“One episode left before the big one, girls!” Lyra triumphantly raised her glass and her tablemates, the three fellow members of the Extras Club, did the same.
“Nine whole seasons of making crowds more crowd-ish,” Screwball marveled, tossing a shot glass of seltzer into her muzzle and swallowing. “Croup-breaking work, yes sir. Enough to make stress squiggles appear in front of my exhausted little look-holes.”
Blossomforth rolled her eyes. “Says the pony who appeared on screen exactly one time,” she razzed.
Moments later, Blossom’s face was sprayed with seltzer and Screwball was clad in a pinstripe suit to accent her vaudevillian spit take.
“I’ll have you know,” Screwball huffed as she stroked her comically large false mustache, “That I actually appeared twice during the show’s lifespan. After prepping super hard both times. I ain’t no one trick pony.”
Blossomforth harrumphed, but didn’t bother wiping her face. Everyone present knew the seltzer would be gone in a few seconds, along with Screwball’s gaudy costume. Screwball often employed continuity errors to clean up her sight gags. Not a very creative technique, but if it was good enough for her father, it was good enough for her.
“Chill, girls,” suggested Vinyl Scratch. “Let’s not argue over who pulled the most or least weight throughout the s-s-s-show’s run. We all did our parts. ’Sides, Lyra s-s-still has one more background bit she’ll be d-d-doing in next week’s episode.”
“For real?” Blossomforth did a quick mental check. “You were also a one-scene character in the pilot, right Chief? And now you’re gonna be in the last episode before the finale?”
“That’s some bush league bookending for your career, Ly!” Screwball exclaimed. She pulled her shot glass apart seamlessly and held each half up with a flourish. “Beginning and end, perfectly mirrored. With everything in between a cool, refreshing center.” The two halves snapped together like magnets, inexplicably full of seltzer once more. Screwball tossed this serving back as well.
“So, is it a speaking part?” Blossomforth asked casually. She was always interested in speaking parts, never having netted one of her own.
Lyra ran a hoof through her mane apprehensively. “No, no lines this time. Just a classic, silent pose in the midground of a scene. Pretty much as routine as it gets.”
“Always s-s-so modest,” said Vinyl. “Go on, Ly, Tell ‘em what you told me. What makes this one s-s-special?”
Blossomforth and Screwball regarded Lyra with shared excitement. Neither of the two junior Extras had made an onscreen appearance in ages. Living vicariously through their club leader was how they got their kicks nowadays.
“I, ah, well…” For all her years of experience, Lyra still didn’t do well when put on the spot. “I’m gonna be down on one knee proposing to Bon Bon.” She smiled, but only Vinyl Scratch detected the bitterness hidden beneath. Blossomforth laughed and clapped Lyra on the back while Screwball sqee’d, grabbed her friend’s hoof and pumped it up and down.
“What a great bit to go out on!” Screwball gushed. “It’s like a… a whaddya call it.”
“The end of a character arc,” Blossomforth finished for her. “Closure for nine years of ship teasing. Must feel good, Chief.”
“It does,” Lyra admitted. “And I think it’ll make a lot of watchers go absolutely nuts. I just feel kind of guilty about it.”
Behind her sunglasses, Vinyl Scratch’s eyes darted between Screwball and Blossomforth. Vinyl herself had already tried and failed to give Lyra a pep talk before they’d all met at the bar, but maybe the other two could succeed where she hadn’t. Blossom and Screwball were each well-spoken in their own ways, after all. Vinyl meanwhile had to randomly fight to get her malfunctioning mouth to form certain sounds.
“You feel guilty?” Screwball inquired, cocking her head at an impossible angle. “Guilt is for characters who cook up and eat their comedic foil’s expensive imported oats that they were saving for a special occasion.”
The other three waited patiently for the inevitable punchline.
“And the showrunners made you get over doing that years back.”
“So what’s the real trouble, Chief?” Blossomforth asked directly.
Lyra was reticent. “Girls…” She said, then looked over her ragtag friends wistfully, taking in what she saw.
A lackadaisical Earth Pony with heliotropic eyes.
A bluntly-spoken Pegasus with a mane that looked like a computer printer’s highest intensity color test.
And a serene, sunglassed Unicorn whose voice and music both had a trademark stutter.
Like chalk, cheese, and chicken feathers, nothing about any of them had any obvious similarities. The only thing they shared was membership of the Extras Club, a loose sorority Lyra had founded half a lifetime ago to meet and mingle with ensemble ponies like herself.
Only she hadn’t been feeling much like an ensemble pony nowadays.
“Girls,” she repeated, “Am I still an Extra? I mean, in the technical sense?”
“Technical sense?” (Blossomforth again). “How can you not be? You’re tied with freaking Derpy for Most Popular Filler Character.”
“It’s just… I don’t think filler characters are supposed to have arcs or payoffs. I started worrying about this back when Bon Bon and I were given two rapport scenes in Episode 100, because afterwards, things picked up so quickly. I got mentioned by name in an episode I wasn’t in, then featured in a photo as one of Twilight’s ‘Canterlot friends.’ Now with them having me propose to Bon Bon next week, I don’t…” Lyra took a swig from her whiskey glass apprehensively. “Have I gone from Extra to full-on Minor Character?”
Screwball manifested a newspaper bearing Lyra’s face, then fanned herself with it dismissively. “Well what if you have? Octy and Doc Whooves jumped that shark a few episodes back, no problem. The viewers love them.”
“Except,” Blossomforth realized aloud, “neither of those two are the founding member of a social club dedicated to us Extras hanging out together.”
The newspaper went up in smoke and Screwball’s already fishy expression became even more bug-eyed than usual. “Oh wow. Is that what it is? You worried your metaphorical britches are too small?”
