> Fear and Loathing in Las Pegasus
>  by TailsIsNotAlone
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> I: Driving to Distraction
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We were somewhere around Barnstow on the edge of the desert when the sugar began to kick in. Like a gryphon invasion, it came in three waves: first the nerves, then the shakes, and finally the Fear. All in rapid succession, so quick that by the time I noticed it I was almost too far gone to stammer a warning. I remember saying something like "yo Pinks, I feel kinda lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a horrible screech all around us and the once friendly skies were filled with what looked like huge bats, all diving and hissing and swarming around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down near Las Pegasus. And a voice that sounded very familiar, yet much too shrill and frightened to be mine, was saying "Holy Celestia! What are these goddess-damned animals?!"

Hugging the steering wheel with my front legs, I struggled to keep the crazy machine on course. My friend had opened up a flask of cider and was humming an unfamiliar song to herself, punctuating each chorus with a chug. She stared up at the sky through a pair of thick sunglasses, not even flinching when one of the leathery little demons shrieked right in her face. "What in the name of rock candy are you so scared of, Dashie? Those are just fruit bats, remember? We saw a gazillion of them back in Ponyville."

"Well, close up that flask until they go away! Besides, it's your turn to drive." I jammed a hoof on the brakes and aimed the Great Red Dragon toward the side of the road. We were traveling in the most awesome carriage I'd ever laid eyes on. Just call it a 'car' for short, the Princess had said. The smartest unicorn scientists are still debating where it came from and how it arrived in this world, but at least we've figured out how to use it. That was all I needed to hear. I like things that are fast, especially myself, and this thing moved like Cloudsdale lightning.

But the San Palomino Desert is vast, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. Hard miles, at that. Very soon we would both be completely wound up. But there was no time to rest, and turning back now would be admitting defeat - something Rainbow Dash never does. We would have to tough it out. Press reservations for the infamous Minty 500 race were already well underway, and we had to get there by four to claim our soundproof suite. A flashy sports magazine in Manehattan had taken care of us, this "car" thing was insured by the Crown, and I was after all a journalist with an obligation to "cover the story."

If that sounds ridiculous, well, it wasn't really my idea. If I had my way, I would be breezing through my Weather Team duties in Ponyville and then catching some Z's on the softest cloud I could find. But becoming an egghead is a sinister process that creeps up on you very slowly. One day you find yourself falling in love with the Daring Do series and reading every part of it you can find, then you start making more and more regular visits to the library, then you end up scribbling down a few things yourself, and before you know it you're being offered money to go out to the most twisted spectacle in Equestrian history and write something about it. 

Naturally there was a catch: I couldn't just fly there. I had to travel overland in this thing because "for our readers, it is not the destination but the journey that matters." I didn't really get it, and I took a little comfort in that; it meant I wasn't a total egghead, not yet. At least I was allowed to bring a friend along. That made the trip a lot more fun, even if said friend insisted on stopping at Dodge City, Appleloosa, the MacIntosh Hills, and her family's rock farm, picking up loads of sweets along the way.

"Now this is the way to travel!" Pinkie Pie said brightly as she stuck her head out from under my seat.

"Whoa!" I jumped back into the passenger's side with a gasp. "Don't startle me like that. I'm already wired."

Pinkie somehow extracted her body from the floor of the car and plopped into the driver's seat in one smooth motion. "Sorry, Rainbow Dash! Wired, huh? You mean you have wires inside you just like the car? That would be weird. Or is it wired? Weird. Wired. Weird. Wired. Weirdwiredweirdwiredweirdwiredweirdwired - "

"Pinkie. We should drive."

"Yup-erooni!" She hit the juice much too hard and the car actually jumped, fishtailing all over the dirt road like a mule gone amok from a bee sting. I held on, closed my eyes and tried to relax. As a journalist, you must keep a professional demeanor at all times, the Princess said ... before chuckling to herself and winking at me. For a monarch whose word was law, she sure was fond of sending mixed messages.

At her behest, the magazine editors had hoofed over 300 bits in advance, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous desserts. The trunk of the car looked like a candy store on wheels. We had two bags of fresh-cut grasses, seventy-five peppered vanilla lemon drops, five sheets of high-powered hay cubes, a salt shaker half-full of pure confectioner's sugar, and a whole galaxy of multicolored cupcakes, donuts, cookies ... and also a quart of hot sauce, a quart of Crystal Empire nectar, a case of cider, a pint of raw Zap Apple Jam and two dozen pieces of rock candy. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but when your best friend has a sweet tooth the size of a mountain, the tendency is to follow her and climb it as high as you can.

Each of these treats was pretty intoxicating in its own right, but it wasn't the sugar that worried me. The only thing that worried me was the salt lick. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a mare in the depths of a sodium binge. And I knew we'd gallop into that rotten stuff pretty soon, probably at the next rest area. We had sampled almost everything else on the drive from Canterlot, and now - yes, it was time for a muzzleful of salt. One good taste of that and the next hundred miles would melt away into a slobbering yet satisfied stupor, but some ponies couldn't stop at just one good taste and that was the danger. The only way to stay alert on salt was to do up a lot of pepper lemon drops - not all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain the focus at ninety miles an hour through Barnstow and reach Las Pegasus before the electric battery ran out.

A sudden cry from Pinkie interrupted my feverish thoughts. "We need some driving music! Dashie, the kazoo!"

She had done the same for me, so I wearily obliged when she extracted the crude instrument from nowhere and shoved it into my hooves. "Right. What should I play?"

"The 'happy birthday' song!!"

I gave her a funny look. "It's not your birthday."

"But it will be in five months, twenty-four days, fifty-eight minutes and two seconds! And the more I hear the 'happy birthday' song, the happier my birthday will be when it finally comes!"

I shrugged, took a deep breath, and blowed Happy Birthday to beat the band - or the bats, as it were. They had been dispersing ever since Pinkie corked the fragrant apple cider, and my bad kazoo playing seemed to scare them off for good. I sucked on one of Bon Bon's chocolate cigars, the miles fell away, and I allowed myself to hope that we would finish our journey with no further delays. Silly Dashie.

Pinkie Pie saw the hitchhiker before I did. I'd been trained all my life to act and react quicker than anypony else, even other pegasi, but never met anyone with senses as acute as hers. "Look, Rainbow Dash, a new friend," she crowed, and before I could mount any argument she was stopped and this poor young MacIntoshian stallion was cantering up to us with a big grin on his face, saying, "Hot damn! I surely never rode in a carriage like this one before!"

"Is that right?" I said pleasantly, trying to suppress a full-body twitch. "Well, I guess you're about ready, eh?"

The kid nodded eagerly as we rode off. His coat was a light pastel green, his cutie mark a hammer. Probably a simple and honest pony looking for work in the city, with no idea what he was getting himself into.

"Don't worry about us; we're your friends," Pinkie Pie said to him with a huge frozen grin, her eyes wide as dinner plates behind the sunglasses. "We're not like the others."

O Celestia, I thought, now the sugar has her too. She's already half around the bend. "No more of that talk," I said sharply. "Or I'll put the poison joke on you." We didn't have any poison joke, but she nodded, seeming to understand. Luckily the noise in the car was so bad with the wind and the kazoo that the kid in the backseat couldn't hear a word we were saying. Or could he?

How long can we maintain? I wondered. Professionalism, normalcy, an air of unsweetened sanity - before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this colt? And what will he think then? This lonesome desert was the last known home of the Maneson family. Will he make that grim connection when I start trembling like a jackhammer from the rush, or when Pinkie cracks open a cider or a jelly donut just to piss off the bats? If so - well, we'll just have to do him like the Crystal Heart did King Sombra - blow him up and bury the pieces. Because there's no way we can turn him loose. He'll report us to the nearest Royal Guard post and they'll run us down like diamond dogs.

Goddess! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced over at Pinkie, but she was actually being quiet and watching the road for once, driving our Great Red Dragon along at a hundred and ten or so. Silence from the backseat.

Maybe I should just shoot the breeze with this stallion after all, I thought. Nothing weird, nothing heavy...I just feel like I should explain what we're doing out here. Put his mind at ease before he starts asking stupid questions, or somehow gets a look in the trunk and freaks out and goes to the royal guard and - whoa nelly! Shut up, sugar; you're making my mind race. Stop thinking weird. Stop thinking heavy. Just ... calm ... down.

I leaned around in the seat and gave him a big friendly smile, meeting his eyes through my translucent orange shades, studying the fine masculine contours of his skull. That's totally normal, right? "By the way, dude, there's one thing you should probably understand."

He looked at me without blinking. Did he catch that? Maybe the noise ...

"You can hear me, right?!" I yelled, trying not to sound hysterical.

He nodded rapidly.

"That's cool," I said proudly, sticking my chest out a bit. "'Cause I want you to know my friend and I are on our way to find the Equestrian Dream. That's why we're in this car. It was the only way to get there. You know what I mean?"

He nodded again, but his eyes were nervous. He's spooked, I thought. He doesn't understand. You've done it now, Dash. He's going to freak and run and squeal and report two crazy mares to the Royal Guard and

Twitch.

Shit. I know he saw that. He must have

Twitch.

seen it. That goddess-damned rush. It's 

Twitchity-twitch.

got me for real now. I knew I should have just kept my mouth shut. Any action, any stimulus just sets it off.

