Flim and Flam Save an Orphanage

Chapters

Flim and Flam
Flim, Flam, and Trixie
Flim, Flam, Trixie, and a New-Found Passion
Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, and Iron Will
Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, and Lyra and Bon-Bon
Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, Lyra, Bon-Bon, and Octavia
Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, Lyra, Bon-Bon, Octavia, and Vinyl Scratch's Sound System
Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, Lyra, Bon-Bon, Octavia, Vinyl Scratch's Sound System, and Some OC Attorney
Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, Lyra, Bon-Bon, Octavia, Vinyl Scratch's Sound System, Some OC Attorney, and Fancypants' Money...
...Save an Orphanage (Epilogue)
Flim and Flam, but Not Trixie ("Bonus" "Chapter")

Flim and Flam

The first rays of sunshine crept across the plains, casting natural light through the barred windows of the Chihocko dungeon.

Two pegasus guards, dark in coat, trotted quickly through the stone corridors of the dungeon.

“Last one, then we’re off shift.”

They stopped in front of one cell, where its single occupant – a tall unicorn stallion with a pale olive coat and a two-toned mane that might remind a griffin or other carnivore of bacon – was snoring.

The preferentially-nocturnal guards frowned.

“You – wake up.”

Snoring persisted.

“I said, wake up!”

No effect.

One of the guards slammed his wing hard against the bars; the clanging filled the cell block.

“On your hooves, criminal scum! It’s time!”

Out of doors, in the cool moist dawn air, a contraption of magic and mechanization rumbled down the road outside the dungeon. Faded paint identified it as having been, once upon a time, the property of the ‘Mareland Night Guard’. Its unicorn operator, with a throw of a few levers, brought it to a halt, and with a magical glow shut off the motor.

“Prisoner FF-215-B, unicorn block. Paroled, time off for good behavior, eight months out of twenty-four.” The pegasus guard finished reading off the clipboard his compatriot was holding up for him. The unicorn prisoner stood unmoving.

“Need a moment.” The wiry green unicorn behind an iron mesh wall disappeared for a minute, reappearing with a cardboard box. An orange glow appeared around its contents, one at a time, lifting them into view, and describing them.

“One canister mane gel, Dapper Dun, full.”

“One - half-used.”

“One empty.”

“One bow tie, dark navy blue.”

“One shirt, cotton, short-sleeved, white.”

“One vest, silk, blue and white striped.”

“One hat, straw.”

A small sealed envelope was the last thing out of the box. “Twenty three bits and seven cent pieces. Make your mark here.”

The green unicorn presented a signature page to the prisoner. Looking for a quill, and seeing none, the prisoner raised his left fore hoof, spit on it, tapped it on the dirty floor, and, with a stamp, left his hoofprint on the document.

Celestia’s ward rose in shining glory through the eastern sky, lighting up the courtyard of the dungeon, not to mention the whole of the Chihocko plain, and the operator of the magitek contraption looked towards it, towards the entrance of the dungeon, to see the gates open wide and a single unicorn trot out. The vehicle’s operator disembarked, meeting the former prisoner in the middle of the road.

Wearing identical hats, vests, and bow ties, they regarded each other, distinguishable only by their cutie marks and the presence of a mustache on the vehicle’s operator.

Each threw a foreleg over the other.

“Flim.” The operator patted his brother’s back.

“Flam.” The prisoner returned the favor for his brother.

The two boarded the vehicle that Flam had driven to the dungeon – Flim regarding it with a raised eyebrow – and with a magic glow, the motor whirred right back to life, as if it had never been turned off. Two pushes of a lever sent the vehicle down the streets, driving west.

For quite a few minutes the two were in silence. Finally, Flim spoke.

“What’s this?”

“What’s what?” was the reply.

“This – contraption, this infernal contraption. Where’s the Cidermobile?”

“The what?”

“The Cidermobile – the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000!”

“Sold it.”

“Sold it to buy this?” Flim nearly spat.

“No – sold it to pay our restitution.”

“Sold it to – ” Flim thought for a moment. “Ah. You must’ve gotten a pretty good offer for it.”

Flam nodded.

“But still – what is this?”

“This?” Flam tapped the vehicle, as he turned onto one of the main highways of Equestria, a road actually paved – with stone fragments, not the cobblestone or bricks of a major city. “This, dear brother, was a positive steal. Prototype carriage for the province of Mareland, sold at auction after the Night Guards there standardized on a different model. Barely paid pennies on the bit for it.”

Flim snorted. “Utterly without class. The day of my release from incarceration, my own brother sees fit to meet me in a Night Guard carriage.”

The carriage pulled up next to a bridge over a wide, shallow canyon. Though the hour was still early, traffic was backed up at the bridge, where two mares pulling carts loaded with refuse appeared to have stopped to tell each other jokes.

Flam looked at Flim. “It isn’t to your standards?”

Flim thought for a moment on this. “No. Not in the least.”

Flam threw three levers on the carriage, and violently twisted the wheel of the helm. Within the bowels of the machine, turbines shrieked, and the carriage wheels spun sparks on the stone pavement for an instant or two before propelling the carriage forward. With one more twist of the wheel, Flam evaded a patient pair of oxen pulling an anchor-laden wagon; with a third twist, he wove the carriage through a laughing bachelor herd; with a fourth, he made an impromptu ramp out of the stone bridge’s guardrail, and made the carriage airborne.

The two trash-hauling mares looked up from their comedy routine to see the source of the sudden shadow, then followed it downwards to see the carriage slam onto the bridge in front of them, shoot up an instant’s more sparks, and streak off into the horizon.

Flim shrugged. “Acceptable acceleration and handling, I suppose.”

“Detrot motor, Stalliongrad frame, wheels made from Whitetail wood, whole thing’s built to Mareland specifications. Hybrid turbine will run equally well on unicorn magic or coal or both – with magic, it’ll even run fine on biomass. Manewell Daemon on the turbine means no heat or power loss when the contraption’s turned off and on, as long as we’re firing it up again with magic. C’mon, brother – is it the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000 or what?”

Flim tapped the side of the carriage. “Can’t see how - blasted thing doesn’t even make cider. Yet.”

Flam smiled.

A few long hours of driving later, the carriage pulled up in front of a small brick building at the outskirts of Canterlot. A stone sign on an arch over the doorway had once read ‘Clover Home for Orphaned Unicorns’, but long weathering and recent battle damage had reduced the legible portions to “love Home an d corn”.

Flim raised an eyebrow. “And we are here…why?”

“You promised Penny Wing you’d come by the day you were released.”

“Imagine I prevaricated to her.”

“You don’t prevaricate to Penny Wing.”

“Why not? That old nag does every time she says her name. She’s not even a pegasus.”

“Come on. We’ve got to go in and see Penny Wing.”

Flim rolled his eyes, but complied. The brothers stepped out of the carriage, and past a group of young unicorn foals bouncing a ball between them with magic. Slowly they entered the ancient building, and up a narrow staircase, coming to a door at the top.

“Who goes there?!”

The voice was – different – than the Penny Wing they recalled. They looked at each other, then announced themselves.

“Flim and Flam.”

A cobalt blue glow overtook the door, which opened. The brothers gasped to see, sitting at the desk of their old guardian, a tall, sapphire-blue coated, winged unicorn, with a blue mane flowing with the stars of the night sky.

“Your Highness – ”

“We’ll just be – ”

“Come inside, colts.” Princess Luna shuffled a few documents with her magic, and looked up at them. “Come – forward – that’s better. Please – do not bow. We have read a bit about you, Flim Flimflam and Flam Flimflam.”

Flim gulped in horror. Flam summoned the urge to speak – if only to change the topic.

“Your Highness – what happened to Penny Wing?”

“Sister Penny Wing took ill after the Chrysalis Invasion. There was no one from her order who could take her place, so we took on the management of this place in our personal capacity, until she could recover, as we and our sister did with many places throughout Canterlot.”

“Well – ” Flim gulped, edging towards the door. “ – we see that Your Highness has everything well in hoof – ”

“This place suffered grave damage during the Chrysalis Invasion. Temporary patches have been made, but without full repairs to the walls, and a new boiler room, this building will not be suited to equine habitation come the winter. Especially not for all those little foals.”

Flam raised an eyebrow. “There’s quite a few months left until winter. The Summer Sun celebration is tomorrow, is it not?”

“Yes, but the construction workers are stretched to the limit rebuilding this city. If this orphanage is to be repaired in time for the winter, it will need to place an order, with the fifty thousand bits up front, by the end of the month. Elsewise, this orphanage must be shut down.”

“Wouldn’t the royal government cover that? Or Penny Wing’s order?”

“Penny Wing’s charitable order doesn’t have that kind of money. And we are running this place, and many others, in our personal capacity – we do not have access to the Equestrian treasury.”

“And what happens if the place is shut down?” Flam asked.

“The orphans would have to live wherever might take them – probably nowhere left in Canterlot, so they would be separated and sent out to the countryside. And Sister Penny Wing would have no home here to return to – when she recovered, her order would probably send her someplace that still had need. Perhaps a reservation in the Buffalo Lands – or among the Griffins – or the Everfree – ”

“Now look here, Your Highness! There’s no need at all to imagine these consequences. Fifty thousand bits? My brother and I can get that by tomorrow evening.” Flim tapped Flam on the shoulder with his hoof, making a knowing smile. “Maybe the morning after, if the banks take longer than normal to check the paperwork. C’mon, Flam, let us do this.”

“NAY!” Luna shouted, rattling the windows of the orphanage. “We will not avail ourselves of wealth obtained by fraud and deceit.”

Flim chuckled. “Well, I guess they’re just bucked, then.”

A terrible white glow overtook Luna’s eyes, a blue glow, her horn, and a chalkboard eraser flew from the side of the wall, clobbering Flim in the head.

“Ow!”

“What didst thou say?!”

Flim rubbed the side of his head. “I offered our help.”

Luna nodded.

“Your Highness refused to take our money.”

Luna nodded again, smiling.

“So I said ‘I guess they’re just bucked, then’.”

A second eraser flew into the back of his head.

“Jeez, Flim, take it easy, feather-brain – ” Both erasers flew up from the ground to address Flam’s tongue as well. “ – ow! Horse apples!”

Lesson not learned, the brothers continued to respond to pain with profanity, until the Princess hefted, above her crowned head, a file cabinet.

“Buck this noise, brother!” Flam charged for the door. Flim scrambled as well, but could not make his escape before being slammed in the back with the office supplies and hurled tumbling down the stairs.

From the base of the stairs, they looked up to the doorway, to see Princess Luna there, hovering, eyes aglow, horn aglow.

“It pains us deeply that two young stallions raised by a charitable order to follow the path of Harmony, come back to it as con artists and hucksters, with wicked tongues – and bad attitudes. BEGONE FROM THIS PLACE! AND RETURN NOT UNTIL THOU HATH REDEEMEST THYSELVES!”

Bits of the stone ceiling finished falling in response to the thunderous command, and still hovering on her wings, the Princess retreated into the office, closing the door behind her with magic.

“I see you foals still haven’t learned your lesson about how to address your betters. One would think with a royal princess you’d have had a little more sense.”

The two brothers looked up to another unicorn behind them – an azure-coated young mare with a cornflower mane.

“Flim. Flam.”

“Trixie, old girl!” Flim shouted in surprise, getting up. “How in the hoof have you been?”

The three unicorns took their seats at a local dive with one hay smoothie and two hard ciders. A musty smell in their padded seats suggested that the patch in the wood ceiling overhead was (A) not doing its job at keeping out rain and (B) hadn’t been doing it since the Chrysalis Invasion, or possibly before.

Trixie sipped on her straw. “Trixie was by the orphanage this morning, and heard the same tale as you two, Trixie presumes.”

“Her Highness wouldn’t take your money, either?” Flim asked, knocking back half his bottle, and ignoring his old friend’s habit of using the third person, as inconsistent as it could get in private conversation.

Trixie snorted. “What money? Trixie has no money. There are no open venues in Canterlot, Trixie knows nopony in Manehattan, and the show circuit in earth pony country – ” she shuddered. “And you two? You can’t have much yourselves, not after that unpleasantness last autumn.”

Flam laughed. “Tell me about it. Flim here was only released this morning.”

Trixie shook her head. “I do wish you had written me before going into Ponyville. Trixie could have warned you.”

Flim raised a brow. “Ponyville? That town didn’t go well for us, but we weren’t arrested for Ponyville. That was all on the up-and-up – our lawyer said so – and no one pressed charges about the rocks there.”

“Ah yes,” Trixie chuckled, tapping her glass on the table to signal the waiter for a refill of smoothie. “And how is Nickel Guise, the earth pony attorney?”

“Presumably still cheap, clever, a touch neurotic, and lonely. Couldn’t keep you up to date on the specifics – I’ve been avoiding him for about, oh, eight months now.” Flam polished off his bottle of cider and contemplated another. “Anyway, we were arrested in Fillydelphia, not Ponyville. And it was for serving cider with rocks, sticks, and other…things…in it.”

“Flam got three months for ‘reckless service of an adulterated beverage’. I got two years for being the one to add the button to turn off quality control to the machine. Thank Celestia for good time.”

“Yes, indeed.” Trixie nodded as the waiter poured more smoothie into her cup. “So have you any notion? On the orphanage?”

“That it’s not really my problem,” Flim said, grabbing an unattended bottle of cider from the table behind him whilst its owner used the little colt’s room. “I’m sorry, Trixie old girl, I know you were nearly as much born there, but Flam and I were just there for a year after Foal Protective Services decided our mother was unfit.”

“Don’t forget, Flim.” Flam said quietly. “Also the two years after dad ran off to his old bachelor herd and mom started drinking the second time. And the year and a half they both first discovered drinking.”

“Well – all right – we were just there for a bit over four years, total.”

Trixie gave Flim a stare that only slightly tiptoed over the line into a glare.

“I mean, yes, Carriage Callow was the closest thing any of us really had to a father who gave two horse apples about our lives, and Penny Wing took responsibility for us truly learning to use our unicorn gifts with both talent and care, and…” Flim sobbed, emptying the stranger’s drink. “Oh, who am I kidding? That blasted orphanage really is all we’ve got that’s ever been a proper home. How in the hoof are we going to save it? Fifty thousand bits – I can only think of one or two scams that could raise that kind of money before the end of the month, and the Princess of the Mother-Bucking Night is filling in for Penny Wing – she’d know if we didn’t get it honestly anyhow! And she’d hand us right over to the Night Guard, and we’d be back in the dungeon! And me, as a parole violator!”

Flam sighed. “We’ll just have to come by it honestly.”

Trixie self-consciously smoothed her mane with her magic. “Trixie’s money is always honest. Her tales are exaggerated, but no one comes to hear a modest performer.”

“Trixie’s money also doesn’t exist right now.”

“There is that, yes. Speaking of which – who is buying?” The waiter had just set the bill down on their table.

The three unicorns regarded each other, and the bill, and each other again. Flim sighed, and pulled the check towards him, quickly marked it with the quill, and magically passed it to the waiter, who trotted off.

“How generous of you, Flim. Was that the last of your money?”

“Generous – yes.” Flim coughed. “We should move on – quickly.”

The other unicorns got the hint and trotted out of the dive quickly, making their way to a main street of Canterlot.

Inside the dive, an earth pony with thick brown mutton chops finally exited the restroom, stopping short as he approached his table. “Hey! Who took my drink?”

“Your bill, Mister Ace,” the waiter said, holding a check in front of his face.

“Thirty nine bits?! For ‘Two hay smoothies, three hard ciders, two ’ – I didn’t order half of this!”

The unicorn brothers and the traveling magician parted ways – agreeing to meet again the next evening, after they’d had time to brainstorm, and in the brothers’ case, talk to their lawyer.

Though it wasn’t the best part of Canterlot, the brothers didn’t have to chase anypony away from their carriage – it would take a foal with a potent mix of crazy, stupid, and confident to mess with a carriage labeled as the property of the Night Guard, even if the paint had faded, and no such ponies were apparently on the streets of Canterlot that evening.

“So where is home, now?” Flim asked, as Flam kicked the motor to life and started driving for the city gates. “I mean, I got the address you wrote me, so I could give it to my parole officer, but I didn’t recognize it at all.”

“Boarding with a bachelor herd’s temporary digs a few miles out of the city. Bunch of stallions and colts doing construction work to rebuild Canterlot. I throw a few bits their way for rent when I get any, they throw a few extra day labor jobs my way when they come up.” Flam pulled out through the gates, and started down a winding mountain road. “It’s not much, but it’s a home, and a place to pass the time until you got out.”

“Indeed.” The two brothers were quiet and thoughtful as the carriage maneuvered, in low gears, down miles of switchbacks. At the foot of the mountain, they turned, and headed down a dirt road. They stayed silent for a few minutes more, until Flam glanced at the carriage’s side mirror and muttered an oath.

“Buck.”

“What?”

“Night Guards.” Flam pulled the carriage to the side of the country road, and stopped, as two pegasus ponies – one white coated, one black – flew up beside them. The white one mouthed a hand torch, shining it into the unicorns’ faces. “Is there a problem, sir?”

The black pegasus glared. “You failed to yield the right-of-way at the last intersection.”

“There was nopony there to yield to, sir.”

“Show me your license and ownership papers.”

Grumbling, Flam carefully pulled out from under his seat – with his hooves; anypony who had as many run-ins with the law as they had knew you tried not to use unicorn magic around Night Guards if you could help it – a small pile of papers, and passed them to the dark pegasus. The pegasus ponies nodded to each other, and pulled back towards their own carriage.

“So what’s the problem, Flam? They’ll punch a hole in your license papers and give you a fine due in a month.”

“Well…” Flam pulled his hat over his eyes. “Not if they check with their headquarters.”

Flim groaned.

“Counting interest fees, I already owe eighty five thousand bits in fees for parking and moving violations. Maybe more.”

Flim stammered. “You – you’re eighty five thousand bits in debt for this thing? Wh – why in the hoof are you still using it?”

“Hey.” Flam looked seriously at his brother. “I haven’t been pulled over in six months.”

This, in Flim’s estimation, didn’t help matters. “You mean to tell me – I’ve been in the dungeon for eight months, you were in for one, and you haven’t been pulled over in six – you racked up eighty five thousand bits in moving and parking fines in one month?”

“Moving, parking, and interest.”

The lights from the pegasus ponies’ lanterns approached again. The dark pegasus glared seriously. “Flam Flimflam, you have an outstanding warrant for your arrest. Please, step out of the carriage.”

Flam nodded solemnly raising his hooves in the air – his horn glowed with magic, bringing the turbine right back to life and slamming the levers of the carriage.

“Buck!” the dark pegasus shouted, flying briefly after the carriage, shooting off into the night. The light pegasus flew back to their own, and set the lanterns and klaxons to maximum, as their engine screamed with power. The dark pegasus dropped into the Night Guard carriage as it pulled forward, and a few seconds later they were in pursuit.

“Genius, Flam, positively genius. Now we’re both going right back to the dungeon.” The Flimflam carriage hung a sharp left on the next intersection, sending up a massive cloud of dust on the dirt road as it shot towards a cluster of lights indicating a village.

“They’re not going to catch us, Flim. Princess Luna herself ordained us with this task – and on the eve of the Summer Sun Celebration? We’re on a mission from Celestia and Luna both, and don’t you forget it.”

The Night Guard carriage could match their speed, but not apparently exceed it, and it maintained about the same distance. Flam looked in the mirror approvingly. “These aren’t the kind of pegasus ponies who get out and chase you on wing. We should be able to get clear after this village – ”

Interrupting Flam, another Night Guard carriage pulled onto the road just beside them, lanterns flaring and klaxons sounding. Flim glanced over to the side, seeing a pegasus looking straight at him. The dark-colored pegasus gestured at Flim with his hoof, and then at the side of the road. Flim gestured to Flam, shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders.

The pegasus gestured again. This time, once at Flim with his hoof, and then slowly drawing the hoof across his own throat.

Flim gulped. “Brother of mine, I do think we had best quit while we are ahead.”

“We’ll be fine if we can just lose them in this village.”

“I hardly think we’ll accomplish that on the main drag!”

“Good point!” Flam nodded, and spun the helm of the carriage hard left.

The waiter at Mild West-style café had just taken their order, and left the two ponies to their own devices.

“Now, Wild Fire”, the grey earth pony stallion began, “I don’t want you to take this too hard.”

“You’re – you’re…?” The cream-colored pegasus mare started to tear up, as the stallion patted her outstretched hooves with his own.

“But with my career where it is right now, I just don’t think I can make the kind of commitment a mare like you deserves.”

The side wall of the café imploded, bringing a volley of screams as ponies nearer to the chaos scattered – a carriage spun on the tile floors, swinging a tight circle.

Wild Fire locked her gaze with the pistachio eyes of a tall unicorn – at the helm of the carriage – who tipped his hat to her, winked, and pushed the throttle, sending up a trail of sparks and smoke as the wheels ground against the café floor and propelled the carriage back out of the restaurant.

The fire of resolve filled her heart.

“I must have that stallion.”

And at that, she took wing, and headed out into the night.

The earth pony she left behind stared stupidly a minute more. At last he cried out:

“You could take it a little harder than that!”

He blinked again, to clear the confusion from his eyes, when a fresh chorus of screams arose as a second carriage made a second hole in the café wall – shouting pegasus ponies hollered to clear the way, klaxons sounding and horns blaring and lanterns flaring – the earth pony threw himself backwards as the second carriage drove up onto his table, and high-centered itself there. The wheels, front and back, on the carriage spun wildly, and the pegasus at the controls waved his hoof in rage, before pointing at the earth pony.

“You! Help push!”

The earth pony cried out, and joined the rest of the patrons in running, screaming, out of the café.

The pegasus Night Guard slammed his hoof on the dash of the carriage. “Buck.”

“Now what, feather brain?” Flim bellowed, as they left the café and the second carriage behind them, with first still on an intercept course.

“Just need a fruit cart and we’ll be fine.” Flam turned the wheel tightly, spinning the carriage around, around, and around again, before he had it solidly pointed at an outdoor marketplace, just closing up for the evening. “Settle down, brother, I’ve got this.”

“Flam Flimflam!” the dark-colored pegasus on the first Night Guard carriage shouted. “This is your last chance! Pull over now!”

“At once, officer!” Flam shouted back. “Here we go – ” He muttered.

The earth pony vendor had but a moment’s notice, but it was sufficient. “My cabbages!” he cried in horror as his cart exploded into splinters, sending produce – brassica oleracea included – scattering through the marketplace.

In a moment, the produce was joined by the assorted wares of R.J. and Sons – purveyors of down pillows – and a local distributor for Quills and Sofas – fortunately, just the quills were out today – and hundreds of feathers hit the air.

“Stop – stop!” the dark-colored pegasus cried to his partner. “Oh, Luna, I think they hit someone!” They watched as feathers fluttered downwards behind the disappearing carriage. “Get some medics out here – we must have a seriously injured pegasus, maybe more than one – ”

“See?” Flam said, grinning, as their carriage pulled away, expanding the distance between themselves and their pursuers. “Hitting a fruit cart always works.”

It was another mile down the road when their final pursuer, unknown to them, gave up, at least for the time. Panting, the cream-colored pegasus stopped to catch her breath. “Whoever you are, stud…” Wild Fire exhaled again, and grinned. “I will find you.”

Half an hour later, the brothers’ carriage pulled up to a four-story tottering wood building labeled “The Stable” by means of red paint over what could have charitably been called the main entrance. Flam carefully maneuvered their carriage into a small shack, and locked it in.

“Don’t trust the locals?” Flim asked.

“What? Nay, they’re fine fellows – I’d trust them with my life, though not my cider.”

“So, hiding it from the Night Guard? They have your license – they’ll be coming to find you.”

Flam laughed. “Not with those papers they won’t. They’ll have my address as 1400 Apple Lane, Rural Route 6.”

Flim frowned, as they headed up the stairs of the alleged entrance. “That sounds familiar to me, but why should – wait. Sweet Apple Acres?” Flam laughed again. Flim shook his head. “That’s just demented, brother.”

They trotted up into the lobby, conveniently located on the third floor. Flam tapped on the glass of the night clerk’s booth. The earth pony on the other side looked up from his dog-eared copy of one of the racier of the unlicensed Daring Do spin-offs. “Whaddayawant?”

“Any messages?”

“Nothin’ for ya, Flam. Some dame came by – not Night Guard, but workin’ with ‘em – lookin’ for a Flim Flimflam, though. Left her card.”

Flim nodded. “That would be my parole officer.”

“Ya figure?” the clerk asked, uninterested.

“This is my brother, Flim. He just got out of the dungeon, and will be boarding with me until he gets back on his hooves. Will that be acceptable?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” The night clerk spat. “With two of youse, maybe I can get some rent out of that room now.”

“Don’t be like that, friend – I paid you not that long ago.”

“We’ve got some very different positions on ‘that long ago’. Go on.” The earth pony waved the two unicorns off. “I’m just at the good part, where Daring’s gotta battle the tentacle demon.”

