Chapter 6
Hopely sat back as her motorcycle drifted through the streets; she glanced up at the holographic canopy above her as it displayed navigational information. There was a map that displayed the route that they were taking, how fast they were going, where exactly their end destination was. Looking at the map, it became pretty clear that this place was pretty far out of the way.
'How did you learn about this place again?' Hopely asked, calling over to Pinkie Pie, who was sitting in the holographic confines of her motorcycle's deployable side car.
'Kelso took me here when we first met, before I even knew I was a changeling. Their food is really good! I should know, I accidentally devoured all of it while Kelso was working out a dispute with the owner', Pinkie Pie said with a smile.
Pinkie Pie was clearly enjoying the ride; she had the canopy retracted pretty much all the way, allowing the wind to whip through her mane. It was going to be nothing but a tangled mess by the time that they got there. Hopely thought about it for a moment before realising that Pinkie Pie's mane was always a tangled mess, so what she was doing really wouldn't matter.
Hopely still had a lot on her mind, what had happened last night... it wasn’t like this was the first year she ‘celebrated’ the ‘birth’ of her foal, her poor nameless, genderless, innocent foal. It had been five years, but in those five years, this was the first time Hopely had ever spiralled out of control like she had. Last night was a terrible night, but was this an indication of things to come? Of that she could not be sure. What she did know was this, what had happened last night could not be allowed to happen again.
‘Hopely? Hellooo? Belleau to Hopely, come in Hopely, do you read us?!’ Pinkie Pie said as she waved her hoof over her eyes.
Hopely snapped to attention, and discovered that they had pulled up outside the restaurant. Māo Xióng Yī was a small restaurant in a storefront. Of course, it was a takeout place, so how much space did you really need? As she looked around the place, Hopely noticed that the restaurant was decorated with paraphernalia from the Peking Republic. She let out a sigh of relief, the owner wasn't a communist. Though, Hopely was pretty sure that if he was a communist, he wouldn't own a takeout restaurant. The Māo Xióng owner was standing behind the counter, looking at the two ponies intensely as they walked up to him. The Māo Xióng were a large, bear like people with black and white alternating fur. It was almost comical, because the owner looked to be incredibly uncomfortable; he barely fit in his own restaurant. The Māo Xióng species were much larger than ponies, and because of their large size, it made manoeuvring around difficult.
‘You no call ahead?’ the owner asked as he looked them over.
‘Uh... no, is that a problem?’ Hopely asked.
‘Call ahead preferred’, the owner said with a huff. Hopely was half tempted to make a snide remark about how she didn’t have to patronise his restaurant, but decided against it, she was pretty hungry and didn’t feel like going anywhere else. Also she didn’t want him to spit in their food.
‘I’ll do that next time’, Hopely said with a shrug as she glanced at the menu for a few seconds. ‘Two large orders of fried rice and an order of spring rolls, please’, Hopely said as she ordered their food.
The owner tapped at his cash register for a few moments before looking back up at her. ‘Eight pound forty five, cash only’, he said with a huff.
Hopely was starting to get annoyed with this bastard, but said nothing. She pulled out her wallet and placed a ten Equestrian pound note on the counter. The owner inspected it for a moment before putting it in the cash register and giving her back her change, almost as if he thought there was a chance it might not be real.
The owner went back and started cooking their food. They waited for about five minutes before the owner came back with a bag for their food and passed it over to them. ‘Here go’, he said in his usual huff.
Hopely took the bag in her teeth and motioned for Pinkie Pie to follow her; they exited the restaurant and took a seat on a nearby bus stop bench. Hopely had to admit, she had been hungry before, but now she was starving. She opened up the bag and looked inside, seeing two containers of fried rice. ‘Hey! There aren’t any spring rolls in here!’ Hopely said before passing the bag over to Pinkie Pie. ‘Hold this a moment, I’m sure he just forgot to put them in’.
Pinkie Pie nodded her head and took the bag, watching as Hopely got up and went back inside the restaurant. She was hungry too, so she opened up one of the cartons, and let out a sigh of pleasure as the wonderful aroma of the fried rice filled her nostrils. She knew that she should wait for Hopely before eating any... but it smelled so good, and was hot and fresh! One bite couldn’t hurt.
Before she knew it, both cartons of fried rice lay empty on the ground, she had practically inhaled both of them.
