On a broad expanse of dried out, dusty grass, a hot wind blew, parching Lyra's nose and throat. She knelt on the ground, stroking the forehead of her very good friend Bon Bon, who was very, very dehydrated and almost unconscious. "Bonnie. Do you think you can survive?"
Bonnie made a weak, coughing sound. "Water. Need water."
"But Bonnie! Now that our society has collapsed into a post-apocalyptic nightmare, water is a precious commodity. It won't be easy."
"Whatever it takes." Bonnie seemed to go limp.
"I'll do my best to save you!" Lyra said. She rummaged through Bonnie's purse. "This MIGHT be enough...if we're lucky."
Wearing her dusty leather pants, metal armor bikini top, face cloth, and goggles, Lyra walked closer to the Water Fortress. Forming a makeshift barricade, piles of stacked rubble surrounded the one working drinking fountain anywhere in or near Canterlot High School. The rubble fort protected three ponies young CHS students:
Sweetie Pull (quick-fire mistress of the shotgun blast)
Sootaloo (running swiftly across the sunburnt, blasted, devastated landscape, she ALWAYS caught her quarry)
Apple Boom (very good with a gun. And with another gun, and ANOTHER gun, and so on)
"Please hear my plea, Cutie Well Crushtators!" Bonnie bowed low to them. "I have brought you an offering. The wealth that everyone in this hellscape now desires, more precious than gold."
"Hold out your offering!" Sweetie said imperiously. "Let us see it!"
Lyra held up a stack of old photographs. In the photograph on top, the three CWCs saw Applejack as a small child, still wearing diapers. Applejack seemed to be crawling on her hands and knees, next to a sheepdog.
"Hmmph," Apple Boom sniffed, looking at more pictures. "You have a lot of photographs of the Great Appley One. Photographs that look very similar to each other. One water token for the entire stack."
"You don't understand!" Lyra implored the CWCs. "Have you ever heard of a flipbook? It's an old fashioned kind of animated gif, but using paper or cardboard instead of digital data. You pinch the cards between your fingers on one side, bend them a little. Not too much, don't crease them! Ruffle through them quickly, like this." Lyra demonstrated. "If you know how to use your hands properly to make it work, it's easy!"
As the photographic prints ruffled, showing one after the next in quick succession, Applejack seemed to waggle her bottom back and forth, imitating her dog's wagging tail.
"We could make a video of this," Sootaloo said. "A very valuable video. Everyone likes to watch Applejack doing funny things that make her look silly. This could be worth more than the Piggly Wiggly Secret."
"Yes!" the other two CWCs agreed. Sweetie said, "Let's call it the Doggly Woggly. The Daggly Waggly? Whatever we call it, the mysterious and dreaded Anon-A-Miss will pay us well."
Lyra herself didn't know how to sell secrets directly to Anon-A-Miss, but she trusted the CWCs' positive opinion. "How much will you pay me?" she asked.
The three younger girls conferred, whispering to each other. Apple Boom said, "A hundred water tokens."
"Thank the Water!" Lyra said. "Bonnie is saved! O, thank the Water indeed!" In a less affected voice, she added, "I think I'll need at least a quart right now, though. Bonnie ate a LOT of peanut butter crackers. That goshdarned Trixie waved them in front of her face, tantalizing her. Like she WANTED Bonnie to die of thirst."
The CWCs shook their heads. Sweetie said, "So you could see Trixie WANTED to make Bonnie so desperately thirsty that you would do anything to save her? That's no good."
Apple Boom tossed Lyra a plastic quart size bottle of water, and a little baggie full of metal tabs, each tab stamped with the CWCs' special symbol. That symbol marked them as valuable tokens of thirst quenching. Keys to survival in the harsh summer heat.
"Go," Sootaloo said. "Water your friend before it's too late. If she dies, we'll lose a customer."
"Gee, thanks." Lyra rolled her eyes. "It's good to know you care."
