> Social Drinking
>  by arcaneCentrifuge
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Trivia Night
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Evening, Punch."

"Evening, Burst," Berry Punch mumbled, almost slipping as she climbed onto the bar stool.  Purse-strings were tight, and she had pre-gamed a little bit this evening... it was more cost-effective to drink at home than at the bar.  But she couldn't not show up at all.  Not tonight.  Not on Wednesday.  Trivia night.  "You guys're packed tonight.  Whats the special?"

The bar was nowhere near "packed", but it was about as close as they came.  Saddlebags Rest was only the most recent in a long line of financially unsustainable alcoholic Ponyville institutions.  Before Saddlebags Rest, it had been the Longface Tavern.  Before that, it was the Naughty Nocturne, Half-Full Bar, Stable of Four... all the way back to Pony Lane, when Ponyville was only recently founded.  As long as there was a Ponyville, there would be a Ponyville Bar, and it would always be a few weeks in the red away from total fiscal meltdown.

Ponyville was, for the most part, a town of teetotallers.  Perhaps it was because Ponyville suffered from rural attitudes about temperence.  Or perhaps it was just an illusion, since everyone knew every colt and his grandmother had a still set up in their basement.  But either way, Ponyville just didn't have a "night life".  It wasn't that kind of community.  And for most of the locals, that was fine.

Most of the locals.  But not Berry Punch.

BP didnt think of herself as a drunk.  Drunks were people who couldn't find their way home after last call.  Drunks were ponies, innocent ponies, that drank too much and found themselves out of their element.  Berry Punch was never out of her element.  Drinking WAS her element. She was doing what she was meant to be doing. If anypony had any question about that, the answer was right there on her flank.  Drinking wasn't just something she did.  It was her super-special talent.  There's no 12-step program for getting a new cutie mark.  She was who she was, and she didn't have a problem with it.

But she couldn't drink at home, either.  well.  That wasnt entirely true.  Of course she still drank at home.  Hell, she'd made herself a rum and cranberry just for the walk over here.  But she wouldn't do her serious drinking at home.  Those were the rules, when you wanted to think of yourself as a social drinker.  So that was why she was here.  To drink, socially.

Hop Burst, one of the bartenders of the Saddlebags, pointed at the big slate board leaning against the bar.  It said:

"Mixed drinks half-off between 5 and 7!"

BP scowled up at the clock on the wall.  "Zat your idea of a joke?"

"It's not a joke, Beeps.  I'm sorry, but I cant extend Happy Hour to 8 anymore.  The last time the boss threatened to take the money out of my wages!  I'd barely break even!"  Her face fell.  "I cant afford that shit."

"I dont even get off until 7!" Berry Punch said.  "Cant you convince him that I, as a Very Important Patron, am valuable enough to this bar to justify it?"

She rolled her eyes and held up a hoof to stop BP as a pony further down the bar flagged her down.  "We can argue about this later.  If you dont whine I'll comp you a drink later, okay?"

"Fiiiiiine," BP whined.  "Gimme a roman cola when ya get back, kay?"

HP gave her a 'hooves up' as she poured a cider on draft for the other stallion.  Berry Punch took this moment, not having a drink yet, to cast an eye across the crowd tonight.

It was a typical workhorse crowd.  If this was a Saturday night, the place would be full of tourists.  That was something BP was still trying to get used to.  Ponyville had been nowheresville until about two years ago, and frankly, she'd liked it that way.  The close proximity of the Everfree Forest and the overall "bumpkin" image of the town meant that there was really nothing worth visiting in Ponyville.  That was before Celestia's protege came to town.  Now it seemed like Ponyville made the national news on a near weekly basis.

But tonight the crowd was mostly mules, here in Ponyville for one construction job or another.  BP was sure Hop Burst must be happy about that.  Mules meant she'd be mainly serving beer, instead of the cheap, thin swill that they sold as cider.  Most ponies would rather drink a bad cider than a good beer.

Mules, on the other hand, invariably preferred beer.  The only ponies at the bar tonight were the regulars... each nursing a Crab Red or a cocktail as they waited for the trivia teams to pair up.  BP recognized a few of them.  Trivia night was a time-honored occasion and the prize for winning each week was worth competing for.  But most of them, the ones who were there every Wednesday, already knew to stay the hell away from Berry Punch.  She'd had to go partnerless for the past two Wednesdays.

"Rum and cola," Burst said, pushing the highball glass across the bar to BP.  It had a toothpick-kebab of grapes and a strawberry garnishing it; Punch's signature garnish.  "Are you starting another tab?"

"Yeah sure," Punch said, taking the first sip.  "Mmm.  I'm at least going to be drinking through the quiz portions.  What's the category round gonna be tonight?"


"Grab bag," Burst said, briefly disappearing under the counter to drag a new keg of Crab Red up to the hook-up and pushing the empty keg where it wouldn't get out of her way.  "I was going to do Pony History but with the crowd being what it is, General seems better.  Be nice to get some of the blue-collars to try to play."

"Those guys?" Punch raised an eyebrow.  "I mean I dont wanna be mean, but..."

Hop Burst waved away the conversation.  "Dont even start.  Mules are good customers and they LIKE my beer.  Better customers than some."

"I'm a great customer!" Punch protested.  "Come on!  I am a GREAT customer.  When have I not tipped well, Punch?  When have I ever stiffed you?"

"Monday."

"Yester..." Punch set her glass down to think.  Hop Burst braced her head up with her hoof, waiting.

"Oh.  Ohhh.  Oh, Bursty.  No no no no no I wasn't not tipping!  I just... had to go in a hurry, and... at least I settled the night's tab before I left, right?"

Hop Burst kept frowning.

"I didn't?  Haha, oh man, what a... what an accident that was!  Of course I'll pay now, I have the money!  I just... how much was my bill, again?"

"Thirty-eight bits."

"Thirty-ish bits?  That's... oh yeah, I definitely have around that much.  Look, since I'm already here, and I've got a drink, how about we just extend last night's tab into today?  Ehh?  Just merge the tabs?  And then I'll settle up at closing time?"

Burst shook her head.  "You mean, assuming you dont win the trivia contest, right?  In which case, the combined tab would just disappear and the bar would be out a lot of money.  I'm not combining your tabs.  They stay separate."

"I may have it to let it ride if I dont win, then," Punch grimaced.  "I mean... you know I'm good for it?"

"You know I love you Beeps but if you make me have to cover for you to the boss... just settle up before you go, okay?"

Punch opened her mouth to make some promises, only to be cut off by the sound of hooves clopping together at the end of the bar.  She and Hop Burst turned to notice the impatient blue unicorn in a hood who, apparently, had been trying to catch the bartender's attention.  The unicorn said nothing but levitated an empty glass with a celery stalk sticking out of it and shook it a little.  Hop Burst frowned.  "Be right back."

Burst dumped out the celery stalk garnish on a napkin for the customer to munch on or dispose of at her discretion and whipped up another Bloody Mare.  As soon as the drink was on the bar, the unicorn mare grabbed it and turned away, angling her face away from the crowd... and from Berry Punch.

Punch pulled the last grape off her toothpick garnish and chewed it idly as Burst returned and started to make her a fresh rum and cola.

"Hey... Burst, have you seen that mare before?"

"Miss Stoli-and-tomato-juice?  No, I don't think she's from around here."

Punch shook her head.  "No, but... are you sure you haven't seen her?  I've got the weirdest feeling..."

"How can you tell?  I've served her three of those Bloody Mares and I think I've only gotten two clear looks at her face.  She kinda creeps me out a little."

Punch shrugged.  "Maybe I'm just imagining it.  I dunno.  Anyway.  Are we going to get started soon?"

"Yeeees," Burst said slowly.  "Most of them have already paired off already, actually.  Everyone got here early tonight.  Everyone who I know is coming."

"So someone doesnt have a partner yet?" Burst's eyes lit up.  "We have an odd number?  Oh, who?  Is it a regular?"

"Actually, that's kind of the thing.  He specifically-" But Burst was already scanning the crowd for ponies that were sitting alone.

"I dont get it.  Who's the odd pony out?"

Hop Burst sighed.  "...You are, Beeps.  I mean, that's not accurate, the odd pony out is Thunderlane, but... he specifically asked not to be paired with you."

"He..." Punch's jaw dropped.  "No!  He did not."

"He certainly did."

"Why that-" BP slammed her drink down loudly on the bar.  Behind her, well outside her field of vision, a black stallion shrank into his chair at the sound.  "That jerk!  How dare he- on what grounds-  I dont- Last time he were grouped up we had a blast!  I dont get why he's acting like this!"

"Last time you were grouped you got way too drunk and grabbed his ass," Burst said.  "You remember that, right?"

"WELL, I wouldn't have grabbed him if he hadn't been so rude!  He was clearly making fun of the way I talked!"  Punch picked her rum back up and sipped it once, indignantly.  "And Burro isn't Thunderlane's ass, he's his OWN ass.  Get with the times, Burst!  Donkey rights!"

"Yes, well, they also have the right to not be assaulted when theyre just trying to enjoy a drink with a... friend.  Slow down on your rum, Punch."

"I'm not-" Punch looked down.  Her second rum (third if you counted pre-gaming) was almost polished off already.  "Oh.  Hmm."

"Also, you groped Thunderlane's flank."

Punch squinted.  "Did I do that?  I dont remember-"

"Aaaaand then threw up on him."

"Hmmm."  Punch frowned at was left of her rum, then tossed it back and pushed the empty glass back over to Hop Burst.  "Well... that does sound like me."

"I'm sorry but I cant make people partner up if they dont want to.  He's gonna be playing by himself tonight."  Burst took the glass, but didnt immediately make Punch another drink.  A good bartender knows when to withhold.  "If you'd learn to control your temper... and to respect other's boundaries, you'd probably have an easier time making friends."

"Whoa." Punch raised her hands.  "Time out.  Whoa.  I have friends, okay.  I have tons of friends.  Don't make this a saturday morning special here.  I have plenty of friends."

"Why dont you ever invite them to come here, then?  I could always use the business of a few more customers that can keep up with you."

"Well, I dont..." Punch thought about it.  "I mean, well, there's Cheerilee.  But she doesn't really drink, anymore.  Went all 12-steppy when she got that teaching job.  There's, uh... Pinkie Pie?"

"Pinkie Pie is friends with everyone, Beeps," Burst said.  "Pinkie Pie is even friends with my mother.  I dont think they've ever spent longer than two minutes together and Pinkie Pie is helping my dad throw her a surprise anniversary party this weekend.  Pinkie Pie doesn't count."

"Okay, well... you're my friend!"  Punch reached across the bar and patted the pegasus bartender on the head.  "You're my friend, right?  Bursty?"

"Because I provide you with alcohol.  And I cant be your partner, Punch.  It's my trivia.  I already know all the answers."

"Well, FINE!" Punch recoiled back from Burst sulkily.  "If you have all the answers then what am I supposed to do?  It's almost 8:30!  I'm not going to play without a partner!  I'm here to drink socially, dammit!  I'm a SOCIAL PONY!"

The rest of the bar suddenly seemed to have gotten really quiet.  Punch slowly turned in her barstool, just enough to see the crowd out of the corner of her eye.  They seemed to be staring at her.  Punch swiveled back to face Hop Burst.

"I'd like to apologize.  I think I'm drunker than I thought I was."

"I accept your apology."  Hop Burst hesitated, then gave the fuschia mare a half-hug across the bar.  "If you're good, in fifteen minutes I'll serve you a drink.  But you have to promise you aren't going to 'Berry Punch' any customers tonight, okay?  Can you keep yourself calm for me?"

"I will be so calm," Punch promised with the sincerity of the inebriated.  "I will be so, so calm.  I'm sorry Bursty I dont wanna get you in trouble, it's just, it's hard being me and i get so frustrated and no one wants to pair up with me and oh celestia its TRUE i dont even have any FRIENDS-"

"Why dont you go use the Little Filly's Room?" Burst said quickly, cutting her off before she started sobbing into her napkins.  "And when you get back we'll get started.  Does that sound good, Beeps?"

Punch nodded, pouting a little.  She climbed off her stool carefully and trotted down the length of the bar, past the hooded unicorn.  She was pretty sure the unicorn was watching her as she passed by, but there was no way to peek and confirm.  She took a left and found the bathroom.

Once Punch had cleaned herself up and taken a few deep breaths, she started to feel a lot more relaxed.  The alcohol had hit her kinda suddenly, but she felt less weepy and more sleepy.  Trivia night would wake her up.  Trivia night always got her excited.

Game face on, Berry Punch strode out of the restroom with swagger.  Screw Thunderlane and screw his dumb ass, and screw not having friends.  She could make friends if she wanted to, being social was what being a social drinker was all about!  She turned right to walk back to her bar stool, where Hop Burst was already waiting with a new drink.

She stopped.  The drink looked nice, but...

Punch clumsily climbed up to the first free stool to her right... the one next to the one that was furthest away from the rest of the crowd.  The one right next to... the hooded blue unicorn.  Little Miss Stoli-and-tomato-juice.  Once she was comfortably on the stool, she turned on it to face the blue unicorn (who was shrinking into the wall divider to try avoid Berry Punch).  She stuck out a hoof.

"Hi!  I'm Berry Punch!  I'm... hey, let's be social!  Let's socialize, okay?  What's your name?  Have I met you before?  I swear you seem vaguely familiar and I KNOW this must be weird to have ponies randomly come up to you, but it's just itching at my brain and if I could just put my finger on it- dang!  Hey, what're you drinking tonight?"

The blue unicorn seemed to be sensing that Berry Punch was not going to go away on her own.  She turned back enough so the other pony could see what she was drinking- a Bloody Mare, of course, the same one she had been nursing.  When she spoke, her voice was low, but the tone of derision was impossible to miss.  "What do you think?  How many drinks do you know that are made with tomato juice?"

"Uh, off the top of my head..." Berry Punch cocked a head in thought.  "Bloody Bull, Bloody Sunday, Scary Mary, Snake's Blood, Tomboy, Rooster Tail, Bannockburn, Clam Digger-"

"It's a Bloody Mare!" the unicorn hissed. "It's OBVIOUSLY a Bloody Mare!  I've never even heard of... any of those!"

"Really?  I hadn't even started to go obscure.  Ever had... a Cajun Tomato?  Vampire's Kiss?  Tomato Slammer?  Red Ruth?  Autopsy, Banderas, Carnegie Sunri-"

"NO!  No.  I have never had any of those.  I have never had any drink with tomato juice that wasn't a Bloody Mare.  Thank you for enlightening me.  Now if you'll leave me to my drink, I'm not here to socia-"

"It's just that you look like you're on the way to racking up quite a tab," Berry Punch interrupted.  "And you're not a local, but you're here on a Wednesday.  So you probably have no idea what's up.  But tonight is trivia night, and any minute now the bartender is going to get started."

"Thanks for the warning," the unicorn said.  She turned back away.  "I'll be sure to stay far away from your hickville party games."

"Aaaand you see, there's a prize for whoever wins," Berry Punch continued.  "And I just figured, well, I dont have a partner.  So I thought-"

"You thought wrong," the unicorn responded sharply.  "I didnt come here to socialize, or play trivia games.  I came here to drink until I cant remember my name anymore.  Although at this point I think I'd be satisfied with drinking until I didnt know YOUR name anymore.  What was it?  Very Drunk?  Oh, I seem to have lost it already!"

"Whatever team wins gets their tab covered for the rest of the night," Berry Punch said.  "I dont have a partner because everyone here is awful, but if we team up, and win, you can drink as much as you want for the rest of the night, on the house."

The unicorn considered this.  "...How long is the trivia contest?"

"About an hour and a half, maybe two.  And the bar's open until 2, so..."

"So that's a good-"

"Three hours to drink as much as you want," Berry Punch said.  "Maybe three and a half."

"That's a lot of time to drink..." the unicorn mused.

"Enough time to kill every brain cell in your pretty little head!" Punch said.  "Unless you dont think you have a chance of winning, I mean..."

The unicorn's eyes flashed with anger and she tossed her hood back, revealing her full face.  "A 'chance'?  You have no idea who you're talking to, clearly.  There is no 'chance', here.  I'm going to win, that much is a certainty.  The only question was whether it would be worth my time."  She scowled and drained the rest of her bloody mare.  "Do you have any intention of contributing to our inevitable victory, or does your freaky encyclopedic knowledge end with obscure cocktails?"

"Dont worry," Punch said.  "I can more than pull my weight.  Bar trivia is what I do, we have this in the bag."

The unicorn snorted derisively.  "I'll take your word for it.  And if you're bluffing, I'm not too magnanimous to let you ride my considerable coattails.  It would practically be an act of charity."

"Speaking of charity..." BP waved a hoof at Hop Burst.  "Hey can I get that drink over here, Bursty?  And get Snooty Horn another drink on my tab!"

"I can pay for my own drinks," the unicorn said.  "And the sooner we get started so I can win already, I wont have to."

"Buy you a drink if you tell me your name?"

"I just said I can pay for my- hello."  Hop Burst had arrived at their side of the bar and was looking bemused.  She slid Berry Punch's drink over to her.

"Hello.  You girls having fun?"

"No," the unicorn scowled.

"Yes," Berry Punch said, sipping her new drink. It wasnt a rum and cola, but it tasted pretty good.  "We're going to be teaming up for the trivia contest!"

"Great, the rest of the ponies are getting antsy.  Another Bloody Mare, Miss...?"

"My name is the Great and..." the unicorn considered.  "...Lulamoon.  Just call me Lulamoon.  And I'll have an old fashioned, if you can make it right."

"Um," Burst said.  "I can make it *almost* right.  We're out of angostura bitters, but I have orange bitters, would that-"

'Lulamoon' cut her off with a wave of her glass.  "Yes, yes, fine.  It'll have to do."

When she had it mixed, Hop Burst retreated from the two mares to climb up on the bar.  "Alright, everypony who wants to participate in tonight's Trivia Showdown Extravaganza, listen up!  You should already be paired up with a partner by now, if you're not you have one minute to find one or you're playing by yourself!"

Berry Punch felt a little bit of satisfaction as she watched Thunderlane out of the corner of her eye.  Who was the lonely pony now?  Thunderflanks, that's who!

"Okay!  Everypony who is playing is going to need to give me one bit to help pay off the prize.  Once we have all the money, I'll start passing out the quiz sheets!"

"Money?" 'Lula' hissed.  "You didnt say anything about money."

"It's just one bit, hold your hominids!  I got us covered here."  Berry Punch put two bits on the bar and slid them just out of her reach, where Hop Burst could collect them later.

"So how does this work?" 'Lula' asked.  "Are we working together or competing?"

"Uhhh, working together," Burst said.  "That's pretty much the central principle behind team-based games, right?  She's gonna give us a quiz sheet in a minute and then we have like five minutes to fill out as many answers as we can in the time.  I can write it all down.  Correct answers are worth 2 points, incorrect answers are worth a negative point, and no answer at all is worth no points!"

"What kinds of questions are they?  Academic questions, or general knowledge, or...?"

"Oh, all kindsa stuff," Burst said.  "It's different from week to week.  History, science, math, sports, you know, whatever."

"Math?" 'Lulamoon' paled a little.  "And sports?  I don't know about-"

Hop Burst slammed the face-down quiz paper on the bar in front of Berry Punch and 'Lulamoon', startling them.  She smirked a little bit at that, and then gave the last piece of paper to Thunderlane.

"Okay everypony!  Turn over your paper in one... two... three!"

There was a scramble of sound as all the competing ponies flipped the page over and started reading, in quiet but urgent tones, the first questions.

"Okay, question one, geography.  What's the capital of Papau New Whinny?"

"Port Horseby," 'Lula' said.

"Really?  Where's New Whinny, I've never even-"

"Dont waste time, write it down!  Next question!"

"Uh, okay.  What's the process by which plants turn sunlight into food?"

'Lula' frowned.  "Ugh.  Put down photosynthesis, but it's a trick question.  Plants only do that in magic-null zones like the Everfree Forest, and only because-"

"Next question!  What's the square root of 289?"

"Umm..." 'Lula' started scratching on a napkin with her pencil."

"17," Berry Punch smirked, marking the answer down while Lula was still doing the math.  "Okay, in theater, what does the best boy do?"

"Suck the gaffer's dick," 'Lula' said, sipping her old-fashioned.

"Uhh..."

"Dont put that down.  The best boy puts up the lights.  Next question!"

"Okay.  What is the chief export of Appleloosa?"  Berry Punch rubbed her head.  "That's gotta be a trick question, right?  I mean... Apples are in the name..."

'Lula' shrugged.  "I'd assume its apples.  I don't know.  I havent been to Appleloosa yet."

"What, and you've been to Papau New Whinny?"

"Yes!" she snapped.  She paused for a moment and then her expression softened.  "Okay, no, I've been to Hosstralia, I'm not even sure why I lied about that."

"Is that... is that near New Whinny?"

'Lulamoon' facehoofed.  "Do you know ANYTHING about geography?"

"Well..."

"Just put down apples.  Next question!"

"Okay, okay.  Uh oh.  What was the final score in the '02 Supertrough between the Bisons and the Bolts?  Can we just-"

"Mmyes, skip it."

"Kay."  Berry Punch cast her eyes down the page.  "I'm just gonna preemptively skip any of the sports questions.  Oh, here we go!  What was the first studio-album by z-rock duo The Black Stripes?"

The unicorn looked blank.  "Should I have heard of them?"

"What?" BP's mouth dropped and she wrinkled her snout in mild disdain.  "What."

"I don't listen to much music!  If you know it, write down the answer and lets move on!"

"I don't even-" BP looked baffled.  "Who doesn't listen to music?"

"I don't listen to music."

"What do you do to relax?"

"I drink!  Alone!" the unicorn hissed.  "And generally, when I drink alone?  I prefer to be by myself."

"Well now I know you listen to music, because I love George Thurbred," Berry Punch said.  "Oh, nevermind.  It's a gimme question, their first studio album was self-titled.  I'll try not to give you a hard time.  D'you want a geography question?"

"God yes," 'Lula' said, closing her eyes.  "Let's do all the geography while I'm still sober.  The only thing I cant find on a map is this godforsaken town."

"Well, you aren't sober, but okay.  Highest peak in the Macintosh Hills, first major pegasus city in Equestria, first pony to map Galloping Gorge-"

"Slow down! The first major pegasus city was Cloudsdale.  Galloping Gorge was first navigated by Compass Rose. And the highest peak in Macintosh Hills is Smoky Dome."

Berry Punch shook her head.  "What are you, an alcoholic geography teacher?"

"Neither.  I just do a lot of traveling.  And sometimes I read an atlas for fun.  What's next?"

"How many words end with 'mt'?"  Punch looked up.  "I wonder if acronyms count?"

"I doubt acronyms count."

"What about 'empty'?"

"Dont get cute," 'Lula' said, rolling her eyes.  "Just put down 'one'.  They didn't ask us to name the word."

"Done and done. What is the sum of the angles of a triangle?  Celestia, talk about a baby question."

'Lula' frowned.  "But what kind of triangle?"

Punch blinked.  "...No, it doesnt matter what kind of triangle, Lula.  The angles always add up to 180 degrees."

"Really?  Even for really big triangles?"

Punch studied her face to see if she was joking.  There was only a blank expression.

"...How about I do the math questions without even reading them out loud, okay?"

'Lula' frowned and waved her old fashioned in a gesture of 'whatever'.  "Sure."

"Next... what is the airborn velocity of an unladen racing pigeon?"

"Is it a Giraffrican or Stirrupean pigeon?"

"I think you're thinking of a different bird," Berry Punch said.  "I think racing pigeons are domesticated in Equestria."

"Hrm.  Just put down whatever, then."

"One hundred... and ten..." Punch said as she scribbled on the paper.  "What is the term for a group of unicorns... there's a word for that?"

"A group of unicorns is a blessing," 'Lula' said.  "That's just common knowledge."

