“... drinks, and sixty hayburgers.”
“Yes.” Twilight gave a polite nod.
“What are your friends ordering?” the awkward looking teen behind the counter asked.
Twilight’s eyes narrowed in the most dangerous way one could imagine. “I have a small mob of hungry earth ponies, two adolescent foals with bottomless stomachs, a manticore spawn that is an aggressive eater, a dragon, and at least a dozen guards who insisted on coming inside with us. I thought it was fair that I buy the food to make up for the fact that your regular customers can’t get in right now, because they can’t come in.”
The pony behind the counter blinked once. “You can’t fool me, Princess Sparkle… I’ve seen you come in here with just you and your dragon… and you blame the dragon—”
Mouth falling open, Twilight recoiled from the sass, and the earnest, hearty laughter of Applejack made her ears fidget. She shuffled on her hooves, from left to right, and her tail swished around her hind legs. She was too flustered to do proper math and this bothered her a great deal. When she recovered, she somehow managed to say, “And add thirty milkshakes to that order too.”
“Right.” The cashier smirked. “Again I ask, what’ll your friends be having?”
“I dunno,” Twilight replied, “but I’m about to have a real long talk with your manager!”
The young unicorn behind the counter cringed a bit, but didn’t look sorry.
“Say,” Pebble said, sidling up beside Twilight at the counter. “What’s a cutie mark for working in a burger chain look like? Does it look like incurable acne from standing too near the fryolator, or were you born with a plot like that?”
In her attempt to remain silent, Twilight almost swallowed her lower jaw, but her other friends weren’t quite so lucky. Pebble was savage, and Twilight fully intended to pull her aside and have a talk with her. Later. When the time was right. If she could remember to pen it into the schedule. With how busy everything was, she might forget.
“Pebble Pie, I think I love you.” Sumac stood nearby, shaking his head from side to side, and then for emphasis, he clucked his tongue several times and went, “Mmm, mmm, mmm.”
“You better.” Pebble cast a wary sidelong glance at her coltfriend. “I’d snap your spine if you stopped.” These words made Megara and Corbie start giggling.
For a brief moment, Twilight thought about hiring Pebble to fulfill the same position that Blueblood held, a weapon of savage wit to be unleashed upon the public in times of need. It was tempting, and Pebble was at that age when getting a first job was important. Looking the cashier in the eye, she took a deep breath and said:
“Put everything on my expense account, I’m not carrying any bits.”
The pony behind the counter sounded quite meek after his roasting. “Right… I’ll do that.”
Corbie, was a devourer. Twilight watched the little filly as she ate, and took note of just how much food she consumed, which was considerable. She might have pecked at her food, but she did a lot of pecking. She gobbled down more food than both of her brothers put together, eating with a frantic, almost desperate energy. Little pegasus ponies had fantastic metabolisms, from what Twilight could remember, which allowed them to do well in athletics. They needed exercise, and plenty of it.
With her current living conditions, Corbie wasn’t getting much in the way of exercise. She wasn’t allowed to go out flying, running indoors was frowned upon, for obvious reasons, and Corbie still wolfed down every last bit of food within her reach, going so far as to steal Radiance’s hay fries by licking them to claim ownership.
Twilight was seized with an idea, one that paralleled the one already in place for Nuance. Corbie needed to attend flight camp, but given that she was a member of the Royal Brood, that almost seemed impossible… except that Twilight knew a qualified trainer, a pegasus known as Rainbow Dash. Even better, Twilight could help Corbie make some friends, as Sumac needed to attend flight camp. Others could attend flight camp as well, even though they were excellent fliers, such as Megara, who was surprisingly skilled for having grown up in a family of terrestrial quadrupeds. Little Alto needed flight lessons, and he was just the right age for Corbie to make friends with.
Corbie would also be well protected—Megara wasn’t even full grown yet, but she had learned her father’s improvisational fighting style—and this made her a fierce, dangerous combatant. Twilight was loathe to admit it, but Megara’s combat experience—the many, many times she had followed her father out on dangerous field missions—was about to become a foundational cornerstone in Twilight’s coming argument.
At some point, Twilight would need to commune with the ink to determine just what Megara’s cutie mark meant: the severed teddy bear’s head was rather enigmatic to her as a point of scholarly interest, and a point of absolute terror to others who viewed it.
Most other species didn’t need a cutie mark to figure out what to do, they just did what came natural to them. Ponies, and by extension, pony hybrids that developed cutie marks, they needed a cutie mark to tell them what to do. Twilight was uncertain of what this said about her own species, but given how the common pony acted, their behaviour, and how easily most of them were spooked by common things, garden variety every day sort of things, she suspected that ponies, her species as a whole, were no doubt incredibly stupid, and needed a pictograph of sorts to remind them what to do.
Sometimes, the truth was tragic, and this was one of many reasons why Twilight prized individuality.
She dismissed the distraction and instead thought about the fact that one day out of the week was not enough to get the exercise that Corbie needed. No, Corbie needed an extended stay at flight camp, to get in shape, and then she needed to do all of the conditioning and cardio stuff that Rainbow Dash was always talking about—though perhaps in not the same way that Rainbow Dash and Tarnished Teapot went about doing it.
Walking into a monster-infested area while wearing scraps of meat was just plain stupid, and she shook her head at the memory. Rainbow and Tarnish weren’t known as the smartest of ponies, but they might be the most capable athletes that she knew. Still, even with their combined stupidity and the brain aches it caused, Twilight had to commend their friendship. It took some very special friends indeed to walk into an area packed with ravenous beasts while wearing meat scraps.
So distracted was Twilight that she did not notice the mischief starting.
