Even while asleep, Rainbow tended to be mobile. Her body would shift, limbs participating within a range that began with small twitches and frequently ended with full-fledged nocturnal wingspan extrusions. Her mind soared, darted, and swooped its way through the endless sky of the nightscape as her subconscious worked on routines yet to come, and so anypony sharing hard-twisted sheets with her had a very good chance to be stunted out of bed.
But on this day (just barely day, with Sun having been raised a little while before: the prior night had seen her tell the rest of the weather team that she wouldn't be able to work and everypony who'd been close enough to scent the undertones had understood why), her dreams didn't have her winning Equestria's Best Flier for the eighth year in a row (again). And yet within the limited confines offered by the mattress, she was just as mobile as ever. The true differences lay in subtle shifts: the way the wingtips failed to curl, the tendency of the already-streamlined body to present a long, low profile. A pony going not for stunts, but pure speed. Somepony who was trying to get away from something.
Within the dreams of her nightscape, she accelerated and dodged and fled from what was to come. Fled when no true escape was possible, because it would find her. It always did, when the enemy was within.
Twitched. Groaned. And, incidentally, completely failed to register the faintest trace of those she was currently sharing a bed with.
But she was getting closer to waking now, and so certain activities in the outside world began to work themselves into dream. This began when the clouds started talking to her.
"...well, why don't you try it, laddie? Maybe I'm tired o' being kicked into the clouds! It's like she knows we're here, even like this, and she's defendin' it..."
(This created a burst of speed within her imagination. The clouds kept up.)
"Why don't we just wait? She'll toss off the sheets entirely if we just give her ano'ther minute! We'll get the view!"
"But she might toss 'em because she woke up, might'ent she? Just get under there!"
(There was now a cloud under her belly, and it was tickling her. She couldn't get away from it. She kept moving faster and all that did was send it backwards along her body, heading for a place it shouldn't be...)
"Ain't nothin' back here! Just the 'bow!"
"Check the tip!"
"Ain't nothin'!"
"Well... no one said which end, right? Try up by the base!"
The cloud followed orders and in doing so, turned into a giant goose.
"HEY!"
The nightscape kicked Rainbow into reality, a shared scream of outrage chasing her back to Sun, and she opened furious eyes upon a scenario too strange for mere dreams.
She was in her bedroom. The sheets were tossed and twisted almost beyond recognition. There was some sunlight hitting the mattress, because she'd had to open a few extra cloud holes to let a little of the smell out. (It was subtle, almost pleasant, barely detectable by many ponies, and she couldn't stand to breathe around herself.) There was an adventure novel on the nightstand, a half-finished snack next to that, and a towering pile of boring Weather Bureau papers which she'd been neglecting to send threatened to overflow everything. All of that was normal.
The miniature bipeds, however, were entirely new.
Rainbow didn't take a moment to evaluate the situation. She didn't search her memory to see if they reminded her of anything, nor did she consider her next actions. Those were things which Twilight would have done, taking an emergency as the cue to waste precious time on thought, and so Rainbow did none of them.
Her wings flared, got her free of the sheets and put her hovering about half her own height above the mattress. Several startled bearded bipeds stared up at her.
"Now, lass," one of them said, "this ain't what it looks like."
Her lips pulled back from her teeth.
"Or maybe," it tried, "this is exactly what it looks like --"
She dove.
They scattered. (There were about six of them: she was just starting to register that, and the number included the one she'd tail-whipped onto the floor when the goose had appeared.) They were small: at best, the largest would have come up to her knees, and that was after factoring in quite a bit of hat. And the reason that mattered was because it meant there were multiple targets, none without very much surface area to hit, and they were scattering everywhere.
"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
She swooped. She missed, because there was very little space in which to get up speed and the one who'd been talking had simply done a tuck-and-roll to the right, with the only damage taken as a slight ruffling of the fine green jacket.
"Easy, lass!" it chided her, quickly regaining its booted footing. (It was standing on her floor, it had no wings and it was standing on her floor...) Followed by, with open bemusement, "We're not so easy to catch! There's stories about it! There are those who say it's so hard, anyone who does it is entitled to a wish...!"
Which was when she went up, adjusted her position, lined up, and swooped for the second time.
Panicked green eyes went wide. The biped rolled left, and did so a vital half-second after Rainbow had tilted two crucial feathers.
She slid across her floor on her belly and barrel, sending up little vapor puffs along the trail. Her forelegs were stretched out in front of her, the hooves awkwardly angled to put pressure on the small body which was now trapped between them.
Using her teeth had been out of the question. She wanted to yell.
"WHAT ARE YOU? WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHO TOUCHED ME? I OUGHTA --"
She could hear some of the others. They had been scrambling around her bedroom, in her house, trying to get away. This had stopped. Based on what her twisting ears could pick up, those still within range had frozen, and all of their energy was now being devoted to gasping in horror. One of them had been caught.
The biped between her hooves wriggled a bit.
"Er," it said. Then, "Um..."
It took a breath, exhaled. The air in front of its bearded face instantly developed a mild haze.
"So," it tried. "You've... caught me, then."
"YEAH!"
"...an' that means there's a wish coming."
Rainbow hesitated.
"Seriously?"
