"I told him that no, I don't own any alcohol, stop asking, it's a rumor!" Berry Punch ranted to Golden Harvest. "But did he listen? No! He ran straight into my house to start looking!"
"What the heck is wrong with Goldengrape?" Golden Harvest frowned as they walked. "How long has he known you?"
"Three minutes," Berry grumbled, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "I go to pick up Piña Colada, he decides he's found himself a girlfriend, invites himself home, and the next thing I know my dad's yelling at him to get out and my mom's yelling at me for bringing a random boy home."
"That's harsh, girl," Golden Harvest set down her crate of Healthy Carrot Fizz and tucked an orange curl behind her ear. "I hope Piña Colada gave him the what-for!"
"If she punched him, it would be all over MyStable," Berry pointed out. "Anyways, where do we bring these?" She wiggled her fingers, which were grasping onto a similar crate of Healthy Carrot Fizz.
"To the gym, where else?"
"Maybe the cafeteria?" Berry suggested. "I can't wait to see this contest! For, uh, taste, or something!"
"Especially since my carrots are going to win!" Golden Harvest bragged. "Applejack doesn't stand a chance!"
"Cherry Crash?"
"She just grabbed some soda that said 'cherry' on it. I saw her at the store." Golden Harvest rolled her eyes. "I wish people would take this fruit contest more seriously!"
"Are Carrots fruits, Carrot Top?" Berry Punch queried as they walked into the gymnasium.
"You know what I mean, Berry. I just remembered, why aren't you entering?"
"Oh, you know," Berry responded casually as she placed her crate next to Applejack's fizzy apple cider. "With my reputation, everybody would assume my stuff was alcoholic."
"I think you should go see Sunset Shimmer about the reputation thing. She's gotten over her reputation!" Golden Harvest pointed out. Berry smirked and rolled her eyes.
"Sweet Leaf has a similar problem. She told me Sunset gave her zero advice on how to shake a bad reputation."
"Who woulda thought." Golden Harvest shook her head. "Ah, well. I'm gonna call Merry May, is that alright? She told me she had something to talk to me about."
"Go right ahead!" Berry encouraged her. "I'll wait for you outside."
"Thanks!" Golden Harvest flashed her a smile, her green phone already in her hands.
"No problemo," Berry winked before leaving her friend to the call. She swagged outside and headed straight for the marble statue that greeted the students of CHS every morning.
Ding!
"Who's textin' now?" Berry wondered, pulling out her green-and-purple-swirled phone. She swiped a finger across the screen to see the latest news.
"'Walk into the statue portal.'" Berry read Pinkie Pie's text aloud. Afterward, she scratched her head in confusion. "Statue portal? Wait, like the stallion statue?" Berry stared up at the marble stallion she had just been admiring. The pony's rearing pose now looked weird; spooky, like it had been cast in a shadowy light. Berry shivered.
"Where the heck did that imagery come from?" she asked her, reaching a hand out to the surface of the portal. In contrast to the hard stone she expected to feel, Berry instead found her hand slipping right through the surface! Berry's eyes widened. She quickly retracted her hand.
"Ick!" she commented, shaking her hand in case germs from another dimension came for her. "What was that about?"
Ding!
"'It's a portal to the universe Twilight Sparkle hails from,'" Berry read. "Sheesh, really? I had to skip the Fall Formal and the Battle of the Bands because they unfortunately coincided with Pina Colada's birthday and Ruby's first birthday. You expect me to be excited about some girl I've heard about but never met?" To anyone else, Berry might've looked like she was ranting to herself. But Berry was asking legit questions to the explainable law of physics they called Pinkie Pie.
Ding!
"'It'll be super fun, please go, you know you want to.'" Berry rolled her eyes. "Alright, Pinkie! I give up! I'll go through!" Berry stared at the statue a moment longer before she ran straight in.
"Berry? Sorry I took so long-" Golden Harvest stopped talking when she realized no one was around to listen. "Berry?"
Berry Punch hated her reputation as an alcoholic. If she wanted to obliterate that reputation, she probably should have stopped partying all night long ago. Once, she had partied all night, with shots and everything, and Berry had gotten a hangover the next day.
Berry was thinking about hangovers because it felt like she was having one at that moment. A background of neon pinks, purples. greens, blues, and oranges swirled around her, or rather, Berry swirled through the colors.
"Aaaaaaaah!" she cried as her body was stretched this way and that. "What's hapeniiiing!?"
Suddenly the swirling stopped. The colors disappeared. Inertia at work, Berry was sent flying.
"Woah!" Thankfully, she was able to catch herself before she rammed into a wall of crystal clear blue.
"That was close!" Berry gasped, looking around. She was shaky from the adrenaline rushing through her veins. She seemed to be in a crystal place of some sort.
"Did I just get transported to Crystal Park High?" she wondered, noting the architecture resembled the new school up North. Berry quickly dismissed the thought. "No, Pinkie said this is where Twilight Sparkle came from. The universe Twilight Sparkle came from." At that moment, Berry's gaze wandered downward. Two plum-colored hooves greeted her.