“Well, it’s lacking in a lot of the comforts we once had, but it is home for now,” Flam said, backing into the apartment.

“Why are you walking backwa - ” Flim looked inside the apartment, perhaps more plausibly called a stall. “Ah. Because there is no room to turn around.”

“You do rather have to make up your mind about which way you want to be facing before you enter, yes.”

The building rumbled as the horn of the Friendship Express sounded, far overhead, and a dozen cars rolled over a distant bridge. Flam’s room too, rattled, various knickknacks and bottles of cider freeing themselves from their shelves to now adorn the floor instead.

“How often does the train go by?”

“If you believe the schedules, every twelve hours.”

“You don’t?”

Just as Flam’s magic had set most of the cider bottles back on the shelf, the building rumbled again.

“No,” Flam sighed, as entropy and gravity reasserted their dominion over his belongings. “I don’t.” He gave up and sat back on his haunches, as Flim crawled into the tiny bed in the corner – which itself took up about a third of the apartment’s space. “We’d better hit the hay – in the morning, we’ve got to catch up with Nickel Guise and see if he can find anything for us, and then we’ve got to get with Trixie again and see if she figured - ”

Flam stopped and frowned, as Flim began snoring.

“Or, you know, we can simply wait until the morning to figure out our schedule.”

Flim, Flam, and Trixie

The sun was making a determined ascent, to the lack of concern of most of the residents of the temporary village – for most of them had already set out to their construction jobs in Canterlot hours ago, while Luna’s ward still ruled the sky, and as for the remaining two –

The brothers’ snores, assisted by a miserably uncomfortable bed and a few bottles of cider, rattled the windows of The Stable.

A certain cream-colored pegasus looked up at their third-story window with a pair of binoculars, and frowned. Reaching it would be no difficulty for her, of course, but it would be unseemly if there were witnesses to her opening a stranger’s window – and there were witnesses, in the form of a Night Guard carriage pulling up to the building. She sunk herself down into the bushes, and listened carefully.

The first one out of the carriage was a round, rose-colored unicorn, dressed in far more clothes than ponies usually wore except for the fanciest of occasions – and her red sweater and white stretch trousers weren’t slated for any appearances at the Grand Galloping Gala. Behind her were two pegasus ponies from the Night Guard – one white, one black.

“Now, right here, sirs, is the address Mister Flim Flimflam left on file with us. Oh, I sure hope for his sake he didn’t lie to us, or things will be a mite unpleasant for him too, don’tchaknow.”

“Thanks for your help, Pearl.” The black pegasus guard held the door of The Stable open for the unicorn and his pegasus partner, and a moment later all three were inside, and out of sight.

Wild Fire bit at her hoof, and looked up at the rattling window. “They’re going to get caught!” she whispered to herself, and thought quickly. A lantern went on over her head.

Months earlier, just after the Chrysalis Invasion, and before the true royal wedding, Wild Fire had, like so many other ponies, been wandering the streets in a daze. Somehow, she had ended up just outside the Hall of the Elements of Harmony – and come across a curious device, left behind by somepony who had participated in the battle. She had taken it with her, and hadn’t been sure why – but now she was certain.

She turned the dial past “Recommended Maximum”, past “Maximum Safe”, past “No, Really, No Higher”, all the way up to “Why Is This Even an Option?”, at which point it would turn no further, and then she flipped the hammer that would light the fuse.

Whatever this “Party Cannon” was, it had been given to her for this moment.

“Flim?” Pearl knocked on the door to the brothers’ stall. “Flim, this is Pearl, your parole officer. Yah, now listen, sweetie, you missed check-in – ”

From the window facing the street, there came a great white flash, and then did arrive a shockwave of bass beats, strobe lights, compressed fog, pressurized confetti, and season-old cake batter.

Wild Fire looked around herself, in a daze, at the flattened village.

“I’ll…catch up with you later, Mystery Stud.” She leapt into her carriage, coaxed the engine to life, and motored on down the lane.

Flam poked his head out the rubble, blinking, and used his magic to pull a few more chunks of busted lumber and stucco off of himself; Flim followed in short order. Flam squinted at the sun, blinking.

“Aw, horse apples. Look at the time! We need to go meet with Guise!”

The two trotted off to their carriage, which had survived the blast, even though the shed serving as its impromptu garage had not, and made their exit.

A few minutes later, Pearl made her way up to the rubble, her magic persistently towing the pegasus guards behind and below her, despite their groans of protest that they could struggle out under their own power.

“And a one and a two and a uff-dah!” The two pegasus ponies popped all the way out of the rubble, and onto the street. Gasping, coughing to clear the stale cake batter from his throat, the dark pegasus guard finally managed to speak.

“I’m going to bring those two sons of Diamond Dogs in – if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Unicorn magic gave him a light slap on the back of the head, and he rubbed it irritably. Pearl glared at him, chastising. “Yah sure, they got away this time, but there’s no call for profanity, is there?”

There was a knock on the front door of Sweet Apple Acres - eager for the distraction, Applejack hastily called "come in!" while trotting to meet the new arrival.

Twilight Sparkle indeed let herself in, bringing a concerned expression with her. "Applejack - is everything all right? I heard the Night Guard was here last night."

"Oh, that." Applejack laughed nervously. "'t'ain't nothing, Twilight, just a little misunderstandin' – how was Princess Celestia’s sun-raisin’ in Canterlot this mornin’, that go okay? I mean, the sun came up and everything, so I assume – "

"A misunderstanding caused by a couple of criminals!" Rainbow Dash added angrily, interjecting herself into the conversation as she flew in from the kitchen. "Those two con artists! Flim and Flam! They put down Sweet Apple Acres as their address!"

"Now, Rainbow - " Applejack protested, "I ain’t gonna hold that against them, messin' around a little with the Night Guard."

"‘Ain’t gonna’ - ?" The blue pegasus stammered angrily. "They're screwing around with the cops and you're not going to hold that against them? You're the Element of Honesty!"

"Well, of course," Applejack said, almost preening with pride. "The Apple family has always prided ourselves on hard work, not takin' shortcuts, and truth-tellin'. And followin' good laws, of course. But sometimes laws ain't so good." Twilight tilted her head, watching, with interest, as her earth pony friend explained herself. "Fr' instance, say some busy-body unicorns in Canterlot decided nopony could drink cider any more. Well, if'n that were to happen, maybe the Apple family would do whatever it took and then some to make sure thirsty ponies didn't stay dry just because some can't-mind-their-own-darn-business-unicorns stuck their nose in."

The orange earth pony gave an aside glance to Twilight Sparkle. "Ah, no offense, Twi, unicorns ain't the only ones who don't mind their own business." The aside glance moved back to Rainbow Dash. "Pegasus ponies have also been known to put their hoof in it." Her gaze returned to a more neutral, less accusatory form. "Anyways, what I'm sayin' is, maybe the Apple family can respect havin' a little fun at the Night Guard's expense every now and again."

"Well - okay!" Rainbow Dash thrust her forelegs out exasperatedly while she hovered off the floor. "But still! It's Flim and Flam!"

"I had been wondering when those two would get out of the dungeon..." Twilight murmured to herself, looking meaningfully at Applejack.

Applejack nodded, leaving the pegasus thoroughly out of the loop. "Yeah, I'd talked over what we'd talked over with the rest of the orchard folk, and they said they wanted me to go ahead and give it a shot. So in a way it's good that they pulled that little stunt, so'n I know fr' sure that they're both out of the dungeon."

"Wait wait wait." Rainbow Dash dropped down to the ground, physically placing herself closer into the conversation. "What the hay are you on about?"

"Well." Applejack took a deep breath, and looked to Twilight for assistance. Twilight shook her head in a manner that said 'all yours, sister'. "After everything had a chance to cool down last fall, Big Mac and I ran some numbers, and we ran 'em past Twilight, and she said they made sense - so - well - we were thinkin' of doin' a co-op, all the apple orchard folk around here with the Flimflam brothers. All the orchards could sell their cider as the premium stuff, that everypony'd pay top bit for, and the Flimflams could make up each day's supply shortfall with a little cheaper but still pretty respectable cider - and we'd make a profit-sharin' arrangement, so nopony would be at risk of losin' their farm but the brothers'd still get a good return on their fancy contraption."

"I don't believe it." Rainbow Dash flapped her wings again, if only to free up her forelegs so she could cross them in anger. "After all those jerks tried to do to you and your family - what they did do to you, if they hadn't started serving cider from the last barrel they made instead of the first - you want to work with them?"

"Ah, well, it all worked out okay. I mean, I knew they'd be servin' from the last barrel first, since the early stuff was all at the inside of the pile, and I knew it'd all be fine in the end - even if they didn't give up and run away like they did, I knew y'all'd do somethin'. And I was right - turned out Twilight was plannin' a - how'd you put it again?"

"A benefit concert," Twilight said quickly.

"A what now?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"A variety show, to raise money so they could get through the winter and keep the farm. I'd, ah, sort of been planning on the possibility for a few months. I've still got it on the shelf, just in case. I just have this feeling we'll end up needing it sometime."

"So see? It would've worked out okay. And Flim and Flam - they paid their debt. Hard time in a dungeon and everything. I mean, Twilight here started a riot, and the worst that happened to her is we had to start helpin' with her homework. So why can't I forgive and forget?"

"Augh!" The pegasus shook her head angrily. "AJ, you are such a - such a softie!"

She continued to look angry, even as Twilight's magic pulled her gently back down to the floor - though she looked less angry when Applejack suddenly threw a foreleg over her. "Rainbow - I'm real happy you're on my side - and I really admire your loyalty. But I'm done bein' mad, when there's a lot of good to get done by forgivin'. Can't you see that?"

"Fine." Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "Let's go find those jerks." She shook her head. "So you can offer them a business deal."

The first train station out of Canterlot – a valley between Canterlot Mountain and the next one over, where the cold winds howled daily, where ancient mine tailings left the soil incapable of growing so much as a thistle, where the sun was only visible for the thirty minutes before and after noon, where the Friendship Express didn’t stop so much as accelerate through, and where, above all, the rent was dirt cheap.

It was no surprise to Flam Flimflam that he’d find his lawyer here, operating out of a shopfront, with the front door missing and a single lantern hanging from a chain to illuminate the office – although Flam would have expected at least one of the other shops in this dilapidated plaza to be occupied by somepony, even a vagrant. As it was, it seemed Nickel Guise had the run of the place, not that he had taken advantage of it. The brown earth pony was still hoofing through files at his desk when the brothers walked up.

“Mister Guise! How good to see you again!” Flam began. The earth pony instantly looked up and shot him a glare.

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure, Flam. So good to see me again, that you’ve been ducking my messengers, letters, and bill collectors for most of a year. What do you want?”

The brothers took seats at the lawyer’s desk, and wasted no time in putting their back legs up, reclining.

“It’s time for us to get back into the business, good sir. We’ve taken a long enough sabbatical.”

The lawyer set his fore hooves together and sighed. “You know that you only ever had one shot at the cider scheme. The griffin has flown on that master plan.”

Flim looked at Flam, Flam at Flim, both with mock indignation. “I said nothing about cider – did you say anything about cider?”

“So, what, you want to move on to a new product line? Have you considered selling construction supplies? There’s a lot of work left to do in rebuilding Canterlot….”

“Yes, we know.” Flim leaned forward. “Let me give it to you straight, dear Nickel. We need fifty thousand bits by the end of the month.”

Nickel Guise laughed.

Flim and Flam waited patiently for him to stop.

He kept laughing.

After about two minutes, they decided that was quite enough patience, and used their magic to stick a crumbled-up newspaper in his mouth.

Spitting to clear his palate, he finally got the breath back to ask. “If I had the contacts to secure any sort of distributorship or franchise that could deliver fifty thousand bits in eight days, do you really think I’d be working here?”

Flam considered this. “You are a bit of a notorious cheapskate.”

“I’m thrifty. What point in renting a place in Canterlot proper when the elevated levels of damage claim work will dry up in another six to eight weeks?”

“We’re departing from the main point, my good sir. Fifty thousand - ”

“Yes, yes, fifty thousand bits.” Guise shook his head. “I’m sorry. You two are brilliant showponies, excellent at sales, quite good at invention, and if we were talking about what you could accomplish in thirty to ninety days, we would have dozens of lucrative things to discuss. But in just over a week? We could barely secure a worthwhile product to sell in that time; we certainly couldn’t secure fifty thousand bits in commissions.”

“Think harder, stallion!” Flim leaned forward suddenly, grasping the lapels of Guise’s vest with his fore hooves. “You owe us!”

“I – I owe you? I’m still waiting to get paid for not one, but two criminal defenses! In what demented version of reality do I owe you?”

“Ah – ah – ah!” Flam wagged a hoof. “Don’t forget – we’ve kept our mouths shut about some of your ethical issues.”

The attorney shoved Flim’s hooves away. “Now this, I’ve got to hear. What ‘ethical issues’?”

Flam smiled knowingly. “You used to date the prosecutor at our trial.”

“And? I dated all the earth pony mares in my class at the Canterlot Legal Academy. She, all the earth pony stallions. When your entire race is one study group and your entire study group is one race, that’s just the way of things.”

Flam’s grin got even wider. “Ever stud with her?”

“That’s none of your business – and no.”

“So there you are then – hoping to get on her good side, you put on that shameful performance you called a defense.”

Flim and Flam looked smugly at their attorney. Their attorney looked back. There was a moment of silence.

“Three problems with that theory. First, you weren’t convicted for anything fraud-related, so I’m going to go ahead and take the credit for saving you five to ten years apiece in the dungeon. Second, you two really were dumb enough to include a button to turn off quality control and then use that button in a production setting and then forget to turn the mode back to normal in the next town you went to, thereby contaminating cider with rocks, twigs, and…” Guise paused, and looked around. “…things…and I refuse to be blamed for failing to get you off the hook for that!”

“And third?” Flim asked.

“You have no idea how attorneys think! Get on a mare’s good side by taking a dive? Hah!” He snorted. “Horse apples. If such had been my intention, I would have been determined to impress her with my talent and intellect by putting on a skillful, passionate defense, so brilliant that a fire would have lit in our minds, souls, loins, and afterwards, fresh in the glow of my victory, our eyes locking across the courtroom, with quick, shallow breaths – ”

“That’s – that’s quite enough.” Flim held up a hoof in horror. “I have had a sudden change of heart and realize that it would be wrong to blackmail you. Very wrong. But are you sure there’s nothing you can give us?”

Guise threw up his hooves. “Seriously, you two – I’ve got nothing. I’m in hock up to my hock with student debts to the Legal Academy, I pretty much bet what little savings I had on the cider scheme, I’m not even renting this office so much as squatting in it, I make my daily commute by impersonating a bag of mail, and it turns out the old money Canterlot clients are just as bad at paying me as you bums – I helped out a couple with names like ‘Jet Set’ and ‘Upper Crust’ – you’d think they’d be legit, right? – and they said they’d cover their bill in trade.” Hot steam snorted from his nostrils, as he opened his desk and pulled out three gold-colored tickets. “In! Trade!”

Unicorn magic seized the tickets, and pulled them into Flam’s pocket. “Every little bit helps, Nickel. Thank you ever so much, kindly do keep an ear to the ground, and we’ll be in touch.” Flam looked over at Flim, who had just been the one to speak and to take the tickets, with a little horror in his eyes. “Come brother! We’d best be off and not bother Nickel Guise any more than we have!”

“Brother?” Flam asked, as their carriage ground its way up the road to Canterlot.

“Yes, Flam?”

“Do you think we did the right thing, back there?”

Echoing through the mountain valley continued the cry of “Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu – ”

“Indubitably, Flam. Guise is a very hard worker, and would probably have neglected to make use of these tickets entirely.”

“And our plan is to scalp them?” Flam asked, looking closely at the tickets Flim was holding up.

“I think not. They’re for the final ceremony of the Summer Sun Celebration, some kind of grand operatic pageant, are they not?”

“Indeed, and I’d rather be skinned alive and sautéed for a griffin family reunion than listen to one of those, so – oh ho ho!” Flam had finally noticed some of the print on the tickets. “Luxury box seats?”

“Drinks included! And there’s even an extra one for the old girl. What better place to brainstorm our master plan – at some of the toniest seats of one of the grandest spectacles of the year, blissfully ignoring opera while getting blackout drunk?”

“Fantastic. Now, the next question – when are we going to be able to cross this bridge?”

The brothers’ carriage was, again, stopped at a bridge – though over a much shallower canyon, really more of a small stream barely six feet down, compared to the one they faced yesterday.

At the center of the bridge, a small herd of buffalo. Just nearer to them than the buffalo, a construction forepony with a clipboard and an orange safety vest shouting angrily at one of the buffalo. Between the brothers and the crew, a dozen carriages with angry or exasperated or bored drivers, pulled over to the side of the road, under shade trees – by all appearances, they had been there awhile, as were a score of idle construction ponies taking an extended break. The brothers leaned over the side of their carriage and pressed their ears forward, to listen to what was being shouted.

“This river is sacred to my people. We will not allow further work to proceed on this bridge!”

“For the love of – you guys protested about the last river, too!”

“Many rivers are sacred to my people!”

“The whole idea of ‘sacred’ is to set special things apart from other mundane things! If everything’s sacred then what’s the point?”

“Only to you ponies is it such a narrow thing! To my people – ”

“Your people: who, I remind you, haven’t lived here for centuries!”

“Because you ponies forced us out!”

“But we live here now, and these bridges need to get built for progress to happen!”

“Who asked for your ‘progress’?”

“They did!” the forepony screamed, pointing at the lines of cars at the side of the road.

Flim looked at Flam. “Brother, this sounds like a complex, deeply nuanced issue – perhaps even an intractable conflict – with moral, sociological, legal, economic, ethnic, and political dimensions unparalleled. Certainly it is highly unlikely to be resolved in, say, the next twenty-two minutes, even supposing an impromptu song-and-dance number on our, or anypony else’s, part. I, for one, am not certain that there is even necessarily a ‘right’ side at this stage.”

“Perhaps not, brother,” Flam said, tapping his chin. “However, I do believe I have observed a flaw in the buffalo’s present argument, which they will have to correct before the debate can resume.”

“And that flaw is?”

Flam coldly worked the throttle of the carriage. “That they are in my mother-bucking way!” The turbine howled to maximum power, and the telltale sparks and smoke arose from the back wheels.

Flim held himself back against his seat. “Flam – Flam – if those buffalo don’t move – ”

“Hold steady, bulls,” the lead buffalo said, eying the oncoming carriage.

“Relax, Flim. They’ll move. Every buffalo in these parts would’ve gotten schooled at the missions – run by Penny Wing’s order.”

The lead buffalo spoke with assurance. “No pony carriage could possibly survive an impact with one of us.”

The carriage was up to full velocity now.

“Not seeing how that helps, Flam!”

“They would have learned from the same physics text we did. Including…”

The lead buffalo’s eyes widened. "Kinetic energy equals one-half mass times velocity squared."

“Wuuaaaaaaagh!” cried the lead buffalo.

“Aaaaaaaaaaagh!” cried Flim.

“Baaaaanzaaaaai!” cried Flam.

“Buck!” cried the forepony.

A clamor of hooves arose as the buffalo rushed to get out of the way of the oncoming carriage, demolishing the guardrails and landing in the stream below. Cheers from the ponies – save the forepony, still clutching his clipboard protectively over his head in terror, and the construction ponies, who knew that their break was over – followed, as the carriage continued to Canterlot.

Coughing up water, and trying to keep his footing in the muddy bed of the shallow creek, the lead buffalo frowned. “Somebull – anybull – bring me that carriage.”

“Trixie wishes you had given her a bit more notice,” Trixie said, as the three unicorns walked into the Royal Canterlot Opera House. “Trixie would have liked to be able to dress up a bit more than this.”

“No worries, old girl!” Flam said, clapping her on the back with his hoof. “You don’t have the money to go splurging on some kind of fancy thing to wear anyway!”

“Trixie still could have done a bit more – just a bit – for her mane than this.”

“Ahem.” The trio looked up to the throat-clearer, a gray unicorn with a slick black mane, dressed in a black silk suit.

Flam laughed. “Let me guess – ‘Waist Coat’? That your name? ”

“Cuff Link, sir. Your tickets?”

Flim presented them. Cuff Link gave as polite and deferential an expression as he could while clearly despising the brothers and everything they stood for, and magically opened the door to their box suite. “Anything sirs will be needing – perhaps I could take your…straw hats…to the coat check - ”

“Indeed, my good fellow, indeed!” Flam slapped Cuff Link on the back with his hoof – a bit more aggressively than he had Trixie, with a bit more rumpling resulting. “No, I have one simple requirement for you this evening, just one – keep the cider flowing.”

Cuff Link sniffed. “We do not have cider, sir.”

The Flimflams gasped. Trixie looked to salvage the situation. “Smoothies, then?”

“Nay.”

“You – you must have something,” Flam said, nearly begging.

“We do have a variety of fermented nectars available, if sirs would care to specify – ”

“All of them. Bring Trixie and her guests all of the nectars. Or must Trixie speak to her retained counsel about the service she received?”

The brothers snickered as Cuff Link beat a retreat, and situated themselves in their box suite.

These particular seats were not, strictly speaking, the most desirable among the Canterlot nobility and assorted upper crust, as they were neither particularly good for seeing nor being seen. Had Nickel Guise gone, it is possible he would have been disappointed – yet for the three ponies that now inhabited it, it was perfect for their requirements.

Well, almost perfect – it took the arrival of the drink cart for it to become truly perfect.

Somewhere below, standing alone on the stage, a young colt, barely more than a foal, was singing the opening verses to Canticle of the Two Mistresses of the Stars, a piece considered by centuries of musicians as “an enduring masterpiece, without equal”, in a performance contemporary critics would themselves call “subtle, technically skilled, moving, worthy of the Princesses themselves."

Trixie Lulamoon had another opinion.

“Is that little twit ever going to shut up? He’s been on for something like five minutes now! When do the fireworks start? Trixie came here to see some pyrotechnic masterpieces!”

“Couldn’t tell you, old girl – but perhaps we can find out.” Flim magically passed Trixie a glass bottle filled with pale green fluid. “I have it on very good authority that the answer to your question is at the bottom of this bottle.”

Trixie squinted, flipping the bottle upside down to peer at it. “Trixie does not see this answer.”

“Ah, that is because it is backwards. And the glass is like a one-way-mirror of sorts. You must read it from the other side.”

Trixie smiled. “One-way mirrors are one of Trixie’s specialties. Very well: challenge accepted! Which of us shall first master the secrets contained in these nectar bottles?”

The Canticle went on, a cappella. The Canticle traditionally could stand on its own without instrumental backing, and in the first century of its performance, it did so. However, in its second century, a musician – it remained a bone of academic contention whether it was Bate Hooven or his contemporary Hay Den – composed a stunning orchestral accompaniment that met with the approval of Celestia herself, and in more than two thirds of the Summer Sun Celebrations which followed, the Canticle was sung at the closing ceremonies with the backing of the finest orchestras in Equestria.

Because a dive-bombing changeling had punched a hole through the roof, floor, and plumbing of the opera house a few months earlier, and contaminated with water and mold the instruments of nearly the entire Canterlot Symphony, it was decided that this year’s closing ceremonies would be done entirely a capella.

A dozen empty bottles rolled around the floor of their suite by the time the colt bowed and left the stage, only for a cluster of mares in far too much dress and makeup to come onstage and start saying lines that Trixie and the brothers couldn’t make out.

“Well,” Trixie said, reclining, “these bottles failed to answer that last question. Have they anything to say about the orphanage?”

The brothers sighed, not quite back to reality but certainly feeling closer to it.

“What’s the use?” Flim asked. “There’s nothing we could sell, no scheme we could undertake….”

“You couldn’t do the cider again?” Trixie asked, squinting at the brothers, mostly to deal with her slightly-blurring vision.

“One, not cider season. Two, our names are mud in the orchard business. Three, the cider scheme was never about the quick bit – we’d make a little right away, right up front, snatch up a bunch of farms around Earth Pony country – ” Flim stopped, hiccuped, and continued. “ – pretend things were going wrong and run a loss – on paper – for nearly a year…”

“And then corner the market on not just cider, not just apples, but half of Equestria’s agricultural production. We’d cash out, maybe even accept a ‘bailout’ from the royal government, and trot away….” Flam paused to consider the metaphor.

“Filthy Rich?” Trixie suggested.

“Nah, we could have bought and sold his discount-retailing hide.” Flim tried to drink from a nectar bottle, found it empty, tossed it over the side of the balcony, and found a full one. “We could – we could’ve bought an entire ski resort, Royal Guest House and all, in the Coltorado Rockies. We could’ve written the guest list for the Canterlot Garden Party. We could’ve leased our own personal Wonderbolt!”

“Spitfire?” Flam asked, with a mischievous, and, of course, inebriated, grin.

