An Occasion for Altercation
"Ohh yes yes yes," Berry Punch replied.
"Here? You mean here? Here, at the Grand Galloping Gala?" the poor bright brown stallion stammered.
The plump-cheeked mare with the light plum wine coat eyed her quarry carefully, then nodded in silence. She had plans for the colt--probably big plans, all things considered. She didn't take gently to romantic considerations, after all. She just wasn't that sort of creature. She saw what she wanted, and she made it happen.
And this fellow--what was his name? Caribou? Caramel? Carrageenan? Oh, what would it matter in the end to Berry? He'd just gotten done pulling a cart for a few overexcited single mares from nearby Ponyville, but he would no doubt be truly tuckered out if the lady with the bright burgundy mane had her way.
"Now I know you may get to thinkin', 'oh, well what's to do with everypony watchin', everypony lookin' on and such, how's she gonna get a fresh minute to 'erself,' " Berry went on. "Naw, naw, I always find a quiet place. So if you wanna have some fun and--ah come on, I know ya do, don't be lyin' to me now"--she practically breathed these last few words as she gently scritched Cara-whatshisname on the back of the chin and along the cheekbone--"this girl can make it happen. No doubt. Not a doubt in the world."
The fellow with the three-horseshoes cutie mark didn't quite know how to compose himself at that very moment. He was going to have quite some trouble with that big and beautiful pony. He may have thought himself a true stallion--a cut above the rest, a credit to the Earth pony race, a hardy worker and hearty lover--but nothing quite prepared him for sudden courtship with the five-time (and not stopping anytime soon) winner of the Sisterhooves Social.
Berry eyed the target of her present affection with gentle contentment, clearly pleased at his submission. She spoke as if she were not so satisfied, but this would be clearly seen as an act to any outsider. "Oh come now, you won't pick up your back a little? Just try to say somethin' to me, why don'tcha."
The fellow seemed to shrink in a way, nearly unable to respond to the lady's powerful presence. "Uh-uh--I..."
Berry clearly wanted to roll her eyes at his lack of resolve, but she didn't dwell on the moment with any more than a quiet sigh. Instead, she thought carefully and attuned to her surroundings, as if in a mild trance. Carefully, ever so carefully, she considered her surroundings--the concession stands, the schmoozing socialites, the light presence of guards (all grounded), the garden path...the rather large and conspicuously unpopulated hedge maze...
"Ha-haa!" The lady's ears twitched, and she perked up with delight. "You hear that too, right? Don't tell me ya don't hear... You just need a chance to lighten your load. And I"--she perked up her head toward the Canterlot Castle entrance, away from the courtyard crowd--"just found"--her grin tightened and her face gained a faint rosy tinge--"our ticket!"
With this she strode off, mindfully kicking up the back of her lustrous grape dress, flashing glimpses of her generous derrière to all who might follow.
And the Cara-guy followed.
Once inside the grand castle's confines, any pony could easily hear what the more observant mare picked up at a distance: music! And Berry wasted no time in taking the sop of a stallion right onto the floor, enjoining him with her swift and passionate grace: a deeply motivated, thrilling variation of that time-honoured tradition of waltz. She danced to the refined motions of the occasion as if the vulgar and visceral beauty of the tango or lambada were on her mind instead. And for a moment, she practically dragged her partner through the motions. But Berry's magical power did not lay merely in seduction, as he soon understood.
Thirty seconds, sixty seconds, ninety...gradually, Cara-something's body started to respond. He soon found that he wanted to be a part of this party. How crazy, he thought of the version of himself that sheepishly attended this gala. How insane that you would just look for an okay time. How could I not hope to enter such a sweet embrace!? What a fool! Of course this is what I really wanted...I was just too timid, too afraid to ask, too embarrassed to admit it to myself!
He dared to learn. As their forehooves held a tight grip, Berry whipped him from one angle to another, snapping him to where he needed to be--but as he awoke to the occasion, he started to pull a little as well. He brought one foreleg to the classical waltzing brace, elbow out and hoof near to Berry's shoulder--and Berry mirrored it naturally. Where Berry first took two strong steps to sling him outward to where she would step next, the stallion gradually understood the greater intention. With the start of each musical metre, he understood to motion outside of that rude circle they stepped, sidestepping this way or that and bringing fresh air to the pattern; the lady followed suit effortlessly, clearly acknowledging his proper initiative. Once or twice he even released a forehoof to allow her to twirl--and twirl she did, kicking up a very full and floofy tail as she spun. And as Berry's charismatic spell worked within his bones, her dull grin brightened to a shine.
