"Finally," Mayor Mare said, "before we begin the Harvestfeast, I'd like to welcome Princess Twilight Sparkle to the stage." Amid a roomful of hoof-stamps, the alicorn shot to her hooves and pranced forward, a wide grin on her muzzle.
"My fellow ponies!" Twilight said, leaning forward onto the podium, wings flaring out. "It will be my pleasure to initiate our celebration, but first, I've got an idea!"
Rarity's eyebrows quirked up, and her face twitched with a suppressed grimace.
Next to her, Applejack and Rainbow Dash glanced at her expression. Fluttershy leaned over, whispering, "What's going on?"
Rarity discreetly pointed a hoof at Twilight's chair. Her friends' heads swiveled to follow the gesture, only to see a tall stack of notecards neatly squared off on the seat.
"So I was thinking earlier," Twilight said, "about the multiple meanings of our holidays. How Harvestfeast is about the bounty of nature and the gathering of community — but how it's also the last big celebration before the scheduled snows of the Hearth's Warming season."
Applejack groaned and pulled her hat down over her eyes. "Oh no. It's one of those ideas."
"Yes," Rarity muttered, "where some obsession digs into her brain to the exclusion of everything else."
"Like when she tried to figure out whether a checklist which listed all checklists that don't list themselves would list itself?" Fluttershy whispered.
"Which got me thinking about Hearth's Warming," Twilight said. "It's always been my favorite holiday — did you know that? The most amazing day of the year, with unparalleled meaning and history."
The crowd began muttering uncertainly. A few ponies glanced up at the huge Harvestfeast banners, and then over at Twilight's friends. Rarity sank lower in her chair.
"And you know one of the most magical things about it?" Twilight continued, undeterred. "The tradition which has led to some of the brightest memories of my life?"
Mayor Mare, finally noticing the missing stack of notecards, shuffled nervously and cleared her throat. "Princess, as fascinating as this is —"
"Hearth's Warming presents!" Twilight said, flinging her hooves wide.
Rainbow Dash facehoofed with a smack that echoed around the room.
"And I know that's not a Ponyville thing," Twilight said. "Not even a Canterlot thing, really. But my family's from back east, and carried some of their traditions with them when they moved, and let me tell you there's nothing like waking up on Hearth's Warming morning and galloping downstairs to a stocking full of gifts over a roaring — please put those down, Rarity, you'll get them out of order." A magenta aura overtook the light blue aura around the hovering stack of notecards, and they floated back to Twilight's chair.
Fluttershy placed a comforting hoof on Rarity's shoulder. "Don't worry," she whispered. "As long as she doesn't start talking about books, we should still be able to get her back on track."
"My first book ever was a Hearth's Warming present," Twilight said. "Did you know that?"
Applejack sighed and pointed toward the kitchen. "Flutters, go get Spike."
"It was a foal's book based on a Qilinese folk tale about a little duckling who lived on the river with his family and their dragon owner, first published by Horseton-Marelin in 933, although the one I received was a nineteenth printing …"
Rarity dragged her hooves down her face. Then she paused. Blinked.
"The nineteenth printing was distinguished from the twelfth through eighteenth by sporadic yet severe kerning issues, which is why my parents still tell the story of me pronouncing 'flight' as 'Aight' as an allegedly endearing tale of foalhood misunderstanding, even though the root of the issue was clearly traceable to printer error —"
Rarity sprang to her hooves, a smile spreading across her muzzle. "Which is why," she said loudly, "the Princess is taking the opportunity of this holiday to encourage a post-Harvestfeast day of shopping tomorrow."
Twilight's mouth opened and closed. "Rarity, what does that have to do with printing errors?"
Rarity gave her a Look.
Twilight tapped a hoof to her chin, mumbling to herself. "Allegedly endearing … parental stories … nineteenth printing … Horseton-Marelin … Hearth's Warming presents …" She blinked. "Oh! That makes sense."
"Wait," Dash said, "what?"
"It's simple, darling," Rarity explained to the room. "The Princess' goal is to encourage the exchange of holiday gifts, yes?"