“You know it!” The brothers clapped hooves; Trixie sighed, tipping her own bottle further back. “Still,” Flim muttered, “It’s all for nothing now. They’d be on to us too quick. Even if they didn’t run us out of town as soon as we rolled in, somepony would be poking around our business and figure out what we were up to – probably even make the last few steps illegal before we could get to doing them, and then we’d be left holding the bag on a bunch of farms that we couldn’t possibly run profitably ourselves.”

“Trixie had no idea….”

Flam shrugged his shoulders and leaned back, resulting in the clanking of more nectar bottles. “It was a good master plan, as master plans go. It failed – and it failed early enough that we just did months in a dungeon, instead of centuries on the moon. And it failed while it was still fun. We’ve got a long life ahead of us, plenty of time to come up with new plans.” His speech was almost nostalgic.

“Yes…but we still only have a week to save the orphanage.”

Flim and Flam sighed. Flim looked for another bottle. Flam leaned forward, towards Trixie’s seat.

“I must ask you, old girl. Are you really a traveling magician?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie is more than a mere – ”

“Because I am beginning to suspect that the Great and Powerful Trixie is a professional assassin, descended from a mystical order of such, employed by Princess Luna herself to hunt down and kill good moods wherever they should appear!" Flam brandished an empty bottle at her. "Confess, ninja!”

“Trixie notes your gift for melodrama, and that you continue to evade the question.”

“She’s right, Flam. We need to think this through. What are our gifts?”

The third part of the grand pageant was on by now, some kind of retelling of the dark days immediately preceding the arrival of the royal pony sisters to Equestria. Widely said to be a ‘dramatization’ of events that included the dread draconequus himself, somehow few stage performances resulted in it being in any way dramatic, and this year appeared to be shaping up to be no exception.

“We are traveling salesponies nonpareil.”

“Yes,” Trixie asked, irritably, as she felt she was starting to sober up but couldn’t find a fresh bottle among the two score empties to ward that off. “But what does that mean?”

“We…we can pick a product, a market…we can badger our lawyer into keeping it just legal enough...we can put on a show to get ponies into our product….”

There was a tremendous clash of cymbals down on the stage, the first instrument heard in the entire performance, and the unicorns winced in pain. Trixie squinted towards the stage, finally looking at it for the first time in half an hour, and blinked painfully at a powerful mirror.

“Do you…see that…light?” Trixie asked, turning away from it.

“What?” Flam asked, too loudly, as he slapped the side of his head with his hoof, trying to get the ringing to stop.

“The show…” Flim murmured to himself, leaning forward with wide eyes.

“I asked: do you see that light?” Trixie said again.

“What light?” Flam asked again, looking only at the floor.

“Yes!” Flim cried, half-hung over the balcony, fore legs stretched towards the great mirror, which with optical tricks and bright flames emulated the light of Celestia’s glory, at least as far as the stage production was concerned. “Yes! YES! I can see the light! By all the Angels, Ministers, and Elements of Harmony, I have SEEN THE LIGHT!” He flipped himself over, leaning with his back against the railing. “The show, Flam, Trixie, the Show! It’s not the sales, it’s the Show!”

“The show?” Flam asked, skeptically.

“The Show?” Trixie echoed.

“The SHOW!” Flim cried enthusiastically, with, by now, most of the opera house looking up at him.

“The show…” Flam muttered.

“The Show,” Trixie nodded.

“The SHOW! Owww – ah – ” Flim slumped forwards, back into the balcony, four hooves on the floor, nearly prone, and heaved. “Aw, horse apples. I gotta get sober so I can explain this.”

“And….” Trixie gagged. “We should probably make our exit, because that is an awful lot of rather colorful vomit on a very expensive looking carpet.”

“Right.” Flam staggered. “Let’s go. I’ll drive.”

Flim, Flam, Trixie, and a New-Found Passion

“Well, that’s it, then. They must be dead,” a white-coated member of the Night Guard said, peering over the edge of a cliff, where a five-yard section of guard rail had been completely demolished. The rising sun was just finishing the work of cooking away the light dawn fog.

“Maybe so,” said a green pegasus with a crew-cut grey mane and a cigar cutie mark, getting out of his carriage, “but if I’m going to report to the Princesses that somepony died at a Summer Sun Celebration, I’m going to need you to walk me through it.”

“El Jefe!” The white pegasus saluted.

“At ease,” El Jefe said. “Where’d this all start?”

Patrolling the streets, the Night Guard trotted carefully, ears open for suspicious sounds – and he was rewarded for so doing by the clamor of three arguing unicorns.

“Where’s the throttle – for the love of Luna, are you sitting on it? Move your flank, brother!”

“Excuse me, citizens!” the Night Guard called, catching air to fly closer to the carriage with the argument. “Is everything quite all right?”

“Aw buck, it’s the feathers! Gun it! Gun it!”

“The…‘feathers’?” El Jefe said, raising a brow.

“Slang for the Night Guard, sir, given the large proportion of pegasus ponies in our ranks.”

El Jefe snorted. “I’ll have to remember that one. So then what?”

The white pegasus led the green one down the Canterlot street. “Up there, you can see where they glanced off a gaslight post and went careening at a new angle down the road – a few inches off and they would have plowed squarely into TC&R’s Glass Figurine Emporium.”

His white foreleg pointed out further tracks down the street, tracing the path of the carriage. “And there, you can see where they hit a pothole, catching air and just missing a collision with four different florists’ street carts.”

El Jefe nodded. “Have somepony fix that pothole.”

“And then they overcorrected, and were rolling their carriage on its two right-side wheels, missing what would have been a bounce with a mailbox, and that kept them from crashing into Madame Honeywell’s Urban Apiary.”

“We really should look into the zoning rules again – that just doesn’t sound safe.”

“Then they began spinning wildly, still generally heading in the same direction but making cookies on the road – just past this office building here, the Canterlot Repair Committee’s Office of General Contracting Clearinghouse. Finally, they regained control of their vehicle, gunned the throttle to maximum, and propelled themselves right through this guard rail.”

El Jefe looked over the edge. “Well, I suppose if they went over at just the right angle, they could have hit that viaduct right down there – that’s a pretty short fall, all told, perfectly survivable, if a bit hard on the shocks.”

“Indeed, sir, but if they had, there’d be some kind of marks or something down there from their impact point, or turning and steering to make a right-angle turn and get oriented with the road – it’s just the normal traffic tracks down there.”

El Jefe nodded again. “So, they must have missed the viaduct and fallen all the way down Canterlot Mountain. And that’s a…well, pegasus ponies could have survived that fall, especially if they somehow happened to land in a flock of butterflies, but you said they were all unicorns?”

“The patrol officer saw three horns, sir.”

“We know who they were?”

The pegasus reached into his uniform vest and mouthed out three golden ticket stubs. “Three ponies who left a little early from the Closing Ceremonies last night. The coordinators recorded the tickets as sold to one Jet Set, one Upper Crust, and one of Jet Set’s cousins.”

El Jefe allowed himself a sigh. “Three unicorns. I guess that’s it, then. Try to keep out the rubberneckers – I’ll go inform their next of kin, and make an appointment with the Princesses to explain this mess.”

Trixie’s eyes were shut, but her other senses were telling her quite a bit. Warmth and odors and the sounds of breathing told her that she was snuggling between two familiar unicorn stallions, and the light bristles of a moustache brushing on her right shoulder told her that one of them was Flam. The twisting feeling in the base of her gut told her that she had far too much to drink on far too little to eat – as if the other circumstances hadn’t made that exceedingly obvious – and a small twinge of pain at the back of her skull, like a crack in a dam, told her that she was due to be transported to a magical realm of infinite hangovers when she got up.

“As soon as I admit I am awake, the situation is going to be extremely awkward. These two are my fillyhood friends, and I knew long ago that was all they could, would, should ever be. But I can delay reality just a little longer.” She nuzzled closer to Flim.

A smile crept onto her feigning-sleeping face. “I’ll bet that purple little unicorn nerd in Ponyville never woke up between two handsome stallions.” For some reason, that thought made her happier than anything had in quite some time.

Something tugged on her mane. She giggled softly. It tugged a little harder, and then harder still – as it started to hurt, she turned her head, blinking gingerly, towards whatever was responsible –

Just above the muzzle that was chewing on her mane, there, staring with cold judgment deep into her soul, were two horizontal, rectangular-slit eyes.

“This is deeply wrong,” Flim was thinking to himself, head pounding, moments before. “She’s our friend, our colthood friend. She’s charming, yes, but – no, Flam and I agreed years ago that no – oh, this is so wrong. But it’s not as if anything’s happened! We just – were drunk, and for some reason all landed in a pile, and ended up snuggling – oh, Celestia, what if she’s enjoying it? Oh, this is going to be so difficult to – please, Luna, Princess of the Night, Patroness of Redemption, hit me with my penance now so we can all just move on – ”

Trixie’s scream, drawn all the way from the most abyssal depths of her diaphragm and encompassing the shrillest pitches the mare could muster, blasted directly into his ear.

Trixie continued to scream, backing away from the monstrosity, blinking her tear-filled bloodshot eyes.

Flim shouted in pain, clutching his head with his hooves.

Flam turned over, covering his ears, curling into a fetal position, yelling a stream of profanity.

A gray goat, wearing a necktie, said “Ba-ah.”

The unicorns continued shrieking at the nonchalant goat, not hearing the approaching steps. In front of them, behind the goat, a door opened, backlighting a great, imposing figure, bipedal – with arms ending in hands! – head adorned with two horns.

The screams – two of pain, one of panic – realigned to being all of panic, and focused solidly on the new arrival.

The two-horned figure rubbed his head. “It is far too early in the morning for Iron Will to have to deal with this.”

“It’s not what it looks like, I swear!” Flim shouted fearfully, backing up against a wall.

The minotaur looked around the room. “It isn’t?”

“No!” Trixie yelped. “It’s not!”

“Because it certainly looks to Iron Will like three unicorn ponies crashed their carriage through the roof of Iron Will’s M-squared-C-squared™. Iron Will is rather curious how.”

Flam coughed, casting a hangover-curing spell on himself, and blinked to clear his vision. He looked up, and saw the driver side of the old Mareland carriage sticking out of the ceiling. “Ah. You have us cold, my good sir. It is indeed exactly what it looks like.”

“Flam,” Flim muttered, “hit me with some of that.”

“Trixie too,” she whispered.

El Jefe scratched his head with his hoof. “Mister Jet Set, Missus Upper Crust, I have the regrettable – and somewhat surreal – duty of informing you that you were in all likelihood killed in a single-carriage traffic accident last night.”

The unicorn couple in the doorway of their Canterlot townhome stared back in confusion.

A lantern went on over the pegasus pony’s head, and he sighed. “Who got your tickets to the Closing Ceremonies?”

“Having been profiled a time or two for WWB, Iron Will can respect the need to evade the Night Guard from time to time,” the minotaur began, as the ponies followed him forward through several small rooms, “but Iron Will must admit that this is the first time anypony has docked their carriage with Iron Will’s M-squared-C-squared™ as a result.”

“WWB?” Flim asked.

“M-squared-C-squared™?” Flam asked a half-second later, being careful to pronounce the ™, in case it was a vital element of the name.

“Walking While Bipedal, and the Mobile Motivational Command Center, respectively.” Iron Will knocked on a wall with his hands. “This ferrous beauty of an omnibus, with its six steam turbines, serves all of Iron Will’s requirements on the Equestrian motivational speaking circuit. Patent pending.”

“Aah!” Trixie said with a start. “You’re that Iron Will!”

Iron Will turned to the cornflower mare with a raised eyebrow. “You know of others?”

“No, but – we met last year! At the Equestrian Pyrotechnics Association Convention! At the round table breakout session, you - ”

Iron Will looked harder at the unicorn. “Great and Powerful Trixie?” He stroked his chin. “You’re doing something different with your mane.”

“Oh – ” Trixie glanced back, self-consciously, toward the part that was still sticking out from having a goat chew on it, applied a touch of magic to smooth it, frowned when that failed, and finally refocused her attention forward. “ – well, yes, that isn’t at all important right now.”

“Indeed. The pointers you had on the best budget fireworks for small business owners who worked on the road – ”

“Trixie is flattered that you found them useful, but there is something still more important – ”

“We’ll just be letting you two catch up, then,” Flim said, walking forward in the carriage. “Come on, brother, let’s talk.”

The two brothers trotted further forward, to the next room of the omnibus – a storage area for Iron Will’s stage equipment, apparently.

“Brother, what you said last night – ”

“Nothing happened last night, Flam.”

“Calm down, Flim – not the thing that didn’t happen – the thing you said. ‘The Show?’”

Recollection of his epiphany seized Flim’s consciousness, after striking from ambush out of his subconscious. “Right! The Show! Yes, indeed.” The two kept forward, at a slow trot. “See, we’ve always had a gift for the pitch, the advertising – the song-and-dance number to get everypony on board with our product. The problem we have right now is that we have no product. But why should that stop us from putting on a show?”

Flam’s face contorted with thoughtfulness. “You mean we put on a sales pitch, get them to pay us, and deliver them nothing? Isn’t that fraud? Even more so than normal?”

“Not if they’re paying us for the show itself – entertainment, Flam! We can sing, we can dance – let’s just sell that! And the old girl – well, she’s got her magic tricks, and a few other talents – she knows a few things about putting on a show for entertainment’s sake alone – ”

The brothers halted, having trotted all the way forward to the front of the vehicle, an enclosed cab of the carriage. A white goat wearing a necktie spared them a brief glance before returning his attention to the helm of the omnibus, which was making quite good time along hard-packed salt flats.

“I say, my good fellow, where in the hoof are we?” Flam asked.

“Ba-aah,” replied the goat.

“Perhaps you are suggesting that we would be better served on this matter by inquiring with our involuntary host?” Flim said.

“Ba-ah,” the goat said.

“Brother,” Flam said, as the two retreated back through the omnibus, “he lets the goat drive.”

“We appear to be in the middle of a very large desert, Flam. It’s not as if the goat’s going to run into anything – which, by at least one reasonable and objective standard, would make him a better driver than you.”

Flam snorted as the brothers walked back into the room with Iron Will and Trixie – with Iron Will currently seated on the floor, rubbing wet eyes, while Trixie looked solemn.

“Iron Will – Iron Will doesn’t understand! Why do these little ponies have nopony else to take them in? No friends, no other relatives?”

Trixie sighed dramatically. “While we unicorns are graced with magical talent and great beauty, ours is to struggle against pride and selfishness. In the great cities especially, we are far less gifted than earth ponies and pegasus ponies at looking out for each other. Many of these orphans have living relatives, not even all that distant, who simply can’t be bothered to tear themselves from their social lives and careers to care for somepony else’s foal.”

The minotaur sniffled. Not one to miss a cue, Flim stepped up. “For many of those little fillies and colts, that orphanage is the first place they’ve really had to experience love and friendship, and yet the bonds they’ve formed are about to be torn apart – maybe forever.”

Just as Iron Will was about to sob, Flam magically passed him a handkerchief. The minotaur nodded appreciatively and dabbed his eyes. He sat for a moment, the unicorns giving him silence, before leaping to his hooves and posing dramatically, kissing his own biceps reflexively. “Iron Will has made up Iron Will’s mind!”

Flim briefly wondered whom else’s mind Iron Will could make up but his own.

“As soon as Iron Will fulfills the promise made to Iron Will’s assistants, Iron Will shall help you little ponies save your orphanage!”

“Splendid! What promise is that?” Flam asked.

“And where exactly are we?” Flim followed up.

“Two questions, one answer, friends.” Iron Will threw his arms wide, pulled open a set of blinds on the window of this room of the carriage, and gestured to a distant spire across the salt flats. “The Iron Will Company is going to Burning Mare!”

A howling wind swept across the salt flats, peppering the unicorns’ coats with stinging sand. Iron Will and the goats, they noted, had come prepared with face wrappings and goggles; for themselves, they had for the moment only to squint tightly and hope the worst would pass.

Burning Mare was a semi-circle of carriages (which now included the M-squared-C-squared™ and the Flimflam’s carriage emerging from the top of it), tents, and dugout shelters, surrounding a central complex built of lumber – referred to as a Temple – which itself supported a wooden sculpture: a rampant mare, one hundred feet tall.

It would be more proper to say that such was the physical place in which Burning Mare was set; what Burning Mare truly was, that was a deeper question, perhaps even a metaphysical one, with as many answers as attendees.

Each of the three unicorns prayed in their hearts that they wouldn’t actually have to learn that answer.

The two goats in neckties had quickly disappeared on the streets of the impromptu village, and Flim found himself with astonishingly little interest in their affairs. He did, however, have a pressing query for Iron Will: “I say, my fellow, how long will we be here?”

“Iron Will promised Iron Will’s road crew that we would remain until the Mare burned.”

Flam looked down the street, noting a pegasus pony on an oversized unicycle, balancing a sword, tip down, on the end of her muzzle. “And…when do they burn the Mare?”

“Four nights from now.”

The brothers gulped. For Trixie’s part, the circle of fourteen earth ponies on pogo sticks, engaging in elaborate multi-pony juggling with a flaming loop-di-hoop and long metal rods held in their mouths, had her attention more than what Iron Will was saying.

“But your exact words to them were – that you would remain until the Mare burned?”

“Right. So don’t go thinking Iron Will’s word is kept just because we’re here for four days – until the Mare burns, we aren’t leaving. Might as well enjoy yourselves,” Iron Will concluded, heading down the road in search of – something. Whether even the minotaur knew what, precisely, was unclear, but with such a mindset he was not greatly different from most of the other attendees.

“Four days – that’s – oh no. That would only leave us with two days to get the money.” Flam looked around. “Unless we could get the money…here?”

A unicorn stallion ran by, a bedsheet clamped in his mouth, that bedsheet tied to another, and another in turn – ten in all – and at the end of the last, a sled, bearing a large ceramic sculpture. The three watched it sail by.

“Was that meant to be Princess Celestia?” Flim asked.

“Trixie believes so.”

“Were we meant to take that other bit as an over-sized phallus?” Flim followed up.

“Trixie regrets so.”

Flam sighed, rubbing the base of his horn with his hoof. “This is all very thought-provoking and counter-cultural, but I have my doubts that we shall find so many as two bits to rub together. Perhaps if we were to perform for the sake of performance, we would find this a more meaningful experience.”

“But we would be no closer to saving our home,” Trixie reminded.

“Indeed, we would be four days closer to it being impossible. And we’ll never find our way back to the civilized parts of Equestria on our own. Well, the matter is settled.”

“Is it?” Trixie smiled, seeing what was coming, but letting Flam make his dramatic assertion.

“We shall have to burn the Mare. Tonight.”

“Tonight, brother? Not right now?”

“Nay, Flim. These fine creatures all came out to see the Burning Mare, and it would be cruel to deny them the spectacle of that rampant beauty lit up against the desert night. There’s pragmatism, and there’s just being an ass. Ah, no offense, my fellow,” Flam offered up in apology, as a donkey trotted near them, wearing a table laden with dozens of coconut halves as a saddle.

“None taken,” the donkey said, approaching them. “Just glad I’m not a mule – equal numbers of unflattering comparisons from ponies, and also no chance of having kids.”

“Er…yes,” Flim offered, as the only reply he could imagine.

“You ponies look parched; need a drink?”

“We’d love one, my fellow. What charge?”

The donkey regarded Flam. Flam wasn’t quite certain as what he was being regarded as, being quite unused to being regarded by donkeys under any circumstances, but doubted the metaphors involved were generous ones. “Your first time at Burning Mare, then?”

“Yes – for all of us – ” Trixie interjected. “ – and our arrival here wasn’t precisely planned, or intentional.”

“Well,” the donkey said, leaning forward with the coconut halves, “we have rules here, and then we have principles. ‘Participate, don’t spectate’ is a principle. ‘No money’ is a rule.”

“What are the penalties?”

The donkey shrugged. “If you break a rule, we run you out into the desert to die.”

The unicorns nodded. It was nice and straightforward, leaving one absolutely clear about where they stood.

“And a principle?”

“If you violate a principle…” The donkey gave each unicorn a long, piercing look. “…you won’t have a creative experience.” The wind, which had for a minute calmed, picked up in a brief gust, sweeping vicious alkali sands down the street.

The unicorns shuddered in fear.

“So.” The donkey stared at them again, with deliberation. “Would. You. Like. A drink?”

“Absolutely!” The magic of each of the three grasped a coconut half, bringing it swiftly to their lips for imbibing. “Thank you v-very much, my g-good sir!” Flam stammered before slamming his drink back.

Trixie smacked her tongue on her lips. “An unfamiliar flavor, to Trixie. What was it?”

“Cactus juice,” the donkey said, nodding, for no particular reason that they could tell. “It’ll quench ya.”

“It’ll…what?” Flam asked.

Another blistering gust arose, bringing on white-out conditions for half a minute; the unicorns squinted again. When the wind died again, the donkey was nowhere in sight, though they looked both ways up and down the street.

“Well, now, that may just be the most disturbing thing to yet happen today.”

“Indeed, Flam, indeed – because nothing else happened today.”

“Absolutely,” Trixie agreed. “A plan of action, then? Disperse, figure out how to burn, and meet back here?”

The brothers nodded, and the three unicorns went their separate ways.

“Something is not right here…” Flim said, almost but not entirely out loud, as his hooves slipped on the earth for the fourth time in as many attempts to take a single step forward. Sweat was roiling from under his mane: more than beads, there were in fact steady rivulets of the stuff streaming down, into his eyes, across his muzzle, down his neck.

Still prone on the ground, acutely aware of every stitch of cotton in his shirt and silk in his vest, Flim turned his head to see how far he had gone from the M-squared-C-squared™. Despite the fact that he could definitely see it, he had to admit that, if he was being truly honest with himself, he didn’t really know how far it was.

After all, what was distance, anyway? Distance was separation, yes, but really, there were only three kinds of distance that mattered:
1.) Separation that would someday be undone, bringing union once more.
2.) Fried cheese drizzled over a crisp garden salad with a side of daisies.
3.) Separation that was destined to remain eternally.

And he wasn’t even one hundred percent on the bit about the fried cheese. There was a substantial possibility that he had overlooked something important before including it in the definition of distance, and his mind spun elaborate hypotheses on this lingering issue.

A buffalo dressed in a tutu rolled Flim onto a litter, and grasping the handle with his mouth, dragged Flim forty yards down the road to a dark tent.

“Maybe heat exhaustion, maybe something else,” the buffalo offered to the tent’s staff, before heading back out into the desert heat to look for others in need of assistance.

The world had fallen away, casting the M-squared-C-squared™ into the realm of type 3 distance, and Flim realized what this meant: either (a) Discord had returned again to bring his dominion of chaos over all Equestria or (b) Flim’s brain was actively melting, and he had at most minutes to live. He tapped at his ears with his fore hooves, and feeling no slime emerging from them, concluded that the world was ending for everypony, not just himself.

But he hadn’t come this far – wherever, exactly, in the infinite void that he had come – to be destroyed so ignominiously. If only he could find order – stability – some sort of immutable pattern that even the chaotic lord himself could not overwrite – find such a rock in the storm, and cling to it, forever.

He turned himself again, so that his hooves were on ground instead of the air, and stared fiercely into the darkness, demanding that it reveal to him some secret sign that he could use to save all creation. At long last, a voice called out:

“So you need not make the trip twice,
See to also bring back some ice.”

Perfection! A melody, a rhyme – vocal order. But what could one do with a voice alone, as wonderfully feminine and mystical as it was?

Another voice – one that didn’t matter, since it belonged to neither him nor the perfection – replied, and received its own response in turn:

“Thank you again once more, my dear;
The patients and I will be right here!”

And then the origin of perfection stepped into view - and it was even better than he imagined. Stripes: a regular pattern of stripes. White! Black! White! Black! Perfect order in sight and sound!

This mare was the key to fighting back against doomsday. He just needed to keep close to her. Focusing on the order she created, he commanded the earth beneath him to become stable once more, and to accept his hooves without complaint. Step, step, step, step, push, and rise: and now he was standing.

The world was his oyster. Wait, ponies didn’t eat oysters. And they were disgusting just to look at.

Truffle. The world was his truffle. Oh yeah: that was the stuff.

“Beautiful,” Flim croaked.

“Ah,” Zecora said, “surely you know it would be best,
If you lied back down and got your rest.”

“Your concern is sweet,” Flim said, taking very carefully measured steps forward, “but I don’t need rest. I need you.”

The zebra raised an eyebrow.

“You, my mare, are, without question, the most sublime being upon which I have ever laid eyes; and this from a stallion who was at the Summer Sun Celebration yesterday. Maybe. If yesterday is when I thought it was. Irregardless – regardlessness – point being: I don’t see any path forward in my life, my existence, except to spend the rest of it by your side.” Flim then magically pressed his hat against his heart, facing Zecora, except for two minor difficulties: his hat had been removed some time ago by the medical tent staff and hung up, and he was seeing the zebra mare about forty-five degrees and ten feet off of from where she actually was standing.

She snorted. “Your flattery I do not mind,
But your breath stinks of cactus rind.”

