//------------------------------// // Chapter 25 (Let's Go Shopping) // Story: Moving Day // by Timothy48 //------------------------------// Chapter 25 Wow, there’s a lot more to buy here than I imagined, thought Allen to himself as he strode casually through the market square after having separated from Penny in front of the bank. His eyes wandered from stall to stall and their contents, while his ears picked up the shouts of the local merchants hawking their wares to the general public in an attempt to catch their attention. Looking around, Allen tried to see if he could spot any stalls that might be selling what he was searching for, a bigger wallet. Not seeing anything, he picked a random direction and continued on. “Geez, this place has got just about everything,” he muttered to himself as he walked down another row of stalls. Passing a stall full of pots and pans, he turned and spotted another one selling fresh produce, while next to it, a pony was selling rugs and throw pillows. The sights, sounds, and smells were nearly overpowering to him as he wove his way through the large crowds of ponies. Coming to a stop at the end of the row, he looked left, then right, then left again trying to decide which way to go. Giving a shrug, he turned left and ventured deeper into the market. He was just passing another produce stand when he heard someone calling out his name behind him. Turning, he spotted a familiar pale indigo pegasus trotting up behind him, a happy smile on her face. “Hey, Allen!” called Cloud Kicker as she came to a stop, “How’s it going?” Allen shrugged. “Getting by,” he replied simply. Cloud Kicker laughed. “Yeah, I know the feeling, heard you were in the hospital for a while.” Allen nodded. “Yeah, turns out my thaumic pathways and appendix were too small and weak to handle the amount of mana that was being pumped into my system from the vaccines they were giving me, and I had a bad reaction. Thankfully, it was fixable, and the doctors said I should be fine in a few weeks, but I need to watch what I eat and not overexert myself.” “Oh wow, I heard that you weren’t feeling good, but I didn't realize that it was that bad. I’m glad to see you’re doing better though,” she replied. “Yeah, me too,” replied Allen whole heartily. “Say,” he said, suddenly remembering what he was here to do, “you wouldn’t happen to know where a fella can get a bigger bit bag around here would you? My wallet isn’t really designed to hold a lot of coins,” he said as he pulled his wallet out for emphasis. Cloud Kicker rubbed her chin thoughtfully for a moment before replying with a nod, “Yeah, I think Coin Purse has a stall nearby. She should be in the market today, if you want I can take you there.” “That’d be great, thanks,” replied Allen, happy that he wouldn’t be stuck wandering the market aimlessly for hours in search of a bigger coin bag. Giving Allen a happy nod in return, Cloud Kicker quickly set off at a light trot, with Allen falling in alongside, his long legs making it easier for him to keep pace with her. Looking around the market, Allen commented, “You know, since I’ve been here, I’ve noticed that there are a lot more mares walking around then stallions in this town.” Cloud nodded. “Ponyville isn’t very far from Canterlot, and the train can make the journey in about forty minutes, though, if you’re a strong flyer, you can cut that time in half. A lot of ponies live here in Ponyville, but commute to work in Canterlot because the cost of living is so much cheaper here. That’s why you’ll see more mares running around during the day than stallions.” “Ah, cause their husbands are at work, or they themselves are off work for the day,” said Allen, understanding dawning on his face. “That makes sense. So what do they do?” Cloud gave a shrug with her wings. “I know a large portion of them are in the Royal Guard and will work three or four days a week depending on the month. Though there are a lot of ponies who work for nobles and the princesses as serving staff and bureaucrats.” “Must get pretty hectic at the station in the morning and evening when everyone comes home,” commented Allen. “It can, but Ponyville has a special commuter train that gets priority for morning traffic up to Canterlot, so it’s not too bad,” replied Cloud casually. Spreading her wings slightly, she continued, “Though I usually just fly there myself, unless the weather is bad of course.” Looking down at her wings, Allen said, “Must be nice being able to just skip all the traffic whenever you want. Me? I’m stuck walking.” Cloud smiled. “Yeah, they have their pluses, but let me tell you something, they have their downsides, molting is not fun,” she ruffled her wings as a phantom itch raced up her wings. Allen hummed in response. “Guess I never really thought about that. Do you guys have hollow bones like birds do?” Cloud shook her head. “Naw, they’re just