It nodded. "One of us gets caught, there's a wish. Y'ready?"
In spite of herself, she nodded. She kept her ears rotating, she listened for the approach of reinforcements, got ready to move -- but she also listened, waited, almost brought forth one of her oldest dreams...
"I wish you'd let me go," the biped declared.
She stared at it.
"Never said the wish was gonna be yours," it grinned. A partial shift of one pressed shoulder suggested a desire to tip its hat. "So, lass, now that we're talkin' an' all, maybe we can work something out?"
She stared at the thing for a while, and that finally allowed her mind to start thinking about its appearance. A biped, and a small one. As with all of the nearly-identical others, it was fully dressed, and nearly all of that was in green. The clothing had brass buckles in what seemed to be odd places: she had very little idea what they were doing on the shoes (along with having not much concept of shoes in general), and none for the presence of one on the hat. A bushy, badly-trimmed full red beard suggested a male, and that Star Swirl was actually a bit of a piker in that department. Twinkling green eyes seemed to be having a little trouble focusing on just about everything, and every breath it exhaled towards her snout told her a little more about why.
"Are you drunk?"
The biped considered that.
"I'm alive, right?"
She nodded. It was the sort of nod which didn't promise anything regarding maintenance of that status in the long-term.
"The world's not ending?"
Again, equally lacking any guarantees on local conclusions.
"Then of course I'm drunk!" the offended biped half-roared. "What do you take me for, the sort of Aos Sí who'd be caught sober? Not while I'm alive, lassie! And the way I know I'm alive is through being drunk enough to enjoy it!"
He hiccuped.
"Wouldn't say no to a fresh cuppa, though," it considered. "And we know y'ain't got nothing -- well, y'ain't got nothing now. Y'had white lightning. Homemade, right? Wasn't bad. Y'really needed to blast it with a few more volts, but decent for what I'm thinkin' was your first try. But don't worry, lass: when it's liquor, we always settle. Eventually."
She stared at him. It didn't seem to be helping.
"How," she half-hissed, "did you get into my house?"
A double-blocked shoulder shift indicated a failed shrug. "Windows were open."
Warding Day. Stupid, stupid Warding Day...
Trying not to put too much pressure on the little body -- at least, not yet: "Why?"
He took another breath. A shift of beard hairs suggested lips twisting with thought.
"We usually don't talk about this," he said. "Not, say, unless we've got a little more freedom of movement -- okay, okay, ouch, lass, ye've made your point!" He gulped for oxygen, released a brewery. "So y'know what they say about pots of gold, right?"
Instantly and naturally, "No."
His eyes widened.
"You don't? Seriously?"
She took her best guess. "There's gold and you put it in a pot?"
He was staring at her.
"But... you're the bringer," he declared. "You've gotta know! Y'don't look like you're that good a liar, to say you don't and sound like you mean it!"
She decided to feel insulted. "Just tell me!"
"They say," the stunned biped just barely managed, "that at the end of every rainbow, there's a pot of gold."
It was stupid. It was ridiculous. It was also completely ignorant of the way weather worked because in her experience, the only thing to be found at the end of most natural rainbows was a rather tired pegasus: setting up the Sun-and-rain conditions wasn't for amateurs, and that was why the Factory arranged for the simpler method. "So?"
He tilted his head, then repeated the action until she realized he was trying to indicate a direction. She risked the glance back, saw nothing more than a brief glimpse of her hard-lashing tail --
"-- you're kidding." It was very nearly a whisper. "You've got to be kidding."
"Us an' gold," the biped said, "we've got somethin' special going on..."
She changed her mind. "You're crazy!"
"Am not!" the offended biped declared. "I'm drunk! Perfectly drunk, and that's a hard place to reach, harder to stay in! We got there last night, all of us, and I remembered there's always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! It happens every time! But there's too many of us looking for rainbows. Too many scramblin' for the same spot. So I got drunk, perfectly drunk, and I thought... we could try somethin' new."
He looked at her again. At prismatic mane and tail.
"You're the rainbow," he stated, "and so there's a pot of gold at your end! So share, lass! If you're too quick to steal from -- and you are, I can see that now -- then we can make some sort of deal, right?" Hopefully, with the air of a sapient who was pulling out his hole card when nopony else had been aware of the game, "Do you like shoes?"
She stared at him, with her barrel and belly pressed into the vapor. And with that pressure came... twinging.
Rainbow let go.
The biped blinked. Shuffled his shoulders, went through a few partial arm rotations before straightening his jacket.
"So we're dealin', then," he decided. "Means we should deal by name. I'm Darby, lass. And you are...?"
"...going to the bathroom." Because there was insanity and madness, which occasionally got renamed to 'being a Bearer, daily life thereof'. But in the face of absolute lunacy, a pony still had to use their bathroom. Especially on this day.
"Oh," Darby awkwardly said. "Well, I'll be here when you're done."
Of course you will. Rainbow got to her hooves, wearily shuffled forward. Bathroom, and then... then... something. Maybe enough food to think of what 'something' was supposed to be. Alcohol probably wouldn't have helped with that and besides, there wasn't any.
Behind her, the other little bipeds were slowly emerging from their hiding places.
"We're dealin'?"
