April 11, 2027
Baltimare
Sunday Evening
Eleven hours later, Quantum found herself sitting at a small outdoor bistro several blocks away from The Hungry Ursa, watching the maudlin sun dip behind the ashen horizon. The cobblestones beneath her cushioned seat were solid. The wrought iron bars of the fence between her table and the street were sure. Her brain, however, was quite addled. The day had been filled with wining, dining, cheerful chatter, and a pleasant sense of getting-to-know the demure, forest green pegasus sitting opposite her. Before all that, however, there had been…well. At some point, Quantum remembered hearing the whooshing sound that preceded Hal. She had thrown a pillow at it, heard it again, and so far the toasty orange pegasus hadn’t made an appearance. Her reverie was broken by the sensation of a silky hoof tracing her flank.
“How’s your sunflower latte, sweetie?” Cozy Hearth smiled through her now-familiar perfume. Quantum stiffened.
“Fine, just…fine.”
Cozy made a pouty face and unabashedly pecked Quantum’s cheek. “Aww, don’t you worry none, honeypony. Your secret’s safe. All stallions have problems with that once and awhile. Why, I can’t even imagine having to carry around one of those—“
“It’s fine!” Quantum held a hoof over Cozy’s lips and glanced around to see if anypony was eavesdropping. “I mean, it’s fine. Just forget it.”
“Well,” Cozy smirked, twirling a cinnamon stick around in a cup of milk tea on the table before her, “It’s like you’re not yourself today, you poor thing.”
You have no idea, Quantum thought to herself. Her glasses had slipped down on her muzzle slightly, but she was learning to break the habit of adjusting them when some pony who didn’t know they existed was looking on. Instead, she absently cast her eyes out over the nearby Baltimare street. A bored-looking stallion wearing an orange construction vest was supervising the street cleaning work of a wagon-sized device on wheels, fitted with a number of spinning mops and brushes on mechanical arms. Quantum smiled wanly; remembering how she built a functional scale model of the Mark VII automated Pathwasher for a science project in tenth grade. It was a dinosaur compared to what she was used to seeing in her own time, but there was something nostalgic about watching it chug along now, going about its toil. The minty mare found herself longing to be the child she was in 2027 again; reliving Equestria’s technological revolution at its infancy.
“Bit for your thoughts?” Cozy asked. Quantum turned to find the deceptively powerful pegasus looking up at her from the last of the chocolate truffles, which she had nosed onto Quantum’s plate. Grinning bemusedly, Quantum levitated the little confection and partook of it before letting out a sigh and turning back to the sunset.
“I dunno. Just…do you ever wish you could do some things over in your life?” Quantum mused to the sky. “Like, if you could make a different choice at some point, or go back even further and change your whole way of thinking, or tell yourself something that you really needed to know back then?”
When there was no reply, Quantum turned to find her companion staring down at her drink, swishing the cinnamon stick more than was necessary. When she remembered some of Cozy Hearth’s history, Quantum kicked herself mentally.
“I’m sorr—”
This time it was the pegasus’s turn to silence the unicorn with a hoof. “No, it’s okay.” Cozy Hearth remained silent for a long time, just staring at the sky, until she finally spoke again. “I haven’t told you much about my past, sweetie, I know. It…isn’t a very interesting story. But I’ll tell you something. I wouldn’t change a day of it.”
Quantum’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Wait…what?” As far as she could remember, Cozy Hearth had been disowned by her family for a teenage pregnancy, and was now working as a callmare just to make enough money for the six foals she almost never sees. “Why…?”
Cozy Hearth smiled softly. “Maybe you don’t understand, honeypony, but there’s more to life than drinking and playing cards every day. My colts and fillies are my whole world. If my life had turned out differently, they might not be in it, and I don’t even want to imagine a life without them.” She paused, and placed a hoof in one of Quantum’s, “Well…maybe they aren’t my whole world…”
Quantum took the offered hoof and felt her cheeks warm up. She thought about how desperately she’d tried to persuade her mother to find another path. If she had succeeded…how would that have changed her life? There was no guarantee it was the right choice, and without any readings from Hal’s device, Quantum had simply been acting out of her own need to erase ‘Twiggy’ from existence.
But who was she to decide that?
As the two mares sat together in the twilight, a rough-looking unicorn stallion in a waiter’s getup served Cozy a second milk tea. Thanking her server, the foresty pegasus bent her head down to enjoy her drink. Quantum adjusted her glasses and squinted at the retreating waiter. He looked…familiar, somehow. The moment she placed his features, her eyes went wide.
“Wait!” The minty mare exclaimed, “Don’t drink that! That guy…I know him! That’s one of Tilt’s thugs!”