as solid as anypony else’s. Though earth ponies do have stronger bones and muscles than pegasi or unicorns, it comes from the way the magic in our bodies works. In pegasi, it makes us lighter and gives our wings more lift so that way we can fly. In earth ponies, and to a lesser extent unicorns, it gives them increased durability. Though we pegasi are pretty tough too, I mean, if you’d seen some of Rainbow’s crashes, you would wonder how that mare hasn’t killed herself yet.” “You know Rainbow Dash?” Cloud Kicker nodded. “Yeah, I’ve known her since flight school. How do you know about her?” Allen shrugged. “Twilight mentioned her at my ‘Welcome to Equestria, glad you’re feeling better, sorry that you were kidnapped by a crazy god’ party that Pinkie Pie threw for me the other day.” “Ah, okay, yeah that makes sense, but yeah, Rainbow and I go way back. She helped me train for when I went to West Hoof and became a Royal Guard.” “Right, you’re a lieutenant aren’t you? I’d forgotten about that,” replied Allen with a look of recognition on his face. “Well, I’m a reservist now, and the assistant manager of the weather team-” “Weather team? What’s that?” cut in Allen suddenly. Cloud Kicker came to a stop and gave Allen a quizzical look. “What do you mean? It’s a team of pegasi that manage the local weather.” Now it was Allen’s turn to look confused. “What?” was all he could say. “Wait,” replied Cloud Kicker, a sudden look of understanding on her face, “do you mean to tell me that in your world, you don’t manage the weather?” Allen slowly shook his head. “Not really no, well I mean unless you believe in the conspiracy theories about the government secretly manipulating the weather with chemical trails in the sky, satellites, and whatnot. But other than that, not to the best of my knowledge have humans been able to manipulate the weather on any kind of scale that would be meaningful. Are you saying that you guys can?” Cloud Kicker gave a smug nod. “Sure do, and I help make it happen!” Allen shook his head in amazement. “You’ll have to forgive me, but that just seems a little out there for me to wrap my head around. I mean, how can you control the entire world’s weather systems in a way that doesn’t cause more harm than good?” Cloud Kicker waggled a hoof back and forth in a ‘so-so’ gesture and said, “Well, we don’t control the world's weather systems, more like, guide them to do what we want on the macro scale of things. Though at the local level we can most definitely manage it to a highly precise degree.” “So you can make it rain whenever you want?” pressed Allen. Cloud gave a wing shrug. “Not exactly. Cloudsdale provides the majority of the manufactured weather in this part of the country, and they can only produce so much at any given time. So it’s up to each local weather team to collect data on local conditions and figure out how much moisture they will need for a given time period. Once they’ve got a good idea, then they can build a weather schedule and send it to Cloudsdale for approval, after which, if it’s accepted, they’ll receive scheduled shipments of weather for their needs. Now that’s not to say that wild weather doesn’t happen from time to time, I mean, we do live right next to the Everfree Forest, and that weather can get prettywild when it wants to, but on the whole, we have to send in a request for weather from Cloudsdale weeks in advance. So there’s a lot of pressure on the local weather manager to make sure they get the numbers right, because if they don’t then they might have either too much or too little rain for a given period of time, and neither one is a good thing to have on your record.” “Wow,” said Allen, an incredulous expression on his face at the idea that the ponies could micromanage their weather that precisely. “That’s... I don’t even have a word to describe it.” Cloud Kicker buffed a hoof against her chest fluff and smugly replied, “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Equestrian weather management is the best in the world, it’s one of the reasons that our agricultural sector does as well as it does.” “I’ll say, being able to basically have rain on demand is something I wish we could have had back home,” lamented Allen. “Well, it’s a lot of work, and when something does go wrong, somepony catches tartarus for it, but when it works, it works really well.” “So do I have to sign up for that or what?” asked Allen curiously. Cloud Kicker shook her head. “Naw, you should already be covered thanks to your farm being located right next to the Apple’s. Shouldn’t be too difficult to stretch the cloud cover to give your fields some water, and if not, then I’m sure Rainbow can call in some favors and get you the water you need, and if that doesn’t work, then we can wrangle some wild clouds and compress them together to get them to rain. It’s not as effective as using manufactured