“Welcome to Berry’s! I’m Berry,” the purplish pink mare with a magenta mop of a mane behind the counter said as we walked into the bar. It wasn't quite what I’d call crowded, but there were enough ponies in here that it didn't feel desolate. In a corner, a beige earth pony plucked a double bass while a pegasus mare sang a slow, loud tune.
“Hey, Berry,” said the wall-eyed mare who brought me here. “Golden Gleam’s with me. Ya have any tables open?”
“Derpy!” Berry said, turning her gaze from me to her. “You didn't tell me you’d started dating again. Or that you were into mares, for that matter. But hay, I’d be open to experiment too if my last experience with the opposite sex was as bad as yours.” She winked, but I’m not sure at whom.
Derpy rolled her eyes in that out-of-sync way she does, but she was smiling underneath.
“Berry, as nice as your bar is, it’s not a grace I’d take somepony to on a first date, and we both know you’d have heard it through the Grapevine if this was a date beyond the first. Golden Gleam is a friend from work, though, so if we could both get that discount?” she said with a smile.
“Derps, she’d get the discount just for being in your party, so no worries there regardless. Anyway, there are some free tables over there,” she said, gesturing to the corner furthest from the band. “But before I lose you, your new friend hasn't said anything yet. So, Golden Gleam, where ya from?”
At this point, both Berry and Derpy were looking at me with interest.
Well, it wasn't like this was a performance review.
“Ah’m from Dodge Junction, ‘riginally, but Ah’ve been movin’ around wherever the EUP thought Ah was needed for a while. Just moved ta Ponyville around when Derpy and I got recruited to go fight monsters for Princess and Principality. Does that tell you enough?”
“Tells me plenty,” Berry responded, pouring some blueberry liqueur into a snifter with a dexterity and smoothness my brother the demolitionist would envy if he saw. “Between your hometown, your life’s story, and the way you wear your mane, I have a pretty good idea of what you’d enjoy.”
She winked again.
“I’ve already got Derpy’s drink,” she said, passing the snifter to Derpy’s outstretched wing, “and yours will be ready in a sec.”
A few ice cubes clinked into a short rocks glass, followed by a stream of ruby-red liquid that smelled like home.
“Cherry Schnapps, made from the second-best cherries in Dodge Junction. Since you’re new here, the first glass is on-the-house. If you want any more, flag down the waiter and you can put it on your tab.
“Have a nice night, you two,” she said as she passed me my drink. “Enjoy the music, the company, and especially the drinks.”
Derpy and I thanked her, and then made our way to a secluded table by the wall. I took a sip of my schnapps. It was… less sweet than I was expecting, but that wasn't a bad thing. It was pretty strong, too; I’d have to be careful if I wanted to show up at work without a hangover the next day.
Derpy took a deep whiff from the snifter embedded deep in her wing and smiled. Well, that smile she always seems to have widened appreciably, at least. “Berry Punch sure knows her stuff,” she said before taking a sip of her own. “Always knows just what a pony needs. How's your drink? I haven't seen her break out the cherry schnapps before.”
I took another sip. “It's actually pretty good. Reminds me a little of when we were little, and Steely would share some cherry cordials he'd snuck with me, so I wouldn't rat him out. Ya want some?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging her unencumbered wing. “You should try some of mine, too.”
She started to reach for my glass with a wing, but stopped when I conjured a tiny bowl of golden light, filled it from my glass, and passed it over to her.
She scooped it up with her wing and drained it, her face scrunching up a little at the flavor.
“It's not bad,” she said once she’d pulled her face back into shape, “but it's a little too sour for me. I think it's a required taste. Now try mine.”
I let the previous bowl disperse and conjured a new one to sample her blueberry liqueur. When it hit my tongue, though, the sweetness shorted out my brain and my conjured bowl with it, staining a little bit of my coat blue.
“How do you drink this stuff, Derpy!”
“Eheh, very carefully?” she replied, rubbing the back of her head with a hoof.
“I mean, this stuff has enough sugar in it to put a hummingbird in a diabetic coma.” I may have been exaggerating a little, but Celestia's flanks that stuff was sweet.
“What can I say? Flying burns a lot of calories.” She shrugged again.
Even if I couldn't see it, I could feel Berry snickering at me behind the counter.
“One of the great injustices of the world,” I groused. “Unicorns are the only tribe that has to exercise to stay in shape.”
“Fair, but they're also the only ones who don't have to touch a dirty diaper directly. It's a good thing Dinky is and was so adorable, let me tell ya.”
“Hard ta argue with that.”
At that, we got back to enjoying our respective drinks for a while.
“Something Berry said is bothering me,” I said around the time my first glass was halfway gone.
“What thing?” Derpy asked, still enjoying the aroma of her drink.
“Second-best. She said this drink was made from the second-best cherries in Dodge Junction. Why the qualifier?”
“Well, Berry Punch told me that any propah mixologist worth her salt has ta care about precision, so there's one raisin.”
“Okay, but why second-best? Why shouldn't the schnapps be made from the best Dodge Junction cherries?”
