I may drink to excess, but never in express.
Okay, that’s a goddamned lie, but the point is I will do anything for a pun at Twilight’s expense.
So when she walked in on me after an all-night pizza and drinking party with Pinkie, she should have known what was about to happen.
“If you were going to have a pizza party in my castle you could have at least asked me first, if not invited me,” she grumped.
“There’s still some left, if you’re looking for breakfast,” I said.
Twilight glanced at one of the boxes. “Where did you get this?”
I looked at Pinkie. “Where did we get this?”
“It was your multiverse phone.”
“Yeah, but you ordered it.”
Pinkie shrugged. “I’m just going to plead the Twilight on this and say magic did it; I don’t have to explain anything.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Twilight demanded.
I laughed. “Like you’ve never pulled some cheaty magic out of your ass. That’s practically the only reason we keep you around.”
“I keep you around,” she grumped. “You’re literally freeloading in my castle.”
“Have some mystic pizza,” I said.
Twilight glared at me, but opened a box and pulled out a slice. I went on. “You know, Mystic Pizza was the title of a movie from my original world.”
She was still angry at me, but swallowed the bite she was chewing and asked, “What was it about?”
“It was a coming-of-age film set in a pizzeria in a town called Mystic.”
“That’s maybe the most boring possible explanation for that movie title,” Pinkie commented.
“Maybe. It had a lot of big-name actors in it. It was Matt Damon’s first movie. It was one of Julia Roberts’ and Vincent D'Onofrio’s first.”
“I don’t know who any of them are,” Twilight pointed out.
“Matt Damon and Julia Roberts are now some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Vincent D'Onofrio is less known, but still pretty famous. His first movie was only a year before Mystic Pizza. It was called Full Metal Jacket and he played a young military recruit who murdered his instructor and then himself.”
“Oh my gosh,” Twilight muttered.
“Suffice to say, that’s how you get the attention of a human movie-going crowd. Slightly related, a few years after Mystic Pizza, Julia Roberts and Vincent D'Onofrio would reunite with small roles in a movie called The Player about a movie producer that kills a guy.”
“Are you an expert on movies, or is this common human knowledge?” Twilight asked.
“Well...you remember the story about how I met Cher that one time. She had a cameo in The Player. She also was in Stuck on You with Matt Damon.”
“I’m sensing a trend here,” Twilight said doubtfully.
“You don’t know the half of it. As I was leaving the scene of the incident where I tried to build a traffic circle in Sonny Bono’s cemetery, I ran into this woman. She was a little older than me, but good looking and we hit it off. I still don’t know how, because she was trying to speak Spanish while I was trying to speak French.
“Anyway, she was an astronomer and had been part of the team at La Silla observatory in Chile. They found an asteroid and had named it 8299 Téaleoni. Actress Téa Leoni, interestingly enough, dressed in drag to play Sonny Bono in the movie Fun with Dick and Jane. Starring opposite her in that movie was Jim Carrey, who likewise dressed in drag to play Cher. But the connection goes deeper. Cher starred in Mask. Jim Carrey starred in The Mask.”
“I’m going to go now because I think we’re getting a little off track here and I also think you have a little bit of an unhealthy obsession with Cher.” Twilight got up. “Do you mind if I take Spike some pizza?”
“No problem,” I said. “Share and...Cher alike.”
She quit talking to me after that, so plan successful.
“Wow,” Pinkie observed after Twilight had stormed out. “I can’t believe you had me set up and rehearse the Mystic Pizza line of conversation with you just so you could throw it away on a one-liner like that.”
“You should be grateful for these Sonny and Cher puns. I’m doing them pro bono.”
She quit talking to me after that, so plan successful.
Not satisfied with the carbs in my tequila or the pizza we’d been eating all night, I headed for Sweet Apple Acres. If I was having a cheat day, I might as well go big.
I walked into their kitchen in the middle of breakfast and had a seat at the table. I told everyone Granny had invited me. Granny was so hard of hearing, she thought she had. Yes, it’s possible to actually have hearing so bad that it goes negative and twists words. It’s like auditory opposite day.
I dug in, but paused. “Applejack, why is your dog eating pancakes?”
“Same reason you’re eating pancakes,” Applejack said. “Because I made them.”
I really couldn’t argue with that answer, even though it wasn’t exactly what I had asked. Whatever. Free pancakes.