rainclouds, but in a pinch it gets the job done.” Cocking his head to one side, Allen asked, “Why would Rainbow be requisitioning weather? Is she part of the weather team too? Wouldn’t your manager be the one to do that?” Cloud giggled. “Rainbow is the weather manager for Ponyville. I doubt you could find a better cloudbuster this side of Cloudsdale. Sure Rainbow has a hard time with doing paperwork and stuff, but that’s why I’m here, to make sure she gets her weather requests done on time and correctly. Though usually, I’m the one filling them out, but I guess that’ll just make it easier for me to take her place when she joins the Wonderbolts... if she ever does, but that’s another story for another ti-, are you okay?” she asked suddenly, as Allen looked like he’d bitten into a sour lemon. “Rainbow’s the weather manager?” he asked weakly. “Yeah, is that a problem?” asked Cloud Kicker quizzically. Biting his bottom lip, Allen looked around and bent down so that his face was level with Cloud’s and quietly explained, “Well, it might turn into a problem.” “And why is that? Did you do something to tick Rainbow off?” “Not directly no, but according to Twilight, when that Discord guy brought me here, he plopped part of my farm on top of Applejack’s, and apparently, she’s not too happy about that.” “Okay, so Applejack is mad, how does that affect you and Rainbow?” she asked. “Well, I’m guessing that the part of Applejack’s farm that my farm sits on was really special to her family and since she can’t take her anger out on the asshat who is ultimately responsible, she’s turned that anger on me.” “Still not seeing the Rainbow connection,” said Cloud, a frustrated look on her face. “I’m getting to that,” snapped Allen, “so anyways, when Twilight told me about how Applejack was upset with me, she mentioned that Rainbow and Applejack are really close friends and that if somebody messed with her friend, Rainbow would take it personally, are you getting it now?” Cloud’s expression quickly shifted from frustration to understanding and she slowly nodded. “Yeah, I can see why you would be a little concerned. I’m assuming you haven’t met Rainbow in person yet?” Allen shook his head. “No, and to be honest, I’d rather avoid that little confrontation for as long as possible. The last thing I want is to wake up one morning and find my crops flooded out or a tornado ripping through my yard.” “Okay, first of all, that would be both illegal and unethical, and Rainbow knows that if she did that she’d lose her weather license, and quite possibly her shot at getting into the Wonderbolts. Secondly, while it’s true that Rainbow can be brash at times and run her mouth when she shouldn’t when she’s on the clock and it matters, she’s all professional... well most of the time anyway,” she said quietly, though not quietly enough as Allen heard her. “Most of the time? Somehow that doesn’t reassure me,” commented Allen skeptically. Sighing Cloud replied, “Everypony has their quirks, and Rainbow’s is that so long as something gets done on time and done right, then that’s all that matters. She’s been known to take naps on the job every once in a while, but she knows that ponies depend on the weather team doing things right to keep their lives running smoothly. She knows that if she purposely screwed something up to hurt someone's livelihood, then not only would her reputation be ruined, but the weather teams as well, and Rainbow would never do that to her team.” “But she still sleeps on the job? Doesn’t sound like she cares that much about professionalism if she’s doing that all the time.” Cloud let loose a grumble. “She’s not as bad as she used to be, but old habits die hard I guess,” Cloud took a deep breath and let it out as a long-suffering sigh, “From what I heard, when she first started in Ponyville as a rookie cloud pusher, she nearly got fired because she took a nap and didn’t get some rain clouds moved to where they needed to be on time. Consequently, they let loose their moisture over the mayor’s inauguration and it was rained out. Needless to say, the mayor wasn’t happy about it, and complained to the weather manager at the time.” “Still not really helping your friend's case there, Cloud,” remarked Allen dryly. “Don’t tell me you haven’t done dumb things or overestimated your abilites at one time or another. Back then, she was a cocky rookie straight out of the Cloudsdale Weather Academy, and thought she could do what she pleased, when she pleased, because she thought that she was a, and I quote, ‘Super awesome, and unbeatable weather pony’. The old weather manager, Hazy Days, after getting chewed out by the mayor, quickly set her straight. She’s been getting better, though some of her bad habits show up from time to time.” “So how long have you known Rainbow then?” asked Allen as he and Cloud resumed their walk. “A long time, like I said, I