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“Hello ! Do you sell …” Twilight paused for a second to glance down at the Delorean manual, before looking back up and continuing, “... any 91 Octane Unleaded Gasoline ?”

The young blond haired woman, who was wearing a bright red shirt that had “Mcdonalds” printed onto the front in white letters, looked from across the counter to the purple and pink haired girl with a look that could only be described as ‘You’re bucking kidding me ? Right ?’.

Fluttershy, who noticed the confused gaze that the woman had given Twilight added sheepishly, “I mean it’s fine if you don’t have any …”

The lady sighed and flatly remarked to the two girls, “Listen, I don’t know what trick you’re trying to pull. Or if you two are just high-”

“Yes, we’ve been called that several times today.” Twilight said as she cut-off the woman with a look of resentment. Although she didn’t know what ‘high’ meant, she could tell from the way that humans had been saying it that it wasn’t a good thing to be called.

“Just tell us where we can find some 91 …” Twilight paused to look down at the manual again, “... Octane Unleaded Gasoline,” letting her hand come rest down onto the counter in a aggressive manner as she said so.

“Please,” Fluttershy quietly added.

“There is a Exxon down the street, no need to get prissy you little emo prick,” the woman replied with her index finger jabbing towards Twilight’s multi-colored hair as she said the last three words.

Twilight scoffed as she haughtily turned around to exit the building, with Fluttershy following closely in her wake like a gosling to a mother hen. As they walked out into the nighttime air, neither Fluttershy nor Twilight noticed a small, colorful plastic display case in the corner of the restaurant that read ‘My Little Pony’.

“So did you get the thing to make the light go off ?” Rainbow Dash said as she looked over towards Twilight and Fluttershy, who had were cramming themselves back into the vehicle.

The dimly lit Mcdonalds parking lot made the interior of the DeLorean blend together into blobs of black and shadowy outlines, but the soft glow from the dashboard lit up the faces of the girls enough to allow them to see one another. Rarity, who had fallen asleep, was slumped down into the passenger seat with her head resting on Pinkie’s lap. Pinkie was still sitting on the center console, and also had Applejack’s sleeping head sitting on her lap, who was slumped over in the driver’s seat next to Rainbow Dash. The hair of Rarity and Applejack streamed over Pinkie’s lap making it look as though she had a purple and gold waterfall cascading down her legs. The bags under Pinkie and Rainbow Dash’s eyes told that they had been awake all night, although Pinkie still kept a small smile on her face despite her fatigue.

“No, but that lady said that there was a place down the street that sold it, called Exxon,” Twilight replied while she reached her hand up and pulled down the gullwing door.

“She wasn’t a very nice lady,” Fluttershy remarked as she scooted more towards Rarity to make room for Twilight in the cramped passenger seat.

“What did she do ?” Pinkie asked as she awkwardly adjusted her seating position while trying not to wake up Applejack and Rarity.

“She called me a ‘emo’. I’m not sure what that means, but from the way she said it you could tell it was meant to be insulting.” Twilight replied with a scowl on her face, “These humans might be the most aggressive creatures I’ve ever studied, or at least from what I’ve seen so far.”

“Maybe they just all need a hug,” Pinkie replied with a shrug.

The girls all quietly chuckled at Pinkie’s comment before Rainbow Dash started up the car and pulled out of the parking lot, heading down the small town street and towards the bright fluorescent lights of the Exxon station, which stood out among the low orange glow of the street lights that lined the road. The station looked so out of place among the old dark brick buildings that it seemed as though somepony had left it there by accident.

They pulled underneath the brightly illuminated canopy, next to one of two machines that were emblazoned with the words Exxon. Connected to the canopy and to the right of the car was a small, high-tech looking store that was the source of the fluorescent illumination. Through the large clear windows that acted as walls for the building it was easily visible that it contained a plethora of colorful candies and goodies inside.

Pinkie’s mouth watered as she stared out towards the rows of sweets, attracted to the sight like a moth to a bug zapper.

“Twiiiiiiiilllllllllllliighht,” Pinkie quietly moaned, “Can I please get some caaaaannnnddddy?”

Twilight sighed as she followed Pinkie’s gaze, “How do you even know if its candy ? Maybe its just colorful packages of inedible … things.”