“Hrm?” Cozy bubbled, coming up from the concoction with foam on her muzzle. “What’s wrong?” She eyed the departing waiter, and then the drink. “It tastes fine. There’s nothing wrong with—!!”
Quantum watched as her companion doubled over and spilled off of her seat the same way her drink splattered from the table. The minty mare was by Cozy’s side in a flash, but her deep, healthy forest green coat was already showing signs of putridity around her eyerims and lips. Cozy Hearth was pawing at the air obliviously with a hoof and trying in vain to speak; her wings beat, but their normal down-softness caught the air with a leathery drag and took her nowhere. Quantum, at a loss, tested Cozy’s pulse and tried to make sure she wasn’t choking to death.
“Don’t bother,” A familiarly sinister voice preened, “She ain’t gonna die. Not yet, anyway.”
Quantum looked up. From the other side of the low iron fence waited the creamy visage of Tilt, flanked on either side by one of his cronies. The three of them were enjoying a good chortle. Quantum scowled.
“What did you do to her!?” The minty mare demanded.
Tilt levitated a small drawstring pouch taken from a saddlebag worn by one of his men and shook it just long enough to show a trickle of bright blue powder before replacing it. “Poison joke,” The young kingpin smiled. “All the rage in high society these days – even better than snuff! Ain’t it boys?”
Tilt’s stallions enjoyed a hearty bellylaugh, the sound embellished by a threatening tinkle from each guffawing voice. Quantum checked Cozy over again. She was lying on her side, and had all the countenance of a rapidly wilting rosebush. The minty mare waved her hoof in front of Cozy’s eyes, but she didn’t show any signs of recognition. The forest green pegasus just lay there, coughing and sputtering until a slight spatter of red blood mingled with the pool of contaminated milk tea before her.
Quantum shook her head and narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying. Poison joke just makes stupid things happen to a pony until you either treat it, or it goes away on its own. It’s like having a nasty rash or something. It doesn’t do this.”
Tilt cackled, “Oh, it does whatever you want it to do when you got the best zebra apothecaries in town in yer back pocket!”
Quantum made to get up, but threatening stares from the thugs kept her by Cozy’s side. “Why!?” She demanded. “If you’ve got a problem with me, then come to me! She didn’t do anything to you!”
“You mess with my mare, I mess with yours.”
“Mares aren’t property!” Quantum shouted.
“They are to punks like me an’ you,” Tilt smiled, “But that ain’t all.” With that, the cream-coated thug with the mauve mane and single card cutie mark turned his head. Most of the left side of his face, which hadn’t been visible before, was covered in mottled black and grey bruises. He even had a black eye. “I pay my debts, and I owe your sorry ass a beating. With a LOT of interest. So listen up. Your lady friend’s got a day if she’s lucky, and what she got ain’t something you can fix at a pharmacy—“
Quantum was on her hooves in a flash, her horn alive with crackles of power. Tilt continued.
“Woah, woah! Like I was sayin’,” he grinned, “It ain’t something you can cure at a pharmacy. You wanna go at it right now, fine; my boys and I would be happy to curb-stomp your ugly mug all over this sidewalk. But ya know what? My bits are down, and they’re all on you not wanting to lose your cute little hump-rump over there. So I’m gonna cut you a break, and I’m even gonna be a good sport about it. Ain’t that just so nice of me?”
Quantum gritted her teeth. When one of the thugs reached out to smack her in the face, she moved as if to attack him, but Tilt superimposed himself between the two.
“I’m being all nice here, and that’s how you show your appreciation?” Tilt smiled evilly. “Alright, then it goes down like this. You get your burnished butt down to the waterfront in three hours. Just you. There’s one bag of the stuff your maretoy needs down there. You don’t show? It goes in the harbor. I see anypony with you? It goes in the harbor. You so much as look at me or my boys the wrong way until then? You won’t care where it goes, because the rest of the poison joke is going down your throat. Got me?”
Quantum hesitated.
“GOT ME?”
Sighing, the minty mare nodded. Tilt grinned.
“You got bits in your ears. That ain’t the right way to look at me.”
The minty mare doused her horn and did her best to stifle her murderous expression. Sniffing disdainfully at the laughter, she retreated back to the ground, tending to her fallen friend.
“What’s going to happen at the waterfront?”
Tilt threw back his head and roared with laughter. “You’ll see! But I’m a gambler, just like you, so don’t worry – you’ll get a chance to walk away with the goods! But let’s see if you really can, when the game is fair for once!”
With that, the group of ruffians clopped away. Tilt and Quantum kept one eye on each other at all times – even as the latter struggled to get the limp form of an adult pegasus mare off the street.