“Look,” Derpy said, smiling warmly at Turner and taking him by his hoof, both to comfort him and to prevent him from biting his hooves again, “I still think you’re overreacting. It’s not such a huge deal, and you know it.”
“Easy for you to say that!” Turner shook his head and gulped, sweat running down his forehead. “My whole career depends on this afternoon, and I know it’s going to go horribly wrong!”
“Oh, come on!” She rolled her eyes. “Doc, you’re brilliant. You’re better than all of those old ponies together. Nothing can go wrong as long as you don’t set fire to their beards.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. “But what if I forget it?!”
Derpy shook her head. “You have it perfectly memorized.”
“What if they don’t like it?!”
“They will.”
“WHAT IF I’VE MADE A MISTAKE AND EVERYTHING GOES WRONG AND I’M EXPELLED?!”
Derpy sighed. It was going to be a very long day.
The two had been sitting on that sofa for hours. Derpy loved that piece of furniture—it was big, it was comfortable, and it was perfect for snuggling. Yes, she had never snuggled with Turner on there yet, but she had high hopes.
They were, of course, at Turner’s place. Derpy had spent the night there, as he had been too much of a nervous wreck to be left alone. Sadly, that hadn’t changed with the morning.
“I’m pretty sure you haven’t made any mistakes, Doc. You’re going to nail it, and then we’ll go to the pub and we’ll celebrate, okay?” Derpy got closer to him and put a foreleg over his shoulders. “Come on, I’ll be there for you.” She blushed a little. She had learned how to blush at will a long time ago. “I’m pretty sure I can do something to help you relax, right? We can get a little more comfortable, and…”
“Uh, no, thanks.” Turner coughed and moved a couple inches away from Derpy, enough for their flanks to stop touching. He then put Derpy’s leg away. “Right now I believe that thinking about, um, celebrations won’t do me any good.”
Derpy frowned and got closer to him again, still blushing. “What do you mean? You need to calm down. Relax a little…”
“No, I need to concentrate. I have everything memorized, but all it takes is a simple mishap, and—”
He was interrupted by the sound of the main door opening.
“Fuck, no.” Both Derpy and Turner muttered at the same time, and then Derpy got up and flew as fast as she could to the door, just in time to see four of her friends about to enter the house.
“The hell are you doing here?!” she whispered, frowning. Octavia, Vinyl, Carrot Top, and Lyra were standing there, with Vinyl levitating her keys to Turner’s house. “Get out this very instant!”
“Cool, you’re here.” Vinyl smirked at Derpy and pushed her away, getting in with no trouble. “We went to your place before and saw that you weren’t there. I should have guessed you’d be here. Is Turner home?”
“You dick!”
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Better luck next time!” Vinyl stuck out her tongue and entered the house, quickly followed by Lyra and Carrot, the latter nodding at Derpy as a greeting.
Octavia was the one who stayed there. “Hello, Derpy,” she said. “I take from your words that we are not welcome here?”
Derpy bared her teeth and flew back a couple meters, stopping Vinyl and the others. “No, you aren’t!” she said. “Doc has a very important lecture in a couple hours, and we were spending some quality time together! Get the hell out of here before he hears you!”
“Wait, he has a lecture?” Lyra chuckled. “Well, that’s interesting. Is he nervous?”
Derpy glared at her. “Yeah, pretty much. That’s why I was trying to…”
“Get in his bed?”
“I was going to say ‘calm him down.’ But yeah, that one too. So, if you don’t mind…”
Carrot frowned. “What’s a lecture?”
“Screw my life. Not only one, but four of you assholes are here?!”
Derpy bit her lip. Too late. Turner was at the other side of the corridor, looking at them with a worried look. “Doc…” she said.
He sighed and turned back to the hall. “A drink and you’re gone, sorry. I’m not in the mood today,” he said. “And can I ask you a favor? Don’t be irritating. I know that’s quite the deal for you, girls, but you can at least try.”
As Vinyl, Lyra, and Carrot Top followed him to the hall, Derpy and Octavia were left alone in the corridor. Derpy kicked the ground. “Crapbaskets.”
