The World At Large

by ToixStory


Episode 3: The Dirty Joke - Part 2

It took the lime green mare behind the counter of the claustrophobic waiting room a second or two to recognize Dirty Joke. When she did, though, it wasn’t pretty. Her expression soured and her eyes curled up into a menacing stare. One lip quivered while she watched him.

“And what exactly are you doing here?” she asked.

“I needed a place to go and this was the last one left,” Dirty Joke said. “You guys were like family to me once, and I just need to stay for a little while, and—”

The mare reached across the desk and slapped Dirty Joke across the face, leaving a red mark on his cheek in the shape of her hoof. She grinned and shook her hoof with a look of exhilaration on her face. I couldn’t blame her, really, as I imagined it probably felt pretty good. Then again, if there was anypony who really deserved to get slapped, it was probably me. That was going to suck when it happened.

“I’m not entirely sure I deserved that one,” Dirty Joke said. “I assume that you are not . . . satisfied with how I left here last time?”

“You’re damn right I’m not!” The mare shook a hoof at him. “You can play with the heart of many mares, but you never play with the heart of a whore, you hear me? I took all those extra clients and hours for you, and then you just leave!”

Dirty Joke cringed. “Okay, I did deserve that one.” He sighed. “Look, Dare, I got an exclusive job opening and I . . . I just took it. I didn’t think about it, I only wanted to get out of this place, but I couldn’t have brought you.”

“So is there a reason why you never came back?”

“Probably so I would avoid this talk.”

Dare’s gaze hardened. “Well if you want to stay here, then you better start talking, or I’m going to throw you out on your ass personally.”

Okay, I had to admit, it was pretty fun to watch the two of them. They almost reminded me of my parents, in a way, except for the whorehouse. And that they were both sex workers. And anything to do with sex. My life had really started to become all about sex, hadn’t it?

Dirty Joke leaned against the counter and hung his head. “Look, Dare, I screwed you in a way you never had before, and I’m sorry. I know what we had . . . I didn’t deserve that, alright? But right now I really need your help, and I’m not the only one. See the two mares with me, they’re in danger too.”

“What, did you sleep with them too?” Dare asked.

Starshine sighed. “Only a few times.”

“No, never—” I said, then turned to Starshine. “Really? Him?”

She spread her hooves wide across her chest and waggled her eyebrows. I just shook my head and turned back to Dare. The little waiting room, despite the cleanliness of it, was cramped and felt like we were in a walk-in closet. There was only a wooden door at the other end that led to the other areas of the brothel, and I was almost pushed up against it.

“I apologize for Dirty Joke dragging you both into this,” Dare said. “Trust me, it’s his signature move.”

Well, he hadn’t really dragged us into it, but I wasn’t about to correct her. Instead, I said, “Tonight’s not really the night that we’re looking to blame somepony. We just need a room so we can lay low for a while.”

By the look on her face, I could tell she really wanted to kick Dirty Joke out, but then she didn’t want to screw us over. Ironic, given the locale. I watched her toss around the two ideas in her head, and I really hoped she would come to the right one. Amethyst knew where I lived, and I had no doubt that she’d put somepony outside Joya’s ready to pounce as soon as we arrived.

Dare sighed. “Fine, fine, I’ll give you all a room, but you’re going to have to talk to Miss Tailor Made in the morning if you want to stay here longer than that. You’re lucky she’s already in bed or you might not have even gotten this far.”

“Thanks,” Dirty Joke said. “How much for the room?”

“Well, that one’s easy.” Her eyes sparkled. “The cost of two mares for the whole night, of course.”

I thought I saw Starshine blush while Dirty Joke grumbled and pulled a wallet from out of his heavy coat. He shoved bits toward Dare until she looked satisfied, then she finally gave Dirty Joke a room key. They parted without a word, though the way they stared at each other, I knew it was just another conflict that was going to erupt at some point. Great.