“Oh, don’t let that bother you, my filly,” Flim said, continuing to be speaking not quite at Zecora. “Normally I just drink cider. Oh! But I could quit, my beauty, if you asked it. And that, my dear, is saying a lot – I didn’t even quit for the feathers – the Night Guard – you probably aren’t related to any pegasus ponies but no offense intended if you are – and they had me in the dungeon for almost a year! The Night Guard, not pegasus ponies in general. But whatever it takes, my lovely little striped sunbeam – you and me, we’ve got to save the world together!”

Zecora watched Flim wave his foreleg repeatedly at the air nearby her, apparently trying for an embrace. She stepped to the other side, grasping a bowl of bubbling blue liquid with her mouth, and setting it nearby Flim.

“To your ‘offer’ I may agree,
But first, please share this brew with me.”

Flim carefully reoriented himself, as Zecora lifted the bowl with her mouth again, proffering it. Nodding eagerly, Flim seized the bowl with his magic, and greedily drank the whole of it.

Zecora smiled.

Flim blinked.

“How they shine,” he started, “like little – ” and at once fell over on his side.

Zecora pushed him back onto his cot, and laid a damp cloth over his head. It was, she had to admit, one of the more creative propositions she had heard in some time. The unicorn scored points for that, though little else.

Flam’s hooves pounded hard on the sand as he continued his hot pursuit.

“That’s my carriage, you rodents born out of wedlock!” he bellowed, the steady rhythm of his gallop punctuating his syllables. “Bring it back! You don’t know what you’re doing with it!”

The confused looks on the faces of the half-dozen unicorns riding on the top of the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 only confirmed to him that they had no business being there. Though he normally enjoyed high speed as a product of magic and mechanization, he didn’t have those here – just him and his muscles, like an earth pony: dirty, primal, real. He commanded his aching body to cease its complaints and comply with his will: faster, by Luna, faster!

“Hey, Sea Swirl, you’ve been to waaaay more of these than me. Is he just sun-baked out of his gourd, or is this part of the show?”

The pink unicorn atop the vehicle considered the pale olive unicorn pursuing it. “Well, who’s to say? Burning Mare is really about radical self-expression, and perhaps he is trying to communicate a post-absurdist response to our – whoa horse apples!”

Her analysis had been interrupted by Flam finally finding the surge of energy to leap onto the carriage, where determined hoof by determined hoof, he pulled himself onto the top of it. Trails of spit and dried salt lingered below his mouth, and his furious eyes darted around the top of the vehicle.

“You’ve changed – you’ve changed everything, you maniacs! What have you done to my machine? My magnificent, beautiful, glorious, passionate, intemperate, tempestuous machine?

“Do we play along, Sea Swirl?” her friend asked quietly. The pink unicorn shook her head no.

“Sir, I don’t think this is what you seem to think it is.”

“Of course it’s not! Not anymore!” Flam snorted violently. “The press! The extractor! It’s gone, all gone! But I’ll bring it back – ” His horn took on a powerful glow, and his mouth, a wide grin. “I’ll bring it all back.”

“…I’m gonna go get some grub from Camp Funnel Cake. Anypony want anything?”

“Wait for me!” “Me too!” “Hold up!”

Sea Swirl noted that she was now alone atop a speeding carriage, save for this mad one. She saw nothing to be gained by remaining in this situation, and extricated herself from it, by tucking and rolling off the side of the carriage.

Flam looked around, cackling madly. “First, a systems check!” He fired a bolt of magic into the carriage’s collector, the one part that still looked familiar. “Power! Receive my power! Unlimited power! Bwa-hee-hee-hee-ha-ha!”

The turbines within the carriage howled, and this pleased Flam greatly.

“Now! Where did they put the press?” He trotted to the side of the speeding carriage, and bending over, examined it upside down. Not only were all the controls absent, but the thing had even been re-labeled! He read the new label, spitting with contempt. “‘Top off your tikis: kerosene refills for bawdy limericks.’”

A voice of reason came clawing up out of the abyss, and waved one desperate hoof over the edge, begging for his attention.

His eyes widened in realization.

“This isn’t the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 at all! It’s a decoy!”

And having grasped about fifty percent of the truth, he leapt from the carriage.

“Everyone needs to get clear of here,” a gruff buffalo in a tutu said. “Ponies, buffalo, zebras, griffins, whatever – we need everyone out to at least the fifth ring. Come on, move it, move it!” The buffalo nodded with his head and horns at a red-maned, yellow-coated unicorn. “You, buddy – you need to get that mare up there to shift her flank! There’s a major kerosene spill at the Temple – everyone needs to get out to a safe distance while it dries up.”

The red-maned unicorn stallion shrugged helplessly. The buffalo security volunteer sighed. “How long has she been up there?”

“About an hour now,” the pony replied. “So graceful. So elegant.”

Balanced on hoof atop a smooth steel sphere, her fore hooves outstretched for balance, Trixie continued to spin, around and around and around.

“Hello again, Ponyville! Did you miss Trixie? Trixie missed you!”

Trixie waved at the assembled population of Ponyville, which for some reason was the equal of Canterlot and Manehattan combined as it stood in a vast stone arena, and she greedily exulted in their shrieks, cheers, and stomps of adoration.

“But the Great and Powerful Trixie will lie to you no more! Nay, all that Trixie will show to you will be the truth: the mighty, invincible, divine truth!” With a wave of her hooves, streams of magic shot out across the assembled myriads, descending as individual perfect gems upon each of her devoted admirers.

Their breaths were taken in, as they gasped for a long moment at the beauty revealed to them, and then as one they cheered, voices raw with unrestrained and passionate worship for their inspiration and guiding light, the Great and Powerful Trixie Lulamoon.

And then came a great crash, and a wave of screams – an Ursa Major! “Save us, oh Trixie,” they cried, “from the dread and terrible Ursa Major!” And indeed, Trixie saw, that terrible blue bear had stormed into the arena.

“Nay, Ponyville,” Trixie said, “For you already have your own hero. Let Twilight Sparkle save you!”

A tiny, insignificant little unicorn, far below Trixie’s stage, gulped with fear and stepped out to face the Ursa Major. The little lavender thing summoned magical power to herself, but the Ursa just applied a single flicked finger of force, and propelled her, screaming, over the horizon.

“Please Trixie!” Ponyville cried again. “You must save us!”

“Very well,” she said, and she began to gather her magic. She couldn’t be arrogant: she had tried this once before on a lesser target, and had been woefully insufficient. But nor could she be afraid: hesitation would only cripple her chances.

From out of nothing, dark clouds began to conjure themselves over the top of the Mare.

“She’s amazing!” The red-maned unicorn cried. “She’s magically conjuring a rainclouds to save the day! She must be part-pegasus pony – oh, wow, do you think she’s related to the Princesses?” The stallion smoothed his mane with his magic, grinning happily.

The buffalo security volunteer looked warily at each unicorn in turn, and then at the dark patch in the skies over the Mare. “You think those are…rainclouds?”

She would get only one shot at this, and it needed to be everything. The Ursa Major stared at her, daring her to make her best move – well, Trixie would show it what she had. Not for Ponyville. Not for Carriage Callow, not for Penny Wing. Not for birth parents she had never known, nor for her uncles and aunts in Canterlot who just couldn’t be bothered. Not to show anypony up. Not for her admirers, not for her haters.

“Pony, we are leaving!” The buffalo finally declared, bouncing the stallion up onto his back and regarding the mare a lost cause, he started into a determined gallop as far and as fast away as he could manage.

“Wait!” the stallion cried. “I need to get her name!”

Trixie’s spin slowed at last to a halt: her horn was white-hot with power; her forelegs were poised in a mystic stance. She spoke aloud at last, her voice seated within a throne of such power as she had never before known and speaking with authority and majesty to dozens of square miles of desert:

“This isn’t about any of you: this is for Trixie!”

“Oooh,” said some ponies.

“Aaah,” said some others.

“Baaah,” said two goats wearing neckties.

“Iron Will must admit, it was even better than you described,” the minotaur said, patting his assistants on their heads. “Iron Will shall make it a point to come next year as well.”

The lightning was but a flash and a crack, the fireball just an overlapping flash and a pressing rumble, but the conflagration was lasting. The temple was gone; the rampant Mare sprawled forward, diving flaming into the desert like Nightmare descending to Tartarus; and two full rings of the town had been committed, in full and in flames, to the Burning Mare principle of “leave no trace.”

“Baah”, the gray goat wearing a necktie said.

“If you’re ready to pack it in, then Iron Will is, too. Go get the M-squared-C-squared™; Iron Will shall find our guests.” The minotaur stood up, dusting himself off.

A sharp whistle began to pierce through the chatter of ponies, growing steadily louder and lower, and the minotaur looked around. Left, right, backwards, and then – up. Knowing faster than he could think, in the manner of all effective athletes, he spread out his arms, and caught the Great and Powerful Trixie.

“Oof,” she said, her pupils dilated to the size of bit coins.

Iron Will nodded. “Iron Will is happy that Trixie is well. Now, if only - ” And so he was immediately interrupted by a voice from behind:

“Pardon me, my fine horned fellow,
Are these two yours, with coats of yellow?”

Iron Will turned around, to see a zebra mare dragging two stretchers, loaded with one hundred percent of the members of the Flimflam family whom Iron Will had met personally.

“Wonderful! How can Iron Will thank you, Miss?”

Zecora shook her head.

“Your thanks, though welcome, I need not,
For the playa always provides.
Return next year to desert hot,
See art and life from dif’rent sides.”

Iron Will bowed in admiration. “That’s good – that’s real good. Iron Will respects a catchy, off-the-cuff rhyming piece of advice.” He bellowed, grabbing the scruffs of the necks of both Flim and Flam with one hand, and hold Trixie in the other. “Now, c’mon, you three! Let’s go save all those little ponies!”

Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, and Iron Will

Still an hour before the sunrise, the Mobile Motivational Command Center rumbled across the desert, all its occupants awake: one goat at the helm, another goat with a set of metal-working tools trying to extricate the Flimflam’s carriage from the ceiling, and the four creatures capable of normal speech reclining in the lounge of the omnibus, sipping at beverages in metal cans.

“You asked for my honest opinion, good sir, and I must give it to you,” Flim said, magically setting the can down upon a coaster. “It tastes like you took distilled all the worst parts of tea into a chamber pot, and then cut yourself on a rusty spoon and bled into it. Other than most of the things that touched my tongue when I was a colt dumb enough to fall for Trixie’s ‘open your mouth and close your eyes’ game, it may just be the most vile substance I have ever tasted.”

Iron Will snorted. “It isn’t meant to be a pleasant flavor. It’s assertiveness! In a can! It’s meant to challenge you! Iron Will was thinking of calling it ‘Blue Bull.’”

“Well, don’t, chum, not until you change the recipe.” Flam bounced his beverage can off a wall and into a waste-bin. “It’s making my horn tingle most unpleasantly, and I imagine if I were a pegasus pony, my wings would be near to falling off.”

The minotaur considered this as a slogan. “‘Blue Bull takes your wings and gives them to somepony more worthy!’”

Trixie shook her head. “No. Just no. And we’ve really gotten off-topic here.”

Not being interested in sleeping, after the fever dreams they had awoken from as the omnibus was pulling away from Burning Mare, and needing time to think, the unicorns had asked their host for “tea, or coffee, or something of that nature.” To their regret, Iron Will had seized on the third option.

“So,” Flim said, clearing his throat. “What we’ve decided is that what we need to do is put on a show – ”

“Excellent! Iron Will plays a mean trombone.”

The unicorns, all reclining in a row on a couch opposite from their host, stared for a moment. Flim tried to regain control of his train of thought. “Well, I mean, if you really feel that is your greatest talent – compared to oration – ”

“Iron Will’s completed the speaking circuit this year, got to leave the customers hungry for next year.”

“ – or working a stage production – ”

“The goats handle most of that.”

“ – or pumping up a crowd – ”

“That only takes a minute.”

“ – or break dancing.”

“Break dancing?”

Flim shrugged. “For some reason, I just looked at you and thought you could break dance.”

The minotaur frowned, folded his arms, and looked away. “Again with the profiling. Iron Will thought you were better than that, Flim Flimflam.”

“I’m – sorry?”

“Iron Will shall play the trombone.” He harrumphed.

“That’s all there is, then.” Trixie summoned a piece of her luggage. “Trixie shall just have to play the saxophone.”

Flam sputtered. “T-the sax, old girl? Not, you know, your magic?”

“Well, with Iron Will on the trombone, it certainly doesn’t sound like we’re doing a talent show, now, are we? We’re a bit more of a band, putting on a gig. So Trixie will play the saxophone.”

“But – but – you are the Great and Powerful Trixie!”

Trixie smiled. “Good of you to recall, Flam.”

“Everypony will expect magic from you – you have an act already!”

She sighed, lowering her head sadly, resting it on her outstretched forelegs. “They may expect it, but they won’t pay for it. Trixie has been paying attention to her receipts. Do you have any idea how many months it’s been since one of her shows has grossed more than a hundred bits?”

Flam’s moustache drooped. “Has it really been that bad? I thought you were just in a slump getting work after the wreck of Canterlot….”

She shook her head quietly.

After half a minute, Flim reached over and rubbed the back of her head with his hoof, rumpling her mane. “I don’t see a problem, brother. Playing the saxophone as well as the old girl does – that’s magic itself, isn’t it?

“I suppose so,” Flam said, pondering. “Ah, I see now – the lure of our show isn’t our raw musical talent – though we certainly possess it – it’s these well-known names stepping outside their known fields to play music! Ponies would come just for the novelty of it!”

“Exactly!” Flim felt the fire of a winning idea. “We just need a few more names – and, well, a little more musical backing. We sing and dance, but no matter how good these two are, the sax and slide horn just aren’t going to carry us unassisted.” Trixie smiled, beginning to perk up.

“Sapphire Shores?” Iron Will suggested.

The brothers shook their heads in unison. “Too big,” they said together, after which Flam deferred to Flim. “We couldn’t get to her in time, not through her agents, lawyers, and managers, and they’d take too big a cut of anything we put on.”

The four thought for a bit.

“Octavia,” Trixie said.

The brothers and the minotaur looked quizzically at Trixie.

“Earth pony musician, performs mostly in Canterlot – she’s actually more famous back in earth pony country, because of how well she’s done for herself in a field dominated by unicorns.”

Flam nodded enthusiastically. “I don’t even care if she’s any good, we could use that: somepony like her on the playbill would really pack them in. So she’s in Canterlot now?”

Trixie grimaced. “Not since the Canterlot Symphony got shut down by the Chrysalis Invasion. The gossip is that she’s moved to Whoa-maha for a year.”

“Whoa-maha?!” was the incredulous cry of the three males.

Even the grey goat, who was passing through the room to retrieve some more tools, offered an incredulous “ba-ah?!” before proceeding.

“That rural backwater? Has she gone to farm corn? Oats? Or perhaps hay?” Flim shook his head in disbelief.

“None of the above – the classiest restaurant in the city recruited her as a celebrity maitre d', and the city is also apparently the center of a new wave in music – something Trixie didn’t quite grasp about the Whoa-maha Sound. With months before the Canterlot Symphony can return to operations, she went there to get well paid for just being herself while informally studying with all sorts of underground musicians and soaking up the new sounds at the clubs.”

“Blast,” Flim said, pondering the implications. “Sounds like a very good deal to have, if one can get it – we’ll have a dickens of a time tearing her away from it.”

“Trixie, old girl,” Flam asked, “how do you know all this?”

“Trixie and itinerant musicians share at least two things in common – poverty, and tastes in discount campgrounds.” The brothers nodded, understanding; they had never been members of a bachelor herd themselves, but their nomadic lifestyle and chronic cash flow issues meant they usually trotted the same roads and called the same stables home – until they were destroyed under mysterious circumstances, anyway – and so they could share quite a few stories of which they were not themselves a part. “So, shall we get her?”

“Yes, yes, we must try,” Flim said, thinking. “But it’s a long way to Whoa-maha. Is there anypony between here and there we could also get? Not just names, talents too.”

Iron Will stroked his chin. “It sounds as if we’ll be driving through the Canterlot-edge of earth pony country. We’ll pass right by Ponyville.”

Trixie shuddered. The brothers didn’t look much happier. Flam made their position clear: “Yes, and we should do just that – pass right on by.”

“Are you sure of that? Because Iron Will learned about some real solid musicians there while doing the circuit. One unicorn I’m thinking of – Lyra Heartstrings.”

“Oh,” Flam said. “I’ve never heard of her.”

“Indeed, that’s a relief,” Flim added. He had made notes on all of the ponies who had joined with the Apples during that unfortunate incident, the prologue to the disaster in Fillydelphia that had gotten them arrested, and was certain none of them were named Lyra or Heartstrings.

“What does she play?” Trixie asked.

“According to her partner, lots of things. She’s even invented her own instruments.”

“Sounds talented, delightfully quirky, and, most importantly, as if she has no reason to hate us personally. Let’s give her a shot.” Flam and Trixie nodded agreement with Flim.

Iron Will leaned back on his own sofa, putting his hands behind his head. “There’s our plan. We should get to Ponyville around noon. Now, Iron Will thinks that sleep would be good.”

“And Iron Will is welcome to it, but Trixie will be staying awake.”

“Same here.”

“And I.”

The three unicorns looked at each other, wondering if they were all worried about the same thing, and then looked away, deciding to think about anything else at all.

“Suit…” Iron Will breathed deeply. “Yourselves….” His eyes closed.

And with the minotaur’s snoring joining with the steady road noise, the unicorns remained still, sharing a couch and yet avoiding eye contact.

Nickel Guise was no stranger to one-way mirrors and interview rooms, and was more annoyed than intimidated at being shoved into one by the Night Guard. Waiting for him was a rose-colored unicorn in white stretch trousers and a red sweater. The lawyer rolled his eyes, and took a seat opposite her at the wooden table.

“Pearl.”

“Mister Guise.”

“I’m familiar with my rights, Pearl. I thought you were in Parole now? What are you doing on a trespassing case?”

“Well, this isn’t really about trespassing, now, is it? After all, the last owner died with no heirs months ago – and it won’t escheat until the Royal Government does the paperwork, so that means it was more or less nopony’s property, don’tchaknow.”

Nickel Guise pounded his hoof on the table. “Exactly! See, that’s what I was telling those pegasus ponies the whole flight over! Since you’ve worked out that I’ve been doing nothing wrong, do you think you can let me go?”

“Yah, like I said, sweetie, this isn’t about trespassing.” Pearl magically slid three photographs out of a file folder – a glossy playbill for the Great and Powerful Trixie, mug shots for Flim and Flam. “This is really more of a triple homicide, now, isn’t it?”

Guise’s eyes went wide. “Get me a lawyer.”

“Oh? Can’t afford yourself, sweetie?”

“Ask every client I’ve had in months – apparently, nopony can afford me.”

The M-squared-C-squared™ was pulled over to the side of the road, on a hill overlooking Ponyville. The goats were servicing the turbines, and the others had stepped out to stretch their legs. The sun was creeping up towards zenith.

“So we take the carriage and go incognito?” Flim said, looking through binoculars – he had found them in the goats’ luggage, and had chosen not to ask why.

“Iron Will agrees.”

Flim looked back at the minotaur. “Ah, no offense, good sir, but you do kind of stand…out…in Ponyville. Also, up. Over most things.”

“So? Iron Will is not hated in Ponyville. That’s all you three.”

“Yes…” Flam admitted, “But we rather not have anypony else looking at us at all, and your presence would thwart that. Just keep an eye out, in case we need your assistance.”

The minotaur thought on that. “That can work. Iron Will has a plan.”

“Are you bucking serious?” Nickel Guise cried, slamming both his forehooves on the table again. “Of all the clients who stiffed me on a bill, you think I’d kill those two bums? Yeesh, at least if I’d whacked Jet Set I could’ve hocked his gold watch and maybe rode the train back to my office as a pony instead of a parcel for once, but the Flimflam brothers?”

At the other side of the mirror, El Jefe nodded in satisfaction to a dark-colored pegasus. “Let him go, but keep him under surveillance.”

“Sir?”

“We’ve confirmed his alibis on the things that matter, and look at that glint in his eye – he’s as mad as hay, and he’s going to lead us right to the Flimflam brothers.”

“I feel so naked,” Flam said, as the three unicorns got out of their carriage.

“You are naked,” Trixie reminded him. “And that is why nopony is going to recognize you.”

“You’re wearing clothes,” Flim pointed out.

Trixie bristled. “Ponyville has seen Trixie naked.” The brothers had by now caught on to quite enough subtext to realize that there was a metaphorical layer to that statement as well. “Trixie has not been seen like this.”

A passing purple-and-green baby dragon gave her an odd look, but continued with his errands.

“They’ve also heard her call herself that a lot, so maybe Trixie should try and remember how the first person works.”

“Shhh,” Flam admonished his brother, as he pushed open the door to the shop – the bells rang, and a distracted voice called for them to take a seat at the counter.

Forty-two Flavors was the name of the shop, and on their wall was a menu, a price list, and a row of pictures celebrating local residents – including one, framed and signed, heralding a certain purple unicorn’s fifth-place finish in the Running of the Leaves. Trixie scowled, but joined the brothers at the counter.

After a moment of sitting, an earth pony mare with a two-toned curly mane – pink and dark blue – came out to meet them. “Hey, hons, what can I get y’all?”

Flam sweated, having not thought this part through. “Do you have…cider-flavored ice cream?”

“Out of season, costs extra. Still want it?”

“Why, yes – ” He stopped and thought, and it occurred to Flam that he probably shouldn’t plan on skipping out on the bill when he was trying to leave a good impression. “ – actually, no. What is cheap?”

The earth pony pointed a hoof at the menu.

“Vanilla, one scoop, then.”

“For me as well.”

Trixie stared hard at the menu.

“Any time you’re ready, hon,” the earth pony prodded.

“One scoop mocha, one scoop peppermint, one scoop pumpkin, on a banana split, drizzled with hot chocolate sauce and a dusting of rose.”

The earth pony wrote that down. “Y’all want anything on that?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Nay.”

“Chocolate sauce and rose.”

“And to drink?”

“Water.”

“Large Truffle Julius.”

It occurred to Flam that he should probably have verified that Trixie was also not planning on skipping out on the bill.

The earth pony nodded at the three unicorns. “Be up in a minute.”

She walked to the back room.

“Lyra, girl,” she shouted over the noisy freezing machines. “You’ll never guess what three bums just sat their flanks down in our shop.”

“Who’s that, Bon-Bon?” the green unicorn asked inattentively, as she pounded condiments into hard slabs of ice cream with her magic.

“We got the Flimflam brothers out there, buck-naked, thinkin’ I won’t recognize the two who put rocks in my drink, orderin’ vanilla ice cream ‘cause the cider flavor costs too much.”

Lyra smiled. “And the other bum?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie herself, dressed up like a giant chicken!” Lyra started giggling, distracting her focus from the ice cream. “Well, go on! Get a look at them ‘fore they wise up and run away!”

Lyra trotted out to the counter, saw the three, and began laughing hysterically. “Oh – oh wow – oh – hee hee hee!”

Flim and Flam and Trixie kept a stoic look on their faces. On Trixie, the effect was somewhat diminished.

“You know you two got a lot of nerve coming back here,” Bon-Bon said, trotting in after Lyra. “Just the other day, Applejack made a little posse with Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash to go hunt you down.”

Flim and Flam gulped; Flim got his composure back first.

“I know there’re a lot of ponies here who are mad, still, but our cider days have nothing to do with this.”

“That’s right!” Flam said. “We’re putting on a concert or two in a few days, a real special event, and we need to be working with the most creative musicians in Equestria!”

Trixie started to join in, but Flim cut her off. “You don’t get to join the pitch until you lose the chicken outfit, Trixie. You’re ruining it for us.” Grumbling, Trixie used her magic to begin undoing the various zippers and buttons involved. “Lyra Heartstrings, not only have rumors of your talent spread far and wide, we heard that you invented your own musical instrument.”

Lyra’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, I have! You wanna see?”

“Of course we do! The ice cream here is renowned, but it’s you we’re here for!”

Not having far to go for it, Lyra summoned her case from under a table and pulled out the instrument, setting its strap around her neck. Bon-Bon sighed in exasperation.

“It’s!” Flim started excitedly, hoping somepony would fill in the blank.

“It’s?” Flam continued, unable to do so.

“It’s a double-necked guitar! Here, six strings, here, bass! I can be two roles at once!” With a magical glow, she demonstrated by playing scales on both necks at once.

“Brilliant!” Flim shouted.

“Fantastic!” Trixie cried, having finally discarded the chicken costume on the floor.

“Economical!” Flam yelled.

“My dear Lyra,” Flim said, wishing he had his hat so he could take it off, “we are putting together a dream team, and it simply won’t be that unless you join us.”

“You really want me?” Lyra asked, happily. Her musical ambitions had been quite diminished lately, what with the Canterlot Symphony not even employing its own members, much less accepting applicants, and now she felt them at last surging back.