"A blessing?  Does being born with a horn automatically make you pretentious, or are there indoctrination ceremonies?"

"Ceremonies, and that's all I can say.  Next question?"

"Mm, it's a math question.  Next after that... who was the first pony on the moon?  Uh... is it 'too soon' to say Princess Luna?"

"Princess Luna wasn't the first pony banished to the moon, just the first pony Celestia banished to the moon."

"There are other ponies that can banish people to the moon?!" Punch shook her head.  "Shit, like one isnt scary enough!"

"Well obviously not anymore.  If there were, they'd be challenging Celestia, wouldn't they?  Put down 'Nightmare Moon'.  That should cover all bases, so long as she's considered a pony."

"Isn't that the same thing as Princess Luna?" Punch said.  "Whatever, dont care, next question.  To the n-"

"Five minutes!" called Hop Burst.

"Shit, already?!  Um, to the nearest hundred thousand, how many species of beetles exist in the known world?"

"There are more than a hundred thousand species of beetles?!" 'Lula' said incredulously.  "Can we guess one?  One hundred thousand?"

"They wouldn't ask if it was one!  They never ask unless it's really high or really low, and one hundred thousand isn't really low!  That's how bar trivia goes!"

"Put down whatever, we're getting off-track!  Next question!"

"What is the speed of light in a vacuum?" Punch asked.  "Shit, I know this, it's just... I dont remember the whole thing.  I know it starts with 299 million meters per second..."

'Lula' shrugged.  "That'll have to be good enough."

"Ugh.  I'll just say 'approximately'.  Bursty will let it slide.  Uh, math question, music question, sports question, here we go: what was the first musical created by both Rogers and Hammersteed?"

"Okllamahoma!," 'Lula' said solemnly.  "Never before, and never since, has the llama audience had it so good."

"What is the differ-"

"Time!" Hop Burst shouted, slamming her hoof into the floor.  "Pencils down, everypony! The quiz portion is now complete!"

There was a collective sigh as the bar dropped their pencils. "That was rough," 'Lula' said. "How many did we have to skip?"

Punch scanned the page.  "Four.  Three sports questions, and the last one.  That's not... a total flop.  ...but I also have no idea if we got the beetle one right  Or the pigeon one."

"One hundred thousand beetles." 'Lulamoon' shuddered.  "That's too many damn beetles."

"I put down three hundred thousand." Punch was sliding her drink back and forth across the bar from one hoof to another, tracing and retracing the same path of condensation and at least one spill.  She stopped and polished off what was left, pushing it and 'Lula's glasses away from them.  "It sounded like a lot.  Next round on me?"

"Berry," 'Lula' said.  "Stop offering me drinks.  It's silly.  We each have a tab open and when we win we'll get both our tabs absolved, so it's completely irrelevant which of us puts which drink on whose tab."

PUnch turned to look her in the eyes. "So you did remember my name."

She smiled a little at that. "I'm good at remembering names."

"If it's completely irrelevant which of buys which drinks, wouldn't it make the most sense for us to buy each other's drinks?"

The unicorn's expression was patient but unimpressed as she waited to see where, if anywhere, Berry Punch was going with this.  "Elaborate?"

"Have you never had someone buy you a drink before?" she asked.

"I don't go to many bars, generally. I... don't like to be very public."

"Well," she said.  "When you drink alone at a bar, if you drink alone, you leave yourself open to intruders.  The solo drinker is an open invitation to other drinkers that someone should buy them drinks. And then when you accept, the person takes that as a prompt that they can come over and talk to you."

"Like you did?"

"Well, that wasn't... okay, yeah, but I sat down before I offered to buy you a drink, so we're already past that stage. By having somepony buy you your drinks, you send a signal to the other single ponies not to move in."

"Signal how, exactly? Who's going to hear my drink order? Is this supposed to keep the bartender from hitting on me?"

"It wouldn't help anyway," Hop Burst said.  The two other ponies jumped. "I dont let stuff like that hold me back."

"Dont just appear behind people like that," Punch said.  "Could give somepony a heart attack."

"I didn't appear.  You were distracted.  Do you have a quiz for me?"

Berry Punch held out the piece of paper.  "Oh, and another old-fashioned for the lady."

"On my own tab," 'Lula' said.

"But secretly on my tab," Punch mock-whispered.

"My own tab," 'Lula' said firmly.  "And... a rum and cola for the lady."

Hop Burst raised an eyebrow.  "Punch, you're having a drink right before the Cocktail Round?"

"The what now?"

"Cocktail Round," Punch said.  "And no, captain, belay that order. I'm saving room."

"Saving room?  Cocktail Round?" 'Lulamoon' looked back and forth between the bartender and the lush. "There's a drinking portion? Then why is everyone else drinking?  Should I not?"

"Everyone is drinking because only Berry Punch ever competes in the Cocktail Round," Hop Burst said, winking at Punch.

"Huh?"

"I'll let her explain it to you.  I gotta get set up."

"Try to challenge me a little," Punch said with a smirk.  "I haven't been studying for nothing."

'Lulamoon' watched as Burst hovered over to the other side of the bar, talking to Punch but without keeping up eye contact.  "Why would they have a round of the game where no one competes but you?"

"Because no one has ever won it but me," Punch said. "Basically, she makes a drink behind the counter and with one smell, one sip, and one shot, I have to identify the cocktail.  If I dont know the name I can identify its ingredients by part, but either way I have to successfully name three in a row in order to get the bonus points.  If I miss one, the round is over and we move on.  Other ponies used to, y'know, go up against me, but nopony could beat my streak.  Now nopony tries."

The unicorn was stunned to silence.  "Nopony has beaten you?  Ever?  How long have you been playing?"

Punch shrugged.  "Few years, every wednesday.  Three times per game."

"So that's... three times..."

"It's around four hundred or so consecutively identified cocktails," she said.  "I know.  It's a lot of drinks.  I'm a local personality because of it.  And I'm not going to lose tonight."

'Lula' shook her head, apparently impressed.  "But what about me?"

"What about you?"

"I'm on your team! Shouldn't I play too?"

Punch shook her head.  "The round only still exists as part of the game because sometimes ponies come to watch me play. It's not supposed to be competitive, the points are just an incentive for me to keep doing it."

"Y'ready Punch?" Burst called.

"Ready," she said with a smirk, dropping from her stool and walking to the table set up for the game.  A few of the mules in the crowd had started to gather around to watch the performance.  Bottles of all shapes and sizes were arranged across the other side of the table, easily a hundred varieties.  Hop Burst emerged from behind the bar with the first drink, a shotglass of black liquid, slightly coffee-colored around the rim.

'Lulamoon' moved around the edges of the crowd, watching Berry Punch as she sniffed the mysterious shot.  The bar had hushed to an almost reverent silence. Most of the patrons hadn't gotten up, but everyone was watching. 

Punch took a sip.

"Mmm. Hmm. Anise. Astringency. Ethanol. Beer... Carbonation? Maybe..."

Hop Burst's expression was a perfect poker face. Berry Punch looked right into her eyes anyway as she considered the palate.

"Oak... Ahh.  Now I have you."  She deftly pounded the shot back and slammed the shotglass back on the table, exhaling with obvious relish.

The crowd leaned in.

"A shot of jagermeister and a shot of jameson dropped into a pint of Harness Stout, shaken, and then poured into a shotglass."

Hop Burst's ear twitched.

"And it's called Double Wagon Bomb."

The bartender grinned ruefully.  "Correct."

The ponies refrained from clapping their hooves on the floor, since it would likely shake the liquor off the table, but there were a lot of cheers and whistles.  Punch waved them away with a drunken smile. "On to the next?"

Hop Burst nodded and went to to grab the next shot.  It was grapefruit pink.  Berry Punch smelled it thoughtfully.  "Whew!  Tequila."

"And?" Burst said, smiling.

"And..." She tasted it.  "Ooo. One part strawberry juice, one part pink lemonade." She took the shot. "...Two parts tequila.  Strained through ice. A Pink Chihuahua."

Hop Burst nodded with a smile.  "Good job.  One more to go."

She returned to behind the bar.  She emerged with another shot, this one a solid, bright green.  She set it in front of Berry Punch, who gave it a good-naturedly disdainful look.

"You're going for Midori right off the bat?  You don't think I'd recognize one of your favorite cordials by color?"

"Lots of things are green, Punch," Burst said.  "Maybe I knew you knew I like Midori, and I went green to mislead you?"

"Cant bullshit a bullshitter," Punch said, sniffing the shot. "I know what I see and I know what I smell.  Mi-do-ri."  She took a sip.

"Mm.  Eeyup.  Gonna say... two parts midori, one part sour, one part coconut vodka, one part... pineapple soda."

"Aren't you going to take a shot before you guess?"

Berry Punch shrugged. She drank the shot and returned it to the table.  "I don't know what it's called.  But that's what it is."

Hop Burst watched her quietly.  "I call it a Calypso Melon. Good guess."

"Tha-

"But you missed one ingredient."

The bar was silent, frozen.  Berry Punch's mouth hung open.

"There was also a splash of sour apple schnappes."

Punch slumped down in her chair, looking physically wounded. She shook her head. "O-oh.  I, um.  I guess.  That's it, then." The regulars in the crowd looked on with pity.  The mighty Berry Punch had fallen.

"I'm sorry," Hop Burst said.  "The Cocktail Round ends with no-"

"Wait!" a voice called from the back of the crowd.  Ponies and mules spun around to see the speaker.

The unicorn had tossed off the hooded jacket she'd been wearing.  Underneath it was a resplendent, purple cloak.  It almost seemed to blow in the nonexistent breeze as she stared the crowd down.  "This round cannot end until both partners have had a chance to play!  The Great and Powerful Trixie demands her turn!"

The crowd now buzzed with whispers as the showpony approached the table.  The other spectators parted in front of her.  There could be no doubt- a lot of the ponies here, at least, recognized Trixie.  And while they were staying out of her way, they didn't look especially happy to see her either.

"Um," Hop Burst said.  "The round has already ended."

"Has it? Is this not a fair game, where any participant has a chance of winning?  Or is this just a public spectacle to bring in customers?" Trixie put her hoof on the table smugly.  "A team PLAYS as a team.  She answered the first two cocktails.  I will guess the last. Or do you not think you can stump me?"

"I think that if I'm going to let you play as Punch's do-over, with just one drink to go, we're going to need to raise the stakes." Hop Burst watched her carefully.  "Alright.  If you win, your team gets your points and we all continue on to the next round.  But..." Burst leaned over across the table. "If I win?  If you cant guess the cocktail I mix?  At the end of the night, regardless of the outcome of the contest... you pay off MY tab. Of whatever I decide to drink."

"Trixie," Punch said.  "Don't do it.  I'm sorry, but you dont sta-"

"The GREAT and POWERFUL Trixie accepts your terms," she cried dramatically.  "Mix your drink, and see if my elegant palate cant bring our team to victory!"

"You asked for it," the bartender said coldly.  She returned within seconds, bring a dark amber shot.  She put it in front of the blue unicorn, who was now standing next to Berry Punch at the table.

Trixie raised the shot with exaggerated flourish and took a long sniff.  "Hmm!  Oh, hmm indeed.  What a complex bouquet! These aromas are so... uh, so diverse!"

Hop Burst rolled her eyes, but Trixie either didn't notice or didn't show it.  She took the smallest, most delicate of sips, just barely allowing the liquor to grace her lips.  A look of serene concentration passed over the unicorn's face.

"This flavor... There's... could it be vodka?  And, yes, juniper berries... gin.  Maybe the lightests splash of cola... Hmm..."

She kicked back the shot and set the glass down suddenly, coughing for a moment.  She exhaled forcefully.  "My.  That sure was strong.  Miss Bartender, I believe I am prepared to unveil my answer!"

"I'm on the edge of my seat," Hop Burst said dryly.

"I'm afraid I dont know the name.  But one part tequila, one part rum, one part vodka, one part gin, one part triple sec, cola, and sweet and sour mix.  Am I correct?"

"A Long-Faced Iced Tea?" Berry Punch said, disbelieving.  "You dont know what a Long-Faced Iced Tea is, but you can pick out the ingredients?"

"Well, Bartender?" Trixie said, not looking at Punch.  "Have I guessed correctly?"

The bar waited with baited breath for ten seconds, before Hop Burst smirked.  "...Yeah.  You got it."

The crowd burst into cheers and applause, even from the competing teams that had just found themselves at a huge point disadvantage.  Berry Punch flushed with relief, but she was quiet.  A few of the ponies started to help Hop Burst return the bottles back to behind the bar, and the crowd dispersed away from the table.

"First of all," Berry Punch said as they broke away from the crowd and returned to their place at the bar, "I knew who you were all along."

"What, all along?" Trixie frowned.  "Have we met?"

"I was in the crowd the first time you came to Ponyville," Punch said.  She paused and then added, awkwardly, "and that bear bit my house."

"Oh," Trixie said, drooping a little.  "...In my defense, I didn't bring that bear to town.  It was two silly colts that didnt understand the concept of a magic show."  She wrinkled her nose.  "Really, this whole town doesn't seem to understand magic shows."

"Second," Berry Punch said, "how did you do that?  Had you really never had a Long-Faced Iced Tea?"

"I have, actually," Trixie said.  "Back when I was pledging with Kappa Kappa Gallup in Canterlot Academy.  But I never would've recognized the taste.  I didn't even know that was what was in it.  Really, no iced tea?"

Punch facehooved.  "Okay, so how did you figure it out?"

"A magician shouldn't reveal her tricks," Trixie said.  "But between you and me?  I was watching the bartender when she mixed it.  The stallion at the end of the bar ordered a drink right before the competition started and I watched her mix that drink, and the three others you tried, all in advance.  And I saw her forget that fourth drink and leave it there.  I suppose it didn't occur to her to think about anyone but you watching, so she didn't notice me watching her."  Trixie shrugged.  "I can be a very discrete cheater."

"You wily bitch," Punch said in a tone of awed respect.  "How'd you know she wouldn't mix something new?"

"I guessed.  I knew she had a complicated drink ready behind the bar, and I knew she'd want to put me in my place.  And now we're winning, so it was worth the risk."

"Well... thanks," Punch said. "I still feel shaken.  That splash of Sour Apple Schnappes was a low blow.  I couldn't taste it at all."

Trixie shrugged.  "Nopony's perfect."  She sipped her old-fashioned, which she'd abandoned just after the start of the Cocktail Round, and her face broke into a wild, fake grin.  "Nopony besides the Great and Powerful Trixie, that is!"

"Good work girls," Hop Burst said, moving within range again.  "I have to admit, I was impressed."

"It was beneath our abilities," Trixie smirked.

"Sorry about your streak, Beeps.  D'you need a fresh drink?"

Berry Punch grimaced.  "I dunno, I'm feeling pretty fresh already. I cant remember how much I've had."

"Then get one to nurse," Trixie said.  "Put it on my tab, Miss Burst.  Rum and cola?"

"No, make me that Calypso Melon again," Punch said.  "But sure, put it on her tab."

The bartender prepared her the green cocktail and moved on.  After that break and all the drama, a lot of the patrons were ready for a fresh drink of their own.  The contest would have to wait- business came first.

"I have to ask," Punch said.  "What *are* you doing in Ponyville? I mean, no offense, but you dont seem very fond of the place."

"None taken, I'm not," she said.  "I was on tour.  I had... difficulties with my assistant,  on the way out of Baltimare."  She grimaced.  "I dont want to get into it all, but let's just say that I dont have a wagon anymore."

"Baltimare?" Punch nodded.  "That's... is that close?"

"Seriously?  Look at a map sometime.  It's about two days east of here, as the pegasus flies.  It took me a lot longer."

"What, did you walk the whole way?"

"Oh, no.  I only walked from Rambling Rock Ridge.  But it's been a rough trip.  I'm kind of hoping to catch a train out of here to Los Pegasus."  She sighed.  "Well, that was my plan.  But between you and me, before you told me about this contest I was all set to drink my ticket.  It's been a hell of a day."

"Los Pegasus," Punch said wistfully.  "I've always wanted to go."

"Why dont you?  I'm sure Ponyville is better than it seems but you have to admit that it isn't the whole world.  You could go anywhere."

"No," Punch said.  "I couldn't.  Work.  Realities.  And... besides.  If I was away that long, I'd miss Wednesday."

"Do different work.  Live in a different reality.  Despite what happened in that last round, you truly have a gift for identifying drinks.  You could be a head bartender in a ritzy Los Pegasus casino.  Hell, you could even do what you do here, there.  Make it a stage act, sub-headlining under another performer."  Trixie tilted her head in thought.  "You could sign with my agent, Punch.  Do a side act.  Stump the Drunk."

"I'm not a circus act," Punch said.  "I'm a social drinker.  And anyway, drinking isnt my dream.  It's just... my super-special talent.  That has nothing to do with why I would go to Los Pegasus.  I- ...Trixie?"

The blue unicorn had turned downright pale. With wide eyes, she shifted in her chair so Berry Punch was blocking her and retreated under her hooded jacket like a turtle under a shell. Her gaze was fixed on another pony, a stallion ordering at the bar just a few seats away from them.

Punch rubbed her head with her hoof.  "Trixie, what are-"

"If you're going to say my name, say it quietly," Trixie hissed.  "Just keep facing me and talking and I'll try to act normal."

"What are you freaking out about?  Because I said your name?  You shouted it to the whole-"

"Not the whole bar," Trixie said.  "Not that pony over there, because he just walked in.  No, dont turn!  Just look."

Berry Punch did look, just out of the corner of her eye.  There wasn't much to see.  The stallion that had Trixie so panicked was colored white and speckled chestnut.  His light blond mane hung down over his eyes and his fetlocks were unshorn.  His cutie mark was a cigarette lighter with a treble clef on it.  He gave the impression of having been through a long, messy day and not yet having had a chance to sleep or bathe.

"Okay, I see him.  Who is he?"

"That's Roadie Roan," Trixie said.  "I'd rather he didn't know I was here, okay?  I don't even know how *he* got here, I thought that manticore..."

"Manticore?" Punch set her drink down.  "Hey, what?"

"He's... the one who took my wagon."

"The manticore or the pony?"

"The pony! Oh, let's not get into that right now, okay? Let's just keep a low profile from now on."

"Low profile my flank!" Punch said.  "If that guy took your wagon you should take it back!"

"I doubt it's in any condition to use," Trixie said dryly.  "If we're lucky he'll just leave."

But Roadie Roan didn't look like he intended to just leave.  He had ordered a pint of Crab Red, and was now sitting at a table next to Thunderlane.  The two were talking enthusiastically about something.  Thankfully, he was sitting facing away from Punch and Trixie.

"What's the next round?  Another quiz?"

"Um, there's two more rounds.  Puzzle round is next."

"Puzzle round..." Trixie closed her eyes and shook her head.  "I think I'm too drunk for critical thinking."

Punch grinned.  "I can totally solo the puzzle round.  I usually bomb the quiz and the category rounds and ace the cocktail and puzzle rounds.  We're definitely going to win."

"Roadie Roan is pretty good at puzzles, too," Trixie said gloomily.  "Who's that stallion with him?  The black pegasus with the mohawk?"

"That slice of beefcake is Thunderlane," Punch said.  "He's my partner, sometimes."

"He seems to be making pretty good friends with my scumbag ex-assistant," Trixie said.  She cocked her head then looked back at Berry Punch.  "'Partner'?"

"Trivia night partner," Punch clarified.  "No more than that.  FML."

Trixie shrugged.  Hop Burst seemed to have gotten the drink orders under control and was now passing out the puzzle handouts.  "Is he very... gossipy?  Do you think the fact that I'm here would come up in conversation?"

"Don't think so," Punch said.  "He moved to Ponyville from Cloudsdale a little while ago, pretty sure it was after your show.  He'd have no idea who you are, other than some loud chick that is hanging out with me."

"I'm not loud!" Trixie snapped.  "Well. So long as the game doesn't get any more... public than the cocktail round was, we should be fine.  I think he's going to play."

"What, Thunderlane?  He's been playing."

"No, not Thunderlane, Roadie Roan!"

This time she was just a little too loud.  Roadie Roan looked up and turned halfway in his chair, leaving Trixie just barely beyond his peripheral vision.  After a few seconds he shrugged, and turned back to his new trivia partner.

Berry Punch and Trixie were both frozen in their chairs when Hop Burst dropped off their puzzle sheet.  "Hey girls.  Not too drunk yet, are you?"

"I am definitely too drunk and you should stage an intervention immediately," Punch said, relaxing.  "I forget that you drink faster when you're keeping pace with someone."

"Dont blame me," Trixie said.  "You are the maker of your own torment."

"Have fun with the puzzles, Punch.  I think you might have this one in the bag!" the bartender retreated once again from the pair.

"Hmm," Punch said.  She had her pencil in her mouth and was already jotting down answers.  "Guess that means we did good on the quiz portion."

"I guess," Trixie said.  "I'm going to head over to the ladies room.  You've got this, right?"

"I have so got this," Punch said, not taking her eyes off the page.  "Go be a lady."

Trixie nodded and shifted off the stool, quickly moving behind the wall divider to stay out of Roadie Roan's eyesight.  She trotted towards the restroom... and then past it, to an emergency exit.  Runes above the exit glowed as she approached, but with a muttered incantation they faded to dormancy.  Trixie had never been particularly great or powerful when it came to the High Sorcerous Arts, but she had her bag of tricks.  Indectability was the first she'd learned.

It was already pretty dark outside.  Trixie stuck a stick in the hinge to hold the door open as she stepped out into the cool air. The wagon parking area was packed tonight.

It didn't take her long to find her wagon.  It was barely recognizable.  The manticore had ripped the fabric roof to shreds- that was all gone now.  She shrugged.  So long as it didn't rain... she could just think of it as a convertible.  The back wheels had been splinters when she'd seen the wagon last.  Now they had been replaced altogether with new wheels, slightly too big for the frame.  When it came to getting a vehicle back up and running, Roadie Roan was a master.  Trixie climbed up the stairs on the back.

The interior reeked of bongwater, strong enough to make Trixie gag.  It had probably spilled when the manticore jumped on the back.  So much for riding in this thing.  She rummaged through the contents of the wagon until she found her own saddlebag, and gathered up her belongings.  RR had tossed some of it out, or it'd been lost in the crash.  She'd just have to make do.  After a half minute's hesitation, she searched the rest of the wagon and found his stash.  She could only eyeball it at the moment, but it looked like a little under a quarter of an ounce of merryleaf.  Well, well.  It was hers, now.

Trixie sat down in the back of the wagon, taking a moment to think.  The wagon was in pretty bad condition still.  It was amazing that Roadie Roan had made it all the way to Ponyville like this.  If she gave him time to find a bodyshop, he'd probably have it back to working condition in the morning.  She could steal it back now, but she doubted she'd last long on the road in this thing.  Besides, the smell was awful.

She sighed.  She was going to miss this wagon.  But she simply could not allow Roadie Roan to beat her to Los Pegasus.

She sprang from the back of the wagon and scanned the ground for a hefty rock.  Upon finding one, she lifted it with her horn.  The rock hovered lazily over towards the wagon, like a gigantic, slightly-sedated bumblebee.  Trixie narrowed her eyes and swung the rock through the air, directing its force into the right rear wheel.It took a few hits before she was confident that the wheel was busted beyond repair.  Smirking with satisfaction, she moved on to the next.

Once her once-treasured wagon was out of order, Trixie scanned the parking area for a new vehicle.  She could leave now and be in her agent's office by tomorrow afternoon.  But... her face fell as she follower that path of logic to its inevitable conclusion.  She had already announced her presence to the rest of the bar.  Roadie Roan wasn't going to talk to the guards, not if he knew what was good for him, but the rest of the bar?  Especially the bartender?  Yes.  If she stole a wagon she'd be back on the run, officially.