Then sometime into this intoxicating affair--two waltzes or three, perhaps?--Caramel remembered who he was, and he remembered that this wasn't who he was, and he started to panic.
"Ah--no, no! Ahh!" He practically shook his hooves out of formation, acting fearful of his dancing partner and of everything around him--as if he had snapped out of sleepwalking, long gone out of bed and clear into a social gathering without a clue.
Caramel took a few breaths outside of the proximity of the clearly unimpressed Berry Punch. He hastily tried to recompose himself, and then he addressed her sharply. "I don't know if this is your idea of a game, ma'am. But if you thought so...then you ought to have another think coming!"
But in a moment, Berry caught her open jaw and affronted expression. She spun it all around, as even her own dance floor presence was but a pawn in her eyes. Berry could roll with anything, and she could make anything work--or so she steadfastly believed. "Aw, but thinkin's just for stinkin'! You'd be best off not buckin' on this ride of mine...and c'mon, innit so much fun?" And she bumped him in the rump, moving in time with the beat, prodding him into the dance routine again as she grasped his hooves with a hidden fearsome strength.
Just as the care-swept stallion jostled back into the dance, the live music dipped into a more exotic and metropolitan air. Berry smiled with devilish glee, such that the tip of her muzzle seemed to perk up--like she had called the tricky tune. For all the poorly self-asserted boy could care, Berry controlled the night itself--and the night was far from over. Half the crowd sidled to the sidelines, unsure how to step to this cadence--but Berry stayed in the spotlight. By her lead, they maintained that play of fretful energy, hoof in hoof, stride by stride, a pair of sweeping tails and one rambunctious dress--and though Caramel never returned to contentment, he was compelled not to ruin the affair outright, jolted into each grand motion as the musical energy increased and left restless as the duo pulled close to nearly nuzzle during the lulls.
As the long and adventurous melody progressed, the duo moved in ever less harmony. Caramel paid sharp attention to Berry's every movement, every eccentric swing of the torso, every dip to all-fours, every exaggerated sidestep, every grand forehoof gesture to the crowd--but his studies were for a sinister end. Once in a while, when they parted for four or eight measures of question-answer performance (which Berry always led), he would not play into the improvisational game but instead parroted her own movement back at her--with eyes drawn hard and mouth not parted even a hair's breadth. He shot back what she gave him with rude snaps and twitches, staying professional and still keeping the gracious attention the lookers-on while showing no grace at all toward his captor.
And Berry loved every minute of it--with ears fully perked, limbs never tiring, a throat full of titters and throaty chuckles, and eyes that never left their target. In fact, she couldn't imagine not loving it.
Yet Caramel found a way to break the spell.
In the two-party bustle, the stallion unconsciously found a way to cause a commotion--an excuse, a way out, an escape from madness. He rump-bumped with the idling blue unicorn who hadn't quite made her way into the pack of wallflowers. And that unicorn was utterly unprepared for it. She went flying, quickly sputtering her hooves to keep from tumbling flat onto her face. But it wasn't quite enough.
CRASH.
Berry Punch fell still. Her sassy self-possession evaporated. She stood between them--an eye laid upon each, with one of them twitching. Her mouth hung open, aghast at what had just transpired. To look into her soul just then would be to witness the slow bubbling of a previously unknown tension--a danger now brought to the burner, any minute coming to full boil.
But she kept generous and gentle, if only for a second. She turned first to the fallen mare, not quickly but certainly with enough attention.
"Oh Minnie girl, you alright now? Talk to me, girl." She held out a hoof for the flattened unicorn, and the unicorn pulled herself up without showing much harm done.
"Minnie" responded rather too knowingly for such an accidental occasion. "Oh, I know what you're going to say: 'Berry, why do we even bother with these guys?' 'Berry, what's the point of playing the game if they're always going to bail like this?' 'Berry, I--I--I don't even think he is that good looking or whatever, let's--let's just get home and call it a night.' " She paused, possibly awaiting a response.
When one didn't come, she continued more curtly. "You could try to have a heart for once...a-and not just for me...you know?"
Meanwhile, Caramel's smartness evaporated. He once again carried that bumbling buffoon's air, that of the very sort of unassuming colt who had shown up to the gala in the first place--only now looking for every excuse to politely bow out of it. Caught up in this, he hadn't quite caught on to the other two knowing one another as well as they did.
"I-I'm so sorry! Really, truly! This is all just so terrible--I should just--" He motioned from one mare to the other frantically. "Oh, I'm sorry for you too! I really should just be going now--"
"I don't think so." The berry-marked mare wasn't releasing tonight's catch that easily.