"That's not quite where I meant to go with that, but —"
"But such gifts do not appear in ponies' hearth-stockings out of nowhere. They must be wrapped. Planned. Purchased."
Applejack blinked, and sat up a little straighter.
Rarity fluttered her eyelashes. "Carousel Boutique, for one, will be well prepared to accommodate the latter."
"Of course," Twilight said, getting animated again, "as I was going to say earlier, the best gift is enriching your foal or loved one with a lifelong love of reading — one which has served me well through two billion, two hundred and fifty-seven million, eighty-six thousand words, plus or minus one million, four hundred and ninety-two thousand —"
"Twilight!" Spike shouted from the meeting hall's kitchen. "Are you sidetracking your speech with your reading statistics again?"
She froze for a moment. "… Maybe?" she shouted back.
"There are ponies waiting to eat! Just start the feast already!"
Twilight cleared her throat and tapped her hooves together. Mayor Mare sighed in relief — then blinked as Applejack strode to the podium and hip-bumped Twilight aside.
"I know we're all lookin' forward to gettin' Harvestfeast started," she said, "but I, for one, am also happy to get behind Princess Twilight's gift-shoppin' idea."
"It was really more a point about books, but —"
"I'm sure y'all remember our fundraiser at our seventh barn-raising of the year last month, and how everypony was so sure that one was gonna last us through the winter. Well, we blew through our charity budget on barn eight, and now that its foundations are shot, I'd plum given up on financing Ol' Number Nine before the first snows. But in honor of … let's call it the 'Big Friends-day Sale' tomorrow … the Apple Family's gonna release this year's cider reserves a week early."
A dubious murmur swept the room, and sweat began to bead on Applejack's brow. Had she miscalculated? That should have been an easy crowd-pleaser. Cider-sales day was virtually its own holiday in Ponyville at this point —
— Oh. Right. Ponyville did not do well with changes in traditions.
Not without some incentive, anyhow.
"At a 40 percent discount," Applejack clarified.
As one, hundreds of cheering ponies surged to their hooves, the meal forgotten.
"So tell ALL your friends to visit Ponyville for their shopping!" Rarity shouted, barely audible above the crowd.
The next morning, a thin, ragged line of ponies stood at attention, staring at the no-mare's-land separating them from the tents of the invading army. Each of them was sweating despite the early-dawn chill. Those few, those brave, those foolhardy souls knew that there was no escaping their fate. In a matter of minutes they would be overrun.
A thin silhouette paced in front of the line, examining her troops and the meager supplies behind them. Sizing up the vast hordes in the distance. Calculating with grim dispassion.
Finally, Applejack halted, pushing back the brim of her hat. "Alright, y'all, listen up!" she shouted. "Thanks to everypony in town runnin' their own sale, this is all the help we're gonna get. Cider line opens in half an hour, an' — Dash!" She stepped forward, looming over the wavering pegasus. "Are you drunk?"
Dash lurched a little straighter, eyes flashing. "Uh, h'lo? Gett'n cider in advance wazh my c'ndition fr helping! Or doesh a certain shomepony not rember lasht time?"
"I said you could have one before we started!"
"I did!" Dash hiccuped. "Barrel."
Applejack facehoofed, then glanced at the rest of her family. Big Mac was staring grimly at the crowds. Apple Bloom was fidgeting. Granny Smith's head was drooped, and light snores were coming from her throat.
"I'm gonna skip the pep talk, then," she growled. "We've seen crowds before, but never like this." She wondered, not for the first time, what insecurity had possessed her to offer such a steep discount. "Our goal is simple: Keep the line movin'. Mac, I need you bringin' backstock from Number Eight. Bloom, you're pourin' and collectin' bits, and Gran … uh …" She looked helplessly at the closed-eyed elder Apple. "Crowd control?"
"Eeyup!"
"Got it, sis!"
"Sknzz."
"Dash, I need you handling the mugs, 'cause I'll be swappin' out barrels at the — Dash!"
Dash lowered the mug of cider, wiped foam from her lips, and blinked slowly. "Wha?"
"Stop that!"
"Y' juss told me to hannel mugsh! Itz practish!"
"Well, do the barrels then! An' stop drinking!"
