This Is Your Story!

by Mahayro

Chapter Three

Though it was not required by any physical means, the sun and moon kept their distance. One would never dare be seen while the other bore any direct presence in the sky. It seemed there was once a time when this distance was not so required or enforced. It was not, however, a matter for mortals to dwell upon with any sense of purpose. It would so figure that a certain new alicorn shared the name of an event that had not been fully known to Equestria's firmament in thousands of years. Her parents or theirs must've been well-read to even know of it...

Within this artificial interstice there lay a newborn party. The BGs would make it come of age.

After the round of streetside cuddling, Colgate had explained that there was still more to do at the office and went to it. Before she made it back, Berry had already passed a message to school for the Berry Bunch for what to do that night (a fairly common occurrence given her erratic lifestyle). Carrot had also gotten paid for her bit on the qualifier meet for the Equestria Games, so she and Berry got to have dinner out together--just snacking at the Hay Burger, as there was no sense eating fancy right before a party with more free food--while Carrot received Berry's own bizarre brand of pep talk for what could be a very important night.

When they rejoined and arrived back at the town clearing, they just about died from the spectacle. It had to be even bigger than the Peacetimepalooza! How much money did these friends of Rainbow Dash make, anyway?

Carrot, ever impatient for good things in her life, scanned the crowd from the hillside. She noted that Pinkie Pie had come back from her huff earlier and was even helping out with stage entertainment. She beheld a few other festivities relevant both for tonight's fun and for a possible write-up: impossible ice sculptures, nested piñatas, a dangerous and comically futile contest to chase a wheel of cheese down a hill, a repeating confetti mega-cannon on wheels, and lots and lots of room for dancing. There was also a fruit punch lake, complete with diving board, way off to the side of everything else, where she figured Berry would go in an instant...but she didn't.

"Well, what're you waiting for?"

Berry wasted no time in her reply. "Now, girl, I am hurt. Truly so. Did you really think I was gonna leave you alone on this buck-tastic mission of yours?"

Carrot dwelled on the particular application of "mission". The gears turned in her head, and she was suddenly stricken with awe.

Berry understood perfectly. "Yeah, that's right. This is your mission. And now it's mine, too. These things we do, they don't always have to be for the town. They don't have to be for everyone else. They can be for ourselves, too. For each other. You get it now?"

Carrot borrowed an invisible mask from Colgate's wardrobe--a mask of determination.

"Operation Get Me Laid is go."

"Phew! Thank goodness I didn't have to explain how you're so loco in the coco that you couldn't be--" Berry cut herself off and feigned embarrassment at administering that test of character. But Carrot just sheepishly chuckled without breaking or even cracking.

Berry smiled in reply: "You are clear for takeoff."

Colgate, who had apparently agreed to give the two their distance for this final pep talk, turned to give a salute to Carrot. Berry did the same. Carrot wasn't sure whether she should salute anyone or not. She decided to direct her gesture of allegiance and respect toward the scene of the party itself.

And so they marched right on in.

---

"Damn, that Pinkie can sing!" Berry Punch swore in front of some pretty pastel fillies.

"And I'd bet you could make her sing." The earlier naughtiness had apparently loosened Colgate's tongue again--or had she found whatever Berry was drinking earlier?

Berry thought about going right for the current liquid offering, eyeing the punch bowl; but she held off her usual inclinations, apparently figuring these drinks were not mission-critical.

Ten seconds afterward, she turned around and got one anyway.

After she returned: "Well, Carrot, time for Plan A?"

Colgate chimed in, "Plan Shake Dat A!"

The focal mare blushed a bit, still being one who hadn't fully gotten the feel for a dance style of either gender. But yes...she was going to give it a go on this special night. She stepped into her character: party-rocking machine, full-time.

Then, out of nowhere, Berry hoofed her a cup of punch. Berry shuffled through her mane shortly after doing this, briefly extracting and re-concealing a bota bag. "Only the goodest of shit," she pronounced with a wink. And sure enough, Carrot did enjoy it. It smelled of pears and ginger and lavender and cloves and horehound and some kind of berries and especially alcohol.

"I'll, uh, save my energy on the sidelines for now," she continued. "But you--get your ass out there."

Colgate embraced the party-rocker one last time before heading to the dance floor herself. Then she came very, very close to her ear and whispered something tender and inspiring--something like, "Everything we are will never die."