"Gotta. Took drink and got caught," Darby said. "Let the lassie have her toiletries. Then we'll get to the good stuff."
"Toilet," one of the others thoughtfully (or drunkenly) said.
"What about it?"
"Don't some people call that a pot?"
Several green-jacketed little bodies streaked past Rainbow.
"Ain't a toilet!" one of them called back from her bathroom. "More of a trench! But there's also a bowl. Pretty thing, all pearly around the edges."
Rainbow froze.
"Get out of there!" Desperation kept it from becoming a shout, and was putting it very close to becoming a kicking. "Get out! That's my bathroom, and -- and it's mine!" Not today, not today...
"Maybe it's not at the end," another one postulated. "Maybe it comes out from the --"
Horror met fear, teamed up for extra strength, and began to mutually consider using lightning. "GET --"
"That sounds about right!" Darby declared, his voice light with the kind of casual logic which could only be found at the very bottom of a white lightning mug. "So what do you say, lass? You produce some end results, and then we make you the finest --"
"-- get on my back." It had been a rather hollow sound, and that impressed Rainbow somewhat. She didn't think there was anything left in her which was hollow, especially not when she felt so full and couldn't... "Get on my back. Now."
"...why?" Darby eventually asked.
"You wanted to deal," Rainbow forced out. "I know somepony who can work out deals."
They climbed on.
"You smell nice," Darby helpfully said. "Kind of like --"
"-- shut up."
She hadn't been completely lying. The secondary, or tertiary, or (whatever word came after that which Rainbow couldn't remember right now) intent had been to deal. The primary had been to get them all on her back and then, as soon as she was clear of her house, dump them off. Rainbow was good at things like loops and spirals and sudden shifts of both weight and motion, while the bipeds were only good at silly stuff like grabbing onto fur, keeping their grip, and shouting with open delight about the exciting ride until her ears hurt.
Eventually, she didn't so much give up as temporarily choose to pursue Option #2 Or Whatever. She touched down at the library, marched them inside past rapidly-scattering patrons. By the time she made the very informal introduction to an extremely startled Twilight, they all pretty much had the place to themselves. And then she temporarily made camp by the periodicals, and waited for somepony else to fix everything.
Twilight could take care of it. That was Twilight's job. As far as jobs went, Rainbow had the day off. She had one thing she had to do, something every pegasus had to do, and she tried to get into the library's restroom so she could do it. Some would have said it was wrong to try it without the bowl, but she could sort of -- smuggle everything back. Fix the problems on the receiving end. And she would have started the process if there just hadn't been at least two of the bipeds following her everywhere she went, just in case there was gold at the end of it. Or at the end of something.
After a while, she registered flashing pinkish light at the far right edge of her vision: a simple signal for attention. Rainbow got up and trotted over to where Twilight was repeatedly igniting her corona, noticed that the bipeds had scattered somewhat. They were all still in the library, but some of them were now paging through books. The majority of those had wound up in Metallurgy, and every picture they adoringly gazed at had the same gleam.
"So,"Twilight softly said, "I learned... some things. Maybe not the right things. They're kind of hard to question. They don't always seem to be listening, their words go all over the place --"
"-- they're drunk," Rainbow cut her off.
"That too," the librarian sighed. "Anyway, they're not from Equestria."
"So where are they from?"
"Somewhere called Éire. It's not on any of the maps. All I could get out of them is that it's very green and the mushrooms grow in rings." Twilight frowned. "I'm not sure if that was supposed to be a ring of plantings or the actual mushroom growing in a ring shape. Probably the former, because the latter wouldn't let it have a proper stem. Also, he was really insistent about special things happening if I stood inside the ring. That would mean a really big mushroom."
"And how did they get here?"
"They..." The hesitation seemed to suggest a certain degree of difficulty with the next concept. "...got drunk enough to make coming here feel like a really good idea. And then they were here."
Rainbow blinked.
"Teleportation," Twilight huffily declared, "does not work that way. Or shouldn't." And then, with what long experience helped Rainbow to recognize as the more subtly terrifying levels of future research-intended thought, "But you know... drinking alcohol, up to a certain point, serves as a relaxant. So maybe if my stress was lowered, and I just wasn't thinking about things like 'this is impossible,' or much of anything else --"
As quickly as she dared, "-- Twilight?"
Distractedly, "Yes?"
"Can we get them out of here first, please?"
"...oh." A moderate blush began to underlight purple fur. "I -- haven't figured out how yet. From what they said, I can't try to teleport them away, because they still think being here is a really good idea. They'd just come back."
"Shield spell?" Rainbow desperately suggested. "Lock them in a bubble!"
A simple statement. "I can't."
Rainbow stared at her. "Why?"
"They're thaumavores -- Rainbow?"
The reply was somewhat muffled. "What?"
"Why did you just dive under my desk?"
The next words were even more indistinct, as the pony speaking them was trying to curl up into a configuration where all of the smaller parts were blocked off. "You said vore. I know that's bad."
Twilight sighed. "'Vore' just means what something eats --"
"-- I know! That's the bad part!"
"-- and... look, just watch..."
Rainbow forced her head out from under the desk, just in time to see Twilight launch a small burst of slow-moving magic at the nearest biped.