met her back in flight school just after she started, and even though I was five years older than her, we became good friends, and we kept in touch through letters when I went off to West Hoof after I graduated flight school.” “Kinda strange that you’d want to hang around what sounds like a freshman when it sounds like you were a senior at the time,” commented Allen. “I was actually a junior that year, I graduated the following year, and at first I didn’t want to be around her, she was loud, obnoxious and a brat, and I couldn’t stand being around her. However, she was having problems flying, and my teacher asked me if I would mentor her after school and help her with her homework assignments. I reluctantly agreed, mainly because he offered to give me extra credit in exchange for me mentoring Rainbow. I knew I needed to get good grades to be accepted into West Hoof, so I figured I could tolerate the inconvenience. Looking back, doing that for Rainbow really helped me out when I went into the guard, as unlike other recruits, I already had plenty of practice dealing with stubborn ponies who acted like foals when they didn’t get their way.” Allen chuckled. “Yeah, kids can really try your patience at times, I remember that pretty well myself with my sister when she was younger.” Cloud Kicker’s ears perked up and she said with a smile, “Heh, yeah, thankfully my little sister and brother weren’t that bad when we were growing up, but that’s probably because my parents wouldn’t tolerate any kind of misbehavior in our house. Guess that comes from having parents who are in the military.” Allen nodded. “Yeah, I know that feeling, my dad was in the army for a couple years before he met my mom, and both of my grandfathers were in the military. So there was plenty of discipline to go around if you misbehaved. Plus, mom was old school when it came to discipline, you misbehave, and you risked getting swatted on the back of the head or rear.” Cloud snickered. “Oh I know that all too well. Thankfully, my younger self was a quick learner, so my parents didn’t really need to knock much sense into me.” “Hehe, I wish I could say the same, but eventually they managed to knock some sense into me,” chuckled Allen in reply. Looking around, he asked, “So where is this friend of yours?” Cloud suddenly spread her wings and leaped into the air, pumping them hard to quickly gain some altitude, and coming to a hover about twenty feet off the ground. Spinning in place, she looked out over the sea of ponies and merchant stalls before then pointing in one direction, “I think I see her stall over there, come on,” she said as she touched down next to Allen and trotted off, while Allen quickly fell in alongside her. After several twists and turns in the maze of vendor stalls, they arrived in front of their destination. Various accessories from purses, to coin bags and even a few vests and harnesses hung from pegs and were laid out on the table. A small, one pony cart sat behind the stand and was piled high with materials, boxes, and tools. Finally, Allen turned his attention to the earth pony mare sitting behind the counter. She was a light tan, with a chocolate-colored mane and tail and her mahogany eyes twinkled in anticipation of a potential sale as she looked up at Allen from her stall. Putting on her best friendly smile, she threw her hooves open wide and proudly declared, “Welcome to Coin Purse’s Accessory Emporium! We’ve got everything you need to keep your bits and valuables safe while you travel! What can I help you with today? Oh! Hi, Cloud Kicker! How are you doing?” she said suddenly, having just spotted Cloud Kicker at Allen’s side. Cloud chuckled. “Hey Coin, I’m doing alright, but my friend here could use a bigger bit bag, his wallet wasn’t really made to hold Equestrian coins.” Allen pulled out said wallet and presented it to Coin. “Yeah, back home we don’t really use coins for big purchases anymore, so I can’t really fit a lot of bits in here without the risk of it bursting. Besides, it’s probably time to retire the old girl anyways, her seams are starting to split and fray from age.” Taking his wallet in her hooves, Coin Purse looked it over with a critical eye, and nodded, “Yeah, it looks like it’s about done for,” she cocked her head to one side and asked, “is this made out of actual leather?” Allen, a little worried about how she would react to his answer, hesitantly replied, “Yeah, it’s cow leather, I think.” Coin turned it over a couple more times in her hooves, being sure to inspect it from every angle before saying, “Hmm, and would I be correct in assuming that this came from a cow in your world?” Allen nodded, not surprised that she knew he wasn’t from Equestria by this point. “Hmm, well then whoever made this did a really crappy job of putting it together, if you want, I can try to repair and reinforce it for you. The rest of