“Come on, dear.” Her friend patted her on the head before walking away. “You can try to seduce him tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but today was perfect,” Derpy said. “I was going to get the socks out in five minutes…”
Time Turner’s house was exactly the kind of house one would expect a respected Doctor in Electrical Engineering to have—big, ugly, and filled with shiny metallic things that went beep when you touched them. None of his friends knew what in the name of Luna his work was, but he had a lot of money and knew how to spend it. The entire gang had spent many hours in that big hall, and soon all of them went to their favorite places while Turner went to the kitchen: Lyra took the entire sofa for herself, Octavia sat elegantly in Turner’s favorite elbow chair, Carrot Top sat on the ground, next to the table, and Vinyl sat on her particular stool, which nopony else used.
Derpy glared daggers at all of them when she got back from the corridor before sitting on the arm of Turner’s usual armchair. “So, enlighten me: What are you doing here?”
“Bon Bon’s working and we’re bored,” said Carrot Top. “Vinyl said we could come here.”
“Yeah, we had nothing to do.” Vinyl looked at Derpy from above her shades. “So I thought that bothering Bon Bon together sounded like a plan. I guess that’s changed, though.”
“Let me guess: you’re going to bother me instead,” Turner said, back from the kitchen with a bunch of drinks. Only one was alcoholic, and right after putting all of them on the table, he took it. “Well, congratulations: you’re already doing that. You’re always doing that, by virtue of existing. Especially you, Vinyl.”
Vinyl raised an eyebrow. “Somepony’s grumpy.”
“Is that lecture that important?” Octavia asked.
“Yes.”
“I still don’t know what a lecture is,” Carrot Top said.
Turner growled and sat down on his usual place. Derpy, who was still sitting on the arm of that armchair, started caressing his mane with a wing absentmindedly. “Carrot,” he said, moving his head to avoid Derpy’s feathers, “I’ve been working as a lector for a year and a half now. I spend a quarter of my time in this city giving lectures. I’ve practiced them with you and Derpy countless times.”
Silence.
Carrot frowned. “So… it has to do with your job?”
“Say whatever you want about her, Carrot always brings us top-notch entertainment,” Lyra said, drinking. “You go, girl. You can conquer the world with those deductive abilities.”
Derpy scowled at her. “Lyra, your Bon Bon is showing.”
“I don’t believe it counts as being Bon when you do it to Carrot,” Lyra said, smiling. “It’s like insulting a rock. Am I right, Topsie?”
Carrot squinted her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m comparing you to a piece of granite.”
“Oh.” Carrot blinked. “Thanks?”
“Carrot, being compared to a rock is not good,” Derpy said, still frowning at Lyra. “Don’t be thankful.”
“But I like rocks!”
“That’s adorable, honey.” Octavia looked to Turner, who was glaring daggers at all of them. “So, anyway, what’s the lecture about? Something sciencey?”
“Do you even care?” He sighed. “Honestly, girls, today I’m definitely not in the mood for hanging around. I need to be alone, I need to concentrate on what’s going to happen, because if I mess up, nopony at the university will ever let me live it down, and I’ll be the laughing stock of…”
The words died in his mouth. Everypony, even Carrot Top, was looking at him with a small smirk and a particular gleam in their eyes. Derpy herself noticed she couldn’t help but rise the corners of her mouth a little. “Bad wording, Doc,” she muttered.
“What? Derpy? Oh my effing Celestia, you’re also smirking. Why are you smirking?” He frowned. “I don’t—OH FUCK NO!”
Too late. Carrot Top had already tackled him down.
“Um, excuse me?”
“Hmm.”
“I, uh… I ordered a caffe latte with vanilla.”
“And I’m incredibly happy for you, miss. I couldn’t have made it through the day without that kind of information. Now, if you excuse me, I have more important things to do than talking about drinks with customers, like doing nothing or thinking about setting my own eyelids on fire.”
“Uh. I… Sorry?”
“I am so glad you’re still here, miss. You see, I was totally not trying to word the sentence ‘I don’t care, go away’ in an original way. Far from it! In fact, why don’t you just sit there and explain to me everything you know about your order? Hell, explain to me everything about your life! I’m completely sure it’s going to be interesting enough to keep myself from committing suicide!”
Silence.
“Uh… You… You got me a caffe latte with chocolate. You see, I ordered vanilla, and the flavor...”