They'll probably be finishing with the puzzle round pretty soon, she thought.  She looked wistfully at the road.  She already was down to her last bits.  Even if she paid off her tab- and after the last few rounds, she wasn't sure she could without the contest- Roadie Roan would know she'd been here.  There wasn't a caravan here or anywhere he couldn't follow.  If she was going to get back to her stage, she was going to have to jump through some hoops.

Tucking her saddlebags under her robes so they just looked like a suspicious bulge, Trixie snuck back in through the emergency exit.

"Hey," Punch greeted her as she returned to her stool.  "Was starting to think you'd fallen in!  Already turned in the puzzle sheet."

"Excellent," Trixie said, but she was obviously still distracted.  She sipped her neglected old fashioned.  "Punch, do you have a wagon?"

BP raised an eyebrow.  "Used to, but I kept finding myself falling off it."

"So... you sold it?"

"No, I..." BP squinted and massaged her head with her hoof.  "No, I was making a joke about my crippling alcoholism."

"Oh."

"Let's pretend I didn't say crippling," Punch said.  "Um.  Yeah.  I have a wheeled cart, for selling vegetables.  But it's not like... you cant ride on it.  Is that what you were thinking?  Midnight wagon ride?"

"Midnight wagon ride," Trixie mused.  "Yessss."

"Right, but more like no, because I just said-"

"Where there's a will," Trixie insisted, "there's a way.  Midnight wagon ride.  Bet on it."

Punch shrugged.  "Shoot, okay.  Midnight wagon ride."

"Midnight wagon ride!" Trixie cried triumphantly.  "Ooo, yesss.  Punch, you are one hell of a friend."

"I am?" BP said, blinking.  A slow, wide grin crossed her face. "Hey yeah!  I am a helluva friend!  A good, social friend!"

The clock on the wall said 9:40, so they still had a while to go before a Midnight Wagon Ride could become a reality.  Most of the bar was wrapping up their puzzles.  A few tables over, Roadie Roan and Thunderlane seemed to be getting on like gangbusters.  Thunderlane, in particular, seemed like he was having a great time.  Trixie couldn't help but sneak a look at them twice a minute, and Punch followed her gaze.

"They seem like they're... getting along pretty well," Punch said in a grudging tone.  "Really well, I'd say."

"Hrm," Trixie said. "The pegasus, you said he's sometimes your partner, right?  Is he... I mean, do you think he..."

Punch raised an eyebrow, and went to take a drink, only to find that she had already emptied it, a while ago.  Hop Burst was crazy busy tonight.  "Thunderlane? Do I think he what?  Has a chance of beating us?"

"What?  No."  Trixie hadn't been thinking about the contest at all.  "I mean, you dont think they have a chance, right?  I'd bet RR is great at puzzles, but... we won the cocktail contest, our victory is in the bag, right?"

"Yeah, but I always bomb categories," Punch said gloomily.  "Because it's always last and I'm always too drunk by that point."

"...Are you too drunk?  You seem fine."

"Trixy-pix," Punch said with a look of absolute seriousness.  "If I get out of this stool I'm going to fall down.  Trufax."

"Oh.  Maybe we should cool it on the next few rounds."

"Maaaybe," Punch said.

"But that wasn't what I meant," Trixie said. "Has Thunderlane ever flirted with you?  Showed signs of interest?"

"Whaaa?" Punch shook her head wildly, to clear out the cobwebs, then winced in pain.  "Flirtered with me?  Shit, I dunno.  We have a thing, I guess?  I mean, I would nevera called it FLIRTING, like, for REAL, but we have a dynamic, and yeah, I guess there's a little bit of, y'know, sexual tension.  It's not like a-"

"Okay," Trixie said, cutting her off.  "I don't need all that.  It's just, I thought maybe I was reading some signals."

"From me?" Punch said.  "I mean he's hot, shit-"

"No, not from you."

"From him?  To me?  To *you*?" she blinked.  "What did he do?"

"No, I..." Trixie sighed.  "It has nothing to with either of us and he didnt do anything, it's just... he's been blushing and... I think he's flirting with Roadie Roan."

"You think he's..." the sentence died in BP's throat as she slowly turned her head to watch the two stallions.  After a few minutes she turned back, with a look that would've looked right at home in a graveyard.  "Dammit Trixie you are the worst friend ever."

"I'm probably just reading too far into things!" Trixie said hastily.  "I've never exchanged word one with the guy.  It's just... I've worked in theater for a while, and..."

"Yeah," BP said into her hooves.  "Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Get Burst's attention.  I want a whiskey and... whiskey.  On the rocks with frozen whiskey."

"I thought we were skipping the next few rounds."

"I changed my mind," BP growled.

"Hey everypony, just reminding you that if you haven't finished your puzzles yet, the category round is going to start in five minutes!" Hop Burst announced to the bar.  "So if pencils arent down by then, we're moving on."

"Buuuuuuurst!" Punch hissed loudly across the bar.  "BOOZE ME."

"And I also thought we weren't going to attract attention to ourselves," Trixie said through clenched teeth, her eyes darting across the bar.  "Right?"

Hop Burst finished with the customer she'd been dealing with and hovered over to the two.  "How're my best customers doing?  Punch, youre finally ready for another drink?  I th-"

"BOOZE ME," Punch growled at her.  "No talkie."

Burst raised her eyebrows and put her hooves up in a 'looks like we're dealing with a badass' gesture.  "Alright, alright.  Sheesh girl.  Who shat in your shredded oats?"

"TRIXIE," Punch said.  "Trixie shat in my shredded oats."

"Punch, I was just making an observation!  I'm sure you know him better than I do, okay?"  Trixie was starting to feel like she'd actually fucked up.  It was hard to tell- the past two hours were the longest she'd had a friend, or even a friendly acquaintance, in ages.  She was out of practice with this.

"I am sure I do not want to know what this is about," Burst said.  "Punch I am going to sell you this drink but only under the explicit conditions that you promise to not puke on my bar tonight."

"Stick a cupcake in my eye," Punch said, teeth clenched.  "Fucking booze me already."

"Bartenderess," Trixie said hesitantly.  "The, uh, chestnut earth pony stallion with the dark pegasus, how are they, uh..." she didn't know how to finish the question, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.  She glanced over at Berry Punch, out of the corner of her eye, to see how she was reacting.  Punch was staring straight ahead, eyes locked on the glass Hop Burst was filling with amber liquid.

Hop Burst finished mixing Punch's whiskey sour and passed it over to the pink earth pony, who promptly drank almost a half the glass in one chug.  She set the glass back down and exhaled with force.  "Squse me," she said in a low tone.  "Gotta... fillys room."

She shifted in her stool and Trixie and Burst could only watch in horror as it tipped over, sending Berry Punch plummeting towards the floor.  Trixie grabbed the stool legs with her telekinesis and attempted to right it, but Punch was already gone.  She hit the floor and groaned in pain.  A few nearby patrons turned to watch the spectacle.

Trixie sprang to help Berry Punch to her feet.  Punch wasnt much help herself- moments before she'd been sober enough to banter, but either the whiskey or the fall (or perhaps the realization that she'd been chasing a coltcuddler for Celestia-knows-how-long) had sent her beyond the Fun Drunk Threshhold.

Finally Trixie managed to help Punch up enough to carry her to the restroom.  Hop Burst watched the two of them go with concern, then set Punch's drink underneath the counter and returned to the many thirsty customers.

By the time they'd reached the hallway with the restrooms, Punch had regained the ability to stand and walk on her own.  BP walked into the restroom on her own, as Trixie stood by awkwardly.  She wanted to be a friend, but she really didn't want to watch Berry Punch vomiting.  She made a halfhearted move as if to follow her, but BP responded with a hoof on her shoulder.  She opened her eyes wide, subjecting Trixie to a bit more eye contact than she was comfortable with.

"Triiixie."

"Um," Trixie said.  The hoof on her shoulder kind of hurt.  Earth ponies were strong.

"Trixie.  Go.  Win... the categories.  I'll be... back.  Gotta take care of business."

"The contest doesn't matter," Trixie said in a tone of voice she hoped sounded reassuring and soothing and... friendly.  "What's important is... uh... that you feel okay?"

"I dont have enough bits to pay our tabs," Berry Punch said.  "D'you?"

Trixie winced.  "...No, I was planning on running."

"Go.  Win.  I'll be fine.  Not gonna throw up.  Super... super special talent.  Just gotta.  Get my head on right.  Win for us.  Crush... that stupid roadie.  Trixie.  Trixie."

"BP, you're... you're hurting my shoulder."

Punch released her from her kung-fu-hoof-grip and almost fell down again, right onto Trixie.  Trixie watched with awkward helplessness as the inebriated earth pony sank halfway to the floor, now clinging to her neck with both hooves.  She hissed each word slowly. "Minnight... Wagon... Ride."

With that, Punch let go of Trixie and pushed her back a little, stumbling her way into the restroom.  Trixie was left in the hallway alone.  She looked from the door, back down the hallway in the direction of the bar.

"Midnight wagon ride," Trixie said with renewed determination.  She walked down the hallway, around the divider, and back to her stool.

But it was no longer vacant.

"Well, well, well," the stallion said, resting his hooves on the bar.  "If it isnt the Great and Powerful Trixie."

"Roadie Roan." Trixie narrowed her eyes.  There wasn't much point in pretending they didn't recognize each other.

He smirked.  "Here in Ponyville.  You have some nerve.  You know we never do repeat shows.  How do you know I havent already put out an alert for you with the guards?"

"You haven't got the stones," Trixie said coolly.  "And anyway, I the Eternal Optimist didnt think you'd survive the fall.  How's the wagon?"

"The wagon's better than the day you bought it," he retorted, and Trixie had to fight to maintain her pokerface.  Clearly, he hadnt been outside in the last hour.  "You forget who you've been traveling with, Trixie.  I'm not just some guy who follows you around.  I'm the King of the Roadies.  I'm the best.  And you?" he shook his head.  "You're just a mare who always seems to piss everyone off right before you would be getting paid.  We had a deal- I would ensure your safety in travel and make sure you got paid what you were due."

"And you only took 50% of the ticket money!" Trixie cried angrily.  "That's highway robbery and you know it!"

"WRONG.  It's Highway extortion.  You know there'd be no income without me.  They aren't paying YOU to dazzle them, Trixie.  They're paying ME to make sure you dont come back!  And we get paid TWICE when I rob the stupid ponies houses while you have them distracted in the first place!  So I guess it IS highway robbery, huh?  What about this arrangement had you confused?"

"I guess maybe the central principle where the two of us are pretending to have honor amongst thieves?" Trixie said.  There was an anger building deep within her, stronger than any she'd ever felt.  She covered it with her default expression: a smirk.  It was getting harder to maintain, though.  "Obviously one of us was going to take the bits and run eventually.  Why would it wait for it to be you?"

"Because I was waiting for you to outlast your usefulness as an awful, unlikable distraction!" Roadie Roan scowled.  "Just like I assumed you were waiting for me to outlast my usefulness as an amoral thug!  That's what friendship is about... mututal postponement of inevitable betrayal!"

"You are completely ridiculous," Trixie said.

"Well, it breaks my little pony heart to see that we've drifted so far apart as good friends, but I suppose that's how it goes.  So, now that we're done with all the pleasantries, where's my fucking money?"

"Not here, obviously," Trixie said.  "If I had the money, why would I be here?  I'd take the first train to Manehattan."

"I somehow doubt you would, Trixie.  I think you'd be on the skyway to Los Pegasus."

"Los Pegasus?" Trixie tilted her head.  "That two-bit cloudstop?  RR, I simply am not following."

"Fine by me.  I'd rather you didn't follow me.  Turn Trix in this dungheap of a town, for all I care."  Roadie Roan looked impossibly smug, even next to Trixie.  "I'll have revenge enough when I take every single bit from where I *know* you've been hiding it and catching the first skytrain to Neigh West for my early retirement.  I'm going to just live well until you die.  It's a zen sort of revenge."

"Alright, everypony, pencils down!" Hop Burst announced.  "The category round is now finished?"

Trixie's mouth hung open.  "Finishes?!  I- when did it start?!"

"About ten minutes ago, when you were helping your drunk marefriend in the bathroom," Roadie Roan grinned.  "Whereas the cute stallion at my table has been filling it in for my team while I kept you distracted, ensuring your loss.  Hope you have enough bits to pay off your no-doubt obscene bartab!"

"But... we had such a lead with the cocktail contest!" Trixie cried.  "There's no way... even totally missing a round, surely that would only cancel it out!  And we did well on our quiz, and surely the puzzle-"

"The puzzle was easy," Roadie Roan said. "And I came in after the quiz round, but Thunderlane is pretty sure he missed four.  How'd you guys do?"

"Well..."  Trixie tried to remember.

Berry Punch wandered in behind the two ponies.  "We... we lost?"

"That's not-"

"Yup!" Roadie Roan said, shooting her a cocky gesture with both hooves.  "Sucks to be you two!"

"We..." Berry Punch's head drooped.  "We lost."

"Punch, I'm..." Trixie bit her lip.  "I'm sorry, I didn't realize-"

Berry Punch cut her off with a hug.  She didnt seem much less drunk than she had before.  "S'okay, Trixie.  Y'tried.  Y'were... undermined.  By a douchebag."

"Anyway," Roadie Roan said.  "I got a long road ahead of me tomorrow, what with going to take all the money and all that, so I'd better get back to my table.  Besides..." he leaned in with a grin.  "I think that stallion's into me, eh?  Might be getting laid tonight."

Berry Punch released Trixie from her hug, then took a step back.  Then she turned, stepped in between Trixie and Roadie Roan and raised a hoof over her head.

"BEEEERRRRRRY..."

Roadie Roan had a moment to realize what was happening.  He wasted it blinking.

"PAAAAAUUUUUUNCH!" BP screamed with fury as she brought her right hoof down on the grungy earth pony's jaw.  Roadie Roan actually spinned, spinned in place, and collapsed legs-out against the bar.  He slowly sank to the floor, an unwitting smile frozen on his face.

Berry Punch exhaled heavily, awash with rage as she glared down at the unconscious Roadie Roan.  Trixie had not moved a muscle, barely even to breathe.  The whole bar was looking at them.  She wanted to sink into the floor and disappear.

Berry Punch turned her head back to look at Trixie, giving her a weak smile.  Trixie returned it, unsure.

Berry Punch's smile disappeared and she twitched, took a half step back, and vomited, explosively, all over Roadie Roan. Her retching was the only sound in the bar.

Trixie scanned the crowd.  Everypony was waiting to see what they did next.  This was simply not how ponies acted in Ponyville.  Hop Burst, in particular, looked furious.

Berry Punch coughed and wiped her mouth.  "Izzit too early for that midnight wagon ride?"

At this point, Trixie did disappear- she invoked an incantation of invisibility, and flashed out of sight.

No one saw who threw the first chair. Anyone who had been paying attention might have noticed a blue, magical glow surrounding it, the moment before it made impact... but all eyes were on the awful, unlikable distraction.  (Distractions, really.)  And no one recognized the deep (but oddly feminine) voice that shouted "FIGHT!"

After that, it was just as difficult to keep track of who threw the first (technically second) punch.  What is clear, however, was that in the next thirty seconds the bar descended into total fucking chaos.

BP had barely enough time to grab her whiskey from behind the bar before Trixie invisibly dragged her away.  The sound of brawling mules and ponies and an enraged Hop Burst covered their escape into the dark of night.

Trivia night, until further notice, had been canceled.
> Berry Punch and Trixie Go To Wine Castle (Part 1)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
((This story came out just before Magic Duel, in anticipation of canon Trixie being confirmed as a sociopathic cunt.  In this fic, that characterization is not used; she's actually a pretty reasonable mare.  This will continue to be the case in subsequent chapters of the story.  Considering the other liberties I am choosing to take with canon, I hope readers will still find this acceptable.))




She could feel the warmth on her her eyelids without opening her eyes.  She groaned and covered her face with her hoof and the warmth went away, but only for a moment.  She was waking up into a massive headache and there wasnt really a way she could get around that.  "Noooo," she whispered, breathing slowly so as to move her head as little as possible.

"Finally, you're awake," another face said.  Female.  She didn't recognize it yet.  Couldn't remember what she'd done to get to this point.  What day was it?  Was it Wednesda-

The thing she was lying down on was not a bed.  And it was moving.

Berry Punch's eyes snapped open, and what little sense she made of her surroundings was overshadowed by the new pain rushing through her head.  She didnt close her eyes, but she did cover them back up with h er hooves and roll over.  On the... wooden floor?

She uncovered her eyes again, slowly this time.  She was looking at wooden boards.  "Ugggghh," Punch groaned.  "This... must be a Thursday.   ...I never could get the hang of Thursdays.  Where... where the fuck am I?"

"You dont remember?"

She was starting to.  That was Trixie's voice.  She'd been at the bar.  Rum and cola.  Whiskey.  Calypso melon.  She and Trixie teamed up.  She had lost.  They'd both lost.  And Thunderflanks was...

"Did I... punch someone last night?"

"You punched a few someones last night," Trixie said, nudging a bowl of shredded oats closer to Punch's face.  Punch shuddered.  She'd be back in her element any moment but at the moment she just wished she'd never even heard the word cocktail.  "What's the last thing you remember, Punch?"

"...We started a fight.  At the Saddlebag's... Rest..."

Punch could hear Trixie stepping around her and rummaging through some gear, nearby her head.  "Yes.  We started a fight.  Do you remember what happened after that?"

Punch shook her head slowly, whimpering a little.  "I threw up, didnt I?  Hop Burst must be really mad."

Trixie scooted a glass of water with a straw next to the bowl of shredded wheat.  "Drink this before the wagon makes it tip over."

Punch looked up, just enough to see the glass, and scooted it close enough to use the straw without moving her head.  She closed her eyes and drained the water, trying not to focus on the throbbing pain in her head.

"Wait, if... if I threw up... why do feel so fucking hungover?"

"Because it's not Thursday," Trixie said.  "It started in the parking lot."

* * *

"Oh god oh god oh god oh god," Berry Punch kept chanting as they ran out of the emergency exit of the Saddlebag's Rest.  Trixie ran, and Berry Punch sort of let herself be dragged along.  "Trixypix what did I DO?!  I cant believe I hit that guy, I'm never gonna be allowed to come back again!  I should... I should go back, help clean up-"

Trixie stopped in between two large wagons, where they couldnt be seen.  Punch immediately stopped behind her.  Trixie put her hooves on Punch's shoulders, as Punch had done to Trixie outside the restroom.

"Berry Punch.  Listen.  I need you to be with me here.  Are you listening?"

Berry Punch nodded.

"In every pony's life, they come to a point that is their day of reckoning.  The day that determines not just what their future will be, but what their past really meant.  Now think about the situation.  Do you have enough bits to pay off your bar tab?"

"Well... no... but Hop Burst is my friend!  She'll be pissed, but we can... we can fix this!  She'll forgive me!"

"She probably would," Trixie admitted.  "But she has a boss, right?  And you just committed public assault."

"Oh god nooooo," Berry Punch moaned.  "I'm too pretty and young to get sent to the moon!  Or banished to the Everfree Forest!  This cant be my life!"

"It's chaos in there right now," Trixie said, eyes gleaming.  "If we can catch a wagon out of town, we can be on the road before they even realize we're gone."

"They probably already realize we're gone!"

"Well... all the more reason we should get moving."

"No, no..." Berry Punch shook her head.  "I have to settle this!  I cant just run away from my life here!  I'd never be able to come back!"

"Why would you want to?" Trixie said.  "This town is terrible.  It's terrible for you, Punch.  Look, I've known you for all of... uh..."

"Like three hours?"

"Could be three hours.  And I admit I'm not the greatest judge of character.  But Punch, listen.  When you think of yourself as an old pony, is it here?  Purple mane going grey around the edges, going to the same bar every night for the rest of your life until you die?  Is that the way you want to live?"

"No, but-"

"So why stay here?  A bar trivia game?  They have trivia nights in Los Pegasus!"

Punch was maintaining steady eye-contact with the ground.  "...It's not... Trixie, I feel secure here!  Safe.  I've lived in Ponyville all my life and it's what I know.  I don't know who I'd be in a place like Los Pegasus!"

"Do you know who you are here?  Really?"

"I..."

"Come with me," Trixie said, grabbing her hooves.  "I wont promise secure.  I cant promise safe.  All I can promise you is the greatest adventure of your life.  Didn't you ever want to have an adventure?  Isn't it about time you did something you really wanted?"  She stepped closer and gave BP the pleadingest eyes in her arsenal.  "Please?  I can honestly say you're the closest person I have to a friend in the whole world."

"Guuuuuuhh, I just know I'm going to regret this," Punch said, gritting her teeth.  "Maybe both of us will.  Okay.  I'll go with you to Los Pegasus."

"Yesssss!"

"But," she continued, "We're not leaving for a huge adventure without provisions."

Trixie frowned.  "We can scavenge for food along the way.  I'd really like to get a head start now, while Roadie Roan is, uh.  Unconscious."

"There's one big reason why I've stayed in Ponyville for all these years, Trixie.  One reason why, even when I wanted to go, I didn't.  Do you know why?"

"Family?"

Punch frowned.  "...Okay, there's TWO big reasons why I've stayed in Ponyville for all these years.  And the second reason, is Wine Castle."

"Wine Castle?"

"Wine Castle," Punch said.

"What's... Wine Castle?" Trixie said.  "I dont think we have time for-"

"We'll have time, Trixie.  We'll have time because I threw up all my booze and I'm not leaving without a full stock.  No way, no how."

"You're holding a glass half-full of whiskey right now!" Trixie cried.  "I cant believe after all that you're thinking of more booze!"

Punch swigged the whiskey back, drowning the lingering taste of vomit in oak and alcoholic fire.  She spat what was left and tossed the glass over her shoulder, all without breaking eye contact with Trixie.

"Let's continue this conversation on the road."

* * *

"So then we left," Punch nodded.  "Okay.  Sounds right so far.  And I passed out?  Are we on the way to Wine Castle now, then?  In this wagon?"

"You really dont remember anything?"

Berry Punch shrugged.  "I dunno, a little bit?  It's really.  Um.  Fragmentary.  I must've gotten hammered."

"You..." Trixie appeared to be choosing her words carefully.  "You may have suffered some brain damage.  I'm not a doctor, but-"

"Brain damage?  Isn't that the whole point?"

"Uh... maybe I should just continue the story."

* * *

"Wine Castle," Berry Punch said, "is not just a store."

The two of them had made it about a mile and a half along the road down the hill from the bar.  No one seemed to have noticed them on the way out, so hopefully the scene inside was still too crazy.  Still, the guards would probably be on the way, and they could only hope Hop Burst wouldn't give out a description.  Trixie was lagging behind, and seemed to be dwelling on the issue of wasted time.

"I'm sure it's special," Trixie said.  "But isnt there a faster way than walking?  Time is a factor here."

"Trixie, wagons are not magical transportation machines.  You still have to pull a wagon."

"Yes, but then only one of us would be tired."

"Listen," Berry Punch said.  "Wine Castle is more than a store.  It's something greater.  It's like some kind of... superstore.  Shelves of bottles, as far as the eye can see.  Wine.  Beer.  Spirits.  There's booze here you cant find anywhere else, period.  It's a paradise of alcohol, Trixie.  It's the alcoholic promised land."

"They sell alcohol in Los Pegasus!"

"Not like this," Punch said.  "Nowhere is it like this.  Because Wine Castle is the retail headquarters of the Sugargrape family.  Do you know who the Sugargrapes are?"

She did.  The Sugargrapes were the titans of the agricultural industry.  More than half of the fermentable crops in Equestria were owned by them.  The family patriarch, Palomino Blanc Sugargrape, was the wealthiest earth pony in the world.

"Here?" Trixie said incredulously.  "The Sugargrape headquarters are here?  I dont get it.  Ponyville isnt a hub for commerce or rural development.  It's just a little town."

