Twilight meets a new alicorn. Study-time commences!
During a morning-time inspection with Rarity, Princess Twilight meets a special pony that she's never even heard of.
It's not every day that you meet a new alicorn, especially one that isn't called a Prince.
Shoutouts and credits to Popamile for commissioning this fic, and love to the background character. They treasure him enough to want to know more about his life, and that's something I think we all feel. Credits for the art go to Sugar Morning, over on the derpi.
Twilight blinked sleepily in the barely post-dawn light, yawning before she nodded. "That sure does sound like a hassle."
"Doesn't it just?" Rarity replied, nodding her head and batting her eyelids against the shining light of the sun. "I mean, he only let me get three-quarters of the way through the order before he decided it needed to be redesigned from the ground up! I had to start entirely over! The nerve of some ponies," she said with a sniff before gently elbowing Twilight's leg. "Drink up dear, I know you're not a morning pony, and I would hate to see you snoozing in the street. Again."
Twilight blinked another couple of times, a couple of shadows passing between her and the sun, before gently shaking her head and taking a long sip of the waxed paper cup floating in her field.
She pulled a face and made a gurgling noise in her throat. "This tastes like construction crew coffee," she said, sticking out her tongue and looking at the cup. "Ugh."
Rarity looked at her for a moment, face carefully blank, before nodding slowly. "Yes, Twilight, it does. Because that is where we are. We're looking over the designs for the new town hall for the mayor today."
Twilight glanced at her doubtfully before forcing herself to gulp down the rest of the coffee.
Shivering and shaking in place, Twilight looked up with much fresher eyes and took in the sight of several different kinds of creatures crawling all over scaffolding that encased all five floors of the town hall.
She watched as a large dragon, barely out of puberty based on the healing zits on his face, picked up a massive timber and flew it up to the second floor before he started calling out to the ponies there. A zebra slowly walked past her, marking out several key locations on a clipboard and muttering under her breath.
Her ears flicked back as she heard the heavy sound of a hammer ringing through the air, and a deep voice called out, "Keep that rivet steady!"
"Ah, and there's our forepony now," Rarity said before raising a hoof and waving it widely back and forth. "Yoo-hoo! Forepony Rivet! We're here about the—"
Twilight barely acknowledged Rarity's sudden drop off of conversation as she raised a hoof to block out the sun to see the figure behind it.
She watched as a pegasus waved back from the third floor, hanging upside down from his back hooves as he turned back to the underside of the piece he was working on. With another two powerful blows of a massive hammer, he called out, "She's done! Ah'll be righ' back, gotta talk up to tha bosses!"
There was a collective laughing and hooting as he set the hammer down on the nearest scaffolding before disengaging whatever harness held him. Dropping a yard, he let a wing come out and flip him right-side-up so that he landed on the platform beneath him with all four hooves, sagging a bit before he used the momentum to push himself back up into the air. With a couple of slowing flaps from a frankly impressive wingspan, he landed before the two mares with barely a disturbance of the dust below them.
"H'lo there, ladies," he said, his almost caramel hoof raising to lift the hard hat from between his ears. "Ah, Princess Twilight! Muh 'pologies," he murmured, lowering his head in a bow that showed off his light brown mane, still in a domed shape from the hat.
"No need for that, forepony," Twilight giggled, holding out a hoof that he slowly met with his own before shaking. "It was Rivet, correct?"
"Yes, ma'am, Rivet Clovah, ma'am."
"Really, Twilight is just fine," Twilight said, still blinking. "We're actually here to look over your plans for the town hall's expansion. Mayor Mare forgot a couple of old breaks that had been informally repaired and wanted us to look over them with you."
"Informally repaired," he chuckled, nodding as a pair of massive sheets of rolled paper floated over in a light blue field. Unrolling, he pulled a pencil out of the bag he had on his haunch and gestured to Twilight. "Alrigh' miss, where's them breaks? We'll get 'em sorted 'fore ya coul' say yer own name."
But now it was Twilight's turn to be speechless. The pencil was being offered to her in the same blue field that held the blueprints of the town hall, with another very thin page over it showing the intended expansion.
It was all being held in the same blue field that currently surrounded the pegasus's horn.