He turned, sniffing at the air. Brought up his arms, caught the hue, and pushed it into his mouth.
"Thank you, lass!" he called back. "Truly, ye're a wonderful hostess!" Burped. "A little spicy, though." And went back to gazing at pictures.
"'Thaumavore'," Twilight quietly said, turning back to face Rainbow, "means they eat magic. A shield spell would be like trying to lock Pinkie in a gingerbread jail."
"...oh." Rainbow slowly worked her way out from under the desk, shaking her right wing to get rid of the shed quill pieces which had migrated with her. "Twilight..."
She hesitated, and knew the librarian had felt it: curious eyes immediately went to Rainbow's face. Twilight had become rather good at picking up on certain emotional cues, and this was one of those times when that felt like a bad thing.
"...I have to get them out," Rainbow softly finished. "I have to get them away from me." With increasing desperation, forced out by steady internal pressure, "They can't be near me today. Not today..."
And it brought out the natural question. "What's so special about today?" Twilight's head tilted slightly to the right, all the better to aim a little field bubble at the biped who was waving for both attention and a second serving. "I know you took today off as a personal day, and the rest of the weather team is covering for you. But the Wonderbolts aren't in the area, none of your favorite musicians are in Canterlot, I'm not aware of any special events..."
I don't have to tell her everything.
"It's... Warding Day." And knew Twilight wouldn't be content to leave it at that, because there were times when telling her anything was too much.
"What's that?" With a little frown, "Is it a holiday? One that's only celebrated in Cloudsdale and the other pegasus settlements? Because I've never heard of it."
Amazingly, there were times when being the most right pony about everything in the history of ever wasn't a comfort. "It's... not one set day each year. Every pegasus does it by themselves, when it's the right time." Please, please let this be enough for her... "And that time is... different for everypony. It's kind of a ritual. You -- get some things, and you work them into the walls of your home. It's supposed to ward off misfortune. But it's also... really private. I do it by myself." Several kinds of urgency were rising. "I can't do it while they're here. Not when they're following me. I have to do it today and I don't know how long I can keep from doing it. We have to get rid of them fast."
Twilight was just looking at her. Simply... looking.
"Warding Day."
"Yeah."
"It's a different day for every pegasus?"
Rainbow had to think about that one. "There's more pegasi in the world than there are days of the year. So I'm probably sharing this with somepony. Lots of someponies."
"How do you know when it's the right time?"
Stop, Twilight, please stop...
"Your -- body tells you. Okay?"
And the little librarian blinked.
"Oh..."
Rainbow winced. "Yeah."
"You're about to molt!" Twilight softly exclaimed. "You're going to lose some feathers and work them into the walls of your house! And you don't want them around when it happens!"
...close enough. "But I don't have a pot of gold. I've got a few bits until my next pay voucher comes in, but it's sure not enough for a pot. And I sure can't make one. So you've got to talk to them some more for me. Find out if there's anything else which would make them leave. I don't have that much time..."
Which was when one of the little green-jacketed men very loudly put his book down.
The little slamming sound got the mares' attention, and they looked over to see him sitting perfectly still. Nothing about him moved except his hands. They were clenching, over and over.
"It's been too long," he half-whispered. "Too long. I've gotta do it. I've got to..."
More books were dropped.
"Me too," another said. "The urge... it's risin'. Can't stay here..."
And before the ponies could react, Darby nodded.
"I'm good for a while," he said. "Y'can --" stopped. "Actually... nah. I ain't all good. Remember how much it took before this started to feel like a great idea?" Several bipeds nodded. "I think I'd better go find enough to make it keep feeling that way. You go take care of yourselves, I'll go take care of me, and we'll get t'gether at the end of the rainbow." He glanced at the pegasus. "Because we're still dealin' for that pot, lass. Don't forget that!"
Twilight was just starting to move forward. "Where are you --?"
Six green streaks moved in multiple directions. Books fells. Windows opened. Doors slammed. Gone.
Twilight's first reaction was to look towards Rainbow, leaving the fallen tomes where they were, and Rainbow briefly felt proud of her friend.
"Can you do it now? While they're gone?"
Her body shouted, and it took so much to keep listening to the world outside.
"Not when they could come back at any minute." She blinked. "And now they're running around Ponyville..."
Twilight groaned. "What would happen if they ran across somepony else? Another pegasus on their own Warding Day?"
Maybe they would switch targets. Leave me alone. But there weren't that many pegasi in Ponyville. There might not be anypony locally who shared her day, and even if there was... the bipeds might not stop at one pot. Still...
Switch targets...
No. There were other pegasi in the settled zone, but she was the only prismatic. No other tails were suitable.
"They'd probably still come back to me," Rainbow decided. "But we've gotta find where they went! We don't know what they're doing out there!" Fortunately, she already had the words which would get Twilight moving. "And when they eat magic..."
"Right!" Twilight declared. "I think I know where the leader is!" Paused. "Well -- I know where he probably is, within a fairly limited range of possibilities! Let's get out there! I just need to grab a couple of things first!"
"Got it!"
Twilight started to rush past Rainbow -- and then hard-learned social mores made her pause.
"You smell nice today."
No answer.
"Kind of... sweet?"
