We finally got into our suite around dusk. I would have complained, but any kind of shelter was a relief after the zoo in the bar and the soul-sapping elevator music. My friend wasted no time ordering four seasoned watercress sandwiches, four fruit cocktails, and some ice-cold milk. "Vitamins," she explained. "Gotta take 'em sometime."

I agreed. By this time the salt was wearing off and my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The waiter from room service had suspiciously beady eyes and a narrow muzzle, but maybe that was how he looked every day. At any rate, I was no longer seeing full-fledged reptilian freaks of nature rampaging through the halls in search of equine prey. The only thing bothering me now was a gargantuan neon sign outside the window that obscured our view of the sunset. Dozens of multicolored lights running on a complicated track, bizarre lettering that could barely be read; the electric hum was enough to make my teeth tingle.

An amazed gasp from Pinkie Pie as she seemed to magically appear next to me. "Dashie, look! It's a huge electric snake in the sky! And it's coming right at us!"

I threw an arm around her withers. "Shhh. It's alright, Pinks. Let's just get away from the window and relax."

"Not yet," she said, peering suspiciously at the sign and munching one of the sandwiches. "I want to study its habits."

I shrugged and pulled the drapes open the rest of the way. They were pastel-colored and cheap-looking, like the rest of the room. "Knock yourself out. I gotta get some of that fruit."

"Yeah, you should get that icky-sicky taste out of your mouth. Lucky they have good room service here, huh? I don't think they'll be letting you back in the bar anytime soon."

I blushed a little and rubbed a front hoof through my mane. "Aw, c'mon. I wasn't that bad, was I?"

"Well, let's see," Pinkie produced a large checklist on a clipboard. "You yelled at the clerk, you couldn't walk by yourself, you were seeing pony-eating lizards, your eyes were all googly, and you tossed your cookies in the elevator. Yep! Worst check-in ever."

"I guess so. But hey, at least we got my press pass, right?"

"Sure. They would've done anything to get you out of there. I could've held them up for donuts! Speaking of sugar, that scene really took me out of my rush. Where's the rock candy?"

I swallowed some green grapes and wild strawberries, gesturing to the kit-bag on one of the beds. "Just take it easy, okay? I have to get some sleep tonight. The race starts at nine."

She tossed a huge chunk of Maud's finest into her mouth and bit down with a crunch that everypony on our floor must have heard. I grimaced and flitted over to the other bed, where I burrowed under the covers and into the embrace of Luna.

Ahh, Luna. The night will last forever, she said when we first met. It feels like so long ago that we leaned over that starless precipice; a broken promise, thanks to me and my friends. We celebrated like royalty. A sincere "thank you" from the Princess herself, congratulations from all our neighbors for saving the world ... chalk up one for the good guys, right? Yet there was a deeply unsettling moment when I suddenly jerked awake - that night and many nights since - pondering why I'd still seen the Fear in some of those ponies' eyes. It stumped me at the time. But after hanging out with Twilight and reading all those books, I think I understand now ...

Too soon to write about that, though, and too late to worry about it. I rolled over and saw my friend in the other bed - finally at rest, lying on her back surrounded with crumbs from a dozen sweets, mumbling happily to herself. I smiled and drifted back to sleep.

The racers were ready at dawn and unexpectedly, so was I. Fine, merciless sunrise over the desert. Very tense. But the race didn't start until nine, leaving us with three long, grimy hours to kill in the casino next to the track.

The bar opened at seven. There was also a "koffee and doenut canteen" in the bunker, but those of us who had been up all night in places like Seabiscuit's Palace were in no mood for that. We wanted strong drink. Our tempers were getting ugly and there were at least two hundred of us, so they opened the bar early. By eight-thirty there were big crowds around the crap tables. The place was full of noise and drunken shouting.

A bony, middle-aged brown earth pony boomed up to the counter and yelled, "Damn! What day is this - Saturday?"

"More like Sunday," someone yelled.