"I want you to know what's up, that's all," I try to reassure him as beads of sweat start to run down my coat. "We're going to meet a mare named Sandy Parchment at the Minty 500. She's our partner, from the magazine. This is a really special assignment, see? Important. Sensitive. Dangerous, and - oh Tartarus, I forgot all about this chocolate cigar. Want to try it? How about a lick of salt?"

"What?" the kid gasps. Bad idea. He's probably not even legal age.

"Never mind. Look, let's cut to the chase, okay? Just three days ago my friend and I were sitting on top of a nice, fluffy cumulus in Cloudsdale's famous Skyline Hotel."

Pinkie Pie chimes in. "Actually, you were sitting on top of it. I was sitting on the underside."

"Right. We had just finished saving all Equestria for ... was it the tenth time? Fifteenth? Help me out."

"Seventeen and a half!" Pinkie says.

"And we were just relaxing there when this uniformed quagga flew up to me with a royal letter and said, 'This must be the message you've been waiting for all this time, miss'." I fumbled with the flask, taking a huge gulp and slamming the cork back in. "And you know what? He was totally right! I was expecting that message, but I didn't know where it would come from. You with me so far?"

The young unicorn's face was a mask of pure bewilderment. My twitching became more pronounced. I was starting to get annoyed. Starting to get antsy. What was so confusing about this?

"I want you to understand," I sputtered testily, "that this mare at the wheel is not just my best friend. She's not just some earth pony! We're all individuals here, see? You don't stereotype, do you, kid?"

"Why, no ma'am!" The stallion shook his head again, drawing back slightly as I stuck my head further over the seat.

"This mare is like nopony else. She's the only one who loves the extreme like I do. I couldn't make this trip without her. This mare ... is a Pie."

"Sh-she ... your friend is a ... dessert?"

Dessert. Sweets. Oh delectable sugar, how I need more of you. Wait. What?! What's he saying? Is he messing with my head? Is he saying he knows what we have in the trunk? Is he one of those twisted, fascist dieticians?! No, I tell myself. He doesn't know that Pie is Pinkie's last name, that's all. He's not dangerous, just ignorant. Steady, now ... stop twitching! Even my wings are doing it now. My feathers are getting ruffled and damp from the heat.

"No! You need to understand, dude! This is important! This is a true story! Like Daring Do, you know? I'm writing it down! It's a story, but it's real! You get that?" I whacked the back of the driver's seat with my hoof. The car swerved drunkenly all over the road, then straightened out. Pinkie shrieked: "Dashie, you're awesome too, but I'm driving! And tell the sky to stop melting!" The kid in the back looked about ready to jump right out of the car and take his chances.

Our vibes were getting weird, getting heavy - but why? I wasn't trying to scare him off. I was just puzzled, frustrated. Was there no communication in this car? Had we deteriorated into beasts of burden?

Because my story was all true; I was sure of it. And it was necessary, I felt, to make the purpose of our mission absolutely clear. We really were sitting there in the Skyline for hours and hours, downing butterscotch éclairs with a syrup and hot sauce glaze. Pinkie was pulling her usual tricks, sitting on the underside of the cloud, sticking her head up over the top and making faces. When I yelled at her to get her flanks up here before she fell and hurt herself because that would be totally not cool, she finally sat still, and we exchanged long and awkward glances over bottomless mugs of rainbow fizz. When the message came, I was ready for a distraction.

The quagga approached our table with great caution, for some reason, and when he gave me the letter I said nothing - merely read it carefully and nodded. I turned to face my friend, who was now spinning her tail and hovering upside down in midair. "It's from the Crown," I said flatly. "They want me to go to Las Pegasus on the double. Write an article for some magazine. Take a form of transportation no pony has ever used before. Bring a friend with a sense of humor who can talk me down from the Fear."

Pinkie Pie said nothing for a moment, then suddenly came alive and landed cat-like on her hooves. "Oh ... my ... goddesses!" she exclaimed. "I'm a friend with a sense of humor who can talk you down from the Fear! We'll have to come prepared."

"Totally," I gave her a starry-eyed grin. "Anything worth doing is worth doing right! We'll need some decent equipment and plenty of bits on hoof - if only for sweets and some decent scrolls."

"They want you to write something? What about?!"

"The new Minty 500," I said reverently. "It's not just any pony-and-gryphon race in the desert. It's the pony-and-gryphon race in the desert. Even the Wonderbolts will be there! It's this awesomely fantastic spectacle by some rich pony named Gladmane, at least that's what the Princess' letter says."

Pinkie Pie stared straight ahead with grim intensity. "We are so there ... that we're not even there anymore."

She snagged the tray of remaining éclairs and swallowed them whole.

I smiled. "I'll call Manehattan for some cash."
> II: Angels with Candy-Coated Souls
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The mare at the sporting magazine's Manehattan headquarters was not helpful. First she claimed to have no idea who I was; then she said she wasn't aware of any Minty 500 or the article I needed to write about it, and by that time I was pouring sweat. I shoved Celestia's letter onto her desk, and after reading it impatiently, she at last gave me a grudging advance check for 300 bits. I have never been able to properly explain myself to pencil-pushers. Pay no attention to anyone who asks you to "wait a moment" or "calm down" or "fill out this form" or "please stop stealing our sugar cubes." These are delaying tactics. Ponies like that are just trying to hold you down. They don't understand the urge - the joy of flight, the shameful thrill of encroaching eggheadism, the sheer buoyant pleasure of a life where it's always time for dessert. 

Neither did I, once. I used to think I was the coolest filly alive, but I was square as a bale of hay 'til I got to know Pinkie Pie. She hooked me up and strung me out; never a bad trip, never a confection I regretted consuming. I've tried to explain it to Twilight Sparkle and Applejack and some other friends of mine. But they just look at me as if I'm crazy, the same as this hitchhiker of ours, and ... Tirek's maw, what if I am crazy? A mad beast, drooling with lust for all things esculent and saccharine, impossible to reason with, a menace to pony society? "She who makes a beast of herself gets rid of the pain of being a pony," one of the books in Twilight's old library said. But civilization has its uses, and to function in it one must follow rules - not religiously, but enough to keep everypony else off your back.

I flew right out of the magazine office through an open window and dove gracefully into our futuristic carriage, where Pinkie Pie sat waiting.

"This is all they gave us?" she said, her ears drooping slightly. "But that will never be enough - not unless we have access to something really crazy, like unlimited credit from the Crown."

I assured her we would, and showed her the royal traveler's checks given to me by the Princess. "Celestia would never hang us out to dry! Don't worry about it, Pinks. Have a little faith in the goodness of ponykind. Just hours ago we were sitting in that hotel, dead broke and exhausted, when a royal message arrives with orders from a total stranger in Manehattan requesting my journalistic services; then they send me straight over here where another total stranger gives me 300 bits for no reason at all ... this is the Equestrian Dream in action! We'd be fools not to ride this thermal as high as it can take us!"

There was no good way to prepare for a trip like this, I told her, because a trip like this had never been taken before. All we could do was wing it: take all the mind-bending confections we could carry and screech off across the desert to cover the story. But what was the story? Nopony had bothered to say. Of course it must somehow relate to the Minty 500, but beyond that what was our angle? We would have to come up with our own. Choose your own direction or get taken for a ride, my father always said to me. Free enterprise. Free will. An adventure limited only by our own imaginations.

Pure gonzo journalism.





I am still vaguely haunted by that green stallion's claim that he "surely never rode in a carriage like this one before." Neither had Pinkie and I, and who's to say we deserved the privilege? I felt like King Boreas. I was tempted to pull over once we reached the city limits and draw up some kind of common-law contract whereby we could just give him the car and divest ourselves of the responsibility. But this manic notion passed quickly. Even in my own compromised judgment, I knew this was not practical. Besides, I had plans for this car. Clear visions of blazing into Las Pegasus in the baddest carriage ever built, maybe doing some serious drag racing ... screeching up to a stoplight by the Ponet Fantastique and start shouting at the traffic: "All right, you gutless changelings! You pansies! When this goddess-damned light turns green, I'm gonna blow every one of you wimps off this road!"

Right. Challenge the bastards on their own turf. Hit the juice pedal with a flask of the finest fermented cider on one hoof,  jabbing the horn ferociously ... red eyes insanely dilated behind these gold-rimmed greaser shades, howling gibberish ... a genuinely dangerous drunk, crusted with salt and cookie crumbs, trembling with terminal psychosis, waiting for the light to change ...

How often does a chance like that come around? Especially now, when we're breeding a lost generation of emotional cripples? They try to lock every door in your mind before you can even peek through the cracks, and make you as joyless and bored as they are. Twilight Sparkle never told me the true significance of Star Swirl the Bearded's work; I had to discover it for myself. Oh, he didn't just write about magical theory, young foals. He also wrote about society, about life, about the dangers of living in a bubble and closing the mind to good things - and evil things. The less you experience, the less you challenge yourself, the more vulnerable you are to the Tireks and Chrysalises and King Sombras of the world. You can't always count on the Elements of Harmony to come down and save you. So if you do happen to be stranded on the side of a dusty road one day, and the ride you flag down happens to be a snazzy red convertible carrying two deranged dessert-swilling fiends, remember that the true danger isn't them. It's the helplessness you have learned and allowed to fester, the inability to cope with extremes.