"Buh?" she offered. The best she could come up with at the moment.
"Buh?" he asked, cocking his head to the side. "The old fixes? Y'wanna just mark 'em here, an' we'll take a good look at 'em."
"Buhbuhbuh," Twilight said again, her tone one of bargaining.
He cocked his head to the other side before scratching his ear with one of his hooves. "I'm sorry, Princess, I ain't gettin' yuh."
Drawing in a deep breath, Twilight pushed all of her focus to the forefront of her mind and pushed from between her lips, "Horn."
Blinking, he looked up between his eyes. "Ayuh. It'sa horn."
"Wings," she ejected next, nodding to his back.
"Ayuh, they are," he said, nodding as he rustled and shuffled the two limbs on his back. "They even work most'a the time," he chuckled.
"Alicorn," she said, pointing at her horn then at his.
"Nah, pegacorn," he said, shaking his head. "I wus born wit' a lil' bit of all three tribes, sure, but I ain't no alicorn. Ah'm, whatcha callit," he murmured to himself, placing a hoof on his chin as he thought for a bit before his eyes widened. "I'ma freak gene'ic mutation, from more 'n one recessive trait bein' active at one time."
Twilight stared at him for a long moment before pushing out a, "Huh?"
Rivet chuckled before turning around and yelling at his crew, "Early break boys, wrap up and stick aroun'! Got'a 'nother biologist!"
There was a scattering of chuckles and cheers before Rivet turned back to the mares.
"Ladies, this usually turns in'ta muh life story. How's some brunch sound?"
Rarity was the one to speak up. "That's the first sensible thing I think you've said this entire conversation."
Rivet thanked the waitress with a small smile before pouring a steaming cup from the large pot he'd asked to stay at the table and downing the entirety of it in a single easy gulp.
"Ahhh," he murmured, a bit of steam escaping between his teeth. "Alrigh' ladies, let loose. You gots questions, I gots answers."
"How on earth did you just do that?" Rarity asked with the fascinated tone of a filly asking a bodybuilder how they'd just lifted a building.
"Practice," he said with a shallow grin and a wink. "Really though, most pony's first question is where I got the wings. Or the horn. Same answer either way though, I w's born with them. Freak occurrence of genetics. I think I hit every newspaper in the country thirty-five years ago, an' I weren't even a month old yet."
Twilight finished her notes and glanced up. "That's why I didn't hear about it! I wasn't born yet!"
Rivet nodded sagely. "Ah, that'll do it, right. There wasn't much hubbub about it for long. Princess Celly visited me soon 'nough and did some sorta mage-y scans, an' figured out I weren't a real alicorn. I was born with some facet of all three races, sure 'nough, but I didn't have the sheer power you two have."
He leaned into the table and whispered, "I'll tell you honestly, I barely had enough power to even have the surges a regular pony has. Never did break a door off've its hinges like an earth pony, an' I could barely fly or cast whatsoev'a until I got my cutie mark."
"Whoa," Twilight muttered, eyes narrowing down on her page. "That's a lot of information. And a lot of reading between the lines." She looked up at him with large, shining round eyes, almost twinkling in the light. "Would you mind telling us, uh, everything? Please?"
"Well," he said, leaning away and scratching behind his ear, "I'm very sorry, Miss Twilight, but I do have a job to finish, and I—"
"I'll pay for your and your crew's lunch," Twilight slipped in between his words.
Chuckling, he continued, "And I'm sort of just getting started with my comp'ny, so I don't wanna look lazy or incomp'tent and lose clients, right?"
Rarity glanced at Twilight before raising an eyebrow and leaning into the table. "You know, I was just considering adding some room to the Canterlot Carousel. I'm rapidly running out of storage room, and my current project room up there is starting to run out of storage space for my fabrics..."
Rivet's eyebrows jumped as he swallowed dryly. "An extension? We talkin'—"
He cut himself off quietly, looking down into his empty cup and swallowing again before looking back up into the mare's eyes.
"Ladies, I'm real sorry, but I don't feel right abandonin' a job in the middle just to secure somethin' better. I'm real sorry, but my contracts mean more to me than that."
