Two Background Ponies Quickie: "The Saddle Row Review" Aftermath · 7:00pm May 28th, 2016
(Addendum to “Saddle Row Review” Vol. 27, originally published Mid-Spring, YOC 1006)
Following my exclusive behind-the-scenes interview with the six mares who made “Rarity-4-U” happen, I decided it would be best to get an outside look from some of the ponies there for the opening to see how they were reacting to the hard work of these young ladies. As it just so happened, I was lucky enough to catch a trio right from Rarity’s own hometown of Ponyville there for the opening…
DAWN CHARGER-LISTENS-TO-CARL’S-PROBLEMS: I heard in the local Free Foal Press that Rarity was going to be opening another boutique, this time in Manehattan, and that she was looking for new sales associates. Well, although my Cutie Mark is in nursing and my husband’s is in listening to the problems of other ponies, I figured that sales associate might be a nice change of venue from customer service and cleaning bed sores and we should actually go for the interview so long as it was open. And since my husband was lucky enough to actually inherit a penthouse from his uncle in Manehattan, I thought it would be a nice little mini-vacation!
SAM LISTENS-TO-CARL’S-PROBLEMS: Yeah…considering how much of a disaster our last trip was to Manehattan, I sort of let it slip through the cracks telling Dawn that my “penthouse” is…well…I’d call it a rat hole but that’s insulting to rats. At any rate, I still needed to make up for the botched anniversary and I figured the interview wouldn’t take long. I mean, imagine me selling clothes, am I right? (Sigh) But, unfortunately, I talked about it to Carl during our walk home the night before and…
INCARLSISTENCY: Frankly, Sam was lucky to have me along. How hard can sales be? You just always give some BS reason that the most expensive item is the best one. And of course I wanted to go back to Manehattan. Sure, I had a dozen restraining orders, but I was going to meet with Rex and he was going to hook me up with some sweet black market anime for a really nice price. Uh…I can’t be prosecuted for saying that in a newspaper article, right?
DAWN: (Sigh) Well, Carl had to come along, so you can imagine the wagon ride there wasn’t the best. Luckily finding Saddle Row wasn’t that hard. I had gotten into the line of applicants and we were just waiting for things to begin when, well...
SAM: I was so nervous about Carl coming along annoying Dawn that I forgot about breakfast. Now having to stand around outside waiting to be interviewed was making me dizzy. Especially since the interviewer was making the other applicants run a race...for some reason...
CARL: So I say to Sam we should pop out for our normal cookie deal. There’s this little café just on the edge of the street. Sure, it’s Manehattan prices but I figure we can get a couple of snickerdoodles at least. Gluten-free, no less.
DAWN: I let them go because I figured getting Carl out of the area would at least help my own chances of getting hired. Oh boy, big mistake…
SAM: We get to the shop, sit down, and hardly place our order when Carl suddenly taps me with his hoof and points over. I look, and I see Pinkie Pie wearing a fedora getting a lemonade. Yet Carl claims that he saw running to the second floor of the boutique before we left. He started going on about her being in two places at once and I’m just eating my snickerdoodle and about to wash it down with some milk, and right as I’m drinking he says to me…
CARL: “Let’s kidnap her.”
SAM: You can imagine what happened to my milk after that.
CARL: Ok, that sounds a little crazy, but this was the definitive proof I was looking for. I knew at least one of those clones had to have escaped. And if one got loose, then what’s to say the other Pinkie Pie wasn’t a clone too? What’s to say the real one didn’t get stuck in that pond? What’s to say she hasn’t been trapped there for three years? This is some Mare-vel Universe Comic Paradox (obscenity) man! It had to be done! Somepony had to do it!
SAM: I tried to talk him down but before I knew it he was pulling out some cold medicine and trying to sneak over to the pony’s lemonade to spike it with it and knock her out. I got up to try and stop him and, well…things got just a tiny bit physical.