Our whole trip out here was one big extreme. It was a gross, clumsy, physical salute to the dazzling possibilities of life in this world - but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that. Grit, and cupcake frosting.

Pinkie Pie understood this, in her own roundabout way; she'd been defying boundaries before she even learned what they were, rejecting any and all limits to her potential with a giggle and a cheeky grin. But our hitchhiker was not an easy pony to reach. He said he understood, but I could see in his eyes that he didn't. He was lying to me.

The car suddenly veered off the road and skidded into a patch of loose gravel. I was thrown against the dashboard. Pinkie was slumped forward over the wheel. "What's going on?" I yelled. "We can't stop here. This is fruit bat country!"

"My heart," she groaned. "Where's the medicine?"

"You don't need heart med ... oh. Right. I'll hook you up." I flapped around to the back of the car, opened the trunk just wide enough so that I (not the kid) could see inside, removed the kit-bag and fished out a few honey-cured hay cubes. The stallion stared. "It's okay. This mare has a bad heart. It hurts when she goes too long without tasting the sweetness of life. But I've got the cure; just sit tight." I put a comforting front leg behind Pinkie's head and fed her one of the cubes as her fluffy mane tickled my coat. 

She chewed and swallowed with a blissful smile. Moments later she jerked and flailed her hooves, staring straight up at the sun and nearly tumbling into the back. "Play the kazoo, Dashie! Give my heart a rhythm to beat to! Volume! Clarity! Sonic friendship!"

"Not so loud!" I barked. "And don't tell me what your treatment plan is. You're talking to a doctor of journalism!"

Pinkie Pie was laughing out of control. "Oh, Dashie, what are we doing in this giant oven of a desert? Why would anypony ever come out here? To party? To gamble? You can throw a party anywhere, and you're gambling with your life as soon as you clear the MacIntosh Hills. We must be loco in the coco. Somepony call the guard! We need help!"

"Don't mind this cream puff," I told the hitchhiker. "She's off her medicine. You see, we're both doctors of journalism, and we're heading out to Las Pegasus to cover a horse race. The great horse race of life! You have to gamble with it before you can understand it. But try to tell that to those damn gryphons!" And then the sugar twitches started anew, and the twitches turned into fits of convulsive laughter ...

My friend turned around to face the stallion, pushing up her shades to reveal the mad primordial gleam of self-awareness within. "The truth is," she said in an exaggerated whisper, "we're going to the Minty 500 to find a gryphon named Grampa Gruff. I've known him for years, but he stole two bits from us. You know what that means, right?!"

I would have shut her up, but nopony can turn off Pinkie Pie when she really gets going, and I was helpless with laughter anyway. What were we doing out here, anyway? Going insane? I had to admit it was the perfect spot for a full-blown crack-up.

"It means Gruff's gonna get snuffed!" Pinkie raved at the petrified kid in the backseat. "He's gonna get his just desserts!"

"With extra frosting!" I blurted out, breathlessly. "That money-grubbing shyster won't get away with this! What's happening to this country when a filthy-feathered old wheezer like that can extort money, kidnap a doctor of journalism and try to talk her to death?! Tartarus on earth, that's what! Judgment day is coming, and we're your saviors! See my wings? See her halo of pink hair? What more do you need?"

"We are divinity!" Pinkie howled, laughing so hard she was tearing up. "And we taste like it too! Come up here and find out, stallion!"

The young unicorn was climbing frantically out of the backseat and scrambling down over the trunk lid, his face a blushing mask of terror. "Thanks for the ride," he yelled as he backed away. "No really! You two ladies sure are nice, but, um ... I've gone as far as I need to go! Thanks a lot!" His hooves hit the dirt and he started running back down the road. Out in the middle of the desert, without a tree in sight.

"Wait a minute," I yelled. "Come back here and get some cider." But apparently he couldn't hear me. I shrugged and trumpeted a solo on the kazoo, serenading his unexpected departure.

"Good riddance, Dashie," said my friend. "We had a real freak on our hooves. That colt made me nervous. Did you see his eyes?"

"You sure run into some weird ponies these days," I chuckled, opening the passenger door. "Move over. I'll drive. We have to get to the city before that kid puts the guard on our tails."

"Aww, that'll be hours!" Pinkie said, but she moved over anyway. "He's a hundred miles from anywhere."

"So are we." I flew around to the driver's seat and got in. "Hang on," I yelled as the wind-scream took over again; I stomped on the accelerator and we continued whirring down the road. "We have to get to the Minty Hotel by four. Otherwise we lose our press pass and we might have to pay for our room."

She nodded. "But let's forget that horse hockey about the Great Equestrian Dream," she said. "The important thing is the Great Pinkie-Dashian Dream." She reached into the kit-bag, fumbling out the salt shaker of confectioner's sugar. Opening it. Spilling it. Then crying out and flailing pitifully at the air, as our fine white dust blew across the country like a twister and was gone. "Oh, nuts!" she moaned as her mane dropped. "Did you see what Celestia just did to us?"

"Celestia didn't do that, you clumsy mule!" I shouted. "You did it! You're a fucking dietician, aren't you?! I was on to you from the start!"

"Don't say such silly things, Dashie," Pinkie growled. "Sir Lintsalot and Madame le Flour might get upset with you."

I blew a raspberry, still fuming. Las Pegasus was just up ahead. I could see the overdeveloped mess of clouds rising from the desert dust-haze: the Ponet Fantastique, the Lucky Horseshoe, Trenderhoof's Tavern and Seabiscuit's Palace, pale rectangles looming ominously in the sky. We had thirty minutes left; it was going to be a close shave. Our goal was the big light green tower of the Minty Hotel, downtown - and if we didn't get there before we lost all control of ourselves, the San Palomino Stable, one of the larger jailhouses in Equestria. I could make it, though. No problem, no sweat. There was just one thing I needed to calm my nerves, to counteract the sugar rush, to steady myself before we steered ourselves up the cloud-ramp.

A big, long, dreamy lick of salt.






KILL THE LIES THAT HURT MOST AND THE
TRUTH WILL DIE PAINLESSLY


This quote is scrawled wildly on one of my scrolls from the Minty Hotel. I have no idea what it means except that it sounds vaguely like something Star Swirl would have written; I was thinking of his work at the time, when I wasn't stumbling through a world of wide-awake nightmares. That was another era. Many things have changed since his day. And now I was in Las Pegasus, the city of bartered souls and wasted bits, as the racing sports editor of this fine slick magazine that sent me out here in the Great Red Dragon for some reason nopony claimed to understand. "Just check it out," they said, "and we'll take it from there ... "

Indeed. Check it out. How complicated could that be? Well, I won't beat around the bush. When we finally reached the hotel it became apparent that I had overindulged, as they say; took a much longer lick of a much more potent block than I should have, and now everything was a mass of bleary shadows that pulsed and jabbered nonsensically. I knew I was in no shape to deal artfully with the registration procedure. We were forced to stand in line with the other press ponies - which turned out to be very tough under the circumstances. I kept telling myself: "Be quiet, be calm, lean on Pinkie ... speak only when spoken to; name, rank, and publication, nothing else ... ignore the effects, pretend nothing unusual is happening and that the bellcolt taking our luggage isn't growing scales ... goddess, he really is! Does he know? Should I tell him?!"

I won't attempt to describe my terror when I finally reached the front desk and began babbling at the clerk, trying to remember my pen name. All my well-rehearsed lines withered to barely connected syllables under that earth mare's stony gaze. "Wazzup ... Minty? I mean, um ... hotel pony. I'm Rainbow Blitz. I mean, Aurora Dash. I mean ... Aurora Blitz. That's it. Totally on the list, you know it. That's for sure. Full coverage, reporting on the Pinkie-Dashian Dream, the magazine, you know? Centerfolds of hoofball centers, yes ma'am. The Princess knows me. Of course this mare with me is not on the list, but she's my supplier. I mean, driver. Uh, moral support. Yeah. Just check the list and you'll see ... a bunch of mimeographed letters, and ... my name. What's the score here? What's next?"

The mare never blinked. "Your room's not quite ready," she said. "But there's somepony looking for you."

"No!" I shouted. "What? Why?! We haven't done anything yet! Did that damn stallion snitch? What did he tell you?! It's lies, all lies! We - mmmmph," I finished as Pinkie Pie helpfully clapped a hoof over my mouth. I slumped nervously over the top of the desk and sagged toward her as she held out the envelope, but I couldn't accept it. The mare's face was actually changing, warping; from well-groomed gray coat to shiny green, blunt muzzle to pointed snout and a forked tongue. It snaked out to taste my fear, drooling hungrily ... deadly poison! I jerked my hoof away just in time, reeling back into Pinkie as she stepped forward and accepted the envelope. The drops of venom fell smoking and sizzling on the wooden surface. Mare in the Moon, what was that stuff?!

"I'll take care of this," she said cheerfully to the lizard mare. "This mare is the best young flier in Equestria and a super-awesome journalisticator! She has a bad heart, but I brought plenty of medicine. My name is Doctor Gonzo. Prepare our suite at once, please, with extra extra mints on the pillows. We'll wait in the bar."