Twilight blinked and glanced at Rarity, who was fluttering her eyelashes in surprise.
"Uh, how about after then? When you're done for the day?" Twilight asked, glancing around the diner they were in. "I could maybe even rent the dining room out here since you seem to like the coffee so much?"
He blinked at her, his jaw working for a moment. "You'd do that for me? You don't mind waitin'?"
"Well, your work obviously means a lot to you," she said with a smile. "I can wait for an afternoon. It'll even give me some time to find some old newspapers and see what they have to say."
He glanced at a smiling Rarity before sniffling and nodding. "You're real nice ladies, going so far just to listen to me talk at'cha about me. Ya gots a deal," he said, holding his hoof out. "You buy my boys dinner, an' you got me all evenin'."
"Deal," Twilight said, smiling widely and meeting his hoof with hers.
"Nice," he said before waving the same waitress over. "S'cuse me, ma'am, but would you happen to serve beer here at dinner?"
***** ***** *****
Twilight's ears flinched as she opened the door, the loud bellows of easy laughter rolling out into the twilit night. Rarity had chosen to sit out this time, and she entered into the diner with only herself, her pen, and a ream of paper.
"I'm sorry, miss," a pony sitting in a booth near the door said when he saw her, "but Boss's rented the place for the night. But if ya like, I could prolly work in a plus one!" he said with a wink and a gale of laughter from the other three stallions at the table. Wiping his eyes, he shook his head. "Really though, Boss's rented the place out."
Slightly blushing and wobbly-legged, she said, "I'm actually," before taking a breath and yelling over the crowd, "I'm actually here to talk to Rivet!"
"Oh, alright," the pony said with an easy nod before turning and yelling into the dining room, "OI BOSS! LADY HERE TA SEE'YA!"
The dining room's din quieted a bit, and Twilight blushed under the gaze of a crew of slightly inebriated construction creatures before a bellowing voice from the back called out, "Princess! Same table!"
She glanced back to see Rivet waving a broad leg at her before nudging a dragon out of the seat she was nearing. "Get now, tha's Twilight's seat."
The drake murmured before dipping his head to Twilight and swaying over to the front counter, and hitting up a changeling there.
"Wow, it's a bit loud in here, isn't it!?" Twilight called out, glancing around at the room with a slight smile. It was loud, no doubt, but it was the jolly, relieved loud after a day's hard work, and she watched as a pony knocked over a large tankard before snatching it up and sopping at it himself, yelling curses at his table with a giant smile plastered over his face.
"Oh, right!" Rivet said before narrowing his eyes and concentrating. Twilight watched his horn light up before his field covered his ears. With a tickling, she felt her own ears covered before the sounds began to filter out into a much softer, background roar.
"How's that?" Rivet asked, his voice transmitted directly into Twilight's ears. "It's an earplug spell I modified, so's I can still talk to my crew without them goin' deaf."
"Oh wow, it's so clear!" Twilight said, flicking her ears and smiling. "Thank you."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, a faint blush running over his cheeks. "I worked on it for a while, but you ain't here to hear about my spell castin'. I already ate, so it's jus' you and me. An' my crew, if they do somethin' out'a shape and I gotta bend their ear, but I trust 'em."
"They seem like good ponies, from what I've seen," Twilight said, pulling her pages out of her saddlebag and setting them on the table.
"Yeah," he said, smiling out on the noisy dining room. "Some've them have had a hard life, but they're all good in their core. Little mouthy, but good deep down."
"How did you find—" Twilight started to ask before chuckling. "Sorry, getting ahead of myself. We can start whenever you're ready?"
"Sure, sure!" he said, gesturing to a waiter behind the counter by tapping one of his hooves with the other twice. "Drinks incoming, and we can get gabbin'! Where d'ya wants to start? I c'in go back to my grandda's birth on both sides, so you lets me know."
"Maybe not that far," Twilight chuckled, shaking her head. "I found an old Ponyville Express from that time that tells a good bit about your birth and some of what your parents told the press, along with the copy three days later that went into your genetics and why you weren't a full alicorn. It was fascinating, but now I want to know more about you. How you grew up, and how you got to where you are today."