"It's the only place in Equestria where you can grow Zap Apples," Berry Punch said smugly.  "The one fruit they cant corner the market on.  Old Palomino would do anything to get the Apples to sell, but they wont budge.  It's because Granny Smith refuses to sell their Zap Apple trees that Ponyville has the economic independence it has.  If they sold the secret, and they could, the Apple Family could be billionaires."

"I had no idea," Trixie said.  "The mare I hogtied on-stage is the heir to an agricultural resource that keeps Palomino Blanc at beck and call?"

"Yeah, you probably shouldn't just randomly tie ponies up.  I've been meaning to mention, that's the kind of thing that makes it harder to make friends.  Look," she said, slowing down long enough to let Trixie catch up.  "There are only two Wine Castles in all of Equestria.  One here, and I think there's another a bit out of town.  And since you've made me a fugitive, I might never be able to go to one again.  So yes, Trixie, we have time for it."

"Okay," Trixie said.  "I think it's probably going to get us arrested and maybe Roadie Roan will catch up with us and stab us to death with knives, but fine.  I'm on board.  Let's go to Wine Castle."

"That's all I ask," Punch said.

Saddlebag's Rest stood alone at the top of a big hill with a road winding down it.  They were down the hill, now, and were approaching the South Ponyville strip.  Even as late as it was, a few cafes were still open.  In Manehattan, at this hour, there's be drive-thrus selling tofu-burgers long into the night.  Ponyville didn't have drive-thrus, so as the town had gained more tourist attention, the little cafes and bistros had decided they could perform the same service by just staying open later.  There weren't many places in Equestria where someone could get a midnight scone with a cup of jasmine tea, but not a 40 of malt liquor.  That was just the kind of night-life Ponyville supported: eager to please and persistently lame.

Trixie's stomach rumbled.  "Uggh.  Okay, okay, I'm on board, but while you stock up on booze I'm going to have to get some food.  Where's the Wine Castle?"

"Should be around here," Punch murmured.  "I don't usually come this way, from the bar.  It's on Brunswick Lane, across from the miniplex."

"I cant eat this dainty junk" Trixie cried with dismay as they walked down the strip.  There weren't many ponies out on the street this late... a few mules who had probably wandered from the bar looking for more substantial munchies, and a few colts who were making the most of a week night "out on the town".  Trixie cringed at the sight of two teenagers playing checkers outside a coffee shop.  Sometimes, Ponyville seemed like almost a completely different world.  "Isnt there anywhere I can buy a curry bowl to go or something?  Or a wrap?  Something greasy and spicy?."

Berry Punch was only half paying attention.  She was frantically looking back and forth between the buildings open and was starting to trot faster.  "Huh... it should be here!"

"Wouldn't it be one of the biggest buildings around?" Trixie said.  "If we just find the miniplex we- Punch?"

Punch had spotted something and had galloped off to go see it.  Trixie couldn't hope to keep up, even if she'd been ready to follow.  Magic definitely made life easier, and wings seemed like they'd be exhilarating... but you couldn't deny that earth ponies had supernatural levels of stamina.  An earth pony, even an out-of-shape earth pony, could out-run, out-lift, and generally out-fight a unicorn or pegasus of the same size.  It wasnt even a contest.

When Trixie caught up to the same block as Berry Punch, she found the earth pony staring in shock at a huge, empty warehouse-building.  All signs had been stripped from it... all lights were out.

"This cant be..." Punch said, shaking her head.  "I don't understand."  Trixie looked across the street.  There was the miniplex.  They were in the right place.  Across the street, a bunch of rowdy-looking pegasi and an earth pony were coming down the sidewalk, laughing loudly about something.

"This cant be right," Punch repeated, turning around to face Trixie.  "I was just here two days ago!  Why would they be gone?"

Trixie shrugged, offering a 'I sure wish I could help' look.  "Is there anywhere else we could get booze tonight?"

"The corner store, I guess," Punch said.  "But it's not-"

This time Trixie was the one who set off first, trotting towards the corner store.  Reluctantly, Punch followed.

The bell rang as Trixie pushed the door open.  The pony behind the counter was grey with a red circle with a diagonal line through the middle as his cutie mark.  He was reading a magazine and didn't look up when they came in.

Trixie walked down the aisles towards the coolers where the booze would be kept, but Punch walked right up to the register.

"Excuse me..."

The cashier looked up.  He had pretty deep circles under his eyes.  "Yeah what's up?"

"I, uh... I thought there was a Wine Castle down the street.  What happened?"

The cashier didn't close his magazine, but he set it down.  "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, purple, but that place is closed for good.  Sugargrape is taking production abroad, so they don't need a retail site here."

"But..." Punch's face fell.  "Permanently?  Like... forever?"

"Yeah, permanently like forever.  Sorry babe."

Berry Punch shook her head.  "No more Wine Castle... I cant believe it."

"Tragic," Trixie said, returning to the register.  "But you know, at least you got some closure, right?  So let's go to Los Pegasus now."

"Yeah man," the cashier said sympathetically.  "Not much left to live for in Ponyville."

"What are those?" Punch said, noticing the bottles Trixie had levitated to the counter.

"Our booze," Trixie said.  "There's not much else we can do, right?"

"Crab Red?" Punch scowled.  "You have got to be kidding me.  We are not drinking that pisscider."

"It's all they have here!"

"Sorry dude," cashier said, shrugging.  "With Wine Castle down the street I never had a chance in the market, so I just stock what sells."

"Well, at least your sales should pick up now, right?" Trixie said with fake positivity.  "Diminished competition and all that?"

"I dunno," the cashier said.  "I guess, whatever.  I'm packing up at the end of the week.  A Ponyville without Wine Castle is no home to me."

"I just cant believe I never got one last chance to shop there," Berry Punch said.

"Dont you two think you're being just a little over-dramatic?" Trixie said.  "It's just a liquor store."

"Nah man, nah," the cashier said.  "It wasn't 'just' anything.  wine Castle was, like... a fuckin booze kingdom.  I gotta tell you, if no one comes in after 2, I'm just gonna say fuck it and head to the Castle out in Cherry Point."

There was a pause as this comment sank in.  "The one out in Cherry Point is still open?"

"Yeah," the cashier said.  "Until the end of tomorrow.  Breaks my fuckin heart."

"Cherry Point is right outside of Canterlot," Punch murmured.  "There's a train that runs straight there!  Trixie!"

"Punch, that'll take us way off-course!" Trixie protested.  "We'd never have enough time.  Roadie Roan could be finding a way to Los Pegasus as we speak!"

"I cant leave without seeing it one last time," Punch said.  "Trixie, please.  It's all I have left!"

"May I interject for a second?" the cashier said, leaning forward.  "As a Jiffy Mart employee for the past 3 years?  If there's one thing I've learned, it's that if you're craving Wine Castle, the cider here just wont cut it.  In fact... just thinking about those red, silk carpets in the aisles, the chandeliers over every light fixture. Those glistening, ice-cold refreshing ciders that just pour down your throat like molten gold... Shit, man."  He stared off into space with a misty look in his eye.  "And one of the janitors sold the stickiest purp I ever smoked."

"You could probably still find the janitor," Trixie said.  "It's not like he ceased to exist."

"The point is," the cashier said, "if you really want something, and I mean you really want it, approximations dont matter.  When you really want something, nothing else will satisfy.  So maybe you mares should just suck it up and go to Wine Castle."

Berry Punch gave Trixie pleading eyes.  "It would mean the world.  Friend?"

Trixie put a hoof to her forehead.  "...I know this is a bad idea, but... yeah, I think I want to go too."

"Yessss!" Punch cheered.  "Yes yes yes!  So it's agreed, then?  We promise, here and now, mare to mare, that this quest will not end until we have gone to Wine Castle.  Pippington promise?"

"Pippington promise," Trixie sighed.  "But how are we going to get there?  We're sort of putting the pony before the cart here."

"Why dont you guys take the 11:00 to Cherry Point / Canterlot?" the cashier suggested, pushing his train schedule across the counter towards Berry Punch.  "The station is ten minutes away on foot, tops.  You could make it if you leave soon."

Trixie levitated the schedule into her saddlebags.  "Alright.  Maybe this wont be too much of a detour.  So long as we're out of town well before morning we should have enough of-"

The door to the Jiffy Mart slammed open, ringing the bell and knocking it down off the the chain it was hanging on to fall to the floor.  Three pegasi and an earth pony came through the door, laughing loudly and hoof-bumping at having startled the ponies inside.  They rudely brushed past Trixie and Berry Punch, bumping into them on the way to the cider cooler.

"Geez, what the hell?" Punch whispered.  "That guy totally bumped into me on purpose!"

"Just let it go," Trixie whispered back.  "We dont have time for this."

"But look at them!"

The earth ponies had opened a big bag of chips and was throwing them in the air while two of the pegasi were trying to catch them.  They were crashing into shelves and knocking stuff all over the floor.  One shouted "Extreme!" as he barreled into a display of two-liters.

Punch turned to the cashier.  "You let these guys get away with this?"

The cashier pony shrugged.  "Man, the universe usually sorts things out.  Guys like that get what's coming to them."

"Yeah, but you're still going to have to clean up!  That isn't-"

"Hey," the earth pony yelled at them.  "What're you looking at, dorks?"

"He just called us dorks!" Punch protested, turning from the others to face the extreme punks.  "You cant call us dorks!"

"Why not, dorks?" His friends burst into laughter at that, hoof-bumping in mid-air.

"Because we're adults," Trixie said.  She seemed impatient with the speed at which Berry Punch was resolving the situation.  "You cant bully adults, it's ridiculous."

"Oh yeah?" the earth pony said, slowly walking towards them with a cocky swagger and a shit-eating grin.  "Then why don't you dorks do something about it?"

"Yeah, dorks!" said Extreme Pegasi #2.

"Punch," Trixie said firmly.  "Come on.  We're going."

"Yeah, listen to your girlfriend, butch chick!" Extreme Earth Pony jeered.  "You better walk away!  Dorks!"

"But..." Punch scowled, then reluctantly turned away from the extreme punks to head towartds the exit with Trixie.  "Man, why do you get to be the girlfriend?"

The Extreme Ponies mocked them relentlessly as they left, waiting until the door closed behind them to resume throwing chips at each other.  The cashier punch watched them go, then shrugged indifferently and returned to his magazine.

* * *

Meanwhile, Elsewhere...

"Fuschia with purple mane," Hop Burst said.  She was outside the Saddlebag's Rest, sitting on the sidewalk.  The guards had already gotten everyone outside of the bar, except for the patrons that were knocked unconsciousness- those had all been sent along to the hospital.  A gray-skinned guard was watching the bartender over a pad of paper, and was writing down, in shorthand, everything she said.  "Sort of a floppy hair style, mid-long."

"Cutie mark?"

"Umm.  A bunch of grapes, next to a big strawberry.  But officer, we're not going to be pressing charges.  She's a good mare, okay?  I just want to know she's alright."

The guard grunted with annoyance. "Ma'am, considering the extent of the public disturbance, we really recommend pressing charges.  I understand that you see this mare as a friend and a customer, but it is apparent that she needs help.  Innocent ponies don't run."

"Actually," Hop Burst, "there was another one with her.  A unicorn.  They disappeared at the same time.  I suspect she was the one who started the disturbance."

The guard nodded, and turned a page.  "Description?"

"Blue skin, with white... no, sort of silverish mane."

The guard looked up, his expression suddenly shifting from bored to wide-eyed.  "And a wand cutie-mark?  With sort of a moon-shaped cloud of smoke coming out of it?"

"She was wearing a cape the whole time.  I never got a look at her cutie mark."

"Cape."  The guard gritted his teeth.  "That's her alright."  He levitated his notepad back onto his utility belt.  "Thank you ma'am.  Your help has been indispensable and may help us bring a fugitive to justice."

"Fugitive?" Burst bit her lip.  "Please... promise me you and your men wont let Berry Punch get hurt?  She's... she's got a problem, and she makes mistakes sometimes, but she's a special pony.  I just want her back safely."

"We'll do our best," the guard said gruffly, but he was already walking away.  He climbed up into the passenger's side of the sky wagon.  His pegasus partner was sitting in the driver's side, sipping a steaming beverage from a foam cup.

"Anything?" the pegasus guard said with a smirk that said showed he thought he already knew the answer.

The unicorn scowled.  "She doesn't want to press charges against the drunk that started it.  We'll have to wait until the stallion wakes up."

"Pfft, of course she doesn't," the pegasi said smugly.  "Berry Punch is harmless, Fuzz.  If you'd get the parasprite outta your ass and spend some time off-duty in Ponyville you'd know that.  She's local color.  Ponies like her."

The unicorn, 'Fuzz', shook his head.  "She cold-cocked a guy in a public bar and ran away with a bar tab of over 70 bits.  She's an addict and a criminal, Flats."

"Are we done?" 'Flats' said.  "Let's pop over to the Taco Shack.  I would abuse some civil rights for a #5 right now."

"Abuse civil rights on your own time," Fuzz said.  "Bartender gave a description of Lady Lulamoon with the perp.  We're following the lead."

"No shit?" Flats said.  "Lulamoon?  Well, they cant have gotten far.  Let's put the siren on and harass some civilians, yeh?"

Flathoof extended a hoof with a grin.  Fuzz looked down at the hoof, then back up at his partner's face.  Flats drummed a hoof on the key, unturned but in the starter.

"C'mon, Fuzz. Dont leave me hanging."

Fuzz sighed and reluctantly hoofbumped for harassing civilians.  Flathoof, satisfied, turned the key.

* * *

"Wait," Punch said (hungover in the future).  "I'm confused.  When did cops show up?"

"The cops haven't showed up yet," Trixie said, a little impatient.  "The cops dont show up until later.  I'm just introducing them now so it wont feel like they came out of nowhere when they show up later."

"Even though, for us, they did come out of nowhere?  And how do you have any idea what they were talking about?  Are you sure Hop Burst isnt pressing charges?"

"Listen, I'm slightly tweaking the sequence of events for the sake of narrative coherency.  Do you have a problem with that?"

"Nah," Punch said.  "I love narrative coherency, I'm all about that shit."

"Great," Trixie said.  "So, back to us.  We had a train to catch. "

* * *

It doesnt really matter what city you go to: public transportation at night is always a freak show.  The few times Punch had been to the Ponyville Train Station it had been by daylight, and the crowd had been families and businessponies.  She didn't see anyone that looked like a family here tonight.

Punch awkwardly leaned against the a map that helpfully showed where this station was in the context of the greater train network.  Ponyville didn't need a map for their station itself, because there were only three platforms.  There was Platform 1, which would take you south towards Ghastly Gorge, Appleloosa, and Dodge City.  Then there was Platform 2, which would take you north to Canterlot and their destination, Wine Castle.  That was where they were now.

Finally there was Platform 3, which went west through White Tail Woods towards Los Pegasus.  That was the Platform Trixie kept staring at wistfully.

"We'll get to Los Pegasus," Punch said.  "I promise."

"...I just hope Roadie Roan is still unconscious."

Berry Punch wandered a bit further away from the crowd of disheveled, zombie-like ponies.  They all seemed to be staring off into space, but she still didnt want to discuss anything personal around them.  They were strangers.  Trixie followed.

"Okay, so what's the deal with the Los Pegasus thing?"

Trixie shrugged, not making eye contact.  "It's like... with the help of an accomplice... I have stashed a lot of money in the city.  Roadie Roan wants to get that money.  And it's in neither of our interests to bring the guards in.  Understand?"

Berry Punch nodded, her eyes wide.  It was difficult to tell if her expression was serious.  "Like... a lot a lot of money?"

"It's a fair amount," Trixie said.  "And yes, we will share it.  So long as you dont get us killed."

"Okay.  That's pretty cool."  Berry Punch tapped her hoof against the station map in thought, staring off into space.  "And Roadie Roan knows where the money is?  So this is like... a race against time."

Trixie shrugged.  "He claimed to.  I dont see any reason to assume he was lying, considering how much is at stake."

"Right, and... sorry to keep going back to this, but... how much are we talking about here?  Like, thousands of bits, or-"

"Two point five million bits," Trixie said.  "Some of it in unliquidated assets."

"And that's..." Punch frowned.  "That's all... magic show ticket sales?"

Trixie fidgeted uncomfortably.  "I think most of it Roadie Roan... stole.  He was trying to mail it to a secure location with a friend of his, and I've been diverting the shipments and stashing it with an associate of my own."

"Isn't this kinda... morally, uh..."

"I've been thinking of it like pirate treasure," Trixie said quickly.  "No one gives a shit who pirates stole all their gold from, right?  Once it has gone into a treasure chest, it basically becomes fair game.  You beat the pirates, you get the gold."

At that moment the train chugged it's way into the station, carefully aligning at the marked locations on the platform.  The zombie ponies began to rise with their luggage, lurching towards the train doors.

"So..." Punch unslouched and moved towards the crowd, to be ready to have a clear path to the train once a place in line broke.  "So basically what you're counting on here is for this adventure to legitimize you stealing 2.5 million bits from some douchebag, who stole it from other, nondouchebag ponies?  A douchebag who worked for you the whole time?"

"A pirate douchebag," Trixie corrected.  "And I did say I was going to share with you, didn't I?"

"Just making sure we're being honest with each other about it.  You know who usually goes after pirate treasure?  Other pirates.  So let's be good pirates."

The pair boarded the train, stowing their punched tickets in saddlepockets.  Finding a completely empty car was difficult- the nightrider zombies liked to spread out, and in fact many of them seemed to have already fallen asleep with their heads against the windows.  But Trixie and Punch found a car with only one other pony, an old mare in the front right corner.  

They sat down in the row on the opposite side, the rear left corner. Trixie took the window seat and Berry Punch took the aisle, with the bags right next to her feet.

"Alright, here we go," Punch said.  "Train adventure, ahoy!"  She stuck a hoof up in the air, pointing up and onwards at the future.

Trixie nodded with a terse look and levitated a blue sleeping mask out of her bags.  She slipped them over her eyes and sighed, sitting back in her chair.

Punch's grin cracked, and she put her hoof down.  "So, round of drinks to celebrate?"

"I thought we were staying sober until Wine Castle?" Trixie said, face pointed up at the ceiling.

"What?  No, man.  I just didnt want any Crab Red.  When do they bring the drink cart around?"

"I dont care, Punch.  I think I'm just gonna sleep until we get to Wine Castle."

"Awww..." Punch's ears drooped.  "C'mon, I'm practically sober!"

"Well I'm not!" Trixie scowled at her, or at least in her general direction.  "BP, I matched you almost drink for drink, and I didn't throw it all up.  I just want to rest while I can, okay?"

"Yeah, alright," Punch said, with a somewhat sulky look that was lost on blindfolded Trixie.  "I'll just have to catch up."

After a few minutes, the train left the station.  By the time the drink cart came around, Trixie had started snoring.  Berry Punch was already starting to feel like she was getting gypped on this adventure of self-discovery.  One hour in already, and she didn't even have a buzz on.

The mare pulling the cart looked as zombie-like as the other passengers.  She stopped for the mare in the front of the car, who slowly turned and waved her on.  She rolled the cart on down the aisle to Berry Punch and-

KATHUMP-KATHUMP

-ran right over their luggage.  Punch yelped and pulled it out of the aisle.  "Hey, careful with that!"

"Please stow your luggage in the overhead compartment or keep it at your feet, ma'am," the cart-mare said.  She wasn't even making eye contact!  "Luggage is not permitted in the aisle."

"Sure, whatever," Punch said, impatiently.  "Look, get me a rum and cola.  ...no, two rum and colas. Bloody Mare for my friend."

"Your friend is asleep, ma'am," the cart-mare said.  "And I'm afraid I am not authorized to sell alcoholic beverages at this hour."

"Whaaaat?"  Berry Punch looked at her wrist.  She didn't have a watch.  "It's, what... a little past 11?"

"We dont serve alcohol past 8 PM, ma'am.  It's the law, ma'am.  Train law."

"That's a law?" Punch sighed.  "Train law is a thing?"

"Train law is very serious, ma'am.  Our policies are strictly monitored by the Canterlot Transit Regulatory Board.  Is there anything nonalcoholic I can get you, ma'am?"

Punch glared at the assortment of carbonated carrot-flavored beverages.  "Nevermind.  You're useless to me."

"Just doing my job, ma'am," the cart-mare droned snippily, and continued pulling her cart on to the next car.

Berry Punch grumbled as she grabbed the luggage and lifted up to put it in the overhead compartment.  As she did, something light fell to the ground.  She couldnt look to see what it was until the saddlebags were out of her hooves.

When she did, her eyes went wide with awe and delight.  There, on the floor in a little plastic baggy, was what looked like a quarter of merryleaf.  She grabbed the bag and sat back down quickly, looking both ways to see if anyone had noticed.

They had not.  Coast was clear.

Berry Punch opened the bag and inhaled deeply.  The dank, skunky smell sent a tingle down her spine.  It looked a little seedy, and a lot of it was shake, but dat stank!  Apparently Trixie bought good shit.  Just when she was starting to have doubts about this friendship!  She poked Trixie with a hoof.  "Trixypix!  Where dyou keep your papers?"

Trixie grumbled in her sleep and shifted into the seat so she was facing away from Berry Punch, covering her exposed ear with her hoof.  As Berry Punch watched incredulously, Trixie resumed snoring.

"Unbelievable," Punch said, shaking her head.  "Am I the only pony here with my priorities straight?"  She rifled through Trixie's gear, but she didnt have a pipe or any rolling papers... just a shiny metal lighter with a name on it: "Arcana Palace".  She also found a hotel drawer-sized copy of the Solar Manuscript.  Punch knew from experience, the pages should be thin enough.

She also found a neat little olive beret.  It was probably Roadie Roan's, but it smelled okay.  Punch tossed the baggie of leaf and the lighter inside and flopped it on top of her head.  This was a much easier to way carry stuff around than big old saddlebags, and she was pretty sure she was rocking this look anyway.  The Solar Manuscript she carried with her.  Berry Punch set off in search of a place to toke up.

* * *

Trixie stood in a massive, marble hall, flanked by massive statues of unicorns.  They towered over her, and she could feel their stony eyes on her as she walked slowly through the chamber.  She couldn't see the other side of the room.  It looked like there was a wall, and maybe a door, on the horizon... but she wasn't getting any closer to it.  Still, she focused on that, because she did not want to look at the statues.

She knew the names engraved at the base of each one.  Knew them by heart.  To the left, up ahead... there was Abigor, the batpony sorceror.  His kind had eventually bred themselves into extinction with the pegasi, but a rare few of the pure ones had commanded power over the darker arts.  All gone now.

Behind her, the one she had just passed, was Clover the Clever, the unicorn maester that was the key unicorn representative in the founding of Equestria.  At her prime, she had rebuilt Canterlot in its entirety, with one mighty spell.  But the old walls had all fallen down centuries ago.  They'd been rebuilt again by other ponies.

These statues haunted Trixie, but one more than all the others.  The others... their greatness loomed over her, but not like the one statue she could not face.  The statue she knew was always behind her.

"We believe in you, Trixie," one statue whispered.

"You possess limitless potential," hissed another.

She ignored them.

"Trixie," Starswirl the Bearded said.  Arguably one of the greatest arcanologists in pony history.  But even he had been unable to prevent his own death, and the world he had given his life to build was frozen by the hate of his descendants.  How many truly understood him?  Lost, as all great and powerful ponies inevitably were.

He was just up ahead, to her right.  "Trixie.  We see into your heart.  We know that you will become great."

"and powerful," added another statue, across from him.  One of the changeling lich queens.  Damarang the Blackhearted.  She'd nearly conquered Equestria, once, but for the intervention of a mischievious avatar of Chaos.  But now her race was reduced to scavenging.  "You will command the wills of other ponies.  They will obey you."

"They'll love you"

"Trixie"

"Trixie!"

"Stop," Trixie sobbed.  "Leave me alone!"

The room was changing around her.  It hadn't stopped being infinitely large, but the distance between the statues was decreasing.  They were closing to her, leaning forward to block out the sky.

"Trixie!  Miss Trixie!"