“Now what the hay are you on about?” Bon-Bon said, stepping up to Lyra.

Lyra gulped. “Now, don’t get riled, sugar,”

“Don’t you ‘don’t get riled, sugar’ me! Now, you not goin’ back on the road no more – and you ain’t playin’ in no more two-bit sleazy dives in Canterlot hopin’ to get talent-scouted. You livin’ with me now, and you not gonna go slidin’ around with some hoodlum unicorns.”

“My dear ma’am,” Flim said, “Would it make you feel any better if you knew that what we’re asking Lyra here to do is a holy thing?”

“You see…” Flam continued, sternly.

The brothers had arrived at this phrasing after careful discussion. Between Luna’s command to redeem themselves, and the epiphany received at the Summer Sun Celebration, they agreed that one of the two royal pony sisters was responsible for what they were doing. They also agreed that it was unlikely that more than one of them was involved – if both were in on it, they probably wouldn’t be facing nearly so many difficulties.

So they could have said ‘We’re on a mission from a Princess’ or ‘We’re on a royal mission’, but then there was also Princess Cadence, whose portfolio was primarily romantic love and therefore was probably not involved, and if she was involved, she was probably responsible for an incident of alleged snuggling that they agreed hadn’t even happened, so there was that. Needing to distinguish between Princesses, they had chosen ‘Goddess’, which everypony would understand to refer exclusively to the bringers of day and night, Celestia and Luna.

And they finally decided that it made them sound weak and uncertain to say “a Goddess” – while they indeed couldn’t agree as to which it was, nopony else needed to know that, so they deleted the indefinite article altogether.

In conclusion, Flam finished his sentence with:

“…We’re on a mission from Goddess.”

Bon-Bon was not amused.

“Don’t you blaspheme in here! Don’t you blaspheme in here! Now this is my mare, this is my ice cream parlor, and you three are gonna just trot right out that door, without your scoops of vanilla, without your mocha-peppermint-pumpkin banana split, and without Lyra Heartstrings!”

Lyra stepped up to Bon-Bon, her face determined. “Now you listen to me. I love you, but I’ve still got a mind of my own and I’ll make the decisions concerning my life.”

Bon-Bon leaned closer to Lyra’s face. “You’d better think about what you’re saying. You’d better think about the consequences of your actions.”

Working the counter of another sweet shop, across town, Pinkie Pie’s tail suddenly twitched, followed by a sneeze and a hip gyration. Her eyes went wide with realization.

“Mr. Cake! I need half an hour off right now!”

Carrot Cake gasped. “Not now, Pinkie, we need everypony on deck! This is the lunch rush!”

“But somepony’s about to break into a random song to resolve a domestic dispute and I need to be there to justify why such a thing could ever happen!”

“They’ll just have to soldier on without you, Pinkie!” Cup Cake said, thrusting a stack of orders at her. “More smoothies! Stat!”

“I’m so sorry, whoever you are,” Pinkie whispered, as she loaded the machine with milk and hay. “I’ll be there as soon as I can!”

Lyra scowled. “Oh, hush up, mare!”

“You’d better think!” Bon-Bon sang as she stuck a hoof in Lyra’s face.

The Flimflams and Trixie jumped when they realized that there had been musical accompaniment, and were still in the air from that jump when they noted that three other earth pony mares, seated at the counter – two with light pink coats, one with a very pale yellow coat – had also raised their left forehooves and chimed in with a sung “(Think!)”

“Think about what you’re trying to do to me, ye~ah, think!”

The three customer mares had stood up to join Bon-Bon as backup dancers.

The Flimflam brothers regarded the song playing out in front of them. “She’s got quite a set of pipes on her, Flam.”

“Very much so, brother. Too bad we already cast ourselves as the vocalists.”

“Oh freedom (freedom), freedom (freedom), freedom (freedom), yeah freedom!”

Flim looked around. “Where did Trixie go?”

“Freedom (freedom), freedom (freedom), freedom (freedom), ooh freedom!”

Trixie had appeared, perched on the counter, her saxophone now present, and she began to play.

Bon-Bon and the back-up dancers continued to pursue Lyra around the floor of the parlor, musically admonishing her.

“Ponies walk around every day, playing games that they can score…” Flim and Flam pulled away from the counter, as Trixie was cantering dramatically down it while jamming on her sax, and they wanted to give her plenty of space.

“You need me! And I need you! Without each other – ain’t nothing ponies can do!”

The song flowed into its bridge, and as the three back-up dancing mares continued to admonish Lyra with “(Think, think about it)”, Bon-Bon pulled from off the wall a trumpet and joined her own accompaniment.

“She plays the trumpet, too,” Flim pointed. “Pretty well, really. Does that overlap with Iron Will’s trombone?”

“Not at all,” Flam said. “Totally different horns, different ranges, different parts.”

Through dizzying work, Pinkie Pie had seen that every last customer in the rush was served in record time, and her apron she had thrown to the floor, as she darted out into the streets.

“What if I’m already too late?” she wondered, even as she offered up breathless-but-cheerful greetings to her fellow villagers. She galloped harder.

Lyra was firmly pressed into a chair, prodded by the accusatory hooves of four separate earth ponies, who were building to the finale.

“(To the bone – for deepness! To the bone – for deepness!)

Flim and Flam looked at each other, nodding, whispering.

“(You had better stop and think before you)”

“Think!” Bon-Bon shouted, slowly lowering her hoof from Lyra’s face, as the music ended.

Lyra’s eyes were wet. “Bon-Bon…that was beautiful. I had no idea you felt that way…or that you were such an incredible musician.”

“She really is,” Flam said, standing up. “Let’s vamoose.”

“But – ” Lyra started.

The front door of the shop slammed open as Iron Will forced himself inside. “Both of you are coming with us! Now!”

At the sight of the hulking figure, Lyra and Bon-Bon leaped, shrieking, not yet recognizing him – nor getting an opportunity to do so before he had seized each of them and taken them under his arms.

“Move move move!” Flim shouted, as the brothers, Trixie, Iron Will, and the two abductees vacated the premises.

Flim, the last one out, lingered just a moment on the threshold before waving at the stunned back-up dancers: “Store’s closed – turn off the lights when you leave.” With that, he joined the ponies and the minotaur on the carriage, and wheels spinning, they vanished.

“So, uh, should we call for help?” Daisy asked.

“Uh, hello? Free ice cream!” Rose pointed out.

Their gazes turned to the unattended counter when the door slammed open again, startling them so badly that they fell off their seats.

Pinkie Pie looked around the room, wild-eyed, breathing heavily, before realizing the horrible truth and falling to the floor.

“Nooo!” She sobbed. “I’m too late!”

“Iron Will?” Bon-Bon asked, confused, upset, as the carriage sped too fast down the roads for her to consider leaping to freedom. “I don’t understand!”

“This is for a good cause, my little pony.”

“We didn’t lie to you,” Flam called, as he whipped around another curve. “We really are on a mission from Goddess.”

Bon-Bon shook her head, and then looked over to see how Lyra was doing. Bon-Bon was expecting fear, nervousness, a thousand-yard-stare – anything but a grin of almost delirious joy. She prodded Lyra with her hoof, to see her reaction.

“Isn’t this awesome?” Lyra asked in response to being poked.

“…awesome?” Bon-Bon echoed.

“I’m going to go play music at a big concert, using my own instruments, beside the mare I love, who has been secretly hiding amazing talent from me. This is basically what I dream about every. Bucking. Night.” Lyra giggled.

Flim turned around in his seat to face Bon-Bon. “We’ll only keep you a few days, and I’m…certain…we’ll make enough to cover any losses you might have suffered and more besides.”

The carriage approached the back of the omnibus, which the goats had modified in their absence, so that the back now had a hatch and ramp which could open and admit a vehicle to drive directly into it. Which was, in fact, just what was starting to happen.

“Fine, fine,” Bon-Bon said, resisting the urge to put her hoof in her face. “But this isn’t for you, and this isn’t for your mission from Goddess. This is for her.”

Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, and Lyra and Bon-Bon

At the edge of Whoa-maha, the M-squared-C-squared™ had stopped to take on water and coal, and again, it was the task of the goats, while the others had piled out to get their first look at the city itself.

“Do you always make the goats do all the work?” Trixie asked, trotting out into the hot humid air, right in front of Iron Will.

“‘Make’, nothing! The goats don’t trust anypony or anything else to so much as touch any of the moving parts. Iron Will isn’t even allowed to drive.”

“Baah,” the gray goat pointed out while working a mechanical pump to fill the water tanks.

“That was one time!” Iron Will snapped. “And she got use of that leg back eventually.”

“Ba-ah,” the white goat added, applying machine oil to the hinges of the coal hopper.

“You – you have the nerve to bring that up? That was as much your fault! You didn’t tell Iron Will about the blind spots!”

Trixie decided that she was done listening to this argument, and trotted up to join the other ponies, who currently were all sitting on their haunches, looking up at something. Setting herself between Flim and Flam, Trixie followed their gaze.

Two reasonably tall buildings – eight and nine stories, respectively, brick – flanked the main avenue of Whoa-maha at this edge of the city. Atop each was a billboard. On the left was a painting of a pegasus-eye view of the city, captioned by the calligraphic words “Chez Drover welcomes you to Whoa-maha.” On the right, there was a painted photograph of a tall gray earth pony mare, wearing only a pink bow tie, standing on her back legs in front of a pair of Mild West-style swinging doors – the pony and her long dark mane backlit by a warm, inviting light. The caption for that one read “And Octavia welcomes you to Chez Drover.”

It did not take Trixie long to note which of the two billboards had kept the collective gazes of Flim, Flam, Lyra, and Bon-Bon.

Bon-Bon at least had the decency to keep her jaw closed, and Lyra was not letting any drool run out of her mouth.

“Sweet Luna in a quad of knee socks,” Flim said, when his sensibility, at least to a small extent, returned, “that’s Octavia?”

“The old girl said she was talented and famous.” Flam added, visibly sweating, which could only be partially blamed on the climate. “She didn’t mention that she was a knockout!”

Trixie muttered “She’s not that pretty.” She spoke a bit more loudly and clearly to make her main point: “You know a lot of that’s just good airbrushing.”

“Actually, no,” Lyra piped up, stepping closer. “I saw her in person a few times in Canterlot. I mean, yeah, that’s airbrushed, but if you ask me, she’s way hotter in the flesh. Arrow-straight, though, I never had a chance.” Lyra considered what she was saying, and, more specifically, what she was saying while standing next to whom. “Which is totally for the best, because that way I didn’t miss the chance to meet the love of my life.” She glanced aside to see if Bon-Bon was placated. She seemed to be, at least somewhat.

Trixie sniffed and trotted away, to nopony’s particular notice.

“That class – that elegance – that natural sophistication. And yet it’s so real,” Flim mused. “You see these ads telling us that mares are supposed to look like Fleur-de-lis. You know what Fleur-de-lis looks like, brother?”

Flam had been in conversations like this many times before with his brother, and enjoyed it no less each time. “Like a painted porcelain doll, Flim. Ornate, gorgeous, and you know she’d just break. And that she’s already been bought and paid for by somepony else.”

“But that!” Flim said, pointing at the billboard. “That’s a mare! Beautiful beyond words, and yet you know that she’s just waiting for the perfect stallion to sweep her off her hooves for the very first time, so she can rock his world.”

“Earth pony, too,” Flam said, with a leer in his voice. “Endurance!” The brothers clapped forehooves. Flam looked back down. “Lyra knows what I’m talking about, right?”

Flam held out a hoof; Lyra clapped it. “Oh wow, yeah: it’s so true. Bon-Bon can go for – ow!” Lyra rubbed the back of her head, after Bon-Bon had smacked it hard with her hoof.

“Nopony wants to hear that,” Bon-Bon admonished.

Lyra pointed at the Flimflam brothers. “They do.” The brothers grinned mischievously.

“They’re perverts. Did you ever stop to think – ”

The Flimflam brothers twitched, but no musical accompaniment resulted this time.

“ – that you might be making somepony uncomfortable?” Bon-Bon pointed.

Following Bon-Bon’s gesture, Lyra trotted over to Trixie, who was sitting on the grass about twenty yards away, facing away from the billboards and towards nothing at all in particular.

Hearing the approach of hooves, Trixie preempted with a soft-volume but firm-toned declaration: “Trixie is quite confident enough in her marehood to not feel threatened, thank you.”

Lyra stopped just behind her, and tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Oh, that’s good. I was worried that with two stallions just calling you ‘old girl’ all the time and somepony they’ve only seen on a billboard getting all those compliments, I dunno, I was worried that you’d get a bit flustered.”

“Trixie is her own mare, and does not require romantic validation from a couple of con artists.”

“Great!” Lyra said, smiling happily. “That’s really strong of you. I know you spend a lot of time by yourself on the road, right? I’d think that’d get really lonely – I mean, I was in Canterlot for a few months at a time off and on, and even totally surrounded by friends, I could get to feeling really isolated, and without the warm, tender, affectionate touch of another pony who really cared about me now and then I think I would’ve gone stark raving mad, but you’re just so much tougher than I am!”

Somehow, Lyra didn’t hear Trixie grinding her teeth, and although the goats servicing the omnibus did, they thought it was a transmission problem. Lyra continued on, blissfully unaware.

“I mean, you really are a very cool pony. Like, when you came to Ponyville, and the only two ponies who were at all interested in you or what you had to say were a couple of dopey schoolcolts? You totally didn’t let that faze you, and that’s really impressive. And yeah, I mean, you kinda got spanked by Twilight Sparkle, but who wouldn’t be? She’s basically the greatest unicorn of all time. You should be really proud that you even made a showing, up against the likes of her!”

Lyra proceeded to recount the time that she was brainwashed into trying to kill Twilight Sparkle, and how Twilight had defeated her with a wedding bouquet; not noting that Trixie, eyes bloodshot, had stomped back over to the other ponies.

“Trixie is so happy that everypony loves Octavia Sparkle so much - ”

“Uh – ” Flam said, helpfully, noting Trixie’s flaring nostrils.

“ – but since it appears everypony else is so deeply in love with her, it seems only Trixie could possibly recruit her without forgetting herself and asking her to marry Trixie instead.” The Great and Powerful Trixie snorted hot steam.

“Once again, Iron Will is left out of the calculus,” the minotaur grumbled, now standing over the ponies.

Trixie turned on Iron Will, giving him a glare.

“…And Iron Will shall just have to deal with it,” he followed up. “The goats will get the carriage ready for Trixie.”

Sitting in the grass, Octavia carefully opened the lunch she had wrapped, unfolding the white cloth with her fore hooves. A few yards away, the sun was coming down hard on the damp grass, but the city’s oldest park didn’t lack for large oak trees and the cool shady relief they offered.

“Pardon, but do you mind if Trixie – if I join you?”

Octavia closed her eyes for a moment, smiling gently. “I rather thought somepony had been following me.” She opened them again, looking towards the voice. “Do take a seat here; these trees were made for it, were they not?”

Trixie quietly set herself down in the grass near Octavia. Though there were perhaps two dozen ponies in sight, enjoying their lunchtimes in the park, the song of a thousand cicadas provided some privacy so far as keeping things out of earshot. Trixie didn’t often get to the parts of earth pony country where cicadas were common, and certainly never heard them in Canterlot; she wondered how anypony could ever adapt to the constant noise. After a moment’s contemplation on this, she realized that Octavia was gazing at her – perhaps even staring. She looked back, and the earth pony smiled at her.

“I know that I have more admirers than I really deserve, but from the hoof-writing on the fan mail I receive, most of them are other earth ponies. Would you like half this sandwich?”

Trixie’s stomach growled loudly, thwarting her hopes to confidently and politely decline. She accepted, and magically drew it over to herself. “I am not really an admirer – ehm, that is not to say that you are not admirable – ” Trixie gulped. What bothered her most, she thought, was that Octavia was not looking at all disturbed by any verbal misstep; she just kept up that soft, understanding smile, completely contrary to the aloof and stoic look she had on her posters. “My name is Trixie – Trixie Lulamoon, but please, just Trixie – and I represent a charitable interest that is planning a concert.”

“That’s wonderful, Trixie. What is this charity?”

“We’re raising money for repairs to an orphanage in Canterlot. It’s – well, I grew up there, so you can see why this means so much to Trixie.” She noted herself sliding back into the third person, but suspected Octavia was not likely to mind.

“Of course I do; so when is the concert, Trixie?”

The unicorn sweated, as she realized what day it was. “Sometime in the next four days.”

For the first time, Octavia frowned. “Oh. Oh my. That’s not a lot of time at all. And you don’t know when? So you don’t even have a venue set?”

“We – no. We’re still putting the group together. We want you to join us.”

“This soon, and you’re still putting the group together? Am I at least the last element you need?”

“Of course!” Trixie said confidently. “We already have two vocalists, a trombonist, a trumpet player, Trixie on the saxophone, and a double-necked guitar.”

Octavia frowned deeper. “It doesn’t really sound like the sort of group that needs a cellist…although….” Trixie smiled hopefully. “…I suppose my skills on the piano haven’t gone that rusty.” Trixie nodded eagerly. “And drummer, you forgot to mention drummer. You do have a percussionist, right?” Trixie’s smile stayed frozen on her face, though the confidence and happiness had drained from it. “You don’t have a drummer.”

The earth pony sighed deeply, and she set a hoof on Trixie’s shoulder, face to face with her. “I’m sorry, Trixie, I really am, but it seems as though your group is a bit disorganized and hasn’t any real notion of how to plan and execute this thing. If all you have left is four days, your time would really be better spent working on any other plan at all.”

“No – please!” Trixie said, throwing both her fore hooves on to both Octavia’s shoulders. “You’re who we need. Things will come together if we get you on our side!” Octavia’s eyes were flicking to Trixie’s hooves nervously. “We’re – we’re on a mission from Goddess! You have to help us!”

Octavia gently shoved herself away from Trixie. “You do need help, Trixie, but not mine. Now, I really must go home and get cleaned up for work.” She backed away, a few steps at a time. “You’re welcome to the rest of the lunch.” She pivoted on her legs and dashed out of the park at a gait a little too close to a gallop to be properly decorous.

Trixie stared after the retreating mare, and then looked down at the grass.

“Buck.”

She did, despite her annoyance, magically grab the rest of Octavia’s lunch to eat on the way back to where she had parked the Flimflam’s carriage.

Trixie ended regrouping with the others at a greasy spoon off the main drag, where, given that Iron Will actually had a few bits to throw at a bill, the party was enjoying a meal. Deeply frustrated, the magician went ahead and had a second lunch.

“I’ll admit, old girl, I didn’t really think it would work,” Flam said, as his magic repeatedly slapped the back of a ketchup bottle.

“Why not?” Trixie demanded, as a plate of chili sin carne on hay fries was set before her.

“She probably gets a lot of offers, and we don’t have a lot to offer.” Flim shrugged. “Had nothing to do with who made the approach.”

Iron Will looked around the table, eyebrows raised. “Wait, so that’s it – we’re done? We came all the way out here for nothing?”

A blob of ketchup comprising the bottle’s entire contents emerged from the glass neck, completely smothering Flam’s grilled mushroom sandwich and half of Bon-Bon’s mane. Flam sighed, before speaking. “Of course we’re not done. We just checked off the first item on the list: ask nicely.”

Bon-Bon irritably dabbed at her mane with a napkin, to not much effect; Lyra intervened with her magic, to only slightly more benefit. “So next you kidnap her?”

The brothers seemed to genuinely be considering this option. As Bon-Bon’s eyes widened, Flim finally announced: “No, of course not.” Flim tilted his head in thought. “Brother, you think maybe the Chihocko Charade?”

Flam stroked his moustache thoughtfully, neglecting his ketchup supper with a grilled mushroom sandwich garnish. “Wouldn’t work. We can’t assume the third premise.”

“Right, right….” Flim gave the matter a bit more thought. “What about a modified Chihocko Charade incorporating the key element of the Salt Lick City Shuffle?”

“The SLC Shuffle? How in the hoof would we do the – ” Flam looked around the lunch table. “Bucking. Brilliant. Brother.”

Half of those not surnamed Flimflam were looking at the other half in confusion; most of the other half were shrugging their shoulders.

As Trixie attacked her dish, vigorously chewing while magically raising another large forkful, she looked down at the table to see that Flam had taken her hoof in his two fore hooves. She looked at him to see that he was gazing into her eyes. Deep into her eyes. She stopped chewing.

“My dearest Trixie – as you sit there, demurely eating those smothered hay fries, silky mane shimmering in the Whoa-maha sun pouring through the single-paned windows, my heart can’t help but to be stirred by the flame of desire and stoked to heretofore unknown passions. Would you do me, your humblest servant, the honor of joining me this evening at Chez Drover?”

Trixie dropped her fork.

The sun was nearly down, and rain was falling in sheets – Flam’s unicorn magic suspended an umbrella over Trixie, as she stepped out of the carriage.

“Thank you ever so much,” Trixie said, as they gingerly stepped through the parking lot to avoid getting too many puddles splashed on their clothes. In a lower voice, she asked, “That check is going to bounce, right?”

“Like a rubber biscuit,” Flam said, nodding. “If it bothers you, try to keep that dress clean, so you have something to return.” He raised his voice as they approached the entrance. “Ah! Good evening, good sir!”

“Madam, monsieur – you are aware that we have a valet service?” asked a white earth pony in a red hat and vest.

“Of course, good sir, of course – I just get very tetchy about anypony else laying a hoof on my carriage.” Trixie smiled and nodded knowingly. “Why, thank you!” Flam added, as the valet held open the door for them.

Past a short entrance lined with oil paintings illuminated by gas lamps, Flam and Trixie joined the very short line in front of the maître d’. They listened patiently as Octavia, standing at a podium, addressed the concerns of the guests in front of them.

“No sir, I am sorry, but Mayor Dahlmane no longer dines here. He is quite dead, sir. Very good; I believe we have a table for you right this way….”

Flam and Trixie moved up in the line as Octavia led the guests to a table.

“Here goes,” Flam said, talking out of the side of his mouth. “Anything I need to know?”

“Just that she really is perfect.” Trixie sighed.

“Nopony’s perfect. That’s why this is going to work.” Flam said confidently.

Octavia trotted back up to the podium, blinking her eyes. “Welcome to Chez Drover – oh. Miss Trixie.” Her face was stoic, rather than smiling.

“Octavia? Oh, my, what an unexpected coincidence. Have you given any thought to what we discussed earlier?”

“You have my answer, Miss Trixie. It is quite impossible. Is that all you require tonight?”

“Not at all, dear filly, not at all! Flam here, my associate in charitable enterprise, and I have come here to dine! Trixie assures you, meeting again like this was a mere happy coincidence.”

Flam took off his hat. “Miss Octavia.”

“Come, dear beau, let us adjourn ourselves to the nearest vacant table, and peruse this establishment’s board of fare.”

“Wait! You can’t – ” Octavia started, as the two trotted off to the dining room. “Ah, welcome to Chez Drover!” she uttered hurriedly, seeing more guests arrive at the front of the line. Her eyes flicked quickly between the two unicorns and the two new pegasus ponies who had arrived, and she sighed, and put on her best stoic face. “How many in your party tonight?”

Trixie and Flam sat themselves at a table, smirking. They looked around the dining room, and then back towards the lobby, where Octavia was not about to get less busy.

“Now?” Trixie asked, in a low voice.

Flam nodded, and whistled shrilly. “Yo! Garcon! A little service, here!”

Several desired effects were achieved: the other patrons were staring, a waiter made his way towards them, and there was no question that Octavia heard him.

“What can I get for you?” the earth pony waiter asked, uncomfortably.

“A bowl of corn chowder for myself, a Wooldorf salad for the lady, and a giant bucking plate of spaghetti with falafel – two forks. Whaddaya got in the way of really good blackberry nectar?”

The waiter cleared his throat. “We have the Dun Peregrine at seven-hundred-fifty bits a bottle, sir – the sommelier could assist you better, if you could just wait a - ”

Flam belched, and patted his chest with his hoof. “Dun Peregrine? Yeah, that’ll do, pal. Bring us two, because it’s just been one of those days, know what I’m sayin’?” The earth pony nodded. “Whaddaya waitin’ for? Schnell!” The waiter trotted off at Flam clapped his hooves, and Flam reclined in his seat, scratching his ear with his hooves.

Trixie, meanwhile, kept her eyes flicking about the dining room, looking for opportunity. The place was ripe with it. With a small glow of magic, she moved a chair leg here, a fallen fork there, and – well, mostly, in fact, just a lot of re-adjusted chair legs. The waiters began to find their paths blocked, stumbling, having to ask guests to move.

And then came the golden opportunity: an unfortunate earth pony mare trying to balance an entire platter of fondue pots on her back. It never stood a chance against a bare nudge from Trixie’s magic – hot cheese sauces splattered across an entire dinner party.

As the dining room worked up to an angry hubbub full of discontented and sometimes cheese-soaked guests, Octavia finally had a moment long enough to meet Trixie and Flam at their table.