the wallet’s in good shape, save for some wear along the corners and edges, but that shouldn’t be too hard for me to fix. Honestly, it would just be wasteful to throw this much good leather away when so much of it is in decent condition, especially when an animal gave its life to make it,” she remarked as she set it down and looked up at Allen. “Well... unless you can make it so that I can carry more bits with it, I’m not sure it would be worth fixing up just for the sake of fixing,” replied Allen, an unsure look on his face as he shifted uneasily back and forth in place. Coin hummed and nodded, a slightly distracted look on her face as she thought about something. “I suppose that’s true, still...” “Maybe you could buy it off Allen and use the material for something else?” suggested Cloud Kicker. Coin hummed again, her distracted look having morphed into one of thoughtful concentration. Finally, she nodded her head and said, “Sure, why not? I’m always looking to buy materials, and I haven’t really had a chance to work with genuine cow leather in a while, so sure, I can give you a say... ten-bit discount towards your next purchase?” Allen glanced at the price tags on display and thought about it. Finally, he nodded, “I think that’s fair,” he said as he held out his hand to seal the deal. Taking his proffered hand with a hoof, they shook on it. Emptying the contents of Allen’s wallet into a small lockbox for temporary storage, Coin asked Allen what he was looking to buy. “So what are you looking for then?” she asked. Glancing over everything that she had, Allen shook his head and replied, “I don’t know, I like being able to keep things like my ID card in the little slots that my wallet has, but I still need to be able to carry around enough coins for my daily needs without them weighing on my belt or being easily stolen.” Coin nodded and pulled out a couple of different bags from under her counter for Allen to look over. “Well, I’ve got these satchel bags here, they’re pretty popular among my non-pony customers, as they can be easily customized for each individual customer's needs,” she explained as she held one out for Allen to look over. Taking it in hand, he turned it over inspecting it closely. It looked to be made of some sort of heavy-duty canvas-like material that was dyed a light earthy green, with a silver-colored latch keeping the bag's flap closed. Undoing the latch, Allen peered inside and found a smaller rectangular pouch sewn onto the backside of the bag with its own smaller silver latch. Undoing that one as well, he could see that there were slots for a person to store cards of varying sizes and shapes, along with a silver money clip for paper currency. Closing the small card pouch, he turned his attention back to the main pouch, sticking his hand inside, he felt around and along the seams and found that the stitching was quite strong, looking up at Coin, he saw that she had a satisfied looking smirk on her face. “Looks pretty well made here,” he commented. “Naturally,” she replied confidently, “all of my bags are made by hoof and I challenge you to find a better one anywhere in Ponyville or for that matter Canterlot.” Motioning for him to give her the bag, she explained, “This bag is made from only the best steelhemp on the market, guaranteed not to rip, tear or wear out or your money back!” Allen blinked. “Steelhemp, what kind of plant is that?” “It’s only the strongest plant fiber on the market today!” declared Coin Purse happily. Seeing Allen give her a skeptical look, she explained, “It a subspecies of regular hemp that is grown in the hoofhills of the Macintosh Mountains. There’s a lot of iron and tungsten in the soil down there, and the local farmers, with help from some unicorns at the University of Baltimare, managed to breed this strain of hemp to soak up the minerals in the soil to make the fibers really strong. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to grow it, and it will only grow in certain spots, so there isn’t a lot to go around, which makes it kinda pricey. However, once the fibers have dried, only diamond and mithril tools can cut it. Plus its fire-resistant up to around eight hundred degrees marenheit!” “Eight hundred degrees?” asked Allen with a raised eyebrow. Coin replied, a defensive look on her face. “Well at the end of the day it is a plant, can’t expect it to take the kind of temperatures that regular steel and tungsten metals can take.” Still giving her a skeptical look, Allen asked, “So anything else about this bag here that’s special?” Coin nodded, happy to be back to giving Allen her sales pitch. “You bet! The latches can be engraved with security runes that will make it very difficult for somepony to get into, plus, since the straps are made out of steelhemp, you won’t have to worry about somepony cutting the strap and taking the whole bag! Additionally, the