Applejack adjusted her clothes as she walked down the sidewalk, briefly checking her phone for messages before looking straight ahead again. She wasn't in a rush to get where she needed to go, but it was still preferable to arrive there soon and not have others wait for long. At least that was what she told herself, to justify her walking pace. What she didn't tell herself was that she was nervous, though beneath the surface of her thoughts she knew she was.
Finally, after turning a corner, her destination appeared to her. Calling it a restaurant would have been a generous thing, perhaps so generous as to make it a lie. It was more properly defined as a place that served food for cheap. The type of business that thrived on people in their late teens and early twenties looking for a place to meet each other and feed themselves at, but not interested in the formalities and prices of a proper restaurant. Visited by anyone who needed cheap food to eat on the go. So, essentially, a gathering place for students, young workers, and other sorts of people still young enough to not care about the quality of the things they ingested. She fit the second category, and the ones she was going there to meet fit the other two.
There they were already, all four of them sitting at a table just outside the entrance. Talking to each other, until one of them noticed her and pointed and waved and the others turned and now they were all staring at her and only then did Applejack realise she'd been standing still and frozen staring at them. Waving and resuming her walk before Lemon decided she needed directions and started to yell, Applejack tried to swallow her nervousness. It didn't work.
"There you are," Indigo Zap greeted her. Then she turned to the others, while Applejack took a seat on the empty metal chair beside Lemon Zest's. "This is Applejack. Applejack, these are Sunny Flare and Sour Sweet."
The latter of the two girl excitedly smiled and waved, while the first one gave a more polite and contained smile. "A pleasure to meet you," she said.
"Uh, likewise," Applejack said, sitting down straight and looking at the four girls at the table. She awkwardly fidgeted with her empty hands, unsure of what to do or say. "So, uh, I know about Lemon and Indigo, what about you two? You're here in town to study, right?"
Sunny nodded. Sour said, "Yes we are! Isn't it wonderful?" Then she looked to the side and her tone dropped. "Ruining our sleep schedules and diets to waste our time and money on learning things we could have learned by ourselves for free if we weren't too lazy for that only because we need someone to acknowledge that we have in fact learned them. And the bathrooms suck."
"Hey now," Lemon interjected. "I'm not going to school, and I still get to ruin my sleep schedule and diet." She pulled out a bag of gummy worms and began to eat them. Applejack had no idea where the bag had actually come from. It was not a small bag, either.
"That's just because you never mentally moved on from being a teenager, Lem." Indigo sighed. She looked at Applejack. "What will you be having? We were discussing what to eat before, I can go order for all of us if you tell us."
"Does this place have a menu?" Applejack asked.
Sour Sweet handed her a folded sheet of thin and glossy cardboard. "Knock yourself out."