We were somewhere around Barnstow on the edge of the desert when the sugar began to kick in. Like a gryphon invasion, it came in three waves: first the nerves, then the shakes, and finally the Fear. All in rapid succession, so quick that by the time I noticed it I was almost too far gone to stammer a warning. I remember saying something like "yo Pinks, I feel kinda lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a horrible screech all around us and the once friendly skies were filled with what looked like huge bats, all diving and hissing and swarming around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down near Las Pegasus. And a voice that sounded very familiar, yet much too shrill and frightened to be mine, was saying "Holy Celestia! What are these goddess-damned animals?!"

Hugging the steering wheel with my front legs, I struggled to keep the crazy machine on course. My friend had opened up a flask of cider and was humming an unfamiliar song to herself, punctuating each chorus with a chug. She stared up at the sky through a pair of thick sunglasses, not even flinching when one of the leathery little demons shrieked right in her face. "What in the name of rock candy are you so scared of, Dashie? Those are just fruit bats, remember? We saw a gazillion of them back in Ponyville."

"Well, close up that flask until they go away! Besides, it's your turn to drive." I jammed a hoof on the brakes and aimed the Great Red Dragon toward the side of the road. We were traveling in the most awesome carriage I'd ever laid eyes on. Just call it a 'car' for short, the Princess had said. The smartest unicorn scientists are still debating where it came from and how it arrived in this world, but at least we've figured out how to use it. That was all I needed to hear. I like things that are fast, especially myself, and this thing moved like Cloudsdale lightning.

But the San Palomino Desert is vast, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. Hard miles, at that. Very soon we would both be completely wound up. But there was no time to rest, and turning back now would be admitting defeat - something Rainbow Dash never does. We would have to tough it out. Press reservations for the infamous Minty 500 race were already well underway, and we had to get there by four to claim our soundproof suite. A flashy sports magazine in Manehattan had taken care of us, this "car" thing was insured by the Crown, and I was after all a journalist with an obligation to "cover the story."

If that sounds ridiculous, well, it wasn't really my idea. If I had my way, I would be breezing through my Weather Team duties in Ponyville and then catching some Z's on the softest cloud I could find. But becoming an egghead is a sinister process that creeps up on you very slowly. One day you find yourself falling in love with the Daring Do series and reading every part of it you can find, then you start making more and more regular visits to the library, then you end up scribbling down a few things yourself, and before you know it you're being offered money to go out to the most twisted spectacle in Equestrian history and write something about it.

Naturally there was a catch: I couldn't just fly there. I had to travel overland in this thing because "for our readers, it is not the destination but the journey that matters." I didn't really get it, and I took a little comfort in that; it meant I wasn't a total egghead, not yet. At least I was allowed to bring a friend along. That made the trip a lot more fun, even if said friend insisted on stopping at Dodge City, Appleloosa, the MacIntosh Hills, and her family's rock farm, picking up loads of sweets along the way.

"Now this is the way to travel!" Pinkie Pie said brightly as she stuck her head out from under my seat.

"Whoa!" I jumped back into the passenger's side with a gasp. "Don't startle me like that. I'm already wired."

Pinkie somehow extracted her body from the floor of the car and plopped into the driver's seat in one smooth motion. "Sorry, Rainbow Dash! Wired, huh? You mean you have wires inside you just like the car? That would be weird. Or is it wired? Weird. Wired. Weird. Wired. Weirdwiredweirdwiredweirdwiredweirdwired - "

"Pinkie. We should drive."

"Yup-erooni!" She hit the juice much too hard and the car actually jumped, fishtailing all over the dirt road like a mule gone amok from a bee sting. I held on, closed my eyes and tried to relax. As a journalist, you must keep a professional demeanor at all times, the Princess said ... before chuckling to herself and winking at me. For a monarch whose word was law, she sure was fond of sending mixed messages.

At her behest, the magazine editors had hoofed over 300 bits in advance, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous desserts. The trunk of the car looked like a candy store on wheels. We had two bags of fresh-cut grasses, seventy-five peppered vanilla lemon drops, five sheets of high-powered hay cubes, a salt shaker half-full of pure confectioner's sugar, and a whole galaxy of multicolored cupcakes, donuts, cookies ... and also a quart of hot sauce, a quart of Crystal Empire nectar, a case of cider, a pint of raw Zap Apple Jam and two dozen pieces of rock candy. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but when your best friend has a sweet tooth the size of a mountain, the tendency is to follow her and climb it as high as you can.