Dirty Joke took us through the wooden door, and immediately to our right up a very narrow, winding staircase. The whole place felt like it was trying to be the size of a hotel in half the space, and it showed. I wasn’t even claustrophobic, but my pegasus instincts didn’t like it one bit.

At the top of the stairs was a hallway that ran the length of the brothel. The wooden floor sagged and was scuffed up by hundreds of hooves that had worn away at it. The walls were a sickly yellow tint, too, but I didn’t think anypony came to the place for the aesthetics.

That idea was confirmed by the sounds coming from the rooms we walked past. Moans, grunts, and even a few squeals all filled the hallway like a hellish symphony. I felt a little sick hearing it all at once, and remembered why I didn’t go to brothels. I cheated at home, dammit!

Our room was at the far end of the hallway, which we trotted to as fast as we could without running. Even Dirty Joke seemed to be a little uneasy that night, not that I could blame him. He still managed to shove the key in the hole and we all tumbled inside, practically falling all over each other. I think our nerves were pretty shot at that point, and there was nothing any of us wanted more than to get inside and relax.

Of course, that would have been easier if we weren’t in a whorehouse. The room we all piled into wasn’t very big or neat in any sense of the word. In fact, it was downright dirty, with wallpaper that was peeling and a ceiling that was chipped and sagged worryingly. That wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst part was that there was only one bed that took up most of the floor. The sheets were at least clean, but I could count pretty well and knew that the one bed would be a tight fit for three ponies.

“Well this is going to be interesting,” Dirty Joke said.

“Oh no it ain’t,” I said. “I think we all know that we’re not sharing the bed. No way, no how would that work.”

Dirty Joke hopped up on the bed. “Oh, I agree. Which part of the floor will you take?”

“Dirty, now isn’t the time to joke,” Starshine said. “Just get on the floor and we’ll take the bed. You always complain about that back of yours anyway, so it’s not like it would be be worse.”

“Fine, fine, have it your way,” Dirty Joke grumbled, but he didn’t seem like he was going to make more than a small protest. He trotted into a narrow bathroom next to the bed and shut the door. Then, it was just me and Starshine in the room, all by our lonesome.

“Starshine, what in Celestia’s name are we doing?” I asked.

“I believe we are about to go to sleep in a whorehouse without sex,” Starshine said.

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, you do too. What am I supposed to say? Yeah, this whole thing is kind of insane, just like everything we ever do.”

I rubbed one hoof over the other. I was a big fan of doing that, especially when I felt awkward or bad about something. My mom had tried to stop me from doing it, but that had worked about as well as getting me to not go to Fillydelphia. “So, I guess, we’re going to share a bed for the night?”

Starshine walked around to the other side of the Alicorn-sized mattress. “Yeah, looks that way. You got a problem with it?”

“Not really,” I said. “Just, I mean . . .”

“Look, I know what you’ve been doing with Grapevine and Scout,” Starshine said. “Trust me, I wouldn’t want to get caught up in all that if you paid me. I’ll keep to my side and you keep to yours.”

I felt pretty bad about my cheating at that moment. I mean, not that I never felt bad, but the way she had said it like I was tying them down emotionally and forcing myself on them, well, it didn't make me feel very happy, I’ll tell you that. Not that I was going to tell her that she was wrong, though. I honestly wasn’t sure she was.

Starshine looked up. “Oh, and you might not want to sleep anywhere on the floor, should you decide you don’t want to share the bed with me. Dirty likes to . . . explore.”

With that, she pulled back some of the sheets and climbed into the bed. Dirty Joke emerged from the bathroom and prepared a little bed for himself on the floor with extra pillows and sheets, and curled up himself.

Before I got into bed, though, I stepped into the bathroom and made sure to lock the door behind me. There wasn’t much in there, just an old toilet and a sink with dirty mirror above it. I looked myself over in the smudged glass. My orange mane looked much more frayed than when I had last looked, and there were big bags under my eyes. I didn’t look very attractive, that was for sure. The hoodie helped a little, at least, but not a ton. It felt more like a safety blanket than anything else. Not that I was going to complain.