The tunes started pretty tame, which gave Carrot a chance to find a groove without getting embarrassed out of her skull. She attempted a very basic swing dance with one named Thunderlane, but Thunderlane far outclassed her and wasn't in the mood to tone it down. Undeterred, she tried this again with a portly old unicorn fellow with a marionette for a cutie mark; this went a bit better, and he even taught her a couple twirls. She spotted a conga line and popped into that--always easy fun. When a mid-paced soulful piece came up, half the floor organized into a line dance. It turned out to be one of the simplest around--the Electric Slide--and Carrot was able to pick it up. There were a couple songs in a row where she just felt kind of lost; she defaulted to whole-body gyrations and eccentric one-forehoof motions that included the Time Warp. At least nopony was laughing at her.

As the fallen sun's diffracted rays slipped entirely out of view, the overhead lights kicked on full-blast. Seconds later, as the current song ended, Co-MC Pinkie Pie called the grounds to attention.

"Filli-i-i-ies and gentlecolts! You all feeling epic out there?" The crowd exploded like a fireworks factory. "Well, you think you're getting excited now? We can take this party to the next level--but only after we've put the little ones to bed!" A storm of moans and groans crept through the air. "Heehee! That just means you get to party in your dreams instead!! And you can do whateeeeever you want there! One time I thought in my dream, 'Hm, Pinkie, why can't I just party all the time?' And Dream Pinkie told me back, 'But you can!' And we went partying everywhere--in ancient Saddle Arabia...oh! Then we went dancing on a train! Aaaand then we danced with the dinosaurs. And then we went to space and danced with the Mare on the Moon! And then I danced with a giant cake on the moon!! That was just crazy! And I got pink frosting all over my mane, but it blended in so well that I couldn't tell just by looking, and then there were astronau--"

With a swoop, Ponyville's own royalty, Princess Twilight Sparkle, approached from above and knocked the mic stand over with a gust of wing-blown wind. After a cringe-inducing thump and feedback squeal from the speakers, Twilight righted the stand with her horn and addressed the crowd herself. "Uh, guys...she means we're starting the second half of the party, so"--she flickered from coyness to graceful command--"it's time to clean up the first half, and that also means taking care of everypony who's got school in the morning. We certainly don't want to miss out on the lessons tomorrow has to bring!"

Pinkie swooped back in herself, impossibly giddy, to add: "But if you're staying tonight it's gonna get sooooooooooo magical." Even coming from those family-friendly lips, the last two words dripped unmistakably with sleaze.

She and Twilight then bickered at the mic for a few minutes over whether that was even appropriate to say, although nopony had actually said anything lewd--but does how you say it really matter? In this little magical moment, the crowd died down as foals and a good number of their parents dispersed.

Carrot looked out over the dance floor. She noticed Berry giving her little ones tender hugs and kisses as their hired caretaker and chaperone, a shale-gray Earth pony mare named Charged Up, brought up a small wagon to haul them home. She didn't spot Colgate or her presumed date, but she couldn't help noticing a very excited Rainbow Dash finally approaching the floor. Cheese Sandwich, who had been riding on a giant cheese wheel much of this time, was long gone. Perhaps he and Pinkie didn't see eye to eye on the matter of partying after dark.

Twilight piped up again: "We have a very special guest performer tonight." Pinkie, next to her: "It took a message to Princess Celestia herself to approve the fastest force in Equestria to get here in time." Twilight, dramatically taken aback: "Oh my, Pinkie. The fastest force in Equestria? Sounds pretty amazing!" Pinkie, deadpan: "Wait, you don't know who the Wonderbolts are?"

On that 'cue', a terrific blaze of flight-trail magic striped the skyscape. The blaze was then encased with a corkscrew of others: frosty, zappy, and shiny, all shimmering at a frightful tack, sharply about-facing at the party's rear and coming back in a broader cross-threading corkscrew to encase their own old trails. The three then split up and to each side while the blazing trail finally came back, just inches above the crowd, sending a gust strong enough to blow punch cups and hairdos into disarray. Their trails hung in the night sky, slowly disintegrating--or as it turned out, gently fell on the crowd in light clouds of colored glitter.

While this unexpected overhead party favor held the crowd's full attention, the source of the leading trail had to clear her throat at the mic for anypony to recognize the Wonderbolts' current stage presence. Captain Spitfire, she of the orange-red mane, spoke once enough heads were turned toward her: "Rainbow Dash. Always going big and bold--like I should even be surprised. It's a shame we can't stay--" a deep-blue maned Wonderbolt beside her went "what?" and got a smack in reply "--but we're always glad to give the old fly-by to see you. Keep being awesome--and happy birthaversary!" And then they took off, straight up then curving to an unseen distance behind the stage. Though some were cheering throughout that spectacle, many were just too much in shock; only after leaving did the flying aces receive their fullest celebratory due.

