After Sweets took a few more notes on the map, we drove to the cupcake shack, which was named ‘Sugar Curb Corona’ as best as I could tell. There was still a pink cloud of dust floating around the crystal castle, so Sarge pushed us to hurry with our looting. It wasn’t really necessary to do this since we weren’t starving—but it was in our best interest to start eating something not vacuum-sealed in a bag soon.
There was a small set of saloon doors leading inside. Hags tried to bust through it with a kick, only to find it was locked. He sprayed the door with buckshot instead, until it stopped working as a door. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from him. After some light scolding from Sarge, we followed Hags as he ducked under the doorway. The ceiling felt a bit under six feet, so we split up to sweep through the building to avoid bumping into each other. Sarge and Hags took on the second floor while Sweets and I cleared the shelves below.
The specialty of this bakery or café thing was… cupcakes. What else, honestly? But these treats were something else; they were grapefruit-sized, with a whole other level of craft put into them. I kind of felt bad for touching a few of them. I can't describe all of them—but they all had the potential to shut down your pancreas if you looked at them funny. Sweets, funnily enough, did manage to find something more sustainable behind the short counters; bread. By the time the other two were through upstairs, we had a stack of to-go boxes ready to ride off with.
“Any luck down there? We ain’t found shit up ‘ere,” Sarge called out while stepping back down, almost crouching down to fit in the stairwell.
Hags shuffled past him at the bottom, picking up a red-velvet confection to take a closer look. “This… really all they got here?” he commented.
“There’s something you think we missed?” Sweets spoke up. “Because these boxes are clearly meant for doughnuts—but there’s none in the ba–”
“–Naw, not that.” Hags shrugged. “The Hell’s the meat here?”
“Uh, we’re in a bakery—not a butcher’s shop, Sherlock.”
“Well, what kinda bakery ain’t got a… deli-combo or somethin’? These folks vegan?”
“Hold on… lemme see that.” Sarge took a pinch out of the cupcake, looking at it closely as he rubbed the bit between his fingers. “Huh…damn, this stuff’s as wet as a fish. You can bet your ass there’s buttermilk in this…”
Everyone else looked at him in a way that we usually reserved for Sweets: puzzled.
“What? I can’t know a few things about food?” he snapped back. “Or did none of your momma’s ever show you some good cookin’?”
“Well… nothing that didn’t come out a microwave…” Sweets admitted.
“Oh—dang.” Hags stuttered before giving him a pat on the shoulder, “I… I really do feel bad for ya.”
“Yeah, yeah—and I feel sorry that your mom ever had to deal with a shit like you.”
“Bah—shut your shit-chat,” he said before tussling Sweet’s helmet with a strong flick. “Now, let’s blow this sugar-shack. Ain’t nothin’ up there but a buncha hot-pink, girly stuff.” Before he left through the non-existent doors, he turned to point out something else. “Hey, I call dibs on that cherry lookin–”
As he turned away from the door, Sweets saw his backside and yelled, “Haggard!”
“Jesus, what’s it now, Sweets?”
“Don’t… move!” With a wary tension in his voice, he awkwardly inched forwards with a knife in his hands. Hags actually did listen to Sweets, and kept still for the moment, probably because he was more confused than concerned.
Sarge quickly commented on Sweets. “The Hell’s the matter with you—oh… my God… the fuck is that?” he spat out.
“Woah, woah, woah—stay calm, I got this Sarge—I got this.” Sweets eased him as he was mere feet away from looking like he was about to… stab Hag’s ass.
“Dude, just spit it out; do I got somethin’ on my butt or what?” he must have jokingly asked. But when I shuffled over next to Sweets, I saw the issue—with its jaw clamped to a pocket on his rear.
“A… uh, a lizard?” I told him. I was… I kinda found it funny—But I was still too tense from the killer stick dogs to let my guard down.
“Lizard? Where?” He spun around as he tried to pat down his back and glutes. “Shit, it ain’t burrowin’ anywhere, right!?”
