//------------------------------//
// "And at the End, You Shall Remain Alone" 
// Story: Behind the Magic Eight Ball 
// by Baal Bunny 
//------------------------------//

In the sudden quiet, AJ watched Pinkie's jaw go up and down, her eyes bulging at her crystal ball like she'd never seen it before.

AJ wished she hadn't. Turning, she pushed between Fluttershy and Rarity, her stomach tightening.

"Applejack! Wait!" Pinkie called.

But AJ wasn't of any mind to do that. Shoving through the flap of the fortune teller tent, she kept her eyes downcast and resisted a powerful urge to stomp, her hoofs stepping slow and steady out into the watery afternoon sunlight.

The laughter and the music and the cinnamon-spicy scents of Ponyville's Autumn Festival seemed too sharp and too loud after the quiet dimness, but the voices and shadows of the girls swirled after her. "The nerve!" Nopony in Equestria could sound scorned like Rarity. "Were I you, Applejack, I would lodge a complaint with the festival's organizers!"

"That would be me." Twilight's sigh came out every bit as unmistakable as Rarity's huff. "I'm sorry, Applejack." Feathers draped across AJ's back. "I can't imagine what Pinkie thought she was doing."

"Maybe..." Fluttershy had a way of using silence that was all her own. "Maybe it was...a joke?"

"Ha!" Whatever Dash said, of course, crashed like cymbals. "And that wasn't me laughing, Pinkie!" she yelled. "That was me snorting because I can't believe I just heard you say what I just heard you say!"

"Wait!" The shout, in front of AJ this time, forced her head up and made her blink at Pinkie kneeling on the ground, her turban all askew and the ends of her scarf drooping. "I didn't mean it, Applejack! Honest!"

And as much as AJ wanted to laugh, tell her it was fine, and suggest they all head over to the food booths for cider and boiled peanuts... "Then why'd you say it?" she got out through clenched teeth.

"I didn't! It was—!" Pinkie slapped her hooves over her mouth. Her eyes narrowed almost immediately, though, and she leaped up, planted the top of her turban against AJ's chest, and shoved. "Back into the tent! We're gonna fix this!"

"Pinkie," Twilight started.

But Pinkie whirled on her. "I whim-whammed when I shoulda zim-zammed is the thing! Happens all the time!" The glare she shot over her shoulder at the tent was scorching enough for AJ to feel it. "Way too often, lately," she muttered, then she straightened to stretch a too-wide smile at the whole group. "You girls already got your fortunes, so I'll take AJ in there, get her a good one, and everything'll be donkey whorey! I mean honky dory! I mean—!" Another spin, and she pushed her head into AJ again. "Wait...here! We'll be...right back!"

AJ blinked down at her, the scrabbling of Pinkie's hooves doing nothing but dig little trenches in the dirt, then she blew out a breath. "Fine," she said, and relaxing her constant grip on the earth, she let Pinkie push her backwards into the tent.

The draping cloth of the door flap flopped down to cut off the light and sounds and smells outside, and AJ went on. "It ain't like I believe this fortune telling hooey. It's just—" Her throat wanted to close, but a big part of not trying to handle everything all by her lonesome, she'd learned the last few years, was not saying she was fine when she wasn't. "After all them fun fortunes you gave the others, you saying I was gonna die alone got me a mite perturbed."

"Me, too!" Pinkie jumped up and pressed her snout into AJ's ear, her sudden whisper all damp and blustery. "But the thing you've gotta understand, Applejack, is that, with everything I hafta do around Ponyville, I kinda, well—" She made a choking noise. "Don't hate me when I show you how I cheat a little!"

Those last words popped loud as a pin-stuck balloon inside AJ's head, and she started to pull away, started to open her mouth to ask Pinkie what the hay she was talking about.

But Pinkie was already tumbling over to the crystal ball on the table in the middle of the tent. "Just please promise you won't say anything!" she hissed, but before AJ could get a word out, Pinkie swung the tabletop open like a storm cellar door.

