“No shirt, no shoes, no service,” a typical pegasus stallion by the name of Deli ‘Dale’ Sandwich read from a sign in the window of a little store – a pawn shop, if he understood correctly – then looked down at his hooves. “Yeah, I’m good.”

With just a modicum of grace and a lot of nose, the cornflower blue pegasus pushed against the door, snug in a tie-dye shirt and not one but two pairs of special-made sneakers. The moment he passed the threshold, the cashier turned to him.

“Hey,” the cashier called out. “We don’t serve your kind here!”

“My kind, sir?” the pegasus echoed. “What exactly would the problem be? I saw your little sign in the window – no shirt, no shoes, no service – but nothing else.”

“Don’t be coy, horse,” the shopkeeper, a burly middle-aged Afro-American, spat. “No service to your kind.”

Deli Sandwich stared up at the shopkeeper, a vague smile ever-present on his muzzle. He really wanted to buy the little statuette in the window, and couldn’t imagine another store in the area having it. Vaguely, he could recall something from Earth Orientation Class.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Deli smirked as he found his hook and turned back. When he was out of sight of the shopkeeper he lifted off and carefully perched right on the store’s roof. Deli nosed his shirt and pulled out a tablet, which he then placed in front of him. Pulling out a stylus from the side between his teeth, he turned on and unlocked the device.

“Good reception up here,” the pegasus muttered to himself. “Now, let’s see…”

About fifteen minutes later, Deli circled around to street level and entered the store again. The burly shopkeeper was on his case immediately. “What did I tell you, horse? No fucking service!”

“Now now, sir. There’s really no need to swear,” Deli deflected calmly. “I just wanted to ask you a simple little question.”

“Price checks are service, horse.”

“No, not a price check, sir. Tell me, you are what humans call… ‘African-American’, correct?”

The shopkeeper was slightly taken aback by the (to him rather obvious) question. “Well… yeah. I am. What’s your point, horse?”

Dale could swear the venom increased every time this asshole said the word, and he really didn’t take kindly to being called that. He could only imagine what it’d be like for a human to be called an ape, but felt countering like that was below him. More importantly, he had to show that he held the higher ground – Dale was very well aware of the Hearth Warming story and the inherent racism that drove said historical plot, and he wasn’t one to fall into the trap of not learning from history.

“Are you aware of the history of Afro-Americans in this country?”

The shopkeeper nodded sharply, with a hint of pride on his lips.

“From, say… the late 19th to early 20th century?”

Another nod confirmed Deli’s plan was likely to end well.

“Are you,” Deli asked, punctuating his words with a short power walk to the counter, “at all aware that you, sir, are doing basically the exact – same – THING!?”

The shopkeeper blinked in dull surprise and took a step back, even though there was a counter between him and the pegasus.

“If your grandfather – or even his father – could see you now, sir,” Deli finished, putting about the same venom in the word ‘sir’ as the shopkeeper had in ‘horse’, then whispered, “I daren’t imagine what he’d think.”

Deli stepped back from the counter, calmly looked at the window and extended a wing to point at the trinket he’d been after.

“Now, might I purchase that little item, please?” And don’t even think about raising the price, fuck-ass.

The shopkeeper, sufficiently cowed into submission by the idea of his grandparents’ shame, silently nodded and retrieved the beautiful little statuette of a rearing alicorn from the window.

“Did you know, by the way, that this statue is of Equestrian origin?” Deli remarked as he scanned his card and stashed the little Fausticorn down his shirt. He turned to the door just in time to not let the shopkeeper see one massive shit-eating grin.

Author's Note

Short one this time.