“Right cheek, on your pockets,” Sweets corrected him. “Don’t you dare gra–”
“Gotcha!” Hags snatched it with a swipe, only to hold it up to his face. “Wha—Ha! Ho—lee shit, dude! Lookie’ here at this catch!” He waved around the footlong reptile for us.
“Haggard—you can’t just handle something new like that!” Sweets warned him, “It could be... a venomous lizard, for all the jack shit you know.”
“Aw, c’mon. This isn’t just a lizard—it’s an itty-bitty gator! Ain’t that just cool? Look, tiny arms!” he cheered while dangling it up by its front legs. “Heh, I mean, I guess It’ll kill me too, Sweets. In a few years, Haha!”
“You… really didn’t feel it bite you?” I asked.
“Well, no,” he admitted. He opened the alligator’s mouth to inspect it. “Ooh, now that’s neato. Fella’s ain’t got any teeth on him, look.”
“What?” Sweets squinted as he looked into it. “How do you de-tooth an alligator?”
“Hell if I know—but I love this lil’ guy!”
“Ugh, Christ… I’m startin’ to think we’re stuck in Florida with all this shit now,” Sarge spoke up.
“Yeah, speakin’ of that—it’s like you’re the asshole of a flamingo upstairs with all that pink. That’s got to be some chick’s room, cause ain’t no man in his right mind gonna burn his eyes out like that.”
“Ah, whatever” Sarge uttered as he signaled us to follow. “Now, let’s get out of this place before I go colorblind … and put that thing back down, Haggard…”
“Well, shouldn’t I put this in that toony-ass lookin’ fountain we passed?” Hags replied. “Gators need water, right?”
“God, just put the thing down before I put you down.”
“Oh fine… It’d just be cool “surprise mechanic” for the next guy to toss a coin in it.”
After that, we began our road trip to the other castle, with Sarge on the wheel for a change. I was still up front trying to navigate with Sweet’s notes and with what I could read on road signs. We started by following the only railroad out of Ponyville on a dirt path following it. If all went well, we would be there to introduce ourselves non-lethally to the natives in hours.
A few hiccups happened, of course. Most were small, annoying splits in the path at rail junctions sprouting out from the track. Had we not been in a constant view of the mountain, meandering through those would’ve taken all day. But this was nothing compared to the latter half of the trip. It’s like whoever laid down the rails just said “screw it” when they looked at the mountain. The tracks started to slip into tight corridors and over rail-thin bridges, leaving nothing to drive on except for the tracks themselves.
We were just asking for a messy death on the rails, since any train coming up or down it would crush us. Even with Hags standing up in the turret with an RPG to blast anything in the way, we still would’ve been screwed: any chance that we would’ve had at working with whoever would be zilch if we dumpstered a train full of partygoers off the mountain. I’ve never felt tenser while riding in anything else, from gunships to golf carts.
We eventually found a way to drop off the rails, on a separate path cut out of the mountain. And it was the first path that was paved…
“God… this sucks,” Hags spoke out to break the silence of our drive.
“What? Bored?” Sarge guessed.
“Yep...”
“You wanna play eye-spy or…” Sweets joked.
“No—it’s just… we ain’t got jack to listin’ to,” he clarified.
“Well, at least you have a view up there, Mr. Grenadier.”
“Yeah—only problem is that we’ve been circlin’ ‘round this mountain for hours, man. That whole waterfall was pretty… pretty the first time, not so much the fifth.”
“Ah, I hear you. This road’s starting to feel like I-20 at this point. I’d kill to even listen to that Pole-folk shit on the air back in…” Sarge trailed off as he noticed a slot on the extra radio set that was screwed into the roof of the car. “Sweetwater, is this a—CD player above the console here?”
“You mean the one slapped on over the dash? It’s old—but yeah.”
“So… If there’s a player here, then there should be CD’s here too,” I added.
