//------------------------------//
// Chapter 25: Griffon The Rush Off 
// Story: The Night Janitor 
// by Knox Locke 
//------------------------------//

After a while, Cozy had left the Crusader's clubhouse in hopes of finding somepony else to befriend. Scootaloo's words still echoed through her mind, though, reminding her what her former "friends" thought of her. She closed her eyes and held a hoof to her head, desperately trying to purge her mind of the tornado of hurtful words which pervaded her thoughts.

Her attempt was cut short when she literally walked right into somepony on the street. Well, not exactly somepony.

"Hey, watch where you're going, would... Cozy Glow?"

Cozy Glow was suddenly an even bigger ball of nerves. In front of her was an all-to-familiar figure: Gallus.

She almost whimpered when she thought of what the griffon might do to her, but she quickly snapped back to reality when Gallus quickly flew away from her, seemingly terrified of the little filly.

"No, Gallus, wait!" she found herself yelling.

The griffon came to a screeching halt as her voice reached his ears. Cozy could see him facehoof (faceclaw? facetalon? I don't know.) before he slowly started to descend back down towards Cozy.

"What do you want?" he asked, clearly still on edge.

"I was hoping we could go someplace and, you know... catch up."

Gallus looked lost in thought for a moment, but he seemed to quickly reach some type of conclusion. He flew away from Cozy, leaving her in the dust. Cozy's ears drooped as she realized she'd failed once again.

To her surprise, Gallus came back just a few moments later.

"Well?" he said with a sly smirk on his face. "You can fly. Are you coming or what?"

Cozy laughed and wiped the tears from her eyes before flapping her tiny wings and following Gallus through the sky towards the Everfree Forest.





Meanwhile, elsewhere in Ponyville, Knox was at the Quills & Sofas store trying to get a replacement for the sofa Pinkie had accidentally set on fire.

(Bet you'd like to know that story, wouldn't you?)

However, he was quickly becoming annoyed.

"What's the deal, Davenport? How can you be out of sofas? The store is called Quills & Sofas! You only sell two things!"

"What can I say?" replied the store's owner, "Ever since Rarity gave me those excellent sales strategy tips, our sofas have been flying off the shelves!"

Ironically, some of the sofas he'd had actually did fly off the shelves! Discord had been in here, looking to refurnish some part of his chaos dimension.

"Good news is," continued Davenport, "we get a new shipment in a couple of days. If you get here early enough, you might be able to get one before they're gone! In the meantime... Need to buy some quills?"