Eeyup. They were doomed.
Applejack turned toward their customers-to-be. She crouched slightly, lowering the brim of her hat, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.
"L-Let's." She swallowed. "Let's do this."
Pinkie glanced over her shoulder as a soft bang echoed from near the front door, then gasped. Despite the obvious exhaustion in her face, it lit up like a Hearth's Warming bonfire. "Twilight! What are you doing here?"
Twilight shook off the haze of teleportation and glanced around Sugarcube Corner, stifling a yawn. "Good morning, Pinkie!" There was plenty to take in — the gleaming, spotless shop; the new Hearth's Warming decorations; the playpen where Pumpkin and Pound were sprawled sleeping; the counter stuffed nearly to bursting with baked goods. The scent of baking bread itched at the back of her nostrils, along with a sharper smell of — ah, there.
"Wow, the place looks amazing!" Twilight said, then got down to business. "I know you're not open yet," she said apologetically, "and I apologize for intruding on your sale preparations, but Mr. Rich asked if I could work as a temporary Barnyard Bargains employee for the day, and I couldn't say no because he wanted me to singlehoofedly run their book sales, so —" she pointed to the half-full coffeepot on the edge of the counter —"could I have a cuppa before I head to work?"
"Of course, Twilight!" Pinkie stumbled sideways, reaching for the pot with shaky hooves. "I could never refuse a friend coffee —"
A monster burst up from behind the counter.
Pinkie was thrown away from the pot with a yelp. Twilight shrieked in surprise. The thing turned its sunken, hollow eyes briefly on her, and then its attention swiveled to the pot. "Coffee," it echoed in an eldritch croak, and before Twilight could quite react, the feral form of Mister Cake had downed the remaining liquid in a single massive gulp.
He breathed for a few moments, forelegs trembling around the empty pot, and then pushed back the wild jungle of his mane, giving Twilight a closer look at his pallid, shaggy muzzle. His eye twitched. He breathed out, a shudder passing through his body, then flung the pot into the kitchen where it casually shattered. "Oh, thank the stars," he said shakily. "I thought we were out."
Pinkie slowly rose back up from behind the counter. "Oh, that was for Sweetie Drops' tiramisu! But I'm sure she'll be okay with plain misu." She pursed her lips. "Probably."
Twilight felt her heart rate slowly start to recede. "Uh, Mister Cake," she said, "exactly how long has it been since you've slept?"
His vision unfocused for a moment, and then his cheek twitched, pulling his pupils toward her again. "Six days?" he murmured. "No, seven. Eight?"
Pinkie leaned toward Twilight. "We've been working around the clock on Harvestfeast deliveries," she stage-whispered. "Today was supposed to be our rest day. But when we heard about how many ponies were arriving for the big sale, there was no way we could close like we'd planned!"
"Arriving …" Twilight slowly blinked. "What do you mean, arriving?"
Pinkie pointed.
Twilight slowly turned.
"Oh," she murmured. "My."
Fluttershy peeked through the shades obscuring Carousel Boutique's front window as the seventeenth train of the morning pulled into Ponyville Station. A new group of ponies galloped up toward the line of tents pitched in front of the boutique. The first pair of them lunged for the end of the line at the same time, and her ears flattened as she heard them start to shout about who'd gotten there first.
"How is it looking out there?" Rarity sang as she made some last-minute alterations in the pre-dawn light.
"Crowded," Fluttershy whispered.
"Which is why I requested your assistance, darling," Rarity said. "I should hate to lose business due to having insufficient salesponies for my customers."
"… Really crowded."
Rarity set her stitching down and joined Fluttershy at the front window, making a gap in the slats with her magic and peering through. Her face lit up, and she let out an "Eee!" that startled Opalescence into dashing behind a dress rack. "Look at that line!"
"Really, really crowded." Fluttershy's voice broke into an incoherent squeak, and with a blur of yellow, she was huddled next to Opal behind the dresses.
Rarity paused, then wheeled the rack out of the way. "Why, Fluttershy, darling, what's the matter?" she said gently.
"Crowded," Fluttershy squeaked.