“Well, duh,” he answered back. “But I didn't exactly see any CD racks lying around the crash.”
“Ooh, Ooh, I know!” Hags jumped in, “Check those sun shields—everyone stuffs them up there.”
“Hags, this is a tool of war, not a minivan,” Sarge corrected.
“Uh, hmm… Then it’s gotta be stuffed between the seats and that middle console—thingy.”
Sarge shook his head as he spoke just to me, “What kinda dumbass thinks anyone would store…” He stopped mid-sentence as his hand pulled out a CD case from the crevice. “Well, I’ll be damned, we got somethin’!”
“Ha! There we go,” Hags cheered. “Now, what is it, Sarge?”
“I dunno… Sweets?”
He popped his head through a roof hatch to look at it. “Let’s see… ah, clearly we have pirated material on our hands here—you can tell because it’s unlabeled. What lazy prick doesn’t even bother marking it with a sharpie?”
“One of those assholes back up in the plane, probably,” Sarge chuckled. “So, you can’t tell what’s on here?”
“No—just go ahead and play it.”
Sarge shook his head as he muttered to me, “Hope this ain’t polka,” and slapped the disk in the player. It took a second to boot up—but when it did, the first track to play was “I Get Around.”
“Wait—Beach Boys!” he called out with a smile.
“Wow. Now that—is a weird pick,” Hags added.
“Weird?” Sweets questioned. “Honestly, what were you expecting a bunch of Russian operatives to listen to? Jimi Hendrix?”
“Well… yeah. More than Brian Wilson at least.”
“You don’t have a problem with this stuff, right?”
“Oh, Lord no. I think this shit slaps! This is like, that Surf radio on a disk! Ha, technology!”
“I’ll say,” Sarge jumped back in. “I remember sittin’ around listenin' to some of this on vinyl…”
“Jesus, Sarge. You’re not that old, are you?” Sweets sneered.
“Bah, it was my old man’s stuff, asshole.” He shrugged off. “What’s your take on this old noise anyway, kiddo?”
Sweets paused for a moment to rev up his thoughts. “Honestly… These guys have definitely aged well. Like sure, a bunch of their early stuff was a bit too slow for me personally—but after they broke into their own and cut-out all the musical cheese in their songs, they really–”
“Musical… cheese?” Hags butted in.
“Yeah, ‘musical cheese’; those cheap harmonic elements found overabundantly in other songs at the time. I mean, these guys were breaking new ground, and not because they were experimenting with ambience or anything. They’re just so lax in how they played. I mean… Pet Sounds is still just–”
“–Sweetwater…”
“Uh… quiet?"
“God yes. Just—enjoy—the sounds that we have now been blessed with—please.”
A moment passed before Sweets spoke again. This time with a much simpler question than usual.
“Can I… can we still sing along?”
“Shit...” Sarge gave it a scholarly long thought before answering. “Well, if you know it, don’t blow it–”
For a solid half-hour, we almost forget our predicament at the time, while we butchered the lyrics to some Ivan’s favorite collection of surfer rock. But we were eventually snapped out of it by the sound of a whistle coming down from the mountain.
“Oh hey, trains! that's a good sign!” Sweets noted.
“That’s even more music to my ears,” Hags spoke. “Y’all know what they say about trains?”
“What?” I asked
“If there’s trains… eh, there’s probably people too…”
“–What kind of wisdom is that?” Sweets called out, with a hint of an aneurysm behind his voice.
“Well… It means that it, uh—oh, just buckle your jaw before I do it for ya.”
“Oh, sure, I'll just let the dumbest declaration of anything I’ve ever heard outside of FOX news slip under the doormat to your house on Brainless Boulevard”
“Ok, then how about this one then: I've got dibs on the gun from here on out!”
“Over my body, Dixie boy. That’s my spot. I’ve got all the plates on me and everything to take a beating—you don’t even have a helmet! The second we stop, we’re–”
“–I ain’t got to wear that shit because I duck out of the way of stuff, instead of taking hits like a sad lil’ punchin’ bag!”
