Pinkie Pie’s lower jaw quivered with rage and her blue eyes were fierce. Princess Twilight Sparkle’s Princess Suite had a bit of a crowd, but Pinkie didn’t notice any of them, no, her eyes were tight-focused on Sumac and Pebble. All over Pinkie’s body rage was evident—her ears twitched, her lips were pressed into a ferocious scowl, her tail jerked up and down, and there was a foamy, sweaty lather all along her back.
“You almost made me break a Pinkie Promise,” she growled to her niece and Sumac.
“I wasn’t going to do anything!” Sumac said as he took a single step backwards.
“Look me in the eye and tell me that.” Applejack pressed in closer to Pinkie, and she squinted down at Sumac, her green eyes wary and worried about Sumac using his slick magical words. “If I even think for a moment that you’re using magic to lie to me, you, me, and Pebble are catching a train home tonight.”
Pebble let out a little moan at Applejack’s words, but Sumac took a brave step forwards. Swallowing, he looked Applejack in the eye, his knees knocking together, and he licked his lips as he tried to prepare himself to speak. What came out was a squeak, a reminder of himself at half his current age.
“I was just going to slip Pebble the tongue and maybe find out what her teats feel like,” Sumac said to Applejack. “I have a checklist, one of Twilight’s roadmaps to success. I could even show it to you when we get home.” Hearing a long, feral sounding growl from Pinkie, Sumac ducked his head and took a step back.
“Will both of you stop it?” Pebble demanded, her voice cracking. “You’re acting like a hick and a feeble minded nitwit.” Anger blazed in Pebble’s eyes as she pushed Sumac aside and stepped forwards to face the two much larger mares. “Stop interrogating Sumac. It’s not always the colt that is the aggressor, you know, and just assuming that he did this is hurtful and wrong. I did this. I jumped him. I went in there with the intention of making something happen.”
“But why?” Pinkie cried, now too confused and bewildered to be so angry.
“Why?” Pebble sucked in a deep breath, and it felt as though the very hotel room itself trembled in anticipation. “Why? I’ll tell you why”—the filly’s voice rose in pitch—“since you asked. I got tired of feeling like a fat, disgusting lump, that’s why. I got tired of worrying about the Shatterstone competition, that’s why. I’m sick and tired of all of these urges and no matter what I do to service myself, I can’t seem to scratch this itch between my legs and it is driving me crazy. I wanted to win… to succeed at something… I wanted to feel good and I wanted Sumac to say all of those nice things that he says about me, but I wanted to hear him saying them while I had him pinned to the floor beneath me, as I was grinding out my itch.”
Cheese Sandwich’s mouth fell open and so did Applejack’s. Pinkie Pie stood there, dumbfounded, and Sumac suffered a full body colour shift, his pale, cream coloured hide becoming a flustered maroon colour. His ears turned an exotic shade of purple that couldn’t be observed in this light spectrum, but a mantis shrimp might find it attractive. Maybe even sexy.
Sucking in a deep breath, Pebble visibly relaxed, perhaps having some sort of catharsis.
“What do I do, Applejack?” Pinkie Pie whispered. “Being an aunt hasn’t prepared me for this. Please, please help me.”
“Nopony panic,” Applejack drawled. “I gots this!” Reaching out her foreleg, she draped it over Pinkie Pie’s drooping neck. “You, Pinkie Pie, you’re going to go off with Cheese Sandwich, and the two of you are going to have a nice time if’n you can tonight. You ain’t been right since we got here, and you need sorting out.”
Turning to Sumac, she poked the colt in his chest with her hoof. “You need to breathe! Breathe, damn you, breathe!” When Sumac didn’t breathe, Applejack cuffed him hard enough to make him suck in a deep breath involuntarily, and then it sounded as though he might start hyperventilating. Realising that Sumac was left on the wrong setting, Applejack cuffed him again, causing him to stagger backwards, and this seemed to fix the problem. Applejack had a lot of experience resetting Sumac when he forgot to breathe and she considered herself an expert.