With one finger, Sweetie made a symbolic tick mark on an imaginary blackboard in front of her. "Sarcasm penalty: one token. Get out of here before we start confiscating what we just gave you."
Lyra heard the ominous 'snap, snap' of a rubber band gun being cocked. She ran away.
***
On the dusty ground near the Wondercolt statue, Bonnie lolled, looking almost lifeless. Over her, Trixie shouted. "The Great and Powerful Trixie demands to know where you put her deck of special cards! The ones with pictures of Applejack on them, the cards you stole!"
Lyra said, "She doesn't have them. Please stop bothering her, or I'll dunk you."
Trixie sneered. "You absurd bluffer! You can't dunk me! You don't have the water!"
Lyra lifted her plastic baggie of water tokens, jingling them ominously. "I could have your entire family dunked, just for kicks. The CWCs would do it for a five percent service charge. Splash! Dropped to the bottom of a water-filled tank, struggling to reach the surface, gasping for breath again and again and again. So don't test me!" In her other hand, Lyra lifted a Blackjack, which was a card game manufactured and sold by Colt-Tel. The box was heavy, stiff and strong.
"You haven't heard the last of the Great and Powerful Trixie!" the semi-professional magician warned. "Trixie can reappear anytime, as quickly as she can vanish!" Trixie threw a smoke bomb at the ground, filling the air with a cloud even thicker than the cloud of blowing dust that was already threatening to choke and dry up Bonnie's throat even faster than her throat was already drying out.
Feeling a tug on her gunbelt, Lyra swung her Blackjack. "Ouch!" Trixie shouted. "That's not funny at all!"
"Go away!" Lyra shouted. "Before I hit you again!"
When the smoke cleared, Lyra didn't notice anything obviously missing other than (Thank the Water!) Trixie herself.
Lyra ran to Bonnie, gently opening her friend's mouth, and dribbling water drop by precious drop between her lips.
After a minute, Bonnie coughed.
"You're alive!" Lyra rejoiced. "I'm so happy! I love you so much!" She bent low over Bonnie, kissing her lips, and incidentally licking up any escaping droplets, which she tongued back into Bonnie's mouth. In the cruel, pitiless apocalyptic future of drought and sorrow, such a water-returning kiss had become one of the most meaningful expressions of love indeed!
"And THAT," Pinkie explained, "is why it's a good thing Anon-A-Miss is finally over. If it had lasted a few more months, with you three anonymously posting even more embarrassing secrets about everyone to turn people against each other...society would have finished collapsing, and Bonnie could have died of thirst! And peanut butter crackers would become a cruel, tantalizing instrument of torture and death!"
"Thank you for not immediately telling our sisters that you caught us being Anon-A-Miss," Apple Bloom said, "and letting us tell them ourselves so we could beg for forgiveness."
"That was very kind of you," Sweetie agreed.
Scootaloo nodded. "Rainbow Dash is still kind of talking to me, which is better than I deserve."
"I didn't want you three to never get any of your Christmas presents, and to get grounded forever!" Pinkie hugged all three girls. "In my heart, I feel like even though you three were very, very naughty, you were really just trying to say how much you missed spending time with your sisters. It was almost like saying 'I love you,' but with cruelty and blackmail."
"Speaking of which," Sunset's voice said behind the CMCs, "How much cruelty and blackmail should your punishment include, you little twerps?"
"Run!" Scootaloo shouted, and the three younger sisters scattered.
"Hmph." Sunset watched them run away. "So do you really think if Anon-A-Miss had continued, peanut butter crackers would be used to kill people by making them too thirsty to survive?"
Pinkie shrugged. "Who can tell? It makes the story better."
"I suppose it does. So...there was something else I wanted to talk about. A different mystery. I ducked into the Portal to use some Equestrian magic, and I saw a vision of you and I holding hands at a music festival in the future. We looked very, very friendly. What I really want to know is, do you think some snuggling might be in our future? Because this winter day, I'm feeling really cold."
Pinkie smiled. "Let's find out what Madame Pinkie sees in her crystal ball. But first...it's snuggle time!"