CARL: Dude, without warning, hoof kicks me into the nearest table and knocks the Night-Quil all over the place. And guess what table I got knocked into? Some dude and a colt. Of course, he immediately assumes I was trying to drug the kid, wait for him to go to the bathroom, and then do something… Sheesh, Manehattanites have dirty minds…
SAM: Well, Carl naturally makes it worse when the guy gets up and starts talking roughly, saying he wasn’t trying to drug a foal…he was trying to drug a mare. Yeah, that’s much better. Doesn’t help that he starts going on a tirade about how he’s trying to eliminate a clone and liberate the real Pinkie Pie. So whoever doesn’t think he’s a sicko thinks he’s psychotic at that point. I tried to play it off…but then I saw two off-duty cops start to get up. Let’s just say my last experience with Manehattan cops wasn’t that good. And after being charged first with royal abduction and later with murder…wait, don’t write that down. Why are you writing that down?
CARL: Dude, you just keep writing every time I say something. Are you literally able to record everything I say with just a pencil and a little pad? That’s some mad shorthand right there.
SAM: Suffice to say the last thing I wanted was to try and explain anything to the MPD, especially with Dawn around. Anyway, let’s just say…I panicked and overreacted trying to get us out of there.
CARL: And he got mad at me… Sam bends over to pick up the bottle, then suddenly he grabs me, turns, and bolts for it straight out the side doors. Because…yeah, that doesn’t look suspicious.
SAM: It took a second for the cops to realize what happened and they were still blocked by other ponies, so I actually thought we were going to make it, but literally the second we bust out of the door and charge into the side alley, we smash right into… (Deep breath) I can’t believe it…
CARL: Yeah, remember how I said I was calling up Rex? Turns out he and his ga…er, posse were in the neighborhood with another request. All of the sudden we smash into a bunch of foo dogs tearing open crates of cutlery, throwing away the forks and the knives in this one pile and putting the spoons into these boxes. Someone apparently wanted a lot of black-market spoons…
THEORDORUS (“REX”) FENTON SCOTT: Those cutlery sets belonged to my grandma. She just never took the price tags off of things, is all, and we found an Eastern Giddy-upean superintendent willing to pay a reasonable price for just the spoons.
SAM: Yeah, well…soon after we break in on them the cops follow us out. So, the big guy knows us and he sees us run into him with a bunch of cops, and…well, you can guess the conclusion he jumped to.
REX: So I may have thought that the whole thing was a bust and we had been sold out…uh, not that we were doing anything illegal to begin with. Well, when it looks like some dude you thought was your bro is going to be a snitch and the cops are closing in, you do what comes natural.
CARL: He pulled out a switch blade and screamed “I’m going to kill you (obscenities)”. But as soon as the policeponies busted into the alley and spotted the foo dogs they yanked out their horns and ordered them on the ground. I mean, true, they could have bought and paid for those spoons and that might have been a bit of speciest profiling…but I can’t complain considering it helped me. I used the moment to grab Sam this time and go for the nearest door.
SAM: I actually caught the name of this joint. It was another Saddle Row clothing outlet. I figure that’s a good bet. We’ll hide in the dressing room or something. But no sooner do we bust in than Carl stomps on a raccoon’s tail. It didn’t like that. (Groan) Not. One. Bit.
CARL: For the love of Celestia, what the Tartarus was a (obscenity) family of raccoons doing in a Saddle Row outlet getting fit for waiter’s tuxes?! These damn oversized rats immediately jump on us and start biting while shots are going off in the alley, and so everypony starts screaming and running everywhere. I’m trying to claw this damn hairy face-hugger off my head while I bust back out into the street and try to keep running…
SAM: Aaaand…we end up charging right back to Rarity-4-U.