Dead silence, and Twilight hadn't learned enough to recognize that it was the sort of death which wouldn't mind company.
"Sort of like --"
"Can we just go?"
It could have been called a desperate search racing through the town. It also could have been called completely routine. The fact that they actually had a routine for conducting a desperate search of Ponyville said something about Bearer life, and Rainbow wasn't entirely sure what it was.
As always, the two mares looked at the other residents as they galloped and flew down the streets (with Rainbow feeling her usual frustration about having to go so slowly in order to let Twilight keep up), looking for signs of panic: there was no surer indicator for This Way To Disaster than a fainted Flower Trio having fallen into the rough shape of an arrow. But the citizenry seemed calm, with the only source of concern coming from seeing two rather worried Bearers on the move at not-high-enough speed. Whatever the bipeds were doing, they were doing it out of sight from the masses. At least one of them would have to do so fairly quickly, because Twilight had a very good idea of where Darby was.
So naturally, they found the others first.
"A moment of your time, please."
The uniquely-accented words had been calm. Far too calm, and it was that self-imposed state of I Will Have This Dealt With Or There Will Be A Death (Please Note That I Did Not Claim Said Death Will Be Mine) which made them stop, legs and wings shuddering to a complete halt mere body lengths away from the Carousel Boutique.
"Rarity --" Twilight quickly began.
"-- this may not take long," the remarkably calm mare said. "I can see that you are looking for a problem. I suspect that I am currently hosting a portion of it." Neither eye twitched. The false lashes steadfastly remained exactly where they were supposed to be and somehow, that felt like the worst thing. "Please... come inside."
She curled her tail: a signal to follow. They did, and a curious tapping sound led the way.
Five of the bipeds were sitting on the floor of the customer-free Boutique. They were all hunched low over tiny workstations, using strange tools on a material Rainbow couldn't identify. They seemed content.
"A short time ago," Rarity softly told them. staring forward in concert as she stood between the other two mares, "these gentlemen -- I believe I am safe in presuming they are male -- entered my shop, in some distress. A distress I recognized, as I have been among addicts before, and so can recognize when a sapient is well past due for their fix. And they were still in distress after coming inside, because we only share the most general category in common. Mine was the first place they encountered which might even be remotely suitable, and so they mostly stopped in the desperate hopes that I was simply hiding some of what they needed, and in hopes of directions if I did not."
Of the two with horns, Twilight was the one who lectured, and so it was often necessarily to cut her off in the name of getting everypony to the point all the faster. Rarity was as guilty of that as anypony in the group -- and simultaneously failed to recognize her own flaw.
"Rarity," Twilight quickly broke in, "what are they doing?"
"But I had some of what they needed," the designer calmly, almost mistily stated. "It was enough for them to stop. They brought most of their own tools, of course. And... materials. Yes, the acquisition of materials would be the ultimate issue."
"There's one more," Rainbow insisted. "We've got to find them all --"
"-- this," Rarity too-calmly said, "is a matter of some importance. Listen."
Twilight lectured, and so could be stopped. Rarity was their storyteller, and that was harder.
"One could argue that they would never locate a fully-suitable shop," Rarity softy went on. "Not in Ponyville. Perhaps not even in Equestria. But we had enough in common, and so they stopped. For they are shoemakers, every last one of them, shoemakers all. But while we have our boots and assorted coverings for our hooves, what we would consider as shoes are not how they think of them. Shoemakers who must make shoes, who are in fact addicted to it, in a nation where hardly anypony would use them. I saw their distress, one creator to another, and allowed them to stay."
She stepped forward, just enough to turn around and face them. There were more tapping sounds.
"In fact, after we had spoken for a time, in the name of cooling their fires... I allowed them to make shoes for me. But we think of shoes as metalwork. And they... do not."
The bipeds continued to work. Needles flashed, sunk into brown, came out the other side.
"They made me these," Rarity stated in that same horrible calm.
She raised her left forehoof, rotated the ankle to let them see the bottom of her hoof. Rainbow and Twilight mutually looked at the new shoe.
Then they kept looking.
"The results are," Rarity forced herself to softly continue, "surprisingly durable, given what they were made from. They are also -- although I feel my guests may not be entirely aware of this -- incredibly offensive. And I am dearly hoping that they brought all of their own materials with them, from a very great distance indeed, and that every last scrap came from willing posthumous donation. Because if they did not..."
"Rarity..." It was the half-swallow, half-gulp of a pony desperately fighting not to be sick, and Twilight didn't sound like she was winning the battle. "Please... please put your hoof down. Please..."
The designer glanced down at her own hoof. Brought too-calm eyes back up.
"So I will keep them here, as long as I can," she finished. "I suspect they will be happy to stay. But as I will be quite busy with that, I would appreciate it..."
Another glance at the leather.
"...if somepony would go by the Acres and see if any of the bovine tenants are missing. Thank you ever so. And when whatever this is finally comes to its conclusion, please return and get these corpses off my hooves."
When they entered the first -- and as it turned out, correct -- guess on Twilight's short list, Rainbow realized that she hadn't been provided with complete gastronomical information during her time at the library. She had been told what the bipeds ate: magic. But to explain what a creature ate was allow the listener a chance at falsely incorporating their own guess at a second category...
