The Only Chapter (Fortunately)
Twilight sank further down into her cushion and tried to ignore the chaos around her in favor of the paper in her hooves. It wasn’t much yet—just a single page with bullet points and neatly organized headings following her hypothesis—but she was certain that if she put in enough effort she could get the fieldwork done by the end of the night.
“Alright, Twilight,” she whispered to herself. “You’ve read almost every book in Equestria, and owned near that amount. It’s time to contribute to history and leave your own impact—”
“Yo, Twi!” The cushion sagged to the right as a weight deposited itself beside her. “You gonna stare at your egghead garbage all night?”
Twilight wrinkled her nose at the smell of cider radiating from Rainbow’s general direction and scooted a few inches to the left. “It’s not garbage. It’s a very important hypothesis.”
“Oh, sorry.” Fluttering her wings, Rainbow burped loudly and hiccuped before flopping down completely. “But like, why’re you doing that now? It’s a party, man! Don’t be such a downer.”
“Because I have to do this now,” Twilight sighed. “I explained this to all of you already, and you promised to help.”
“Don’t remember that,” Rainbow said, though her expression said she clearly did.
“So, I’m testing the correlation between water and sobriety, which I can’t exactly do anywhere else besides… here.”
Twilight gestured out to the main floor of Sugarcube Corner, which had been transformed into something that could have resembled a warzone, or a frat party. Fortunately it was limited to just the six mares in the room—Twilight and her friends.
Unfortunately, Pinkie and Rainbow alone made up for the lack of ponies with their volume.
Oh, and the music blasting out of Pinkie’s speakers. Sweet Celestia was it loud.
“Aaaaaanyways,” Rainbow continued, snapping Twilight back to the present. “I’m gonna go see how many shots AJ can take, and then up that by five. You wanna watch?”
“Not really,” Twilight sighed to herself, but got to her hooves anyways as Rainbow staggered away. Once the others were good and hammered she could start the experiment, which meant she could get her research over with and go home. She also had a feeling she’d be needed to vaporize some vomit off of the floor in the near future, too.
On the way to the other side of the room Twilight caught sight of Fluttershy giggling to herself on the couch. She was already tipsy and leaning against Rarity, who was nursing a glass of vodka and still looked completely sober.
Perfect, Twilight thought to herself. She broke away from her path and trotted over to the pair on the couch. “Hey, girls. How’s the party going?”
“Wonderfully, darling,” Rarity said, at the same time Fluttershy burst into another giggle-fit.
“She’s already had too much to drink?”
“One glass of cider,” Rarity sighed. She stroked a hoof through Fluttershy’s mane and continued, “She’s always been a lightweight, I suppose.” She paused, then added, “Oh, but if you’re still doing your experiment, I don’t suppose you’d mind fetching her a glass of water?”
Twilight grinned sheepishly and levited a glass up off a nearby table. “...That’s sorta why I’m here.”
“Ah.”
Carefully Twilight pushed the glass into Fluttershy’s hooves and said, “Hey, Shy. Would you mind drinking this so I can observe your actions?”
Fluttershy stared at the glass for almost ten seconds before gently pushing it away and onto the coffee table. “No thanks.”
Twilight frowned and pushed the glass back. “Why not?”
“Smells funny,” Fluttershy sighed. She put the glass down harder and nearly made it tip over. “Like… like nothing.”
“It’s water, dear,” Rarity said.
“Gross!” Making a face, Fluttershy flopped back against Rarity and whined, “I want, um, cider. Yeah! Not… not this.” She crossed her forelegs and rolled to the side so her back was to Twilight.
Rarity shot Twilight a helpless look. “Sorry, but I’m afraid that’s the best we can do for now.”
Shrugging, Twilight said, “It’s okay. I’ll have plenty of other chances with the others.” Something shattered behind her, followed by an ear-piercing whoop, and she lowered her eyebrows. “Plenty.”
The shattering turned out to be one of the shot glasses Pinkie had set out. Apparently Rainbow thought it was acceptable to chuck it after she’d knocked it back. All three of the mares around the table had flushed faces and reeked of alcohol, though Pinkie seemed the most stable out of all of them.
“Hey, girls,” Twilight tried, and levitated a few glasses of water beside her. “Would you mind-”
“Up that, Apple-crack!”
“Ah sure will, Dainbow Rash!”
Both of them took another shot. Pinkie clapped her hooves together and quickly poured out two more. “Wowzers!” she said. “I can’t believe you guys haven’t barfed yet.”