The door to Māo Xióng Yī flung open and Hopely stormed out, turning around and shouting at the owner as she left. ‘You are so fucking lucky that I’m a Police Constable! Or I would burn your fucking restaurant to the ground!’ Hopely screamed as she walked away.
‘Ér nǐ tā mā dì nàme xìngyùn, wǒ bù dǎ nǐ yòng bǎn qiú qiú bàng!’ the voice of the owner called back as the door shut behind Hopely.
‘What happened?’ Pinkie Pie asked as Hopely walked up to her.
‘Fucking cheapskate claimed I didn’t pay for spring rolls... so I don’t get any spring rolls’, Hopely said with a grumble.
Pinkie Pie stopped and thought about it for a moment. ‘Huh’, she said, tilting her head back and forth as she remembered the previous time she was here.
‘What?’ Hopely asked.
‘The same thing happened with Kelso when we were here the last time!’ Pinkie Pie said.
‘And you’re not just mentioning this until now!?’ Hopely cried out.
‘Huh, now that I think of it, Kelso might be banned from coming here…’ Pinkie Pie said.
Hopely let out a sigh of frustration, at least there was fried rice for her to eat. She looked onto the ground and saw the two empty cartons. She stared at them with disbelief and then looked up at Pinkie Pie. ‘Oh you have got to be kidding me!’ she cried out in frustration.
Pinkie Pie offered her a nervous chuckle before picking up the empty cartons and putting them in the bag. ‘I happen to know another restaurant...’
…
As Hopely sat munching on a slice of Port Pizza’s mushroom and pepper pizza, she looked over at Pinkie Pie, watching as the changeling pretending to be a pony herself watched the foals running around having fun. ‘Are you feeding off them?’ Hopely asked.
‘Uh huh’, Pinkie Pie said nodding her head in affirmation. ‘Feeding is passive, can’t control it one way or another… at least, I don’t think I can’, Pinkie Pie said with a shrug. ‘To be honest with you, Hopely, I really don’t know how my body works’.
Hopely shrugged as she took another bite of her pizza. ‘You want a slice?’ Hopely asked, she had ordered a medium pizza, but this was her second slice and she was already starting to get full. Hopely figured that the rest of it wouldn’t be too much of a problem for a big eater like Pinkie Pie.
The changeling pretending to be a pony shuttered at the thought. ‘No thank you, I… I mean, the original Pinkie Pie had a really really really really really really really really REALLY bad experience with mushrooms once, and just looking at them makes me feel really uneasy’, Pinkie Pie said with a shrug.
Hopely had to wonder exactly what she meant by that, but it clearly was something that had bothered her quite a bit, and she decided not to press further. ‘Fair enough’, Hopely added with a shrug as she finished the slice of pizza and boxed up the rest.
‘I’m thinking of changing my look’, Pinkie Pie said finally.
‘I thought you said that you didn’t know how your body worked?’ Hopely asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Oh, I don’t! I meant like… my mane and tail style. I might look like Pinkie Pie, I might sound like Pinkie Pie, hell, I even think like Pinkie Pie, but no matter how much I want to be, I am not Pinkie Pie. This poofiness? It’s really a Pinkie Pie look… am I making sense?' Pinkie Pie asked.
‘I think so…’ Hopely said. ‘You want to be your own person; you don’t want to hold on to what’s defining you when it isn’t you’.
‘Yeah! Exactly! I think I should come up with a new name too, eventually someone’s going to recognise the name Pinkie Pie…’ Pinkie Pie said.
‘How about Felicity? It fits, trust me on that’, Hopely said with a smirk.
‘I like it! That’s me now! Felicity!’ the mare who would now be forever known as Felicity said with a bright smile.
Felicity, it meant happiness, and knowing her, she could always find something to be happy about. The more Hopely thought about it, the more she could see that it could apply to her as well. Hopely had been focusing on the sadness of her unborn foal. That foal was gone, aborted before it could have a chance at life, and Hopely had felt guilty over not allowing this foal to grow up.
However, this event did not need to define her; it didn’t need to control her life. She didn’t need to keep beating herself up over it. She couldn’t change it; there was nothing to be gained by continuing to mope.
She offered the newly named Felicity a smile. She was glad that the changeling pretending to be a pony had stumbled onto her doorstep.