"That's a bitch, ain't it?" the loudmouth bellowed at no one in particular. "Last night I was back home in Fillydelphia and somepony said they were running the first Minty 500 today! Ponies and gryphons! So I says to my old lady, 'well, I'm going'." He laughed. "So she starts giving me crap about it, and then we get in a fight, and next thing I knew two stallions I never even seen before were draggin' me out on the sidewalk. Celestia! They beat me stupid!"

He cackled again, talking into the crowd and not seeming to care who listened. He reminded me of myself five or ten years ago. "So one of 'em says 'where you going?' And I says 'Las Pegasus, to the Minty!' So they gave me ten bits and a ride down to the train station ... " He paused. "At least, I think it was them ... "

"Well, anyway, here I am. Tartarus, that was a long night! Thought that damned ride would never end! But when I woke up it was dawn and I was in downtown Pegasus and for a minute I didn't know what the hell I was doin' here. All I could think was, 'here we go again. Who's divorced me this time?!' But then I remembered, by the Sun ... the Minty 500! And I tell ya, I don't care who wins or loses; it's wonderful to be here, folks ... "

Nopony argued with him. We all understood. In some circles, dangerous desert races are a far, far better thing than the Summer Sun Celebration or the Grand Galloping Gala. This one already seems to be attracting a very different breed. Our guy with the booming voice was definitely among them and, for that matter, so were we.

A correspondent from the Canterlot Chronicle nodded sympathetically and screamed at the bartender, "I'll drink to that!"

"Me too," I croaked, still a bit groggy. "Spiced hard cider! A race like this deserves a damn fine buzz."

"I'll take one too, more hard and less cider!" the Chronicle reporter slurred. He was sliding off the bar onto his haunches, but still speaking with definite authority. "This is a historic moment in sport. It may never come again!" Then his voice seemed to break. "I once covered the Equestria Games," he muttered. "But it was nothing like this."

A frog-eyed mare chafed feverishly at his barrel. "Stand up!" she pleaded. "Please stand up! You'd be a very attractive stallion if you'd just stand up!"

He laughed distractedly. "Listen, madam, I'm damn near intolerably attractive down here where I am. You'd go crazy if I stood up!"

The mare kept pulling at him. She'd been sighing and mugging at him for two hours and now she was making her move. But this guy wanted no part of it; he just slumped deeper into his crouch.

I turned away. It was too horrible. These ponies were supposed to be the cream of the free Equestrian press, and here was a Canterlot sportswriter smashed out of his skull before nine A.M. We were gathered here for a very special assignment, and when it comes to things like this, you don't fool around. Much.

But now - even before the event got underway - there were signs that we all might be losing control of the situation. Here we were on this cool bright dawn in the desert, hunkered down ten miles out of Las Pegasus in some greasy barsino (Pinkie's word for it: "it's a bar but it's a casino 'cause there are drinks at the slots and slots at the bar - it's a barsino") ... and we were already very disorganized.

Out in the slowly rising heat, the lunatics were trading old stories and fiddling with their gear. A hundred seasoned pony runners testing their hooves, a hundred professional gryphon fliers stretching their wings. Preventative measures were taken against cheating; pegasi raced with their wings bound, and unicorns had their horns capped. They would race in pairs, fifty teams in all, with the gryphon on the pony's back for the first half and the pony flying on the gryphon's back for the second. The track would be clearly marked, checkpoints with feed and water every five miles. The first ten teams blasted off at the stroke of nine. It was extremely exciting and we all ran to the grungy dining room area re-purposed as a "press box" to watch, jostling for a good view at the big windows. The flag went down and these poor buggers rumbled off and galloped into the first turn, saddled with gryphons who leaned forward and held on with all their might; then somepony grabbed the lead (a purple stallion as I recall, with the strongest legs I'd ever seen), and a cheer went up as he led the way into a cloud of dust.

"Well, that's that," somepony said. "They'll be back around in an hour or so. Let's go back to the bar."