I relieved myself on the toilet in the least mare-like way possible, then trotted back into the main room. Starshine was already lying face down on the bed, with her head pressed deep into the confines of her pillows. I scooted into the bed on the opposite side from her and did my best to keep away. It wasn’t easy, since I wasn’t used to the feeling of sleeping all alone, but it would do. Honestly, I just didn’t want to upset Starshine.

I don’t know know what I expected, really. It was late at night and we were all tired, so we all just kind of . . . ended. No big conversations or actions, just falling asleep in a dark brothel room. It was kind of anticlimactic to me, but then again it was better than fighting for my life like I always seemed to do. The room was dark, the bed was fairly comfortable, and I was tired.

So, sleep should have been no problem, right? Well, it probably wouldn’t have been in a normal place that wasn’t a whorehouse, but here it was not. Just as I started to fall asleep, I began to hear the noises coming from the other rooms. The screams, the moans, and the squeals of rough fucking that permeated the air in the little brothel.

I could have dealt with all that, had it not been for the banging.

I could hear it from the next room, the bed hitting the wall. Bang. Bang. Bang. It was a hard tapping sound on our wall, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Every little bang hit deep into my head until I felt like I was swimming in my own emotions.

I wanted to throw up, I really did. I wasn’t even sure why until I realized what I was hearing. I wasn’t listening to some whore getting slammed into the wall again and again, but a gun going off, over and over. Bang. Bang. Bang. Lying there in that bed, I was back in the Heights, stuck inside a factory under siege. I could almost hear the bullets hitting around me, and smell the copper in the air.

There were bodies everywhere. The two stallions who had been killed in front of Amethyst’s headquarters were among them, and Shuya was placed on top. He had a gaping hole where one eye should be, covered in blood and brain matter. I started to shake, too, when I saw who was lying next to him. Scout, with half her body looking like it had been in a meat grinder, and me, a clean shot right through my forehead.

I think Starshine was shaking me in real life, or was it fantasy? I’m pretty sure I was screaming, though. Almost completely sure of that. A loud, long scream not unlike an orgasm, luckily for me, so it wasn’t exactly out of place in a brothel. Still, I managed to finally come to when Starshine literally started beating me in the face, screaming, “Wake up you stupid bitch, wake up!”

It was very rude of her.

I shoved her off me once I had managed to stop yelling my head off. “I’m up, I’m up!” I caught my breath while my chest heaved, covered in sweat. “I’m okay. Just had a nightmare, alright?”

“You were screaming.”

“It was a scary nightmare.”

I noticed Dirty Joke was staring at me with a mix of sleep and malevolence in his eyes. “Are you quite done?” he asked. “I couldn’t tell if you were getting yourself off or if Starshine was stabbing you in your sleep, but all I know is that it was keeping me from sleeping. So thanks for that.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t some kind of nightmare, Minty,” Starshine said. “Not a normal one, at least. What’s going on?”

“Just bad memories, alright?” I said.

“Memories of what?”

I pointed to my leg. “What the hell do you think?”

“Oh.” Starshine looked down while Dirty Joke grumbled and went back to the floor. “Look, I know it isn’t exactly my place, but what in Celestia’s name happened that’s got you screaming when you go to sleep? Have you done this before?”

I tried to think, and I realized I had felt bad before, but never like this. I had never just exploded like that. I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. But usually where I sleep it’s . . . quiet.”

Starshine tilted her head like she was just now hearing the moaning and banging in the whole place for the first time. I think I saw her eyes widen a little, which was pretty funny. After that, she just nodded her head. “Yeah, I guess I can understand that. The quiet thing, I mean. Not the screaming your head off in the middle of the night.”

I shrugged. “So what now?”

“Why don’t we go somewhere?” Starshine asked. “It’s not like this district has a bed time. There’s bound to be somewhere interesting open.”

I almost refused, but then a stallion in the next room started yelling: “Take it, bitch! Yeah, take it like that you sexy slut!”