"Trixie," another voice called out.  Trixie knew the last statue was behind her.  She couldn't look.  She wouldn't.  "Trixie.  Face me.  Face your destiny."

"Miss Trixie"

The world was compressing and there was nothing but the statues, everywhere, chanting, encouraging and jeering at the same time.  They mocked her weakness.

"Trixie!"

"Miss Trixie!"

She couldn't move forward.  The statues were all around her.  Trixie could feel them worming into her mind.  She could feel their old hopes and dreams, wrapping around her and threatening to smother her.

"Miss Trixie!"

Trixie's eyes flew open.  There was nothing but black all around her, but the voices were gone.  The statues were gone.  She was alone.  She could feel an ambient rumbling all around her.

"Hey, Miss Trixie! Are you okay?"

Slowly, Trixie's groggy mind processed what was happening.  She wasnt surrounded by blackness.  She was still wearing that thing over her eyes.  And that voice... that slightly nasally coltish voice... She groaned as it slowly registered, and pulled off her sleeping mask.

"What the fuck are you two doing here?"

It was Snips and Snails, the idiot colts that had led the Ursa Minor into town.  Trixie scowled.

"Whoa," Snips said, raising his hooves in a defensive gesture.  "You looked like you were having a panic attack.  Just trying to help."

"You okay, Miss Trixie?" the bigger one, Snails, asked.

She sighed.  "Yes, I'm fine.  I was just napping,  I-" She looked around.  "Where'd Berry Punch gone?"

"Berry Punch?"  Snails tilted his head.  "Ruby's mom is here?"

"Yes, we're- wait, what?"

"Nevermind that," Snips said.  "Good to see you again, Miss Trixie, but we have to find a dracogram booth!"

Trixie shook her head to clear it.  "Alright.  Good luck, boys.  If you see Berry Punch, could her ask her to come back?"

"Sure, no problem!" Snip said, pulling Snails along with him.  Snails followed reluctantly, looking back at Trixie with a big goofy grin.

Trixie sat in silence for a moment, then turned back suddenly.  "Wait, before you go- what was that you were saying about Berry Punch?  Being a mom?"

Snips took a few steps back so he was back in Trixie's line of sight.  "She's got a little filly in our school. Ruby Pinch. She didn't mention her?"

Trixie frowned.  "She alluded to family, but-"

"Well, no one really knows," Snails said.  "Ruby never talks about anyone but Berry Punch at her house, but I dont think she ever said she was her mom."  Snails grinned bashfully.  "She's pretty hot, though, right?"

"Okay, that's enough of that," Snips said, rolling his eyes.  "C'mon, Snails."  The taller colt blushed, and followed his friend out of the car.

Trixie watched them go, troubled.  A daughter? Really?

* * *

Berry Punch's first idea was to go to a bathroom, but everyone she found has a pony already in it.  It seems like almost have the train passengers were barricading themselves in the bathrooms.  She wasnt sure if that was because they were creepy ponies with the bathroom-sickness, or fellow stoners that had beaten her to the punch.

The train actually had a smoking car... for ponies to smoke tobacco.  Punch passed through it and saw old stallions clenching cigars in ancient, locked jaws.  They were behind glass on each side of the corridor, to keep the smell ventilated away from the rest of the train.  Their eyes barely followed her as she passed through.  To Punch, they looked like caged specimens: Equus fumus.  She moved on, and as she did her eye caught a clock on the wall: 11:21.  Good to know.

Soon enough, Berry Punch found an empty private car, with opaque walls on each side of the aisle.  At any point one of those pushy train ladies could walk by, but they wouldn't be able to see Punch unless they opened the door, and why would they?  The car also had a window, and way better seats than where she and Trixie had been sitting.  Berry Punch flopped down on the comfy seat and took off her hat just long enough to get out her lighter and the bag of grass.

Giving the merryleaf a longer, critical look, Punch had to admit that it didnt really look dank.  The upper echelons of mids, perhaps, but no more.  Still, it would be a good smoke.  She opened to a random page in the Solar Manuscript and curiously scanned the text.

It said:

30 The stallion answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvelous thing, that ye know not from whence she is, and yet she hath raised thy very morning sun for which you would see.
31 Now we know that Celestia heareth not the Bad Pony; but if any pony be a worshiper of her light, and obeyeth her will, him she heareth.
32 Since the world began was it not heard that any pony moved the stars by their own power.
33 If she were not daughter of skies, sister of light, mother of earth, she could do nothing.

"Cool story bro," Punch grinned, and ripped the page out.  She lined up an even distribution of leaf on the page with her hoof.  Earth pony hooves were clumsy, but not as much as one might think.  Pretty soon she had rolled a pretty tight joint, and with plenty of leaf left in the bag to spare.  She smiled at her craftsmanship.  Using somepony else's leaf made rolling a fat joint a joy.

She cranked down the window and sparked the first hit.  She took a long pull, facing out the window, and let the smoke she couldn't hold in out through her nose.  She liked exhaling that way.

Smoking a joint by oneself is no easy task.  Within a circle, a pony can have time in between hits to recover.  A joint burns constantly, and with nopony to help with it a lot of leaf is burned without being inhaled.  Berry Punch considered herself, if nothing else, a thrifty drug-user, and so she used this rationalization to keep taking hits even when she felt like she wanted to cough her lungs hoarse.  Hehe... hoarse.

She passed two minutes quickly, getting down to the last third of the joint.  So far it didn't seem like anypony could smell the smoke outside this car.  Berry Punch smirked and enjoyed the cold, rushing air from the window on her face.  So much for Train Law.

Suddenly the door burst open.Punch jumped and fumbled the joint in a panic, flipping it out the window.  She could only look on in dismay.  Just like that, it was gone... and the room reeked of merryleaf.  She spun around in horror, eyeing the intruders.  They were... two young colts?

"Oh shit kids,"  Berry Punch said, squinting through the darkness in horror at Snips and Snails. "Um, stay in school.  D-drink milks."

"What're you doing in here all alone, Berry Punch?" asked the squat, slightly nasally colt.

"How do you even know my name?" Punch groaned.  "What the hell."

"We go to school with your daughter," the taller pony chimed in.

"For FUCKS SAKE she's my little sister!" Punch said through gritted teeth.  "How old do you think I am?"

"Old enough to be smoking better leaf than this," Snips said, rolling his eyes.  "Why does it smell like schwag in here?"

"What," Berry Punch said, her paranoia shifting into indignation.  "No, kid, no.  This is good weed.  Dont you come around here, poking your nose in my coatroom, telling me my herb is schwag.  That is disrespectful.  Do not disrespect me."

"You're disrespecting yourself if you're going to smoke anything less than the best," Snips said.  He reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a small pill bottle.  He unscrewed the cap and tilted it towards Berry Punch.  Her gaze traveled down the inside of the cylinder and found a single nug.  It was more purple than green, and the bud glistened with tiny, sparkling crystals.  Punch could almost hear an alicorn chorus singing in exultation.  Snips raised a smug eyebrow.  "You should be smoking this."

"You..."  Punch's mouth hung open.  "Celestia help me, I should be smoking that!  Okay.  Fuck.  Come in, close the door."

Snails was already using his magic to retrieve a massive clear plastic bong from his saddlebags.  It was easily taller than Snips.  He pulled a water bottle out, as well, and poured a little into the tube.

"So..." Punch scratched her head.  Snips placed that beautiful nug into the grinder and began to turn it.  She bit a lip.  "So what are the hell are you guys doing out here so late?"

"We got the munchies so we decided to go to Hot Dog Heaven," Snails said, grinning.  "What about you, what are you doing?"

"Going to Wine Castle," Berry Punch said.  "There's a 24-hour one out in Cherry Point."

"Yeah?" Snips said.  "Think you could pick me up a handle of Maneischewitz?  I wanna impress this filly at school."

"That would be a felony, Snips," Berry Punch severely as he levitated the bong to her.  She held her lighter down and took a long pull on the bong, scorching the the entire surface of the bowl and letting the chamber fill with thick, milky white smoke.  Once it was full, she pulled the bowl and inhaled until her lungs were full and the bong was empty.  She exhaled through her nostrils, giving her the impression of some kind of diabolic dragon-bull.  Smoke wreathed her head and she almost made it to the end when her throat caught and she began to cough.  Just a little cough, but the small cough got bigger until she was lying on the floor hacking her lungs out.  Finally, the cough went away and she shivered from mane to hooves.  Fuck yes.

Snips grinned and hit the bowl himself.  He had levitated the bong away when Punch started coughing.

"Damn, this shit hits hard fast," Punch said, still on the floor.  "What is this stuff?  Where'd you get it?"

"It's my own strain!" Snips exclaimed.  "I cross-it bred from Blue Cheese and Heavy Debby.  I call it Ribbon Cutter!"

"Shit kid," Punch croaked.  "You've got a super-special talent.  You could go places with this."

"No kidding!" Snails said.

"Dude," Snips said, giving Snails an annoyed sideways glance.  "Yeah Punch, I'm really happy with it.  It's a little too munchie-inducing, though, you have no idea how bad I want those hot dogs."

"Mmm hot dogs," Punch said dreamily.  "Okay man, I think I can cover you for a bottle of Maneishewitz." She stared up at the ceiling of the coatroom.  This was a pretty tight train after all.  "Good shit."

"Thanks," Snips said with a smirk.  He levitated a pill bottle with one nug of Ribbon Cutter over to Berry Punch.  "Here, take a bud for the road."

Punch's eyes lit up and she stowed the pill bottle in her beret.  "You better not get Ruby drunk, though.  And... dont tell Cheerilee."

"Cheerilee's cool!  We smoked with Cheerilee once!" Snails said brightly.  "It was so cool."

"It really wasn't that big of a deal," Snips said. "You dont need to make it such a big deal."

"It was a big deal," Snails said directly to Berry Punch.  He passed the bong back to Snips, who tapped the ashes out the window.  "It was such a big deal.  We shared a moment."

"My friend here is a champion of hopeless causes," Snips said.  "It's his height.  The altitude is bad for his head."

"I'm just mature for my age," Snails said.  "All the girls our age are so obsessed with, like, cutie marks and stuff.  Hey, that reminds me!  We ran into Trixie on the way here!  Remember her, from the magic thing?  With the bear?"

"Please don't talk about that," Snips said, putting his hooves to his face in shame.  "It seemed like such a cool plan at the time."

"Yeah, anyway, she was looking for you, Punch!  Wanted to tell you to come find her."

Punch snorted.  "Already?  She was passed out when I left."

"Well she was tossing and turning in her sleep when we saw her," Snips sailed.  "Right in her seat, mumbling stuff.  It was awkward."

Berry Punch tilted her head with concern.  "Nightmares, huh?  ...I'm surprised you guys left her side.  You were hanging on her every word last time she came to town."

"We were really baked," Snips said.  "Anyway, pretty sure she hates us after what we pulled.  Didn't stop Snails from going googly-eyed at her, though."

"C'mon, dude!  I'm way over her.  So many other mares in this town, anyway." A sly smile crossed his face.  "By the way... that's a pretty cute hat, Miss Punch."

Berry Punch giggled at that.  "You little charmer.  Thanks, I stole it."

"Stand down, loverboy," Snips said, snorting.  He smiled at Berry Punch.  "I'm sorry, I wish we could sesh again but we're actually in the middle of a whole thing."

"Snips!" Snails protested, with a 'dude, you're blowing it!' face.  "I mean, we have a little time!"

"No more distractions, no more detours! " Snips said.  "You see what I'm dealing with here?  C'mon, we gotta find a dracogram booth before we arrive at the station if we're gonna get to Hot Dog Heaven."

Snails' face sank.  "Aww..."

Berry Punch didnt get up, but she raised a hoof to wave goodbye as they packed up their bong.  "Later dudes.  Thanks for the bud!"

"Later!" they called out in unison, and stepped out of the room.

Seconds later the two colts came back through the door and shut it behind them.  Their expressions were fixed into a rictus of intense horror.  Punch looked at them, confused.  She could see the fear in their eyes.  In a flash of chemically-enhanced paranoia, she knew exactly what had spooked the boys.

"Cops," she whispered.

* * *

Flathoof walked a pace behind his partner, Fuzz.  Neither pony was "in charge", or anything so simple, but this was more Fuzz's case than anyone.  Flathoof didn't know the Lulamoons from the Lemondrops.  Fuzz had... history.

"Yo, Fuzz.  Can you smell that?"

Fuzz raised an eyebrow, but since he didn't turn around or even slow down, Flathoof didnt see it.  "Is it a real smell?"

"It's not a symbolic smell," Flathoof said.  "I actually smell something and I want to know if you recognize it."

"Flats, now is not the time to joke around."

"Ribbon Cutter," Flathoof said in a low growl.  "I smell it.  In one of these cars, I just know it."

"Who cares?" Fuzz said.  "I'm sorry but how is tracking down somepony smoking leaf even remotely relevant right now?  Do you not get how important it is that we find this crazy broad?"

"Oh wow, you actually said broad," Flathoof said.  "Not even ironically or anything.  Wow, man.  Chill.  We're on a train.  She isn't going anywhere.  Let's confiscate something to celebrate catching her!"

"No," Fuzz said.  "If you want leaf, after this we'll go hit up Heady Meds and grab a dime.  And we'll pay for it.  We're not stealing somepony's Ribbon Cutter, and we're certainly not doing it with Lulamoon still on the loose."

The two stared at each other for a moment of tense silence.  The moment stretched on... and Fuzz cracked first, grinning widely.  After that Flathoof couldn't hold it in and started to crack up laughing.

Both ponies chuckles for a while, then sighed.  Flathoof wiped a tear from his eye.  "Ah.  Okay.  But seriously?"

"Lulamoon first.  Then, if you find the stoner before we get off the train, yes, you can take his leaf."

"Yessss," Flathoof cheered, pumping a hoof.

"But you cant arrest him, alright?" Fuzz said.  "We dont have time to escort three ponies."

"Well I wouldn't want to be a dick about it."

Snips, Snails, and Berry Punch stood as still as they possibly could in their private car as the cops passed right by their door.  The cops didn't seem to be checking any of the private rooms, in fact.  They seemed like they knew where they were going.

When they could hear for sure that the cops had left the hallway, the colts breathed a sigh of relief.  But Berry Punch was looking even more panicked than before.

"Guys, is Lulamoon, like... Trixie's family name or something?  They mentioned her a few times and... I mean she's got a moon on her flank.

"I wasn't really looking at her flank," Snails whispered, staring up at the ceiling.

"I think... I think the cops are going to arrest her."  Berry Punch shook her head, trying to clear out the cobwebs.  She was way too high for this but her friend needed her.  They'd made a promise to go to Wine Castle together, and that meant they couldn't do it alone.

Berry Punch put a hoof to her chin and frowned.  Somewhere, beneath the haze, a plan was starting to form.

"Snips," Berry Punch said, staring off into space.  "Do you remember that rope trick you did at the talent show?"

"The snake charmer bit, that we pretty much completely stole from Trixie's set?" Snips said skeptically.  "I thought it was hackish, but-"

"Do you think you could lift a pony's weight on one of those ropes, if you focused on it with your magic?"

"Uh... yeah, sure.  Either of us could, easy.  Why?"

Berry Punch licked her lips.  "Their skywagon will be docked near the front of the train.  We're probably not far from there.  We'll have to act quickly, but... I think I have an idea?"

"What kind of idea?" Snails asked.  There was a dim unease in his tone.  He was not a clever pony, but he knew when he was about to do something unwise on the behalf of a pretty mare.

Punch's eyes gleamed and she put her hooves on the colts' shoulders, like a coach about to pump up her team.  "How long do you boys think you can distract two cops?"


* * *

Fuzz pulled his gun from his holster.  He glanced over at Flathoof, Who had unloaded his collapsible battle saddle and was now hovering with his mini-turrets pointed at the door.

"Show-off."

"Nice handgun, does that come in a 'stallions'?"

"Fuck you," Fuzz said good-naturedly, and slammed the doors open.  He stepped in to see...

An old mare, knitting a... something... to the immediate left of the door.  She didn't seem to have noticed the armed entrance at all.  Fuzz grimaced.  Transit zombie.

The rest of the car was empty.  Flathoof flew in behind him, looking skeptical.  "Maybe she went to the bathroom?"

"Bathroom is the way we came," Fuzz reminded.  Flathoof grunted in response.

"Alright," Fuzz said, after checking underneath the seats.  "Probably just another of her famous disappearing acts.  You hold that door, I'll scout out the next few cars."

Trixie was curled up on the ceiling, trying to stay as quiet as possible.  The invisibility spell she could maintain indefinitely, if she had to, but the reversed personal gravity spell she could maintain for another three minutes, at most.  As the unicorn cop moved on to the next car, she watched the pegasus below her.

Flathoof stared off into space, clearly bored and humming some tune to himself.  He wasn't paying close attention, but he'd definitely notice if she hit the floor.

Trixie bit her lip and started inching towards the door.  If she could climb through the top of the door, right over the pegasus's head... but it would be close.  If he flew up a little, he would bump her.  She watched him, sweat beading on her forehead.

"Yeah i wish that i had jessie's mare, bada bada bada bada ba jessie's mare, bada bada bada ba, where can i find a filly like that, like-"

Trixie set her first hoof down on the wall, swiveling her gravity spell to smoothly reorient her.  The sensation was something like falling at the ground, and then, just as you are about to hit it, finding youself standing upright.  It was unsettling, and on top of all those cocktails from the Saddlebag's Rest, Trixie felt like she was going to be sick.  Physically sick.

"cuz she's watchin him with those eyyyyes!  and she's lovin him with that body i just know it" Flathoof continued singing quietly to himself.  The only other sound in the car was the click and clack of the 'transit zombie' mare's knitting needles.

Trixie was so close.  She was holding back a stomach full of tomato juice and vodka and who even remembers what else, but she was just a hoofstep away from the door.  It was still open.  She just had climb over the door frame...

"Jessie's Mare!" Flathoof sang out, hitting the chorus with renewed energy and zipping sharply into the air.  He crashed into Trixie's right shoulder, battle-saddle first, disrupting her concentration and abruptly ending the gravity spell.  Trixie crashed down on the floor with a thud, badly bruising her back.

The pegasi landed on the ground too, but he reacted quickly, deploying his personal ScoutBuck E.F.S. tactical visor and activating his battle-saddle targeting spell.  The guns made an ominous clacking "reloading" sound that didn't actually do anything.  Flathoof always sprang for the intimidation features.

The goofy pegasus was a locked-and-loaded war machine, and he was in between her and the door.  Trixie crawled back from him in horror.  She was still invisible, but only on the assumption that his targeter didn't have heat vision.  She didn't even have any good cover, here.  Trixie closed her eyes and prepared to dismiss her spell and come quietly.

"Hey, pig!" a voice called from beyond the door.  Trixie gaped.

Snips was in the next car, holding with his magic in the air what Trixie was pretty sure was the biggest blunt she'd ever seen.  It was practically the girth of the colt's hoof... it had to be a half an ounce, all by itself.  Trixie and Flathoof watched in awe as Snips took a twenty second pull on the blunt.  The cherry was pointed right at the pegasi, glowing red and strong and defiant.  Flathoof, for his part, was too surprised (and though he'd never admit it, impressed) to make a move against the colt.

Snips exhaled and for a few seconds, the whole area around him was blanketed in thick, milky smoke, like he'd thrown down a ninja smoke bomb.  When it cleared, he hadn't disappeared.  He was just a few steps back, next to the door he'd come in through.

Snips raised his blunt and tilted with a mock salute.  "Want a hit, pig?  Come and get it!"  And he dashed back through the door.

Flathoof's jaw dropped and he charged after the colt.  Whatever interest he'd feigned in the "hold the door" initiative was out the window.

Trixie sighed and dismissed her invisibility spell, catching her breath.  Her heart was pounding like a drum.  She looked back and forth between the doors, trying to decide which way to go.  Towards the front, to flank the triggerhappy pegasus?  Towards the rear, to flank the unicorn officer?  What was worse, she was pretty sure she recognized that one...

She had to find Berry Punch.  They had to get the hell out of here.  Or maybe she should just escape on her own.  That seemed for the best, really.  She shouldn't be putting Berry, Berry who had a daughter she never mentioned, into this kind of danger.  Maybe-

The train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a hoof tapping against reinforced glass.  Trixie looked in the direction of the sound.

Berry Punch was hanging outside the window.  Outside the train.  She was wearing some kind of armor that looked like a flight suit with grey and blue stripes down the sleeves.  On her head was, of all things, Roadie Roan's olive beret.  Around her legs and her midsection she was strapped into a harness made out of glowing ropes.

Berry Punch waved and gave her a grin.  Trixie boggled vacantly.

Before Trixie could react with any kind of communication, the door to the rear of the train slammed back open and Detective Fuzz returned, gun trained on Trixie.  In surprise, she backed up out of the aisle, next to the window.

"Lady Lulamoon," Fuzz said.

"Fuck," Trixie said.

"You're under arrest for multiple counts of conspiracy to commit grand larceny, and the attempted murder of the pegasus Daisy Chains.  Do you understand your rights?"

"I understand that you cant shoot that thing at me," Trixie said.  "Not if you want to keep your job."

Fuzz narrowed his eyes and levitated a set of a hoofcuffs.  "No.  And I'm not going to have to."

Trixie's eyes darted over to the window.  It was just out of Fuzz's field of vision, so he couldn't see what she was looking at.

"We both know you can make all these charges disappear, Lady," Fuzz said.  "But you're going to have to come quietly."

Berry Punch was mouthing something to her.  Trixie couldn't quite make it out. Five words?  No... four words, five syllables.

"Just stand down and we can all go home."

Trixie watched:

"Jump
Out
The
Win
Dow," Berry Punch mouthed.

As if in a trance, Trixie unbuckled the latch on the window.  It wouldn't open low enough to jump out but with some gravity adjustment... Fuzz froze.

"I don't think you want to do that," he said slowly.  "I don't know what you're thinking about but I'm pretty sure you haven't taken into consideration how fast this train is going right now.

"The Great and Powerful Trixie is supposed to fear such a trivial matter as velocity?" Trixie said.  "Trixie cannot be harmed by such petty concerns."

"Lady.  ...Trixie.  Dont-"

The cop sprang forward, trying to slap the cuffs on her legs with his telekinesis.  Trixie reacted instinctively, slamming the window fully open, re-invoking the gravity incantation and flipping out of Fuzz's range.  She dashed out the window and without a floor beneath her to orient gravity, her world turned around and around like a horrible amusement fair ride.

The world outside the train was dark and cold and the wind howled in her ears everywhere.  Trixie didnt have a grip on anything, couldnt even tell what way was up, but she felt strong hooves holding her and saw more of those glowing ropes lashing around her limbs.  She resisted the urge to kick wildly at the danger and clinged back to whatever was holding her.  She tried to keep her eyes open and stay aware of her surroundings but the wind kept forcing her to close them again.  She saw... Snails, wearing the same blue and grey striped armor that Berry was wearing.  His horn was glowing and he was shouting something at... Trixie?  Berry?

Berry Punch shifted Trixie onto her back, and Trixie held onto her with hooves and magic.  She had heard that earth ponies were stronger, of course, and she'd seen it in Roadie Roan, but she was still surprised at how easy it seemed to be for her.  Trixie squeaked and covered 

her eyes as Berry Punch made a charge for the edge of the car.

They jumped, and Trixie was pretty sure she screamed but could hear nothing but the wind.  She continued to grip onto Berry Punch for dear life as she charged across the roof of the train.

After what felt like it had dragged on for minutes, Berry Punch leaned for the right side of the car, and as Trixie screamed bloody murder she jumped down off the side, landing with a thump in the cop's docked sky wagon.

Trixie immediately ruined the vehicle by vomiting across the passenger's side of it, moaning in agony.

"Okay," Berry Punch said, catching her breath.  "That should slow them down a little.  At least until we can get the hell out of here.  How's tricks, Trix?"