Bon Bon sighed. “You know? This is why I love this job. This is why I love this Celestia-forsaken cafeteria: because of whiny customers like you who can totally read between the lines. But come on, don’t stop talking! Keep ranting about caffeinated products! That’s my most favorite activity! Let me experience the joy of me not giving a damn about your order! I’m absolutely sure if you keep annoying me everything will take a turn for the better. In fact, now that I think about it, that has to be the best idea I’ve ever heard: annoy your waitress until everything fixes itself. Yes, you are definitely a genius, miss.”
The customer, a yellow pegasus mare with a pink mane, blinked twice. “B-but… you’re my waitress!”
“Thank you for explaining that to me,” Bon Bon said. “You know, I had no idea. Don’t let the fact that I just said the exact same thing three seconds ago fool you: you totally blew my mind here, miss.”
The mare opened her mouth, then closed it again. She shook her head and frowned. “What kind of service is this?! I am a customer, you’re forced to treat me with some respect!” she yelled. “I demand to talk with your supervisor!”
“Oh, yes. Because I’m so getting him here so you can complain to his face. We have nothing better to do in this shop than taking care of ponies whose coffee is slightly different from what they ordered.”
The mare threw the cup to the floor. “You’ve lost a customer,” she said before going away.
“Great loss. The remorse won’t let me sleep tonight,” Bon Bon said. And for once, she stopped after just one sentence, as the moment the yellow mare opened the door of the cafeteria to walk away, a certain white unicorn crossed it in the opposite direction, walking straight to Bon Bon with a bright smile upon her face.
“And add another pony that won’t ever come back to this store thanks to you, Bon,” Vinyl said, looking at her from above her glasses. “You never disappoint at being horrible, did you know that?”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Bon Bon massaged her temples. “I’ve dealt with my daily dose of stupidity already, I don’t need you to come here and make my day even worse. What the hell do you want?”
Vinyl smirked. Bon Bon was behind the counter, attending the cash register, so she couldn’t move, and Vinyl knew it. “Can’t a mare just ask for a good ol’ coffee at her friends’ workplace?” she asked.
“Fuck no. Go away.”
“You’re as charming as always, Bon Bon.”
If there was anything she hated more than her job, it was working at that place while her friends were there too. Bon Bon sighed and looked at the ceiling, wondering what she had done in her past life to deserve such torture.
The worst thing was, her friends hung around that stupid cafeteria way too often, so she didn’t even have the relief of it being an extraordinary thing. Then again, Bon Bon did work at the most popular cafe in Canterlot, so the place was always filled with ponies. With green and brown walls and twenty beautiful oak tables, the thing was actually bigger than Bon Bon’s apartment. Which was completely stupid, she always thought, because a place that only serves coffee and that charges fifteen bits per cup didn’t deserve to be popular.
“You can’t imagine how much I enjoy your compliments,” Bon Bon replied. “They are like music to my ears, except that instead of music I just hear the most retarded mare I’ve ever met being a total imbecile. But I absolutely adore that—!”
“Why are you still working here again?” Vinyl looked around. “Every time I come here the place is completely full, and yet you keep scaring ponies away. Anyway, I’m here because I want a coffee, actually. For Turner.”
Bon Bon blinked. “For Turner?”
“Yeah. You see, we went to his place, and turns out he has a very important thing this afternoon.”
Bon Bon rested her hoof against her forehead. “You know, this is incredible. I’ve never cared about something so little in my whole life. I thought that was impossible, as usually I deal with you guys all the time. But this?” Bon Bon nodded. “Yes, this is a new record. Truly an inspiring turn of events: you are talking to me about Turner. It’s like, you know that particular feeling, that mixture between misanthropy, regular hate, and extreme boredom that you develop when you’re trapped in a two-hour-long train trip and there’s a particularly annoying foal sitting right behind you that does nothing but kick your seat? This. This is that. You’ve managed to synthesize that emotion and turn it into a conversation.” She shook her head. “What am I saying? It’s not even a full-length conversation! You’ve managed to make me feel that thing with just a sentence!”
Vinyl frowned. “Would you please shut up? Look, I’m telling you this because—”
“And yet you keep talking! Vinyl, I’m going to try to talk Retard, as apparently that’s the only language you can speak: you are not welcome here, get the fuck away!”