Twilight and Pinkie slowly trotted back from by the stage's curtain. The princess led: "Just...amazing!" The MC followed: "You don't even knooooow amazing! But you're gonna! Yeah! Yeah!" Twilight: "Why, whatever do you--" Pinkie, hungrily stealing the next line, even though it was already hers: "This is just the greatest thing ever! I never thought I'd get to see her perform again! This is gonna be better than maple doughnuts and whipped cream with habanero sprinkles! And she's gonna be everypony's best friend for the night, right here on the stage, and she can take all the cheer you got and give it back to you harder and faster than a Big Mac Attack!" Wait...how family-friendly was she? Some of the crowd started whooping insanely, already anticipating the only one deserving of such an introduction.

Twilight took it back: "Hehe, yeah. So let's give it up for..." In unison: "DEE! JAY! PON-3!!"...with one side dribbling on, "heeheeicantbelieveitohmygoshimsoexcited..."

The excitement explosion before contained much shouting and whooping. This time, however, many had gone to full high screams. Even with the cozier crowd, the roar was just as intense and maybe even more voluminous than any heard before the second half. Though the crowd's limits were already strained by this effort, they went one higher for the performer herself--wheeled out atop a giant pink/blue tank with thousands of lights, whole arrays of lasers, side-shooting streams of fog, hatches that shot out strings of glowsticks and blacklight-lit streamers, and an extremely conspicuous cannon pointed directly at Rainbow Dash. Then the bottom of the tank folded out, and a fully-complemented deejay booth appeared with more mixers, scratch pads, buttons, knobs, and big red levers(?) than any non-superpony could manage. And she slid right down from the top, straddling the over-sized tank cannon for a moment and stirring up the crowd to an entirely different level before falling into place behind the controls.

In the brief lull of the DJ's setup, Berry suddenly appeared back at Carrot's side, offering another cup of "punch". "You seem to have misplaced your drinking vessel, ma'am." The ridiculous politeness made Carrot smile warmly well before any more alcoholic aid was administered--though it was administered quickly enough.

The music-making center of attention then spoke--but it seemed not to be her voice, but rather something electric and synthetic. She moved her mouth, and the tank itself delivered her intention. "What up, Ponyviiiiiille!" The cheers surged once more, totally electrifying the floor. Carrot Top was pushing her lungs for all they were worth. Berry knew better than to try.

"Alright, from the top. Let's spin! This! Shit!!" She pulled one of those red levers, and the cannon lit up in rings, starting at the base and working toward the nozzle. When the very tip finally lit up, there came a great and powerful nothing. Vibrations rattled the very floor itself, with some tiles cracking or peeling from their foundation. The cheese wheel, put away dozens of paces behind the floor in the cannon's direction, utterly exploded, blasting bits mostly away from the party scene but with a few chunks falling toward the back of the crowd. And Rainbow Dash, the honored and targeted guest, along with a half-dozen others behind her, had just combined with the back of the crowd--having been blown clear with inconceivable amounts of invisible force. Piled atop roughly five to ten others, Rainbow bore a goofy, drunken grin and little else. By the time that anyone fully realized that the cause of this was sound, the DJ had already started her first track, one of her recent releases of the rap and dubstep persuasions.

This loud, booming, uncomfortably energetic electronic music took the partying experience and added jet rockets to it--which is somewhat to say, it really improved the situation for experienced rocket racers and masochists. Carrot Top had no experience whatsoever with this, so she was going to throw herself in and prepare for pain. She noticed that others weren't really dancing so much as jumping and contorting madly to the beat. There were a couple of really skilled performers who did something like break-dancing, and it was great to cheer them on. But it just didn't feel the same as a proper thrashing effort all of one's own.

And yet, her persistence paid off. Within only a few tracks, she intuited the point of everything. She was giving her energy to DJ PON-3. She just had to smash and crash and swirl around until there was hardly a spark of life left in her, so that the DJ could know her enthusiasm and she could then be made whole again by the awesomeness in the DJ's reply. Thus, this exhausting act of musical devotion had a note of profound intimacy. And it drove her absolutely wild.

