right!” Morgana nodded rapidly.

“Hey, hey, I was just trying to help,” Sylvia said, holding up her hands. “Sorry, I’m not so good at this ‘idea’ thing.”

“Well, come up with better ones,” Dani scowled.

“Oh! I know!” Holly skipped over and wrapped her arm around Dawn’s shoulder. “What about the Carousel? I used to love going on that ride!”

Dawn smiled a little at that suggestion. “Yeah…” She nodded. “I used to like that one, too!”

“Ehehehe!” Holly chuckled. “Fellow shorties unite!”

“Do you guys mind?” Dawn turned to the others, her eyes glistening with hope. The bad mood that had started to build up inside her had passed away by this point. “I know it’s not the most exciting ride out there, but…”

“Sure, it sounds fun!” Carly nodded eagerly.

“I’m with her,” Marley said, smiling ironically. “But I mean, for real. A relaxing ride like that sounds like the perfect thing to ease us into the day.”

“I love Merry-Go-Rounds!” Mary squealed with glee. “When my family used to take me to the county fair, I would spend hours just going around and riding the horses! I always wished we could have one on the farm!”

Her eyes glazed over wistfully and that basically sealed the deal. Between Holly’s excitement, Dawn’s hopeful expression, and Mary’s nostalgic smile, no one wanted to disappoint those three girls by saying no.

With a plan set for the first ride, everyone headed to the Carousel.

When they got there, though, Dawn’s enthusiasm started to wane.

“…Seriously?” She sighed, taking off her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose. Her ears tilted down and her tail drooped.

“This is… a little different from the Merry-Go-Rounds I remember,” Dani said, making a sickened face at what she was looking at.

She wasn’t completely off, but she wasn’t completely correct, either. The Merry-Go-Round certainly was what it purported to be. Elegantly-painted horses and ponies pranced around a wide wheel, saddles gleaming bright red.

Anatomically correct horses and ponies.

Mary’s hands leapt up to hide her eyes.

“Why?!” She wailed. “Why does it have to be like that!?” She felt like her beloved childhood memories were being sullied.

“…Welcome to the Carousel,” Kim said dryly from her spot at the counter, her face red with shame. “Would anyone… like to go for a ride?”

She felt like she was going to die.

“I don’t think you’re gonna get any takers here,” Dani said, shaking her head.

“Oui,” Rose sniffed, turning up her nose and crossing her arms over her chest. “As much as I like the image of my elegant self astride a steed, that grotesque bit of sculptury is simply out of the question, thank you very much!”

Dawn sighed and turned to Sylvia. “…Are all the rides here like this?” She asked.

“Not all of them,” Kim said, shaking her head. She glanced at Nick. “When Nick and I were here, we had a lot of fun on the rides just the way they were. Nothing too perverted. Maybe Dakota’s been doing some remodeling?”

“Or maybe you just had a really boring date,” Sylvia sniffed. “Come on, guys, this is Harem Hotel. What did you think we were going to have? This is just the start! Ooh, I already know what we should do next, let’s go on the ‘It’s a Small Dick After All’ ride!”

Nick swatted her on the back of the head.

“Ow! Daddy!” Sylvia whined.

“Stop being a brat,” Nick chastised her.

“You guys are such prudes,” Gina scoffed, rolling her eyes with a smirk. “It’s just a ride. So the horses have cocks. Guess what? They have those in the real world, too.”

“So why aren’t you going?” Dani asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Because Merry-Go-Rounds are for little kids and virgins,” Gina pointed out.

“I’ll go for a ride!” Holly chirped.

Gina smirked. “Case in point.”

Holly ignored Gina’s jab. She didn’t wait for anyone else to decide, and rushed over. She walked through the horses, eyeing them up like a butcher picking out a fresh cut of meat (an analogy that wasn’t so far off).

Finally, she selected a particularly large stallion and climbed aboard, ignoring certain parts of it that happened to be sticking out from the underside.

Or maybe she wasn’t ignoring them. It was Holly, after all.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Sylvia shrugged, following the maid girl. “It’s just a penis, guys. A horse cock. A-”

“If you’re going to go, just go,” Dawn said, shoving Sylvia forward. “You don’t have to use such colorful language.”

Disappointment was dripping from her voice. She loved the Carousel. And of course, Dakota had perverted one of her favorite rides.

“I don’t mind a little dong,” Carly said. “Come on, Marley, let’s go! It’ll be fun!”

“Fine,” Marley sighed, her cheeks a little pink. She wasn’t exactly thrilled to go on a ride like that, but she wasn’t going to be selfish and deny her sister, either. And since she didn’t want to spend the next three minutes or so as a puddle, she didn’t really have a choice.

“Um… and… and me…”

Morgana’s face turned the same shade as her eyes as she slowly raised her hand. She was unable to look at anybody else.

“Really? You?” Gina couldn’t hide her amusement. She turned to Dani and mouthed “little kids and virgins” at her, earning an eye-roll from the tomboy.

“The Carousel is one of my favorite rides, too,” Morgana mumbled, twiddling her fingers together. “I wasn’t ever brave enough to go on any of the roller coasters as a kid, so… when we had class trips to the amusement park, since I didn’t have any friends to go with, I would just sit on the Carousel for hours…”

Sad. Way, way too sad. Morgana’s explanation caused a swell of depression and guilt to well up in everybody’s heart.