Each of these treats was pretty intoxicating in its own right, but it wasn't the sugar that worried me. The only thing that worried me was the salt lick. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a mare in the depths of a sodium binge. And I knew we'd gallop into that rotten stuff pretty soon, probably at the next rest area. We had sampled almost everything else on the drive from Canterlot, and now - yes, it was time for a muzzleful of salt. One good taste of that and the next hundred miles would melt away into a slobbering yet satisfied stupor, but some ponies couldn't stop at just one good taste and that was the danger. The only way to stay alert on salt was to do up a lot of pepper lemon drops - not all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain the focus at ninety miles an hour through Barnstow and reach Las Pegasus before the electric battery ran out.

A sudden cry from Pinkie interrupted my feverish thoughts. "We need some driving music! Dashie, the kazoo!"

She had done the same for me, so I wearily obliged when she extracted the crude instrument from nowhere and shoved it into my hooves. "Right. What should I play?"

"The 'happy birthday' song!!"

I gave her a funny look. "It's not your birthday."

"But it will be in five months, twenty-four days, fifty-eight minutes and two seconds! And the more I hear the 'happy birthday' song, the happier my birthday will be when it finally comes!"

I shrugged, took a deep breath, and blowed Happy Birthday to beat the band - or the bats, as it were. They had been dispersing ever since Pinkie corked the fragrant apple cider, and my bad kazoo playing seemed to scare them off for good. I sucked on one of Bon Bon's chocolate cigars, the miles fell away, and I allowed myself to hope that we would finish our journey with no further delays. Silly Dashie.

Pinkie Pie saw the hitchhiker before I did. I'd been trained all my life to act and react quicker than anypony else, even other pegasi, but never met anyone with senses as acute as hers. "Look, Rainbow Dash, a new friend," she crowed, and before I could mount any argument she was stopped and this poor young MacIntoshian stallion was cantering up to us with a big grin on his face, saying, "Hot damn! I surely never rode in a carriage like this one before!"

"Is that right?" I said pleasantly, trying to suppress a full-body twitch. "Well, I guess you're about ready, eh?"

The kid nodded eagerly as we rode off. His coat was a light pastel green, his cutie mark a hammer. Probably a simple and honest pony looking for work in the city, with no idea what he was getting himself into.

"Don't worry about us; we're your friends," Pinkie Pie said to him with a huge frozen grin, her eyes wide as dinner plates behind the sunglasses. "We're not like the others."

O Celestia, I thought, now the sugar has her too. She's already half around the bend. "No more of that talk," I said sharply. "Or I'll put the poison joke on you." We didn't have any poison joke, but she nodded, seeming to understand. Luckily the noise in the car was so bad with the wind and the kazoo that the kid in the backseat couldn't hear a word we were saying. Or could he?

How long can we maintain? I wondered. Professionalism, normalcy, an air of unsweetened sanity - before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this colt? And what will he think then? This lonesome desert was the last known home of the Maneson family. Will he make that grim connection when I start trembling like a jackhammer from the rush, or when Pinkie cracks open a cider or a jelly donut just to piss off the bats? If so - well, we'll just have to do him like the Crystal Heart did King Sombra - blow him up and bury the pieces. Because there's no way we can turn him loose. He'll report us to the nearest Royal Guard post and they'll run us down like diamond dogs.

Goddess! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced over at Pinkie, but she was actually being quiet and watching the road for once, driving our Great Red Dragon along at a hundred and ten or so. Silence from the backseat.

Maybe I should just shoot the breeze with this stallion after all, I thought. Nothing weird, nothing heavy...I just feel like I should explain what we're doing out here. Put his mind at ease before he starts asking stupid questions, or somehow gets a look in the trunk and freaks out and goes to the royal guard and - whoa nelly! Shut up, sugar; you're making my mind race. Stop thinking weird. Stop thinking heavy. Just ... calm ... down.

I leaned around in the seat and gave him a big friendly smile, meeting his eyes through my translucent orange shades, studying the fine masculine contours of his skull. That's totally normal, right? "By the way, dude, there's one thing you should probably understand."

He looked at me without blinking. Did he catch that? Maybe the noise ...

"You can hear me, right?!" I yelled, trying not to sound hysterical.

He nodded rapidly.

"That's cool," I said proudly, sticking my chest out a bit. "'Cause I want you to know my friend and I are on our way to find the Equestrian Dream. That's why we're in this car. It was the only way to get there. You know what I mean?"

He nodded again, but his eyes were nervous. He's spooked, I thought. He doesn't understand. You've done it now, Dash. He's going to freak and run and squeal and report two crazy mares to the Royal Guard and

Twitch.

Shit. I know he saw that. He must have

Twitch.

seen it. That goddess-damned rush. It's

Twitchity-twitch.

got me for real now. I knew I should have just kept my mouth shut. Any action, any stimulus just sets it off.

"I want you to know what's up, that's all," I try to reassure him as beads of sweat start to run down my coat. "We're going to meet a mare named Sandy Parchment at the Minty 500. She's our partner, from the magazine. This is a really special assignment, see? Important. Sensitive. Dangerous, and - oh Tartarus, I forgot all about this chocolate cigar. Want to try it? How about a lick of salt?"