A mare possessed (and, not by chance, of greater-than-usual stamina), Carrot Top bared her soul in rave form. Adorned in several of the glowsticks spewed by the Bass Tank, she unleashed upon the world a whirling dervish of flying-limb, floor-crossing engagement that only picked up with the tempo. As many enthusiastic but less well-adjusted individuals had to take to the sidelines to recuperate, they could only watch her insatiable appetite for bass and beats and drops and hard lyrics and insanity. Dizziness was hardly her concern--she just kept enough wits to avoid crashing into others and let her unbridled heart do the rest. Her method of physical rest was merely to pause the head-shaking and forelimb-waving for a moment, but her body stayed fairly intense and in the moment even then. She did, however, remember on occasion to grab a glass of water from the side stand in order to stay hydrated.

Berry and Colgate, both of whom appreciated raving on the same level but nowhere near with the same enthusiasm anymore, decided to join in a couple times when Andrew W. Neigh was sampled, both not quite half an hour in. They did their best to align to either side of their orange tornado, but "side" didn't have much meaning here. They just tried to shadow her moves as well as they could. Tonight, Carrot was their leader.

As she developed a vague sort of following from strangers, even Rainbow Dash dropped by--of course while fully engaged her own wing-aided brand of triumphant craze--with a "Way to rock!" She then flew up and waved toward the stage, also pointing down toward her partner in partying crime. Ten seconds later, the criminal's punishment due was initiated--execution by bass cannon. Carrot gazed straight toward the cannon and its lighting rings, and she gradually rendered a hyper-smile of the sort that would give most other smiles nightmares.

"HIT ME!" she cried, so high and forcefully that the second word broke entirely and seemed more of a croak.

Colgate, one of many who had not anticipated a second assault from the Wubwaffe, suddenly noticed her fellow BG approaching at about a hundred miles an hour. Carrot had keenly leaned into the blast and was not knocked clean from her hooves; however, Colgate and several others in the cone of effect behind her got abruptly acquainted with her hindquarters as a result.

Righting herself among a pile of plowed ponies, Carrot raised her head and roared with laughter--a healthy but frenzied cackle, so bursting with mirth that it could challenge the DJ's cutting-edge sound system for a moment. After a full deep breath's expression, she fired another salubrious salvo, even slightly louder than the first. This abruptly ended with a squeak as her voice finally gave--along with her consciousness. She crumpled and then came to again seconds later, groggy and weak but still full of wild abandon.

Colgate braced her with worry; they exchanged some words in close quarters, Colgate's mind eased somewhat, and Carrot rested for a few minutes at the water table. But soon the beats pulsed through her once more as she blitzed about on the floor, less refined in motion but not withered in the least. In her fever, she had become one with the night.

At least an hour and a few more choicely aimed Bass Cannons into the madness, Carrot received a tap on the head--just as "Meth is for Monkeys" commenced its drop.

She arrested her groove and searched about, finding a quite familiar face--the mouth of it, at least, until she glanced upward. For several seconds, she wasn't even fully aware of his relevance, being too far gone from higher thought. Indeed, though, she soon knew it to be her newest prospect.

"You're pretty much the belle of the ball, or what have you."

Carrot stared at Drum, wide-eyed, still raving internally. "Join me!" growled something from Carrot's body.

He acted visibly nervous, glancing around and starting to back-pace. Carrot couldn't help but react to such a display, regaining her sympathetic composure and gently trotting back over to him.

"Sorry... Just don't mind me."

"What?" The stream of great stonking beats could have overwhelmed any conversation.

"I'm fine! Let's go talk somewhere!"

A hundred paces taken away from the dance floor only made small talk possible rather than pleasurable. Drum motioned to keep going, out around one of the corners she'd waded through with a quasi-mob hours prior. The shop building muffled the sound well enough and foiled anypony who might look on. Actually, it was quite seriously dark in this part of town, with all of the buildings and their awnings obscuring Luna's light.

Carrot, still not fully disengaged from the rave, regarded the well-built stallion all over and wondered.

"Heh, yep, it's all me," he said, just somewhat too quickly for it to come off as smug.

As her senses came back, she recognized the situation as rather dangerous, being separated from friends and the public eye by an essential stranger. But she had a playful spirit this night.

"So, you dragged me back here to have your way with me?"

"Oh, get a hold of yourself, lass! Do I look like I need to fight unfair?"

"So you do wanna fight..." Her saucy undertones barely even made sense.

Drum braced himself as if to charge at her and snorted loudly. "Snap out of it!!" The anger from her admired certainly caused this thing. She drooped her ears a tad and resigned herself to sitting on the ground before him, still rather dazed.

Then Drum stood at ease and took one firm step forward. "I could have my pick of the lot, if I were to want it badly enough. But this isn't about control. Go on now, take a crack. What do you think caught my eye about you?"

