//------------------------------//
// Accountability - Romance, Comedy 
// Story: Krizak's Compendium of Concise Chronicles 
// by Krizak 
//------------------------------//

They had made sure Rainbow Dash was accounted for; their fierce pegasus friend has a tendency to use the library as a landing pad for her latest death-defying stunt, whether she intended to or not, and they didn’t want to be interrupted by the inevitable decimation of the bookshelves below. This weekend, Dash was attending a weather ponies conference in Cloudsdale as the central weather factory outlined its climate plans for the upcoming blah blah blah, or at least, that was what Dash had said with a roll of her eyes.

They had made sure Pinkie Pie was accounted for; the problematic pink pony was practically impossible to predict at any given time, and she had the tendency to pop up out of nowhere… sometimes quite literally. But Pinkie took her responsibilities seriously these days, and with both the bakery and the Cake twins left in her care as Mr. and Mrs. Cake went on a second honeymoon to celebrate their tenth anniversary, Ponyville had been pretty quiet on the Pinkie front for the last week.

They had made sure both Spike and Fluttershy were accounted for, mostly by leaving one in the other’s care. Their most gentle friend had recently brought in a drake that had suffered a torn wing in the Everfree Forest, and they had presented it to Spike as a much safer opportunity to learn more about dragons; the drake was the primitive ancestor of dragons just as ponies had been preceded by horses (though drakes hadn’t gone extinct unlike the unfortunate pony forebears), and Spike had leapt at the chance to learn more. Fluttershy had been more than willing to take Spike in for the night and teach him about drakes, of course; given the chance, animals were one of the only things that really animated Fluttershy, and she could talk for hours about the offspring care of ducks or the foraging behaviours of fruit bats.

But they had made a mistake in simply assuming that Applejack wasn’t a factor. The farmpony was early to bed, early to rise, after all, and even if she deviated from her standard routine (an unlikely possibility, they had thought), was she really likely to come to the library? AJ liked a good book or two, sure, but only those truly devoted to the literary arts would arrive at the library so late in the evening, right?

And so it was that three ponies stared at each other in mutual shock that Friday evening, and while Twilight and Rarity both knew what was going through the other’s mind — What in Equestria is she doing here? What do we tell her? Is she going to tell everypony else? Do we finally have to come clean? — it was less clear to them just what Applejack was thinking.

And then the farmmare’s shocked expression turned into a rueful grin as she shook her head. “Darn it, Twi, Rarity, you just cost me twenty bits!”

The two unicorns looked at each other in confusion, taking the opportunity to shift into slightly less compromising positions. Rarity took the initiative in asking, “Whatever do you mean, darling?”

“Ah had mah money on you teachin’ Twi how to be more hoity-toity and ladylike. It was RD who bet on you two makin’ out behind our backs.”