Beneath the table sat an earth pony mare not much older than Pinkie herself, AJ reckoned, her hide as golden brown as a perfectly baked pie crust, her mane the blackish purple of sun-dried raisins, her hazel-green eyes widening behind little half glasses. "My cousin Mince Pie," Pinkie said, her face going even pinker. "She's been working as one of my writers since just before Twilight got her wings." Her blush hardened into a glare at the other pony. "So you'd think by now she'd know what my audience wants!"

"Pabulum!" Mince Pie had a voice like the ponies AJ had met living among the Oranges in Manehattan. "It deadens me to my very core to toil away endlessly on these 'gags' and 'skits' and 'routines'!" AJ could hear the quotation marks she put around the words. "With a modicum of effort, Pinkie Pie, you and I could truly challenge and inspire! We could bring depth and angst to these ponies' lives!"

"Depth? Angst?" Pinkie flailed a hoof in AJ's direction. "Applejack has family and friends and trees and pigs and cows and sheep who just plain love her, and you feed me a line telling her she's gonna end up alone? That's not just inaccurate; it's mean!"

Mince Pie sniffed. "Life is tragic."

"I'll say." Pinkie jerked the hoof over her shoulder, a hardness in her face that AJ didn't often see there. "Get back to the party cave. I'll have your severance check later tonight."

The other pony's jaw dropped, then snapped shut. Eyes clenched and nose in the air, she turned and slid away into the darkness under the table.

Pinkie was shaking her head. "Edgy is one thing. Clueless is another."

A chill iced down AJ's spine. Unsure what to say or do, she went with a wisecrack. "So, my real fortune is: never hire relatives?"

"Exactly." Pinkie gave a start and a gasp. "Wait! That doesn't work for you, either!" She waved a hoof at the secret underground passage or whatever it was. "Lemme get one of the other writers up here, and we'll have you a real fortune quicker than quick!"

"No, no! That's okay!" AJ leaped forward, put an arm around Pinkie's withers, and wondered how hard it might be to bodily drag her outta this place. "I don't wanna cause more bother, and seeing as how it weren't you who done it in the first place, I'm wiling to call it even." Some more effort got a fair-to-middling smile tugging at her lips. "So how 'bout I predict you're taking the rest of the afternoon off, and we rejoin the girls?"

A grin blossomed over Pinkie's face. "Signs point to 'yes'!"

AJ nearly deflated with relief, but when Pinkie leaned over the dang hole, it set AJ's mane to bristling.

All Pinkie did, though, was call out, "Folks? You're off the clock! Come on out and enjoy the festival, but remember: gag meeting tomorrow morning at six!" She flipped the tabletop back into place, pulled off her turban, and tossed it beside the crystal ball. "Y'know, you're pretty funny, Applejack. How'd you like to hitch your wagon to my writing staff?"

"Mighty neighborly of you, Pinkie." AJ tapped the side of her snout and let another wisecrack float to the surface. "But you oughtta know by now I work alone."

Pinkie groaned. AJ snickered, lowered her head, pressed it to Pinkie's side, and pushed her out to where the others were waiting.

The rest of the day went along slick as apple butter, AJ smiling and joking with the gals on into the evening. Laughing and clapping at Trixie and Starlight's magic show, riding the rides, sampling the deep-fried cuisine, she found it way too easy to fall back into that 'everything's fine' way of acting.

But what else could she do? She'd pretty much promised Pinkie she wouldn't talk about what had happened in the tent, and that put the kibosh on her sharing the brambles that were growing all jagged and stickery inside her.

Not long after sunset, though, Twilight started saying she oughtta round up Spike and get him home to bed. Fluttershy, same as always, took the opportunity of somepony else leaving to slip away with a few quiet comments about needing to get up early to see to her critters, and Rarity wasn't far behind with her usual complaints about the stitching she still had to do before she could turn in for the night.