The clerk shrugged as she led me away. I suppose in a floating city full of half-mad zombified slot jockeys, no one really notices a salt freak. We struggled through the bustling lobby and found two stools at the bar. I sat in mine only after verifying that there were no spikes hidden inside the cushion, waiting to make bloody mulch out of my hindquarters. That was just the kind of demented trick that Grampa Gruff would pull. My friend ordered two 'Minty juleps' and a dish of gumdrops, which I choked down nervously as she opened the envelope.

"Hmmmmmmmmm." She scowled at it through the magnifying glass she must have whipped out when I wasn't looking. "If I'm not mistaken, this ... " She gummed the paper, sniffed inside the envelope, and stared at the message upside down. " ... is a letter."

I groaned.

"Hey, good detective work takes time," Pinkie pouted. She studied the words even more closely. " 'Where in Tartarus are you girls? Meet me in Room 420 and step on it. Sandy Parchment'. Do we know her?"

I swayed slightly on my stool. Sandy Parchment? The name rang a bell, but I couldn't remember; couldn't focus. The bar was turning into a veritable house of horrors, with sickening things happening all around us. Right next to me a massive reptile in a third-rate leisure suit was knawing messily on a mare's neck, turning the carpet into a blood-soaked sponge; impossible to walk on, no traction at all.

"You'd better get our hooves shod with cleats," I whispered, "If we want to get out of this room alive. All these lizards don't have any trouble moving around, do they? That's because they've got claws on their feet, lucky bastards. Herbivores like us just have to make do."

"You think it's weird in here? Wait 'til you see what's happening in the elevators." She shuddered and gestured toward the gleaming metal doors. "Two words: mu ... zak. It's the worst thing in the whole wide world. My hair straightens every time I hear it. Where's our kazoo?"

I shook my head. "Forget that! What about our room? And the cleats? We're right in the middle of a fucking reptile exhibit! And ponies are serving booze to these goddess-forsaken things! They'll pump us full of poison, wait for us to die, claw us to shreds and then fight over the pieces."

"I dunno - they look pretty much like regular ponies to me, unless ... what if they're all lizards wearing really convincing pony costumes?!" Pinkie's eyes got big and watery. "If they are, you'll save me, right? You'll pick me up and fly me out of here."

I swallowed the final gumdrop, finishing what might very well be my last meal, and stared back at her. "I'll fly you as far as it takes," I said softly.

She smiled gratefully. If that was the last thing I ever saw tonight, at least it was something good.

When green, scaly death did not immediately follow, I took another cautious look around and saw a group that seemed to be watching us. Their teeth flashed dully, dripping blood. Apparently they'd already dined. Maybe that made them less dangerous than the others. "Look at that bunch over there. I think they've spotted us!"

"That's the press table, Dashie. That's where you have to sign in for your credential thingies so they'll let us in with the other reporters." She took a sidelong glance across the room. "Let's get it over with. Just stand up and follow me. Put your hoof on my back. We'll get your pass, get our room, you'll come down soon and everything's gonna be okay. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay," she tittered, and led me gently over in the direction of the table. Somehow we managed to walk through the pools of blood without slipping or even staining our hooves. The room was a blur. As I moved the edges of the lizards' bodies seemed to disintegrate, exposing cold sinew and bone. I fought down a wave of nausea and looked away. We couldn't let it end here. The job must be completed. Wonderbolts-in-training never surrender!

Follow the sweet-smelling pink thing, I told myself as I trotted through a low-lit den of monstrosities. That way lies salvation.
> III: A Horse Race ... Special Guests ... The Wheel Never Stops
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We finally got into our suite around dusk. I would have complained, but any kind of shelter was a relief after the zoo in the bar and the soul-sapping elevator music. My friend wasted no time ordering four seasoned watercress sandwiches, four fruit cocktails, and some ice-cold milk. "Vitamins," she explained. "Gotta take 'em sometime."

I agreed. By this time the salt was wearing off and my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The waiter from room service had suspiciously beady eyes and a narrow muzzle, but maybe that was how he looked every day. At any rate, I was no longer seeing full-fledged reptilian freaks of nature rampaging through the halls in search of equine prey. The only thing bothering me now was a gargantuan neon sign outside the window that obscured our view of the sunset. Dozens of multicolored lights running on a complicated track, bizarre lettering that could barely be read; the electric hum was enough to make my teeth tingle.

An amazed gasp from Pinkie Pie as she seemed to magically appear next to me. "Dashie, look! It's a huge electric snake in the sky! And it's coming right at us!"

I threw an arm around her withers. "Shhh. It's alright, Pinks. Let's just get away from the window and relax."

"Not yet," she said, peering suspiciously at the sign and munching one of the sandwiches. "I want to study its habits."

I shrugged and pulled the drapes open the rest of the way. They were pastel-colored and cheap-looking, like the rest of the room. "Knock yourself out. I gotta get some of that fruit."

"Yeah, you should get that icky-sicky taste out of your mouth. Lucky they have good room service here, huh? I don't think they'll be letting you back in the bar anytime soon."

I blushed a little and rubbed a front hoof through my mane. "Aw, c'mon. I wasn't that bad, was I?"

"Well, let's see," Pinkie produced a large checklist on a clipboard. "You yelled at the clerk, you couldn't walk by yourself, you were seeing pony-eating lizards, your eyes were all googly, and you tossed your cookies in the elevator. Yep! Worst check-in ever."

"I guess so. But hey, at least we got my press pass, right?"

"Sure. They would've done anything to get you out of there. I could've held them up for donuts! Speaking of sugar, that scene really took me out of my rush. Where's the rock candy?"

I swallowed some green grapes and wild strawberries, gesturing to the kit-bag on one of the beds. "Just take it easy, okay? I have to get some sleep tonight. The race starts at nine."

She tossed a huge chunk of Maud's finest into her mouth and bit down with a crunch that everypony on our floor must have heard. I grimaced and flitted over to the other bed, where I burrowed under the covers and into the embrace of Luna.

Ahh, Luna. The night will last forever, she said when we first met. It feels like so long ago that we leaned over that starless precipice; a broken promise, thanks to me and my friends. We celebrated like royalty. A sincere "thank you" from the Princess herself, congratulations from all our neighbors for saving the world ... chalk up one for the good guys, right? Yet there was a deeply unsettling moment when I suddenly jerked awake - that night and many nights since - pondering why I'd still seen the Fear in some of those ponies' eyes. It stumped me at the time. But after hanging out with Twilight and reading all those books, I think I understand now ...

Too soon to write about that, though, and too late to worry about it. I rolled over and saw my friend in the other bed - finally at rest, lying on her back surrounded with crumbs from a dozen sweets, mumbling happily to herself. I smiled and drifted back to sleep.





The racers were ready at dawn and unexpectedly, so was I. Fine, merciless sunrise over the desert. Very tense. But the race didn't start until nine, leaving us with three long, grimy hours to kill in the casino next to the track.

The bar opened at seven. There was also a "koffee and doenut canteen" in the bunker, but those of us who had been up all night in places like Seabiscuit's Palace were in no mood for that. We wanted strong drink. Our tempers were getting ugly and there were at least two hundred of us, so they opened the bar early. By eight-thirty there were big crowds around the crap tables. The place was full of noise and drunken shouting.

A bony, middle-aged brown earth pony boomed up to the counter and yelled, "Damn! What day is this - Saturday?"

"More like Sunday," someone yelled.

"That's a bitch, ain't it?" the loudmouth bellowed at no one in particular. "Last night I was back home in Fillydelphia and somepony said they were running the first Minty 500 today! Ponies and gryphons! So I says to my old lady, 'well, I'm going'." He laughed. "So she starts giving me crap about it, and then we get in a fight, and next thing I knew two stallions I never even seen before were draggin' me out on the sidewalk. Celestia! They beat me stupid!" 

He cackled again, talking into the crowd and not seeming to care who listened. He reminded me of myself five or ten years ago. "So one of 'em says 'where you going?' And I says 'Las Pegasus, to the Minty!' So they gave me ten bits and a ride down to the train station ... " He paused. "At least, I think it was them ... "

"Well, anyway, here I am. Tartarus, that was a long night! Thought that damned ride would never end! But when I woke up it was dawn and I was in downtown Pegasus and for a minute I didn't know what the hell I was doin' here. All I could think was, 'here we go again. Who's divorced me this time?!' But then I remembered, by the Sun ... the Minty 500! And I tell ya, I don't care who wins or loses; it's wonderful to be here, folks ... "

Nopony argued with him. We all understood. In some circles, dangerous desert races are a far, far better thing than the Summer Sun Celebration or the Grand Galloping Gala. This one already seems to be attracting a very different breed. Our guy with the booming voice was definitely among them and, for that matter, so were we.

A correspondent from the Canterlot Chronicle nodded sympathetically and screamed at the bartender, "I'll drink to that!"

"Me too," I croaked, still a bit groggy. "Spiced hard cider! A race like this deserves a damn fine buzz."

"I'll take one too, more hard and less cider!" the Chronicle reporter slurred. He was sliding off the bar onto his haunches, but still speaking with definite authority. "This is a historic moment in sport. It may never come again!" Then his voice seemed to break. "I once covered the Equestria Games," he muttered. "But it was nothing like this."

A frog-eyed mare chafed feverishly at his barrel. "Stand up!" she pleaded. "Please stand up! You'd be a very attractive stallion if you'd just stand up!"