Screw that. Not yet. There were something like forty more teams waiting to start. They went off ten at a time, every two minutes. At first it was possible to see them as far as three hundred strides away from the starting line, but this visibility didn't last. The third line of racers disappeared into the haze about a hundred and fifty strides from our position, and by that time the mammoth dust cloud that would hang over the land for the next two days was already formed up solid. A great moment in sports, just as the drunk from the Chronicle said; a symbol of the new trade partnership between Equestria and Gryphonstone. I hastily scribbled a lead about it, then stopped, realizing that every single reporter in this room was probably writing more or less the same thing. The Crown and the magazine, I suspected, did not send me out here just so I could turn in a generic article with some canned message of reconciliation. They wanted the experience, the nitty-gritty ... the journey. Now I began to understand.

By noon it was hard to see the starting line from the barsino, just fifty strides away in the blazing sun. The idea of trying to "cover this race" in any conventional press-sense was ridiculous. It was like trying to keep track of the Running of the Leaves from the Canterlot Mountains, with cataracts. I felt it was time to reconsider this whole situation. The race was underway, yes, and we had witnessed the start. But what now? Rent a balloon? Take the Great Red Dragon without adequate supplies? Wander out into the dunes and watch these fools race past the checkpoints? All I could do from there was keep track of who was in the lead and who was behind, and that was the racing officials' job, with telegrams being wired back to the press box every fifteen minutes. So what was the point? Tartarus, I wished I was in the damn thing! My wings itched the whole time. If Gilda or even her demented Grampa Gruff himself had shown up, I would have thrown them on my back and taken off. At least then I would get some lasting entertainment out of the race itself, and it might have been a better story too ...

By nine-thirty the teams were spread out all over the course. They reached the second lap around ten, with ponies and gryphons changing places and flying headlong into another brutal hour of madness in dust-blind limbo. Pinkie was so bored that after a while she started having long, vehement sociological debates with herself; I was so bored that I actually listened. Suffice it to say I'll never look at a layer cake again without thinking of class stratification. The second and final lap finished around eleven, with the team of Lightning Dust the pegasus and Girardot the gryphon coming in first. They were so surrounded by other reporters that I didn't even try to interview them, and besides, I knew Lightning. Bad vibes. If I knew she was entering I would've bet money on her. I love to win, but when you talk about mares who have to win, who make a point of being Absolutely Fucking Ruthless about it, she's at the top of the list.

And so much for that. Let her be somepony else's story. My story was leading me back up to the city limits, to the flashing lights, to the improbable odds - to the very first den of fiscal iniquity that looked Right.

Big-time gambling is a very heavy business. You can lose a fortune easily enough to the crooks in the East, but Las Pegasus makes Manehattan look like your friendly neighborhood market. For a loser, the L.P. is the meanest town on earth. And until about a year ago, there was a giant billboard on the outskirts that read:

DON'T GAMBLE WITH YOUR HEALTH!
TOGETHER, WE CAN WIN THE FIGHT
AGAINST SUGAR & SODIUM ABUSE!

So it goes without saying that we never felt quite at ease driving around this town in a vehicle that drew gawkers everywhere we went, with a trunk full of dangerously rich sugars and exotic salts. But the story must be covered, no matter where it takes you or what it becomes, and we weren't about to let a bunch of health nuts stand in our way.

We drove over to the Lucky Horseshoe to see the Sapphire Shores concert. Not for any particular reason - it was just one of a few dozen marquees that caught my eye. The Pony of Pop had lost some of her luster in recent years. She was never a great musician per se, and with fresh new stars like Countess Coloratura capturing the public's attention, she was almost an afterthought. But nopony cares in Las Pegasus. As long as you're a decent singer, you can get booked here by falling out of a cart. All they want is vaguely pleasant background noise: an act good enough to draw the crowds, but not so good that it distracts them from gambling away their children's college fund. Real bands like the Saddlesores or the Mares of Thrace are not invited here. You have to bring them along with your gramophone. Fortunately Pinkie and I were covered; as we drove up to the casino we had a passionate, sugar-fueled argument over which record we should listen to first when we got back to our room that night.

Suddenly ponies were screaming at us. We were in trouble. Alarm bells in my head, blaring silently. Two storm troopers wearing red and gold jackets loomed menacingly over the hood: "What the hay are you doing? You can't park here!"