“Cheese… do you think you can take Pinkie out and show her a nice time?” Applejack asked. “It’s an emergency.”
“I sure can!” Cheese replied, still looking a little shocked by Pebble’s outburst.
“Good, go now.” Applejack gestured at the door with her hoof.
“Right!” Cheese Sandwich, a smooth operator, swept Pinkie up and herded her towards the door. “Come, Miss Pie. We’re going to hit up the hotel bar and get a few drinks in you. The party tank is empty. After that, we’ll go dancing, and then after that, maybe I’ll serenade you.”
When the door clicked shut behind them, Sumac gulped, fearing whatever was about to happen next. Applejack had a peculiar look upon her face, a look he had never seen before, and it scared him like nothing else in his life, not even Catrina, or his mother, Belladonna.
“Sit down, both of you.” Applejack’s tone left no room for discussion or argument and both foals sat down. Applejack sat down herself and she sucked in a deep breath. “Now, we’s about to have ourselves a long, long talk about earth pony sex education. I ain’t one for reinforcing stereotypes, but it’s true. Earth ponies are born and bred for sex. Hot, horny horsey sex, with heavy breathing, and plenty of it. We can be insatiable. I think that’s the right word, I’ll need to ask Twilight.”
Letting out a shrill squeak, Sumac fell over onto the floor with a thump.
“And if’n we get stressed out, sometimes, those urges can become unbearable. Now, Twilight says it has something to do with evolutionary biology, and that during times of trouble, earth ponies go to make more earth ponies, as trouble is best faced in numbers, or, if something bad happens, at least we have a way to repopulate.” Brows furrowing, Applejack leaned in a little closer to the two foals. “Twilight and I talk about sex a lot. She comes to me for my earthy wisdom to help her round out the sex education courses in her school, seeing as how I have two little fillies of my own and I was married. Twilight is smart like that.”
Pebble, her eyes glittering, listened with rapt attention.
Sumac on the other hoof, not so much.
“To deal with those overpowering urges, we have to deal with the source of the problem, if’n we can…”
Twilight wasn’t quite sure what had happened or how it had happened, but she was now sitting around a small wooden table with Fluttershy and Rarity having drinks. This was new to her. Oh, she had drank a few times before, but never quite like this, sandwiched between two mares, and feeling their hot, fuzzy bodies pressed against her as the burning liquor slid down her throat and made her shudder.
To her left, Rarity was sucking on a section of lime, while on her right, Fluttershy was pouring something called mezcal into three small shot glasses. Twilight was feeling a little warm, a little sweaty, and a bit buzzy in the crotch, as if a swarm of bees had taken up residence between her legs.
Much to Twilight’s surprise, Fluttershy took a long, long pull from the bottle, and guzzled down almost a third of it, causing Rarity’s eyebrow to arch upwards. Even more surprising, Fluttershy didn’t seem affected by it in the slightest—she covered her mouth with her hoof while she let out a terrifying, cute little belch that made Twilight Sparkle’s eyes water and burn.
“‘Scuse me,” Fluttershy said in a husky voice.
“And you and Fluttershy do this often?” Twilight asked in disbelief, and she thought about her sentence. Something didn’t quite feel right about it, but she couldn’t make out what it was.
“Oh, darling, we do this every chance we get. Fluttershy won’t drink alone and neither will I. Alcoholics drink alone, and Fluttershy and I are not alcoholics.” Rarity began to giggle, causing her to jiggle against Twilight’s side. Lifting up a shot glass, Rarity continued to chuckle a bit. “It’s been ever so long since we did this last though.”
Twilight followed Rarity’s lead, and lifted up a shot glass. Fluttershy lifted one, clutching it in her fetlock. Together, the three mares drank, and as the mezcal trickled down Twilight’s throat, the buzzy, electric sensation between her hind legs intensified. Twilight realised that she was feeling pretty good at the moment, and she didn’t have a care in the world.
Fluttershy, a helpful, kind sort, filled up the three shot glasses once more, and then took a long drink from the bottle, the pourer’s tax.