bag has a featherweight charm built into it, so you won’t get fatigued from having it on you all day, and for an extra fifty bits, I can have an internal expansion charm placed on it, which will effectively double the number of things you can put in it!” “So how much would this all cost?” asked Allen, an unconvinced look on his face as he thought about the final price tag. Feeling as though she were about to make a sale, Coin proudly stated, “If we included the extra spellwork and engraving, the final price would be eleven hundred and forty bits, and that includes the store credit I gave you,” she added at the end. “Eleven hundred and forty bits, huh?” replied Allen, as he rubbed his chin, an unsure expression on his face. “Yep!” replied Coin happily. Sucking on one of his teeth, Allen looked over the other bags that were on display and asked, “I don’t know, what do you think Cloud Kicker?” Giving Coin an unamused look, she reached up and grabbed a similar-looking canvas satchel, this one colored dark khaki, and said, “Here, this should be all that you need right now.” Taking the bag in his hands, Allen noted that it was similarly designed to the first satchel, except that it wasn’t made of steelhemp fiber and didn’t have a silver latch, but a brass one, and that there were already runes carved into it. Peering inside, he found the same was true with the internal pouch’s latch as well. Giving the bag and shoulder strap a couple of test yanks, he slipped it over his head so that the strap lay diagonally across his chest, and adjusted it slightly until it rode how he liked it. After walking around for a minute he gave a satisfied nod and said, “I’ll take this one, how much?” Shooting a pouty look at Cloud Kicker for ruining her sales pitch, Coin Purse unenthusiastically replied, “With the discount, your total comes to twenty bits.” Placing the bits on the counter, and putting his things in his new bag, Allen said, “If it’s any consolation, you gave a good sales pitch back there.” Sighing in defeat, Coin replied, “Thanks, and sorry for trying to upsell you like that. I’ve been trying to get rid of that bag for months now, but unless I go to Canterlot or Manehatten, I doubt I’ll find anypony around here that needs a bag with that kind of security on it.” Nodding in agreement, Cloud Kicker chimed in. “Well, you should have thought of that before you spent all those bits on the materials and tools to make it.” “Well how was I supposed to know that getting a market stall to sell in Canterlot would be so damn expensive! I mean, they’re charging ten times the amount for a stall space up there in comparison to down here, and that's for one of the bad spots!” she whined, her ears pinned back against her mane and a frustrated look on her face. Cloud shrugged indifferently. “Should have thought of that first there Coin, not my fault you put the cart before the pony.” Hanging her head in defeat, she moaned out, “I know, but I took out a loan to pay for several bolts of that steelhemp, and now I can’t move it!” Watching the two go back and forth for a minute, Allen interjected, “Then why not sell it to someone else then? Sure you might not be able to get all your bits back, but you should be able to recoup the majority of it.” “I already tried that, the DOTI wouldn’t let me,” she replied with a pout. “Why?” asked Allen puzzled. Rolling her eyes and letting loose an irritated huff, Coin replied, “Because I don’t have a wholesalers permit that’s why, and the cost to get one would be too expensive for it to be worth doing. The best I can do right now is just hold onto it until I can save up enough money to rent a stall in one of the big cities and hope that I can drum up enough interest in it.” Picking up the steelhemp bag in his hands, Allen ran his hands over the material and thought for a bit, after a few seconds, he felt an idea form in his head. “Have you ever thought about marketing this stuff to businesses directly?” he asked. Coin shot him a quizzical look. “Huh? What do you mean?” “I mean, you say that this stuff is pretty much impervious to being cut by anything save diamond and mythril, and is pretty well fireproof, so why not look around and see if any of the local businesses that might be interested in using it. I mean, you could pitch it as a way to reduce burns and cuts in the kitchen or market it to a blacksmith as a lighter, more breathable material for their protective equipment, than say leather or whatever they’re currently using. I don’t know, I’m just throwing ideas out there,” replied Allen with a wave of his arms. Coin Purse stared at Allen, her mouth hanging open slightly. “I...” she began, “can’t believe I didn’t think of that. That’s... genius!” she happily exclaimed as her eyes lit up in excitement. “This opens up so many possibilities now! Thank you, thank you!” she cried as she quickly began packing