"Another!"
"There isn't any more!"
It was always a little dark inside The Whole Bunch: it was as if nopony truly wanted to be seen there and the building was doing its best to cooperate. Rainbow's rare visits always found her squinting, mostly in an attempt to figure out exactly what she was being served: given the bartender, it was probably going to be good and also given the pony who was doing the serving, you would only be told what had gone into it after it was far too late. That party was of the opinion that just about anything could be fermented, and Rainbow had ultimately drawn the line at cucumbers.
There were ponies in the building, even at that early hour: nopony was entirely sure when (or if) the place closed, and most of the regulars didn't have much of a grasp on time any more. But none of them were consuming the contents of mugs. They would have needed mugs. And contents.
"Surely ye've got a little bit tucked away for yourself, priestess?"
"...what's a priestess? I'm a bartender! And my personal stock is -- look, it's gone! You've taken it all! Every last drop! You crawled into the casks and licked the interiors!"
"Not my fault --" hiccup "-- that you're just that good." Darby happily smiled. "It's that magic picture on your hips, is it? Startin' to understand how that might work. Lovely bit of magic, that..."
Berry Punch planted her forehooves on the bar's main counter, openly fuming. (There might have even been steam coming off her fur, but it was hard to make out within the haze of other fumes.) The regulars simply stared, trying to reconcile themselves to one of two horrible possibilities: a life without alcohol or the effort required to go somewhere else.
To ask what a creature ate was to neglect the question of what it drank. And Rainbow, staring at the hundreds of empty bottles arranged on the shelves behind Berry's head, learned the answer: they drank everything. There was a century-old container of yak vodka which nopony had ever asked for because ponies generally didn't want to die, and there was also a distinct set of handprints worked into the dust around the bottle's neck.
"Pay up," Berry insisted, for she could only be stunned by strangeness in situations where alcohol wasn't involved. "I never let anypony run up a tab that high, no matter who or what they are, and you only got away with it because you were going too fast for me to stop you. Pay me right now or I'm calling the police. And you're not even big enough to be carrying enough money for it, so unless you've got a letter of credit on you or a world-class voucher --"
Darby, standing on the bar itself, swaying like a metronome between two tongue-polished mugs, was still smiling.
"Yes, priestess," he said. "I've taken my drink, and I wouldna want to give offense in a house of worship. This may take a bit, though."
"It'll take more than a bit," Berry muttered, with Rainbow and Twilight still approaching the counter. "Start paying."
The little biped reached under his hat, and a gold coin came out -- or rather, a disk: it was completely featureless, lacking in any and all engraving. It was also about as tall as he was.
"One," he said. "I'll keep 'em coming until you've got enough --"
But Berry was staring at the first one.
"-- this isn't money."
The biped, caught in reaching under his hat again, lowered his arm.
"It's gold," he said.
"It's not currency," she shot back. "It's not Equestrian: there's no picture of the Princess. There's nothing here which says it's currency from any nation, not that most of the others use gold. It's just gold by itself, backed by nothing. How is this supposed to be payment?"
He blinked.
"It's gold," he repeated through a fresh haze: that of light stun. "Gold is payment by itself. Gold is..." A deep breath, and then the hat came down, was placed over his chest before he reverently finished with "...everything."
"Gold," Berry countered, "is nothing more than something to mint money on. Gold by itself is --" and even Rainbow felt the danger "-- worthless."
The biped jammed his hat back on. Took one small, precise-but-for-the-weaving step forward.
"Lassie," he slowly said, "yer a fine priestess. The best I've ever seen with hooves, even if that still figures for your being the only one. But... do I walk into your house of worship and say somethin' blasphemous towards your religion?"
Berry stared at him.
"What's a religion?"
Which was when Rainbow and Twilight finally reached the bar.
"Darby," Twilight tried, "we have to get back to the -- negotiations, remember? For the deal..."
"Whatever this thing is dealing on with you," Berry quickly cut in, "I'd better get paid first. You may not know just how much of a tab he just drank up, especially since you're never in here. I do, Twilight, down to the tenth-bit, and that coin isn't a bit. It isn't anything. He just drank me out of bar and stock, I don't know how he's holding it all, I don't know how he's still alive, and I do know that if he doesn't pay me --"
"-- so y'really are all out, then," Darby checked.
"YES!"
"Huh. Well, me mates are probably getting thirsty at their work," the biped decided. "Guess I'll have to show them the next-best bar in town. Settle up with ye later, priestess!"
The earth pony lunged, and did so just a little too late: her hooves merely brushed against the back of the green jacket. Four seconds later, a door slammed, long before the regulars had stopped screaming about the sudden appearance of the hated light.
The bartender slowly focused on the Bearers.
"That was real, then." Half a question.
They nodded.
"I treat things as if they were real all the time," Berry told them. "Just in case. But this one actually was."
There didn't seem to be any real response to that.
Berry turned her head. Counting happened, and then she looked at them again.
"Somepony," she declared, "or someone, is paying for this --"
There was a scream. It came from, in Rainbow's best estimate, six shops down, and probably was the result of three casks already down, with an unknown number to go.
"Oh," Berry distantly said. "Rehoboam's place. Bet he hates the ale. Now about my money --"
"I'll write the palace," Twilight cut her off. "Berry, we've got to get back out there..."