"Why not?" I demanded. It seemed like the perfect spot: attractive, prominent, plenty of room even for a carriage as long as the Dragon. I'd been looking for somewhere to park for a very long time, too long. In fact I'd been about ready to give up and look for a less busy casino ... but then, yes, we found this space.

Which turned out to be the sidewalk in front of the main entrance. I had run over so many curbs by then, my senses pleasantly numbed by chocolate fudge cupcakes with extra vanilla bean frosting, that I failed to even notice this last one. So now we found ourselves in a position that was hard to explain: blocking the front walk, angry mares yelling at us, bad confusion ...

Pinkie Pie didn't even blink. She was out of the car in a flash, waving a twenty-bit coin. "Listen up, everypony: we want this carriage parked on the double! No, on the triple! We're besties with Sapphire! She comes to Ponyville to see us! We know the pony who designed the very outfit Sapphire is wearing right now! We're like this!" She clopped her two front hooves together. The coin went flying into the air and as we all looked on momentarily hypnotized, it fell perfectly into the front pocket of a casino employee.

The tension dissipated. "Okay, okay ... we'll take care of it, miss ... " And she gave us a parking stub.

"Holy shit!" I whispered to Pinkie as we hurried, laughing breathlessly, into the lobby. "How did you do that?"

"Well, I held up a twenty-bit coin. Then I said 'listen up, everypony: we want this carriage parked on the double! No, the triple!' Then I said - "

"Never mind," I held up a hoof. "Anyway, that was amazing! You sure are a quick thinker."

"Aww. Thanks Dashie!" she beamed. "But you still owe me twenty bits."

I shrugged and gave over the money. This garish, red-carpeted lobby of the Lucky Horseshoe was no place to haggle about small bribes for the valet. This was Fancy Pants' turf. Filthy Rich's. The place reeked of fresh remodeling, polish from the gleaming hardwood floors, and plastic palm trees; a posh refuge for big spenders, which we definitely were not. I felt out of place, but I also had that pleasant little tingle a foal feels when she's getting away with something naughty. What was I worried for? I was the one and only Rainbow Dash, and my friend could pop up anywhere she wanted, invited or not.

We trotted to the Grand Ballroom full of confidence, only to find another phalanx of ponies trying to shoo us away. We were too late, said a pegasus in a wine-colored tuxedo; the house was already full, no seats available at any price. I was prepared to offer a bribe of Sweet Apple Acres' finest - that name carries some weight in certain quarters of Equestria - but there was no need, as Pinkie took over once again.

"Oh, never mind seats!" she giggled as if it were the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. "We're old friends of Sapphire's! Crown-tested, Princess-approved. Don't mind us, we'll just hang out in the back." And when the tux pony, who was clearly in charge, started hemming and hawing about fire codes: "Fire?! Don't be silly! My friend is the best flier in the world! She's not afraid of fire - fire is afraid of her! Even if there were a fire she could evacuate the whole theater in sixty seconds flat! She bucked a fire-breathing dragon right in the face. And she eats fire cinnamon candy. And she was once fired out of a catapult! And one time she made me laugh so hard that tea came out my nose, and it felt like fire! Did you ever notice that when you say a word like 'fire' over and over it loses all meaning? Listen! Fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire ... " All the time my friend was advancing on them slowly with an innocent yet unrelenting onslaught of gibberish, backing them closer and closer to the ballroom until we were practically inside already. I could see ponies in the rearmost seats looking around nervously, no doubt wondering why some crazy pony behind them kept talking about fire. Finally the tux pony clapped his hooves over his ears and yelled that we could stand in the back as long as we didn't eat, drink, or make trouble.

I grinned at him. "Don't worry about us. We're responsible ponies."

It is very possible that an exaggerated, totally untruthful version of the following events is already on its way to the printers at some half-bright national tabloid, so I should take this opportunity to set the record straight. Yes, Pinkie Pie and I were present during Sapphire Shores' concert at the Lucky Horseshoe on the day of the Minty 500 race. But we were not heckling Sapphire Shores or throwing jelly donuts at her.