"What?" the kid gasps. Bad idea. He's probably not even legal age.

"Never mind. Look, let's cut to the chase, okay? Just three days ago my friend and I were sitting on top of a nice, fluffy cumulus in Cloudsdale's famous Skyline Hotel."

Pinkie Pie chimes in. "Actually, you were sitting on top of it. I was sitting on the underside."

"Right. We had just finished saving all Equestria for ... was it the tenth time? Fifteenth? Help me out."

"Seventeen and a half!" Pinkie says.

"And we were just relaxing there when this uniformed quagga flew up to me with a royal letter and said, 'This must be the message you've been waiting for all this time, miss'." I fumbled with the flask, taking a huge gulp and slamming the cork back in. "And you know what? He was totally right! I was expecting that message, but I didn't know where it would come from. You with me so far?"

The young unicorn's face was a mask of pure bewilderment. My twitching became more pronounced. I was starting to get annoyed. Starting to get antsy. What was so confusing about this?

"I want you to understand," I sputtered testily, "that this mare at the wheel is not just my best friend. She's not just some earth pony! We're all individuals here, see? You don't stereotype, do you, kid?"

"Why, no ma'am!" The stallion shook his head again, drawing back slightly as I stuck my head further over the seat.

"This mare is like nopony else. She's the only one who loves the extreme like I do. I couldn't make this trip without her. This mare ... is a Pie."

"Sh-she ... your friend is a ... dessert?"

Dessert. Sweets. Oh delectable sugar, how I need more of you. Wait. What?! What's he saying? Is he messing with my head? Is he saying he knows what we have in the trunk? Is he one of those twisted, fascist dieticians?! No, I tell myself. He doesn't know that Pie is Pinkie's last name, that's all. He's not dangerous, just ignorant. Steady, now ... stop twitching! Even my wings are doing it now. My feathers are getting ruffled and damp from the heat.

"No! You need to understand, dude! This is important! This is a true story! Like Daring Do, you know? I'm writing it down! It's a story, but it's real! You get that?" I whacked the back of the driver's seat with my hoof. The car swerved drunkenly all over the road, then straightened out. Pinkie shrieked: "Dashie, you're awesome too, but I'm driving! And tell the sky to stop melting!" The kid in the back looked about ready to jump right out of the car and take his chances.

Our vibes were getting weird, getting heavy - but why? I wasn't trying to scare him off. I was just puzzled, frustrated. Was there no communication in this car? Had we deteriorated into beasts of burden?

Because my story was all true; I was sure of it. And it was necessary, I felt, to make the purpose of our mission absolutely clear. We really were sitting there in the Skyline for hours and hours, downing butterscotch éclairs with a syrup and hot sauce glaze. Pinkie was pulling her usual tricks, sitting on the underside of the cloud, sticking her head up over the top and making faces. When I yelled at her to get her flanks up here before she fell and hurt herself because that would be totally not cool, she finally sat still, and we exchanged long and awkward glances over bottomless mugs of rainbow fizz. When the message came, I was ready for a distraction.

The quagga approached our table with great caution, for some reason, and when he gave me the letter I said nothing - merely read it carefully and nodded. I turned to face my friend, who was now spinning her tail and hovering upside down in midair. "It's from the Crown," I said flatly. "They want me to go to Las Pegasus on the double. Write an article for some magazine. Take a form of transportation no pony has ever used before. Bring a friend with a sense of humor who can talk me down from the Fear."

Pinkie Pie said nothing for a moment, then suddenly came alive and landed cat-like on her hooves. "Oh ... my ... goddesses!" she exclaimed. "I'm a friend with a sense of humor who can talk you down from the Fear! We'll have to come prepared."

"Totally," I gave her a starry-eyed grin. "Anything worth doing is worth doing right! We'll need some decent equipment and plenty of bits on hoof - if only for sweets and some decent scrolls."

"They want you to write something? What about?!"

"The new Minty 500," I said reverently. "It's not just any pony-and-gryphon race in the desert. It's the pony-and-gryphon race in the desert. Even the Wonderbolts will be there! It's this awesomely fantastic spectacle by some rich pony named Gladmane, at least that's what the Princess' letter says."

Pinkie Pie stared straight ahead with grim intensity. "We are so there ... that we're not even there anymore."

She snagged the tray of remaining éclairs and swallowed them whole.

I smiled. "I'll call Manehattan for some cash."

Author's Note

There's our beginning. I will drift further away from the original text as the story progresses, lest HST himself rise from the grave with a magnum and a bottle of gin and hunt me down. Nightmares, nightmares. Wait, you're reading this? You made it this far down the page? You might just be a freak like me. Don't worry. There are more of us out there than you think, and we've got candy. Mahalo.