“I - just - know,” Pinkie replied with a wide-eyed gaze, “Also, it says candy on the top of the display thingie.”

“Fine, I’ll just get you something inside since you look a little occupied at the moment.” Twilight gestured towards the two sleeping girls on Pinkie’s lap as she opened the door and stepped out of the car with Fluttershy.

“Oh no, that's not a problem !” Pinkie quietly proclaimed as she somehow managed to slip out from underneath the girls and let their heads slide down onto the center console without waking them.

While she bounced out of the Delorean, Rainbow Dash said, “I’ll just stay here with Applejack and Rarity, I’m not really in the mood for food from another dimension.”

As the girls approached the entrance to the store, the double glass doors suddenly shot open with a metallic hum. This caused Fluttershy to suddenly jump into the air with a yelp, instantly assuming that this would be the source of her death in this strange world. Twilight and Pinkie Pie, although moderately surprised by the magic doors, simply stepped through the threshold and into the store.

Even after the doors had shut behind them and sealed back up the entrance, Fluttershy still remained outside, frozen in place with fear. Pinkie glanced  over her shoulder, and laughed a bit to herself before running back up to the doors, forcing them to slide back open once again.

“Oh don’t be such a scaredy-pony and get in here,” Pinkie said with a bright smile lit up on her face.

“Umm .. alright.”

Fluttershy cautiously stepped towards the door, keeping her eyes glued to her feet the entire time. When she was just about to cross over the threshold and into the store she picked up her head and looked up at Pinkie as if she was searching for some sort of approval. Pinkie only replied with a bigger smile than before, so Fluttershy took a deep breath and quickly ran over the threshold and into the store.

“See its not that hard,” Pinkie said as bounced past Fluttershy and made a beeline straight to the candy aisle.

The interior of the store was rather deceiving based on how high-tech it had looked from the exterior. For one, the floor was lined with a thick film of dirt and grime. Various tattered and worn signs from beer companies hung from the ceiling in a state of despair. A drink machine sat in the corner of the store upon homemade wooden counter, and was affixed with what one could assume was a permanent “Out of Order” sign. The shelves that lined the aisles of the store didn’t seem to fare any better than the rest of the interior. One of the aisles was void of anything except for the empty metal shelves and small handwritten price tags of items that hadn’t been there in a lifetime. Yet another was filled with clear baggies that contained various toys that looked like they would probably fall apart if a child even managed to touch one. Miraculously though, the candy aisle seemed to be the only one that had any sort of semblance of order. The aisle was lined with mostly empty boxes of various candies and boxes that held a different type of candy than they were supposed to be inside, but it was good enough for Pinkie Pie. She scooped up about fifty different types of candy and shoved them all into one of the empty boxes before sticking it under her arm and walking up to the check-out, which is where Twilight was currently engaging in a conversation with a young dark-skinned human.

“So you have 91 Octane Unleaded Gasoline ?” Twilight said with the most friendly smile she could muster directed towards the tired-looking gas station employee.

The man reached up his hand and slowly ran it through his black hair as he replied nonchalantly to the eager girl, “Yeah … you choose what grade when you fill the car up.”

“Perfect ! We need-” Twilight lifted up the manual, which was still in her hand, and glanced at the page she had held with her finger, “51 point 6  Liters, please.”

“We sell it by the gallon … this is America. Not some Euro-crap country.”

“Oh, well then-” Twilight glanced down at the manual with a worried expression on her face, but just as quickly as it came the expression of worry faded after she saw the amount in gallons was right next to the liters, “we need 13.6 gallons.”

“Please,” Fluttershy added as she silently walked up behind Twilight.

“Listen, girls,” the man looked back in forth between the two young women with a slightly annoyed scowl on his face, “Here is how it works. You pay me an amount of money. That is the amount of gas you get, you can do the math yourself.”

Twilight’s heart suddenly sunk as soon as she had heard the word money, because only then had she realized that they had nothing to purchase things with in this world. The fear of being stuck in this town and having to work in order to earn money for gas flooded her mind, but then suddenly she remembered.

Without a word, Twilight ran out of the store and headed straight towards the Delorean, leaving Fluttershy and the clerk to awkwardly stand there in complete silence. There was the sound of Twilight opening the door of the car and yelling something to Rainbow Dash before running straight back into the store again with several green sheets of paper clutched in her hand.