“I know what you are trying to do,” she said. “And it will not work.”

“This doesn’t have to go on,” Flam said, smiling. “I can make this end at any time. All you have to do is take our offer. A few days; that’s all we need.”

“No.”

“Your loss, sweet thing.” Flam whistled sharply again. “Hey! Garcon! Where’s that booze I ordered? Shift your flank!”

“I must ask that you behave. You are disturbing other guests.”

“Or what?” Flam asked, as he magically tossed a bread roll into Trixie’s open mouth.

“Or I must tell the two Night Guards in the lobby that you have refused to conduct yourselves in a lawful and orderly matter.”

Flam and Trixie looked towards the front, where two pegasus ponies in uniform were waiting.

“You called the feathers on us already? Dang.” Flam shook his head, and stood from out of his chair. “And here I thought you were cool, Octavia. Well…Trixie?”

Trixie nodded, and stood up. “Flam?”

“Run!”

The two unicorns jumped onto the table, smashing the wood leaves and tearing the cloth, and galloped towards the open-air balcony, leaping from occupied table to occupied table, destroying thousands of bits worth of gourmet food alone before clearing the balcony rail and descending to the rain-slicked street below. The two pegasus ponies in hot pursuit did only somewhat less damage as their hastily beaten wings knocked over dozens of glasses and set off a sneezing fit in an elderly truffle magnate.

With a few hasty directions by Octavia, the staff set into damage control mode, arranging for the replacement of affected meals and the issuing of complimentary gifts to disaffected customers, and after ten minutes, order seemed to return – leaving the maître d’ free to return to the front, where two mares were waiting for her.

“Welcome to Chez Drover, so sorry about the delay,” Octavia said, taking in the two new guests – an earth pony with a pink-and-blue curly mane, and an aquamarine unicorn with a cyan mane. “Just two in your party?”

“Yes,” the unicorn said, rubbing her side up against the other guest. “We were just hoping for a nice romantic dinner here; do you have a table?”

“Romantic – of course, of course. Right this way.” Octavia pondered briefly for a moment whether to tell two obvious out-of-towners that Whoa-maha wasn’t necessarily as progressive in some aspects as one might think. “Still,” she thought, “one ought to trust that they will maintain a reasonable level of decorum; and, the other guests, well, I mean, they’re wealthy ponies who pride themselves on a level of sophistication in a part of Equestria not generally renowned for it, they really should be able to tolerate something as innocent as two mares having a quiet, romantic dinner.” She trotted into the dining room, finding them an empty, non-broken table.

“Thank you very much, dearest,” the earth pony guest said. Octavia offered her graces, and turned to leave, when the earth pony continued. “You know, I’m a member of a certain charitable enterprise that’s going to put on a concert soon.” Octavia froze, her eyes widening. “You really should consider auditioning with them.” She gulped, and resumed her trot back to her podium.

Her heart raced as she waited for more customers. Her cynical angels were telling her to just call in the Night Guard now and to avoid the rush – but then there might be complaints, too. Some of them very hurtful – intolerant, for one, would be a title her reputation in Canterlot might not survive.

Minutes passed, and she began to calm – perhaps things she had misjudged things. She seated another party of guests, and then came in a pair of pegasus Night Guards. The veteran waitstaff said that the Whoa-maha Night Guards always gave good responses to Chez Drover, since the restaurant put so much sales tax into the city coffers, but that the check-ins – especially by stallion pegasus ponies, who were the norm, even out here - hadn’t been nearly so regular before Octavia started working there.

“Evening, ma’am,” the lighter-colored pegasus said. “We heard there was a disturbance earlier, and wanted to make sure everything was okay now.”

“Well, I can’t speak as to your comrades out pursuing the criminals, but we do have some semblance of order back here, thank – ”

A young waiter stuck his head into the lobby. Octavia noted a furious blush on the earth pony colt’s face. “Miss Octavia – um – er – you – uh….”

The maître d’ trotted out into the dining hall, followed by the two Night Guards. Their jaws dropped in unison. Octavia regained control of hers considerably faster than the pegasus ponies, though she still was stammering. “Y-you – you have to – s-stop them!”

“Why?” one pegasus asked, his mind clearly occupied.

“It’s – it’s indecent!”

“Looks pretty decent to me,” the other pegasus said, chortling.

One could not describe what Lyra and Bon-Bon were doing atop their table, one astride the other and with frequent rolling over to reverse positions, as ‘kissing’; not when the chance to use Trottingham dialect like ‘snogging’ was so blatantly available.

Octavia stomped her hoof in fury, and the pegasus ponies sighed. “Alright, you two,” they said, fluttering their wings for altitude. “Break it up!”

For a couple locked so deeply in the throes of passion, they managed to break into a gallop out the emergency exit of the restaurant with startling alacrity, sounding a loud, piercing alarm.

After the alarm was reset, the guests calmed, and a gray-maned busybody’s cardiac distress tended to, Octavia returned to the front podium, a little surprised to still be seeing new guests this late in the evening.

“Welcome to Chez Drover,” she began, taking in the new arrivals before her, a process which involved a fair amount of looking up. She had certainly heard of minotaurs, and supposed that this blue fellow was probably one of them. “How many in your party tonight?”

“Two,” the minotaur said.

Octavia looked down to the minotaur’s companion. “Sir, pets, except for service animals, are not permitted in the dining area of Chez Drover.”

“And this little goat serviced six steam turbines this afternoon.” The minotaur rubbed a hand through the goat’s white fur, vigorously scratching his head right behind the ear. “Iron Will thinks he deserves a night out for such good work.”

“Baaah,” the goat said, thumping his leg on the floor.

Octavia wasn’t certain whether goats generally crossed the line into sapience – they were probably much closer to sheep than cats, though sheep at least spoke intelligibly – but given that the goat was wearing a necktie, she decided not to push it. “Right this way, sirs.”

“Thank you,” the minotaur said, as he took his seat. “By the way, Iron Will hears tell that a certain charitable enterprise is looking for talented musicians for an upcoming concert. You should think about it.”

“Ba-ah,” the goat agreed.

Octavia considered having them ejected on the spot, and realized this would be a case of ‘you and what army?’ – even the bigger stallions on the waitstaff were casting a nervous eye at the minotaur. “Somepony will be with you shortly,” she said, smiling without mirth, as she turned and trotted back to the front.

“Get. The. Guard,” she said, hissing at a waitress who was on break in the front lobby.

“What? Why?” the other mare asked.

“The minotaur – we’ve had a lot of trouble already tonight, and I think he’s going to be more.”

“What, just because he’s a minotaur?” The waitress gave Octavia a skeptical look. “I’m really surprised at you, Octavia. That’s not like you at all.”

“What – no, no, it’s not that, it’s….”

The waitress, who Octavia realized, on reflection, had always rather resented her, trotted off in a huff and harrumph. Octavia sighed and put her face in her hooves, as she leaned against the podium. “Well,” she thought, “even if we can’t get them called, two of them should show up in about twenty minutes anyway.”

It was about half that time before a scream came from the dining room. “Your goat ate my hat!” was the follow-up shout, explaining the scream.

“Only yourself to blame, ma’am: you left it out where he could get it.”

Octavia sighed, looking around for the potted plant where the head waiter stashed his corn liquor, even as the first shrill voice replied: “It was on my head!”

“Iron Will stands by what Iron Will said.”

Octavia mouthed a clay jug out from under the plant, and plopped it on the podium. The young colt waiter who had been flustered by the earlier mare-on-mare action came into the lobby. “Miss Octavia – the minotaur – ”

“Yes,” Octavia said, popping the cork on the jug, and spitting it out. “Can you physically eject an unruly minotaur?”

“No ma’am,” the colt said.

“Neither can I. We wait for the Night Guard.”

“You called them, ma’am?”

Octavia thought of the ridiculous billboard at the city entrance. “Yes, I do believe so.” She grasped the neck of the jug in her mouth, and upended it. She stopped when it was halfway empty, and listened to hear if the shouting was still continuing. It was. The colt was still staring at her in horror. “Do you drink?” She asked. He shook his head no. She tossed him the rest of the jug. “Start.”

It was only a few more painful minutes before another pair of Night Guards arrived. They raised their eyebrows at the sight of a despondent Octavia, and then at the sight of a young colt in a waiter’s outfit nursing a jug, and then at the next round of shouted arguments between a minotaur and a waiter.

Octavia cocked a hoof toward the dining room, and the pegasus ponies flew off that way.

“You dirty feathers! You’ll never take Great Fortitude alive!” the minotaur shouted. Octavia raised an eyebrow at the change in name, but before she could even ponder the implications, she winced at the sound of broken glass.

She trotted towards the dining room, out of more morbid curiosity than anything else, to see the large picture window next to the balcony shattered, and the Night Guards flying out in hot pursuit. Again.

Sighing in defeat, she said just loudly enough to be heard over what was, in fact, mostly hushed silence: “That’s it. We’re closed. Everypony out.”

As the more junior staff were cleaning up, Octavia sat outside, leaning against the brick outer wall of the building, watching the rain continue to fall. Just as she began to wish that she hadn’t given half the jug to anypony else after all, she caught sight of two silhouettes approaching in the rain. It didn’t take long for recognition to click and for her to jump to her hooves.

“You! And…you! But how?”

The same stallion as before – red and white mane, olive coat, unicorn, same eye color, same bushy moustache – and the same white goat. The unicorn smirked, as he magically suspended an umbrella over the goat.

“Oh, your Night Guards have plenty of experience chasing earth pony ruffians and drunkards around, but they lack experience dealing with unicorn magic,” the stallion said, while smirking. “We can keep them chasing shadows for as long as we need.”

“I’ll – I’ll call the guards – ”

“And we’ll keep giving them the slip, and showing up to dine once more.”

“Bah,” opined the goat.

“Alright! I’ll do it.” Octavia threw up her forelegs. “I’ll take a leave of absence for a few days to recover from this. The owners will understand. And I’ll do whatever the charity needs until the end of the month.”

“There, was that so hard? We’ll meet you at ten to midnight, outside your house, in our omnibus.”

And like that, the unicorn and the goat retreated into the rainy night.

It was eleven minutes to midnight when the M-squared-C-squared™ pulled up outside of Octavia’s rented house – she had already showered, locked up, and left a note with her neighbors; and was now seated outside with her luggage.

The side door opened up, some stairs unfolded, and two unicorns came out to help her with her bags – the mustachioed one and – one she hadn’t seen, though he could have been a twin of the one with the moustache.

As their magic lifted her bags, she stared closely at the one she didn’t think she had seen.

“Yes?” Flim asked, innocently.

“You,” Octavia growled, “have spirit gum on your muzzle.”

Flim grinned. “And there’s a gray goat inside trying to sponge off the flour. Do we still have a deal?”

Octavia rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

“Really?” Flam asked, as he led the floating luggage inside.

“I said your little group didn’t know how to plan and execute. You have most thoroughly corrected me on this matter.” She stepped up onto the stairs, into the omnibus. “It remains to be seen whether we can save your orphanage, but I shall give it my utmost.”

“Yes!” Lyra shouted, pumping her foreleg excitedly. “This is going to be the best week ever!”

Trixie sidled up to Octavia. “Well, Trixie told you the state of things this afternoon. Where should we begin?”

Octavia looked around, as the Flimflam brothers set her luggage near the couch that would presumably be hers. “You still have no percussion section, I presume?” The others shook their heads. “Then take us down Dodge – there’s a club just outside of Colts’ Town, should just be getting ‘hopping’ this time of night.”

She smiled. The other ponies would even have called the smile a sinister one. It looked alien, on her face.

“Vinyl Scratch: I shall not be the only one of us to have had a bad night.”

Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, Lyra, Bon-Bon, and Octavia

“So – this Dodge Street we’re on – named after Dodge Junction, or Dodge Junction named after it?” Iron Will asked, leaning over the (authentically) white goat at the wheel, peering through the windshield into the dark, cloud-covered, Whoa-maha night. Octavia stood in the cab as well, seeing that the omnibus navigated properly to her destination.

“I had wondered about that myself one rainy Saturday, and inquired at the city library. It appears that the proprietress of the largest orchard in Dodge Junction and one of the town mothers of Whoa-maha share a grandfather, by the name of Salad Dodge. Larger-than-life fellow, in several different meanings of the cliché, but he rather could afford it; apparently, the very fact that orchards can be grown in the desert is thanks to some of his discoveries.”

Iron Will and the goat held their breaths as a Night Guard carriage passed them, but the pegasus ponies operating it paid the M-squared-C-squared™ no special mind. Octavia continued: “The short of it being that they are both named after the same pony, rather than one after the other, and yet the history of the two places continues to be tied together. Note the name of the club.” At this, Octavia gestured with a hoof at a large, brightly lit barn-like building coming up on their right, with a large neon sign, which Octavia read for them: “Cherry’s Jubilee.”

“That’s the club where we’re getting a drummer?” Flam asked, trotting up to the cab, which now, in the opinion of the goat in the driver’s seat, was uncomfortably crowded. Nopony, however, sought the goat’s input.

“We shall address our percussion issues here,” Octavia responded.

Flam narrowed his eyes, regarding Octavia. For certain, she was no less beautiful than the advertising promised – but his mind was in a different mode now: it was a time to work, not a time to be played. “From the way you word your reply, I take it you have a plan.”

Octavia chuckled demurely, as the omnibus pulled into the parking lot. “A plan? No, I do not. I have what you may consider ‘intelligence’ regarding this place. I have a grudge. I have faith that you will be able to apply this intelligence as expertly as you did against me just a few hours ago. And I have confidence that the outcome will be favorable to your charitable enterprise.”

“Go back a step,” Flam said. “What was that second one again?”

“Faith?”

“No, before that.”

“Intelligence on Cherry’s Jubilee?”

“No – oh, forget it. I’m sure it’ll come out later at the worst possible time. So you’re not going to be taking the lead?”

“Good sir, I’ve had a good quarter hour to consult with your fellow bandmates. Having heard a merely abridged version of their recruitment, I can be quite confident that I cannot match your uncanny abilities of interpersonal magnetism. I shall offer advice to you and your brother’s capable leadership, and no more.” Octavia smiled. There was some mirth in it, Flam thought, but not necessarily the good kind.

“You’re still a bit upset about the fondue thing earlier, I take it?”

“While I must confess to being a bit cheesed about the whole affair, I shan’t let it cloud my judgment.”

“You’re quite certain it hasn’t curdled your stomach for our charitable enterprise?”

“I told you my decision; you should not further milk this line of questioning, lest I end up reconsidering after all.”

Flim cleared his throat behind them, not quite able to squeeze into the crowded cab himself. “If you two are quite finished, we’re ready to unload.”

Thunder rumbled as the grey pegasus pony beat her wings through the night sky, wind tousling her blonde mane, though the lightning, at least, was safely below her hooves. She hadn’t been counting on working a double shift, nor that her extra shift would be covering a delivery from Canterlot to Chihocko, but she really thought that she shouldn’t be feeling this exhausted and sore – she found a suitable cloud and stopped on it, carefully hefting the mailbags that were her charge.

The mailbags were definitely overstuffed by local delivery standards, but she didn’t do enough regional deliveries to be certain if this kind of volume was excessive. However – and this took careful consideration, as she had certain issues with regards to depth perception – she decided that the two bags were quite imbalanced. She trotted around the top of the storm cloud, viewing the mailbags from every possible angle, wanting to be certain that the problem was really with them and not with her vision – and satisfied herself that the left bag was at least five times bigger than the right.

That simply wouldn’t do.

She opened up the left bag with her mouth, planning to redistribute some weight.

From inside the bag, a brown earth pony looked up sheepishly at her.

Wild Fire’s gleaming white convertible carriage careened through the night. Thunder and lightning rolled overhead, and a few droplets fell onto her, but to feel the cool night air running through her mane was just too sensual an experience to pass up. Singing along with a Sapphire Shores cover of ‘Love is in Bloom’ playing on the record player, she was quite unable to hear one particular pony scream in terror until he was directly overhead.

“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaa - ” His cry was suddenly curtailed by his impact, and Wild Fire’s shocks bounced. She glanced in the rear view mirror, not slowing down.

A brown earth pony was extracting his face from a large featherbed mattress that had been lying in the back seat.

“Are you alright?” was the obvious question, and indeed, it was the one she asked.

“Better than I expected to be thirty seconds ago.” Nickel Guise looked around. “Air mail is a lot less forgiving than rail. Can I get a lift?”

The pegasus pony kept a remarkably straight face. “This one not good enough for you?”

“Ah, well, yes, thank you kindly, ma’am.” The attorney climbed forward in the carriage, seating himself next to Wild Fire, and buckling a seatbelt. “I was on my way to Chihocko, in search of somepony, when it came to the attention of a certain admittedly beleaguered civil servant that I was not postage-paid. Might I ask where you’re going?”

“Whoa-maha. The stallion I’m looking for is there.” Wild Fire closed the roof of the convertible, having no room for further passengers.

“Ah.” Nickel Guise thought for a bit, looking in the rear view mirror. “Ma’am, while I’m very grateful – alive, even – for the presence of that feather bed – I must ask: why was there a feather bed in the back seat?”

Wild Fire grinned wide. “Because when I find that stud, I don’t want to have to waste any time.” The earth pony shifted uncomfortably. “Flam Flimflam is going to be mine, and I’m going to be ready anywhere, anytime.”

Guise would have spit-took if he had been drinking. Parched as he was, he was therefore able to maintain his composure. “You’re looking for Flam Flimflam, are you? And you think he’s in Whoa-maha?”

“Not think. Know.”

“Really? How, may I ask?”

“The power of love.” The pegasus at the wheel appeared to be dead serious.

The earth pony considered this, muttering only barely aloud: “Well, it single-hoofedly thwarted a large-scale military strike a few months back, so I suppose it might also have the ability to track down a few deadbeats.”

“Beg your pardon?” Wild Fire asked.

“I said, ‘I’m very grateful for the ride to Whoa-maha,’” Nickel Guise lied.

“What?” Flim demanded, angrily. “Am I not on the list?”

The bouncer, a purple earth pony with an image of a door on his flank, rolled his eyes. “There is no ‘list’, sir. If you want to come in, drink, dance, and have a good time, you’re more than welcome, as long as you don’t make trouble. My problem is that you seem to be bringing in musical instruments.” He waved a hoof at the minotaur with a trombone, the unicorn with a saxophone, the unicorn with the double-necked guitar, the earth pony with the trumpet, the white goat with a stack of amplifiers on his back, and the gray goat carrying an electronic keyboard and a cello case.

“Of course we are!” Flim bristled. “We’re the band!”

“The band,” the bouncer deadpanned. “It’s nearly one in the morning, and you show up, saying you’re the band.”

“We’re the second feature.”

Before the bouncer could eviscerate this bluff, he noticed one more pony approaching behind the rest of them, derailing his train of thought. “Miss Octavia. Cherry’s Jubilee always welcomes you.”

“And a good evening to you as well, Zed Sway. Is there a problem with my bandmates?”

“No – no problem. Go on in.”

While the outside of the building was meant to resemble a giant barn, the interior was clearly built by consulting other ponies entirely, ones who studied subjects like ‘acoustics’ and ‘sound engineering’. The dance floor was fronted by a large bar, and flanked by stages at each end – one stage empty, the other having only a small DJ’s booth, piped into the club’s sound system. Rhythmic bass beats blasted, and hundreds of ponies danced, while easily another hundred sat or stood but drank either way.

Pretending they knew exactly what they were doing, the charitable enterprise began to set up its equipment on the empty stage. Flam found an undistracted bartender and asked: “So, what kind of music do you usually get here?”

The bartender pushed her thick-rimmed glasses back on her snout. “We play a pretty big variety here, but the house specialty is a pretty obscure genre; you’ve probably never heard of it.”

Flam frowned. “Try me.”

“‘See and Dub’,” she pronounced it.

“C&W? Really?” Flam laughed briefly but haughtily. “You think your little club has a monopoly on C&W? We know C&W.”

The bartender gave him an annoyed look, and went back to wiping the counter, as Flam joined his group on stage.

“Alright, everypony, we need something country and western for this audience.”

Trixie looked at Flam, at her saxophone, and then back at Flam. In point of fact, only Lyra looked did not have a look of disappointment at this announcement – not counting Octavia, who seemed to have been distracted from the moment they entered the club.

“On three – one, two, three – ”

The Flimflam brothers held their hats in their hooves as they crooned into the microphone. The bass beats came to a prompt end as their song now replaced the house’s choice over the speaker system.

“All day I face the barren waste without the taste of water,” Flam sang.

“(Cool water),” Flim harmonized.

All other activity came to a halt as five hundred club-goers stared at the stage. While Lyra plucked out accompaniment on her instrument, the rest of the band awkwardly struggled to harmonize vocally with the Flimflam brothers, unable to find a part for their instruments in the song.

“My brony and I with throats burned dry and souls that cry for water (cool water).”

Some in the crowd began to boo. Others, by nature or blood-alcohol level of a more violent persuasion, prepared empty bottles – the few unicorns in the crowd with magic, the many earth ponies with carefully poised back legs.

By the time the song reached its chorus of “Keep a movin’ brony, don’t you listen to him brony, that’s Discord not a pony – ” the stage was under bombardment by projectiles and broncs’ cheers.

The hip bartender, who had seen a lot of bad bands in her time, did admire this about the one on stage right now: only one of their number – the earth pony trumpeter – seemed at all fazed. The two lead vocalists didn’t even blink, the minotaur was batting the bottles out of the air, the guitarist was too in the zone to notice, the saxophonist seemed more at ease after the crowd turned sour than before, and Octavia was wearing her trademark expression.

The crowd’s booing came to a halt as leitmotif of electronica heralded the arrival of a white unicorn with an electric blue mane to the DJ’s booth at the opposite stage. The new arrival spread her forelegs wide, and the crowd, turning towards her, cheered and stomped their hooves, as she called for silence over her microphone.

“Attention – attention, everypony. Need everypony to calm down and take a seat; I got this.”

Her purple-lensed glasses may have covered her eyes, but they couldn’t hide the gleeful smile on her face, as she continued to introduce herself.

“For your one, your only, your master of ceremonies, your jockey of discs, DJ Pon-3, has arrived for tonight’s encore, to deliver you all from these weak-ass beats!”

The cheering was reinvigorated, as Vinyl Scratch’s preferred array of sound equipment appeared around her, descending on hooks and cables. The pony she had pushed aside a minute ago merely kept the tracks playing; what was to follow would be a DJ’s work.

One strong but feminine voice was heard over the microphones again, clearing her throat at first. “We are terribly sorry that our warm-up exercise disturbed you, Vinyl.”

The cheering stopped as the crowd listened to the interplay.

The DJ peered through her glasses. “Tavy? The buck you doing here?”

“We’re here to play some C&W, Vinyl. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

Vinyl snorted. “You tell me. That crew of yours doesn’t exactly look up to playing Country and Dubstep.”

Flim clamped his hooves over the brothers’ microphone. “I believe I have identified the problem,” he whispered.

Flam shrugged. “And here I just thought they could tell that we had never rehearsed.”

“Oh, we’re up to it, Vinyl,” Octavia continued, ignoring the byplay and keeping the crowd going, “if, you know, you’re not afraid of being upstaged now.”

The unicorn DJ’s smile returned, though it was now a wicked one. “You itchin’ for some humiliation? Go on, then.”

Octavia nodded, and returned her borrowed microphone and she trotted back to her place on stage, where her cello case awaited beside the keyboard. Passing by the Flimflams on her way, she offered this: “I’ve done all I can. From here on out, it’s all you two.”

The Flimflams turned their backs to the crowd to check with their band.

“Anypony have a clue on how to make a wub without a synthesizer?” A lot of shrugs gave Flim his answer. “Fine. Let’s just pick something a little snazzier, and try to suck less.”

“Ghost Herd in the Sky,” Lyra suggested, “old classic, and then we just jazz it up a bit.”

“As fond of jazz as she is, Trixie must point out that it isn’t exactly wub.”

“We can’t do wub. Let’s focus on not sucking. On three.”

Lyra blasted an epic guitar riff through the speakers, seizing the crowd’s attention for the charitable enterprise’s second attempt. Flam took the low notes, Flim took the high, Octavia aimed for the most violin-like notes her cello could manage, and the others…improvised.

“An old cowpoke went riding out one dark and windy day
Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way
When all at once a mighty herd of red-eyes cows he saw
A-plowing through the ragged sky and up the cloudy draw.”

Vinyl folded her forelegs, knowing full well an absence of wubs when she heard it – not that she was surprised; Octavia’s band simply didn’t have the equipment for it.

“Yippie yi yaaaay
Yippie yi ohhhh
A ghost herd in the sky!”

The audience was, however, somewhat distracted from the genre failure by an impressive performance on the fiddle – cello – and Lyra continuing to rock on.

“Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred, their saddles slipped on sweat,
She’s gallopin’ to catch that herd but she ain’t caught ‘em yet!”

