"Okay, okay, lay this on me, one more time..." Rainbow Dash shook her head and tried to stifle her laughter. "You. A bunch of foals, barely just got their cutie marks. Know DJ-PON3? The DJ-PON3?" Applebloom gave it a moment's thought, just to tease, before nodding.
"Well, if it weren't for the little marshmallow here..." Scratch reached down and gave Sweetie Belle a playful nudge. "It wouldn't'a happened. Kid's a real talent."
"Really? I... you... I..." Rarity was flabbergasted.
"Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't run into her sooner, when you're running fashion shows out of your house. Ponyville's a small town."
"Ooh! Ooh! Can I get your autograph? Oh! Sign my head! No, sign my belly! Oh! Even better, sign m-" Applejack clamped a hand around Pinkie's mouth before she could embarass herself.
"Listen, it was real nice meetin' y'all, but y'look like y'got someplace to be, and we ain't gonna keep you."
"Actually..." Twilight cut in, a smirk developing on her face. "Where are you headed?"
"Oh. They evicted me from Ponyville earlier today for whatever reason, said I couldn't prove citizenship or some bullshit like that. All the ID I had on me was this Canterlot alchemy licence..."
Twilight quirked a brow. "Why do you have an alchemy licence?"
Vinyl Scratch's expression went entirely blank. "Reasons." Her eyes shifted from side to side, and Twilight shook her head, waving her on. "Anyway, I was on my way to Manehattan, and was gonna stop over here along the way. Things are getting hot all over Whitetail, ponies were running around sharpening swords when I left Ponyville. Figured Hoofington wouldn't be any friendlier."
"That's... interesting." The librarian held her hand over her chin pensively. "Say... that cart looks pretty heavy. I could probably help you lift it up this hill, on a condition..."
"Oh boy, I smell mischief!" Scratch chuckled.
At the bottom of the hill, the three pegasi remained, Fluttershy only just beginning to regain consciousness. All five youngsters had been left with them, along with Spike, curled up at the side of the road, sleeping. Rainbow Dash was sprawled out on her back, looking bored. The tortoise she rescued earler was slowly making its way over her body, claiming a perch on her belly.
"'Watch the kids, Rainbow, you need your rest'. Pfff, do they even know who they're talking to? Do I look like a daycare centre?"
"Uh..." Derpy couldn't help but chuckle, when Scootaloo and Kalza landed in the dirt next to her, and started arguing over who tripped who, trying to appeal to their guardian for arbitration. "Do you want me to answer that?" Dash gave her a stare you could split rocks on. The other pegasus just giggled. "I thought you'd be happy to spend time with your... with Scootaloo." The two kids got distracted by something, and went back to playing with the others.
"I just..." Dash sighed. "I didn't think being a mom would be so demanding. You give the kid a room, put food on the table, send her to school, play with her sometimes..."
"But it's more than that, isn't it?" Dash nodded and frowned. "There's a special... stuff that makes a good parent. Anyone can cook dinner and make a bed. The difference between a mother and a mom is, well... going the extra mile. Going out of your way to make sure she's safe and happy. And I'm not talking about ice cream and balloons, 'cos those are fun, but when they're gone, they're gone, I mean... staying up 'til three in the morning making costumes for the school play, getting up at the crack of dawn for birthday surprises, flying cross-country in driving rain to pick them up from camp because they got hurt. That kind of dedication, that kind of..."
"Loyalty."
"... yeah. That's one way of putting it. I was gonna say, you have that spark of it in you. Back six months ago, you wouldn't have gone back to save Scootaloo if you didn't care about her at least a little." Dash gave a weak smile. "You've already got something special. You have not one, but two foals... er, kids, who look up to you like nopony else, and you were good enough to take them in when they needed it most. If you show them even half the kind of loyalty you have to your friends, I think I might have competition in the mom department."
"... really? You're not just... saying that?"
"Well. I'm not gonna lie, it's a lot of work. But I think you have it in you." They paused for a little while, just watching the kids playing at the roadside. Eventually, Dash smiled, and acknowledged.
"Thanks."
The cart trundled up to the gates, substantially lighter than it had been on the way here. Vinyl whistled while she cycled along, casual as could be. The screech of the brakes alerted the guards to her presence, and the sudden stop made the contents thump loudly against the walls of the cart.
"Evening fellas," she chirped.
"Do you have proof of identity on your person? Entry to the city is restricted."
"Oh, I, hmm..." she made a show of patting herself down and looking around, before pulling a card out from inside her top and lifting her glasses to inspect it. "Aha! Here we go." She sat back in her seat and folded her arms, while she floated the card over and pressed it against the forcefield. The guards leaned in close to inspect it, sharing a couple of suspicious glances, but, the picture checked out, and it had 'Canterlot' in big letters along the top, so they couldn't really fault that. They gave a nod to an unseen comrade, and the shield across the gateway dissipated. She smirked, tucked the card away and got back to pedalling.