“Let’s get out of here right now,” I said as fast as I could, moving toward the door. I still had on my hoodie, which was pretty comfortable to sleep in, and I put the hood up over my head. Anything to drown the noises out. Starshine followed me out the door, and together we trotted down the hall back to the stairwell.

When we got to the bottom, though, we were met by a mare standing in our path. She was colored a neat seafoam green that matched her lipstick, with a mane tied into a bun that resembled a dark green bush. She wore a see-through dress and had a pouty look on her face when she approached us.

“Since you’re not any of the lesbians who check in here, and you’re definitely not one of my girls, I guess you two are the mares who came in with Dirty Joke?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, and who are you?”

“I’m Tailor Made, of course.” She grinned. “I’m the mare who runs this place, the place where you were making such a racket that I was about to come up there and tell you to quiet down. Has neither of you ever heard of a quiet orgasm?”

“I wasn’t cumming,” I said. “I didn’t have a good, uh, dream.”

“You’re telling me.”

She swished her tail and motioned for us to follow her farther down the hall. With a look at Starshine, I figured it was best to obey her, so I let her lead me to a room near the back of the hallway, which was near the front of the brothel.

It, like the rest of the whorehouse, was cramped, with a large oak desk taking up most of the room. Tailor Made had to hope over it to get to her chair on the other side, which she plopped down on. She motioned for us to sit on a couple stools in front of her.

“So you two girls decided to show up with Dirty Joke,” she said. “What, does he owe you money or something? Or is it the other way around? It’s been a while since two mares as half-decent as yourselves have gone anywhere with him.”

“We’re helping him out because he’s a friend,” Starshine said.

Tailor Made snorted. “Ponies don’t just help each other out in this business,” she said. “We do it for money, or sex, or better clients. What in the world would you do for him just as a friendly favor?”

“A lot more than you might think,” I said in a grumbling voice. “So far, we’ve had to stick out our necks for somepony that my friend here slept with a few times, and that I just met today.”

“And you two are both not insane, right?” Tailor Made asked. “Like, you didn’t escape from a mental asylum, did you? We’ve got a few girls here like that.”

“No,” I said, “I’m Minty Flower.”

“Who?”

Naturally we would come to the part of the city where nopony knew who I was. Then again, I had been gone long enough that maybe my stories had been forgotten about already. It wouldn’t have surprised me. The big city was a place that never really stopped moving and falling behind meant obscurity and nothingness. In small towns a little scandal could last for years and never go away, but here it was just a drop in an endless ocean.

“I’m a reporter,” I said. “I’m going to do a story on Dirty Joke and the whole thing about phone sex. I‘ll do anything to get my story, so it’s not like this is such an extreme thing.”

Tailor Made chuckled. “A reporter, huh? I haven’t had one around here in quite some time. Last one was this real nice filly . . . Grape-something. I ain’t sure Dirty Joke is worth a story, though. Trust me.”

“Well I do,” Starshine said.

“Of course you do.” Tailor Made tapped her hooves against the desk. “Say, would you two care for a drink? It always helps me get through my day around here.”

I nodded vigorously. A drink right then sounded just about great. To tell the truth, I didn’t even care much for alcohol’s taste, but the effects more than made up for it. The mare got up and took a bottle out from a drawer in a filing cabinet. The smooth, brown liquid sloshed into three shot glasses, two of which she pushed over to me and Starshine. I took mine in my teeth and threw back my head as fast as I could, downing the whiskey in one swallow. I shivered a little, but it was oh-so worth it.

Starshine slammed her drink at about the same time Tailor Made did: a few seconds after me. Without hesitation, she poured us all another shot and we drank that one too. It was pretty fun, just sitting in silence and drinking. It was so rare to have silence those days that I was surprised whenever it came. Peace. Tranquility. Whatever bullshit you wanted to call it, it was pretty nice.