“I think Twilight needs a kiss, Uncle Seville,” Corbie said in a manner most casual, and she then she licked some yellow mustard from her snoot with the curled over tip of her tongue. When the yellow mustard was gone, she slurped up her tongue, and then began to eyeball the remains of Nuance’s fries.
With a slow, slow turn of her head, Twilight began to survey the situation, and she knew, she knew that Rainbow Dash was behind this somehow. Rainbow Dash and her team of Dastardly Delinquents had gone off and plotted something at the botanical gardens. Eyes narrowing, Twilight studied her loyal friend, looking for signs of guilt. Of course, there were none to be seen.
“It’s not that simple, Corbie.” Twilight picked up a paper napkin, wiped her muzzle, and for a moment, a brief moment, she resented the gleeful abandon in the little pegasus filly’s eyes. “It’s actually pretty complicated.” For a moment, her eyes darted to the left, making a quick sidelong glance at Seville, and then she returned her attention to Corbie.
“Bah, kissing is simple,” Megara bellowed, and she twisted her upper body around to face Sumac, who was sitting to her right. “I’m gonna eat your face, okay?”
Before Sumac could respond, Megara the Lioness did in fact, eat his face. Opening her maw, she grabbed Sumac with her paws and then proceeded to stuff most of his muzzle and his face into her open mouth, while somehow not impaling him with her tusks. Then, with slow deliberation, she licked him while the colt tried to squirm away. In mere moments, his face was drenched with slobber, and the various sounds of reaction began to happen all around Twilight; some laughed, and some made disgusted noises.
As for Twilight herself, she was aghast.
When Megara at last began to pull away, she puckered up, pressed her fuzzy lips and her tusks up against Sumac’s snoot, and smooched him, making a loud smack. Twilight was horrified—she could feel the food in her stomach tumbling around like clothes in a dryer—and she couldn’t even begin to process why this act had just violated every single one of her sensibilities.
“Pebble… doesn’t that bother you?” Twilight asked, and she didn’t like how her voice was squeaking.
“Celestia and Luna have the right of it,” Pebble replied, and she turned to look over at her own sister just in time to watch her give Sumac a final lick as she pulled away. “I’m fine, sharing with my sister, and truth be told, I prefer having some backup around to keep Sumac safe. I’m not about to have another Belladonna incident on my watch.”
“That kiss was kinda gross.” Corbie stuck out her tongue and shook her head for a time, before slurping up her tongue once more and adding, “Manticore kisses, I don’t want them.”
“Ugh, your tongue is like sandpaper!” Sumac pulled off his glasses, revealing his eyes, and he glared at Megara. “You licked my glasses, you fiend! You know that I hate that!” When Megara rolled her eyes, the colt let out a flustered huff and mentioned in a threatening growl, “You’ll get yours… I’ll shine a spot on the wall again.”
“That’s fighting dirty!” Megara let out a yowling whine, reached out one muscular foreleg, and gave Sumac a shove, pushing him into Pebble.
“It’s just a kiss,” Pebble said to Twilight in a flat deadpan. “Sumac has kissed a lot of fillies. I’ve kissed a few myself. It’s normal for foals our age.” Eyes narrowing, she continued, “You on the other hoof, never kissed anypony when you were a filly, and now, you’re like ten thousand years old. You need to hurry up, Miss Sparkle, and get a move on with your life.”
The sudden rush of anxiety was almost paralysing. Twilight sat there, unable to cogitate, unable to process everything that had just happened, and she stared at Sumac, who was mopping up his face with a wad of paper napkins. She was shocked to her very core that these foals treated such a special thing—at least, what she saw as something special—with such casual disregard. She didn’t know how to take it, or cope with it, and even though she knew that Sumac and Pebble had been kissing, she hadn’t cottoned on to just how simple it was for them.
“It’s not that simple,” Twilight said to Pebble, trying to refute the filly’s claim.
“Sure it is,” Sumac replied. “Even if you are an introvert. You just have to work up the courage to ask.”
“No, Sumac, it isn’t that simple—”
“Yes it is.” Sumac crawled over Megara, causing her to yowl, and she gave the colt a rough shove to help him over. He tumbled into Rainbow Dash, looked up at her, waggled his eyebrows, and asked, “Hey, you’re the fastest mare I know… how’s about a smooch?”
“You cheeky little… whatever you are.” Rainbow Dash’s ears angled forwards over her eyes, and then stood up when Pinkie Pie began laughing. “You’re covered in manticore slobber. Get out of here!”
“Shot down, and rejected.” Sumac let out a sigh as he turned to face Twilight. “See, that’s the worst that can happen. It stings a bit, but it isn’t so bad.” The colt took a moment to adjust his glasses, which were now free of manticore slobber. “As bad as this is, it isn’t as bad as sitting around wondering what might have happened.”
“Rainbow, you put them up to this!” Twilight spat out her accusation, and she wanted to be angry, but she also knew that Rainbow was just trying to help. Some of her friends were laughing, but she realised that they weren’t laughing at her. Her anger dispersed with a grunt, and she sat there, looking sullen.
“This was Sumac’s idea, actually.” Rainbow gave the colt beside her a shove, pushing him into Megara. “He didn’t tell me that he was going to say that I was the fastest mare he knew though… stop laughing, Applejack!” Turning her head, she shot the orange earth pony a withering glare.
Her green eyes glittering with mirth, Applejack responded, “Can’t fault him for being honest.”
“Ooooh, that’s mean, Jackie, that’s just mean!” Rainbow shook her hoof at her friend and bared her teeth. “You’ll get yours, just you wait!”
Alone in a crowd, Twilight realised that she had a lot to think about.