“The phrase is ‘getting too big for my britches,’ Screwy, and the answer is… it's complicated. I love doing bits with Bon Bon. I really do. She and I are tighter than bolts on a Sweetie Bot, but…” Lyra reached out and laid a forehoof on Blossom and Screwball’s respective shoulders. “I don’t want my bit next week to make me lose touch with where I came from.”
“Come off it, Chief,” Blossomforth assured her. “Onscreen life doesn’t have to affect offscreen life. It’s not like you’re gonna quit the club or anything, right?” A hint of nervousness crept across Blossomforth’s face. “Right?”
“Wha-? No! I’d never do that. Extras for life. It’s just...” Lyra inhaled sharply before speaking her mind. “It’s just that I don’t feel completely happy getting a conclusion while the rest of you never made it.”
A mixed silence presided over the table. Lyra was staring into her half-empty whiskey glass, reflecting on her career. Blossomforth was looking away, chewing on Lyra’s confession. Screwball remained unreadable as ever. And Vinyl Scratch was still acting as an observer, waiting to see who’d step up to the mic Lyra had just yielded. It ended up being Blossomforth, but only after she’d downed her entire gin and juice for courage.
“Does anyone remember back in Episode 75 when I almost had a speaking role?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Lyra said cautiously. “ It was supposed to be you on the air sprinters team with Thunderlane, but they swapped you with… Helia during production.”
“Mm-hm. My name even had Helia’s voice actress listed in the credits, that’s how last minute the change was. And the reason it was so last minute is…” she swallowed. “Because the ‘last minute’ is when I chickened out.”
The surprise at the table was palpable. Even the normally quiet Vinyl Scratch chuffed audibly. It was Lyra who recovered first, though.
“Chickened out? But I thought-“
“That a speaking role is a lifelong dream of mine? It is. Has been since before I even joined the Extras Club. But at the time, right before I was set to be in the episode where I would get my voice heard... I thought of all of you. Of all the good times we shared between seasons. Between episodes. Shoot, even between takes. And in a moment of weakness, I thought if I spoke onscreen it meant I’d be outta the club.”
“Gosh-diddly-damn,” Screwball breathed, uncharacteristically morose. “It didn’t have to be a Pick One, Ditch The Other deal, Bloss. Can’t turn your back on your friends if they’re standing all around you on all sides.”
“Heh, I know that. I’d have to be three feet thick to not know that. But for one crucial moment, that’s what I was: too thick to see the big picture. It would’ve felt amazing to be heard. To own the airwaves, even if it was only to speak a single line. But I backed out because of some asinine belief it would have to affect my offscreen life. Lyra, you know how you said us Extras aren’t supposed to have arcs? Sorry, but I gotta call manure on that. Episode 75 was the conclusion to my arc. Not my character’s arc, mine. It was when I made my biggest mistake and learned from it. Don’t do what I did and drop the buckball at the finish line. You go onscreen next week and strike the best proposal stance you can, without letting any lame thoughts about the rest of us keeping you from doing it. We joined this club because we’re Extras. But we stayed because we’re friends, Chief.”
Her monologue done, Blossomforth raised her glass to her lips, only to remember she’d drained it dry before she’d started speaking.
“Uh… hey Screwy? Wanna top me off over here?”
“Boundless cosmic chaotic power,” Screwball whined facetiously, “and you use me as a walking beer keg.”
“Ew, no. Not any beer, please. Just more gin and grapefruit juice. With some lime pulp too, unless that cocktail is too complicated for your cartoon conjuring to handle, of course.”
“Too complicated?! I swear, if I wasn’t a merciful demigod, you’d be so humiliated right now.”
“Yeah. You get your niceness from your nonexistent mother, I’m sure.” Blossomforth jingled the ice cubes in her glass. “Still high and dry over here, in case you’ve forgotte-“
“Oh, to Tartarus with it.”
Blossomforth’s lips sealed and her cheeks bloated as Screwball conjured the requested drink ingredients directly into the pegasus’s mouth. Suddenly wearing a professional-looking mixologist’s uniform, Screwball gripped Blossomforth’s head like a cocktail shaker and gave it a few jostles up and down before stepping back. Blossomforth swallowed the result and doubled over the table, panting to get her breath back.
“Et voila,” Screwball declared in an atrociously fake Europony accent. “Ze lady’s thirst izt no more.” She glanced at Lyra, looking for approval for the gag.
“You two really can brighten anypony’s mood,” Lyra smiled warmly. “Whether it’s with life lessons or simple clowning. Or one after the other. You make a good double act.”
“It’s just the booze coloring the convo, Ly,” Blossomforth said between gasps. “We are all... very drunk right now.”
“Not me!” Screwball screeched rapturously. “Unlike you featherweights, I have the liver of a horse.”
“S-sure, and the voice of the s-s-s-sweetest sounding s-siren,” Vinyl added, rubbing her sensitive ears.
“Eas-s-s-sy for y-y-you to s-s-say,” Screwball retorted. “Where do you get off wearing sunglasses indoors anyhow?”
“It’s so I can s-s-secretly nod off when your jokes go on for too long.”
Laughter was shared around the table. The pure, hearty kind of laughter between friends who were comfortable poking crass fun at each other’s successes and failures.
Kind words coexisted with sharp ones in the Extras Club, just like the bitter bite of alcohol shared space with the sweet syrup of fruit juice in the drinks they clinked together and tossed back in unison. The upcoming finale and the ensuing week afterwards would be one long victory lap for the Mane 6 and their ilk, but tonight wasn’t part of such loftiness.
This particular night belonged to the workhorses.