Rarity leaned in to neck-hug her friend. "I know you dislike dealing with strangers," she said, "but I know you can do this, or I wouldn't have asked for your assistance. Why, do you remember when we toured with the Ponytones? You were smiling and singing on stage in front of ten times as many ponies."
Fluttershy whimpered incoherently for a few moments, then swallowed. "But they weren't going to ask me anything," she said faintly. "What if I get something wrong and cost you customers?"
Rarity blinked, then tittered into a hoof. "Oh, darling, is that all? Do you think those ponies would be lined up by the dozens if they were not desperate for my haute couture? Why, my designs will sell themselves!"
Fluttershy swallowed, then gave Rarity a shaky smile and stood up. "I guess they will, won't they?"
"Trust me," Rarity said. "Nothing could possibly go wrong."
Rarity cleared her throat as Fluttershy timidly slid back the lock and depressed the handle on the shop's front door. "A very special 'Big Friends-day' welcome to Carousel Boutique!" she announced as the door began to swing open. "Where every garment is —"
The rest was lost in the collective roar of the hundreds-strong crowd. Even Fluttershy's yelp as the door slammed open straight into her side could barely be heard over the screaming and cursing from the eight frontmost ponies trying to simultaneously wedge themselves through the doorway.
Opalescence — fur puffed out until she resembled nothing so much as a clawed parasprite — yowled and shot up Rarity's legs to the top of her head.
Then the logjam at the front door broke, and the crowd surged over a screaming Rarity, and Opalescence was the least of her worries.
A tide of flesh surged toward Twilight Sparkle.
"Welcome to Barnyard Bargains!" she said cheerfully, briskly following the flowchart of her memorized customer-interaction script. "What can I help you — oof!"
"THAT DOORBUSTER SALE IS MINE!" she heard a stallion shout as she hit the floor beneath a dozen scrambling, flailing bodies. She thrashed almost free. A heavyset mare stepped on her face.
Twilight flailed ineffectually for a moment, then lit her horn. Pew! Bang! And then she was lying on top of the table of Daring Do novels, watching the surge flood past her like the waters of a tsunami.
She sucked in a breath, clambered to shaky hooves atop the book pile, and cleared her throat. "Welcome to Barnyard Bargains," she said with slightly less cheer as a second wave surged in her direction toward the frenzied grabbing and shoving of the first. "What can I help you — oof!"
Pinkie stood behind the counter, a rigid grin plastered on her muzzle. Outside, a surging mob of bodies hammered on the door, silhouettes swaying at the windows. Distant screams mingled with the moans of the mindless horde. Soon enough, they'd figure out how to get through the door. But Pinkie believed in her friends. Together, she and Mr. and Mrs. Cake could get through anything.
Also, for some reason this whole situation reminded Pinkie of something just past the edge of memory. She frowned, insomnia-addled mind churning fruitlessly for an answer, then shrugged.
Mr. Cake made some sort of gurgling moan, eyes unfocused, face again going pallid as the last of the coffee dwindled away. He lurched forward, forehooves out toward the countertop. To Pinkie's other side, Mrs. Cake stood as silent as the grave, her face vacant save for a thousand-yard stare. Her entire body was spattered with red icing.
"Is the baking done?" Pinkie said.
"Graaains," Mrs. Cake moaned.
"Brace yerselves!" Applejack shouted as the charging horde collided with the thin Apple line, and then everything was chaos.
Flailing limbs. Thrusting hooves. The savage cries of advancing customers and the crushed whimpers of those stymied by the one-drink maximum. Applejack whirled, shoved, heaved, trying to keep a circle of ground clear around her lest she get boxed in and overwhelmed. Mugs came at her; mugs got flung away. A barrel tipped off the top of the stack of empties, and she savagely bucked it away just for room to maneuver. Dash drunkenly stumbled against her, and she braced back-to-back with the mare as a screaming customer lunged in to accost her for a second serving.
Then there was a dull, distant thump, and a high-pitched shrieking noise gradually increasing in volume and pitch. Her eyes flicked to the skies, and widened as an impossibly fast shadow hurtled inward —
"Got it!" Dash yelled, spreading her wings and vaulting upward to catch the barrel Big Mac had thrown from their first restocking cart. To her right, Apple Bloom swiped a bit off their counter and hoofed a cider mug to the green-coated mother holding two shrieking foals. The mother's face lit up. She shushed her babies and galloped off.