Twilight glanced up and blushed a little. "Sorry, I know it's prying, but you're just so fascinating!"
He chuckled and waved a hoof. "It's alright, Miss Twilight. Honestly, I get a couple of reporters a year who find out about me and want to do a full, uh, 'exposed' or whatever, until they fin' out that I can' lift the sun or help ponies find their one true love or nothin'.
"It's a little flatterin' you just wanna hear about me, honestly," he said, scratching the base of his mane. "Most creatures lose interest when I tell them I'm pretty much a normal stallion."
"Well, that's it exactly!" Twilight said, smiling widely at him as a couple of thuds on the table announced their drinks. "You could have done anything! Become a minor celebrity, focused on your magical abilities and wings to create a traveling show, anything you could think of! And you're here, working with your hooves to make creature's lives better. It's amazing!"
He looked down at the table for a long time; his face stayed blank as he thought before he shrugged. "I guess I could do all that stuff and maybe even get some good bits for it." He paused, then shrugged again. "I just don't think that would make me happy."
Twilight let out a little squee at that before blushing and shaking her head. "And that's why I want to know about you," she said strongly before reaching over and grabbing her drink to take a heavy gulp from it.
Her eyes immediately crossed, and she started coughing, setting down the large frosted mug full of dark liquid topped with a light-caramel colored foam before gagging.
Rivet burst into laughter, leaning back and slapping his seat with his hoof before nodding at her. "Yeah, it's rough stuff, but Sparkle Coat introduced us to some Griffon stout, and now the rest of the lads can't get enough of it!"
He pointed out one of the dragons, who raised his mug to Twilight before emptying it, to the cheers of any of the crew watching.
His chuckles trailing off, he took a sip of his own drink before shivering and taking a larger drink. "Princesses help me; I think I'm gettin' used to it too," he chuckled before placing it carefully to the side. "Get you somethin' else, Princess? I can get you something softer an' more local, or a pop?"
Her coat shivering, she shook her head and let a breath out. "No, no, I'm okay," she said quickly, shivering again. "I just wasn't expecting it. Uhm," she said, coughing a little and pushing the drink away a hoof's length, "I'll get to that later." Taking another breath, she looked at Rivet. "Are you ready?"
He took another drink, he nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Where're we startin'?"
"Let's start at your earliest memories," she said, clearing her throat again and glancing over at the tall, dark drink. "What were you like as a foal? What sort of home did you grow up in?"
"Ah," he said, almost sighed. "From the beginin' then? Let's see what I can gather..."
Notes of Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, Magic, and other miscellaneous titles
Concerning the life of Pegacorn Rivet Clover
Following is a near-transcript of an interview between self and subject. The interview stage being Ponyville's historic diner The Rollerskate, an establishment that focuses on the black and white era from roughly seventy years ago. Self has rented out the dining room for the evening, and self and subject are speaking at a table by ourselves. Self will be marked by a T, and the subject will be marked as an R.
Transcript begins:
R- Why don't we start with one of my mother's favorite stories? The one when she was bringing me home.
Now, I told you earlier that I didn't get any real control over my wings and horn until I got my cutie mark. That didn't stop me from trying, though, and my mom and dad got a real hoot out of watching me work my wings and legs.
We lived in Filly(delphia), and my mom didn't feel up to walking home on account of my being a thirty-pound foal that she'd spent twenty-plus hours birthing. Poor mare says that she's still tired from that, even after my two younger brothers.
T- Oh, you have brothers? The newspaper (Ponyville Express issue no. 11456) mentioned that your mom was an earth pony and that your dad was a pegasi, but nothing about your brothers.
R- Yeah, there's four of us total. One older, then me, then the twins popped out. Public Clover, my older bro(ther), he's been in construction since he was strong enough to fly with a hammer. He's just a pegasus, no horn. And the twins are both earth ponies, taking after mom. They're named Wrench and Works Clover. They're all actually a couple of booths down; they used to moonlight as taxi ponies, but they came on to the crew when I got enough bits to start paying my outfit well. I'm glad I got Pubs to move over; he's got a lot of know-how that I'm actually still learning.
T- Sorry, but to go back to the story your mom likes to tell?