Big Mac was nodding in front of his breakfast, almost sleeping. I wondered about the blueberry syrup he was unconsciously pouring across the table. I would’ve thought the Apples would have had, well, you know.
They were busy with something and mostly ignoring me. I’d noticed that happening more often lately. Ponies seemed to prefer to just bypass anything that gave them a mild inconvenience. Since I was mostly on good terms with the Apple family, I wasn’t going to do anything that majorly inconvenienced them.
Applejack was talking to the rest about something called the Confluence, a big harvest that only happened once every hundred moons. I have no idea how long a moon was. A month?
Just then, the door opened to reveal cats. I was a little surprised, but still had pancakes in front of me, so I stood my ground. Well, sat at the table. The wall of pussy resolved itself into an older pony who just happened to have a ton of cats with her.
“Goldie Delicious!” Apple Bloom exclaimed.
“Granny told me y’all could use a helpin’ hoof with this here Confluence, so I came a-runnin’,” Goldie said. “It’s too bad y’all ain’t ever caught the Great Seedling. He’d have granted you a perpetual harvest, Confluence or no.”
“The Great Seedlin’?” said Applejack. “Well now, I haven’t thought about that old mare’s tale for years.”
“The Great Seedlin’ ain’t no mare’s tale!” Goldie protested. “He’s a magical earth spirit all the colors of the harvest that travels from farm to farm daring ponies to catch him. And those that have the ingenuity are rewarded with crops that are always in bloom.”
“Wait, what?” I said. Visions of an eternal agave harvest danced in my head.
“You want to catch him?” said Apple Bloom. “With the two of us workin’ together, we shouldn’t have any trouble!”
I looked at Applejack. She wore a skeptical look. See, Applejack was very black and white. She was honest as the day was long, didn’t buy into rumor, and naturally expected the world to be the same. Of course, the world wasn’t, so when magical creatures did exist she was caught flatfooted. Applejack probably wouldn’t even believe in magic if she didn’t have unicorn friends.
So me going after the Great Seedling basically came down to betting Applejack was wrong about the supernatural and that an old Equestrian legend was real. This was a bet I would take all day long.
First I had to extricate myself from the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what Winona was going to think about all these cats. Plus, Mac was sleeping again. I wasn’t sure if he was a werewolf in this universe, but it seemed impolite to ask in front of his family.
Applejack seemed to want Apple Bloom to actually do some work around the farm, considering the extra large harvest. I wasn’t sure if Equestria had child labor laws, and at what age they kicked in. Did it count if Apple Bloom had her cutie mark? Could a family employ their own child? What if said child didn’t have a cutie mark related to the type of work?
I realized I was getting distracted and got back on track. Right. Hunting down a possibly-fictional creature. I was all set to call in air cover and surveillance, but remembered I had yet to invent those in this world. Hmm. What was the fastest way to get them?
I had no idea if Sunset’s version of a human world that could be reached through the mirror portal had the kind of high-end satellite equipment I needed. They had cars and earbuds, so who knows, maybe they invented ballistic rocketry.
I remembered that I’d tried to go see her last time and the high school on the other side of the portal had been closed for summer break. I didn’t really know how time passed over there, so it might or might not still be break. Either way, getting Sunset’s help would really make this easier.
Well, except that she might not remember me. While the world across the portal was technically another universe, it was inexplicably tied to this universe. Well, not this one, but every pony-Equestria. They seemed to come in chained pairs.
So I didn’t know if Sunset’s world had military spy gear. Well, okay, it wasn’t technically Sunset’s world, but I didn’t know what else to call it. Also technically, Sunset herself might not know about the hardware if she didn’t know me and know that I would want to know.
And if Sunset didn’t know me, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get her to know me to help me out. I’d already tried Trixie and that hadn’t worked out. This wasn't even going into how I was going to fit a heavy-lift space launch vehicle through the mirror portal.
“Um, Valiant?” said Apple Bloom.
I shook my head. “Huh?”
“You’ve been starin’ into space for like five minutes.”
“I was just thinking about complicated things and...it was not really going well.”
“There’s somepony I can always count on to help me when my thoughts are too big for my head,” she said. “I can take you to them.”
What did I have to lose? Better still if it was Twilight. She deserved it.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
This proved to be a mistake.