With a grunt, Dash yanked the empty barrel from underneath Apple Bloom's tap and shoved the replacement in its place. She turned to Applejack, swaying side to side, and gave her an exaggerated wink. "Pik up th' pace, shlowpoke!" Dash yelled, laughing, and braced to snatch another barrel from Mac out of midair.
Applejack drew in a shaky breath, straightened up, and took a moment to look around. Really look around. Granny Smith was shooting orders from her rocking chair with calm efficiency, hoof straightening toward customers one-by-one, her booming voice dropping stragglers and line-cutters, directing the unruly customers into single file. Apple Bloom was slinging mugs at machine-cannon speed, dispersing the clamoring horde at the counter. The first wave had been beaten back. And their supply lines were holding.
Slowly, the disbelief on Applejack's muzzle creased upward into a smile, then she met Dash's laugh with one of her own. "Hoooooo-weeeeee!" she shouted. "We're doin' this! Keep it up, Apples!"
The influx of ponies finally slowed. It had to. Carousel Boutique was literally full; every inch of floor space had a pony desperately trying to get somewhere else, and the air was so crammed with pegasi that those trying to wedge through the doorway had no room to spread their wings, falling back into the ground surge.
Rarity had long since lost track of Opalescence and Fluttershy. She'd long since lost track of her merchandise, except for the occasional dress which flew overhead as customers frantically flung items off the rack to dig through to the rearward pieces. She couldn't even hear herself think over the frantic shouting of a room at quintuple capacity.
So she took a deep breath and shrieked.
The effect was as if a bomb had gone off. Everypony cringed at once, ears flattening, then blinked and slowly, slowly, began to look around, disoriented.
Rarity steadied herself, then shouldered the press of bodies back a few inches and reared up, popping out of the crowd like a cork bobbing to the surface of an ocean. "If I may have your attention, please!" she shouted, and then stopped — for once in her life having absolutely no idea what to do with it once she got it.
A tiny voice inside her noted that she finally understood what Fluttershy had meant when she talked about her nightmare of being surrounded by staring eyes.
Still, she was a professional, and while it was possible for professionals to draw a momentary blank, one did not make it to the upper echelons of professional success without an unparalleled ability to ad-lib. So Rarity drew in a breath, frantically assembling crowd-control plans on the fly, when her speech was preempted by a shouted question from the back of the room: "What's on sale?"
Her plans vanished in an instant.
"Sale?" Rarity sputtered. "Excuse me? Sale‽"
"They said the princess had announced a sale, but nothing's marked down!" another voice whined from the far side of the shop, as muttering swept through the crowd.
"Of course nothing is marked down!" Rarity shouted, feeling her face contort. "Carousel Boutique is premium fashion, and we take pride in our designs!" She whipped a hoof in the direction of the second voice as if she were firing a crossbow bolt. "You! Who said that?"
The crowd went silent again, and somehow managed to squirm into a configuration that opened up line of sight between Rarity and a Manehattan matron wearing two-season-old styles and diamond earrings that could only be described as flagrant.
"Get out of my store!" Her thundering judgment delivered, Rarity whirled around, eyes flashing, scanning the crowd like a storm building up its next electrical charge. "And if anypony else is only here for a bargain, you may feel free to do the same!"
The crowd erupted into murmurs, then mutters, then motion.
And everypony left.
The trampling portion of the morning had long since dwindled away, to be replaced by the stupid portion of the morning.
"You don't understand," the stallion said, shoving a floppy superhero comic compilation in Twilight's muzzle. "I need the hardcover T.P.B."
"T.P.B. stands for 'trade paperback'," Twilight said. "That's a book with a flexible cardstock cover which is larger than the standard mass market paperback format. There's no such thing as a hardcover paperback."
He stared dully into her eyes, frown deepening.
Twilight tried to pick her mental script back up. "Barnyard Bargains values your business, and I deeply apologize for that, sir," she recited. "Is there anything else that I can help you with?"