There was not a particularly good reason for Trixie to be flamboyantly jamming a saxophone solo between these verses; one could only mark it up to her being tired of not being in the spotlight and nopony knowing how to stop her, except by joining her – which would only serve the purpose of making it not a solo.

“As the leader loped on by him he heard her call his name
If you want to save your soul from the Nightmare of this range
Then cowpoke change your ways today or with us you will run
Trying to catch this wretched herd ‘til the dying of the sun!”

At this point, astute listeners, which included most of the audience but not much of the band, noted that the cellist and the guitarist appeared to be in a duel for the phattest finish – fortunately, the winners were the audience themselves.

“Yippie yi yaaaay
Yippie yi ohhhh
A ghost herd in the sky!”

With the trailing vibrato of Flim and Flam, and the two ponies in the string succession finally coming to simultaneous, flamboyant finishes, the audience broke out in an applause of hoof stomps and cheers.

Not quite certain of how that had happened, the Flimflam brothers took a bow.

“Alright, alright,” came Vinyl Scratch’s voice over the microphone, “that was considerably less weak, but it still ain’t exactly up to local standards. Now, if you don’t mind, let me show you how it’s done – ”

“Actually, young filly,” Flim said, taking the microphone firmly in magical grip, “That just wouldn’t be fair, would it? As you can see, we’re painfully short of equipment.”

The DJ snorted again. “Don’t think I’ll let you lay a hoof on my gear.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Would barely know to operate it.” A few ponies in the audience chuckled. “No, no, you misapprehend entirely. A different kind of competition entirely is what I’m calling for. You introduced yourself as an MC as well as a DJ, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, what of it?” Vinyl asked, having an idea where this was going, and looking forward to it.

“There’s a way for musicians to prove their superiority that requires nothing but a pair of microphones and one beat for the both. I trust you’re familiar?”

“Oh yeah.” Vinyl’s magic pulled the microphone off its stand at her booth, holding it in front of her. “This…” She began, trotting down off the stage, towards the center of the dance floor, “…is going to be good.”

Flam set a hoof on Flim’s shoulder. “You know what you’re doing, brother?”

Flim nodded. “I know what I’m doing, Flam – do you know what you’re doing?”

Flam grinned. Flim nodded again, and trotted down to the center, where the audience was forming a circle.

Flim and Vinyl circled each other, eyes locked, listening to the beat. Flim tapped his hoof a few times to catch it; for Vinyl, it was instinct.

“Grab yourself a quill and ink, it’s time to get schooled,
Don’t know what Tavy sees in ya but I sure ain’t fooled,
You’re sittin’ on my stage playin’ songs with no drums,
Now I’m here to toss you all out on your bums.
You’re a downright fool to challenge the likes of me,
You’re a nopony, foal, I’m the DJ PON-Three!”

Pumped up by their champion, the crowded cheered; Flim grinned as he continued to circle, and began.

“DJ PON-Three? What happened to One and Two?
You always re-inventing for a brand new you?
I’m Flim Flimflam, I’ve never been ashamed of that,
So back off little filly before I wear you like my hat!
You not heard of me? You’re in for a surprise.
Now take off those glasses and look me in the eyes!”

Vinyl frowned for a moment, before coming back to a grin as she magically removed her glasses, revealing magenta eyes. Her fans hushed – she was rarely seen like this.

“Take off my glasses? Don’t mind if I do –
For a better look at your stupid face when I beat you!
Now it’s you, sir, your hat – that thing, you need to doff!
So we can see the bacon that the griffin dropped off.
But the vest, I respect, you do look good in stripes,
And it really distracts from your total lack of pipes.”

Flim huffed and pushed Vinyl’s hooves off his silk vest. Even the bouncers and the bartenders were gathered now; they were joining in the cackling at Flim’s expense.

“Now listen up, mare, ‘cuz your eyes will go wider,
I’ll stick you in my press and squeeze you into cider,
I’ll take you down like I took down Sweet Apple Acres,
And everypony here’ll see you go cryin’ to your makers.
Your final downfall is tonight, right here in this club:
It’s all over faster than you can say wub-a-dub-dub.”

The DJ snorted, and waved a hoof at the crowd.

“My downfall? Guess you haven’t been keeping score:
My rhymes are getting cheers; you’re just a bucking bore.
This club is my world, and it’s the end of your line.
So go back to your cowtown and be with your own kine.
At this contest I am indisputably the master,
Bow down and beg now so the end’ll be faster.”

Flim smiled solemnly, and gave a gesture of mock courtesy.

“Alright, perhaps you’ve made me admit,
You’ve got a sharp tongue and a tiny bit of wit,
And on your own turf you seem to have the crowd’s love,
And that’s all that really matters when push comes to shove.
So maybe I’ve lost this battle of rhymes, but one thing I must know –
If I’ve the one who’s lost, where’d your sound system go?”

“What?” Vinyl blinked, and turned, looking away from the center of the room to its edges for the first time in a few minutes.

The DJ’s stage was completely empty. The microphones and beatbox were working because they were part of the club’s integral systems, and not Vinyl’s specialty equipment.

“Aw buck no!” She whipped her head back around, to look at Flim, who was already galloping towards the door, using his magic to cast earth ponies out from in front of him and into his wake.

“Hurry up, Flim…” Trixie muttered to herself, standing at the open back hatch of the omnibus. The turbines were warm and spinning, and Iron Will was finishing the work of strapping down the new cargo.

Out the front door of Cherry’s Jubilee, Flim burst. The doors managed four swings before the angry mob followed.

Unicorns were, for well-established reasons, rarely renowned for their athleticism when compared to earth ponies, but Flim, like Flam, and Trixie, had this over other unicorns: a lot of practice running. For Trixie, predominantly from monsters, angry mobs, and public humiliation. For the Flimflams, mostly from angry mobs and the Night Guard.

This was helping Flim, but, Trixie realized, it was not going to be enough. Even if the unicorn DJ was trailing at the back of the mob, a lot of rodeo ponies were at the front.

In fact, one of them even had a rope, which he was swinging in his teeth to make a lasso.

Trixie grinned, thanking the universe for continuing to give her these opportunities.

The rodeo pony let his lariat fly, and had only physics been in play, it was indeed possible that Flim would have fallen there and then. However, a glow of Trixie’s horn said that physics could warm the bench, as the rope flew to the side and snagged on a light post.

Flim knew that the first rule of running from an angry mob was to never look back at them, so he was not treated to the show of a few dozen ponies getting suddenly clotheslined by the lasso, nor another few hundred getting into a pile-up atop of them, nor Vinyl Scratch failing to screech to a halt on her hooves right before joining them. That show was only Trixie’s to enjoy.

With a final leap, he landed in the omnibus, the clank of his hooves on the metal floor being the signal to the driving goat to throttle forward.

“We’ll get you back in a few days!” Flim cried into the night, as the omnibus rolled away. “Sorry! We had no choice – we’re on a mission from Goddess!”

Trixie’s horn glowed again, closing the back hatch of the omnibus. “Really?” She asked, skeptically, raising a brow. “You’re sorry?”

“Well, no. But I’ll make an effort to return the gear in good shape, maybe with a rental fee, too.” The two unicorns trotted forward in the omnibus, to rejoin the rest of the band. “Now, all we need to do is find ourselves a venue.”

“Wrong.” Iron Will said loudly and firmly, his arms crossed. “We need to rehearse.”

“Ah – well, yes, but…” Flim started.

“Yes but nothing,” Lyra said. “We were blowing chunks out there tonight. I know it didn’t really matter, but I signed on for great music, and if we’re going to make your charity money, we need to be able to deliver.”

“Um.” Bon-bon coughed. “We were kidnapped, Lyra, remember?”

“I agreed not to complain about being kidnapped for great music. And I think we’ve got potential, but we’ve never played together before – we’ve got to work harder!”

Flim gulped. “Is this, ah, what we’re going to be doing for the rest of the day?”

Iron Will nodded, with intensity. “That, and driving back towards Canterlot. And the goats handle the latter.”

“I – you know, I just had an epic rap battle, can I get a reprieve?”

“Gargle with some cider and wash your face. Iron Will begins vocal warm-ups in five.”

“It’s time,” the blue-maned unicorn said, “roll it on out.”

“No, Vinyl!” her road engineer protested. “We haven’t finished testing – it’s much too dangerous!”

“Too dangerous for those thieves, you mean. Do as you’re told. Those fools are going to pay, and all will learn the source of true power in Equestria.”

The engineer gulped. “I can’t persuade you otherwise, Vinyl?”

“No. You cannot.” Vinyl’s magic adjusted her glasses so they were again firm on her eyes.

“The time has come for the world to see the power of the Bass Cannon Express.”

Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, Lyra, Bon-Bon, Octavia, and Vinyl Scratch's Sound System

A million cicadas chirped in the mid-morning heat, as another sweltering sun beat down on the prairie, offering no particular mercy for this small cluster of buildings at the intersection of highway and railroad. Ponies travelling by drawn coach rested their legs, those travelling by self-propelled coach or omnibus stretched them, those needing fuel for their vehicles acquired it, and Nickel Guise plunged his head deep into a pool of cool water and briefly contemplated drowning himself.

“So I said to him ‘I’m a pegasus, I crave spontaneity!’ and that morning he quit his job! So I was like, ‘dummy, we can’t exactly go out and have fun with no money’ and he was all ‘mare, I’m the stallion here’….”

No good. Even down here that crazy pegasus wouldn’t shut up, and he wasn’t ready to take his chances that a shade bearing her voice wouldn’t await him in the next life. He lifted his head back out, shaking the water from his mane and face, while his forelegs continued to hang over the rim of the fountain.

“Pardon, good fellow, but the fountain is for drinking, and most emphatically not for bathing,” said a voice behind him.

“Sorry. Just got a little carried away.” Guise pushed himself off the fountain, and turned to the voice – his tone getting considerably darker after he did so. “Flim. You look good for dead.”

Flim grinned, showing a touch of sheepishness and a touch of nervousness. “Dead, dear Nickel? Wherever did you get that impression?”

“When the feathers hauled me in for it – you and Flam and your old friend Trixie. I want my money, Flim. I want my money, and I want the Night Guard off my back so I start my practice up again.” Guise took a step towards Flim, in what he imagined looked like a threatening way. If water hadn’t still been dripping off of his soaked mane and moustache, it might have been so. “Don’t even think of running away from me.”

Of all reactions Guise was expecting to this, Flim suddenly throwing a foreleg around him was not one of them. “Run away? I wouldn’t dream of it, Nickel! You’re just the stallion I wanted to see! Trot with me.”

“Huh?” Guise said, ever quick to adapt to changing circumstances, as Flim half-dragged him forward.

“And as for the rest – well, Nickel, you know I’d never mean to leave you in the lurch! I honestly thought Flam would pay you for our defenses – must’ve been all those parking tickets he racked up – the interest too, just murder, I hear – ”

“Now don’t you try to polish a horse apple,” the attorney said, managing a protest, trying to halt himself on the sidewalk while Flim continued to drag him. “You’re the one who stole my opera tickets!”

“An investment, good fellow, an investment!” Flim said reassuringly, while his magic came active to push Guise along as well. “One that is indeed about to pay off. If you come with me I’ll tell you all about it!”

“What? No! You need to come with me, I need to bring you to the Night Guard, you need to turn yourself in, and clear up this mess, and – ”

The unicorn frowned. “That’s just not going to happen, my friend.”

Guise looked up at where Flim had brought him – to a large iron omnibus, painted with the logo of the Iron Will Company. If the recognizable registered trademark hadn’t been clue enough for Guise, the presence of the blue minotaur, leaning up against the bus, would also have been adequate. He looked at the minotaur’s immense muscles and gulped. The minotaur looked at his puny earth pony body and shrugged.

“Now,” Flim said, “You can come with me, or you can stay here – but that other thing you were speaking of? Not really an option.”

For a long moment, Flim, Guise, and Iron Will were silent against a background of chirping cicadas.

Then they heard shouting: “I said anthracite, you son of a Diamond Dog! How in the hoof is my beautiful white carriage going to run on lignite? I have a date to keep, and you will clean out the bunker this instant and replace the coal with the grade I paid for, or I will buck your stupid little head into…”

Guise suddenly made up his mind, and trotted up the stairs into the omnibus.

The unicorn and minotaur followed him in, closing up behind them.

“Hey brother,” Flim called. “It really was Nickel.”

Flam trotted in from the rehearsal car of the omnibus. “See? Our holy mission continues to be blessed.” An engine turned over, and the turbines of the omnibus started up as the goat got the M-squared-C-squared™ moving towards the highway.

“So what’s going on?” Guise asked. “Did you join the motivational speaking circuit or something? And this isn’t the way to Whoa-maha – where are we going?”

“It’s quite simple, our long-suffering esquire: we have formed a musical group composed of some of the greatest talents in Equestria who would work at our prices, and we intend to hold a concert.”

Guise stared at the Flimflam brothers for a while. “This is it? This is your plan to raise – what was it, fifty thousand bits?”

Flam grinned. “Our one and only!”

“And we need the money by, ah, the morning of the day after tomorrow,” Flim added.

“Which is where we could use your help!” Flam clarified.

Guise laughed. “Keep looking. I have no musical talent. In six years of school band, they had me play a tambourine. With the jingles welded together.”

Flam’s moustache twitched in mirth. “Indeed, Nickel, I’ve heard you attempt to sing. No, we weren’t asking for your help with that end. No, no, no, no, we most certainly were not. The very idea…oh, no, no, no!”

While Guise looked hurt, Flim threw a foreleg over him again, in renewed invasion of his personal space. “We don’t need any more band mates, Nickel; we need a manager. Or, to be really to the point, we need a venue. One that can raise us fifty thousand bits. By the morning of the day after tomorrow.”

Guise removed himself from Flim’s leg and stepped away. “You have any idea the kind of venue you’d need to work? And you don’t get those kinds of places with a day’s notice. I’m sorry, guys, but what you’re asking is utterly impossible.” The attorney trotted away from the brothers, coming into the next car of the omnibus. He stopped, giving plenty of time for the brothers to catch up with him, as he stared at the ponies re-tuning their instruments for a fresh round of rehearsal.

“Your band,” Guise asked, “includes Octavia, the Great and Powerful Trixie, and Lyra Heartstrings?”

“Hi,” Lyra said in a friendly tone, though she did not look up from her double-necked guitar, as she carefully adjusted the tuners. “You know me?”

“Your band played the Bright Donkey pretty much every Thursday night my last year at the Canterlot Legal Academy. Gimme Some Lovin’ might just have gotten me through the fall semester. That, and lots of coffee-based highballs for breakfast.” Guise turned back to his clients. “I’m sorry, guys, but what you’re asking is rather difficult.”

The brothers grinned.

“I’ve got maybe one favor I could call on this kind of notice. You ever heard of the Roan Palace Hotel? Nice place, right at the edge of earth pony country, overlooks a mountain lake. They’ve got a great big auditorium that they basically never use. The general manager’s son is an old classmate of mine, and I got him a nice quiet annulment from this drunken marriage he got himself into with his own – uh, anyway, big theater. If you fill that up, we’ll take fifty thousand bits, easy. Get me to a messenger post, I can get that arranged for tomorrow night.”

The attorney sighed and rubbed his face with his hoof. “That’s just the seating, though. No idea how we’re going to cover the advertising, the exploitation.”

Iron Will, having come up behind him, clasped him firmly on the back of the neck, simultaneously making Guise jump and keeping him from moving. “That won’t be a problem,” the minotaur declared proudly. “No one knows exploitation the way Iron Will knows exploitation!”

“Baah,” the gray goat agreed.

In the streets of Canterlot, outside a small brick building, unicorn colts and fillies gathered in awe, beholding their headmistress and Princess of the Night.

“Thou hast heard us speak about the two rapscallions, Flim and Flam. Yet they too struggle to trot the road of redemption! Tomorrow night, they shalt be performing to raise money for the aid of thee and thou! Thy slothful backsides art entwined in this matter as well! Now, take for thyself a stack of these flyers, and be off with thou: Canterlot, nay, Equestria, shall hear thy story, and learn how they might be of aid merely by attending a concert! Be off with thou!”

In the town square of Ponyville, Spike scratched his head. “Lyra? Bon-Bon? I heard you were kidnapped by Iron Will….”

“What?” Lyra laughed nervously. “Don’t be silly! Bon-Bon and I just decided to take a sudden vacation…you know how it is…” She trailed off, while leading Spike in any direction other than that facing Ponyville’s Civil Defense Loudspeaker, which Bon-Bon continued to attack with a hacksaw.

At an outdoor café in Canterlot, Twilight Sparkle looked up from the map she had spread across the table to see a unicorn colt holding up a poster.

“Excuse me Miss Twilight – ”

“Roo!” Twilight smiled. “How have you been?”

“Good Miss Twilight, can you please take this back to your friends in Ponyville and tell them because it’s real important.”

Twilight took the poster from the colt before he ran off, and read it carefully. Her eyes widened, and she shouted out to her friends, who were standing in line at the counter: “Applejack! Rainbow! We’ve got a lead!”

“Tomorrow night – one night only – ” Vinyl Scratch read the words as they appeared, pegasus ponies hastily painting them on a billboard. “The Flimflam Brothers Band and Music Revue. Featuring: the World-Famous Flimflam Brothers, the Great and Powerful Trixie, the Iron Will Company, Lyra Heartstrings, Bon-Bon, and Octavia. Roan Palace Hotel. One night only.”

Vinyl smiled in satisfaction. “The foals have led me right to them. I’ll have my revenge and my stuff back in no time.” She looked towards the back of her omnibus, the Bass Cannon Express, and the ten-pony team working to shovel enough coal to fill its hoppers. “How much longer, guys?”

The forepony wiped his brow. “Still another forty-five minutes, minimum, ma’am. We’re losing workers left and right to heat stroke and exhaustion.”

The DJ scowled, and stomped her hoof. “Damn, but I wish that thing got better fuel economy. You know I’m going to have to coal up like three more times to get to the Roan Palace Hotel?”

“I hear you, sister,” Wild Fire said, as she refueled her own carriage, no longer trusting others to pick the right coal. “And I was so certain he was in Whoa-maha,” she muttered.

The Canterlot Night Guard had a strict no-smoking policy, so El Jefe had to content himself with chewing on his cigar at his desk, which is what he was doing when unicorn magic carefully set a bowl of soup and a wrapped sandwich on it.

The pegasus chief looked up. “Oh, thanks, Pearl.”

“Oh, you’re quite welcome, Jefe, not a problem at all, I hate to see you hungry on these late nights. So, I was in the market – ”

“Uh-huh,” El Jefe said, preparing to tune out what was likely to be a well-intentioned but ultimately fruitless tale.

“ – and then the little dear gave me this and so then I was thinking maybe you and me and a bunch of the boys ought to take a little trip up there tomorrow night, you know?”

“Huh?” El Jefe replied, before Pearl illustrated her story by unrolling a poster.

“Oh,” he then said, having been enlightened.

The Flimflam’s carriage had been selected by Flam for several reasons. Chief among them was its price, secondly was its performance. Tertiary and yet still important was the potential the mechanically-inclined salespony had seen in it as a base and frame for further modification – for instance, for turning it into the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000.

The modification it actually received wouldn’t make any cider at all, but it could nonetheless prove useful. It certainly was eye-catching; ponies everywhere stared at the carriage, and the enormous loudspeaker mounted atop it.

Inevitably, the sights and sounds of this advertising campaign would stick in their minds.

Inevitable, in this town at least, because of the peculiar time of day at which the Flimflam brothers had chosen to begin their campaign.

“Tomorrow night! One night only!” Flam said into the microphone, blasting his message across the Fillydelphia town square.

“It’s after midnight, brother,” Flim said, checking his vest pocket watch. “So now you can start saying ‘tonight.’”

“Correction! Tonight, in fact! One night only!” Flam said, his clarification reverberating off the town’s windows.

The brothers’ fuel-efficient carriage – designed as it originally was for long pursuits in Mareland – had no immediate need to stop; they munched a few apples as daybreak arrived and their quest continued.

“You! The pegasus up on that cloud!” Flam had taken to shouting at each passing ball of white in the sky, just in case.

“Free parking!” he would add sometimes, which, while technically true in an objective sense, he probably should not have said, since he didn’t actually know that.

“Free cider!” would also be added by him sometimes as well, which was both false and irresponsible.

“…that’s a lot of entertainment! For twenty bits!” he finished, an hour after lunch. Flam looked over at his brother, who was looking at the map. “Progress?” He asked, not into the microphone.

“We’ve covered Canterlot, Cloudsdale, Fillydelphia, Ponyville, Foaledo, Whinneapolis, Detrot, Mareland, Stalliongrad, Dodge Junction, Las Pegasus, and now Appleloosa – ”

“Wait, Cloudsdale? Brother, I’d think I’d remember covering Cloudsdale.”

“I had you drive under it. I turned the speaker straight up for that one.”

“Alright. Then let’s get to the Roan ourselves.” Flam notched the throttle up; the turbines, notably, didn’t respond. In fact, they grew quieter. “Ah hay.”

“What?”

“We’re empty.”

They looked around at the empty road, twenty miles out of Appleloosa, surrounded by desert.

“Buck.”

The rest of the band had already arrived at the Roan Palace Hotel, by now, and while Iron Will and Company began setting up equipment, the ponies took in the theater with wide eyes. Mostly.

“Here?” Lyra asked, a touch nervously. “We’re playing here?”

“Is there a problem?” Octavia asked, the one stoic among the ponies.

“I – I play city park concerts, at best; bars, mostly. This is…a palace! A ballroom!”

“Guh,” Bon-Bon helpfully added, her brain almost broken.

“Not in Trixie’s wildest dreams did she imagine – ” The magician paused. “Okay, well, in Trixie’s wildest dreams, but that’s hardly fair, not when cactus juice was involved.”

“C – cactus juice?” Octavia asked.

“It’ll quench you,” Trixie replied, evenly.

“It’s the quenchiest!” Lyra added, helpfully.

Like Octavia, Nickel Guise was also unflabbergasted by the theater, but it was for different reasons. He trotted up from backstage, muttering figures to himself. “Ten bits cover charge – eight thousand seats general admission – two hundred bits VIP – fifty VIP seats – factor in the special rate – ”

“What do you think, Mister Guise?” Lyra asked. “Are we going to pull it off? Are we going to fill this hall?”

“Hmm?” Guise looked up. “Oh, we don’t need to fill it to meet our target – we’ll hit fifty thousand bits at 85% capacity of general admission alone.”

Bon-Bon frowned. “But that’s just for the orphanage. We were promised money for ourselves, too, to make up for certain…kidnappings.”

“You were?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Guise thought about this. “They give you a solid number on that, though?”

“No. But I would like to repeat the word ‘kidnapping’ a few times.”

“Out of fuel,” the earth pony at the highway coal station called out, as Flim and Flam magically propelled their carriage up to it, straining with the effort. Behind them, the sun was nearing setting.

“Indeed, good fellow. That is why we’ve come to your station.”

“Nope – we’re out of fuel. Train had a breakdown.”

“Hmm. That’s suboptimal,” Flim said.

“At best,” Flam added.

“Yep.”

The brothers looked around.

“So…any idea when the coal train will be arriving?”

“Oh, probably no more than another hour. Of course, it’ll take a bit to unload after that.”

“Right.” The brothers looked around again.

“Ah, sir?”

“Yep?”

“Would you object to us removing some of that switchgrass behind your station?”

“Nope.”

The doors of the theater had not yet opened, but the growing sounds of activity in the rest of the hotel could be heard as more and more ponies started to arrive. Finally unable to obtain any more value by retuning her saxophone for a tenth time, Trixie set it down and stomped over to where the goats were working, teeth clattering with nervous energy.

“The lasers – the fog machines – the fireworks – let Trixie assist. Trixie must do something!”

Flim leaned against his carriage, taking a break and keeping watch. It was Flam’s turn again to attack the overgrown fields behind the coal station with a magically-wielded machete, and Flim was enjoying his break with a bottle of cider.

A horn honked, as a varnished rosewood carriage rolled into the station.

“Excuse me, sir!” the driver called to Flim. “Need a refill of anthracite, and could you kindly check the flywheels, please?”

Flim considered this. On the one hoof, he had often spoken disparagingly of this pony, in comparison to others he preferred. On the other, Fleur-de-lis was right there.

“Sure.”

“Isn’t this exciting, girls? I’m so happy for Lyra! I know she’s wanted to put on a concert like this for – well, forever!” Twilight Sparkle bubbled as she, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash found their seats, near the front of the theater. “And to get to do it with a big name like Octavia!”

“What I can’t wrap my noggin around is Trixie doing a concert. You sure that there poster didn’t say ‘Music Revue and Magic Show’ or somethin’?” Applejack asked.

“No, it’s just a concert. I guess Trixie has other talents! I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully we can meet up afterwards and talk! I’ve wanted to hear how she’s been doing. Such a busy pony like her, though, probably doesn’t even remember me.”