He laughed distractedly. "Listen, madam, I'm damn near intolerably attractive down here where I am. You'd go crazy if I stood up!"

The mare kept pulling at him. She'd been sighing and mugging at him for two hours and now she was making her move. But this guy wanted no part of it; he just slumped deeper into his crouch.

I turned away. It was too horrible. These ponies were supposed to be the cream of the free Equestrian press, and here was a Canterlot sportswriter smashed out of his skull before nine A.M. We were gathered here for a very special assignment, and when it comes to things like this, you don't fool around. Much.

But now - even before the event got underway - there were signs that we all might be losing control of the situation. Here we were on this cool bright dawn in the desert, hunkered down ten miles out of Las Pegasus in some greasy barsino (Pinkie's word for it: "it's a bar but it's a casino 'cause there are drinks at the slots and slots at the bar - it's a barsino") ... and we were already very disorganized. 

Out in the slowly rising heat, the lunatics were trading old stories and fiddling with their gear. A hundred seasoned pony runners testing their hooves, a hundred professional gryphon fliers stretching their wings. Preventative measures were taken against cheating; pegasi raced with their wings bound, and unicorns had their horns capped. They would race in pairs, fifty teams in all, with the gryphon on the pony's back for the first half and the pony flying on the gryphon's back for the second. The track would be clearly marked, checkpoints with feed and water every five miles. The first ten teams blasted off at the stroke of nine. It was extremely exciting and we all ran to the grungy dining room area re-purposed as a "press box" to watch, jostling for a good view at the big windows. The flag went down and these poor buggers rumbled off and galloped into the first turn, saddled with gryphons who leaned forward and held on with all their might; then somepony grabbed the lead (a purple stallion as I recall, with the strongest legs I'd ever seen), and a cheer went up as he led the way into a cloud of dust.

"Well, that's that," somepony said. "They'll be back around in an hour or so. Let's go back to the bar."

Screw that. Not yet. There were something like forty more teams waiting to start. They went off ten at a time, every two minutes. At first it was possible to see them as far as three hundred strides away from the starting line, but this visibility didn't last. The third line of racers disappeared into the haze about a hundred and fifty strides from our position, and by that time the mammoth dust cloud that would hang over the land for the next two days was already formed up solid. A great moment in sports, just as the drunk from the Chronicle said; a symbol of the new trade partnership between Equestria and Gryphonstone. I hastily scribbled a lead about it, then stopped, realizing that every single reporter in this room was probably writing more or less the same thing. The Crown and the magazine, I suspected, did not send me out here just so I could turn in a generic article with some canned message of reconciliation. They wanted the experience, the nitty-gritty ... the journey. Now I began to understand.

By noon it was hard to see the starting line from the barsino, just fifty strides away in the blazing sun. The idea of trying to "cover this race" in any conventional press-sense was ridiculous. It was like trying to keep track of the Running of the Leaves from the Canterlot Mountains, with cataracts. I felt it was time to reconsider this whole situation. The race was underway, yes, and we had witnessed the start. But what now? Rent a balloon? Take the Great Red Dragon without adequate supplies? Wander out into the dunes and watch these fools race past the checkpoints? All I could do from there was keep track of who was in the lead and who was behind, and that was the racing officials' job, with telegrams being wired back to the press box every fifteen minutes. So what was the point? Tartarus, I wished I was in the damn thing! My wings itched the whole time. If Gilda or even her demented Grampa Gruff himself had shown up, I would have thrown them on my back and taken off. At least then I would get some lasting entertainment out of the race itself, and it might have been a better story too ...

By nine-thirty the teams were spread out all over the course. They reached the second lap around ten, with ponies and gryphons changing places and flying headlong into another brutal hour of madness in dust-blind limbo. Pinkie was so bored that after a while she started having long, vehement sociological debates with herself; I was so bored that I actually listened. Suffice it to say I'll never look at a layer cake again without thinking of class stratification. The second and final lap finished around eleven, with the team of Lightning Dust the pegasus and Girardot the gryphon coming in first. They were so surrounded by other reporters that I didn't even try to interview them, and besides, I knew Lightning. Bad vibes. If I knew she was entering I would've bet money on her. I love to win, but when you talk about mares who have to win, who make a point of being Absolutely Fucking Ruthless about it, she's at the top of the list.

And so much for that. Let her be somepony else's story. My story was leading me back up to the city limits, to the flashing lights, to the improbable odds - to the very first den of fiscal iniquity that looked Right.





Big-time gambling is a very heavy business. You can lose a fortune easily enough to the crooks in the East, but Las Pegasus makes Manehattan look like your friendly neighborhood market. For a loser, the L.P. is the meanest town on earth. And until about a year ago, there was a giant billboard on the outskirts that read:


DON'T GAMBLE WITH YOUR HEALTH!
TOGETHER, WE CAN WIN THE FIGHT
AGAINST SUGAR & SODIUM ABUSE!


So it goes without saying that we never felt quite at ease driving around this town in a vehicle that drew gawkers everywhere we went, with a trunk full of dangerously rich sugars and exotic salts. But the story must be covered, no matter where it takes you or what it becomes, and we weren't about to let a bunch of health nuts stand in our way.

We drove over to the Lucky Horseshoe to see the Sapphire Shores concert. Not for any particular reason - it was just one of a few dozen marquees that caught my eye. The Pony of Pop had lost some of her luster in recent years. She was never a great musician per se, and with fresh new stars like Countess Coloratura capturing the public's attention, she was almost an afterthought. But nopony cares in Las Pegasus. As long as you're a decent singer, you can get booked here by falling out of a cart. All they want is vaguely pleasant background noise: an act good enough to draw the crowds, but not so good that it distracts them from gambling away their children's college fund. Real bands like the Saddlesores or the Mares of Thrace are not invited here. You have to bring them along with your gramophone. Fortunately Pinkie and I were covered; as we drove up to the casino we had a passionate, sugar-fueled argument over which record we should listen to first when we got back to our room that night.

Suddenly ponies were screaming at us. We were in trouble. Alarm bells in my head, blaring silently. Two storm troopers wearing red and gold jackets loomed menacingly over the hood: "What the hay are you doing? You can't park here!"

"Why not?" I demanded. It seemed like the perfect spot: attractive, prominent, plenty of room even for a carriage as long as the Dragon. I'd been looking for somewhere to park for a very long time, too long. In fact I'd been about ready to give up and look for a less busy casino ... but then, yes, we found this space.

Which turned out to be the sidewalk in front of the main entrance. I had run over so many curbs by then, my senses pleasantly numbed by chocolate fudge cupcakes with extra vanilla bean frosting, that I failed to even notice this last one. So now we found ourselves in a position that was hard to explain: blocking the front walk, angry mares yelling at us, bad confusion ...

Pinkie Pie didn't even blink. She was out of the car in a flash, waving a twenty-bit coin. "Listen up, everypony: we want this carriage parked on the double! No, on the triple! We're besties with Sapphire! She comes to Ponyville to see us! We know the pony who designed the very outfit Sapphire is wearing right now! We're like this!" She clopped her two front hooves together. The coin went flying into the air and as we all looked on momentarily hypnotized, it fell perfectly into the front pocket of a casino employee.

The tension dissipated. "Okay, okay ... we'll take care of it, miss ... " And she gave us a parking stub.

"Holy shit!" I whispered to Pinkie as we hurried, laughing breathlessly, into the lobby. "How did you do that?"

"Well, I held up a twenty-bit coin. Then I said 'listen up, everypony: we want this carriage parked on the double! No, the triple!' Then I said - "

"Never mind," I held up a hoof. "Anyway, that was amazing! You sure are a quick thinker."

"Aww. Thanks Dashie!" she beamed. "But you still owe me twenty bits."

I shrugged and gave over the money. This garish, red-carpeted lobby of the Lucky Horseshoe was no place to haggle about small bribes for the valet. This was Fancy Pants' turf. Filthy Rich's. The place reeked of fresh remodeling, polish from the gleaming hardwood floors, and plastic palm trees; a posh refuge for big spenders, which we definitely were not. I felt out of place, but I also had that pleasant little tingle a foal feels when she's getting away with something naughty. What was I worried for? I was the one and only Rainbow Dash, and my friend could pop up anywhere she wanted, invited or not. 

We trotted to the Grand Ballroom full of confidence, only to find another phalanx of ponies trying to shoo us away. We were too late, said a pegasus in a wine-colored tuxedo; the house was already full, no seats available at any price. I was prepared to offer a bribe of Sweet Apple Acres' finest - that name carries some weight in certain quarters of Equestria - but there was no need, as Pinkie took over once again.

"Oh, never mind seats!" she giggled as if it were the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. "We're old friends of Sapphire's! Crown-tested, Princess-approved. Don't mind us, we'll just hang out in the back." And when the tux pony, who was clearly in charge, started hemming and hawing about fire codes: "Fire?! Don't be silly! My friend is the best flier in the world! She's not afraid of fire - fire is afraid of her! Even if there were a fire she could evacuate the whole theater in sixty seconds flat! She bucked a fire-breathing dragon right in the face. And she eats fire cinnamon candy. And she was once fired out of a catapult! And one time she made me laugh so hard that tea came out my nose, and it felt like fire! Did you ever notice that when you say a word like 'fire' over and over it loses all meaning? Listen! Fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire ... " All the time my friend was advancing on them slowly with an innocent yet unrelenting onslaught of gibberish, backing them closer and closer to the ballroom until we were practically inside already. I could see ponies in the rearmost seats looking around nervously, no doubt wondering why some crazy pony behind them kept talking about fire. Finally the tux pony clapped his hooves over his ears and yelled that we could stand in the back as long as we didn't eat, drink, or make trouble.