“…Can’t say anything about that,” Gina nodded, smiling and patting the goth on the back. “Go have a blast!”

Morgana brightened, glad the other girl wasn’t mocking her, and headed off to join the others. She chose a beautiful black horse for herself.

The Carousel started up not long after that and the park filled with music as the people who didn’t want to ride horses with erections walked over to a cluster of benches in the shade.

“At least the rest of the ride is normal,” Nick offered, trying to pick up the mood. Mary and Dawn both seemed really disappointed.

“I guess so…” Mary sighed. “I was just really looking forward to it… but at least the others are having fun, right?”

“Daddy! Daddy, look at how fast I’m going!” Sylvia called from her horse as she passed by, waving at Nick like a little girl on her first pony ride.

“She’s really going all-in on this whole ‘child’ thing, huh?” Rose asked, trying to hide her amusement. “That’s gotta be rough for you.”

“She’s doing it to goad me,” Nick replied. “Just ignore it.” He was starting to get better at telling when Sylvia was genuinely **** for affection and approval, and when she was just being a teasing brat to him.

Besides, he had other things to be concerned about, namely how despondent Dawn looked.

“Hey, is everything alright?” Nick asked, placing his hand on her back. Her tail sprung out and her ears popped up in surprise. She turned to him with a sad look on her face.

“…I should have gone,” she said quietly. “They’re all having fun. I should have joined in with them.”

“Hey, you weren’t comfortable,” Nick said. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“Exactly,” Dani nodded, sitting down on the other side of the bench beside her. “You think I’m gonna go on a ride with a bunch of horse dicks? Not a chance!”

“Still… I love the Carousel,” Dawn sighed. “And it would have been a good chance to bond with the others.”

“Well, we have other rides like that.”

Dawn’s head snapped up and she looked at Kim in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Kim shrugged. “You remember the map, right? And you remember too, Nick? The ride we went on with the chairs.”

“Oh, yeah!” Nick nodded, remembering back to his date. “Yeah, we went on this ride that was kind of like a Merry-Go-Round, only instead of riding on horses, you rode on chairs. And it would slowly lift up into the sky as it spun.”

“That sounds fun,” Dawn said, brightening. “The park we went to back in elementary school didn’t have anything like that!”

“That sounds amazing! I’d love to try!” Mary’s mood picked up fast as well.

“Yeah, it was really weird, be careful,” Nick said. “For some reason, the chairs would always sort of tilt out, at like a 45 degree angle. I felt like I was going to fall out half the time! It was a pretty scary ride, honestly.” He didn’t mention the part about how it had mashed Kim’s boobs into his side the whole time.

Mary’s enthusiasm dimmed. But only slightly.

“That’s so weird. It’s like magic,” Gina said, frowning. “How does the chair tilt out? That makes no sense.”

“I think I know what you’re talking about,” Rose nodded thoughtfully. “It must be like, because of the wires on the machine.” She took out the brochure and checked the picture. “See here? They probably do something to the cables to make the chair stick out!”

“Oh, I see…” Dani nodded. She didn’t actually get it at all.

“No, it’s centrifugal ****,” Dawn explained, going over the picture again in her mind to prove her . “That’s why the chairs move away from the central pillar as it spins.”

“Huh?” The three women all stared at her.

Dawn sighed and rubbed her brow.

“Centrifugal **** is the outward **** observed on a mass when it is rotated about an axis,” Dawn explained. “It’s because of Newton’s first law of motion. And object in motion will stay in motion. The inertia of your body in the chair is trying to keep you on that forward bath, but the rotation is pulling you in a different direction. Your inertia then tugs you outward. It’s like, when you’re in a car, and you’re going along a sharp curve, and you feel a tug on your body pulling you the other way, that’s your inertia in action.”

She saw nothing but blank faces and burning synapses. She sighed again.

“When you go around a single point, your inertia keeps you going forward,” Dawn said, making a circle with her finger. “It’s why when you spin a buck of water around you, the water won’t spill out, because it’s being pulled to the outside of the circle.”

“Oh, like a lasso?” Mary asked.

“No, not like a- wait, actually, yeah, that’s a perfect example,” Dawn said, surprised. She’d been prepared to shoot down whatever dumb thing the other girls said, but Mary actually got it.

“Oh! Like, I think I get it,” Dani said.

Dawn turned to her with a wary look in her eye.

“What? I do?” Dani huffed. “It’s like the hammer toss in sporting events! You spin around in a circle really fast, and the faster you go, the further you can throw the hammer! That’s gotta be centrifugal ****, right? That tug that pulls the hammer away from you!”

Dawn’s jaw hit the floor. “That… yeah, that’s right…” She stammered, absolutely shocked that Dani actually could understand anything related to physics.

“Wait, I’m right?” Dani was just as shocked. “I actually got something about science right?!”

Dawn couldn’t even respond with anything other than a nod.

“Wooo!” Dani punched the air. “Science, bitch! Yeah!”

Nick just laughed. Dawn might have been worried this morning about not being able to get along well with the others or fit in. But he always knew that she was being concerned about nothing.