Well, we sort of were. But they blew it entirely out of proportion. The truth of the matter is that the moment we entered the Grand Ballroom, we found it impossible to keep our promise. The tension was simply too great. The Pony of Pop mincing around the stage in a silver afro wig and a dress that resembled tinfoil spray-painted random colors, yowling forgotten radio hits from ten years ago ... it was a far more desperate and artless thing than we had prepared for, impossible to process or even endure without laughter, and I just happened to be there with the Element of Laughter. I'm not blaming her; she was only there because of me, and I accept all responsibility. First we started cracking jokes at each other, then we remembered we had some donuts left in the kit-bag, and it was all downhill from there. Multiple hooves surrounded us and yanked us out of the room halfway through the performance. I hid my chocolate cigar in Pinkie's mane just in time. We were rudely herded across the lobby and back to the front door by goons, no doubt mercenaries hired by Gruff to hassle us, and detained at the front door until they could retrieve our car.

"Okay, get lost," the tux-pony sighed. "We're giving you a break. If Sapphire has friends like you girls, her career is in worse shape than I thought."

"You haven't heard the last of this!" my friend shouted as we drove off into the muggy neon-blue night. "The revolution will never die! Free Luna!"

Even now, the only thing I regret is that the dress Sapphire wore that night might be attributed to Rarity simply because two other Elements of Harmony happened to be there - which, for the record, would be horsefeathers. I don't know who the real designer was or what they got for making that thing, but it should have been three to five years. (Are we cool now, Rarity?)

The night was young, so I drove us around to the casino next door: a bright, gaudy circus-themed joint called the Cirque de Sorraia. "This is the place," I said. "They'll never fuck with us here."

"Where's the salt?" said Pinkie. I reached over to give her the key to the trunk, but she was already holding the block in her hooves. "Found it!" She gave it a strong lick and sighed contentedly. I joined in, and the taste was overwhelming; soon we were staggering around to the back door, giggling stupidly and dragging each other along like drunks. This is the main advantage of salt, provided you don't take too much all at once and start seeing things; it makes you behave like the classic village drunkard, but without losing your lunch or waking up with a hangover. All motor functions are compromised - severance of all connection between thought and reality. Your brain continues to operate more or less normally, so you can consciously see yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it.

You approach the turnstiles leading into the Cirque de Sorraia and you know that when you get there, the stallion at the door won't let you inside without bits ... but when you clear that obstacle, everything goes to Tartarus; you misjudge the distance to the turnstile and slam against it, bounce off and grab hold of an old mare to keep from falling, some angry slot jockey shoves you and you think: what's happening? What's going on here? Then you hear yourself mumbling. "Diamond dogs fucked the Mane-i-ac, no fault of mine ... it wasn't even my carriage ... Fruit bats! Hit the deck! ... My name is Lacerda. I was born ... born? Made, made in Manehattan ... grace and humility, my ass ... who's licking me?"

Salt is the perfect thing for Las Pegasus. Everypony loves a drunk in this town, especially one who might have money. Fresh meat, they think, so they put us through the turnstiles and let us loose inside.

The Sorraia is what the whole hip world would be doing if Discord had won: barely organized mayhem of the best and worst sort. The ground floor is packed with gambling tables, like any other barsino ... but the building is about four stories high in the style of a circus tent, narrowing as you get higher and ending in a vaulted ceiling, and all manner of unthinkable shenanigans unfold in this space. The Forty Flying Fillies are doing a high-wire trapeze act, swooping in death-defying arcs right over the craps tables, along with four muzzled timber wolves and the Six Hayssan Brothers from Saddle Arabia ... so you're down on the floor playing blackjack and the stakes are getting high, sweat dripping, tails swishing, praying for the Right Number when suddenly you happen to look up and there right smack above your head is a red filly in a cocktail dress being chased through the air by a snarling wolf, which is suddenly locked in a ferocious deathmatch with two female minotaurs who come swinging down Daring Do-style from opposite balconies and meet in midair. They all plummet towards the crap tables with only a net to break their fall, separate and spring back up from the net in three directions ... the act goes on and on, and you begin to wonder how much of it is real and how much of it you're just hallucinating ... or if you're hallucinating all of it.