R- Right, sorry. Yeah, so we're heading back to our apartment in a taxi, and it's one of those ones with the open-top because it's springtime, and dad's always liked the fresh air blowing past him. Of course, I'm laying there, and they're trying to keep me safe and bundled, and so I flap my wings to get the blanket off my back.
Right then, there's this real strong wind. It just goes right between the buildings and over the top of the cab, and there I am, not knowing not to have my wings out.
Up I go like a kite! Mom swears it was the scariest thing that ever happened to her, but dad always says my face was the funniest thing he's ever seen. All eyes and wings, he says, just looking down on top of all those buildings and roads.
T- You were flying!?
R- Miss Twilight, any pegasi can tell you the difference between flying and gliding. I caught air alright, and there's no doubt that I was above the city, but nocreature would call it flying. And considering how I was about three days old at that time, it wasn't long before my wings couldn't hold me anymore, and I wasn't gliding, either.
Luckily, my dad was there to meet me just as my wings let go, and I only fell about five hoof's worth. Giggling and wiggling too, according to dad, like he'd just tossed me up and caught me.
My older brother called me Kite for the next two years, and my mom called my dad a number of names I can't say in front of a princess for not bringing me right back down. She says he flew me all the way back home, but he says it was just a block. Might have been both as far as I cared, still being three days old at the time.
That was about all the sky I saw for a little bit, that wasn't out a window. My mom got a bit paranoid see, and she tried to keep me under a roof for months until my dad convinced her that I wasn't going to get pulled back up into the sky.
She still didn't care until I got a surge that teleported me outside a window. Lucky again, because it was on the ground floor, and I landed in my mom's patch of clover she keeps outside her sills.
After that, she realized that she couldn't keep me too cooped up, and we found a park that we went to every weekend in summer. I still go there sometimes, when I'm in Filly.
T- Do you still live there?
R- No. Well, yes and no. I still have a room in that apartment, same as my brothers, but as it is, I was always a traveling sort. But that comes after my cutie mark, so I think we should wait on those stories?
T- Oh, yes, please. Are there any more things that stand out about your foal-hood?
R- Not much, to be honest. I was always getting into predicaments like those, scaring my poor mom and getting my dad cackling. There was more and more of them as I got into school. Got into school a little later than normal too. I was busy getting myself to the minimum mark for all three races, studying magic and getting my wings working, stuff like that.
I got bullied a little bit in school, being called a freak and stuff like that. It usually got cleared up by my brother Pubs, or the school principal sometimes, but there was a couple times where I got into some tough situations before finding myself twenty hooves in the air on my wings or on top of the school after a surge and a teleport.
Then comes the day of my Cutie Mark.
See, all throughout my days of school, there's been this one bully, some arrogant little unicorn whose name I can't even remember. He was smart, but the wrong kind of smart, you know? The kind of smart that makes you think you're above all the rest of the creatures of the world.
He knew spells that would paralyze my wings or push me off of the school's roof, and he liked to do it right when I'm over a mud puddle or something else nice and gross.
One day he decides he's had enough of me and comes over with his little goons that every bully seems to have, and he tells me he's gonna stomp me into the ground once and for all.
First thing I do is try and flap away, so he hits me real quick with that stiff wing spell. Then I try and teleport over to the school roof, and that works, but he's already got his shoving spell warm, and he pushes me.
Now, at this point, it's been raining so hard, on and off, that there's this mud puddle going all along the side of the school building. The biggest, stinkiest, algae-growing-est puddle you ever did see. So now I'm plunging down through the air, my wings stiff and my horn still smoking a little from the teleport, and I look down and see that mud puddle. And I sort of give up.
But it's not like the regular kind of giving up, where your spirits sink, and you start feeling sorry and sunk.
It's the trusting kind of giving up, where you hand over the reins of your life to the universe, and you say, "Universe, I don't think I can get out of this, so I'm gonna trust you with it. Either you'll do something, or I'll be coated in mud. Either way it shakes out, I guess I'll be alive and be happy about that."
Do you know what I mean, Princess?
...Twilight?
T- Oh, uh, sorry. Yeah, actually, I know exactly what you mean. That sounds a lot like the trust I put in my friends.