“This stuff ?” Twilight questioned as she neatly laid out the green pieces of paper onto the counter in front of her.

The man looked down at the sheets of paper, his expression turning from moderate annoyance to mild confusion, “You realize that is like 2,000 dollars ?”

Each of the pieces of paper Twilight had laid out had a number 100 written on it in fancy script and an ornate picture of a old human was visible on one side. The total amount of pieces of paper was somewhere around twenty-ish, making the man’s math correct.

“Yep. How much does 91 Octane Unleaded Gasoline cost ?” Twilight asked with a rather smug expression on her face, having realized from the man’s expression that she was the owner of quite a large sum of cash in this universe.

“Only like 3 dollars a gallon … just let me give you like forty dollars worth,” the man replied as he lifted up a single sheet of paper from the pile in front of him.

“Don’t forget these !” Pinkie exclaimed as she spontaneously appeared from behind Flutttershy and Twilight, slamming down her box of candy with a gentle thud onto the counter near the pile of green paper.

“Just keep the change,” Twilight replied with a smirk as she reached out a single hand to grab the remaining paper money.

After the man had finished pressing each of the pieces of candy up to a little red light that came from a small window installed inside the counter, he slid forward the box back towards Pinkie, who eagerly grabbed it and ran out to the waiting car.

“Sure you don’t want your change ?” He said as he turned his gaze back towards Twilight.

“Nope, I’m fine.” Twilight casually remarked as she silently rocked back and forth in place.

“Alright.”

The man, Fluttershy, and Twilight all stood in silence for a couple of seconds until the man awkwardly asked, “You don’t need anything else ?”

“Nope.”

“Alright.”

After another couple seconds of eerie silence, the man finally said with an expression of annoyed confusion, “Then why don’t you go back to your car...”

“You still haven’t given me my 91 Octane Unleaded Gasoline.” Twilight replied with a serious expression set into her face.

The man sighed and reached his hand up to rub his forehead before lifting up his other hand to point out in the general direction of the front door. “You get the gas from the machines out front …”

Twilight glanced in the direction he was pointing before sheepishly replying, “Oh sorry … thanks for your help!”

“No problem.”

Twilight turned around and started to head out towards the car, but then she caught something out of the corner of her eye. She walked over to a once-white-now-yellow stand that held in it a multitude of various pamphlets and flyers. The one that had attracted her attention was a small folded up sheet of paper labeled: Washington D.C and Surrounding Area Tourism Map. She thought about it for a moment, before she finally decided to pluck out the map, and put it with the stack of money she had been holding in her other hand.

“Twilight ? How did you get all that money ?” Fluttershy whispered to Twilight as she stepped away from the pamphlet display and started to head back out the front door.

“Well, at first I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to get the gas to fix the car, but then I remembered that I had left some of my bits in the wagon when we left.” Twilight replied with a smug smile of accomplishment on her face.

“But those aren’t bits …”

“Indeed they aren’t, but just like how when we came here we changed into humans and the wagon turned into a car, my bits changed into currency of this world.” Twilight said as they both walked around the front of the car to face the foreign machine that was emblazoned with the word “Exxon” in various places.

After a long bit of trial-and-error, and a fair amount of assistance from the Delorean manual, the girls finally managed to fill up the gas tank of the car. Even if some of the gas had spilled onto the ground once, or twice, or a few times.

“Alright, try it now Dashie.” Twilight said as she screwed shut the cap which covered the hole where they had to put the liquid in.

Rainbow Dash started up the vehicle with a flick of the keys in the ignition and happily nodded towards Twilight and Fluttershy as the little gauge rose up to the “F” mark and the warning light shut off.

“So … back on the road again ?” Rainbow Dash asked as Fluttershy and Twilight clambered back into the vehicle and shut the door.

“Yea-f we-lts go!” Pinkie said between bites of some sort of peanut and chocolate mixture.She had somehow managed to slip herself back underneath the two sleeping girls without waking them, and was even using their sleeping heads as a table to set her box of candy on.

The brick buildings surrounding the gas station of the small town glowed with a soft-orange tone as the sun began to peek over the horizon. With the rising sun ahead of the girls, they pulled out of the parking lot and headed back down the long stretch of road towards Washington.