"Yeah," he said and shoved the comic book forward again. "I need the T.P.B. version of this, but in hardcover."
Twilight suppressed a sigh — it would reflect badly on Barnyard Bargains! — and went for iteration six. "T.P.B. stands for 'trade paperback' —"
"Oh, forget it!" he snarled and stalked off. "You clearly don't know a thing about books if you can't solve my problem."
Twilight's eye twitched.
"Excuse me," another customer lisped from behind her. A pudgy earth pony with bad teeth and a snub nose, holding a copy of Why Everything's Wrong With Everyone Else. "You need to give this to me fer free."
Twilight opened and closed her mouth, trying to figure out where the customer-interaction flowchart even covered that, and went for: "I'm sorry you're having issues with your shopping experience today. Is there a problem with that book?"
"Yes!" the mare said.
Twilight waited.
… Which didn't work. So she tried: "Why do you feel you should get it for free?"
"The sign said it was 20 percent off," the mare said. "So I took it to the counter, and it was marked 10 bits, and they tried to charge me eight."
"… That is 20 percent off."
"It's too much."
Twilight added yet another new entry to the day's list of indictments against Equestria's public schooling system, and sucked in a long breath. "Twenty percent means twenty parts out of every hundred," she said. "Ratios are the same if you can cancel out a common factor from both numerator and denominator, like one part out of two representing the same fraction as two parts out of four. So if you divide both 20 and 100 by ten, in other words remove a zero, it leaves you with you're not actually listening because I lost you the instant I started talking numbers, didn't I."
The mare stared numbly at her, and Twilight felt a secret little thrill from going off-script, and then panic surged and she suppressed it and reasserted her professionalism before anyone else noticed.
"They gave you the correct discount," she said instead.
"Yeah, that's what they tole me," the mare muttered, rubbing her nose with a stocky leg and smearing phlegm all over it. "But it's too much."
Realization slowly dawned. "Like, the 'I don't want to pay eight bits for it' kind of 'too much'?"
The mare's face brightened. "Yeah!"
"That is not an approved basis for further discounting," Twilight said smugly. "Thank you for your business."
"Yeah, okay," the mare said, not walking away, why wasn't she walking away, Twilight had won this one.
"What've you got for two bits?" the mare said.
Twilight opened and closed her mouth several times. "In books? I'm pretty sure, nothing."
"Well, what good are books then?"
Twilight's eye twitched again.
She began to wonder if customer immolation was anywhere on the flowchart.
Pinkie knew how to deal with sleep deprivation. She was, it could be argued, uniquely capable of handling it. In order to deal with the barrage of information at right angles to normal reality that most ponies just called "Pinkie Sense," she'd … kinda … just made her brain work differently, in a way that she didn't actually understand but could point to in hindsight and acknowledge that she hadn't always been that way.
Dealing with sleep deprivation was like when she pulled her party cannon out of her mane. Anypony else trying to do it would reach into her mane, and of course it wasn't there; her mane wasn't nearly big enough to hold it! But when she did it, she just reached to where the party cannon was, and her mane parted to let it out.
Okay, she thought as she made another sale, maybe that wasn't a great analogy. Sleep deprivation isn't like a party cannon at all. One is noisy and blurry and makes you do strange things nobody ever seems to acknowledge afterward, and one finds you waking up the next morning covered in confetti. Maybe sleep deprivation is more like … She paused, racked her brains as Sweetie Drops screamed something about missing tiaras or something, and tried to pick her train of thought back up as she made change for a visiting changeling pretending to be a Vanhoover business-stallion, who ostensibly was indulging his sweet tooth with a tasty cupcake but really was desperately sucking it dry of the little love Pinkie had been able to spare for it in the middle of a frantic week of nonstop baking. She felt sorry for poor "Cold Cash". He'd be back on a train again in another two hours and she'd be behind a counter until well after he'd left, so she left herself a mental note to go back and sneak one of next week's banana fritters into his suitcase while he was in the station. It wasn't quite a welcome-to-Ponyville party, but she'd already tried that and he didn't take it well.