Silence. Bon Bon noticed that at least half of the customers were looking at her with a surprised—or offended, she couldn’t really grasp it—look. Vinyl, on the other hoof, looked unimpressed.
“Are you done?”
Bon Bon glared daggers at her.
“Okay, I’ll take that as a yes. Deep breaths, girl.” Vinyl patted Bon Bon on the head. “You’re even more of an ass when you’re working, did you know that?”
“I hate you so much.”
“Yes, you made that point quite clear.”
“I don’t mean this in an endearing way.” Bon Bon squinted her eyes. “It physically hurts me to interact with you so often.”
“The only reason why I hang around with you is because of the others, darling.” Vinyl said. “So, hey! The feeling is mutual!” She rested a hoof against her chest. “I honestly swear that I absolutely despise you, Bon. And I mean it.” Vinyl took Bon Bon by the shoulders and pulled her closer, pressing their cheeks together above the counter. “I’ve felt hate for others before, yes, but it wasn’t the same. What we have here? This is special.”
Bon Bon sighed. “Are we really doing this?”
“We have a connection, Bon Bon.”
“Do you really think that this joke is original? Because it isn’t.”
“Our detestation can move mountains and cross the stars!”
“I’m going to punch you.”
“We were meant to be! We were born to abhor each other’s guts!”
“I am seriously going to punch you.”
“Hate-marry me, Bon Bon! Let’s make this official! I want everypony to know that I will kick your rotten corpse and then laugh at it once you die!” Vinyl took Bon Bon’s face between her hooves and pressed their noses together. “But first, give me a coffee, because Turner wants to relax.”
Then she released Bon Bon, and as she had been pressed against her side of the counter due to Vinyl pulling from her face, she almost fell to the ground. She managed to regain her balance in time, though, and when she got up, Vinyl was levitating twenty bits in front of her face with her magic.
“You want a coffee to relax him,” Bon Bon said. “Your cleverness still manages to impress me.”
“I said he wants to relax, not that I want him to be relaxed,” Vinyl said. “You see, he said it’s a very important thing for him, and he really really really wants to calm down, or else he’ll mess up and then…” She grinned. “Time Turner will become the laughing stock of the university.”
Bon Bon didn’t say a word for a couple seconds.
“And all of you are at his place at this very moment?”
“Yeah. Octavia and Carrot tied him to his chair so he can’t move. Remember how he put tracking devices in our food? He’s going to pay for it now.”
Bon Bon nodded. “Good.” She took the money with a quick movement. “I’ll bring you an extra caffeinated one.”
Vinyl left the store in a surprisingly bright mood, trying to maintain the giant cup of coffee Bon Bon had given her in balance. She didn’t want to spill any of its content—Time Turner was going to swallow that quarter of a liter of coffee, even if she had to spoon-feed it to him. She was so looking forward to it.
In fact, she was in such a bright mood and so concentrated on not spilling any of the caffeinated madness in front of her she almost failed to notice the white ball of fur that went running straight between her legs.
However, “almost” was the key word here. With the quick reflexes that only a pony that’s planning to screw one of her best friend’s afternoon can have, Vinyl grabbed that unknown mass of hair and meows with her magic and, without missing a beat, she threw it over her shoulder without even looking at it.
That ball of fur was, of course, a cat. A pretty cute one, going by the standard eyes-to-paws ratio. Not like Vinyl would have cared, truth be told, but the cat deserved at least some kind of recognition.
That cat also happened to have an owner. A pretty cute one too, judging again by the standard eyes-to-paws ratio. Which was impressive, as the owner was a little filly and little fillies usually have no paws whatsoever. She was that cute. With a baby blue coat, a lavender mane, and two eyes the size of small watermelons. That little filly, named Tootsie Flute, gasped in a quite adorable way when she saw her quite adorable kitty flying through the air like a quite adorable cannonball.
Luckily for them both, the cat didn’t end up as a quite adorable sticky smudge on a brick wall. Instead, it flew right into what possibly was the tallest tree in the whole city of Canterlot, and managed to grab one of the highest branches instead of falling to a quite adorable—if possibly a little traumatizing for Tootsie Flute—death.