"What the-" Berry began to back up from the strange sight. To her surprise and horror, the hooves moved in time with her legs- or how she wanted her legs to move.
"I don't have legs anymore!" Berry gasped in horror. "I'm a pony!"
"Hi Berry!" Pinkie Pie walked into the room at that moment. Berry gaped at her.
"Pinkie Pie! You're walking?" I've never her seen her walk. It's always the bouncing and skipping and running.
"I figured the situation called for me to walk calmly in like it was no big deal and make you freak out even more." Pinkie's giggles dissolved into snorts.
"Well it worked! Kinda!" Berry ran over to Pinkie. "I'm not even wearing clothes!"
"Oh, relax, Silly Filly!" Pinkie told her, ruffling Berry's mane. Unconsciously, Berry's ears flattened in distaste.
"No pony regularly wears clothes in Ponyville!" Pinkie explained cheerfully. "That reminds me! Wanna go to Ponyville? I have a surprise for you!"
"Um, is it another portal?" Berry asked. Now that the initial shock of being a pony had basically worn off, a trip across pony land sounded nice.
"Pinkie Promise it isn't a portal!" Pinkie Pie made an X over her heart, mimicked flying motions, and stuck her hoof over her eye. "Sound good?"
"Sounds good!" Berry confirmed, beaming. "Take me to pony land!"
"Ponyville," Pinkie corrected good naturally. She grabbed Berry by the hoof. "Come on, let's go!"
"Wooooah!" Berry cried gleefully as she was towed away by Pinkie Pie faster than the speed of light. Not literally, though that would've been cool.
"So, I heard from my double's friend Applejack, who is the double of my friend Applejack, that the doubles on the other side of the mirror are having a Fruits and Veggies Drink Contest like the one the pony doubles are having her, so double the fun!" Pinkie exclaimed as she ran down a dirt road.
"Can you clarify that?" Berry shouted in response. "One, the wind's in my ears so I can't hear you very well, and two, I have no idea what you just said."
"Sorry!" Pinkie apologized, slowing the pace so that Berry could hear. "You're having a Fruits and Veggies Drink Contest, right?"
"Yeah!" Berry confirmed, slightly preoccupied with the scenery around her. "What about it?"
"I'm gonna give you some surprise ingredients!" Pinkie exclaimed. "From your own garden!"
"That's good- wait, what?" Berry stared at the back of Pinkie's head in surprise and confusion.
"Yeah! I know the pony version of you so I'm just gonna borrow some grapes and strawberries, like what's on your cutie mark!"
"Cutie mark?" Berry queried.
"The mark on your flank!" Pinkie clarified. "See, look!" Berry looked and indeed, purple grapes and a red strawberry adorned her flanks, just like the symbol on her shirt.
"That's cool!" she exclaimed. "That reminds me, I won a vineyard once. In a contest. I never got it though."
"For realzies?" Pinkie asked. Berry nodded, smiling.
"Yeah! I don't know what happened!" she replied. "The judges never got around to giving me the land."
"Oh, that's funny and sad," Pinkie responded making a sharp turn. "I hope you aren't too upset about that!"
"It was a couple years ago. I'm good now," Berry responded.
"Aaaaaand here we are!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed, suddenly halting.
"Woah!" Berry murmured, looking over the expanse of land Pinkie had brought her to. Rows of bushes lined a hill or two. The orchard wasn't as big as Applejack's, but the sight was still beautiful to Berry.
"Oh, and don't worry about your reputation," Pinkie added, already plucking some berries off the nearest bush. "It will go away! And if it doesn't, you've always got friends like Carrot Golden Top Harvest, Sweet Leaf, and me!"
"That's good advice, Pinkie!" Berry admitted, sitting down next to the native pony. "Thanks. I'll try to take that to heart."
"Nooooo problemo!" Pinkie responded cheerfully.
In half an hour, Berry and Pinkie had picked a respectable amount of berries. The cargo was then packed into some saddlebags Pinkie had conveniently stashed in her hair.
"Do you think I'll ever be able to come again, Pinkie?" Berry asked her as they walked back to the castle.
"I dunno!" Pinkie rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "I'll have to ask myself about that."
"Be sure to!" Berry replied as they ascended the steps to the portal. "One more thing: Where's Twilight Sparkle? I've never met her."
"Oh, she can't know about this!" Pinkie told her with wide eyes. "She'd shut down the portal!"
"I won't tell," Berry promised, leaning in for a hug. Pinkie embraced her warmly.
"See ya around, Berry!" she exclaimed as Berry tossed her saddlebags through the portal.
"Ooof!"
"Uh, Carrot? Are you alright?" Berry knelt over her fallen friend.
"I just got assaulted by a bag of berries," Golden Harvest responded. "Where were you?"
"... Long story."