Where was she? Oh yeah. Sleep deprivation.
Normal ponies got a little weird when they couldn't sleep. Their brain couldn't make things connect to each other. They'd lose time, stare into space, and find themselves suddenly doing things with no context for those actions, Pinkie thought as she took a ten o'clock break from behind the counter to change Pound Cake's diaper. But she already worked that way, so she was used to it. She cooed and rubbed noses with the foal that somepony had hoofed her, and blew a raspberry in its tummy, and that made both foal and mommy laugh in delight. No, that wasn't right. She frowned and put the baby down. Things were more connected for her, weren't they? So that when she was sleep-deprived — she gently detached a toy from between the hooves of Pumpkin and a foal she didn't recognize, and pulled a spare pacifier from cannonspace when the foal started crying — she was able to deal with the loss of context without having to do anything differently. Right?
"Pinkie," Mrs. Cake said in the only moment of lucidity she'd have for another day and a half, "why is our shop overrun with young foals?"
Pinkie slowly blinked, looking around.
There were eight strange newborns in the playpen with Pumpkin, who was sucking on a discarded cupcake wrapper that she'd levitated from the counter eight minutes ago while none of them was looking. Pound was flying around the shop, leading a squealing game of tag with three slightly older pegasus foals. Pinkie herself was rocking a newborn filly in her forelegs while desperately nudging a crawling colt away from his attempts to join four of his peers in the kitchen. The doorbell tingled, and a group of hungry pegasi walked in — only to freeze, look around at the screaming foals, and slowly back away.
"Let me get back to you on that," Pinkie said, because Mrs. Cake's question was the sort of question that deserved a serious answer uncorrupted by sleep deprivation. She made herself a mental note to think about it in a few days.
A green-coated mare shouldered her way through the door, cradling two foals in her fores. Skipjack; from Las Pegasus; likes fishing and peonies; "Welcome to Ponyville" party given 284 days ago during a train layover. "Is this the foalsitting service that Diamond Shine talked about?"
"Two and a half bits per," Mr. Cake mumbled glassy-eyed, just like he had at every single thing someone had said since the day's first surge of customers had set him on autopilot.
"Wonderful!" Skipjack said, hoofing the foals to Pinkie and putting five bits on the counter. "Ta!"
Mr. Cake stared dully at the coins, then blinked and looked up with a start. His eyes widened in horror as lucidity came very close to slamming in. "Pinkie!" he said urgently. "What are you doing?! We can't make any sales if you're starting a baby collection! Our customers will have noplace to stand!"
"I'm sorry, Mr. C," Pinkie said. "What should I do with them?"
Mr. Cake's eyes unfocused. "Two and a half bits per," he mumbled.
Pinkie nodded gravely. She was glad she had such responsible adults to rein her in when she started doing crazy things she didn't understand. Pinkie Sense had its price, after all.
… Where was she?
Oh yeah! Sleep deprivation!
All morning, the Apple Family cider stall sang like a well-oiled machine. Full barrels arrived; empty barrels left. Customers brought bits; customers left bits. Then Fluttershy showed up mumbling something about Rarity not needing her any more, and they really kicked into high gear.
Until the backstock ran out.
At six minutes to noon, Mac returned empty-hooved from his trip to Number Eight, eyes a little wide and lips a little pursed. Applejack's stomach dropped out of her gut. For him, that was full-blown panic.
They simultaneously glanced at the line. Still halfway to town.
"Gran," Applejack said, trying to be quiet enough for the customers not to hear, "we're on our last barrels."
"Yessssssssh," Dash said, pumping a hoof.
Applejack frowned. "It's kind of a problem, Dash. We got some apples an' some Sweet Apple Acres stickers an' balloons as little freebie consolation gifts for those still stuck waitin', but —"
"Okay yeah," Dash smugged, "but thish time I got good an' drunk."
"Well, good fer you. But there's gonna be hundreds of ponies with nothin' to show for spendin' half their day in line."
Granny Smith frowned. "Well, we got the bits we needed, and there ain't nothin' for a problem like that but to rip the bandage off." She stood up and took a deep breath. "Alright, y'all! Sorry to say it but the stall's closed! You've plum run us out of cider! Thank ya and come on back next time!"