I grinned at him. "Don't worry about us. We're responsible ponies."

It is very possible that an exaggerated, totally untruthful version of the following events is already on its way to the printers at some half-bright national tabloid, so I should take this opportunity to set the record straight. Yes, Pinkie Pie and I were present during Sapphire Shores' concert at the Lucky Horseshoe on the day of the Minty 500 race. But we were not heckling Sapphire Shores or throwing jelly donuts at her.

Well, we sort of were. But they blew it entirely out of proportion. The truth of the matter is that the moment we entered the Grand Ballroom, we found it impossible to keep our promise. The tension was simply too great. The Pony of Pop mincing around the stage in a silver afro wig and a dress that resembled tinfoil spray-painted random colors, yowling forgotten radio hits from ten years ago ... it was a far more desperate and artless thing than we had prepared for, impossible to process or even endure without laughter, and I just happened to be there with the Element of Laughter. I'm not blaming her; she was only there because of me, and I accept all responsibility. First we started cracking jokes at each other, then we remembered we had some donuts left in the kit-bag, and it was all downhill from there. Multiple hooves surrounded us and yanked us out of the room halfway through the performance. I hid my chocolate cigar in Pinkie's mane just in time. We were rudely herded across the lobby and back to the front door by goons, no doubt mercenaries hired by Gruff to hassle us, and detained at the front door until they could retrieve our car.

"Okay, get lost," the tux-pony sighed. "We're giving you a break. If Sapphire has friends like you girls, her career is in worse shape than I thought."

"You haven't heard the last of this!" my friend shouted as we drove off into the muggy neon-blue night. "The revolution will never die! Free Luna!"

Even now, the only thing I regret is that the dress Sapphire wore that night might be attributed to Rarity simply because two other Elements of Harmony happened to be there - which, for the record, would be horsefeathers. I don't know who the real designer was or what they got for making that thing, but it should have been three to five years. (Are we cool now, Rarity?)

The night was young, so I drove us around to the casino next door: a bright, gaudy circus-themed joint called the Cirque de Sorraia. "This is the place," I said. "They'll never fuck with us here."

"Where's the salt?" said Pinkie. I reached over to give her the key to the trunk, but she was already holding the block in her hooves. "Found it!" She gave it a strong lick and sighed contentedly. I joined in, and the taste was overwhelming; soon we were staggering around to the back door, giggling stupidly and dragging each other along like drunks. This is the main advantage of salt, provided you don't take too much all at once and start seeing things; it makes you behave like the classic village drunkard, but without losing your lunch or waking up with a hangover. All motor functions are compromised - severance of all connection between thought and reality. Your brain continues to operate more or less normally, so you can consciously see yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it.

You approach the turnstiles leading into the Cirque de Sorraia and you know that when you get there, the stallion at the door won't let you inside without bits ... but when you clear that obstacle, everything goes to Tartarus; you misjudge the distance to the turnstile and slam against it, bounce off and grab hold of an old mare to keep from falling, some angry slot jockey shoves you and you think: what's happening? What's going on here? Then you hear yourself mumbling. "Diamond dogs fucked the Mane-i-ac, no fault of mine ... it wasn't even my carriage ... Fruit bats! Hit the deck! ... My name is Lacerda. I was born ... born? Made, made in Manehattan ... grace and humility, my ass ... who's licking me?"

Salt is the perfect thing for Las Pegasus. Everypony loves a drunk in this town, especially one who might have money. Fresh meat, they think, so they put us through the turnstiles and let us loose inside.

The Sorraia is what the whole hip world would be doing if Discord had won: barely organized mayhem of the best and worst sort. The ground floor is packed with gambling tables, like any other barsino ... but the building is about four stories high in the style of a circus tent, narrowing as you get higher and ending in a vaulted ceiling, and all manner of unthinkable shenanigans unfold in this space. The Forty Flying Fillies are doing a high-wire trapeze act, swooping in death-defying arcs right over the craps tables, along with four muzzled timber wolves and the Six Hayssan Brothers from Saddle Arabia ... so you're down on the floor playing blackjack and the stakes are getting high, sweat dripping, tails swishing, praying for the Right Number when suddenly you happen to look up and there right smack above your head is a red filly in a cocktail dress being chased through the air by a snarling wolf, which is suddenly locked in a ferocious deathmatch with two female minotaurs who come swinging down Daring Do-style from opposite balconies and meet in midair. They all plummet towards the crap tables with only a net to break their fall, separate and spring back up from the net in three directions ... the act goes on and on, and you begin to wonder how much of it is real and how much of it you're just hallucinating ... or if you're hallucinating all of it.

The eerie part is, if the other ponies here can see the madness going on above them, they don't seem to notice it at all. The gambling action runs twenty-five hours a day on the floor, and the circus never ends. If a timber wolf breaks a branch, burn it. If one set of trapezing fillies gets tired, switch 'em out with an identical team from the wings. If anyone falls and goes lame, finish them off. There's nothing more useless than a permanently crippled daredevil, and why pay out the medical insurance when you can just pull them backstage and Do the Right and Equine Thing ...

Meanwhile, all over the upper balconies, customers are being fleeced by any and all kinds of carnival hokum: ring toss, milk bottles, shell games packed into funhouse-type booths; hey rube, over here, I bet you can't shoot the tassels off this yak's horns and win a cotton candy goat for your special somepony. Stand in front of this wondrous contraption, my friend, and for just ten bits you can record a voice message that will play outside the building for half the Strip to hear.

Holy Celestia. I could just see some poor exhausted tourist in one of the nearby hotels, trying to get some sleep, when suddenly an earsplitting scratchy salt-dried voice screeches from a twenty-foot mounted megaphone, "DEATH TO MARE DO WELL!" Could they deal with a mane-raiser like that? I know I couldn't. It would send me careening around the room like a pinball. Visions are bad enough; after a while you get used to seeing things like Granny Smith crawling up your front leg with a knife in her teeth. Most salt fanciers can manage that sort of thing, but the possibility that any freak with ten bits can step up to the microphone and broadcast whatever unconscionable mumbo jumbo pops into her head is something else entirely. I've decided this is a bad town for sodium after all. The reality of Las Pegasus is far more twisted; a lurching, sprawling monster, addicted to bits, bloated beyond recognition. The idyllic desert oasis photographed by Trenderhoof just twenty years ago no longer exists. It was an enclosed, airless little village in the clouds; too good to be true, destroyed by exposure to the outside world and the big-money ethics of Canterlot and Baltimare.

"Dashie, I hate to say this," Pinkie told me as we sat down at the Carousel Bar on the second floor. "But I think we're starting to get sober."

"That's a filthy lie!" I said firmly. "We came out here to find the Equestrian dream, damn it, and now that we're right in the vortex you want to quit?!" I gesture to my brachial plexus. "You gotta know that we've found the main nerve."

But I was afraid she was right. Everything was wearing off, and we were sitting at a round wicker table moving in orbit around the slack-jawed bartender. I felt unpleasantly aware and increasingly dizzy.

"Look over there," I said, hoping for something to distract her. "Two doormares humping a buffalo."

She winced and shook her head. "That's the Equestrian Dream, huh?" she muttered sarcastically, her mane drooping just a little. "Forget it, Dashie. This is no place for dreams. This is a dream. None of it's real except you and me ... maybe not even me."

"What the heck are you talking about?" I was getting worried. I reached out and jabbed the edge of my hoof, gently, into her coat. "See? You feel that, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then you're real."

Her eyes glimmered with tears as she looked up. "I mean that this place makes me feel fake. I thought it would be great, you know? Like the biggest, fantastic-est, most spectacular-istic party in the whole wide world! But parties are supposed to make ponies happy, and no one's really happy here. Can't you feel it?" She gestured around us at the babbling, empty-eyed herds gathered around the tables and roped to the slot machines, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings.

I nodded. "Okay, Pinks. Forget the story. If you want to go, then we're gone."

She nodded gratefully and stood up. Getting off the Carousel Bar was harder than getting on; Pinkie took a bad jump and went sprawling madly into the crowd. Perfunctory shouts and angry noises, but the nearby ponies never even looked up from the roulette wheel. I helped her to her hooves and we made for the exit. Just before we left, my friend turned to the fake-smiling doormares and squinted hard.

" ... Do they pay you to hump that buffalo?"
> IV: Blue Eyes and Green Water ... Trapped in Las Pegasus
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Can we hurry, Rainbow Dash?"  The nervous edge in Pinkie Pie's voice cut through the throbbing din like a cake knife. "I think they're still watching us."

"I'm not surprised, after what you said to those doormares!" I tried a lame half-smile to calm her down but I was pretty jittery myself. With the rush of the sugar and the calm of the salt both wearing off at once, this strange and joyless place became disturbingly Real ... the two of us stumbling around the front entrance hallways of the Cirque de Sorraia, attempting to find a door besides the one leading directly back to the gambling floor. Were there this many twists and turns in the hallways when we came in? Couldn't recall; that was several hours ago. Or was it days, or years? Time moves differently in the barsinos. The outside world no longer registers. You check in but you don't check out. Not unless you're broke, fired, or dead. We saw that in the eyes of all the gamblers, but still we allowed ourselves to fall right into the trap ... how could I have been so stupid?