"Yoouu..." Trixie pointed at her.  "How?"

"Cool, right?"  Punch grinned.  "AirBuck urban flight suit.  Pegasus magic.  Makes you pretty much immune to wind.  I stole them from here, and with Snail's rope trick we rappelled across the trains-"

"This..." Trixie gazed around the skywagon.  "This is... Detective Fuzz's car.  Oh.  Oh man, we should steal this, Punch."

"What?  No, we're not stealing a cop car.  We cant fly this thing."

"I can fly this thing," Trixie said.  "Yes.  Fuck yes I can.  Move over, lemme hotwire it."

"Skywagons are pegasus magic," Punch said impatiently.  "You cant fly it."

"'Pegasus magic' is fakey-fake bullshit," Trixie said.  "Having wings is not magic.  Doing stuff with weather is not magic.  There are magic spells to do those things, and unicorns cast them.  But what pegasi do is not magic."

Berry Punch folded her arms.  "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, okay?  You're talking to a mare who built a 1:256th scale model of this exact sundamned vehicle for her fourth grade science project, so don't tell me what your magic can do.  You and try and feed an arcane surge into the starter and it's going to backfire and scorch your horn, and then you're probably going to throw up on me.  Bet on it."

"If it has feedback glyph, fine, that's unicorn magic and I can disarm it.  What then?"

Berry Punch was about to respond when the two heard a gunshot, close, and screams inside the train.  They looked at each other.

"Okay, then what was your plan?" Trixie said hastily.

"We disconnect the docking clamp on the sky wagon and fall off the train," Berry Punch said.  "And then we run the fuck away."

"That's a terrible plan," Trixie said.  "We're going back to my plan.  Search the seats, there's gotta be a spare key hidden somewhere."

The two ponies scrambled through the center console, glove compartment, checked under the seats, but found nothing.  The chaos in the train nearby was getting louder and closer.  Through the open door to the train, Punch happened to catch Snips eye as he ran by, puffing on an enormous blunt and cackling hysterically.  She tried to call out to him, but he ran right by, followed by a furious, heavily armed pegasus.

"I still feel like my plan was pretty excellent up to this point," Punch said.

"Punch, look at this," Trixie said.  She was staring at something she'd found in a panel on the passenger's door, in an area mostly spared by her projectile vomiting.  There was a little locked compartment.  Trixie focused her magic into a wire point and picked the lock.  Punch and Trixie leaned forward together and found a small panel with two buttons and a switch.

The switch set ARM / DISARM and was set to DISARM.  The buttons said L SEAT EJECT and R SEAT EJECT.

Trixie and Berry Punch both looked at each other.

"Why do I have a feeling that you're formulating a new plan?" Trixie grimaced.

"Parachutes..." Punch murmured.  She found the lever on the side of her seat to pop the trunk.  Then she opened the door climbed around on the platform connected to the train, crawling carefully towards the trunk.  She could open it, but she'd be very close to edge.

"You cant seriously be considering-" Trixie began, but was cut off when Punch shut the door behind her.  That other detective sounded like he was close.  Or at least the shouting was close.

Punch looked in the trunk and frowned.  She gathered up what she found, and returned to the driver's side of the skywagon.

"There's only one parachute," Berry Punch said.

Trixie nodded, absorbing this information.

"Which is good, because the parachute is designed to deploy glider wings and interface with an AirBuck suit, and of course I'm the only one of us wearing one."

Trixie continued nodding, with a frown.  "That doesn't sound good."

"Well, see, I can fly a glider.  We'll be able to fly away from the cops."

"It sounds like you'll be able to fly away from the cops," Trixie said.  "What am I supposed to do?"

"I'll carry you!" Punch said.  She was already connecting the clip fastening the parachute to the back of her flight suit.  "Just like I did on the roof.  Come on, you know I can do it."

"Up there?  In the sky?" Trixie shuddered.  "With nothing but you holding me up?"

"Yeah, what's the problem?"

Two more gunshots, but this time they were no far-off thing.  In front of Trixie and Berry Punch, the windshield shattered.  Skywagon windows were built to withstain incredible amounts of force, especially cop skywagon windows, but whatever Flathoof was packing was not standard ordinance.  Snips was nowhere in sight and Flathoof looked enraged.  He had just fired two rounds into his own vehicle and he looked ready to strangle the mares responsible for it coming to pass.  Smoke coiled from his battle saddle and he zoomed in with his E.F.S. to fire again.

"Nevermind the problem, Trixie cried, scrambling across broken chips of windshield glass, climbing onto Berry Punch's lap.  She turned the switch to ARM and punched L SEAT EJECT.

Once again, the world around Berry Punch and Trixie vanished as powerful pegasi enchantments propelled Berry Punch and Trixie screaming into the clouds.  Trixie clung to Berry Punch and made a frantic whimpering sound.  Just as they began to lose altitude, Berry Punch deployed the paragliders wings.  They immediately lifted back up and began to drift through the air.  Punch hooted with delight.

A bar had been deployed, and Trixie now wrapped her hooves around it and clung to it with her magic, too, for good measure.  Berry Punch didnt have to hold the bar- the glider wings were attached to her back and she seemed pleased as punch to just act like they were her wings.  The sky was too inky black to see, but they were well above the land and would not be in danger of colliding with anything any time soon.

As she began to adjust to her new situation, Trixie forgot to be terrified and started looking down at the ground.  Everything was so very tiny.  They were already well away from the train, and the track was too small to see.

"Okay," Trixie said.  "Where are we going now?"

Punch looked at her as if she was stupid.  "Where do you think?  We're going to Wine Castle."

Trixie shook her head.  "Berry.  C'mon, you cant be serious.  The cops have ID'd us.  We cant go to Cherry Point.  And we'd never get there by glider, anyway, we'll lose altitude before then."

"I know," Punch said.  "I'm just going to fly in the direction of Canterlot and hope we find transport further."

"That's stupid," Trixie said.  "This is stupid.  The cops are shooting at us!  We should just go to Los Pegasus, get money, get out of Equestria and live like alicornian fucking princesses in some griffin resort."

"Nope, we're going to Wine Castle."

"Gahh!  How can you be so dumb about this?  We're in serious trouble here, Punchy!"

"Trixie," Punch said.  "We promised.  We're going.  And that's all there is to say about the matter.

Trixie hissed with frustration, beat her head aginst the glider hangbar once, and sighed.  Finally, she said, "Alright, dammit.  But we're going the wrong way."

Berry Punch looked at her suspiciously.

"No, seriously," Trixie said.  She shifted a little closer to Punch to give her room on the right to point off at distant lights.  "See those lights down there?  That's Cherry Point.  We're going to land way way short of it but if we head on that course we could walk there in about... two hours?"

"Two hours?"  Berry Punch boggled.  "Okay, fine.  And then we'll catch a taxi to Los Pegasus or something."

"Yes," Trixie said.  "I'm sure it will be that easy."

The glider was approaching the canopy line.  Luckily, while they were flying along a treeline, they weren't on a course to crash with any of them.  Trixie cleared her throat.

"Maybe set us down on that hill over there," Trixie said.

Punch nodded.  She moved her arms.  The course of the glider didnt change.

"You're coming in a little fast, arent you?" Trixie said, with a rising panic in her voice.

Punch grunted.  "It's not... I cant steer it."

"What do you mean you cant steer it?!'

The glider was on a crash course for a parked wagon on top of the hill.  Trixie shook her head no, as if disapproving enough could change their course.

"Trixie," Berry Punch said.  "What time is it?"

They had less than ten seconds to impact.  Trixie looked down at her watch, and back up at Berry Punch.

12:04.  Close enough for a midnight wagon ride.

* * *

"Is that the wagon we're in now?" Berry Punch asked in the future, still nursing a hangover.

"No," Trixie said.  "It is not."

Punch still couldn't remember everything, but the overall narrative was beginning to swim back to her.  "Is that how I got brain damage?  Crashing into a wagon?  I vaguely remember a different wagon, too... and singing?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Trixie said dryly.  "One wagon at a time.  We were on a hill..."

* * *

But not for long.  The impact of the glider snapped the hang bar and the wings caught on the wagon's roof, snagging Berry Punch and leaving her hanging.  Trixie was thrown from the glider to the front seat of the wagon. and the sudden force pushed the wagon forward.  Both mares could only watch in horror as the wagon picked up momentum and began to roll towards the edge of the hill.

"Berry..." Trixie cried.

"Yeah," Berry said, hanging helplessly.  "We're boned.  Hang on."

The wagon picked up speed as it went, careening down the hill at a dangerous speed.  No one was pulling it but gravity, so there were no brakes to apply, no animals to halt.  It was completely out of control.  The mares just held on for a wild ride as the wagon bounced off of rocks and sped down the hill.

A grove of trees approached, and Trixie huddled in her seat as the wagon blazed around them, only missing a horrible collision by luck.  She stood up once, to say something to Berry Punch, only to get knocked back down by a branch.  When they emerged from the trees they were once more at the top of a hill, and below it was a field of vines in rows, surrounding a massive farmhouse manor.

The ponies screamed as the wagon bounced down the new hill, the whole thing shaking so much that Trixie thought for sure it would shake apart.  As the ground began to level out the wagon lost speed, but not before plowing through a row of vines, knocking over posts and tangling up in wires.

The wagon was on it's last wheels when it emerged from the field and rolled straight into the broad side of a barn.  Trixie groaned and didn't move from the floor of the wagon.

"Trixie," Berry Punch said.  "Trixie I'm gonna need you to unbuckle me from this parachute."

Trixie slowly climbed to her feet and looked up at Berry Punch.  Both ponies were scratched and bruised and tangled up with vines and wire and twigs.  At the farmhouse, a light switched on.

"Trixie," Berry Punch said, a little more urgently.  "If you could get me out of here I would greatly appreciate it because I think ponies are coming and we're still on the run, Trixie!"

"I'm moving!" Trixie croaked.  "Gimme a second.  The Great and Powerful Trxie feels like she has fractured her mighty tailbone."  She climbed to her feet slowly.

Punch heard a door opening at the farmhouse.  Somepony was coming.  "Trixie!" she hissed.  "Help!"

"Who's talkin down there?" the pony that had come out the house called out to them.  He had a thick country drawl.  "Identify yerselves, hear?"

"Just two innocent mares!" Berry Punch shouted.  We're really sorry we crashed into your barn, we were skydiving and hit a wagon!"

"Ya did what now?" the voice sounded incredulous.  "Skah divin?  Alright, calm down lil lady, we'll see about it."  The voice spoke lower, to someone inside the house, but Berry and Trixie couldnt hear it.  Berry Punch struggled across the straps holding her in, and at last Trixie climbed up over the wreckage to try and unclip her.

"Are we... running?" Trixie asked.  "Because... because right now I could really use a drink.  Even water.  Especially water, actually."

"I dont think we can run," Berry Punch said.  "This place is huge.  I bet they have guards, too.  Oh god we are so boned."

Trixie shook her head.  "I'm not sure which of us is the crazy one in all this."

"Let's split the crazyness."

The pony was coming down the steps from the house.  Berry Punch turned as much as she could while strapped in.  When the stallion passed through the barn flood light, Berry gasped.

The stallion, a strapping dark red pegasus with a brown mane, widened his eyes when he came close enough to see the mares.  His cutie mark was a stack of three barrels.

"Berry Punch?" he asked, with a bemused incredulity.

"Beau Jolais," she said faintly.  Her pink skin hid her blush well, but not well enough.  "I don't even- what are you doing here?"

"Shoot, Berry, Ah work here."  He shrugged ruefully.  "At least Ah guess Ah do now.  What are you doin here?  What were you two tryin to do with that wagon?"

Trixie looked back and forth between Punch and the new pegasus, tired and confused.  The pegasus unclipped Berry's harness and helped her down from the wreckage of the paraglider.  "Wait, I'm confused.  You know each other?  Somehow?"

"Yeah, we..." Punch gritted her teeth.  "Trixie, this is Beau.  He's... well, he was the general manager of the Ponyville Wine Castle.  We, um.  Went to school together."

"Yeah... school."  Beau chuckled awkwardly.  "Howya been, Beeps?"

"I just crashed into a barn," Berry Punch said.  "Do you guys have anything to drink here?"

The stallion laughed from his gut at that.  "Do we have anythin ta drink?  Shucks, I'm thinkin you mares dont know where you are, huh?"

"What?" Trixie said.  "Is this, like, a dry community or something?"

"Not by a long shot." Beau Jolais grinned.  "You ladies just stumbled across the Sugargrape Family Estate."

* * *

"I'm going to interrupt myself, here, actually," Trixie said, in the future.  "What happened with you and Beau?"

"Oh sweet celestia that's really not something I want to get into," Punch groaned.  "I didn't mention it before?"

"No, c'mon, seriously.  I get that you used to date, but-"

"We were school sweethearts," Punch frowned.  "Y'know.  Hearts and Hooves Day, Prom, the... the works.  He was... my first."

"Your first special somepony?"

Punch gave Trixie a 'are you fucking kidding me' look.  "My first, Trixie."

"Oh.  ...Ohhhhhh."  Trixie looked uncomfortable.  "Well that explains a lot."

"And then I went off to college and started spending a lot more time with Colgate and I kinda broke it off with him long distance."  Punch sighed.  "It was a whole thing, okay?  I've made a lot of mistakes."

Trixie nodded slowly.  "The blue unicorn you mentioned?"

"Y- what?  I talked about Colgate?  How drunk was I?"

Trixie cleared her throat.  "So he brought us inside."

* * *

"We were just about to open another bottle of wine," Beau said as he welcome the ponies into the house.  It was nice and warm inside.  The Sugargrape Manor was decorated with a rustic, but classic touch.  Everything felt like it had been there for a century and would look exactly the same in another hundred years.  He escorted through the hall and a welcoming room on the way to private kitchen.

Sitting at the kitchen table was a pretty young earth pony mare.  She was a light yellow with a lovely golden mane and a steaming cup of tea for a cutie mark.  As they entered, she smiled at them.  "Hello!  You ponies crashed inta the barn?"

"Skydiving accident," Punch said.  "Hard to explain.  Sorry."

"Roussanne, this is my old... friend, Berry Punch.  And her friend...?"

"Trixie," Trixie said.

"Well Ah'm certainly chahmed," the mare said with a southern belle drawl.  "So nice of you ponies to drop in, even at such an unexpected hour."

"Punch, Trixie, this is Roussanne Sugargrape," Beau said, blushing and standing next to her.  He pronounced it like "Roo-zahn", putting an exaggerated Fancy emphasis on it.  "Mah fiancee."

"Charmed, as well," Berry Punch hissed.  "How... very lovely.  You're so." She looked like she was trying to swallow back bile.  "So lucky."

If the other ponies noticed Punch's reaction, they didn't let on.  Beau and Roussanne blushed and gazed lovingly into each other's eyes.  "Ah know," Beau said, beaming at his bride-to-be.  "Ah count myself lucky every day since she said yes."

"Welp," Trixie said, cutting in as Berry Punch looked like she'd turned the key on her self-destruct sequence.  "How about that drink?"

"Of course!" Beau said, whirling to a cabinet and opening it.  It was filled with a wine rack, stacked to the ceiling with bottles.  "Oh, what'll we have tonight?  Roussanne?"

"Oh deah, how about you open another bottle of this years Shiraz?" Roussanne cooed.  She smiled angelically at Trixie.  "It's a bit fresh Ah'm afraid, but Ah'm sure you'll enjoy it.  We'll be putting it on the shelves at the next quarter."

"What shelves?" Punch said, apparently having recovered.  "Aren't you closing Wine Castle?"

"Why, of course!" she smiled.  "But we'll be opening our new retail headquarters abroad, in Prance.  They say go where the mahket is, after all-"

"Well, sometimes the product makes the market," Punch said.  "Maybe selling fine wines here in Ponyville brings you new clientelle- lifelong customers- that otherwise never would've tasted anything like your product."  Beau was watching Punch carefully as he poured her a glass and passed it over to her.  "Ponies that cant afford to go to Prance for fine wine."

"Now Berry, Ah know you're probably not thrilled about the closin," Beau said.  "Ah wasnt exactly thrilled mahself.  But it's happenin, an there aint much use fightin it."

"I'm suprised you're giving up so easily," Punch said, locking eyes with him.  "Considering that it's going to cost you your job."

"Beau is going to be our new regional manager, in the Roan Valley."  Roussanne nuzzled her stallion with a satisfied expression and sipped her own glass of wine.  "So you see, he's not losing his job so much as gettin a promotion."

"Regional manager?" Punch stared at him.  "Wow, Beau.  I'm impressed.  You... deserve it."

"Shucks, Punch, means a lot to hear that from you," Beau said, hugging his fiancee.

"Not that he'd ever have to worry about money again," Roussanne said, tilting her head and staring at Berry Punch.  "Ah have more than enough to provide us for whatevah future we'll have."

"So you have been promoted," Punch said, smiling at Beau.  In a voice too low to hear clearly, she added, "from manager... to whore."

"What?" Beau said.

"What?" Roussanne said.

"Haha, she asked if you could manage to give us a tour!" Trixie cut in, fake laughing and pushing Punch aside.  "We'd love to see, ah, where all the Sugargrape magic happens! Hah!"

"Well Ah suppose that wouldn't be no trouble," Beau said, nodding brightly.  "What do ya think, Sugar?  Think Berry would wanna see the cellar?"

"Oh, Beau, if her interests are anything like what you've told me," Roussanne said, "Ah'm sure she'll just love it."  Trixie could detect a nasty, spiteful tone in her voice and felt a growing pit in her stomach.  She suddenly wanted to get her friend as far as possible from this mare.

"Well that sounds marvelous!" Trixie said, walking towards the door and pulling Punch with her.  "Simply marvelous.  Coming along, Beau?"

"Oh..." Beau blinked.  "Well if you girls wanna get goin now, sure.  Let's go to the cellar."

Punch drank her glass in one swig and nodded.  "Kay."  She followed Beau out, through a different door than they came in.

Roussanne watched them go with a self-satisfied grin... a grin that only Trixie caught, looking back just as she was about to go out the door.  For a moment, the mask dropped and Roussanne gave her a cold, territorial look.  The moment passed and the facade was restored.

"Hurry along now, sugar," Roussanne smiled, taking another sip of wine.  "Wouldn't want you to miss the tour."

* * *

"And then the wagon tipped over the hill," Trixie said.  "And, well... you know the rest."

The three ponies, Berry Punch, Trixie, and Beau Jolais, were climbing down the stonecut staircase to the Sugargrabe Family Cellar.  The air was cool and dry.  Berry Punch wasn't sure how she should feel.  This Wednesday had gone off the rails.  She'd fumbled her cocktail round, she'd lost the trivia contest.  She'd gone away with a strange pony and was now in the middle of nowhere, wanted by the cops for only Celestia-knew-what.  She was in the Sugargrape Cellars, a place any drunk worth her salt would give her hoof to visit even once.  And she was being escorted by her ex-special-somepony, who was (surprised!) engaged to some rich heiress bitch.  She was bruised from head to know and still pretty baked and was starting to get back to tipsy.  There was so much good and bad in her day and Berry Punch was too tired to tally it.

"Ha!" Beau said.  "Well it sure seems like you girls have had quite a night.

"Yes," Trixie said.  "What with the pirate treasure and the corrupt cops and all.  So you understand that it's imperative that we get to Wine Castle as quickly as possible."

The pegasi stallion nodded.  "Cant say Ah blame you girls.  If Ah wasn't goin to Roan Valley in a week Ah'd want to give the old girl one last visit mahself!  But Roussanne thinks it's best not to get emotional involved in the closings."

"Roussanne thinks," Punch said, the name dripping with contempt.

"Yup," Beau said, missing Punch's tone entirely.  "And it's not as bad as it sounds, really! Ah cant honestly say Ah've been missin the retail, and Ah have more money than Ah know what to do with.  Ah'm pretty much set for life."

They were in a vast, underground cavern.  As far as the eye could see, rows of stacks of hundreds of bottles extended down the halls.  The sheer size of the stock boggled the mind- a pony could ride a motorcycle through this place safely.

"Are these..." Punch's eyes went wide, immediately forgetting how bitter she was about Beau.  In the presence of this grandeur, it seemed petty.  "Are these all Sugargrape wine?"

"This hall is, yup," Beau said with a chuckle.

"This hall?  Berry Punch shook her head.  "How many halls are there?"

"Five," Beau said, and Punch looked like she would pass out.  "Ah know!  Ah reacted the same way first tahm Ah saw this place.  Always wanted to show it off to you, ever since Dad got the groundskeepin job, but, Ah... Ah forgot when we lost touch, and when Ah finally saw you at Wine Castle-"

Berry Punch raised a hoof to cut him off and he awkwardly changed the subject.  "Anyway, this hall is all private stock bein aged for limited releases and family use.  We got bunkers elsewhere where we age the stuff we sell.  The other four halls are the collection halls."

"Collection?" Punch stroked her chin.  "Can we pick a bottle out, from the collection?"

Beau faltered.  "Shoot, Punch, Ah dunno about that.  Ah've got a bottle for you, actually, but most of these aint really mine to-"

"Isn't it?" Punch raised an eyebrow.  "Are in-laws-to-be not considered family enough?"

"Well," Beau thought about that.  "Ah guess Ah am family, aint Ah!  Might be alright, then.  Ah'm sure Roussanne would approve."

Trixie and Punch were both pretty sure that Beau's fiancee probably wouldn't approve of him lifting rare bottles from the family cellar at the whims of his alcoholic ex-marefriend, but they saw no reason to correct him.  "Absolutely," Punch said.  "We were getting on like aces upstairs.  Let's go drink some rare-ass wine with her blessing."

"Absolutely," Trixie agreed.  If she was gonna be along for the ride, she sure as hell was going to enjoy it.

"Well," Beau said, and he gave the girls conspiratorial grin.  "No point in buryin the lead, right?  Let's go to Vault 0."

"Vault 0," Trixie mused, as they followed behind the stallion.  "That has a sound of arcane intrigue about it."

"Arcane is right," Beau agreed.  "The Sugargrape family legacy is said to have began at the dawn of Equestria, when the male line married their family to Smart Cookie, the earth pony chief of agriculture.  Back then, brewin was entirely a unicorn art!  The legend says that the farmer-adventure, Grand Sauvingnon Sugargrape, went on some sort of quest on the behalf of Clover the Clever.  In return, she passed down to him the private homebrewin notes of her teacher, Starswirl the Bearded."

"Mmm," Trixie said sagely.  "Of course, 'Les Acta Miscendarum', 'The Brewing Journals'.  The original manuscript is on display in the Museum of Arcane Science in Canterlot."

"Uh, right," Beau said, faltering for a moment at Trixie's expertise.  "Anyway, with his newfound knowledge, and his legendary heroic debonair, Grand Sauvingnon won Smart Cookie's heart and together they founded an agricultural empire that's lasted for centuries!  But the first few batches were brewed with direct collaboration between the unicorns and the Sugargrapes, and some of that wine still exists to this day!"

"After hundreds of years?" Berry Punch blinked.  "Uh, how?  No wine is strong enough to last that."

"They're enchanted," Trixie said.  "Unicorn collaboration?"

"Sorry, Ah thought that was obvious."

"And they're priceless relics," Trixie said.  "Obviously we cant drink any of those.  They belong in a museum."

"Obviously," Punch said with a crafty look.

"No, of course not," Beau said.  "But Ah thought you'd want to see 'em first, Punch.  You always did get awful excited bout rare vintages and the like."

They had arrived at Vault 0.  The other halls, as far as Berry Punch could tell as they'd passed through, looked exactly like the first one they'd passed through, only dustier and with more variation in labels and bottle shapes.  If she had the time, and she really wished she did, she'd look at every bottle... this cellar was a treasure trove.  But her enthusiasm was dampened by the fact that none of this wine was for sale.