Tootsie stood there, dumbfounded in the middle of the street for a bunch of seconds, enough for her to make sure that her cat was not dying. Then she realized that, judging by the way it was grabbing that branch with a passion usually reserved to your lover or your pillow on a Monday morning, and by the way its pupils turned the size of two particularly small mosquitoes when it looked at the ground, that cat wasn’t getting off that branch by itself.
“Oh, no!” Tootsie Flute said. “My cat is trapped on that tree and can’t climb down!”
Surprisingly, showing off her natural ability to unnecessarily describe what had happened just in front of her eyes didn’t help her cat. Tootsie was not a filly without resources, though.
“Miss!” she said, in a soft, high-pitched tone that might as well had been scientifically designed to be as endearing as possible. “Miss! My kitty!”
“Your kitty,” Vinyl agreed, still looking at her coffee. Turner’s house was pretty close to Bon Bon’s workplace, and she had walked that distance so many times that she didn’t even need to think about what she was doing. “Completely yours, kiddo.”
“No, Miss, you don’t understand!” Tootsie Flute ran towards Vinyl, but the latter didn’t stop. They were almost at the end of the street. “My kitty is trapped in a tree! You need to help me! Please, Miss!”
“Hm, let me think about it for a second.” Vinyl stopped right on the spot. She looked at Tootsie Flute, looking at her with her adorable, enormous eyes. Then she looked at the tree at the other side of the street, with the horrified cat on top of it. Then she looked at the coffee.
Silence.
“Nah. Better things to do.” And then she kept on walking, and before Tootsie could say another word, she had turned around the corner and the little filly was left alone in that street with her tree and her cat.
“Well, I… I guess I’ll ask someone else...”
“L-Lyra?”
“Hmmm?”
“What…?” Turner gulped. “What are you doing?”
“Looking at your eye.”
Turner would have moved away, but that is pretty difficult when one os tied to an armchair. He could move his hind legs a little, but his front ones, his head, and his entire torso were tightly pressed against the back and arms of his seat.
On the one hoof, that was pretty cool, as nopony could realize he was shaking like a madpony. On the other hoof, he was tied to a chair and Lyra was three centimeters away from his face, looking at him with a bored expression.
“I…” Turner licked his lips. “Yes, I see that. My question here is why are you—”
“Found it!” Carrot Top’s voice came from Turner’s room, interrupting him. “Girls, I found it!”
“Oh?” Octavia sounded really impressed. Both Lyra and Turner looked to the right, where the voices were coming from. “Let me see, dear?”
“Here it is!”
Silence.
“Carrot, that’s a can opener.”
“Oh.”
Lyra turned to Turner. “You have a can opener in your room.”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he answered. “It goes surprisingly well when I need to cut thin metal sheets.”
“I see…” Lyra put her hoof on Turner’s forehead. “Don’t close your eye.”
“Eh, may I ask why you are doing this?”
Lyra raised an eyebrow and put just a tiny little bit of pressure against Turner’s forehead. “I said don’t close that eye,” she muttered, with a voice a grade colder than before.
Turner closed his mouth, opened both eyes wide, and tried to fight back tears.
“Derpy was pretty pissed off when we came here, by the way,” Lyra said absent-mindedly. “I think she wanted to seduce you this morning.”
Turner managed to growl and be scared at the same time. “Yeah, tell me about it. I’m sure she was going to get the socks in five minutes or something.”
“If I cared the slightlest about your business I would recommend you to just screw her and put an end to this whole stupidity,” Lyra said. “But then again, that would be against my personal policy.”
“Of not giving a damn?”
“If somepony’s gonna stab Derpy, it’s going to be me,” Lyra said.
Silence.
“Wow. That was actually funny.” Turner huffed, trying to ignore the fact that Lyra was still looking at his left eye. “I can’t do that, however.”
“You’re gayer than I expected.”
Turner would have rolled his eyes at this, but he was pretty sure Lyra would have stabbed him in the eyeball if he had done so. “It’s more complicated than that and you know it.”
“You still loved when she made out with Octavia.”
“Hey, that was different,” Turner said. “I can look at the menu, I just can’t order.”
“Still mommy issues?”
Turner frowned. “...Partially.”
“You’re pathetic.” Lyra tilted her head to the side. “Anyway, this morning, right after hiding Bon Bon’s reading glasses, a thought came to my mind. I told to myself: ‘Hey, Lyra, you know what would be funny? To grab Turner’s eye and—’”
“Found it!” Carrot interrupted again. “I found it, girls!”