R- You need a tissue, Miss Twilight?
T- Thank you.
Okay, uh, sorry about that. What happened?
R- Oh, well, like I said, I kind of gave up. I gave up on saving myself, and I trusted something to happen, one way or another.
And it did.
After I told my teacher what happened, he told me that it had something to do with the way my wings were splayed and maybe to do with my magical field still coming back from that teleport.
Whatever it was that did it, I opened my eyes after I felt that soft cushion of earth hit me again, and I saw that I was completely clean. All the mud and water in that puddle had splashed out, and all the algae and the bad smell with it, leaving me resting some new dirt, and all that filth splashed out and onto that smart unicorn.
Wow, I can still remember that stench! And so did all those other colts and fillies on that playground until we all graduated.
Anyways, I told the teacher what had happened and how, and he laughed and laughed before he called me a lucky son of a buck. Then he laughed a little more, but I was distracted by a tingling on my flank. I turned and peeked, and I found my best friend, the cutie mark I've had since then.
-The subject stands and motions at his cutie mark. It is a horseshoe, with the standard seven holes in the arch. Additionally, there is a clover inside the shoe, with four leaves.-
R- Nopony has ever been dead sure on what it means exactly, but everypony I know does agree that I'm one of the luckiest ponies they've ever met.
-Subject takes a large drink from the mug before them. Shivering, I copy the motions.-
T- Ugh. Bleh. Uhm, is there anything else about your childhood you think stands out?
R- That's the biggest thing, I think. I was a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to my cutie mark, so I got it maybe a couple of years before we graduated school.
T- I actually know a trio of fillies that are similar in that respect.
R- Oh yeah? Some kids take it harder than others, but I was pretty laid-back about it. Knew it would come at some point, and rushing wouldn't do much about it.
T- I would say that I wish you would talk to those fillies, but it would just end up with them trying to get a cutie mark in... It's luck, right? You're pretty lucky?
R- Yeah, I suppose I have been, looking back at it. Like I said a bit ago, once I graduated, I started roving around the country, and let me tell you, there were some near scrapes then. I got chased up a tree by some Timberwolves, had to make a deal with a Chimera for my freedom, even met some Breezies and helped them on their way.
T- It sounds exhilarating.
R- It was, in the beginning. It started to lose its shine, though, and I was sort of searching for myself for a few years there. Then I made it to a little burg called Los Pegasus.
I'd kept up with the family through the mail, right? Turns out my two little brothers, Wrench and Works, right, had made their way there and were gearing up to find their own luck, according to my mom. But then they were out there for two weeks, and mom hadn't heard from them, so she asked me to drop in and check up there.
I got into town, and it turns out that they'd gotten into some money troubles, surprise surprise. They'd gone under on the second day, then found some sleaze-ball that offered them a loan. They never looked at the contract, were too sure of themselves that they'd make up the money in a week. Three days later, they were under again, and they worked themselves to the bone trying to make up the loan for the next few days.
They scraped together just enough to cover it, right, when the SB (sleaze-ball, subject tells me) comes knocking and shows them the small print. They owed double, and the amount doubled again every week.
So when I get there, they're working their tails off for this SB, and he's laughing as they're killing themselves over a piece of paper.
So I make this SB an offer. I pay off my brother's loan in less than a day, and he retires for good.
He don't know me, so he takes the offer, but he says I have to win off of the random-est game in Los Pegasus. I got to make all of my money off the roulette.
I get in this casino, right, and turns out it's run by SB's cousin. He sends all of his debtors there, and he marks them for the staff, and they bleed them dry. So when I get in there, they're all chuckling and hooting and making a fool of me.
That all doubles when I show up at the counter with my entire savings; two bits.
They're all laughing and pointing at me as I go up to the roulette wheel with my two little chips.
Now, I knew better than to press my luck. That's how you lose it, after all. So I'd never gambled before. Didn't want to press whatever gives me my luck and lose it. But I closed my eyes, and I told the universe what was happening and why I was doing what I was doing, and I tossed my two chips onto the table.
When I opened my eyes, both them chips had rolled over and were sitting on the number one.