"All right!" Dash pumped a hoof and did a little flip in the air. "Now the party can really get started!"

Pinkie was hopping up and down like everything was still the same, and as much as AJ wanted to go on thinking that, she knew it weren't true. "Sorry, gals." AJ nodded in the direction of the Acres. "I got the final cider pressing tomorrow, and, well—" She jerked her chin up at Dash. "I reckon there's a few I could mention 'round these parts who'd rather I not be all bleary-eyed for that."

Dash's wings froze, and she dropped to the ground. "Okay," she said, her voice hushed. "Don't even kid around about messing up cider. Especially the late season stuff: that's always the best!"

A stillness had taken the place of the pink blur off to AJ's left. Trying not to let her swallow show, she turned to see Pinkie squinting at her. "You're sure that's all it is?" Pinkie asked.

And while everything AJ'd heard the last few years about how she couldn't tell a lie was as much hooey as fortune telling, fibbing still wasn't something she cared for. So choosing her words carefully, she said, "I already told you we're okay, Pinkie." She found a smile and used it. "You ain't gonna call me a liar, now, are you?"

For another half a heartbeat, Pinkie looked like she was maybe considering exactly that. But then her whole face curled into a grin, and she announced, "My sources say 'no'!" She spun away. "C'mon, Dashie! I hear a funnel cake calling my name!"

The two of them quickly vanished into the crowds enjoying the festival after dark, and AJ started off on the road home. She didn't stick to it for more than a few blocks, though, bending her steps toward the center of town, quiet since everypony was at the festival tents out by Whitetail Woods.

'Cept not everypony, AJ knew.

A few tries found her the right hollow tree: she'd only been down in Pinkie's party cave the one time, but the exit they'd used had brought them out a block or so away from Sugarcube Corner through a tree either out in front of Timothy Hay's restaurant or across the street from it. The door took a little finagling to get open once she'd clambered into the trunk, but she finally got it to pop; slipping in, she let it click closed behind her and slid down the little half-pipe to where it merged with all the other half-pipes before emptying into the main section of the cave.

Balloons and mirror balls still dotted the walls and hung from the ceiling, but to AJ, the place seemed gloomier than she remembered. Of course, that might've had something to do with the only other figure in sight, a pony slumped onto her forehooves in the shadowy light at a big round table in front of the file cabinets. As dim as it was, though, AJ could make out the other's cutie mark for the first time: a circle of eight spots as dark as her mane and tail. With her name and all, they were likely raisins or currants...

Stepping toward the pony with a swallow, AJ called out softly, "Mince Pie?"

Mince started back and turned, her fetlocks wiping her eyes. "Who—?" Her mouth went sideways, and sitting up straight as a yellow poplar, she settled her little half-glasses onto her snout. "Oh. It's you."

"Look, I—" AJ had to swallow again. "I didn't mean for this to happen: didn't mean to get you fired, I mean. It's been gnawing at me all afternoon, and I, well..." She sat on the stone floor and shrugged. "You want me to talk to Pinkie? See if I can't convince her to give you another chance?"

Her brow wrinkling, Mince stared. "And why in the wide, wide world of Equestria would you do that?"

"'Cause I messed up." Just saying the words relaxed the clench that'd hardened AJ's shoulders the last few hours. "And I'm awful sorry for doing it. I ain't asking you to forgive me." She couldn't stop a sliver of a smile from darting across her snout. "Though I wouldn't mind if you did. But I...I ain't the sorta mare to let something like this slide when I might be able to help fix it. So you say the word, and I'll do what I can to change Pinkie's mind."

Another brow-wrinkled moment went by, then Mince sighed and sagged. "Thank you, but I...I've just been fooling myself, trying to make it here. I was never cut out for the big city life."

"'Scuse me?" It took some effort for AJ not to sputter. "A Manehattan accent like that, and you're calling Ponyville a big city?"