Octavia sighed. “Let me see.”
“Here!”
Silence. Lyra and Turner both looked at the right again.
“Carrot, that’s the same can opener.”
“Oh.”
Then there was the sound of something falling to the ground, and Derpy gasped. “Here it is! It was inside a box!”
“Huh?” Octavia asked. “Oh, good job, Derpy! Wait, it was in his closet?”
“Under his pajamas, yes.”
Lyra looked back at Turner. “Betcha she was sniffing them and found the communicator by accident.”
Turner squinted his eyes. “Thanks for the mental picture.”
Lyra gave him that particular smirk, and Turner’s blood ran cold.
Luckily for him, that was the moment when Carrot, Derpy, and Octavia came back from Turner’s room, holding a white box. “What are you doing?” Derpy asked. “Lyra, get away from him.”
“Why?” Lyra got even closer, her nose against Turner’s cheek. “It’s fun. He’s scared.”
“That’s exactly the reason why you should get away!” Derpy said, separating them. “We’re not scaring him, we’re distracting him—”
Turner sighed. “Celestia. Thanks, Derpy…”
“—so he messes up the lecture later.”
“Oh, come on!”
Lyra shrugged. “You see, it’s just that I decided that, after all, he needs to learn a lesson.”
Turner struggled against the ropes unsuccessfully. “You said you weren’t angry! You literally told me you weren’t angry when we were running to Blueblood’s!”
“She also said that, had she been angry, you would have ended up one-eyed,” Octavia said. “But anyway…” The sound of the main door opening came to the hall. “Oh, Vinyl’s here.”
Turner glared at Derpy. “You were supposed to be my ally here!” he said.
Derpy shrugged. “Eh. Peer pressure. Welcome back, Vinyl.”
“Hey! Lookie here what I’ve got!” Vinyl said, entering the room with a giant cup of coffee floating in front of her. “Heart-attack inducing; two thirds caffeine and one third sugar!”
“How was Bon?” Carrot asked. “I haven’t seen her in three days. Did you say ‘hi’ on my part?”
“Nah, sorry. I was too busy dealing with Bon Bon acting like a total ass.” Vinyl shook her head. “I swear to Celestia, that mare seriously needs to get laid.”
Turner snickered. Everypony turned at him with puzzled looks.
“Doc,” Derpy said, “I don’t think you’re supposed to laugh in this kind of situation.”
“Yes, I believe it will only make your position worse.”
“You’re supposed to be scared,” Carrot said. “Because of the coffee. It’s for you.”
Turner rolled his eyes, still smiling a little. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Look at how scared I am. It’s just that…” He tried to suppress a chuckle. “What Vinyl said.”
“Did I say something funny?”
“Bon Bon,” replied Turner. “She’s in need of some Bon Boning.”
Silence.
Octavia facehoofed. “Vinyl.”
“Yes, I’m on it.”
Carrot Top observed Vinyl force-feeding that coffee to Turner. He was struggling a lot against it, so almost half the contents of that cup ended up falling on the armchair and on Turner’s chest.
“That coffee is pretty hot,” she said, poking Derpy on her side. “I see the steam.”
“Well, Doc brought that to himself,” Derpy answered. “A little burn on his tongue won’t kill him.”
“I guess.”
Silence. Well, relative silence. Turner’s muffled screams were still there, after all.
“I kind of want to see him giving the lecture now,” Lyra said. “I wonder if he’ll be able to talk.”
Carrot frowned. “So we’re going to go to that thing then?”
“Well, it’s open to the public, if I remember correctly. Doc?”
“OH CELESTIA MY TONGUE HURTS MY CHEST HURTS EVERYTHING HURTS AAAAAA—HMPHBRBGRRRBLBLBLBLBL!” Vinyl closed his mouth with the cup of coffee and forced him to drink again.
“Yeah, it’s open to the public,” Derpy continued. “But he didn’t look like he had trouble talking.”
“We have to work on that.” Lyra turned to Carrot. “Go buy some more coffee, would you? As hot as possible. Lots of caffeine.”
Carrot raised an eyebrow. “Me?”
“Yes.”
“Why me?”
“Because I don’t want to do it, and it’s a task so easy that even a mentally handicapped pony like you could do it.”