up her stall and haphazardly throwing her things into her cart. “I’ll need to do some research, but I have a good idea on where to start, and who knows? Maybe I can finally afford my own shop after this!” she squealed in excitement and did a cute little dance of happiness. Allen simply chuckled at her reaction and shook his head as he and Cloud watched Coin pack her things up. Slipping between the shafts of her cart, she quickly got herself hitched up. Fasting the last strap in place, she glanced up at Allen and said, “I know I’ve already said it, but I’ll say it again, thank you so much.” Allen waved her thanks away. “No biggie, you’d probably have come up with the idea yourself at some point,” he replied modestly. Coin Purse shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not, regardless you’ve given me a great lead to follow and if it pans out, then I might just be able to open my own shop! In anycase, I better get going, I’ve got a lot of ground to cover and research to do, you two take care!” she said as she quickly trotted away. “Good luck,” replied Allen with a wave as he and Cloud watched Coin disappear amongst the other market-goers. Turning to Cloud, Allen said, “Welp, looks like I got what I needed, thanks for your help by the way.” Cloud smiled up at him. “No problem, Coin means well, but she has a bad habit of upselling things that most ponies don’t want or need.” Allen pursed his lips. “So like every other salesperson out there?” Cloud chuckled. “Yep, pretty much. So what are you planning on doing now?” she asked. “Probably go home, I got what I needed, and I’m out of money, so no point hanging around town when there’s work to be done at home,” he replied with a shrug. “You don’t want to go and speak with Rainbow or Applejack and try and clear the air first?” Allen looked like he’d bitten into a sour lemon. “I think I’ll pass for now. Might be better if they had a little more time to cool off before I go and make it worse.” “You can’t avoid them forever,” replied Cloud Kicker, a serious expression on her face. Allen nodded, a frustrated look on his face. “Yeah, I know, I know. I just don’t want to deal with their potential crap right now.” Cloud Kicker suddenly got a thoughtful look on her face. “Would you be willing to talk with them if you had somepony there to back you up?” “That’d probably help,” replied Allen with a nod, “are you offering to be my wingma... er wingmare for this meet?” Shooting him a sly grin she replied, “I think I might be free.” Taking a deep breath, Allen licked his lips nervously. Sensing he wasn’t totally convinced, Cloud upped the ante. “Tell you what, I’ll go ahead of you and talk to them first, see if I can figure out how they’re feeling right now. Then I’ll come and get you, sound good?” Sighing Allen reluctantly nodded. “Alright, but I’m not gonna talk to them tonight.” “Alright then, I’ll talk to them tonight, and get their side of things, maybe even smooth out some of their ruffled feathers in the process, and set up some ground rules for when you three meet. Then you can speak with them tomorrow, sound like a plan?” she asked, a hopeful look on her face that Allen would go along with the idea. As, in Cloud Kicker’s mind, letting this potential feud between Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Allen continue, without clearing the air quickly, would only make things worse in the long run. Heaving another long-suffering sigh, Allen hesitantly nodded. “Alright, we’ll do it your way. You know where I live, so you can swing by and let me know how things went along with when and where this meeting will take place.” Cloud gave a firm nod. “Okay then, shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll let you know how it went, and where we’ll meet.” Adjusting his satchel slightly, Allen gave a shallow nod and waving goodbye said, “Alright, guess I’ll see you later this evening, good luck.” Returning his wave with one of her own, Cloud Kicker quickly launched herself into the air with a powerful flap of her wings. Catching a weak thermal, she circled higher over Ponyville in search of her quarry. Hopefully those two won’t kick up a fuss and we can all put this mess behind us. Spotting her first target, she angled her wings and made a beeline for Applejack’s stall. Though who am I kidding? Those two dunderheads will make me drag them kicking and screaming all the way. Shaking her head, she quickly came in for a landing in front of Applejack’s stall. Touching down with a perfect four-point landing, and hardly a whiff of dust kicked up from her wings, she gave a friendly greeting. “Hello Applejack.” “Hey, Cloud Kicker, what brings you by?” replied the farm mare, a happy smile on her face. Taking a deep breath and bracing herself for the confrontation to come, Cloud Kicker fixed her friend with a serious look and said, “Applejack, we need to talk.”