Carrot tried her thoughts. Things didn't make sense quite the way they did before. But she'd also never been in a place like this before.

"You like me and my friends?"

"I don't even know if I really know who your friends are. Try again."

"Hmm..." She jiggled a bit. Then she stood back up and jiggled several bits. "Well, I've been told I have a nice hip sway." This was likely Berry's coaching at work here.

"Hehe, now we're getting somewhere."

Glancing straight upward: "Oh, the luscious hair, too. I spend an hour or two on it some days."

"Though it's definitely taken a beating today, hasn't it?" He gazed into her frayed locks and splayed tresses earned from two days of tussling, tumbling, and tuckering herself on the dance floor.

"Oh...oh yeah, hehe..."

"Hey, don't worry about it." He slowly approached and put a hoof around her upper back, sharing body heat and vibrations along their sides. He politely released after a few seconds and stepped back to resume the face-to-face.

He looked her over carefully in the low light, more like an appraiser of minerals than of derrières. "There's a lot to you, lass. You see, deep down, I really like the gentleness of a mare's touch. Stepping into that embrace, I can feel so at home. A big guy like me needs a break from the whole being-big thing to forget everything and fall into a little bundle of joy. And even if there are so many around who would be their bundle for me, I think that bundle is you. You're so cozy. You're so timid." Half a beat later: "Well, maybe not tonight, but I suppose you need to break out of the usual sometimes too, eh?"

Carrot's confusion finally waned entirely, and she smiled with warmth and some confidence. "I didn't even know what came over me. I was just...it was so great, getting to be me. I didn't even care about anything else."

"Yah. Yah." Drum's head turned away.

Continuing, his eyes totally out of view, revealing only the bright green of his mane in the light of a faraway streetlamp: "What does it mean to be you? I wonder."

Carrot lacked a ready response to this. She just tried to act pensive.

"So, still don't know?"

"Um, I don't know what you're aski--"

"I'm asking if you even know who you are. And you should care!" What could this mean?

Responding to the silence: "Because I care! I care about you! And..." His voice broke ever so slightly. "I did care about you."

Carrot caught a certain message between the lines here, and it shook her resolve to the point of her not even realizing she was pawing gently backward from that disturbed stallion, arching her tail end up like a cornered foal.

"Every week...I came to buy supplies. Supplies I could've bought twice a year instead. You wanted to...'be yourself'. And I wanted you. You were everything I was looking for. So calm...so poised...so supple in the right places, athletic and robust but not so full of muscle. So...tender..." He drew a sharp breath, revealing still-unseen troubles. "I can't find anything like that in the world. I couldn't before you."

He slowly, slowly returned his gaze forward. In the much-increased distance between them, one could only see the glints of the other's eyes. One set hung low, getting tearful; the other tipped monstrously high and canted, already to tears and beyond. His breathing gradually increased in pace, shivering and then slobbering and then slicing the air with...not sadness, not pain...

"And now I never will again!! You've gone and bucked the whole works! 'Carrot's lost his carrot!', they said. But you'll soon wish you'd only lost that!"

One hard pair of hoofbeats. Then another. The third came sooner, and then a fourth sooner still, and then all noise from Drum's corner became barreling thunder.

Carrot Top was still somewhat tired from the night's big event, and it was clear she could not outrun his pace in any state. She just continued to back up and count the last seconds of her life.

About two seconds away, a pair of heads butted hard into Drum's side from the darkness, rolling him clean into a lit lamppost. One of those heads raised and pushed toward his quickly recovering form.

"Tell me, what's my name?" the head commanded.

The pony stood just outside the lamp's light, form outlined but color not quite clear.

"Don't make me say it again!"

Drum stood tall, very tall, previously unseen muscles tensing everywhere, seething and breathing with senseless grotesquerie under full light.

"What is my name?"

Then Drum reared up, nearly high as a house, his neigh a feral bellowing, his form a great green-on-gray volcano. As he came down, the volcano was cooled by a disrupting splash of liquid and ice. The cup from which it came, hanging in mid-air, crunched intensely against the end of his face--along with a solidly planted hoof. A second hoof broke against his right temple a split second later; the third strike came not quite two seconds after that, against the opposite temple, with sweeping force. Drum toppled and crumpled, half-spilled from the lamp light.

"And don't you bucking forget it!"

The three ran off blindly. Berry Punch trailed among them, her forehooves clearly giving her some trouble.

After clearing the scene, the backstreet brawler spoke once more: "Everyone. My place. Now."