“That’s…. that’s what Twilight’s here for,” Applejack slurred, then seemed to register that Twilight was standing right in front of her. “Hey! Twi, you’re doin’ science, right?”
“I’m trying to, yes.”
“Then who’s drunker? Me, or Dash?” She scooted backwards to throw a leg around Rainbow, who looked as if she was trying to hold down a burp.
Twilight made a face and took a step back. “Does it really matter who’s more inebriated if you’re competing by the number of drinks consumed?”
Rainbow blinked slowly. “...What?”
“Who had the most shots?”
“Me!” they both said at the same time. Then, “Hey! It’s me!”
Sighing for what felt like nth time that night, Twilight turned to Pinkie. “Look, will you drink this?” She shook one of the glasses of water around and tried, “To help a friend?”
“No can do, friend-er-oo,” Pinkie chirped. She took a swig of her drink—half of one of Rarity’s vodka bottles mixed with an ungodly amount of other drinks, with a bendy straw to boot—and continued, “I’m part of this contest too, y’know. They just forgot.” She glanced around before pulling Twilight in to hiss, “And I’m winning.”
“H-how many—”
“Sixteen.”
Twilight very dearly hoped she wouldn’t have to take anyone to the hospital tonight.
“Okay, I’ll just… come back later.” She turned around to go back to the couch—maybe Fluttershy had come to her senses—and chanted a mental prayer to Celestia that four mares could only drink so much.
Ah. Five mares, she corrected, as she was met with the sight of Rarity opening her second vodka bottle. She seemed a bit more upset than she was a minute ago, though that was probably due to the large cider stain on her white coat and Fluttershy’s empty glass sitting in her lap.
“Um, are you okay?”
Without answering, Rarity popped the lid off, poured a small amount into her glass, set it down, and then began drinking straight from the bottle as fast as she could.
“Rarity, what…”
“A lady needs her alcohol,” was the only reply she got. Twilight had no idea how she hadn’t passed out yet, given she had probably just taken the equivalent of eight shots.
Beside her, Fluttershy snuck a hoof up to the table to grab Rarity’s discarded glass and downed the whole thing in one go. Then she started coughing up a storm.
“Okay. Okay, this is fine,” Twilight breathed, even though everything was not fine and her friends were probably all going to be hospitalized for years to come. “That just means another pony to test my hypothesis on. Rarity, if you could-”
“Oh heavens, I couldn’t,” Rarity interrupted. She swished the bottle around and took another large gulp.
“Why not?”
“Appearances, darling. You may not believe it, but I’m actually feeling very stressed, and am on the verge of passing out.”
Twilight blinked. “You look pretty sober to me.”
“I’ve had plenty of practice.” Frowning, Rarity took another gulp and placed the bottle back on the table. “I couldn’t possibly assist in your experiment anyways; my incredible capability to hold a drink would affect your results.” She burped loudly. “Excuse me, dear.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Twilight muttered. Mentally she made a note to check on Rarity’s home life; perhaps she’d ask the Crusaders to tone down their escapades a bit so that Rarity wouldn’t be driven to poisoning herself on a regular basis.
Fluttershy finally stopped coughing and put the glass down. “Girls,” she whined, “I’m really thirsty.”
Twilight’s face lit up. “Would you like a glass of—”
“Really, really thirsty.”
“—that’s great, because I have an all natural, healthy alternative right here—”
“Also, I think I’m going to barf.”
“—so if you’d just drink it… wait, what was that last part?”
And then Fluttershy daintily vomited the contents of her stomach onto the carpet, and proceeded to pass out.
Sighing, Rarity grabbed her bottle again and drained the rest of it as fast as she possibly could.
It didn’t take Twilight very long to clean up the floor. However, it took an unnecessary amount of time to haul Fluttershy upstairs to the guest room, since Rarity said she couldn’t get up without dying, and the rest of the girls were too absorbed in their contest to be of any help. She thanked Celestia that the Cakes were away, or else she’d have to explain why on earth she was dragging Fluttershy by her tail down the hallway and leaving alcohol-scented hoofprints in her wake.
Once Fluttershy was dealt with and arranged in a safe position so she wouldn’t choke to death in her sleep, Twilight took a few moments to compose herself. She still had three subjects left; four if she could convince Rarity to participate. She could still gather the data for her book. Everything was fine. Perfectly fine.
Then she went back downstairs and everything was not fine at all.
In all of her life, Twilight had never been more thankful for Rarity. She had not moved from her spot on the couch and was instead staring at the room around her with an amused expression. She was also the only one in the room not contributing to the chaos in any way.