“You wanna know how I got to be in charge of this place?” Tailor Made asked after a third drink. Her voice was slurred and a big smile was plastered on her face. “It seems like you two girls might need to have a little help getting anywhere if you’re going with Dirty Joke these days.”

Starshine hiccuped. “Yeah, sure Tailor Paid. Anything you wanna tell us.”

“Oh, then you’ll love this one.” Tailor Made grinned and hung onto the bottle of whiskey like it was her foal. “You see, there was an old stallion that ran this place named . . . shit, I can’t remember. He was a douche, okay? Anyway, a douche used to run this place when I was a whore for him.”

“So you’ve seen a lot of dicks in your time, huh?” I asked, giggling.

She grinned. “Of course! Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I was a whore here for that douchey stallion. But see, I didn’t want to stay a whore for the rest of my life. I wanted to run things, by Celestia! So do you want to know how I did it? It wasn’t by violence or anything.”

“Sure,” I said.

“It was by being the biggest slut in this whole place! I wasn’t going to just be another passable whore who had her own room and didn’t make waves, I wanted to be known. So I took one client after another and always gave them the best sex their money could buy. Sometimes I took on three or four at a time, and always made them cum everywhere.” She giggled. “I slept with the boss, too. I listened to his secrets and soothed him when he was in trouble.

“I made myself useful, girls. Violence can only get you so far before everypony hates you. By making myself wanted and loved by my boss and my clients, it wasn’t hard to be given more and more privileges. Before long, I was in power. Don’t be afraid to act like a dumb airhead if you’re moving in for the kill.”

“What happened to your boss?” Starshine asked.

Tailor Made smiled. “I bit his dick off when I didn’t need him anymore.”

“I wonder what it tasted like,” I said in my head. That is, until I realized a few moments later I had said out loud. I tried to grin and took another shot real fast so that I would seem more drunk than crazy.

“I loved the taste,” Tailor Made said. “It tasted like victory. Like one day this whole thing will be over and I can retire somewhere in the country. I’ve yet to make the money for that, though, but it’s a hope that I still keep.”

Starshine nodded sagely. “I would have done the same thing to get ahead.”

“She sure got a head alright,” I said. my voicing starting to slur along with theirs. The unwashed swine of my journalistic endeavors. I was feeling very fashionable at the moment, like I was just a pure genius at whatever I wanted to do, and nopony could stop me. I’m not the best drunk, you see. Then again, I’m not that great sober, either.

“So what are your plans for Dirty Joke?” Tailor Made asked, finally putting the bottle of whiskey away.

Starshine cleared her throat. “Right now, we have to keep him safe,” she said. “This whor— er, establishment is the best place for him right now until we can figure out what to do.”

Tailor Made brushed back a strand of her hair. “So he’s in trouble, huh? Who with? I would assume the police or government, since you haven’t gone to the cops yet. Not that I’m surprised. That new bitch of a mayor’s been cracking down on all of us something fierce.”

“Marshmallow?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess that’s her name. She’s been having the police snatch up girls off the street left and right. I get two or three mares a day wanting to join my little brothel since the cops don’t touch us, just the working girls. I’ve taken on as many as I can, but it’s never enough.”

“And she’s just doing this because . . . ?”

“Because she doesn’t think the girls here are fit for her streets.” Tailor Made sniffed a little. “My mares are good, alright? I know you two aren’t from around here, but I’ve got the best in the whole city. They are sweet and kind and didn’t ask to be like this, but they make the best of it anyway. I won’t let them get taken away because some wet-behind-the-ears mayor thinks she can do whatever she wants.”

I paused for a moment. She was talking about Marshmallow, my friend, in a way I had never heard her described. The mare was one of the sweetest, most innocent girls I had ever been friends with, and I knew Amethyst was only playing on that kindness. She was probably be played on this, too. I was sure of it. Still, it also gave me a chance to make a deal.

“What if we could get all that pressure off of those girls?” I asked.

Tailor Made snorted. “What, are you going to wave a fairy horn and get it all to go away?”