With a low chuckle, Mince took off her glasses, and when she spoke next, the words came out softer and rounder, gentler and more lilting to AJ's ear. "I grew up north of Manehattan on a rock farm in the granite hills of New Hoofshire, the place they've been getting the stone for those wicked big buildings since they started raising 'em all those generations ago."

"Huh." AJ moved into the second chair to Mince's left. "I've heard it's mighty pretty country up that way. Reckon you must miss it."

"Eh." Mince shrugged. "The country, maybe. The ponies, though..." She shook her head. "I can't go back's the thing. I mean, I could, but..." Putting her little glasses on again, she waved a hoof at the cave. "This gig was supposed to be my way out, my ticket to success, the first step on my road to riches and fame." She fixed those warm-syrup eyes on AJ. "Did you know that six of the ten top-earning playwrights on Bridleway last year got their start writing for Pinkie Pie?"

AJ's ears folded. "Then...'cause of me, you...you—"

"Oh, it's not because of you." Her lips pursing like she'd grabbed a bite out of a lemon, Mince leaned against the back of her chair. "I've been 'pushing the envelope' for months now in my contributions in the hope that Pinkie would fire me. The brand of light, fluffy comedy she's looking for, well, if I wanted to make a pun, I'd say it triggers my gag reflex. I want to write something deeper, something grittier, something more connected to the earth." She made a circular motion in the air with a hoof. "Something a little more...a little more—"

"Peppery?" AJ asked, those wrinkly little spots on Mince's flanks looking for all the world like peppercorns 'steada raisins now that AJ was this close to her. More words struck her, too, words that just seemed to fit the mare. "Heftier? A mite ungainly and maybe even not all that welcome?"

Sitting up straight again, Mince blinked over her glasses at AJ. "Something not so easily chewed up and digested, yes. Something that makes you think you might've made a mistake getting involved in it, but something that rewards you handsomely if you stick through to the end. Something that cuts, not something that's cute."

For an instant, a sort of fire seemed to glint inside her, but only for an instant. Then she slumped, a dusty grayness in the air that put AJ in mind of Pinkie's ma. "But this gig here?" Mince slowly shook her head. "It feels like I'm losing my edge. And really, if there's one thing this experience has taught me, it's that ponies don't want writing with that sort of edge."

"Hey, now." AJ leaned forward and put a hoof on Mince's. "You want it, don't you? And you're a pony, ain't you?"

The whole cave seemed to go completely still, Mince as much as slab of rock as the walls or the floor. "I do want it," she whispered after a moment. "Oh, how I want it..."

"Well, then." With a nod, AJ hopped down from the chair. "Let's get going."

"Going?" Mince didn't move. "Going where?"

Just breathing, AJ could tell exactly where the roots of her trees were gripping the soil, and she waved a hoof in that direction. "It's an apple farm, not a rock farm, but it'll give you a chance to keep your hooves nice 'n' grounded while you work on this something of yours."

Mince blinked very slowly. "You're...offering me a job?"

"Nope." AJ reached over and tapped the table. "I'm offering you some good, solid work you can do while you get on with your real job: writing whatever it is you was just talking about."

Silence stretched, Mince's blinks getting faster and faster. "And...why would you do that?" she finally asked.

AJ shrugged. "Right place, right time, I reckon. You need help, and I've got help to give." She cocked her head. "'Less'n you ain't interested."

"No! I mean, I am! Very interested! Very, very interested!" Mince scrambled to the floor, the bounce in her step the first sign AJ'd seen so far of any resemblance to Pinkie Pie. "I just— I mean, I don't— I can't—" She took a shaky breath. "Thank you."

"My pleasure." AJ touched the brim of her hat and turned for the chute. "Now, last time I was down here with the girls, Twilight figured out how to get this thing sliding upward." She looked back at Mince. "You know the trick to that, or we gotta just clamber up it?"

Rolling her eyes, Mince nodded to the farthest, shadowiest corner of the cave. "There's a door over there with a stairway behind it that leads up to the alley behind the Quills and Sofas shop. Pinkie doesn't like us to use it, but, well, comedy writers are some of the most nervous, neurotic ponies you'll ever meet. Half of us can't figure out how to get that slide to work, and the rest of us refuse to try."