Then there was Rainbow Dash.
Poor, poor Rainbow Dash.
For some reason she was sprawled on the floor and coughing up a lung, yet another smashed glass strewn around her. She was also flailing her wings about with enough force to stir up the room’s decorations into a mini tornado of streamer-filled doom.
Seriously. Twilight was pretty sure if she stared at it for too long her eyeballs would get paper cuts.
Applejack was no help, as she was simultaneously laughing at Rainbow’s misfortune and throwing up into her hat. It was probably easier to just burn the hat than try to clean it, Twilight reasoned, and tried not to think about Applejack’s reaction when she found out.
If she found out.
Pinkie was… Pinkie. She had finished her bendy-straw cocktail and wasn’t drinking anything else (thank Celestia), but made up for the lack of alcohol twofold by mixing up more for the other two.
Where had she gotten all those bottles? As far as Twilight could recall Rarity had brought vodka, Applejack brought cider, and Rainbow brought a case of beer. She also knew the Cakes didn’t drink much, so then why were there at least seven different types of alcohol in the concerningly large pile of drinks?
Twilight decided for her own sake she’d better not ask.
“Pinkie,” she tried instead. “Don’t you think they’ve had enough?”
“Oh, yeah.” Pinkie continued opening more bottles and sloshing the contents into the baking bowl in front of her.
“...So, shouldn’t you lay off with the alcohol?”
“Yeah, tried that. They won’t stop until one of them passes out.”
Twilight made a face. Instead of arguing, though, she grabbed one of the empty bottles beside Pinkie and turned around so no one could see her pour two of her glasses of water into it. Then she spun back to face the three and levitated the bottle up in the air.
“Whoever can drink all of this is the winner!” she yelled.
Applejack perked up, and Rainbow’s coughs quieted from thunderous to more of a hacking fit.
Finally, Twilight thought. Then I just have to observe them for an hour, and then I can go home, and then….
Her thoughts trailed off as she realized that nopony was actually drinking from the bottle.
“Excuse me?”
“Y’ain’t trickin’ us,” Applejack said bluntly.
“Yeah, that’s totally gonna sober us up,” Rainbow added. She swayed a bit on her hooves and blinked a few times. “The… the wet stuff.”
“Water,” Twilight growled.
“Yeah. That.”
So neither of them would drink. Nor Pinkie, nor Fluttershy, and Celestia be damned if she was going to try and force Rarity to drink something that had less than fifty percent alcohol content.
And since Twilight couldn’t possibly experiment on herself, that seemed to be that.
Unfortunately.
Slightly pissed, Twilight stomped her hoof on the ground hard enough to shake the floorboards, and to draw the attention of everyone else (minus Fluttershy). “Fine. Fine! I give up! If none of you will help me with my experiment, I guess I have to just change the topic.” She released her magic on the water-filled bottle and let it crash to the floor with a thud.
Pinkie squinted. “...You were doing an experiment?”
“Sweet Celestia.” Twilight took a deep breath and held it in, before letting it rush out in a single whoosh. Suddenly the ridiculous amount of alcohol in the building seemed very appealing.
As if reading her mind, Pinkie pushed a few shot glasses towards Twilight.
Twilight, after mere seconds of deliberation, levitated all of them up into the air and knocked them back one after the other.
“Holy smokes,” Rainbow slurred. “You… you like, never drink.”
Coughing, Twilight set the glasses down harder than necessary. “To quote a very dear but frustrating friend of mine: a lady needs her alcohol.” She then winced. “Also, I’m going to regret this tomorrow.”
“Won’t we all,” Rarity muttered from over on her couch. She was nursing what appeared to be her third bottle. Then, in a surprising moment of sobriety she asked Twilight, “Did you at least learn something tonight, even if it didn’t go as you hoped? Perhaps on how to cure alcohol poisoning?”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly. She couldn’t find any poisonin’ here.”
“...Uh-huh.”
“Oh, we learned something, alright,” Twilight said. She gave the bottle on the floor one last kick and fixed it with a spiteful glare. “No, I think I’ll do my project on the fact that no matter how hard you try, no matter how much effort you put into a hypothesis, no matter how much you trust your friends—”
She paused to look each of her friends in the eyes. Not one of them looked guilty at all. Then—
“I’ve discovered that you can lead a mare to water, but you sure as hell can’t make her drink.”
Silence.
Rarity rolled her eyes and started chugging the rest of her vodka as fast as she possibly could.