“Better. We know Marshmallow.” I smiled. “Personally. She sent donuts last week that she made herself. Starshine can attest to it, too. We can get an audience with her, but only if you help us.”

“Okay, assuming I believe you, what sort of help would you want?”

“The kind that keep Dirty Joke out of trouble. We just need your cooperation for a day or two and then we’ll be fine. All we need is your help, Tailor Made. That’s all we ask.”

She looked like she wasn’t sure if we were bullshitting her or not, but Tailor Made eventually nodded. “Alright, I’ll give you a little help,” she said. “Just don’t fuck me over, or I will bite your dicks off.”

I wasn’t really sure what to make of that, but I guess it was a threat. Probably metaphorical, really, but I wasn’t entirely sure. I’d seen mares of her type before, and you could never really tell with them. You had to stay unsure about them or they’d lash out at you when you had just become comfortable. She was alright, I guess.

We shook hooves and she let Starshine and I go back to our room. The moaning wasn’t so bad the second time, though whether it was because of the time of the night or because I didn’t notice it, I wouldn’t know. It might have also been that I was more than a little drunk.

Starshine somehow managed to not slur her words. “So what will we do tomorrow?” she asked.

“I dunno,” I said. “We’ll go see Ornate Vision, I guess, and see about him publishing that journal-thing Sexy Joke has. Ya think he’ll do it?”

“I’ll make sure he does.”

“Good to know!”

That one line sent me into a fit of giggles. I barely made it to our door and all, and practically fell on the bed once we got in. I was too tired to care about anything but sleep at the moment. Well, and Starshine too. Warm, fuzzy Starshine. I ended up curled next to her, my hooves gripping her around the waist and her head nuzzling beneath my chin. I guess I was into that. I held her there and fell asleep just about instantly.

To tell the truth, it was one of the best nights of sleep I’d had in a long time.

*        *        *

We took a trolley the next morning to the Fillydelphia Chronicler building. It seemed like ages since I had last been there, and it showed. Somepony had redone the wallpaper on the inside and all the typewriters looked shiny and new, so my eyes popped out of my head every three seconds or so. Starshine had to keep dragging me around. I noticed that more ponies stared at me, but most said hello to her. I guess by then I had become less an actual pony who worked there and more a legend. I could only imagine what Grapevine was to them.

Ornate Vision wasn’t in his office, but some new filly told us in a sparkly voice that he was on the roof. She looked like she didn’t know who I was, but that didn’t bother me too much. I was just glad I didn’t have to hang around the office much.

We threaded our way through the new rows of printing presses and desks to the door on the far side of the room that led to the roof. There were a couple stallions in the stairwell passing a joint between themselves who didn’t look very concerned when we came in. They just stared at us while we trotted up the stairs.

It felt strange to push through the swinging metal door onto the roof again, after so long having been away from it. It was like going through a completely different world only to find something wholly familiar. It was the same roof as always, with the same little bits of trash scattered around blank concrete that ended suddenly at a drop that spanned two stories.

Ornate sat on the edge, his hooves dangling over the side. He had a bottle of wine sitting next to him and a bunch of plastic cups all spread out around it. He was whistling in the wind that swept over the Fillydelphia rooftops, but he wasn’t very good at it. Me and Starshine approached him from behind all quiet-like, though with hooves that can only amount to so much.

“Hey, Ornate, I’m back,” I said.

He turned and stared at me for a moment, then the old pony put a smile on his orange face. “Minty! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. I haven’t seen any of my senior staff in what feels like forever. Only got the new kids around, and they’re annoying as all get out.”

“I was a kid once, you know,” I said. “I mean, what, I’ve only been here a few months. It’s not like I’m as much a veteran as Grapevine or any of the rest. I barely qualify on that account.”

“No, but what counts is experience, and you’ve had plenty of that.”

Starshine stuck up her hoof. “Uh, so if experience counts does that mean I get a raise?”

