//------------------------------// // Fish Out of Water // Story: Sweetie Belle: Blackjack Dealer. Yay! // by RaylanKrios //------------------------------// Mugsy and Nunzio mailed the burnt hat back just like Shadow told them to, and for the next few days, everything was quiet.  Sweetie Belle continued being a blackjack dealer, unaware of the events she had set in motion, and Mugsy and Nunzio kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. And drop it did. The enforcers were pacing around their hotel room when the door opened to reveal a heavyset, purple pony wearing a grey fedora. “Boss, what are you doing here?” yelped Mugsy as he and Nunzio quickly scrambled to bow to their guest. The pony, recognizable to all who knew him as Don Falcon, walked deliberately into the room and sat down. “Let me tell you a story. I’m sitting in my office, and I get a little package: a burnt hat telling me that my hitpony is grass food, may he rest in peace.  So I says to myself, ‘who is this mook that keeps doing these things to me?’ I’m not taking his money, but still he disrespects me, like I’m some kind of jabroni.’  Then I think, ‘maybe this guy isn’t some sort of crusader; maybe he’s looking for a job. I’d like to meet him.’” “I don’t think you want to do that, boss. She’s real dangerous.”  Nunzio said, hoping to prevent this conversation from going any further. “She?” The Don was momentarily surprised, but quickly recovered. He may have been head of a major crime family, but he wasn’t sexist. Mares could do everything stallions could as far as he was concerned.  “You two go on and on about the stones on this guy,” he said, ignoring the obvious problems with that metaphor, “and now I find out she’s a mare, and I don’t even know what she looks like. Enlighten me.” Mugsy did not get his position as a mob enforcer by being quick on his hooves. “Umm, well, she’s got a black coat with a red mane. I think she’s part alicorn,” he said, unable to come up with anything else. The don nodded slowly. “Black and red. What’s her name?” “Night Rider,” Mugsy said, continuing his streak of terrible lies. “Since she seems amenable to keeping you two numbskulls alive, I want you to set up a parlay. Use that restaurant across town, Olive’s Garden.  It’s nice public place; I’ll rent it out for the afternoon. ” With that, the Don left, and Mugsy and Nunzio were face with an impossible conundrum. On the one hoof, one simply did not disappoint “da boss”. So if said boss was renting out a restaurant so that he could have a face-to-face meeting with a red and black half-alicorn, then there’d better be a red and black half-alicorn waiting at that restaurant. Of course, the other hoof was that red and black half-alicorns didn’t exist. Mugsy and Nunzio sulked towards Sweetie Belle’s table right before her shift was scheduled to start.  In a casino, it was common to see ponies down to the felt, short stacked and long odds against them, looking for that one card in the deck that could save them. They never imagined they would be one of those ponies. As they approached, Sweetie could clearly tell something was wrong with her new friends.  They looked worse than Apple Bloom did when she told her sister she didn’t really like apples that one time.  (She, of course, wasn’t thinking clearly. Apple Bloom LOVED APPLES, and WOULD NEVER DREAM OF NOT LIKING THEM!) “We have a problem,” Nunzio said weakly. Sweetie put on a brave face. Mugsy and Nunzio may not have been official crusaders, but she liked to think of them has honorary ones, and the crusaders lived by the code of “All for one and one for all”. “Don’t worry, you guys are my friends, and my friends problems are my problems.  What can I do to help?” Nunzio glanced at his partner hoping for some help, but received only a blank stare in return. “See, it’s… unsafe to have a filly working at a casino, so we told our boss that you were a red and black half-alicorn named Night Blade.” Sweetie couldn’t help but giggle at such a terrible lie, as though such a pony might actually exist in Equestria.  I mean why not make her Celestia’s secret other sister while they were at it?   “Why’d you do that?” “Well, umm, if he found out you were a regular filly, you could, uh, lose your job, and then we’d be ki-fired also.” “Oh. It’s still not nice to lie to ponies.” “We know, but now the boss wants to meet you, so we was kinda hoping you might play along with it.” Sweetie Belle scratched her head.  Cheerilee always said that lying was bad, but sometimes you had to lie.  Like when Rarity asked if her dress made her look fat. “Hmm, I do enjoy dressing up, and I really like working at the casino.” Sweetie Belle considered the request some more.  The crusaders were always doing stuff like this, and Twilight had lied to Trixie that one time about that amulet, so maybe this situation was kind of like that.  “Deal! Let’s get started. We’ve got a lot of work to do if we are going to make me look so silly.”  Sweetie left a note for Royal Flush saying that she’d be late for her shift, but that she was out doing official casino stuff with Mugsy and Nunzio’s boss. Mugsy ran out for some supplies, and soon, Sweetie had dyed her mane red and painted her coat jet-black. Some step-up horseshoes made her look taller than she was really was, and thanks to the skills Rarity had taught her, she was able to use makeup to make her look a little older.  Even disguised, however, there was no denying that she was adorable, but at least she looked more like the pony Mugsy hastily described to his boss. Mugsy and Nunzio walked with her to the restaurant.  