The stallion who was third in line paled. "What?" he shouted, shoving his way forward to the counter. "But I came all the way from San Palomino for this! I can't leave empty-hooved!"
"We, uh, got stickers?" Applejack said.
A determined look crossed the stallion's muzzle, and he slammed his saddlebags down on the counter, causing piles of coins to spill out. "Your barrel on tap doesn't look empty yet," he said. "Eighty bits to fill my mug before you close."
Mac coughed, eyes widening. "Eighty bits —"
"Sold!" Apple Bloom shouted before anypony else could react, sweeping a pile of coins into the cashbox.
And the crowd erupted.
"A hundred bits for a mug!"
"A hundred twenty!"
AJ glared at her sister. "I'm sorry, folks, we really shouldn't —"
"A thousand bits for the rest of the barrel!"
"Fifty for one of the empties!"
"A hundred for an official Apple Family souvenir!"
Coins showered over the counter. "There's eighty bits! I've paid, gimme cider!"
And then the horde surged forward again, relentless and unstoppable as the tide, their hooves and metal sweeping and lashing. Somepony snatched a mug off the counter. Others started grabbing mugs off the return rack and the empties rack. One lunged for the mug in Fluttershy's hooves, at which she squeaked and froze up, clinging to it for dear life. A wave of ponies leapt the counter, galloping for the empty barrels, the cart, Granny's rocking chair —
And Applejack's world spun away in a surge of bits and bodies.
"Hey Twilight! I'm back from the Crystal Empi—"
Starlight Glimmer didn't trail off so much as hit a verbal wall as she entered the map room, eyes flicking around. Twilight was wearing new grooves in the floor in what Starlight had come to think of as the Frantic Pacing Zone. Rarity was wailing in a chaise longue against the back wall, surrounded by empty tubs of ice cream and a frantic Spike. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were sprawled limply on the floor alongside their crystal thrones, looking like they'd been thrown from a fast-moving cart into a different fast-moving cart going the other direction. Fluttershy was shivering behind her throne with a thousand-yard stare, clinging with a death grip to a cider mug. And Pinkie Pie — the only one actually sitting down — had faceplanted onto the map table, snoring loudly, a baby rattle stuck in her hair and three non-matching diapers wrapped around various appendages.
"Oohhh boy," Starlight finally said. "What'd I miss?"
"An object lesson on equine nature," Applejack whispered to the ceiling.
"Sknzz," Pinkie said.
"And the worst hangover of my life," Dash moaned. "Unless this is just the bruising and it gets worse later on."
"It cannot get worse!" Rarity wailed. "I'm ruined! Ruined!"
Starlight raised an eyebrow, glancing back and forth between Rarity and the floor-ponies. "Ruined? What happened to you?"
When Rarity's only response was further sobbing muffled by a full spoon of ice cream, Spike sighed. "An hour before closing time, she lowered the prices on her new line by three bits to get ponies back in the door."
"… Three bits."
"It's the pri-hi-hi-hi-hinciple!"
Starlight pressed a hoof to her temple. "I'm sure there's a story behind that as absurd as Pinkie Pie's, what with the reporters outside wanting comments about the thirteen infants arrested for bank robbery. But I'm not even going to ask — I've learned that lesson about Pinkie already. What's your story, Fluttershy?"
Fluttershy's mouth moved, but no sounds came out. Spike sighed again. "The good news is, the seven-judge panel in The Haygue agreed that including her in the 80,000-bit purchase price would violate international anti-slavery treaties. I think Celestia's still in four-nation diplomatic negotiations over what happens if she drops the mug, though."
"Um." Starlight turned to Twilight with a too-wide smile. "At least you seem alright?"
Twilight grinned back. "I've already got a costume design picked out for Nightmare Grapheme," she whispered, eye twitching sporadically. "Should I write a friendship letter before or after my inevitable rampage?"
Starlight opened her mouth, then closed it again. And again. And again.
"You know," she said on try five, "maybe we should go do something friendshippy together to get our minds off of all this disaster. Anypony want to go shopping for Hearth's Warming presents?"