“You say that like I plan on giving raises anytime soon.” Ornate got to his hooves and offered us some wine. Starshine took the bottle and started to drain it. “So what can I do for the both of you? I know you wouldn’t come back to visit unless it was something important. At least, I hope not. Is it a story, or what?”

“Oh, it’s a story alright,” I said. “A big one, one that will get some major headlines.”

“Then say it already and don’t waste my time, Ms. Flower.”

I blushed. “Right. Anyway, we have in our possession—not on us, but where we can get to it—a journal kept by a sex hotline worker that details some very personal details of a high-level Amethyst Lines employee. Some information that could prove very intriguing for the ponies of Fillydelphia to hear.”

Ornate’s eyes narrowed. “Information on Amethyst Lines? What kind?”

“Damaging,” I said. “The worst kind.”

I didn’t actually know what was in that journal of Dirty Joke’s, but I was going out on a limb with it. It felt like something Grapevine would do, anyway, and I still based a lot of my being a reporter on her. Sometimes I wondered she felt proud her former photographer was a reporter, or jealous that I had climbed to that rank so fast. Probably a little bit of both, really.

“So you want me to publish something that would hurt both the largest remaining corporation in the city, and a personal friend of the mayor’s,” Ornate said.

I nodded.

He snorted and shook his head. “You’ve got balls, Minty, but I never knew you were crazy. I mean, literally crazy. What the hell do you think would happen if you published a story like that? That you’d get famous? No, you’d be found gutted in some back alley a few days later.”

“What, so you won’t do this because you’re scared?” I growled. “You didn’t have any problems publishing my Pullmare story, though.”

“Pullmare was dead by the time we published that,” he said. “Unless you bring me Amethyst’s head on a pike, I don’t want to risk pissing her off. We’re still a small newspaper, Minty, and can’t take on the heavyweights.”

I must have looked really downtrodden, because he put a hoof on my shoulders and looked all hurt at me like he was real sorry he couldn’t help. And the thing was, I knew he couldn’t either. It had been a suicidal plan, to try to stop Amethyst using a small-time paper. She was a megalomaniac and wasn’t going to be cowed by the Chronicler. Still, I felt like I had to try, no matter how stupid of me it was.

“Is there anypony we can take this too, then?” I asked. “Somepony worked for a bigger paper? I know I’m supposed to stay loyal to the Chronicler, but is there another way?”

“Is there another way, she says . . .” Ornate sighed. “Yeah, yeah there’s another way. If you’re really that insane that you want to publish it anyway, there is another way. See, we may not be big on publishing those kinds of stories, but Newsday is. They’re based right here in Fillydelphia, and the head editor is a bit of a nutjob like you.”

“Great, how do I talk to her?” I asked.

“To talk to him,” Ornate said, “you’d have to find him, and he is not an easy pony to find. The only place you could maybe talk to him will be at, well . . . a place of ill repute.”

Starshine snorted. “If you knew where we’ve been, you wouldn’t be so slow to offer it. Where is it?”

Ornate coughed. “An orgy party.”

“A what?”

“An orgy party,” he said. “It’s where a bunch of rich and famous ponies in the city get together and have their way with, well, the whores of Fillydelphia’s underbelly. It’s a big event, and the editor of Newsday likes to frequent there. If you could get in there, you’d be able to talk to him. Just be warned, though, since you two are mares . . .”

I felt a little sick to my stomach, but I wasn’t overly surprised. The way this city treated sex was the way a foal treated matches. They kept playing with it until they burned themselves. Better for me, though, as I was almost certain I knew a way to get in. I nodded to Ornate.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“I hope you can,” Ornate said, snatching the wine bottle back from Starshine. “Good luck to you, Minty. I sure hope that you can take her down, I really do. I’ll even give you the money for the story if you can get it published.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t know what else to do, so I reached over and gave him a hug. I then trotted off with Starshine, back down the stairs. We stopped by her desk first before going out, though. Her desk was still remarkably clean, despite her going to the office every other day or so.

“Call Tailor Made,” I said. “We’re going to need a couple tickets to an orgy.”