That got a chuckle outta AJ. "Reckon it must be a mite vexatious, working for Pinkie Pie."

Mince shook her head and started for the corner, AJ falling in beside her. "Pinkie's driven, totally devoted to her craft, and more than willing to step outside her comfort zone if she thinks the gag's worth it." Her head drooped. "And the way she kept working with me long after I'd pretty much stopped working with her, I owe her an apology at the very least." Her head came back up, her little glasses glinting. "You, too, now that I mention it."

"Me?" AJ did some more blinking at her. "What for?"

That pinch-lipped look came over her again. "That fortune I gave you? The whole reason we met in the first place?"

AJ felt her face heat up. "Oh. Yeah. That."

"You forgot?"

"Well?" AJ gave as much of a shrug as she could since they were walking. "What'm I s'pposed to do? Get all grudgy and spiteful over something as silly as a line of patter from a fortune telling booth?"

They reached the door, but Mince stopped, her eyes glinting now, too. "That. Right there. That's why I gave you that fortune."

In the silence that followed, AJ had to say, "Don't think I'm getting it."

"Of course not." Mince sounded tired again. "Because you're good and decent and honest and forgiving, and I'm...I'm as far away from that as it's possible to be while still remaining the same species. When I'd be out around town during my time off and I'd see you with your family and your friends and your stupid, stinking joie de vivre, I...well, like you said: I got all grudgy and spiteful."

She gave a coughing sort of a laugh. "And then you track me down in here, apologize to me for getting me fired from a job I pretty much hated, and offer me what sounds like my dream job, getting back to doing something real and solid while also having time and space to write what I want to write?" A wavery smile trickled over her muzzle. "You're setting a very poor precedent, rewarding me for my bad behavior this way."

AJ's chuckle then was about as honest a one as she'd given all day. "That's me: setting poor precedents ev'rywhere I go." She put a hoof on the door handle, swung the thing open, and nodded to the stairs on the other side. "How 'bout we go set a few more while we're at it?"

"Don't mind if I do." With a scuttling sort of curtsy, Mince moved through the doorway, and AJ followed her up to what looked like a solid brick wall. "There's a latch," Mince said, running a hoof over a section of the wall near the floor. "Somewhere the ding-dang here..."

"Ding-dang?" AJ arched an eyebrow.

"What can I say?" Mince pressed an ear to the wall and kept poking. "I'm a country girl at heart. Ah!" A click echoed through the stairwell, and a hatch just tall and wide enough for a pony to scoot through on her knees and fetlocks swung open.

Mince gestured to it; AJ scrunched down and dragged herself into a darkened alleyway. Straightening, she watched her newest friend and employee come oozing out like toothpaste from a tube. "Another ding-dang thing I'm not gonna miss," Mince was muttering.

"Just wait." Brushing the dust from her hooves, AJ put on her best 'boss mare' face. "Once I get you crawling through cellars and attics and haylofts and all, you'll be itching for something as cushy as this."

"Uh-huh." Mince reached into her mane and pulled out a change purse. "All right, then. How much'll it cost me to buy back my introduction to you?"

"Too late." AJ put a saunter in her step and started for the street. "There's a venerable economic principle involved here known as 'no backsies.'"

"Ding-dang it!" A warm shadow shuffled up beside her, and when they came out into the glow of a street light, AJ saw Mince grinning at her. "You fancy, big city mares with your fancy, big city ways! I can already feel my morals crumbling!"

"Whoa," a scratchy and familiar voice said, and AJ started around, Dash and Pinkie stopped in mid-step a few paces away. Dash's wide-eyed stare was already wrinkling into a curly grin of her own, though. "So. AJ. Walking out of a dark alley with a cute mare talking about crumbling morals. There something you feel you maybe oughtta be sharing with your very best friends in the whole wide world?"