"The palace," Berry repeated. "Fine. As long as it's here in a day or two, because I can't reorder stock without money. Go."
They went.
"You'll really write them?" Rainbow asked.
"Yes," Twilight sighed as sunlight (and screams) reached them again. "Under the usual disaster relief fund rules. I'm sure her regulars will say this qualifies -- oh, no..." Two green-jacketed streaks had just gone past them, into the same bar. "I guess making shoes is thirsty work."
Unlike Twilight, Rainbow drank. Not often: she didn't like the way it affected her flying. Every moon or two, during a night out, and unless it was Festival, never so much that somepony would need to take her home. She knew what her tolerances were, what her favorite vintage was, just when Happy Hour started, and the moment when somepony else's consumption would make it end. Rainbow understood drinking.
Which, trailing in the wake of the liquid carnage, was a little like standing in the middle of a summer breeze, declaring you understood wind, and having the world drop you into the middle of a hurricane.
Eventually, they got the bipeds back together in front of the library for a private negotiation, if you didn't include the ring of police officers and angry unexpectedly-sober citizenry watching from Twilight's shield-mandated distance. (Most of the watchers had already tried using magic, and so the well-fed bipeds had concluded they were in the most hospitable town ever seen.) Rainbow had noticed that none of the intruders had asked to use a restroom at any point, simultaneously hating and envying them for that.
"All done!" Darby declared. "Even settled up with the priestess!"
"That," Twilight tried, "will have to be paid for by --"
"I gave her a recipe," he grinned. "One she didn't have. Takes coffee for half of it, and that's all I'm sayin'. Good thing ye have coffee, even if I dinna understand what zebras have to do with it. She can handle the brewing for the rest. So me lads are at their best again, and I'm drunk enough to know I have the right idea about being here. So let's talk about the bringer." A nod to Rainbow. "You've got gold, because there's always gold at a rainbow's end. And we took your drink, and you caught me, so we've gotta deal. You could ask for just about anything, lass -- but what we want is the gold. So how do you want to settle this?"
A happy, saturated smile regarded Rainbow.
"Glad I thought of the brew," he said. "Credit to you, lass. Wouldn't have come to me if you didn't smell so sweet."
Several kinds of pressure surged.
"Twilight," Rainbow said through her clenched teeth, "can I talk to you? Alone. Over there. By the tree."
"...okay," the librarian agreed.
"We'll wait," Darby said. "We can wait a long time."
Rainbow led Twilight to the shield-distorted shade of the largest branch, then turned to face her.
"So here's my plan."
Twilight listened.
"You open the shield. Just at the top. A little hole, large enough for me to leave, and you keep that open. You tell them I went home to get the gold or something."
The librarian nodded.
"And then I come back in through the hole at my best speed, I set off the Rainboom just before I reach the ground, and we don't have any more problems. Or bipeds. And maybe the front edge of the library, but I'll fix that." Desperate eyes went up. "Ready when you are."
Nothing happened.
"This," Rainbow reminded her friend, "is when you open the hole."
"Rainbow..."
"This is like, five seconds past when you should have opened the hole. Fifteen. Twenty --"
"-- Rainbow -- there's some problems with that plan."
"Like what?"
"Well..." Carefully, "For starters... you're kind of talking about killing them."
Rainbow considered three things: the pressure which she hadn't been allowed to release, the fact that having a single one of Ponyville's drinking population on the jury would get her off, and a complete lack of caring. "So? You're not the one who had your day start with a giant goose! And --" because she was just that desperate "-- and it's Warding Day, Twilight, you don't understand, it's been hours and... I can't keep this up, I can't..."
"Also," Twilight cautiously continued, "they're... short. Really short. Even if this was a situation where killing was justified, and it isn't, not when we found out the tenants are all okay -- in order for this to work, using the Rainboom as a weapon -- you'd have to set it off when you were about twelve hoof-heights above the ground. That's too close, Rainbow. You wouldn't have enough room to pull out and send your momentum in another direction. You'd just -- crash. And at that speed, it would kill you."
Rainbow thought about that.
"What if you jump into me at the exact moment it goes off and teleported me back into the sky?" Which, she instantly realized, needed a little refinement. "Teleported us: I kind of forgot that you have to come with me. But don't worry: at the speed I'll be going, I won't have any problems with catching you --"
"-- and," Twilight interrupted, "the Rainboom is magic. I think... you'll mostly be giving them dessert."
Rainbow's hind legs twitched.
"I can't deal with this," she urgently whispered. "Not today, Twilight. Any other day, but not on Warding Day. I don't care what it takes. I just want them gone. Can't I just -- get gold from the palace to make them go away? We know they're a disaster!"
"It takes time to authorize the forms," Twilight reminded her. "Even if we went directly to the palace, that's time. You need this today."
I need this in the next thirty minutes. I can't hold out like this. Nopony ever waits like this on their Warding Day...
And now her tail was lashing. Her beautiful prismatic tail, the only tail of that type in all of Ponyville. Prismatics were rare: not as scarce as metallics, but scarce enough. Rainbow was proud of her mane and tail, and now both had betrayed her.