“Oh, just—shut. Up,” Sarge jumped in. “We’re only a few mikes from that castle place if that train’s anythin’ to go by… sounds like an old one too.”
“How can ya tell?” Hags questioned.
“Lived by a railyard—long time ago.”
“Oh, that's cool...” Hags scooted closer to our hatch, as if to ask something personal. “So... did ya ever see a train wreck with one of those fertilizer tanks involved before? I ain't seen one—but I've heard they'll explode into somethin' bigger than that shit I pulled off in–”
“–Haggard, can you ever stop thinkin' about that shit? Ever?” Sarge demanded from him.
“It’s… that’s kinda my job here, Sarge.”
“Well, can I put you on a mental leave for five minutes? God… honestly, how are you eager ‘bout this ‘job’ of yours?”
"‘Cause you tell me to be?"
"C' mon. Gimme a real answer."
“Hey, I just like my job.” He grinned. “Ain’t nothin’ like the illusion of bein’ paid by the booms, the cracks, and the rat-a-tat-tats.”
“Huh, I can tell you that shit wore off real quick a few years in. This soldierin’ sucks—I’d almost do anything other than this shit for this long.”
“Really? So… what about—kickin’ puppies for, like, a million dollars? That more up your alley?”
“Isn’t—I don’t know—killing people up all of our dark, soulless, government-issued alleys anyway?” Sweets pointed out.
“Oh, quit your bitchin’, dude. Besides—I’m askin’ a technical question! You love this kinda stuff.”
“Well—technically, you just asked Sarge a hypothetical question,” he piped up. “A technical question deals with ideas based on more immediate events and their implications. A hypoth–”
“–So, a technical question would be ‘how hard do I have to sock you to get you to zip it, right?” Sarge quizzed Sweets.
“Shutting-up now.”
“And Hags… what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Oh, you say that, Redford—but is it really evil? You could, like, raise a thousand more dogs with that kind of cash. How is that not worth more than just offin’ one pooch?” Hags stated in a form of defense.
“Cause I’m damn sure you wouldn’t spend a dime on another dog if you got that blood money.”
“That… that’s a very good point…”
“Aww Hell, Marlow! Wake up, there’s something—yellow on the road.”
Sarge woke me after a quick powernap upfront. It looked like we were near the top of the mountain, almost in the clouds and driving on something wide enough to be considered a two-lane road, with a view over the cliffside to the right. But looking forward down the road, I could just make out a tiny, yellow horse pulling something along with it… with blueish hair. Sarge killed the music as I washed a bit of water over my face to make sure I was seeing this right.
“Are… we all seeing the same thing?” I said.
“A neon pony pulling the wagon?” Sweets warily spoke.
“Yeah, that.”
“Yes, definitely yes. I think it’s safe to rule out any hallucination theory”
“Hold up, lemme get a look at it.” Hags leaned out of the back door with a dismounted rifle scope to spot ahead. “Yep, that is… a pony, under 14 hands tall anyway. And with a big-ass head. Looks like some girl’s decked this one out.”
“Who the hell has the time to dye the mane on a horse? And why are we still driving closer too it?”
“Heh, you sure changed your tune about meeting the people here real quick, Sweets,” Sarge called out.
“Uh, that’s a horse, not a dude,” Sweets snarked back. “The Hell are we going to do with it anyway, lead it to water?”
“Hey, excuse me, city clitty—but rule one of horses is to never leave ‘em unattended.” Hags spoke up, “My bet’s the rider’s gotta be close by.”
“My thinkin’ too—now, let’s corner it, then fan out to look for whoever or whatever owns it. Bailout when we stop, got it?”
Everyone gave a quick ok, and Sarge floored it.
“Damn! Don’t go so fast, you’re gonna spook the shit outta it!” Hags yelped.