"There!" Pinkie, standing slightly behind me, pointed a hoof over my shoulder. "Is that the elevator?!"

I shook my head. "That's a double-door utility closet. Keep looking."

"Darn. Oh, Dashie, what am I thinking? We can't go near the elevator even if we do find it! That's just what they want ... to trap us in a steel box and take us down to the basement. So Gruff can finish us off!"

"Pinkie, Gruff isn't here. Don't you remember? We just said that to freak out the hitchhiker."

"If there was a race with gryphons, then Gilda is here. And if Gilda is here, her grampa is here. And if Grampa Gruff is here ... " She trailed off into a black silence. The Fear is strong with this one, I thought, but maybe she's on to something. Ever since we found the Idol of Boreas only to lose it again, he's been out to get us. I half expected to see his withered face leering out at us from the next door we opened, that scarred blue vulture eye gleaming with the thrill of terminal revenge as he raises his claws and --

No! I can't let it control me too. I have to be the strong one this time. Calm Pinkie down, get her out of here, don't mind her feverish chant of "hurry hurry hurry hurry." Just make it back to the Minty. Turning one last treacherous corner, I saw an open window and knew what to do.

"Hold on," I whispered.

She understood instantly, throwing her hooves around my neck. We soared right out the window into the cool night air of the city, gliding towards the rear parking lot where the Great Red Dragon waited. When we got back to the Minty, I flew Pinkie straight out of the car and up to the window of our room, bypassing the lobby entirely; no reason to risk another scene in there, I thought. The window was almost entirely closed, no way to get in - but before I knew what was happening Pinkie had squeezed through anyway and opened it the rest of the way for me.

It was dark and quiet. No sign of trouble. "Okay, Pinks, we're back. We made it."

"Lock the window!" She zipped around the room, investigating every nook and cranny, presumably to see if anypony had come in and searched our belongings. Then she whipped not one but two hotel keys out of her mane and stared at them. "Guess we didn't need these, huh? Say, where did this one come from?"

She held up a key with an unfamiliar number on it.

"That's Sandy Parchment's room," I said, suddenly remembering. "She wanted to meet us here. I think the magazine sent her."

"Probably as a spy!" Pinkie shivered. "I saw her last night in the bar. She was trying to flag us down as we got on the elevator."

"Well, why didn't you hold the door?"

"We had other problems. You were seeing lizards and tossing your cookies."

I feel my cheeks turning red. "Oh ... yeah. That. She must be wondering what happened to us. I should probably go up and visit her, huh? Maybe we can compare our notes and still throw together a decent article here."

My friend shrugged. Something made me stop and take a closer look at her. She was still watching the floor, and her hair hadn't poofed up quite right. She wasn't herself yet. The scene in the Cirque had shaken her up pretty bad. To a pony like Pinkie Pie, parties are the Way and the Life, and Las Pegasus is the Promised Land. It's one big party, the party, 24/7 and 365 'til the sun burns out, or so the advertisements say. It must have been a nasty shock to visit here at last and see it was more like one big neon funeral: ponies assembling from all over Equestria just to stand in lines and stoically mourn the loss of all their bits, faces grim and feverish, chasing the ghost of The Big Score ...

"On second thought," I say, turning on the bedside lamps, "I can drop by Sandy's room tomorrow. Let's you and I stay here and just chill."

"It's already chilly in here, Dashie," she smiled without humor.

An idea sprang to mind. "We can make it warmer instead. Your sister gave me something special to surprise you with."

She immediately perked up. "A surprise present? For me?! I love surprise presents for me!"

I dug into my saddlebags and whipped out a large canvas pouch with 'Pie Family Rock Farm' inked on it.

"Maud's bath salts? But she never gives those out!"

"Except when a Doctor of Journalism promises to bring her back some rocks from the San Palomino Desert," I said. "Remind me to grab some before we leave."

"Thank you thank you thank you thank you!" Pinkie Pie gave me one of her most bone-crushing hugs before taking the pouch and diving all the way from the window to the bathroom, landing gracefully in the tub. "Grab the hay cubes and turn up the music! Sound! Singing! Bass! We must have bass!"

I complied while she turned on the faucet and poured in the pungent minerals. Before long she was submerged in green water and the gramophone was cranking out the first good vibrations of the day, a mind-bending group called The Nags. We each downed our first hay cube in unison, and gasped. The resulting cacophony of spices - sodium, dried tomato, basil, cilantro, lime - shot straight from my tongue to my brain, weaving sinuously into the music until my senses all seemed to join together, wanting to melt into one whole; needing only a source of heat to carry me higher.

I looked up at my friend and saw a huge, rapturous grin on her face, eyes glittering from the oasis, and I knew she was soaking in the very same experience I yearned for. Without a word I jumped in with her, and the warmth was indescribable; enough to purge all the dark thoughts that had been creeping through our minds since we arrived. I could actually see them leaving us, black oily things twisting helplessly and evaporating in the rising steam. Others would replace them, I knew; eventually the water would cool, the cubes would wear off, and we would remember we were still stuck in Las Pegasus, duty-bound to stay until the magazine was satisfied or the city swallowed us whole, whichever came first. Pinkie and I were like cake and frosting, but this went beyond friendship. In that moment we were one, and the night was ours, pure and unspoiled.

"Dashie," she said a few hours later as we climbed into bed. "Tell me about the Mares in the Moon."

She never gets tired of that story, no matter how many times I repeat it. And each time the memory grows a little stranger, never more so than on this nervous night in the desert. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era - the kind of peak that never comes again. What I didn't understand until very recently was that Ponyville, in the last few years before Nightmare Moon's return, was a special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run ... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch the sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant ... 

Twilight's history books call them Lunarians, but they had many names: Stargazers, Mares in the Moon, the Night Watch, Lunar Republicans and more. History is hard to know, but even without being sure of all the facts and dates it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash.  My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or even forty nights - or very early mornings - when I left flight camp half-crazy and, instead of going home to my worried parents in Cloudsdale, streaked through the sky at nearly the speed of sound to reach the blue house next to the train station, or the tents at the foothills of the Canterlot Mountains, or even the lights at the border of Everfree Forest. Those were the only places I could find ponies who were just as wild as I was.

I wasn't a Lunarian myself; I didn't worship Nightmare Moon. I guess I never saw much sense in worshipping anything. But I was one of the few outsiders they trusted, and after hanging out with them I understood the appeal. Nopony was against Princess Celestia, but she was safe and familiar. Her sister was exotic and mysterious, and they would be the first generation to see her in a thousand years. Plus, how could the idea of eternal night not capture the imagination? They were convinced that Nightmare Moon's return would force a reckoning; not a war for the throne but a righting of old wrongs, a new age in which the dark was no longer feared but loved. Everypony has a vision of the Great Equestrian Dream and that was theirs. The old legend said "the stars will aid in her escape," and the Lunarians believed it. They gathered every night, wherever somepony had a telescope and the sweets were good, wanting to see it happen. Most of their friends and families didn't know they were involved in the group, and those who did wanted them to stop. But there was a fantastic universal sense that whatever they were doing was right, that they were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

Needless to say, things changed when Nightmare Moon actually returned. We discovered what she really was: dangerous, authoritarian, threatening my friends. In helping Twilight Sparkle defeat her, I had done the right thing. Any faintly rational pony could see that. So, being very young and ... let's face it, pretty dense and self-centered at the time ... I didn't understand why some of those Ponyvilians looked so unhappy with me afterwards. By destroying Nightmare Moon, I had also destroyed their Dream. She was gone forever, leaving behind a sadly contrite anachronism called Princess Luna who would be allowed back into the royal chariot as it were, even trusted with a certain measure of power; but it was blindingly obvious to everypony that big sister was still holding the reins.

The history books will say that I made five very important new friends that night. But I lost a lot of old ones, too. Some of those ponies still won't speak to me and I can't say I blame them. On some nights, when everything is quiet, I fly all the way up to the highest spires of Canterlot and look south to the ruins of the old castle. With the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.





The decision to flee Las Pegasus came suddenly. Or maybe I had planned it all along, in the back of my mind; the race was over and I'd written as much about it as I could think of, so why spend any more time in this floating sweat box? The bill was a factor, I think. Because I had no money to pay it. The Crown is legally responsible, of course; we signed nothing ... except for those room service tabs, which we shouldn't have. Now the Minty expected us to cover them. I'm a full time professional flier and part time writer, not a mathematician, and we never knew the full total anyway ... but seconds before the fight-or-flight reaction kicked in, my friend figured we had run up somewhere around 50 bits an hour, for forty-eight consecutive hours. A tad exorbitant to say the least.

"That's crazy," I said, staring frog-eyed at the totals Pinkie had calculated on the back of our last receipt, trying to ignore all the smiley-faces where zeroes should be. "How could it happen?"

But by the time I asked this question, there was no one around to answer it. My friend was gone.