The entrance to Vault 0 looked impenetrable.  It was big and shiny and had no door handle.  Instead, there was a keypad by the door, and Beau carefully tapped the combination out with his hooves.  Once he hit the last number and the # key, the door shuddered with an ancient hiss.  The door slide in halves into each side of the wall, along a seam that had been so fine as to be invisible before.  Beyond the door there was only darkness, and the blurred shape of what could be wine racks.

Beau entered first, and lights in the Vault flickered on one at a time.  Punch followed, her jaw hanging open in awe and wonder.  Trixie entered last, quietly using a surveillance spell to locate the Vault security cameras and levitating putty onto the lenses of each before she walked within range.

Beau came to a stop in the center of the Vault and turned around to Berry Punch.  Trixie browsed bottles innocently, minding her own business.

The bottles themselves were not labeled, but each bottle had a plaque mounted under it, listing the date of brewing.  Some had vague inscriptions.  "With Cinnamon", "Hurricane's Last Stand", "Romana Coronation Banquet".  Berry Punch caught Trixie giving her a nod, prompting her to hold Beau's attention for a minute.  Well, Punch was just fine with that.  She turned to Beau.

"So, what about these bottles over here?" Punch asked, pointing to a specific rack where all the bottles had odd, decorative flared corks.  Beau turned his attention to her and began to explain.

Trixie didn't waste a minute.  She scanned the bottles, looking for one worth stealing.  Virtually all of them were red wines, and truthfully, without labels, or any information on what the vintages really meant, it was impossible to determine which of these wines was worth her time.  She was about to pick one at random when a peculiar bottle shape caught her eye.

The bottle was clearly unique.  The glass was shaped with intricate patterns of magic runes over a massive four-leaf clover stamp.  The bottle had no plaque, but carved into the glass in embossed letters were the words:

FOR LULA

Trixie swallowed.  The bottle was clearly magical and probably strongly so.  She could feel it pulling on her soul.  Even a drop-out like her could recognize power like this.  A High Magi made this bottle.

She plucked it off the shelf and unceremoniously stuffed it into a place in her saddlebags where it wouldn't knock into anything.  Off to the side, Beau was still talking to Berry Punch.

"Pretty cool, Beau," Punch said, making eye contact from Trixie to let her know that he might turn around.  "So... these are some cool bottles, and I'd love to come back and study them someday, if I can."

"Yeah, that's..." Beau shrugs awkwardly.  "Ah'd like that, Punch.  When Ah come back from Prance, for Hearth's Warming, maybe we can meet up then?"

Punch very much doubted Roussanne was going to let her new husband spend their first Hearth's Warming with another mare, but she nodded back.  She couldn't really fault him for moving on.  Not when she ended it in the first place, sort of.  And who knows?  Maybe Roussanne was great.  She was rich, after all.  And young.  And pretty.

She suddenly realized that she was unconsciously grinding her teeth.  "Yeah, Beau.  Maybe then.  ...So hey, let's go find a bottle we can drink, huh?"

"Ah think we can handle that."

"Yes!" Trixie said, carefully eyeing the door as she walked out of Vault 0, the priceless, ancient bottle of booze safely stowed away in her bags.  Nothing happened.  Beau punched in the code to seal the Vault again.

"So, Berry.  What was that bottle you always were lookin for, back at the store?  Every week, it seemed like, you'd ask about it?"

Berry gave him a level, testing stare.  "Do you not remember?"

"Ah remember very well, Punch.  Ah watched for that wine every day.  C'mere."  He trotted away down the hall to some the racks they'd already passed by.

Punch shook her head as Beau scooted from bottle to bottle, trying to get a sense of a completely mysterious organizational system.  She tried to take the bottles in, but half the brewers were completely foreign to her.  They couldn't be on the market anywhere.  Which meant they were ancient, very foreign, or both.  But the one she'd been searching for...

He passed a bottle towards her.  Punch examined it.

"This isn't the right bottle at all."

"Nah," Beau grinned.  "This is one for us to drink.  It's an eight year old port.  Mellowed, complex tannins, currants, blackberry, plum, and spice.  Miss Trixie, can you get the cork?

Trixie took the bottle with telekinesis, and easily pulled the cork out with a soft 'pop!'.  He held out his own glass, and Trixie filled his glass first, moving the bottle around with her horn.  Punch smelled the wine.

Her ears flew up.  "Wait, stop."

The other ponies turned to her impatiently.

"It's..."

Beau sniffed his glass.  His eyes widened.  "Ahh, dont tell me!  But that's impossible."

Trixie sipped it.  She shrugged.  "I dont get it."

Punch set the glass down.  "Trixie, it's infected.  Cork rot.  You cant taste it?"

Trixie looked blank.  She sipped the wine again.  "I dunno.  It tastes interesting.  Sweet.  Wouldn't say it's bad."

"But that's just impossible, Berry Punch!" Beau said.  "Fer starters, the cork was made of a polymer that should not have in any way degraded.  And this came from a highly prestigious batch.  Most of them haven't been opened."  He took the bottle, still half-full, and recorked it with a rubber plug. "Maybe Ah should save this bottle.  As evidence."

"Well if you guys dont want your glasses I'll take them," Trixie said.  "I dunno, it's kinda good."  They grimaced and she levitated their glasses over to hers, filling it almost to the brim.

"Anyway," Beau said.  "Sorry bout that.  But this should make up for it."  He'd still been browsing and rummaging while they were talking and now he'd found the bottle he'd bee looking for.  He carried it to Berry Punch, cradling it with care in his forehooves.

Berry Punch gasped at the distinctive bottle shape.  It was the one.  She staggered back, surprising both Beau and Trixie.

"Dude.  How?  This vintage-"

Beau nodded.  "A limited batch, collaboratively brewed by Granny Smith and Lambrusco Sugargrape to celebrate the founding of Ponyville.  Used zap apples and grapes together in the mash and fermented at hah gravity.  Strong, rich yeast character.  Then it was primed and sealed with magic so it would have a slight effervescence.  A bottle was served at every table during the banquet ceremony, and each family was given a bottle to take home.  That's all that was ever made.  It's argued by some purists to be the greatest wine ever made."

Trixie gave Berry Punch an impressed look.  "And I here I was starting to think you had no ambition!  How many bottles can still exist, if each family only got one?"

"Not many," Punch said.  "Thanks, Beau.  You... you know what this means to me."

"Ah do.  Ah'm sure they'll accept it."

Punch closed her eyes and cradled the bottle in her arms.  "I'll take good care of it."  She carefully fastened it in Trixie's saddlebags, taking great care to make sure it did not clink against the bottle they had stolen.  Punch felt pretty guilty about that, but she wasn't going to put it back.

Punch turned back and gave Beau a hug with her forehooves.  "I mean it.  Thank you.  And... I'm sorry I acted weird around Roo-song.  I'm just dazed by all this weird shit that keeps happening.  But, uh, I think she'll make you happy, so I'm pretty down with that.  I mean, like... y'know."

Beau looked like he was about to crack up.  "Yeah, Berry, Ah know.  You've been handlin it better than Ah thought you would.  But don't you have something more important than me you should be thinkin about right now?"

Punch looked blank.  "The cops?"

"Wine Castle!" Beau reminded her.  "You lost yer train and totaled yer wagon, remember?"

"Oh," Punch said, glancing over at Trixie.  "Yeah, I kinda figured we'd get there when we get there."

"Well, let's make it sooner rather than later.  When you're done with all this, you can come back here in the morning and we'll all have a drink and let this 'cop' thing blow over.  But in 

the meantime y'all have an adventure to get back to!"

"I couldn't agree more," Trixie said.  "I think I know how to get back to the main road from here, but I wouldn't mind some directions."

"Shoot sugar, Ah can do a lot better than that!" Beau said brightly.  "Let's go take a gander at the Sugargrape family ga-rage, shall we?  We'll get you a new wagon."

* * *

It didn't take long to pick out something that would serve their purposes.  Nothing too elaborate, but a good, sturdy wagon that Punch would be able to pull easily enough.  She'd still be walking, but it wasn't like she seemed to ever get tired.  It didn't take long for Beau to explain how to get back to the main road to Trixie, and the wagon had a glove compartment helpfully stuffed with local maps.  Roussane hadn't come back outside to see them off, and when they left Trixie noted the time was a little past 1:40.

A long dirt path led away from the Sugargrape Manor, to its massive ironwrought gates.  There was only one guard on the way out, and he was conversationally friendly as he opened the gate via mechanized pulley system.

Once they were out on the road, Trixie grimaced.

"Alright.  Punch, I wouldn't want to give you a reason to doubt my commitment to our quest, but we're going to have to make another detour.  We have got to find something to eat."

Berry Punch nodded.  She was strapped into the wagon's harness, which wasn't too uncomfortable but restricted her ability to turn around and participate fully in a conversation.  "I can get behind that plan.  How close are we to a place to eat?"

"There's a nice little diner about twenty minutes from here," Trixie said.  "I've been to this place before.  It's off course, but I can tell you where to turn up ahead."

"Kay," Punch said.  "Do we really not have any food?  I cant believe we failed at preparing for this adventure so hard."

Trixie shrugged and opened her saddlebags.  "Hmm.  We have two bottles of potentially magic wine."

"We're not drinking the Ponyville Celebration Wine," Punch said.  "It's not ours to drink.  And we shouldn't drink any more on empty stomachs anyway.  Or at least, I shouldn't, not if I want to pull the wagon."

"Erp" Trixie said, shivering.  "Guh.  Tell me about it.  The Great Trixie is starting to regret drinking all that fine, rare, infected port."

"I warned you dog," Berry Punch said.  "I told you about cork rot."

Trixie curled up on the seat.  "I'm gonna close my eyes.  I think watching the world moving is making it worse."

"Yeah, just dont forget to tell me when to turn, alright."

They continue on for a bit in silence.  Berry Punch didn't mind the chance to gather her thoughts.  She felt like the stuff with Beau had gone well, even though he was engaged to a ravenous cuntbeast.  At least she'd gotten a little bit of closure.  It was okay that the love of her life was going to be moving away to another country, for her to never see again.  At least he'd be rich, happy, and successful!  And hey, maybe spending the rest of her life chasing stallions that superficially resembled Beau in a desperate bid to reclaim her youth could be fun!

On the other hand... she glanced back at Trixie.  Or maybe she could spend the rest of her life chasing mares that superficially resembled Colgate, instead.  She sighed.  Oh well.  She could do worse.  Trixie wasn't like what she'd expected from her stage presence.  Punch still wasn't 100% sure she could trust her- she clearly was lying about a bunch of things.  This whole 'pirate treasure' quest was suspicious all around, and with the police involved now... it was a clusterfuck, to be sure.  But it was also the most exciting thing Berry Punch had been involved with since... well, since Colgate.  It always came back to the exes, didn't it?

As for the rest of the ponies in her life?  Punch didnt know what she'd say when she saw Pinchy and Hop Burst again.  If she ended up as a fugitive, she could send her share of the money back to them.  She could pay off her bar tab, send Ruby birthday presents, whatever.  They'd miss her, and it would hurt, but in some ways it was for the best.  Ruby didnt need her dumb big sister fucking up her life.

The road was plain dirt, barely even cleared, and Punch had to keep an eye on the ground to keep from tripping over rocks.  The scenery looked exactly the same as it had since they left the Sugargrape Estates: flat land with just enough trees to keep the route looking outdoorsy.

After walking for a while, her eye caught the shape of a pony up ahead.  She was illuminated by a soft, purple glow, that did little to reveal her features.  Clearly she was a unicorn, though, and she was moving around.  Maybe dancing, or just pacing back and forth.  Punch shifted her pace so she'd be able to slow to a stop when she reached the pony.  It didnt do to stop suddenly when pulling a big wagon.

"What's going on?" Trixie said, raising her head from the floor.  "Are we stopping?  Why are we stopping?"

"Hitchhiker up ahead," Berry Punch said.  "We've got room.  Maybe they can help."

"What?  No.  Keep going, fuck them."

"No, dude," Berry Punch said.  "They might have food."

"They might have a gun!"

Berry Punch snorted.  As they drew close, the other pony noticed them and flicked on a light from her horn.  Punch and Trixie's eyes widened as they were bathed in purple light.

"Hi girls," the unicorn said, beaming at them.  There was something off about her stare, something manic and unsettling about her mannerisms.  Her left eye, in particular, seemed to twitch every now and then.  "Thanks for stopping!  I'm not quite sure where I am."

"Holy shit," Trixie said.  "You're Twilight Sparkle."

She was, although she didn't look her best.  Her body was matted with dirt and fur and she had a rats nest of twigs tangled in her mane.  She looked like she'd been dragged through the forest, and it was certainly possible, considering where they were, that she had.  She had slight bags under her eyes and her left ear was laying flat on her head.

"Ha ha!" Twilight giggled.  "Wow, it sure is great to see you girls out in the middle of this wasteland.  I was starting to think no one else made it!"

"Ha, yeeeaaah..." Punch said, sharing a long look with Trixie.  "I'm glad we're both... alive?"

"But we havent a moment to lose!" Twilight said earnestly.  "We have to find the others and use the Elements of Harmony to set things right!"

"Twilight," Trixie said, giving her addled rival an awkward look.  "What are you doing out here?"

"Yeah, why aren't you back at the library doing nerd stuff?" Punch said.

"Thanks for asking, Pinkie Pie-"

"What?" Berry Punch said.

"-and..." Twilight Sparkle gave Trixie a long appraising glance.  "Rar... hm... Rainbow Dash?"

Trixie and Punch exchanged glances.

"I'll accept that," Trixie said.

"Yes," Berry Punch said, choosing her words carefully.  "It's... good to see you too.  

Twilight.  We were just leaving a, uh... friendship party?  And we were on our way to..."

"Rainbow some dashes," Trixie said.  "That's something she'd say, right?"

"And get a bite to eat," Berry Punch cut in.  "Right?"

"If you think you can get me out of this nightmarish hellscape," Twilight Sparkle said, "then I am okay with whatever you're saying.  I dont understand any of this."

Berry Punch hesitated, then shrugged.  "Okay, works for me."  She unhooked herself from the harness and helped Twilight up into the backseat, next to Trixie.  Trixie watched, but didn't help.  She seemed content to keep a healthy distance from Twilight, perhaps worrying she'd get recognized.  Once Twi had found her seat, Punch stepped back into the harness and resumed pulling the wagon, straining a little at the added weight.

"So, Twilight," Trixie said.  Punch was returning to their previous speed.  "What exactly are you doing out here?"

"I was at our book club and one of the ponies had brought this neat enchanted scroll..." Twilight stared off into space and then her face broke into a huge, goofy grin.  "The next thing I know I'm being thrown out of a moving wagon.  I mean, you guys were there, remember?"

"Were we?" Berry Punch said.

"Book clubs," Trixie said.  "So that's where Ponyville's night life is.  Of course it would be hiding."

"Well, nevermind that!  We have to find the rest of the girls and get the Elements of Harmony!  There isn't a moment to lose!"

"The Elements of Harmony?" Trixie said.  She tried to imagine what those artifacts, or even just Rainbow Dash's, would be worth on the arcane black market and her imagination came up short.  There'd be a heavy risk... but the prize...

"Yes!" Twilight Sparkle said, bubbling over with bewildered enthusiasm.  "Operation Get Twilight Sparkle Laid is still go!"

"Oh god," Punch said.  "I dunno about that, Twilight.  We've been trying to get to Wine Castle and we keep getting sidetracked.  So we really cant-"

"Forget Wine Castle, let's go get the rest of the gang!" Twilight said, giving her a big, off-kilter grin.  "Make this a real party, at the Friendship Pole!"  Despite the coolness of the air, Twilight was sweating.

"What?" Trixie said.

"C'mon! Pinkie Pie, you've got my back on this, right?"

"Twilight you dont understand," Punch said.  "We've been craving this wine all night.  We're only detouring for food, and only because we'll pass out if we dont."

"They serve food at the strip club," Twilight suggested.  "You girls ever been to the Friendship Pole?"  She grinned widely.  "Ehh?  The wings are delicious."

"No, and I dont intend to start tonight," Trixie said.

"C'mon!" Twilight said.  "It'll be like a friendship adventure!  They have mares too, Dashie.  Probably."

"We're not changing course, Twilight," Punch said.  "Tri- Rainbow Dash is hurting from hunger.  She needs a real meal, and as her friends, we need to support her."

Twilight sighed.  "Okay, fine.  You win, Pinkie Pie.  We'll go to your food party first, since you rescued me from the shadow demiplane.  But after that, we're cruising the strip and finding some stallions, yeah?"

Trixie and Berry Punch glanced at each other.  "...How about Los Pegasus?" Trixie said.

"No better place in the world to get laid than Los Pegasus," Punch said.  "That's a party fact."

"Wow!"  Twilight gave them a horrible, wide grin.  "A friendly road trip!  I like the way you think, girls!  This is just the opportunity I've been waiting for to go test out my Big Book Of Road Word Gamess, volumes 2 and 3!

"Or maybe we'll just find her a whore," Punch suggested hastily.

"Yeah, maybe that." Trixie said.  "But food first."

"Alright then!  Pinkie Pie!" Twilight suggested brightly.  "Sing one of your songs, to help make the trip go faster."

"Belay that," Trixie said, waving a hoof.

"A song?" Punch thought about it.  "I don't know any songs off the top of my head, but a musical scene really would speed things along.  Trixie, do you know any?"

Trixie grunted.  "You cant be serious."

"I dont make the canon of cartoon logic," Berry Punch said.  "I just live by it."

"That's it, let's all get into the Pinkie Pie spirit!" Twilight said.

"C'mon, 'Rainbow Dash'," Punch said.  "I know you've got a song in there.  I can Pinkie Sense it."

Trixie sighed.  "If I sing one song, will you guys let me sleep the rest of the way?"

"Yes," Punch said.  "Absolutely."

"Okay.  Punch, you do a do-wop beat and keep it steady, or it'll mess up everything."

"Aye-aye!" Punch said.

"Twilight, follow my lead."  Trixie took a deep breath, sighed, and whipped a wand out of her saddlebag.  She tapped it on the wagon once, twice, three times, and then waved it like a conductor's baton.

"Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, dum, ba-dum ba-dum!  Ba-dum, ba-dum, dum, ba-dum ba-dum"

Life could be a dream," Trixie sang, her voice crystal clear and elegant.  "If I could take you up in paradise, up above..."

"Sh-boom!" Twilight chimed in

"If you would tell me I'm the only one that you love, life could be a dream, sweetheart."

"Hello hello again, sh-boom and hoping we meet again, boom-o-hey nonny ding dong, alang alang alang!"

"Life could be a dream, if only all my precious plans would come true," (Sh-boom) "If you would let me spend my whole life loving you, life could be a dream, sweetheart!"

"Ayoo ayoo, sh-boom sh-boom!"

"Ba-dum, ba-dum, sh-boom sh-boom"

The three sh-boomed their way through the night en route to the Hawthorne Diner Grill.

* * *

By the time they'd made it to the diner, Twilight seemed to have calmed down a little, and had at least stopped groping Trixie.  Now she was tracing shapes in the air with her horn magic, and watching as they faded away.

Trixie hoisted her saddlebags back on as she crawled out of the wagon and towards Berry Punch.  "Hey, ket's bring the bottles inside," shewhispered to Punch.

"Why?  They're heavy, and hard to explain."

"I dont want to leave them with her," Trixie hissed, nodding her head at Twilight Sparkle.  Twilight, for her part, seemed distracted.  She was trying to use her telekinesis to catch motes of dust out of the air.

"Really?  After the shit we've done tonight, Celestia's star pupil is the suspicious one?"

"She's clearly not in her right mind!" Trixie said.  "C'mon, don't fight me on this."

"Alright, alright," Punch said, gathering up Trixie's saddlebags.  She smiled at Twilight.  "Hey, we're going to go inside and have a bite to eat.  You're welcome to join us, if the desire strikes you... or, uh, wait in the wagon.  We shouldn't be more than fifteen minutes."

"Mmm?" Twilight said.  She wore a distant expression.  "Sure, Pinkie, whatever you say."

"I really wish we werent leaving her with the wagon," Trixie said as they walked away.

"What's she gonna do, try and pull it?  No offense, but she's a unicorn.  I dont think she'd get very far."

Trixie shrugged uneasily.  "Yeah, I know.  Just worried."

The door rang as they opened the door to the quaint little diner.  

There were a surprising amount of ponies in here tonight, considering how late it was.  That was because they were just a stone's throw from Canterlot University, now.  Most of the ponies in here were students, and at least more than half of them were drunk, high, or both.  Berry Punch and Trixie found a booth seat.

After a few minutes, a tired-looking grey earth pony with white hair approached their table with a pad of paper.  His cutie mark was a dainty looking spoon with a black substance dripping from it.

"Evenin, ladies," he said.  "What can I get you tonight?"

"I'll have the potato hashers, tumbled and rumbled," Trixie said, not even looking at the menu.  "And a big glass of orange juice."

"Uhhh..." Punch pawed through the menu.  "I'll have... the Slam Dunk Cheesy Double Omelet."

"Cheddar, pepperjack, or Equestrian?"

"Can I have a blend of cheddar and Equestrian?"

The waiter shrugged.  "Yeah, it's just another bit."

Punch glanced up.  "Who's paying for this, anyway?"

"Roadie Roan."

"Sure, then," Punch said.  "Cheddar and Equestrian.  And homestyle grits on the side.  And..." she scanned the drinks menu.  "And the five bit milkshake."

"You want that milkshake Princess Luna or Princess Celestia?"

"Moonbutt," Punch said

Trixie sat up.  "Did you just order a five-bit milkshake?"

"Eeyup," Punch said.

"Five bits?  That's milk and ice cream?"

The waiter nodded.

"You don't put bourbon in it or anything?"

"Actually it does come with bourbon," the waiter said.  "Unless ya order it 'Princess Cadence'."

"Oh," Trixie said.  "Well shoot, that's not bad for a cocktail."

"'S'what I'm sayin," Punch said, handing her menu to the waiter.  "And bring it fast, buddy, before we eat the table."

He nodded and headed back to the kitchen.

When he was gone, both Trixie and Berry Punch collectively relaxed.  Neither pony had really realized how famished they were before they came inside and the smell of fried food and grease hit their noses.  Berry Punch had been walking all over, and the last time she'd eaten had been an avocado sandwich at work, and come to think of it she probably threw that up at the bar.

"Fuck," Berry Punch said.  "This was a good idea."

Trixie nodded, smiling.  "Of course, after this we'll have to deal with Twilight Sparkle."

"How hard could it be?  She's a conventionally attractive, brilliant celebrity.  This isn't My Fair Fucking Lady, we just find her a willing stallion.  Should take, like, three minutes, maybe ten if she's still tripping balls.  We'll do it on the way to Wine Castle."

The waiter returned with Trixie's orange juice and Berry Punch's milkshake.  They each raised their glasses in toast.

"Here's to the start of a beautiful friendship," Trixie said.

"Yeah, sure, that," Berry Punch said.

Clink

"Ooahhahh sooo good," Berry Punch shivered.  "C-cold, though."

Trixie grimaced.  She'd screamed herself hoarse today and the orange juice actually burned her throat a little.  Dammit, now she wanted a milkshake.

"Punch."

Punch was in a special paradise that existed only in the Land of the Five Bit Milkshake.  She was well out of range of Trixie's calls.

"Punch," Trixie said.  "The Great and Powerful Trixie DEMANDS that you surrender your milkshake to Trixie!"

Punch stopped drinking her milkshake for a moment to consider this offer, then shook her head.  "Nope.  Not gonna."

"Punch!  The Great and Powerful Trixie is no mare to be trifled with!"

"I am immune to your bullshit, Trixie," Punch said, straw still in the corner of her mouth.  Planet Brainfreeze does not recognize your authority!"

"Waiter!" Trixie cried, as one passed close.  "Trixie demands a milkshake of her own!"

* * *

"Is that why I'm Future Spiking?" Berry Punch said, still hungover in the future.  "Milkshake overdose?"