"Before you continue..." A firm hand blocked her entry. "We'll need to inspect your cart for banned weapons, magical artifacts and substances."
"I... what?" The colour would have drained from her face, had there been any there to start with. "Okay." She took a couple of deep breaths. One of the guards kept a suspicious eye on her, while the other moved over to her cart and pulled the tarpaulin away. Scratch gulped, and chewed on her fist. The guard gave a slightly puzzled look, and craned his neck to get a good look around the inside of the cart. He had a good rummage, turning over the speakers and mixing desks, and shaking a couple of them to see if anything fell out. Eventually, satisfied that there was nothing suspicious about its contents, he gave a nod.
"All seems above board. Carry on." The two guards pulled the tarp back over the cart and stepped back to let her through. She gave a deep sigh of relief, raised two fingers to her brow, and cycled on into the city.
Much of lower Canterlot was still a mess, with lots of hastily constructed housing and poor roads, sitting on top of often-unreliable bridges over the old city below. Indeed, there had been a number of accidents where the floor had given way under a pony, and in some places, the damage to the roads had been so bad that it was just easier to build into the old city and storm drains. As such, there were plenty of places were unseemly individuals might hide if they needed somewhere to hide from the law, or somewhere to stash sound equipment filled with illegal plant products from the Everfree forest. Vinyl Scratch quickly detoured from the main streets, down a rickety side-street, leading into the roof of a house in the old city. She parked by a doorway, hopped off and entered, finding a room with five ponies and three large monitor speakers recovering from a mass teleport.
"Oh, hey! It worked!"
"Told you!" Twilight chuckled. "All I needed was a couple of seconds' gap in the shield. For a city primarily populated with unicorns, Canterlot's magical defences are pitiful. Anyway, as agreed, here's your gear..."
"Awesome..." Scratch lifted the three speakers in turn to her cart by magic. "Listen, if there's any favour you need, just hit me up..."
"I... don't think you understand how much you helped us just now."
"And I don't think you understand how much you helped me just now..." With a chuckle and a lazy wave, Scratch saddled up again, and was on her way. Twilight scratched behind her head and blinked.
"I don't get it... all we did was carry some heavy equipment for her.
Zecora put a hand on her shoulder, smirking. "If by her load's odour I had to guess, suspicious elixirs I'd say she'd possess." Twilight went wide-eyed. She'd been wondering what that smell was. There's something else to add to the list of 'things not to introduce Pinkie Pie to'.
The group descended the stairs to traverse Canterlot through the old city. The air was clearer now than it was when it was just a sewer - most of the buildup had been detonated in the explosion six months ago, the open ceiling in many places provided much better ventilation, and the streets were in no state to facilitate their continued use as sewers. Indeed, many of the streets were cracked open right down to the bottom of the storm drains, leaving buildings half-collapsed over sheer hundred foot drops, pipes emerging from the broken rock faces to empty water directly into the pool below, and making the old city level a veritable maze of chasms and ruins.
"Okay, this might be trickier than I originally thought..."
"Can't y'just magic us over again?"
"Mass teleports take a lot of energy, Applejack, I'm still recovering from the last one. And at this range, we could just as easily end up over empty space, or inside a wall, or something. Heck, we were lucky not to end up stuck in rubble just now!"
"Coming through!" Pinkie Pie barged her way in between the two, and leapt at the edge of the nearest chasm, to universal alarm. For a few horrible seconds, she sailed through the air towards the other side, before landing with a thump and a hard roll, scuffing her pants on the edge. "See? It's easy!"
"She's kidding." Rarity looked to Twilight. "She's kidding, right?"
"I..." Before she could express her disbelief, Zecora ran past her, aiming the end of her staff for a notch in the rock near the edge, and once it slotted in, using it to launch herself across the gap, landing in a hard crouch. "...wow."
"If you would like to arrive today," the zebra called back. "You may need to make a leap of faith."
"Welp, s'worth a shot!" With a little run-up, Applejack launched herself into the air, making full use of her years of apple-bucking to clear the gap and make a sideways roll on landing. Her hat was a little crumpled, but it would be a quick fix.
Rarity had to shake herself out of her stupor. "This is insane! We can't make that kind of jump, Twilight!"
"Hmm... no, we can't. That... that actually makes some sense, that earth ponies and zebras would have better leg strength than us."
"That's all well and good as an assessment of the situation, but it's not helping us across this ruddy great cliff." She snorted, and folded her arms.
"I, ah... hmm..." For a couple of minutes, Twilight started intently at the gap, humming and hawing and making false starts. Eventually she called back across. "You girls go on ahead. We'll... we'll find another way around." Hopefully.