I should probably be glad they decided it was my tail. If it was the end of my mane, they might be trying to crawl down my neck. Not that trying to go up my prism-carrying b --
"Rainbow? You look like you just thought of something..."
She nodded, barely registering her own movement through the forever-building pressure and sudden sense of dazzle.
"I," Rainbow stated, "am a genius." And she meant it.
That made Twilight blink, and Rainbow patiently waited for the rest of the reaction.
Several seconds later, she got an "...um... Rainbow, I -- um... what did you think of?"
"Stay here," Rainbow confidently instructed her, and trotted towards the bipeds.
She went down to all four knees, the better to speak with Darby eye to eye, and she told him exactly what he wanted to hear.
He nodded.
He nodded. And just like that, Rainbow had won.
"Open the shield at the base," she called back to Twilight, ignoring the increasing rumble coming from the citizens. "Just enough for them to get out. Because they're leaving."
Twilight, looking utterly confused, did it. Six green-jacketed streaks moved in the same direction. And then the bipeds were gone.
Rainbow trotted back to the shade.
"Now the top," she said. "For me."
Time passed.
"Right now would be good," Rainbow added. "When I asked would have been better."
"Rainbow -- what did you say?"
Oh, right: even with that horrible pressure inside, there was always time for applause. "They think there's always a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow! I'm the only prismatic in town, so I couldn't pass this off to anypony else. And I'm good enough to set up a weather bow by myself, but I'd have to do here and they'd see there wasn't anything there: I might get them to hunt for a while, but then they'd just come back. I needed to get them to leave, Twilight, at least long enough for the palace to send some blank gold! So I sent them to where they could look for days, just because there's so many places for them to search..."
She beamed with open pride, and all of it was in herself.
"They're going to the Rainbow Factory," she smiled. "Because they were drunk enough to understand it was a really good idea. Shield hole, please."
She looked up, waiting: she only needed to hear the applause.
Nothing happened.
She's just not stomping because she didn't think of it. "I said, shield hole, please --"
"-- the Factory." It had been a rather stark pair of words.
"Yeah. You remember the --"
"-- Rainbow... do you know how many bars are in that area, for the ponies getting off-shift? How many places they might empty out? The relief fund is low enough just from what happens normally, and now you've just put a multiplier on what I already had to ask the palace to pay, forget about the amount for making them leave you alone! We can't just keep kicking money at problems! You made things worse, and that's if there isn't any damage to the Factory itself, plus that whole area doesn't know they're coming, any more than we did! You made things worse, and we have to find which kids Spike went to play with, send off a scroll and warn --"
And that was when all of it, pushing from outside and in, especially in, became too much to bear.
"-- it's Warding Day! You don't understand, you don't know what it's like, I can't hold this off any longer, you can criticize and lecture and everything else and nothing changes the fact that it's Warding Day and I'm hours overdue! I don't care, Twilight, I don't care about anything except getting it over with, and I can't care until it's done! Please, if you're my friend, if you're really my friend at all, open the shield! Let me out! Lecture me after! PLEASE!"
(She had just openly, loudly begged. She had also done so in front of a significant fraction of the town, but some of those were pegasi and so they would understand.)
The unicorn, startled, scared, things Rainbow would have to apologize for later, took three frantic short breaths. Looked up. The shield opened.
Rainbow gained altitude faster than she ever had in her life, and streaked away.
Home. A biped-free home, and that was the only thing that mattered. The thing about consequences was that they were something for later, while what Rainbow had to do was an activity which should have taken place well before now. She would care later, for those things which were worth caring about. But now...
She rushed into the bathroom, nearly went for the trench on sheer habit. Stopped, forced her trembling body to realign.
There were pegasi who looked forward to this, to what Rainbow could only see as betrayal coming from her own body, and so she could also only see that attitude as sickness. She loathed Warding Day. But some instincts could not be driven away, only postponed, and that which came from deep inside would have its say.
Rainbow centered herself, made sure she was exactly above the ceremonial bowl, and let the horrible pressure go.
There was a smell. She'd opened the windows to vent the early stages of that smell, the more subtle portions which wafted from her very fur. This was a hundred times worse, and she gagged several times before it was done -- but finally, it was done, at least for the first stage.
Rainbow staggered away from the bowl. Made it to the sink, splashed cold water into her snout until her eyes finally uncrossed and the smell started to go away. Warding Day was stupid. It was a personal horror. But in order to keep misfortune away, something a Bearer needed more than anypony, it had to be done --
-- and the chirping reached her. An eager sound, conducted in chorus, from far too close.
Stupid birds! Of course they'd been attracted by the stronger scent, and she'd left the bathroom windows open to vent some of it! They'd tracked it to the source!
She started by shooing the warblers away from the bowl, and quickly escalated that to a chase around the bathroom until she finally had them out the window with a final scream of directions to Fluttershy's and an order to leave Rainbow alone. And then she made her way back to check the contents, making sure they hadn't gotten anything.
They hadn't. The bowl was still near-overflowing with the horrible, disgusting, sickly-sweet red balloons, green clovers, yellow diamonds, and blue horseshoes.
Rainbow sighed with relief.
"Always after me lucky charms," she muttered in the infectious cadence of the bipeds, and got to work.