“We’re going to need more mezcal if you keep that up,” Rarity said in a dramatic whine. “At least Twilight is starting to look a little relaxed.”
“I feel great!” Twilight said, feeling great, and she leaned against Fluttershy to give her friend a snuggle.
There was a gasp from Fluttershy as Twilight’s foreleg slid around her lower belly, and Fluttershy’s face turned a dark shade of pink as the pegasus mare lifted the bottle to her lips. She guzzled more down as Twilight nuzzled her neck, and then, setting the almost empty bottle down upon the table, Fluttershy returned Twilight’s overly affectionate snuggles.
The hour approached midnight, but Pinkie Pie was somehow just hitting her stride. In front of her, there was a big ridiculous fruity drink that hid all of the awful taste of alcohol and a platter of fried cheese sticks. Her hooves were sore from dancing, but she didn’t care. She was with Cheese again, and all was right with the world, even though nothing was right in the world.
The pink pony’s lips puckered around her rainbow coloured straw and she slurped in a sip of her fruity drink as her eyes drank in the sight of Cheese Sandwich, who was sitting across from her. He was different from when she had seen him last, and no doubt, she was as well. Her lips slipped from her straw and a little booze dribbled down her chin.
“You got a little snow on the roof, Cheese.”
Eyes crossing, Cheese Sandwich looked up at his mane and eyed the pale grey streaks that could be seen there. Pinkie smiled, she couldn’t help it, the sight of Cheese with his eyes crossed made her face cramp up with the need to smile. Cheese lifted up his own glass in his fetlock, and grinned at Pinkie.
“It makes you look distinguished,” Pinkie said, being honest. “I’ve gotten older too, and a good bit pudgier. All those sweets like to hang out on my backside.”
“I didn’t notice,” Cheese replied.
“Liar.” Pinkie Pie felt herself growing pinker. “You’ve been checking out my backside all night. You even groped me while we were dancing.”
Grinning, Cheese said nothing in his own defense, but he took a drink, and then picked up a fried cheese stick. He nibbled on one end and chewed, his eyes lingering on Pinkie, and Pinkie resumed slurping from her straw. Pinkie thought about being groped, and giggled as she thought about the fact that she had groped him first.
The pleasant, amicable silence persisted for a time, but it was Cheese that broke it. “Still having some trouble being an aunt, I see.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” Pinkie replied as she hunched forwards over the table. “It seems like every time I get Pebble figured out, she changes, something new comes along, and then I gotta start over from scratch.”
“From the looks of things, you’d make a good mom,” Cheese Sandwich said to Pinkie in a low whisper that was difficult to hear over the background murmur of the bar. “When you went storming in, you could have done anything, said anything, but you went in there and started hugging both of them. That says a lot about you, Pinkie Pie.”
“Do you think so, Cheese?”
“Yeah, I do,” he replied. “Pinkie, why are you wasting your time with me?”
“I… I… I…” Pinkie’s squeaky stammer trailed off into just little snorty-squeaks.
“I’ve been trying to figure out why we do this to ourselves,” Cheese said, admitting his feelings. “I can’t settle down, and you won’t settle down. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, Pinkie, as I roam the frontiers and prance from town to town.”
Her blue eyes shimmering, Pinkie just stared at Cheese Sandwich and did not reply.
“I know you got hurt, Pinkie. I remember that, and I think about it a lot. And I can’t help but feel that you cling to this relationship that we have, such as it is, because it allows you to say you’re attached without actually being attached.”
Her lower lip quivering, Pinkie Pie nodded.
“The problem, as I see it, is that I love you, and I allow it happen.”
Clutching her large, oversized drink, Pinkie Pie hugged it to her with a slosh.
“It also gives me the same protection that it gives you, Pinkie. I can roam from town to town, free of entanglements and the ties that bind, free from all of the complications, and I can say there is a mare waiting for me back home, and it allows me to slip away with no fuss, no messy feelings.”
“Free to go from party to party,” Pinkie squeaked.
“Yep.” Cheese Sandwich sighed. “Free to go from party to party…”