Caramel was caught even further off-guard by this adjustment. His response had no strength to it. "I-I don't know what you're talking about. This wa-was, I-I mean I just wanted to mi-mingle--I mean, I'm not even a dancer, what am I--what am I even doing here? This is all just--yeah, you know, it's just a big mistake, you know? Haha--I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
FWWWIP. TUMBLE.
While Berry may have swept Caramel off his feet before with her commanding presence, this time she preferred a quick swing of the hindhoof. With military efficiency, that hoof spun through all of his like a hot knife through butter, snapping up at the end so her dress continued to cling to her and not to the rapidly crumpling mess of limbs in front of her.
Several ponies at the edge of the fray gasped and raised hooves to their mouths; but the unorthodox music continued, and other lively ponies found their flavor of dance in the space around them, each lost in their own moment.
"Yeah, don't think I don't buckin' get what you're implyin'." Berry's eyebrow raised moodily. Before continuing toward the heap of Caramel she'd left on the floor, she muttered to her blue unicorn friend, " 'Ey, wine me if ya could, dear."
As she trotted up to tower over the fallen coward, she took grip of a freshly procured glass of a vintage Neighpa Valley Pinot Noir, one of a few uncorked just for this gala. She took a small sip and then promptly spit it upon the colt. The words she spit also carried a rural sort of accent she had hidden up to this point. "Get up all in the motions, have some fun--then you buckin' wanna chicken out. Nothin' I ever saw before, that's for sure." She chuckled at her own cold sarcasm, then she took a sip for herself. "You come to hang out with the big girls, now, so what do you expect? Boys these days aren't worth the spit on mah shoes. I don't even wanna hear it. You're disgusting! You're nothin' but chum! Oh, how I wish I'd never seen ya!"
Then a thought struck Caramel, hard, as if delivered from the back of the head. For an instant, his ego stepped aside, and he perceived the wisdom of Berry's sentiment directly. I am just a player in this game, a meek actor in a world that doesn't particularly need me. I have been given a chance to step up--to have fun, to get close to somepony who sees the bigger picture. If I hadn't so utterly failed to appreciate that in my callow fear--if I had the inner strength to let go of my inhibitions and embrace the winds of tomorrow--I could become a greater pony than anything I had ever known. And maybe, just maybe, in seeing this now, it isn't too late...
He chose to express this dire revelation with a most abject groveling. At least it had more force behind it than his previous sputters, though. "No, no! I'm sorry that I didn't understand! This isn't just a fling, this isn't just a chance to--to get lucky or whatever! You want to make me better! You want to make me whole! You've decided to take it upon me to make a special bond with somepony! And you just want to do this and I don't know why, but you chose me, and I'm so, so sorry about before! But I understand now! Please forgive me!"
But Berry wasn't looking at Caramel at all. She was swirling the glass vigorously, pretending with her scorn to be captured by foalish joy in watching liquid wash and splash around. She smiled momentarily as she stared into the wine--admiring the bubbles and the chemical glee they could induce, if only she were to swallow them...
But then she stopped without another sip, and the wine settled down. Yet one could practically hear the contempt percolating behind her deadpan expression. Instead of further bullying, however, Berry held a mysterious reservation.
"Why?"
"U-uh..." The poor stallion hadn't fully thought through the response to his own personal revelation.
"Why should I give you the time of day? It's not really like I got forever left myself...heheh..." The harsh mare turned from her words to her wine again for a minute, this time taking a rather big sip. "Look all around ya, ya find these guys and gals? Look at 'em. They wanna have a good time. All of 'em." She watched carefully as the target of her ire did this. "You think they all just get out and do this every day? Bet half of 'em, this is the only time all year they get their butts up half the courage. T'you, it's just 'nother..." The wine tickled through Berry's brain. "...'s just a waste. Like why? Oh my--like, come on."
She sputtered like this for several beats before getting on with it, growing more boisterous and using her hoof for crude self-expression as she continued.
"...Just...My gosh! Y'waste everyone's time like this! S'enough to bring a pony to tears, you know! Then y'wanna think about standin' up tall, sayin', 'Oh not me, I got it all figgered out.' " She took another aggressive drink, nearly coughing with the next words. "Fine. Prove it. Y'think it's all so simple an' all? Buckin'..." She shook her hoof at his face with the grossest accusation. "Y'know that's how wars start!" She propped up the argument with a couple silly voices--one high and one deep. " 'I know what's best, now if y'only let me tell it to yer frien's this way 'nstead o' that, maybe it'd be such a nice day an' all I wouldn' have to gouge yer eyes out an' such.' 'Ohhh nooo, you gotta know for sure I ain't forgot how you'd done me like that. Today's fine, yeah, but what about th' next? I can't be havin' that! I gotta protec' m'self from your kind 'o scum.' That's you. Slimy little scum."