The eerie part is, if the other ponies here can see the madness going on above them, they don't seem to notice it at all. The gambling action runs twenty-five hours a day on the floor, and the circus never ends. If a timber wolf breaks a branch, burn it. If one set of trapezing fillies gets tired, switch 'em out with an identical team from the wings. If anyone falls and goes lame, finish them off. There's nothing more useless than a permanently crippled daredevil, and why pay out the medical insurance when you can just pull them backstage and Do the Right and Equine Thing ...

Meanwhile, all over the upper balconies, customers are being fleeced by any and all kinds of carnival hokum: ring toss, milk bottles, shell games packed into funhouse-type booths; hey rube, over here, I bet you can't shoot the tassels off this yak's horns and win a cotton candy goat for your special somepony. Stand in front of this wondrous contraption, my friend, and for just ten bits you can record a voice message that will play outside the building for half the Strip to hear.

Holy Celestia. I could just see some poor exhausted tourist in one of the nearby hotels, trying to get some sleep, when suddenly an earsplitting scratchy salt-dried voice screeches from a twenty-foot mounted megaphone, "DEATH TO MARE DO WELL!" Could they deal with a mane-raiser like that? I know I couldn't. It would send me careening around the room like a pinball. Visions are bad enough; after a while you get used to seeing things like Granny Smith crawling up your front leg with a knife in her teeth. Most salt fanciers can manage that sort of thing, but the possibility that any freak with ten bits can step up to the microphone and broadcast whatever unconscionable mumbo jumbo pops into her head is something else entirely. I've decided this is a bad town for sodium after all. The reality of Las Pegasus is far more twisted; a lurching, sprawling monster, addicted to bits, bloated beyond recognition. The idyllic desert oasis photographed by Trenderhoof just twenty years ago no longer exists. It was an enclosed, airless little village in the clouds; too good to be true, destroyed by exposure to the outside world and the big-money ethics of Canterlot and Baltimare.

"Dashie, I hate to say this," Pinkie told me as we sat down at the Carousel Bar on the second floor. "But I think we're starting to get sober."

"That's a filthy lie!" I said firmly. "We came out here to find the Equestrian dream, damn it, and now that we're right in the vortex you want to quit?!" I gesture to my brachial plexus. "You gotta know that we've found the main nerve."

But I was afraid she was right. Everything was wearing off, and we were sitting at a round wicker table moving in orbit around the slack-jawed bartender. I felt unpleasantly aware and increasingly dizzy.

"Look over there," I said, hoping for something to distract her. "Two doormares humping a buffalo."

She winced and shook her head. "That's the Equestrian Dream, huh?" she muttered sarcastically, her mane drooping just a little. "Forget it, Dashie. This is no place for dreams. This is a dream. None of it's real except you and me ... maybe not even me."

"What the heck are you talking about?" I was getting worried. I reached out and jabbed the edge of my hoof, gently, into her coat. "See? You feel that, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then you're real."

Her eyes glimmered with tears as she looked up. "I mean that this place makes me feel fake. I thought it would be great, you know? Like the biggest, fantastic-est, most spectacular-istic party in the whole wide world! But parties are supposed to make ponies happy, and no one's really happy here. Can't you feel it?" She gestured around us at the babbling, empty-eyed herds gathered around the tables and roped to the slot machines, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings.

I nodded. "Okay, Pinks. Forget the story. If you want to go, then we're gone."

She nodded gratefully and stood up. Getting off the Carousel Bar was harder than getting on; Pinkie took a bad jump and went sprawling madly into the crowd. Perfunctory shouts and angry noises, but the nearby ponies never even looked up from the roulette wheel. I helped her to her hooves and we made for the exit. Just before we left, my friend turned to the fake-smiling doormares and squinted hard.

" ... Do they pay you to hump that buffalo?"

Author's Note

Things are intensifying now. The Surge is working its way through my system. Three chapters of relative madness but soon, very soon, a reckoning with friendship. Not for the faint of heart and straight from my own.