Derpy looked thoughtful, and took another sip of her blueberry liqueur before replying. “I figure that the best cherries don’t last long enough to get to the vats.”
I waggled my horn in a shrug, and got back to my drink.
Once we’d drained the last bits of red and blue from our respective glasses and Derpy’d flagged down some refills, and we’d shot the breeze enough that it had to be more full of holes than a brick of swiss cheese, I’d figured I’d stalled long enough.
“So,” I said, my floating glass of schnapps wreathed in the goldenrod glow of my magic, “you wanted to hear about my nightmare.”
She set her refilled drink down on the table. “Ya don’t half to talk about it, if ya don’t wanna, but I dink it would really help,” she said, nodding earnestly.
Well, it's worth a shot. Or a rocks glass, I suppose.
“For starters, it was dark, and I found myself limping along inside a ruined building…”
•°*\•*°‰•°*‰•*°\•°*
I was bleeding from a gaping wound on my leg, and had been for some time. Or that's how it felt. I knew something was supposed to be trying to scare me, but I couldn't remember what or why.
I remember calling out for a medic, only to trip over the next best thing.
“Hey, sis –” Steely let out a wet-sounding cough from under me “– fancy running into you out here.”
I managed to scoot myself backwards off of him, and my brother gave me a weak grin.
“Ya look like death warmed over,” he said.
“Ya don't look so hot yerself,” I countered.
He really didn't. His metal hoof was smashed to pieces, and his body wasn't much better. I hadn't noticed it before, but he was lying in a pool of his own blood. My chest was covered in it, too, after my tumble.
And through it all, he was still smiling.
“Guess yer not wrong on that point, sis.” He hacked up some more blood. “Don’t look like I’m too long fer this world.”
I took a deep breath in and out. “It doesn't have ta be that way, little brother.”
“No.” The smile finally left his face. “No no-no-no. Don't you dare.”
Now, Derpy, I’m about to tell you something Steely don't like other ponies knowing, but it's important for you to know as a squadmate of his, and I’m pretty sparking sure I can trust you to keep a secret if Bon Bon trusts you.
You know that thing Bon Bon said about Steely's abilities? How he can pump lifeforce into an injured pony to heal them? Turns out, it can work in reverse. He’s only ever used it like that on a few plants, and even then he doesn't like it. Says it feels wrong.
“Yes, I do dare, Steely Hoof. Ah can't leave ya to die. Drain me.”
“Ah can't do that. Ta get me patched up, Ah’d have ta take too much. Goldie,” he said, a tear forming in his eye, “you’d die.”
As my vision was starting to fade, I knew he was right. “Ah know. And Ah don't care. It's mah job to look after you, and I didn't do good enough.”
“No.” He cracked a smile again. “What would Mama say… if Ah killed you ta save mah own skin?”
“Steely… If you do nothin’... we both die. Ah don't reckon Mama’d like that much, either.”
His smile flickered away again for an instant as he appeared to think my statement over. Then he smiled again, but a sad smile this time.
“Okay, sis. Just –” he hacked up another dark gobbet of something “– come here and… put yer horn ta my hoof and… wrap an arm around me, please? I really hate ta do this ta anypony, especially you, but Ah guess this is what we both signed up for: givin’ our lives for Celestia and Equestria.”
I complied, lying down next to him. His hoof began to glow an icy blue. My vision darkened further, and I started to feel cold.
“Sis? Just look into my eyes… one last time.”
I turned and looked into his eyes, like he asked, only to see him wearing the biggest grin his face could support. That was my first clue something was wrong.
“One of us… has ta finish… the mission.” To my horror, I felt my wound close and strength come back to my heart and legs. “You were always better at… following... through…”
And I saw him wither to a lifeless husk, that Celestia-forsaken, horseapple-munching grin of his never leaving his face.
•°*\•*°‰•°*‰•*°\•°*
“Ah just sat there,” I whispered, “for what felt like hours, starin’ inta my brother's dead eyes, mah brain just spinnin’ like the wheels on a crashed, upside-down cart. And then Bon Bon clapped my glasses back on mah face an’ told me Ah was dead.”
I took a deep breath.
“Ya know the worst part of it, even days later?” I said, some tears welling up in my eyes. “Ah can't point at one bit of that nightmare and say, ‘That could never happen.’”
I knocked back the rest of my rocks glass of cherry schnapps, using my clumsy hooves since magic had gotten too hard to use reliably at this point in my drinking.
Derpy was silent, both eyes fixed on me. She stood up from her seat, walked around the table sure-footedly like she’d been sober all her life, and wrapped me in a full-body pegasus hug before I could protest.
“Derpy, you're drunk.”
“Maybe, but I’m just as huggy when I’m sober. And you really need a hug.”
I looked imploringly at a smirking Berry Punch across the now mostly empty room, but found no help there. “Sorry, but she's telling the truth. She's just more forceful and coordinated about it when she's had a few.”
So I resigned myself to my fate, warmly wrapped in arms, neck, and wings, if only for a few minutes...