“I’ll make you look like shit in front of it if you don’t zip it!”
From about 50 feet behind it, the horse saw us. It froze like a deer in front of headlights, and we closed the gap while it was stunned. A quick veer to the right before slamming the wheels to the left and the car ended up almost sideways in front of it. The pony was blocked in—between our car and the cart. We corralled the pony within seconds...
Now… on the way to the sugar shack back in Ponyville, we passed an odd fountain with a statue of a horse on it. But, with features like big eyes, a bigger head, short snout, and almost stubby legs, I thought the sculptor had taken a few “liberties” on what a horse looked like…
But whoever made it wasn’t fucking around.
It was… the same: the eyes, head, legs, hair—everything. Like someone took a girl’s fever-dream and gave it life. The head on this pony was big enough to put Sweet’s to shame—and its eyes felt big enough to dive into. There were also some colored marks on its rear—but something more important was the yellow horn poking out of its hair.
“Uh… isn’t this a—unicorn?” I pointed out.
“Wait, what?” Sweets spun around from covering the road behind us and walked over. “Where do you see tha—h Oh! Good fuck, Preston! You are… dead—on right! That is not standard!”
“Hold it, step aside, Ladies.” Hags shoved himself by us to look. “Are you talking ‘bout bull horns or somethin’? Or is it actually… Damn, that’s a unicorn!” He took a few seconds to chuckle about it. “You know… we should start making a bingo list of all the–”
“–Ah, y’all just shut it... and quit looking at it!” Sarge ordered, “We’re not paid by Animal Planet to be here. Now, come with me, Sweets. We’re searchin’ the road ahead. You two stay right there… and don’t fuck with that while we’re gone.”
“Aw, why do I have to scout around with you? That’s Preston’s job,” Sweets nagged.
“Well, I didn’t sign your ass up to be our alien ambassador, now did I?”
While Sarge and Sweets walked away arguing, I turned back to the unicorn—a four-foot-tall horse, now cowering on the ground with its hooves over its head. And I… kinda… found it cute.
Now, not in a lovey-mushy way—but it just looked factually cute, the same way a small dog does—or one of those weird, chibi-figure things Sweets always buys while on leave. And deep inside me, I just… kinda…
I just wanted to pet it. It looked soft.
“Yeah… that horse is spooked to the bone right now,” Hags nudged to me. “You see the ears on it all flopped down? That’s a bad sign… I bet if Sarge hadn’t of driven up on it so fast…”
I stopped listening to him and kneeled over, reaching out to it with my right hand to touch it. The closest part to me was the horn. The horse shook a bit more as I advanced.
“…Preston, damnit, you been listenin’ to me? Cornerin’ a scared animal like that ain’t a good idea, and that’s coming from me. Pres? Preston–”
I waved him off and leaned in. “What was it going to do, bite me?” I thought to myself.
But when I touched the horn, the pony covered its watery eyes, and with a quick, purple flash... it zapped me. Hard.
“OW!” I jumped back from the jolt, shaking my numb hand back into motion.
“Fuckin’ told!” Hags spun around to say.
Sarge took only seconds to sprint back to us. “Shit, what’s wrong now?” he demanded.
“I told his ass!” Hags spun back to say.
“Marlow? Did that thing just bite you?” Sarge chuckled.
“No… gah—that little bastard just, stung me,” I spoke up, grabbing Hags hand to pull myself up.
“What? How? Is the tip of its horn sharp?” Sweets asked.
“No, it—felt like a shock.”
“So, you got knocked over by a bit of static?” Sarge shook his head in disappointment.
“No, it’s not that… but it’s still tingling.” I took my glove off and stretched out my hand to look—It had a warm-purple twinkle all over it, the same color as the pony’s flash.
All of us stood there, staring until it wore off. I tried to speak up again. “I… don’t know how… this feels like–”
“–OH— it’s Magic for crying out LOUD!” the pony shouted out.