The so-declared scum almost shivered in misery at the judgment, ears and eyelids wilted.
Berry motioned to the blue unicorn a pace or two behind her and to the side, who looked on quietly. "She got it right the first time. She knows time ain't a think y'can waste. She knows life's a thing you gotta ride like the--like the--hehe, aww..." She looked around quickly and decided against the colourful turn of phrase she must have had in mind.
With that, she also calmed somewhat, backing down. "...Look, ya say you do, and maybe I wanna believe ya. But it don't matter if ya don't do it. You got it all in ya, so that's what you're gonna tell me? Great! Then you don't need me! Hear what I'm sayin'?! Pull another girl off 'er seat, pull another guy up, give 'em yer little heaven. Give 'em the time you wanted to have all along. Give 'em what I was just givin' you. An' then ya give 'em a little more than that. Ehehe..." Her thoughts wandered again to the prurient. "Me though? Well...one day I thought I'd just about had it, then a girl gave it to me just's hard as I gave it to her. Was it ten? Honey girl, was it ten?"
She looked back with her eyes toward her friend, who appeared unsure herself--though she smiled and giggled at the attention.
"Let's say it was ten years, nice round number. Right here, jus' like this. Ten years ago. An' ever since, it's been nothin' but magic. An' look, we got our baby girl, smart as a whip she is, and we--aw well, you don't buckin' care about that, now."
She thumped her chest with pride, though also as if she were letting out a burp. "But I care. Got it? I care about somethin'. Now how 'bout you go find somepony to care about an' take that li'l light you got turned on there upstairs an'..." She coughed, losing her train of thought with it. "Find yourself someone worth carin' about. Then ya come back to me, ya come find me and we'll catch up over it. An' I'll buy you one for the spot o' trouble I might'a caused you just now."
With the last words, she slipped with a sultry shimmer toward the door, wineglass still in hoof, a sashay of satin and silk and soft tush with every step.
Given the ruckus and/or fracas she had just caused, Berry elected to stay out of the centre of attention for the night, allowing other, supposedly more cultured ponies their chance to frolic and fraternise.
The blue unicorn strode beside her, nearly bracing against the palisade that confined the inner courtyard and the fancy crowd from the hedge mazes and beyond.
"So, you're just going to leave him like that?" Minuette finally asked, rather incredulous but otherwise in good spirits.
Berry wondered with rosy cheeks whether he was still lying in a sorry heap on the dance floor, staring up to nopony. "Why not? You know I don't mess around. Who's even got the time?" She gave an affectionate flank-to-flank nudge to her partner and her cutie mark--coincidentally, the mark of the running hourglass.
"But that was our--" Minuette clenched her teeth nervously and breathed out her thought. "You know, our partner."
Berry suddenly smacked of an uncharacteristic coyness. "Oh girl! You got me all wrong! I'm totally innocent. Honestly...you think I'd...?"
And the two of them laughed out loud with the merry mirth of two partners in crime, joined at the hip.
"Naw, don't you worry. Somepony better'll turn up. Always happens, don't you worry 'bout it. This girl always finds the right kind o' trouble."
Minuette gently sighed anyway--wistful at the endless possibilities she had imagined. That Caramel fellow seemed almost a natural for dancing, not too slow-witted for his own sake, good at following instructions, and not to mention quite soft on the eyes...
Berry picked up on her soulmate's thoughts silently--like picking grapes from the vine. "An' yeah, I know...it only takes two to tango. But it's gotta be four for bridge night--our darlin' daughter Ruby can't play a team by 'erself. Don't worry sugar lump, we got a lot o' road ahead, an' we can just do gin rummy fer now. Rummy...heh..." She gulps down her wineglass in one go, then tosses it casually over her shoulder and onto the field. "Jus' keep on walkin' with me..."
Author's Note
There's an extra surprise for BPR... Humble as they are, they underestimated just how much I value their work and draw inspiration from it--not to mention how similar our visions of our favo(u)rite mare really were all along. So despite the huge effort I've put into my own characters' backstories for future writing and the one-off nature of this...I'm making it canon to my world as well! 
(Those of you who have read This Is Your Story! might wonder how this is possible. And that's fine--keep wondering... The sequel is around the corner.)