DAWN: Those runners had just come back and I was about to speak up to Rainbow Dash when suddenly I hear this violent chittering noise and Carl screaming “somepony claw this (obscenity) marmot off my face”. I turn and look and I see Sam and Carl, three raccoons foaming at the mouth, two police officers firing warning shots everywhere, a gang of foo dogs crawling around with forks stuck in their paws like caltrops, and a crowd of ponies screaming a mix of “terrorism”, “hate crime”, and “vermin” come barreling at the building. Well, just at that moment, the upstairs DJ was trying to haul this gigantic subwoofer down to the first floor by a pulley system out the window…Sam runs right into the pony holding the other end of the line, and…
CARL: …Well, to make a long story short, no one died. Except when the subwoofer landed a piece of it snapped off and went right through the back windshield of this one wagon going down the road being pulled by a couple of stallions in cheap suits. They sped off right afterward but I think I overheard something about a guy named “Marvin” who was in the back…
RARITY: (Stunned silence for 1 full minute) Oh my. Well, of course I didn’t hear any of it. Sound-proof glass, dear. You don’t think I’d want all the noises of the street ruining the feng shui of the boutique, do you? As for not seeing it, well…I was “in the zone”, as it were. Although I suppose this explains the red splotch and tufts of mane hair…
SAM: Whoever could still stand started grabbing everypony else, but before any more blood could be spilled we all felt ourselves immobilized and (Tremendous sigh) the princess who probably hates us more than any other pony comes out. She doesn’t even bother asking for an explanation. She takes one look at the two of us and just kind of gives us a look that says: “What is it this time?”
CARL: I think she planned on throwing the book at us, but luckily we got bailed out. You see, the police ponies…well, one of them…survived the accident more or less intact and conscious and immediately slaps "Rarity-4-U" with fines for housing wild animals, moving entertainment equipment in an urban commercial area over 100 pounds without contracting a union employee, hiring three employees without submitting W-4s, obstructing fire escapes with clothing racks, and not posting a sign that read: “No Smoking within 100 feet of the Store Entrance”. And that’s where we managed to work out a little deal to fix everything…
DAWN: …Yeah, a ‘little deal’. Basically I provided on-the-spot medical care for all the injured ponies and the three of us agreed to pay all fines, as well as consented to a restraining order of 300 yards from "Rarity-4-U", and in return Princess Twilight Sparkle doesn’t press charges.
SAM: Well, at least they let us stay for the opening. (Pause) Oh yeah, I should probably say something about the experience. It was great. At least…I think it was great. We only got to walk in with the crowd to get a picture taken for publicity, and then we were immediately shooed out. We didn’t actually get to see any of the clothes.
CARL: And…if that wasn’t enough, since we spent all our money on the fines and it was getting late, we had to stay in Sam’s old condo. This time, I think the mold was trying to attack us for killing its family the last time we were there… Luckily, we only stayed there about two hours. Most of the night we were at the hospital getting rabies shots from the raccoons.
SAM: The good news is they didn’t have rabies. The bad news is…well…let’s just say they didn’t stink so bad because they hadn’t bathed. Needless to say, this will be our last visit to Manehattan for a while. But I really appreciate Dawn. She puts up with a lot at times like this and she troops right through it. And the whole time she stayed calm and collected talking things out with the princess. I really am a lucky stallion.
DAWN: When I was married, the very day of my wedding, my father walks up to me for the father-daughter dance. Before we get on the floor, he slips me a piece of paper with a dragonfire address. He tells me: “If he ever treats you bad or acts up, just send a message to this address saying: ‘Do it’. Don’t bother signing your name…don’t bother writing anyone else’s name or a time or an explanation…they’ll know what it’s about and they’ll take care of it within 24 hours.” (Lengthy pause) I kept that piece of paper because I know dad would know if I got rid of it, but I always leave it at the bottom of my saddlebags. (Lengthy pause again) I didn’t sleep that night. I just sat awake for eight hours holding that piece of paper in my hooves…staring at it…
COCO POMMEL: (Sniffles, then is suddenly tackled out of the café booth and assaulted by a brown filly from out of nowhere)
BABS SEED: Die, you (obscenity)! I wanna be in a Manehattan episode! It’s my (obscenity) turn!
Wow. Carl deconstructed the blog as it was going on. I'm impressed.
And given Manehattan's apparently nonexistent rent control laws, it's not too surprising that the health code is lax enough to allow raccoon butlers.
Also, that ending was hilarious.