"Yeah," Pinkie said, and the expression on her face wasn't like anything AJ thought she'd ever seen before, about seven different emotions trying to display themselves there all at the same time. "I thought you said you were going home."

"And I was." The trick to lying, AJ'd always heard, was to keep the story as close to the truth as possible. "I wanted to walk off summa them churros, though, so I reckoned I'd take the long way through town. I was passing Sugarcube Corner when I noticed this filly I ain't never seen afore sitting on the stoop, and being a helpful cuss, I went on over to see if she was lost or something."

Pinkie's eyes narrowed, but AJ didn't let her voice catch even a little. "Turns out," she went on, "she's a cousin of yours, Pinkie: Mince Pie from New Hoofshire up north of Manehattan!"

Mince waggled a hoof, and AJ noticed her little glasses had vanished somewhere, her dark purple mane tied back in a ponytail that made her look younger and countrified. "Hey there, cuz," she said. "Wicked sweet to see you again."

"Yes." Pinkie held the 's' out into quite a hiss. "It is my cousin Mince Pie from New Hoofshire up north of Manehattan, isn't it?" Every word tumbled solid as a rock from her lips. "My goodness, what a very long time it's been since you and I had any sort of doings with each other! Whatever could possibly bring you all the way to Ponyville without any sort of advance notice?"

"I—" And every last speck of phoniness fell away from Mince, a near to completely different pony standing there beside AJ. "I just wanna start over, Pinkie. Ev'rypony in the family knows how you left your folks's farm and came to Ponyville to become, well, to become a pony who's saved the world and made it a better place and ev'rything. I'm not looking to do anything like that, but I—" She looked at AJ, and AJ couldn't stop a blush at Mince's smile. "I might've just found what I was looking for..."

Dash cleared her throat loudly. "Something about crumbling morals, wasn't it?"

The glare that AJ threw her way wasn't phony, either. "She's gonna come work at the Acres is all, RD. With Apple Bloom getting so in demand for cutie mark counseling and Mac hying off to see Sugar Belle half the time, I been thinking about hiring somepony."

"Oh, yeah?" Dash cocked her head. "Since when?"

"Since right now!" AJ sharpened her glare a mite, then folded it away and turned to Pinkie. "Talking with Mince here, I gotta say I like what I been hearing. And you'll vouch for her, I reckon, won't you, Pinkie?"

All those emotions kept tumbling around Pinkie's face for another half an instant before clearing away like clouds in a stiff spring breeze, just a plain ol' smile the only thing left. "You bet I will," Pinkie said softly. "Mince is a good, hard worker and sharp as a whip. Stings like one, too, if you let her." The smile got wider and wackier, the public Pinkie popping up. "If I remember right, right? 'Cause it's been, like, four hundred and eighty-six thousand years since we last played Parcheesi together! We even used real cheese, too!"

"Huh." Dash was rubbing her chin, her forehead wrinkled, and AJ thought she might not be buying the act. But then she shrugged, grinned, held out her hoof, and said, "Well, welcome to Ponyville, Mince. You don't hafta be crazy to live here, but it sure helps."

"Thanks!" Mince bumped Dash's hoof with her own, happiness rising off her like a scent. "I'll do my best."

Pinkie giggled. "Don't worry, cuz. I think you'll fit in just fine."

Mince seemed to waver in place again, then she was leaping forward to wrap a hug around Pinkie. "I think I will, too," she murmured, her snout pressed into Pinkie's mane and muffling her voice. She stepped back with a sniff and turned to AJ. "I can't wait to see the Acres!"

"C'mon, then." AJ tapped her nose with a hoof. "We'd better get plenty of sleep, too, if we're gonna make it through the party Pinkie'll likely be throwing for you tomorrow."

"Hey!" Pinkie took a swing at AJ's ponytail. "You giving away my trade secrets now?"

"You may rely on it." AJ spread her forelegs. "What can I say? That's the kinda pony I am."