//------------------------------// // Pony Joe Saves The Day // Story: No Bucks // by 71NYL-5CR4TCH //------------------------------// Spoilers: Not really. ----- Twilight Sparkle continued her hungover escapades through the town square. She'd be annoyed, or joyed, by the loud screams of joyful children playing in the morning sun, but she didn't really give a buck. Since only the late-going members of the town were witness to the night's previous events, the early-birds that were now awake and playful were ignorant as to what could have put their beloved princess in the state they saw walking before them. Concerned and confused whispers were elicited from the crowd, 'my, she looks dreadful' or 'smoking? The princess is...smoking? How...uncouth.' but Twilight simply refused to give a buck. As she entered her favorite coffee and doughnut shop, Pony Joe's, she noticed that, beside herself and the restauranteur behind the counter, the building was empty, and quiet, a fact she would revel in... that is, if she gave a buck. "Oh, good morning Twilight!" Pony Joe greated with his normal enthusiasm of seeing his favorite patron, before her disheveled state reminded him of the previous night's affairs, "How, uh, how are you doing? I see you picked up...smoking..." "Huh? Oh yeah, it's great." Twilight mumbled through her cigarette, plumes of cancer still rolling from her lips as she spoke. Pony Joe waved his hoof in front of his face as if to ward off the foul smoke, "Your friend Rainbow Dash and your little assistant Spike have been looking for you, you know..." he added. "Hm? Oh, well, I'll probably bump into them eventually, or something..." Twilight trailed off. "Why am I here again? Oh yeah, coffee. So, like, gimmie coffee." She ordered, holding out an expectant hoof. "Geeze Twilight, what happened to those sparkling manners of yours? Could I at least get a please?" Pony Joe asked. Spell or not, he knew Twilight well enough to stand up to her, and try to get a little bit of the old princess back. Twilight Sparkle deadpanned before levitating Pony Joe into the air, and promptly heaving him over her shoulder like old garbage. Pony Joe landed in the middle of his restaurant with *thud* and *oof* before slowly making his way back to his hooves. Something was definitely wrong, Twilight was most certainly under some kind of spell that turned her into the opposite of her normal, caring self. Pony Joe turned around, prepared to yell at Twilight. But what he saw left him speechless. There was his local princess, the pony he revered and respected, laying across his coffee machine, now with two lit cigarettes, one sticking out of each nostril, smoking. Impressively, while continuing to smoke through her nose, she was pouring scalding hot coffee directly from the machine into her mouth in a sort of coffee waterfall, gulping it down furiously. Pony Joe accepted defeat. This...this pony before him wasn't Twilight. It couldn't be! No spell could make a pony just...just not care to such an extreme! This had to be an impostor! A changeling! Now was his time to shine, and he wasn't going to let everypony down. With a fearsome battle-cry, he charged the 'impostor', diving over the counter toward the coffee maker. He made brief eye contact with Twilight before a bright flash of purple blinded him. He then landed face first into the coffee machine, knocking him unconscious, coffee pouring out on his head and Twilight was nowhere to be seen. Until she walked out of the bathroom a few minutes later with a satisfied 'ahh'. She proceeded to approach the counter, take a cup off the top and temporarily cut the flow of coffee pouring onto Pony Joe's head by filling the cup. As soon as she was finished, she allowed the stream of coffee to continue to pour down on the poor, unconscious stallion's head. "One for the road," she muttered at no in particular, walking out of the shop, pulling the two cigarettes from her nose and placing them in her mouth. They tasted like snot, blood, and a little like some sort of bitter powder she remembered tasting, but couldn't put her hoof on. As she took a particularly long draw off the cigarettes, she let out a cough, ejecting what was left of one of the cigarettes onto the ground, and the other into her fresh cup of coffee levitating before her with a quiet *psshh*. "Oh...buck." She commented, looking at the waisted 1/3rd of a cigarette and now filthy coffee with a cigarette but floating on top. "Meh." Twilight sparkle drank the ashy coffee anyway. It wasn't like she really gave a buck. She only had one destination left in mind at this point. Home. Not because she was going to start the business of the day, no, buck that. It was simply because she had saved every single gifted bottle of wine from her friends and family and even ordinary townsfolk after her coronation. In her cellar, she had a total of 744 bottles of wine, ranging from ludicrously expensive to cheap as they come. She figured if she got started now, she could probably kill the stash by...what was today? Friday? Then by Monday. Twilight Sparkle had a mission. She decided that it was in her best interest to drink 744 bottles of wine over the course of one weekend. She was going to need more cigarettes.