"No," Trixie said  "Though I dont think we should drink bourbon through a straw anymore.  But I drank more than you did, anyway.  No, your binge is still to come.  Do you still not remember?"

"Oh, I'm pretty much caught up now," Berry Punch said.  "I just like the way you retell it."

"...Okay."

* * *

Halfway through their second milkshakes, the food arrived.  Berry Punch's two eggs omelete was drenched in cheese every which way, so that the eggs were themselves invisible under all of it.  Trixie's potato hashers came, as she asked, tumbled and rumbled; which is to say, dashed with chili powder before dropped into the frier, and served with cheese and onions.  There was a secret language to ordering hashbrowns.

"Mmmm," Punch shook her head.  "Daym.  This is a good omelet.  Trixie, you want a bite?"

Trixie shook her head with a grimace.  "Naw.  I dont eat eggs."

Punch faked a look of shock.  "What, are you allergic?"

"I'm not allergic, no.  I just dont eat animals."

"Eggs aren't animals!" Punch said.  "They're eggs."

"They come out of chickens.  That's an animal."

Punch shrugged, acknowledging that yes, chickens were animals.  "Okay.  Fine.  But eggs taste good.  Omelets taste good."

"Baby dragons might taste like pumpkin pie.  I'll never know, because I wouldn't eat one.  You leave an egg alone, it turns into a chicken.  I call that an animal.  And I mean, chickens can understand speech, a little bit, but we just take their eggs and eat them.  It's, I dunno.  Unnatural."

"What about cows?"

"I don't eat cows either."

"No, but..." Punch poked a slice of omelet around her plate.  "But cows make milk.  Milk makes cheese.  Cheese is delicious."

"Cows give us milk, out of their free will.  A cow's got personality.  It's a little weird, yeah, but personality goes a long way."

"So by that rationale," Punch said, "if a chicken had a better personality, and gave up its eggs out of its own free will, would you eat them?"

"Well, I dunno..." Trixie said.  "I mean we'd have to be talkin about one motherfuckin smart chicken.  He'd have to be at least ten times smarter than Philo from Midtown Cowboys.  He'd be the Twilight Sparkle of chickens."

The ponies both laughed at that, albeit a little uneasily.  Punch leaned in her chair a little, peeking outside.  Looked like Twilight was still in the wagon, for now.

"You seem like you're feeling better," Trixie said.  "I was worried about you, at the wine cellar.  You seemed really quiet for a while, hardly obnoxious at all.."

"I was just thinking," Berry Punch said.  "About all the shit that's happened tonight, y'know.  And about Beau."

Trixie sighed and reached across the table, resting a hoof on Punch's.  "Look.  We all have ones that got away, okay?  It's not a tragedy.  You meet other ponies.  You find one you like.  You move on."

"I had moved on," Punch insisted.  "Look, it's not like that.  Beau is a really good stallion but I didnt think he was, like, my true love or anything.  It was years ago, it's over.  That's not what's got me thinking."

Trixie sipped her coffee.  "Okay.  I dont really believe you, but fine, you're over him.  So what's the deal?  Is it Wine Castle closing?"

"No.  Well... not directly.  Just..." she sighed, and sipped her coffee.  "Didnt you think you'd be somewhere else, by this point in your life?"

Trixie looked to each side.  "...No, not really.  I always assumed I'd end up hiding in a diner with an alcoholic, on the run from the cops.  I guess I assumed I'd be the alcoholic, though."

"Yeah," Berry Punch said, mostly ignoring Trixie.  "Well Beau's getting married.  And I'm not ready to get married.  I'm not even close.  And he's going to be a salaried regional manager, and have access to all the money he could ever need, and the love of a beautiful heiress.  We were the same age!  What did I fuck up to end up this far behind?"

"Well, you didn't put your dick in any beautiful heiresses," Trixie said dryly.

"Garcon!" barked a bright orange unicorn with a thick Canterlot accent.  He was in the booth with a red pegasi mare, just behind Trixie.  "Coffee!"

"Look," Trixie said, cutting Punch off before she could respond.  "I'm not going to tell you life isnt a competition, because we both know damn well that it is.  But it's not over until it's over.  You have plenty of life left to go, Berry Punch.  So we're on the run from the cops?  I dont like that, and it's mostly my fault, but it also presents an obvious solution: get the money with me and move with me to Prance.  Where the beaches are mediocre and the food is amazing and the extradition laws are nonexistant.  We'll live like alicorn fucking princesses and dine on fine cheese and finer wine, and damned be to everyone involved with this whole life.  There's still time to win at a new life, in the end."  She banged her hoof on the table.  "And Wine Castle first, come hell or high water.  Why not, we're already in this deep."

Berry Punch had begun to tear up, and came around the table to give Trixie a hug.  "Trixie... thanks.  Yeah.  Right, fuck this place."

"Yeah!  We can do better than Equestria, Punch. And... look, your daughter... we can get her to Prance with us, if you want.  It just takes money to-"

"Whoa, what?" Punch said.  "Hey, no, I'm not a mom!"

"You're not?  But-"

"Ruby's my little sister!" Punch said.  "Mom had her a little late in life, okay?  Shit."

"Oh," Trixie said.  She had shrank back into her chair a little.  "I'm sorry, Punch.  I was told wrong."

Punch raised her hooves in a baffled expression, then blinked.  "Oh... oh, the colts on the train!  They said they saw you, I just put that together.  Okay.  No big deal."

Trixie watched her warily.  "We're cool?"

"We're cool." She sighed.  "I'm going to have to pause this conversation for a minute.  Excuse me."  She got out of her chair and headed for the bathroom.

Trixie watched her leave, not sure whether or not she'd fucked up.  Punch seemed disproportionately upset about this to her, but it would probably blow over.  Once Punch was out of sight, she snuck a sip of her milkshake.  Damn, that was good.

Suddenly, the unicorn with the Canterlot accent was standing on a table.  He was holding a massive handgun with a levitation spell.  "Everypony be cool," he shouted, cutting Trixie off mid-thought.  "This is a robbery!"

Behind him, the bright red pegasi mare emerged from his booth.  She was equipped with a minigun battlesaddle, and had a look of frothing rage in her eyes.

"Any of you fucking pricks move!" she shrieked, her face a terrifying, manic snarl.  "And I'll execute every motherfuckin last one of you!"

* * *

"'On a train', you said!" Fuzz snapped.

"Yep."

"'She can't get far', you said!"

Flathoof just nodded tersely.  "Okay."

"Well?  Where the fuck is she, then?  Huh?  Where the fuck are they, Flathoof?!"

"Look," Flathoof said calmly.  "We cant find her at this point, clearly.  Celestia only know how far they could get on the glider.  How could anyone think they'd get the glider?"

"Maybe because you left the fucking door unlocked, you incompetent ass!"

The cops were back in a skywagon.  They'd been held up for a while at the train, forced to explain why they had repeatedly discharged their weapons in an enclosed area filled with civilian ponies.  Then they'd had to hastily wipe up the vomit in the passenger's side before Fuzz would agree to ride in it.  And both seats didn't quite seem centered right, after being used to eject the fugitives into the air.  But despite being a little worse for wear, the skywagon was still basically operational and it was sure to be faster than Punch and Trixie could be on foot.  And yet they'd searched up and down the main roads and they were nowhere to be found.

"Hey," Flathoof said, frowning.  "Now, right now we're both upset.  But that's no reason to point hooves.  We operate as a team, right?  What's important isn't which of us failed.  It's that we failed."

"You unbelievable asshole," Fuzz hissed.  "You know what?  Just for that, you're not getting any of the leaf I confiscated from those colts."

"Aw!" Flathoof said.  "I confiscated that!"

"Nope.  Since we were pursuing my case, I was the one in charge.  That makes it my arrest."

Flathoof pouted.  "Can I get, like... just a dimebag?  I already lost my back-up gun!"

"That doesn't make it better!  The fact that you lost a gun only makes you more of a fuck-up!"

Flathoof stuck his bottom lip out and gave Fuzz the watery eyes.

"...Ugh, maybe a dimebag.  If you're good and stop fucking up."

Flathoof sighed.  A beeping sound at the dash of their vehicle alerted them to turn up the sound on the police scanner.  They usually kept it silenced, since Flathoof said the high-pitched whining radio voice gave him a headache.

"Automated alert to Hawthorn Diner Grill.  Silent robbery alarm activated.  Requesting nearest police to Hawthorn Diner Grill to resolve an armed robbery by two ponies."

"Two ponies," Flathoof said.  "Hey, maybe it's them!"

"Our luck isn't that good," Fuzz snapped at him.  "Ah, we might as well, we're closest.  We'll pick up the Lulamoon case in the morning.  Early morning.  And buckle your seat belt, you're a sundamned officer of the law."

Flathoof grumbled and buckled his seat belt.  It was gonna be a long night.

* * *

"Customers, stay seated!" the orange pony was shouting.  Trixie spied a big pumpkin on his flank- orange on orange.  What a silly cutie mark.  "Waitresses, on the floor!  If you aren't in a chair, get on the fucking floor!"

"Fucking now!" the pegasus shrieked.  She had a dripping honeycomb on her flank.  "Get on the floor now or I'll blow your fuckin heads off!"

"Listen," a rotund, greying stallion that had been sitting at the front of the diner said.  "I'm the manager here.  There's not going to be any trouble.  Take whatever you want, just don't hurt anypony!"

"Did you say you're going to give me trouble?!" the orange pony rounded on him, taking the opportunity to menace somepony for the rest of the crowd.  "You going to be a problem, fat guy?"

The manager tried to defend himself, but the pegasus mare cut him off.  "What've we got?!  We got a fucking hero?!"

"I'm not a hero!" the manager protested.  "I'm not going to give you any trouble!"

"I don't buy it," the pegasus cried.  "Fuckin execute him!"

"No!" the manager said.  "Listen, I'm just a diner manager!  I am not a hero!  You can take anything you want, we will not resist!"

"You gonna tell the rest of these ponies to cooperate?" the orange pony said, sneering at the quivering pony at wrong end of his barrel.

"Yes," the manager said, raising his voice to address the customers.  "Please, everypony!  Just stay calm and cooperate with them and all this will be over soon!  Give them what they want and you will be safe!"

Apparently pleased by this, the orange pony was going from table to table, filling a large, black plastic bag with the customer's wallets.  Everypony seemed all too eager to chuck their belongings into the bag, to make him move on to the next table.  Trixie watched from her seat as the orange pony cleared out the other side of the restaurant.  Eventually he'd head back this way, and get to her...

Eventually the pumpkin pony made it to Trixie.  He held the bag open for her.  "Wallet, in the bag."

Trixie stared at him.  She didn't have her own wallet, but she fished Roadie Roan's out of her saddlebags, which she had set down next to her in the booth.  She plopped the wallet into the bag.  The pumpkin pony nodded, but he wasnt quite satisfied.  He pointed at her bags.

"What have you got in there?"

"My hooch."

He tilted his head just slightly, and licked his lips nervously.  "Open the bag."

Trixie narrowed her eyes.  She undid the flaps at the top of the bag, revealing the two bottles they'd taken from Sugargrape Cellars.  Pumpkin pony studied the bottles, and nodded.

"Alright.  Crack 'em open, then.  Let's have a drink."

Trixie nudged the bag back towards her, with telekinesis.  It was a slight gesture, but up close it was impossible not to notice.  "I'm afraid I cant do that."

The pumpkin pony was taken aback by sudden backbone from a customer.  He cocked his gun.  "I'm not sure I heard you correctly."

"Yes, you did," Trixie said.

The crazy pegasus bitch seemed unsettled by the sudden change in tone.  "What's going on?"

"Looks like we're dealing with a vigilante," pumpkin pony said, still staring at Trixie.

"Well, shoot her in the face!"

"I hate to shatter your ego," Trixie said.  "But this isn't the first time I've had a gun pointed in my face.  It's not even the first time tonight."

"You don't open up those bottles," he countered, "it'll be the last time."

Trixie didn't respond.  Pumpkin pony was sweating.

"I'm going to count to three," he said.  "And if you arent opening those bottles, I'm going to shoot you in the fucking face.  One..."

Trixie stared back at him.

"Two..."

The pegasus's eyes darted around, tensing up.

"...Three."

"Alright," Trixie said, raising her hooves in a gesture of surrender.  She pulled the ancient bottle from Vault 0 from the bag.  Of the two, it was by far the more ornate, and it was the one pumpkin pony had had his eye on.

The top didn't have a cork.  It had a chained stopper, with a spell of resealing upon it.  Trixie sent magic flowing into the stopper and it popped out immediately.  A rich aroma began to rise from the bottle.  It smelled strongly of incense and mulling spices.  Trixie slid the bottle over to pumpkin pony.

He watched her, and raised the bottle, sniffing closely from it.  As he did, a strange look crossed his face.  There was a distant expression, as if he was straining to hear music playing far, far away.  Slowly, all the color drained from his face and he set the bottle down.

"Is this..." he swallowed the lump in his throat, and raised his eyes up to Trixie's.  "Is this what I think it is?"

Trixie wasn't sure what was in the bottle, but she was pretty sure it was more than wine.  She nodded her head.

Pumpkin pony chuckled, clearly still in awe by whatever he'd experienced.  "It's... it's beautiful."  He almost pushed the wine back to her.  Then, suddenly, and impulsively, he raised it again and took the smallest of sips.

The reaction was immediate.  His body seized up, and he lowered the bottle as quickly as he could without dropping it.  Trixie watched his face in fascination.  Something about his eyes... something was changing.  He took a step back from the table, then grabbed onto it to maintain his balance.

Trixie watched him impassively.  She was waiting for him to lower his gun.

"What's happening?" the pegasus cried.  "What did you do to him?"

The pumpkin pony had regained a little composure, but he was looking around all confused.  The only thing he seemed capable of looking at with any focus in his eyes was Trixie.  When he spoke, his voice cracked, as if his throat was suddenly dry.

"Lula?" he said, like he could scarcely believe what was happening.  "Lula... is that you?  Where am I?"

Trixie didn't know what the fuck to make of that, but at that point the pumpkin pony dropped his guard and lowered his gun.  She reacted immediately, swiping it out of the air with her telekinesis and leaping out of the booth, behind him, so that the pegapsyco couldn't get a clear shot at her.

The pumpkin pony was confused, but didn't resist when Trixie put him in a headlock and held up his gun.  As she did, the pegasus flipped her shit.

"Let him go!" the pegasus shrieked.  "I'll blow your fucking head off!  I'll kill you!  I'll fucking kill you!"

"Tell this bitch to calm down!" Trixie shouted in the unicorn's ear, his gun- her gun now- pressed to his temple.  "Say 'Bitch be cool!'"

"Chill out, honey!" the orange unicorn said.  Whoever had been there a few seconds was gone now, like it hadn't even happened.  Like he hadn't called her by a name she knew- not her name, but she knew it- that he had no reason to know.  He was back to being a terrified dinner-robber with no idea what had happened to his gun and way out of his depths.  That was just fine, to Trixie, because that was exactly the pony she felt like pointing a gun at.

"Let him go!" the pegasus cried, wildly swinging her gun between Trixie and random bystanders.

"Tell her it's going to be okay," Trixie said.

"I'm gonna be okay!"

"Promise her!" Trixie said.

"I promise!" the unicorn said.  "Just chill out!"

"What's her name?" Trixie asked.

"Honey Bunny," he said.

"We cool, Honey Bunny?" Trixie said, not breaking eye contact with the pumpkin-colored pony.  "We arent going to do anything stupid, are we?"

Honey Bunny could barely point her minigun straight through the tears.  "D-dont you hurt him."

"Nopony's going to hurt anypony," Trixie said.  Her voice had an inner calmness that she'd never felt before.  It was terrifying, and empowering.  "We're all going to be like three Rainbow Dashes.  And what's Rainbow Dash like?"

Honey Bunny's eyes darted around in a panic, not sure what Trixie wanted from her.

"Come on, Honey Bunny!" Trixie prompted.  "What's Rainbow Dash like?"

"She's..." Honey Bunny wiped away her tears, incidentally lowering her gun a little.  "She's cool?"

"Correctamundo!" Trixie said.  "And that's what we're going to be.  We're going to be cool."  She turned to the the pumpkin pony.  "Now, Pippington Britishooves, I'm going to count to three and I want you to put you hooves flat on the table, so I can see you aren't going to go for another weapon.  But when you do it... you do it cool.  Ready?

Pumpkin pony nodded, his lips terse.

"One..." Trixie said.  "Two... three."

Pumpkin put his hooves on the table.  Trixie frisked him lightly with her spare hoof.  He seemed unarmed.

"Okay!" Honey Bunny shouted suddenly.  "Now let him go!"

"Honey Bunny, I thought you were gonna be cool," Trixie said.  "When you yell at me, it makes me nervous.  When I get nervous, I get scared.  And when motherfuckers get scared, that's when motherfuckers get accidentally shot."

"Okay," Honey Bunny said.  "But if you hurt him, you die."

"That does seem to be the situation.  But I dont want that.  And you dont want that.  And Pippington over here definitely doesn't want that."  She leaned forward.  "You two have caught me at an interesting role reversal.  Normally I'd be the one stealing from you.  Maybe I'd get somepony else to point the gun in your face.  And I wouldn't hesitate if you got in my way.  But I'm trying to maybe become a better pony, or at least minimize my warpath a little.  I don't want to hurt either of you.  But I can't give you those bottles.  They're not mine to give.  Besides, I've gone through too much tonight to just hand them over to you idiots."

"Okay, what the fuck?"

Berry Punch had come out of the bathroom.  She had her hat off, and was now pointing .a .38 Revolver at Honey Bunny.  The pegasus was switching back and forth between targets with her minigun, trying to figure out whether Punch or Trixie were the greater threat.

"It's cool, Punch!  It's cool!" Trixie shouted.  "Don't do anything yet!  We're cool, we're all still cool, here.  Tell her we're still cool, Pippington."

"We're still cool, Honey Bunny," the pumpkin pony said.  He'd barely reacted to Punch's arrival on the scene- Trixie holding him at gunpoint was more than enough to hold his attention.

"What's going on here, Trixie?" Punch said.  She'd relaxed a little but she wasn't lowering her gun.

"Dealing with a robbery," Trixie said.  "Where'd you get a gun?"

"I stole it from the cop car earlier.  Isn't that where you got yours?"

"No," Trixie said.  "I took mine off this guy, when I had him distracted with magic wine."

"Nice," Punch said.  "I'll just let you handle this then.  This seems like your kind of mess."

Her kind of mess?  Trixie snorted.  She wasn't the one that had rappelled off the side of a train.  Well, at least she wasn't the first one to rappel off the side of a train.  "Honey Bunny, how're we doing?"

"I gotta go pee," the pegasus sobbed.

"You're doing great," Trixie said.  I'm proud of you.  And Pippington's proud of you.  It's almost over."  Trixie turned back to the pumpkin pony.  "I want you to go into that bag, and find Roadie Roan's wallet."

"Roadie Roan?" he looked confused.  "I don't... which one is that?"

"It's the one that says BAD MOTHERBUCKER on it."

He searched through the plastic bag for a few moments, then pulled out a wallet with his mouth.  It had a patch with three apples embroidered on the back.  On the front, with individually embroidered letters, were the words "BAD MOTHERBUCKER".

"That's it," Trixie said.  "That's the Bad Motherbucker.  Take out the money."

Clumsily, the pumpkin pony pulled the money out of the wallet.  There was a whole stack of bills, most of them with Celestia's stern face on them.

"Count them," Trixie said.  "How much is there?"

He looked up.  "A-about 40 bits worth."

She nodded.  "Put it in your pocket.  It's yours."

He looked bewildered, but he tucked the money away.  She took the wallet back and put it in her saddlebags.  Punch narrowed her eyes.

"You're not even going to get our money back?"

"Let me handle this, Punch," Trixie said with a warning tone in her voice.  Punch shrugged and stood down.

"Listen," Trixie said.  "How much do you think you made on this place?  Taking the amount of cash I had as a mean, adding up the number of customers with wallets, and factoring in the cash in the register... that's a pretty successful score, isn't it?"

"I guess," Pumpkin said hopelessly.

"And the tally for that successful score would be...?"

Punch counted the customers.  "About 800 bits from the wallets.  How much was in the til?"

"A-about twelve hundred bits," the pumpkin pony said.  "Rounded up."

"Good," Trixie said.  "A nice round number.  And that segues nicely into the first rule of business: behind every success, there's a crowd of ponies waiting to get their cut.  As your manager, I'll be taking 10% of your gross income.  Calculate that for me, take it out of the bag, and put it on the table.  I don't want to see whose wallets it's coming from."

The pumpkin pony stared at her, and dug back into the bag.  Once he had counted out 200 bits in paper bills, he stacked them on the table for Trixie to take.

Trixie didn't touch the pile, though.  "Ah ah ah.  Business expenses, too.  Punch, how much did our meal cost?"

"Forty-nine bits," Punch said.  "Including the milkshakes."

"What a bill!" Trixie said.  "Glad I'm not paying it.  Pippington, leave forty-nine bits for the meal.  And another ten for the tip.  Waitresses have it so rough in this economy."

The earth pony stared at Trixie, sighed, and took another fifty-nine bits out of the bag.  He left in on the table, in a pile next to her two hundred bits.  She looked satisfied, and took the two hundred bits, stowing them away in her bag.

"Now, that manager's fee?" Trixie said.  "You're getting something for your money.  You're getting a hard-to-come-by business lesson.  Do you read the Solar Manuscript, Pippington?"

He considered, then shook his head no.

"Well," she said.  "There's this little passage I've got memorized.  "Heavyheart, 25:17: Then Celestia told this parable: / “A pony had a fig tree planted in their vineyard, / and they came looking for fruit on it and found none.  / So they said to the worker who tended the vineyard, / ‘For three years now, I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, / and each time I inspect it / I find none. Cut it down! / Why should it continue to deplete the soil?’ / But the worker answered him, / ‘Sir, leave it alone this year too, until I dig around it and put fertilizer / on it. Then if /  it bears fruit next year, / very well, but if not, / you can cut it down.'"  Trixie maintained intense eye-contact with the pumpkin-colored pony throughout the entire recitation.  "Do you understand?"

The stallion wrinkled his brow with concentration, then slowly shook his head.  He looked terrified.

"Misdirection," Trixie said.  "It's how I just stole another 10% from the bag while you weren't looking.  It was how I got the gun from you in the first place.  That's your business lesson: always keep your eye on the most important element of the negotiations, because the instant you get distracted, they'll rob you blind."  Trixie set the gun back down on the table, still staring him dead in the eye.

He took the gun back.  Punch didn't lower hers.

All the ponies sat in silence until Trixie shouted, "Well go on!  Get the fuck out of here!"  It was like an enchantment broke on the robber ponies, and they bolted for the door.  The bell jangled behind the fleeing criminals and then they were gone.  Trixie levitated the new bundle of cash back to her saddlebags and took one final slurp of Berry Punch's milkshake.  It made a loud gurgling sound as she sucked up the last of it.

"I think we oughta leave now," Berry Punch said.

"That's probably a good idea," Trixie said.

The ponies headed for the door and were halfway there before they saw a wagon- their wagon- careening through the parking lot.  It was covered in a soft purple glow, and Twilight Sparkle was in the front seat, cackling maniacally as the wagon peeled out of the lot and onto the open road.  Punch and Trixie could only watch in horror and dismay at the spot where, moments before, their wagon had been.

It was Punch who broke the silence first.  "Did the Element of Magic just steal our wagon?"

"Yes," Trixie said.

Punch raised an ear and tilted her head.  "Do I hear police sirens?"

"Yes," Trixie said.

Punch tucked her .38 back in her olive beret, and flopped it back on her head.  Trixie tucked the money and bottles out of sight under the rest of her miscellaneous purse object.  The two took one last glance at the diner full of terrified, huddled ponies before they headed out the door, into the night, with a ring of the bell.

* * *