“Oh.” Carrot looked at Turner, who was still struggling against the coffee Vinyl was pressing against his mouth. “But I wanted to go with Derpy!”
“With Derpy?” Vinyl looked at the pegasus. “You’re going somewhere?”
“We were thinking about doing so, yeah,” Octavia said. “You see, Turner here wants to concentrate, yes?”
“Uh-huh.”
“BHJRABJRBHBAMY TONGUE IS ON FIRE! STOPAAGBHAGRBHLBRLBRLBGGG—!”
“Sorry, the cup slipped for a second.” Vinyl used her magic to hold Turner’s face a little better. “That’s it. You were saying?”
“We want to distract Turner with cutie marks,” Carrot explained. “Tavi and Derpy have found the communicators!” She pointed at the white box Derpy was holding. “We’ll talk with him and he won’t be able to concentrate. Or something.”
“Yes.” Vinyl looked at Octavia. “Can somepony who didn’t suffer from prenatal oxygen deprivation explain this, please?” She looked at Turner, who had already finished the coffee and was trying to talk. “And you, shut up.” She closed his mouth with magic. “Tavi?”
“Well, truth be told, Carrot got the basics,” Octavia said. “I know that Turner has a personal interest in cutie marks, seeing how his talent…” She waved a hoof. “And he wants to concentrate.”
“Tavi thinks she discovered something interesting about cutie marks the other day,” Derpy said. “She was telling us so before. So we’re going to investigate what was all that about, and we’ll tell Turner every single detail.”
“He won’t be able to ask questions, though,” Lyra said. “That, plus the caffeine, plus physical pain? Yeah, I think he won’t be able to concentrate on anything.”
“Wow.” Vinyl raised an eyebrow. “Cruel. What do you think, Turner?”
“I HATE ALL OF YOU!”
“I take that as a seal of approval!” Vinyl closed Turner’s mouth again, sat down, and clapped her hooves. “Well then, we have a plan. Derpy and Octavia will go… Where are you going again?”
“Do you remember that guy I slept with a couple days ago? Tall, slender, very funny?”
“No.”
“Well, we’re going to see his wife.”
“Oh.” Vinyl bit her lip. “Ouch.”
“Wait. If he’s married, how did you sleep with him?” Carrot asked. “Shouldn’t he… wait a minute. Lyra?”
The unicorn turned to her. “Hmm?”
“Did you insult me?”
“What?”
“You said I was dumb!”
“What are you talk—Ah. Yeah, I said you were mentally handicapped.” Lyra nodded. “Took you a while, huh? By the way, Vinyl also said you were stupid, but she used smart words so you wound’t get it.”
“Wait, what? Lyra! You ass, you betr—AAAAAARGH!”
Thump!
Too late. Carrot Top had already tackled her.
The hottest cellist in Canterlot observed how her three friends fell to the floor and started punching each other. Carrot had the upper hoof at first, tackling Vinyl and Lyra at the same time, somehow. Lyra soon started throwing hits here and there, but poor Vinyl could do nothing but scream and try to run away. Try.
“Well, that will entertain them for a while,” Octavia said. “Do you mind putting one of those in Turner’s ear, Derpy?”
The pegasus just smiled at her and flew to Turner, who was looking at the fight with his tongue out, like a dog. “Come here, Doc,” she said. “Ah, does your tongue still hurt?”
Turner just glared at Derpy.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“You don’t mind me taking Derpy for a walk, right?” Octavia said, smirking. “We’ll contact you whenever we find the cutie mark thingy.” She got closer to him. “Although we both know that you don’t really care about cutie marks, right?” she whispered. “I’m doing this for a completely different reason. I’m pretty sure Derpy and I can talk about something very interesting for her.”
Turner opened his eyes wide. “No. Fuck, no. Don’t you dare to…!”
“To what?” Derpy said, frowning. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, you’ll find out. You see, I need to talk with you,” Octavia said. “Right Turner?”
“YOU—”
“Well, Derpy, time for us to go!” Octavia took her pegasus friend by the shoulders and pushed her to the corridor. “Come on, come on! Goodbye, Turner!”
The stallion’s face was so priceless that Tavi was still laughing by the time she and Derpy were on the street, walking towards the southern part of Canterlot.