Ponies on the street stopped and stared, but glares from her bodyguards prevented any of them from saying anything to Sweetie. The trio entered the restaurant to find it completely empty, save for the don sitting along the back wall and a very nervous looking waiter. With a flick of his hoof, he dismissed Mugsy and Nunzio, who, while nervous about leaving Sweetie alone with the Don, knew better than to disagree with the boss. For better or worse, it was the only move they had.  Sweetie Belle, not quite aware of the danger she was in, sat down across from the head of the Falcon crime family. Don Falcon started to speak in a slow drawl, wasting no time with introductions. “Do you know how I got where I am?” Sweetie shook her head, unsure what he meant by the question. She assumed he took the train to Ponyville and then walked, though she guessed he could have taken a carriage. “When I say I’m going to do something, it means I’m going to do it. So if I say I’m getting pasta for lunch, then I’m eating pasta.  And if I say that nopony operates a casino in Equestria without kicking in a little protection money, then I get my piece of the action. Do you know what would happen if ponies thought I wasn’t a stallion of my words? Sweetie shook her head again, still not sure what any of this had to do with being safe. “Ponies would think they could put one over on me.  And then I’m a fish out of water. Do you know what that means?” “Yep, it’s when you’re in an unfamiliar situation,” Night Rider Blade Sweetie said with a big smile at finally knowing the right answer. Don Falcon pounded his hoof on the table, the loud thud reverberating off the walls of the empty restaurant. “A fish out of water is dead! That’s what that means!” Night Sweetie’s eyes started to water.  “I’m sorry. I just wanted to do a good job,” she sniffled. It is said that the gravitational pull of black hole is the strongest force in the universe. It’s a force so overwhelming that not even light can escape its grasp. Well, those scientists have clearly never studied Sweetie Belle, because even the largest, most powerful black hole would surrender all of the light it had trapped in an effort to make Sweetie Belle stop crying. And with that, organized crime in Equestria took its biggest hit since the guards indicated Stallion Canterpone for tax evasion. Even mob bosses, cruel and unfeeling as they were, were equine, and there wasn’t a pony alive who could stand against a crying Sweetie Belle.  Against such an overwhelming power, the Don folded like a cheap card table. “Don’t cry.What if you bought the rights to the casino from me? Let’s say one bit?” Sweetie Belle sniffled loudly, wiping her eyes. “I don’t have any money on me.” Don Falcon slid a bit across the table. “There, now you just give it back to me, and I can tell everypony that you bought the rights to this casino from me. I save face, and you can go on being a dealer without worrying about my guys visiting you.” “Aww, I was hoping to get some ice cream with that,” Sweetie pouted, still not really knowing what was going on. The Don slid another bit across the table.  “Now would you like to buy the protection racket from me?” “You have to be nicer to Mugsy and Nunzio,” Sweetie said, having no clue what was going on, but knowing when she had a grownup where she wanted them. “Those lunkheads!” Noticing the beginnings of another set of tears, Don Falcon quickly backpedalled.  “They can stay here as part of the security staff. I’ll still pay them, of course.” “Okay!” Sweetie said cheerfully. She slid one of the bits back to the Don and happily took the other one. Before the Don could consummate the deal, Rarity and Royal Flush burst through the door, panting heavily. “Hello, Rarity,” Don Falcon said, surprised to see his favorite tailor. Rarity recoiled in shock at seeing both the familiar stallion and her sister dressed in a dreadful color scheme. “Oh, hello Don Falcon, I didn’t realize my sister was meeting with you.  I assumed she was meeting with Don Ironhoof.” “And I didn’t know you two were related. Understandable mistakes all around, it seems. Are we still on for dinner on your next visit to Manehattan?” “I wouldn’t miss it, darling. Well, I feel better now. So sorry for the intrusion, we’ll just be going now.” “It’s quite okay, my dear. In fact, I was just leaving. She’s a shrewd negotiator, that one. She must get that from her sister,” the Don said, not wanting to reveal what had actually happened. “You flatter me,” Rarity replied with a small curtsey. The Don tipped his fedora at both Sweetie and Rarity, offered a nod to Royal Flush and quietly left the restaurant, leaving the three ponies alone in the back room.  As soon as he left, Sweetie began to glow a bright white. “Why, I do believe you just got your cutie mark!” Royal Flush exclaimed with a smile after the glare had subsided. Sweetie wheeled around, but without a mirror present, she was unable to get a clear look at her new feature.  “What is it?” she asked, imagining that it must be something like a bit or a scale because she was clearly so good at negotiating things. “It’s a kitten licking an ice-cream cone.” Royal Flush said as he got a better look at the mark. “I don’t get it,” Sweetie said, scrunching her face. “It’s the most adorable cutie mark I’ve ever seen, dear,” Rarity said. “You mean my special talent is being cute?” “It would appear so.” “Fiddlesticks!”