She must have sensed trouble. She had replaced her sunglasses, said "I'll be back," and vanished from the room before I even knew what was happening. I could only hope she wouldn't be long. In the meantime ... panic. All these horrible realities dawned on me, creeping up my spine one after another. Here I was all alone in Las Pegasus with this expensive electric carriage, completely twisted, no spare cash, not even a decent story for the magazine - and on top of everything else, a goddess-damned gigantic hotel bill. We had ordered everything into that room that equine hooves could carry. Imported watercress, exotic southwestern lizard food, long-handled curry brushes, and about six hundred bars of translucent pink soap. The whole car was full of it - all over the floors, the seats, the glove compartment. Pinkie had worked out some kind of arrangement with the maids on our floor to have it delivered to us, six hundred bars of this weird transparent shit, and now it was all mine. Assuming I got out of here with my knees intact.

It is a weird feeling to sit by a closed hotel pool at four in the morning, hunkered down with a notebook and a gramophone warbling "one grain over the line, sweet goddess", saddled with a fantastic room service bill run up in two hours of actual reporting and forty-six hours of total madness, knowing that as soon as dawn comes you are going to make like Zephyr Breeze and take off without paying a single bit ... go tromping out through the lobby and call your red topless carriage down from the garage and stand there waiting for it with a suitcase full of dietary contraband ... trying desperately to look casual, conspicuous rainbow mane covered by a huge sombrero from the gift shop that would send Rarity into convulsions of laughter, hiding behind today's edition of the Las Pegasus Sun with a front-page headline screaming "ELEMENTS OF HARMONY CRASH SHORES CONCERT" ...

Any sane pony would have conceded, by that point, that the jig was up ... but I have always found sanity to be a mere inconvenience. Besides, this was the final step. We had taken all that cursed luggage down to the Dragon hours earlier. Now, it was only a matter of slipping the noose. But the minutes were ticking away and still no sign of the car. The waiting was maddening. Every instinct told me to just fly out of here; I was much too fast for any of these ponies to catch me, but I couldn't face Celestia if I came back without her wheels. Pacing, twitching, sweating, losing control. I could feel my whole act slipping -

And then I saw the Dragon, swooping down from a ramp in the next-door garage. Deliverance! I slung my saddlebags over my back and trotted outside. Very casual, very typical, yes indeed. Easy now. No sudden movements. Almost there.

"MISS BLITZ!"

It was the name I'd checked in under. The voice came from over my shoulder.

"Miss Blitz! We've been looking for you!"

I almost collapsed on the curb. Every cell in my brain and body seemed to sag ... no, I thought. I must be hallucinating. There's no one back there, no one calling ... it's a paranoid delusion, brought on by one of the many goodies sampled earlier that morning ... just keep smiling and walking towards the car ...

"AURORA BLITZ! Wait!"

Shit! He was real. No sense in running. With a shudder I turned to face my accuser, a small young earth stallion with a big smile on his face and an even bigger yellow envelope on his hoof. "We knocked on your door, but you weren't there. Then we saw you standing outside."

I nodded, too tired to resist. By now the Dragon had rolled up beside me, courtesy of a smirking valet who immediately made herself scarce, but I saw no point in even tossing my bags inside. They had me.

The clerk was still smiling. "This telegram just came for you," he said. "But actually it isn't for you. It's for someone named Dash, but it says 'care of Aurora Blitz.' Does that make any sense to you?"

I felt dizzy. It was too much to absorb at once. From freedom to some atavistic debtor's prison, and then back to freedom again - all in thirty seconds. I staggered backward and leaned on the car, feeling the vinyl upholstery with my trembling front hooves. The clerk, still smiling for some reason, was poking the telegram at me.

I nodded, barely able to speak. "Yes," I croaked. "That makes sense." I accepted the envelope and tore it open with my teeth.


URGENT SPEED LETTER


RAINBOW DANGER DASH
C/O AURORA BLITZ
SOUNDPROOF SUITE 105
MINTY HOTEL LAS PEGASUS

WHERE IN TARTARUS HAVE YOU BEEN YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO MEET ME TWO DAYS AGO TO COVER THE RACE STOP MAGAZINE OFFERS NEW ASSIGNMENT FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS MASSIVE PAYMENT CROWN WILL COVER ALL EXPENSES STOP THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF DIETICIANS INVITES YOU TO THEIR FOUR DAY SEMINAR ON DANGEROUS SALTS AND SUGARS AT DUNES HOTEL STOP WE HAVE RESERVATIONS AT MUSTANG LODGE EVERYTHING ARRANGED MEET ME THERE AT NOON AND BRING YOUR NOTES SO WE CAN FINISH MINTY 500 STORY STOP DO NOT LEAVE LAS PEGASUS REPEAT DO NOT LEAVE LAS PEGASUS STOP

SANDY PARCHMENT

I hate reading telegrams, but the message is clear enough ... just when I thought I could get my tail out of this city and be home free, those Canterlot sadists are dropping another assignment on me. I quit. I can't go through with it; there's no way. So what if they're offering more money? That's how they get you in this town; they give you enough chips to get hooked and then you're theirs, hopelessly in debt and begging for mercy, living on the street corner by the casino, carrying your own riding crop for the customers' convenience, selling your body to minotaurs just to get a good meal ...

"No!" I rasp, still holding the paper and trying to blink away those evil words.

"You mean it's not for you?" the clerk asked. "I checked the register for this mare Dash. She wasn't in there, but I thought she was part of your group."

"She is. Don't worry, I'll get it to her. Yes sir, you can count on me. Have to run. Very busy with, er, certain business. No minotaurs, no thanks. I'll be going now," I babbled clumsily and clung to the side mirror, anxious to flee.

"And one more thing, Miss Blitz," he said. Something in his tone made me stop and look at him again. His grin had suddenly taken on a malevolent tinge. "There's also the matter of your bill."

I froze, staring back at him through a fresh haze of naked terror. My heart felt like it was going to plummet straight out of my body, through the earth and all the way to Tartarus. The sick little bastard. He was enjoying this.

"Why don't you come with me, Miss Blitz ... if that is your real name."

"That won't be necessary, Check Box," a deep, rich voice chimed in from behind him. We both turned to see a solidly built dark brown pegasus stallion with a thick auburn mane and impressive mustache stroll up to the curb. His green and black pinstripe employee jacket matched the clerk's, except for the gleaming gold tag that said 'BOTTOM LINE - MANAGER'.

"Mr. Line?" Check Box faltered, his smile finally gone. He looked like a foal who'd just had his favorite toy taken away.

"Miss Blitz," the manager said firmly, "Happens to be a very important client on extremely sensitive business. I have assurances that her account will be settled. You may have already cost her precious time. Now if you would be so kind as to return to your post at the desk, I shall attempt to smooth things over and salvage this hotel's reputation with the Crown."

The young clerk turned red and made a choking sound. "Y-yes, sir!" he stuttered, hightailing it back to the building.

"Allow me to properly introduce myself," Bottom Line reached up and his face promptly split in two - courtesy of a hidden zipper - to reveal a mess of pink curls and mischievous sky-blue eyes. It was ridiculous, impossible. Costumes that perfect did not exist in real life. But then ... it was Pinkie Pie.

"Pinks," I sniffled, almost dizzy with relief. "You ... you're too good for this world."

"Hurry," she whispered.

"What about you?"

"I read the message. I'll catch up. I'll even muster and relish!" my friend giggled, zipped up, and was instantly Bottom Line again. "As I was saying, we sincerely apologize for the delay, Miss Blitz. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to be getting back. This hotel's not going to manage itself ... especially Room 105. Whoever stayed there really trashed that place."

With a smile I dove into the driver's seat and hit the juice, sending the car squealing across three lanes of traffic. Luckily it was too early for many carriages or chariots to be out on the road, so I made it down the street without killing myself or anypony else. Time was of the essence. I had to get away. A pony like myself is most comfortable in motion; driving would help me relax and ponder this incredible telegram from my correspondent. It was true; I was certain of that. There was a definite weird urgency in the message. The tone was unmistakable ...

On one hoof, I was in no mood or condition to spend another week in Las Pegasus. Not now. Not with all the bits I owed and a gryphon out for my blood. My friend pulled off a bonafide miracle to spring me loose, and I had pushed my luck about as far as it was going to carry me in this town - all the way out to the edge, in fact, and now the wolves were closing in. I could smell the ugly brutes.

On the other hoof, there was an argument for staying on. It was treacherous, absurd, and stupid in every way: a gonzo journalist in the grip of a seemingly constant sugar-frenzy being invited to cover a task force of anti-salt, anti-dessert enforcers gathered from all over Equestria to discuss the Nutrition Problem. But there was a certain bent appeal in the notion. For that matter, I would also get a wicked little thrill out of running a savage burn on one Las Pegasus hotel and - instead of becoming a doomed fugitive on some highway in the San Palomino Desert - just wheeling across town and checking into another Las Pegasus hotel. Repaint the car, take the sombrero, keep a low profile, avoid the slots, and I just might pull it off.

It was dangerous lunacy, but also the kind of thing a true connoisseur of edge-work could really make an argument for. It could be done ... with the proper supplies. Let nopony ever say that Rainbow Dash is afraid to live on the edge. And most importantly, I wasn't going to abandon my best friend in a place she hated - no matter what. If she had the gumballs to stay here, then so did I.

Dieticians, do your worst.