The owner himself, SB's cousin, walks over at this point and gives me this real understanding smile. He says, "Son, that's one of the worst odds I have in the house. I'll tell you what, now, if you promise to give yourself over to be one of my grunts, your brothers will go free."
Now, I look at him, and I say, "That doesn't sound like something a gambler would say. How about this. I lose, and I accept that deal. I win? You give me enough cash to let my brothers go, doubled for the work they've almost died for."
The whole room goes silent as this SB number two sits there and chews on his cigar, staring me down.
Then he laughs and nods. "Very well, son. Spin it."
That pony behind the table can't stop snickering as he starts that wheel going before he tosses in this little white marble.
Now it's spinning round and round, and it's looking real hit and miss, with the ball rattling around and bouncing in and out of number slots and going round and round. The wheel starts to slow, and it looks a whole lot like the ball is going to settle into fourteen, right across from my number one. SB number two is chuckling and shaking his hooves with his employees, looking smug.
And then the marble hits in between the two slots, real hard, and it splits in two. And those two pieces fly across the wheel, hit the wall, and they settle into slot one.
T- No!
R, chuckling- They did! Both pieces!
Now, everypony is real quiet, even SB two. Then he starts screaming and squalling and calling me a cheater and every other name under Celestia's sun. And he kicks up such a fuss that the guards come in.
So then he starts trying to get them out, and they just dig in harder, and then he starts trying to buy them out, and they get real firm and mad, and they call in back-up, and by the end of the day, they have the entire casino and loanshark in chains and my brothers free. When they ask me what I was doing, and I tell them, they laugh so hard they lose their helmets, and they get with their commanders, and he writes up bounties on the two ponies. Then he pays me out their bounties, which just happens to be twice what my brothers owed before he bans me from every casino in the town.
T- Wow. What happened from there?
R- Well, I got with my brothers, all three of them, and we put the money into equipment and horsepower, and we started taking on odd jobs for cities and working our way up. We started in a little village called Appleloosa, and we've worked our way up to Ponyville, and if your friend still wants it, it sounds like we'll be in Canterlot soon.
Twilight blinked as Rivet drained the last of his mug, looking up at him. "That's how you got into your construction? Why didn't you just retire? I'm sure it was a lot of bits?"
He wrapped his hooves around the empty mug, thinking as he stared down into it. Twilight looked over at her own half-full glass before she made a face and took another drink of the astonishingly still cold drink.
"By the sun, I think I'm getting used to it," she murmured darkly before taking another drink.
"It felt wrong," Rivet said. Twilight started writing again but paused and laid her quill down on the page. "It felt like I'd taken somethin' that weren't mine, right? So I wanted to use it to give something back, and my brother was already deep into the building work. It felt righ' to go into something that requires some good, hard work with your hooves, yeah?"
Twilight looked across from her at the stallion smiling into his mug before giving her own small smile.
"I think I understand," she said, leaning back from her notes and casting a drying spell on the ink. Looking across the table, she sighed before reaching over and grabbing her mug, downing the dark brew in two drinks and shuddering.
"Thanks," she said, smiling over at him. "I think I understand now. It's a good tale." She glanced down at the pages. "Do you mind if I share them?"
Chuckling, Rivet nodded. "Sure, Miss Twilight. Feel free to share it with any creature you want."
Afterward
Twilight sighed, leaning back from the massive planning table in Canterlot Castle. She twisted her neck and sighed as the two cracks released some of the tension.
"So, are we talking extension or another whole storage building?" she asked the group. Watching them all discuss between themselves, she fluffed her large wings and worked some of the sweat from her wingpits.
"I think an extension will cover the needs very well, Princess," one of her advisors said, a white-coated blond that only passingly reminded her of his grandfather.
"Very well. Will the usual contractor do?"
Every creature around the table nodded at each other, and Twilight called out a name.
Walking in the door came a stallion with a caramel coat and a light brown mane. No wrinkles showed beneath his horn, and his wings were still uncolored and wide, with no graying visible.
"Looking good, Rivet," Twilight said, smiling at their now-old joke.
He smiled back and murmured, "An' you, Miss Twilight, are still as pretty as ye ever was."