“Yeah, well, Trixie’s not the priority,” the pegasus reminded her. “There’s probably going to be a mob of fans rushing the stage after the show, with the likes of Octavia and Iron Will and Trixie here, we’re going to have to get to the Flimflams fast if we’re going to get their ear.”

“That’s right,” Applejack nodded. “We’re going to have to move right quick at ‘em if they’re going to have time to listen to my proposition.”

“So, dear filly,” Flim continued, his forelegs draped inside the carriage and almost atop of Fleur-de-lis, who curiously didn’t seem to mind, “perhaps you might also find the time to come see the show? I’ve heard rave reviews regarding some of my co-stars; you might have as well.”

“While that is tempting,” the pink-maned, white-coated unicorn said, “I do have a prior engagement.”

“Worse the luck.” Flim tilted his hat. “Well, if your…engagement…should turn out not to your liking, perhaps we could…meet? I do believe that there are also rooms at the Roan Palace Hotel. We could meet at one of those rooms, say around midnight, and…meet?”

Fleur-de-lis smiled coyly. “I’ll think about it, Flim.”

Flim glanced over his shoulder to see Flam throwing a bale of switchgrass into the carriage’s hopper, and slamming it shut.

“Spendiferous,” Flim said. “By-the-by, now’s probably as good as any time to mention – I don’t actually work for this coal station, as should have become obvious by now, and you should probably ask somepony who does actually work here for your refuel.”

Lyra poked her head through the curtains and shivered. The sight confirmed what the sound suggested – the house was full, and the audience was ready for the show.

The switchgrass-loaded hopper wasn’t as efficient as it was when burning coal, but with plenty of unicorn magic pumped into the turbines the carriage was still making good time up the mountain roads.

“Brother….”

“Yes, Flam?”

“Did you have a purpose in hitting on Fleur-de-lis?”

“Does one need one?”

“We want the show! We want the show!” was the rhythmic chant of thousands of ponies, in beat to the stomp of their hooves on the floor.

“I am always enthralled by the prospect of performing before an angry mob,” Octavia muttered, tapping anxiously on her piano.

“You too?” Trixie asked. Octavia gave her an odd look. Trixie caught its meaning. “Oh – sorry – angry mobs are almost Trixie’s bread and butter anymore.”

“Guise,” Bon-Bon asked the attorney, who was sweating increasingly, “is there any chance we can just take the gate money and run? If they don’t make it, I mean?”

“Already considered that,” the stallion said, shaking his head as he looked over the latest figures. “Short answer: no. Long answer: yes, if you don’t mind a short life on the lam followed by inevitable capture, hefty civil fines, and five-to-ten years employed in the manufacture of plates for carriages.”

Iron Will grumbled to himself, pacing irritably. “What can they be doing?”

Observing that the parking lot was almost full, and more importantly that an unpleasant number of the carriages in the parking lot had the Night Guard logo painted on their sides, Flam chose to park their carriage in what was, arguably, not a parking space at all, but rather more of a houseboat, on the lake.

It had the advantage that nopony would think to look for it there.

The stomping of the audience was rising in intensity; Octavia, who had taken a few science courses in her musical training, idly wondered whether the resonant frequency of the building itself was being approached. Trixie’s speculation was somewhat more useful:

“This is the sound of an angry mob almost ready to move. If they don’t get something now, lives or property are in danger. Ours. Also, the things we stole.”

“Then I’d guess we’d better run for it,” Lyra sighed.

“What? No! Iron Will is not quitting now! Think of something!”

Bon-Bon raised a hoof. “Do you all know ‘Respect’?”

“Know respect? Iron Will is respect! He receives it from all!”

“No – the song, ‘Respect’?”

Lyra shrugged. “Sure, why?”

Bon-Bon motioned for the goats to pull the curtains. “Then hit it!”

Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, Lyra, Bon-Bon, Octavia, Vinyl Scratch's Sound System, and Some OC Attorney

The curtains of the Roan Palace Hotel Theater opened up on the stage, revealing Bon-Bon front and center – inexplicably wearing a red sequin gown (although with two unicorns handy, perhaps some explicability was present after all). The drum machine began to beat, as Nickel Guise hid behind it and sweated – the drum machine seemed to be operated on the same principles as the player piano, but if the cylinders in the music catalog weren’t properly labeled, there was nothing the rhythmically-deficient attorney could do about it.

The band, however, either found no fault with the percussion or was used to drummers being off in their own world anyway, and a brief intro led Bon-Bon into her song.

“He-ey! What you want!” she belted, leading to immediate applause.

“(Oooh,)” Octavia offered into her piano microphone.

“Baby I got it! (Oooh!) What you need! (Oooh!) Do you know I got it?”

The brothers carefully picked their way through the parking lot, taking full note of the carriages present.

“Brother, I dare say everypony who hates us is here tonight.”

“You’re just saying that because a full third of these carriages have the Night Guard logo on them.”

“Mostly, yes. Also, over there, look: it’s Twilight Sparkle’s balloon.”

Each of their horns alternated glowing as they crept low, loosening the spokes of a single wheel on one Night Guard carriage, then another.

“I ain’t gonna do you wrong while you’re gone,
Ain’t gonna do you wrong (ooh) ‘cause I don’t wanna (ooh!)”

“It is just me, or does Bon-Bon sound really different to you when she sings?” Twilight whispered to Applejack.

Applejack frowned. “Nah, she sounds to me the same way she always does.”

“I’m about to give you all of my money,
And all I’m askin’ in return, honey,”

A long line of Night Guards trotted into the theater, armored and carrying spears.

The power of rock and soul meant that the standing, rhythmically stomping crowd paid them almost entirely no mind at all.

“Now let’s rush ‘em!” one particularly bitter dark-coated pegasus said, before being admonished by a unicorn parole officer.

“Now just hold on a moment there,” Pearl said, under the ongoing music. “We haven’t even heard these colts sing yet, don’t you know. This was an awful long drive, after all.”

The dark-coated Night Guard frowned, looking to El Jefe for guidance. His superior officer smiled. “Cover all exits. They won’t be going anywhere.”

“When you get home (just a little bit) ye-ah (just a little bit)!”

The saxophonist took center stage, jamming heartily for the instrumental.

One scream of “I love you, Trixie!” managed to be audible above the music, and yet everypony pretended they hadn’t heard it – save for Trixie, who being so deeply in the zone, actually didn’t.

“Why are we taking the air duct, Flam?”

“The feathers will have the exits covered.”

They carefully shimmied their way through the ventilation duct, mostly using their magic to push themselves along rather than trying to actually crawl with long equine legs.

“Why didn’t we take that window back there? That was unguarded.”

“I’m surprised at you, brother! That was the fillies’ room.”

Flim accepted this reasoning.

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T; find out what it means to me!
R-E-S-P-E-C-T; take care, T-C-B!”

“What does that even mean?” Twilight wondered aloud.

Rainbow Dash shrugged.

“(sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me)”

Pearl tapped her hoof on the table of her balcony seat to the music, smiling. “Hmm – ooh! I know what’d hit the spot! Who wants a chimmycherry?” She pointed a hoof at El Jefe. “Chimmycherry?” The chief nodded. “Chimmycherry?” she asked the dark-coated pegasus, who nodded as well. She pointed at one of the dozen spear-carrying Night Guards on the balcony. “Three chimmycherries!”

“(just a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit)”

“Well. That’s not good.”

Flim tried to peek his head around Flam to see what he was talking about. “Ah – does this come out where I think it does?”

“Indeed.”

“Well, it is theatrical.”

Bon-Bon took one graceful step aside during the instrumental coda, as a ventilation cover slammed onto the floor where she had just been. A wide stage grin told the audience that it was all part of the show, even as some gasped.

“Listen Flim – you’re kinda dim.”

The bare-faced twin landed next to her a second later, grinning and doffing his hat.

“And Flam? You ain’t half what I am.”

The mustachioed one joined her on stage, by the same death-from-above tactic.

The crowd stomped its applause, while Flim and Flam looked quickly at each other and then back at the band. Bon-Bon’s red sequined gown mysteriously ceased to be, as she retreated to her trumpet.

The brothers’ late arrival meant that there hadn’t been time to nail down the set list – but they did at least know the first song scheduled.

“One – two – one two three four!”

Flam magically seized a microphone, heading for the edge of the stage.

“We’re so glad to see so many of you lovely ponies tonight, and we would especially like to welcome all the elite pegasus ponies of the Equestrian Night Guard who have chosen to join us at the Roan Palace Hotel at this time. We do sincerely hope that you all enjoy the show, and remember that no matter who you are or what you do to live, thrive, or survive, there are still some things that make us all the same.”

“You,” he said, pointing to his brother’s parole officer on the balcony as an example. Pearl waved back.

“Me,” he added, pointing to himself.

“Them,” he went further, pointing to Vinyl Scratch and her groupies in the back row, who were wielding ropes, chains, and lead pipes using unicorn magic and earth pony jaws.

“Everypony – everypony!”

Flim began singing. “Everypony, needs somepony! Everypony! Needs somepony to love! Pony to love!”

“Pony to love!” Flam echoed, on, the bass line.

“Sweetheart to miss! (Sweetheart to miss!) Sugar to kiss! (Sugar to kiss!)”

El Jefe looked down at his chimmycherry, and tried not to cry. The Night Guards pretended not to notice.

“I need you, you, you!!” Flim sang, pointing to three random mares in the audience and making two of them swoon – an entirely unobjectionable batting average.

“And you know people, when you do find that somepony,” Flam cut in, among the chants of (You, you, you), “you gotta hold that mare, hold that stallion, love him please him squeeze her please her! Signify your feelings with every gentle caress, because it's so important to have that special somepony, to hold, to kiss, to miss, to squeeze and please!”

Iron Will began to tear up as he played his trombone. If the goats had an opinion, they did not offer it, continuing to work the light and sound board instead.

“(You, you, you!)” the chants continued, the Night Guards solid and stoic as the crowd stood and danced in place around them.

“I need you! Flim concluded, as the theater exploded into applause.

“What next?” Flam whispered to Flim as the stomping and cheering continued.

“Sweet Home?”

“Right.” Flam turned around and called back to the band. “Sweet Home!”

The band nodded, including Nickel Guise, who loaded up a cylinder into the drum machine. Lyra trotted forward on stage – that itself earning more applause from some of her fans, including three mares from Ponyville – and began a riff.

The cheering gained even greater vigor, as Lyra spoke into her microphone “Turn it up!”

Flam and Flim looked at each other, keeping a rictus grin even as their eyes widened in horror.

“That’s not Sweet Home Chihocko….” Flim muttered through his teeth. “That’s Sweet Home Alba Mare.”

“Just run with it,” Flam replied, “the crowd’s already into it.”

“I don’t know most of the words!”

“Make some up!”

The brothers turned back, still grinning, to the crowd, ready to sing when it sounded like Lyra’s intro was over.

“Big wheels keep on turnin’! Carry me home to see my kin. Singin’ songs about the homeland…” Flim sang, exhausting his lyrical knowledge.

Fortunately, there were six thousand earth ponies in the audience. Half of them culturally identified with the song, and half of the remaining half knew it by heart anyway.

Applejack was one of the half of the half, and she too was on her hooves. “And ah think it’s a sin, yeah!”

“Next is the diss verse,” Flam whispered.

Flim nodded. “Well, I heard the DJ sing about her!
Well, I heard Vinyl put her down!
Well, I hope the DJ will remember:
Earthen mares don’t need her ‘round, anyhow!”

Octavia clamped a hoof over her mouth to suppress a laugh; Vinyl Scratch’s jaw dropped, and her sound engineer had to restrain her minion groupies from charging.

The crowd chanted, the brothers barely able to get in front of them.

“Sweet home Alba Mare!
Where the skies are so blue!
Sweet home Alba Mare!
O I’m coming home to you!”

“Next?” Flim whispered through his teeth.

Flam shook his head helplessly.

“At Burning Mare they love the princess! Woo hoo hoo!” Flim guessed, and while it was entirely incorrect, he wasn’t heard over the vocals of the rest of the audience.

“We’re entirely redundant here, brother,” Flim whispered.

“Then get Lyra up here.”

They danced with the music and the lyrics that they couldn’t make out but the audience seemed to know, dosey-doing around Lyra and her double-necked guitar and bringing her to the center stage, where she could continue to do what she did best.

“Sweet home Alba Mare!
Where the skies are so blue!
Sweet home Alba Mare!
O I’m coming home to you!” the crowd continued to sing as Flim and Flam dosey-doed all the way to the back stage.

Roiling with sweat from the stage lights as they cantered through the back curtains, they stopped short when faced with an unfamiliar unicorn stallion – white coat, wavy blue mane, monocle, and black tuxedo.

“Aw buck – I don’t even remember ticking off the baked goods cartel,” Flam moaned.

“I say, you fellows were positively spiffing. I absolutely must record your group for my new campaign.”

Flim frowned. “You prevaricate, good sir.”

The tuxedo-wearing unicorn frowned. “Prevarication? I, fellow, do not prevaricate. My name is Fancypants; I’m the head of the largest trading company in Canterlot.”

The brothers gulped. They had heard of Fancypants. “So…what?” Flim asked.

“So here is a hundred thousand bits, as the advance payment on your contract.” His unicorn magic produced both a comically large bag of money, weighted with coins, and a long scroll, completely with feather and quill for signature. “Is it a deal?”

Flam looked at the money, the contract, and then the money again. “Guise!” he called out.

His attorney trotted up from behind. “What’s going on?”

“Fatal flaw analysis on this contract, and hurry!”

The earth pony read the fine print with a skeptical eye, moving rapid-fire through the text and making his demands almost as quickly. “Replace all instances of ‘net’ with ‘gross’ in paragraph five, switch out paragraph eight with the model language from the Unicorn Commercial Code; change the jurisdiction on paragraph nine from Delamare to Canterlot, and…yeah, paragraph fourteen just needs to go – a bunch of boilerplate reps and certs, barely even relevant to my clients.”

Fancypants gave a respectful, but not mirthful, smile, and used his magic and quill to hastily make the requested changes. “Anything else, good sir?”

“Yeah – get yourself a new contract team – there’s loopholes here somepony less scrupulous than my clients could drive the Friendship Express through.” The earth pony looked back at the brothers. “But we’re good on our end.”

“Thanks,” Flim told his lawyer, as he took hold of the quill and signed the contract; Flam did so next.

“So, listen,” Flam asked. “All these Night Guards are kind of here for us – do you know a back way out of this place?”

“Why would I know that?” Fancypants asked.

“You didn’t by any chance used to work here?”

“I’m afraid not, my friend. By your leave – I shall catch up with the two of you later.”

Out on the stage, the song was still continuing; between Lyra’s self-indulgent guitar solos and some ponies in the crowd knowing every verse ever written, even for regional variations, there was a lot of life left in Sweet Home Alba Mare.

“Alright, we’ve got three main issues, as far as I can see,” Flim muttered.

“Three? There were a lot more ponies than that who want us dead or worse out there.”

“I’m lumping in all of the Night Guards as one, and I’m not even considering Vinyl Scratch an issue.”

“Well, brother, we just need to pick a song that can get even stoic Night Guard pegasus ponies to dance. Get them dancing and they’re not staring down at us with spears and watching us like hawks. What’s the next issue?”

“Rainbow Dash.”

Flam groaned. “That’s right, she’s out there. We can outrun a lot of pegasus ponies, but I don’t think we can get the carriage to do a sonic rainboom.”

Their attorney, who was still standing there, cleared his throat. “Well, I can tell you, with respect to maneuverability…”

“Yes?” the brothers asked, as Lyra dove into her eighth guitar solo out on stage.

“Every insurance policy sold in the Ponyville region for the last few years includes something known to the industry as ‘the Rainbow Dash clause.’”

“Ah. So we may be able to outmaneuver her.”

“Quite possibly. What was the third main issue?” Nickel Guise asked, eager to continue being of use – now that his clients had a comically large bag of money from which his bills could finally be paid.

“Twilight Sparkle. One of the most powerful unicorns in the kingdom is out there, and after us. If she decides we’re not leaving, we don’t get to leave.”

Guise’s eyes widened. " - wait. Twilight Sparkle is here? The Twilight Sparkle? Personal protégé to Princess Celestia?"

"Yes."

"Multiple-time savior of the world?"

"Well, yes."

"Author of scores of brilliant monographs, including Late Paleopony Theories of Law and Magic?"

"...I...assume?"

"She's here? At the show?!"

"Yeah - she was in the second row, stage left of Rainbow Dash."

"The gorgeous purple mare with the dark blue mane, pink skunk stripe?"

"Right, her – and we need to somehow lock her down, distract her, take her out, whatever, if we're going to get out of here, so if you've got any bright ideas – ”

"Leave it all to me."

"Leave it to you?"

"To take Twilight Sparkle out - this is why I was put on this world." Guise smoothed his mane with his hoof, and trotted back out onto the stage, taking a prideful place at the drum machine.

Flim looked at Flam in disbelief. "Have you ever noticed that our lawyer is a bit of the sort they would call 'hopeless romantic'?"

Flam cleared his throat, as he divided the bag of money into two equal smaller bags; one he kept and one he left, with a note tied to it. "I was with you up right up until 'romantic.' It should, however, be enough of a distraction to see us clear. How about we leave him to his work and never think about it again?”

Flim nodded, and the two brothers trotted back out stage, just as the song was finally ending.

“Thank you!” Flim called insincerely into his microphone. “Thank you!” He waited for the applause of hoofbeats to die. “Now, our next piece – well, I understand we’ve got a few graduates, alums, and otherwise former students of the Cloudsdale Flight School in the house tonight?”

Rainbow Dash, El Jefe, and a few civilian pegasus ponies cheered. The Night Guards remained still and quiet.

“Oh, I know we’ve got more than that!”

El Jefe nodded his permission at the Night Guards nearby his table, who give their own bellowing cheer; the rest of the pegasus ponies joined them after that, with one resounding “YEAH!” pummeling the rest.

“Well, we’re going to take you on back with an old favorite of ours, and we think it’ll be one of yours, too.” Flim turned back to the band and called out the song title. “Did you catch that this time, Lyra?”

Lyra nodded. “Yes, sorry about that; I might’ve just heard what I really wanted to hear.”

A flourish on Octavia’s piano began the piece, with the horns joining in almost immediately after.

“Yeow!
Now when I get the blues, I get me a catchin' air…
When I get the blues, I get me a catchin' air…
Well, if the blues overtake me gonna rock right away from here!”

“Ah yeah!” Rainbow Dash said, grinning. She gestured at Applejack. “Now it’s our turn!” The earth pony raised an eyebrow.

“Now when I get lonesome,
I make them clouds moan!
When I get lonesome,
I make them clouds moan!
Make'm call my baby, tell her
I'm on my way back home.”

“Flip, flop, and fly – I don’t care if I die!”

“If I die!” Rainbow Dash shouted, not quite harmonizing.

“Flip, flop, and fly – I don’t care if I die!”

El Jefe rhythmically stomped his hooves on the floor.

“Don't ever leave me, don't ever say goodbye!”

Rainbow Dash caught air, to the startle of Twilight and Applejack; however, she was not the only pegasus pony doing so, as nostalgia-filtered memories of awkward school dances and their few bright spots came surging back.

“Give me one last kiss, hold it a long, long time!
Give me one last kiss, hold it a long, long time!”

Cheers broke out as the prismatic-maned pegasus pony – in a fit of enthusiasm, energy, and assertiveness, and otherwise moved by the power of rock – planted a deep kiss on a fellow airborne pegasus pony.

It would be fair to say that the earth pony and unicorn she came with were stunned by this development.

“Now hold that kiss until I feel it in my head like wine!”

Many of the Night Guards had graduated from tapping their hooves rhythmically to loosening their wings, giving them a few flaps.

“Here comes my baby, flashin' her new gold hoof!
Here comes my baby, flashin' her new gold hoof!
Well she's so small, she can swim in a cloud's silver roof!”

Half the Night Guards were now airborne, joining the civilian pegasus ponies in a mass aerial dance. El Jefe, who, moved by the spirit and having quite forgotten that Pearl was (A) married and (B) a unicorn, dragged her up into the air as well, spinning her around.

“Now flip, flop, and fly! I don’t care if I die!
Now flip, flop and fly, I don't care if I die!
Ah, don't ever leave me, don't ever say goodbye!”

The song went into an instrumental bridge, and everypony who could be in the air, was.

“I'm like a Bottom Bog bullfrog, sittin' on a hollow stump
I'm like a Bottom Bog bullfrog, sittin' on a hollow stump
I got so many mares, I don't know which way to jump!”

“I’ve – I’ve never seen anything like it!” Twilight whispered. “This power – this beauty in motion – hundreds of complete strangers, united as one….”

Applejack gave the unicorn a look. “It’s called dancin’, Twi. I know y’all’ve heard of it, even done it a time or two.”

“It’s beyond that, Applejack! It’s – it’s some deeper, primal power!”

“Hoo doggy. There’s a letter to the Princess waitin’ for us, ain’t there?”

“Now flip, flop and fly, I don't care if I die
Now flip, flop and fly, I don't care if I die
Now, don't ever leave me, don't ever say goodbye!”

Flam gave one motion with his hoof to the goats, Flim gave one of his own to the horn section – the horn section kept the instrumental coda going well past its normal length, while the goats pulled a switch and ignited dozens of sparklers, putting up an upside-down curtain of light between the band and the cheering, dancing audience.

The brothers gave their hats one last wave at the crowd, and dashed backstage.

They looked quickly around, trying to find an emergency exit door –

“You’re leaving without Trixie?”

The blue unicorn trotted up to them, covered in sweat, her saxophone still hanging from her side on a strap.

“There’s not a lot of time, old girl,” Flam said. “We’ve got the money, and we need to get to Canterlot ahead of all the ponies who want to stop us.”

“And we’ve got a lot more experience running from the feathers than you.”

“So that’s how it is?” Trixie frowned.

Flim sighed. “It’s going to be dangerous. We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Looking into Trixie’s glum face, the brothers reacted quickly with a group hug.

“Thank you for everything…Trixie,” Flam said.

“And just so you know, if one of us dies, we’ve given the other one permission to date you,” Flim added.

Trixie jerked away, stunned, flustered. “What – I – but – ” She shook her head, quickly regaining her composure, and her faux-haughty tone. “Pah! As if either of you two alone were stallion enough for the Great and Powerful Trixie! You shall return to her together, or not at all!”

The brothers took off their hats and bowed in unison. “By your leave, my lady,” they said.

“Be off with you!”

And as the brothers headed for a door, Trixie trotted back onto the stage, shaking her head, ready to keep the instrumental going until the pegasus ponies finally caught on.

The door they chose was leading them generally in the direction of the carriage, though it was doing so through a long, winding tunnel. They moved at a quick trot, wordlessly, and rounded yet another corner.

A painfully bright light came on in front of them, and they squinted against it, to see the silhouette of a pegasus mare backlit.

The strange pony stepped forward, smiling; as their eyes adjusted they beheld a cream-colored pegasus with a straight, close-cropped dark mane, and a flaming wheel on her flank.

“Flam Flimflam…you look just fine, there. Just fine.”

“Do I – know you, good lady?” Flam asked, sweating.

“You don’t remember me? You don’t remember when your prototype cider machine, the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 4000, got out of control and crashed, flaming, into my village? You don’t remember the explosion at the flour mill?” Wild Fire stepped closer. “Nor how, as you ran away like a coward, I called out that I would have my vengeance some day? That for my friends, my family, for the common good, I would unmake you, forever?” The brothers were rigid in terror and confusion as she approached still closer; that they couldn’t see past the bright light to have any idea of what was beyond was also unhelpful. “Beginning with your horn, and your hooves; proceeding then to make you a gelding, a bald gelding at that…but leaving your ears, your perfect ears, so that you could hear the horrified shout of every passing foal….”

“No…” Flam stammered at last. “I really don’t remember any of this.”

“Good!” Wild Fire said brightly, pulling a 180-degree turn in her tone of voice. “Because none of that happened. What I’m really after is…” She whispered in Flam’s ear.

Flam’s mustache stiffened. He looked at Flim.

“Sounds a lot better than that other thing, right?” the pegasus asked, a low and lusty tone in her voice.

Flam nodded eagerly, looking hopefully at Flim.

“We don’t have time, brother!” Flim shouted.

“You – you made a date with Fleur-de-lis!”

“I don’t, and didn’t, intend to keep it!”

“Now stud,” Wild Fire said, putting a foreleg over Flam and nuzzling him. “I’ve chased you all over Equestria, and I’m not about to take a rain check.”

“Well….” Flam said, uselessly.

“Whoops!” El Jefe yelped, forgetting to hold onto his dance partner, and remembering just then that she was a unicorn. He winced as Pearl flew straight towards the band, slamming straight into Iron Will, and falling to the floor, having completely failed to budge the minotaur, or even distract him from his trombone.

The green pegasus pony flew to the stage. “Sorry about that, Pearl,” he said to the parole officer, whose eyes were still rolling wildly. El Jefe looked around on the stage. “Wait a minute. Where’s Flim? Where’s Flam?”

The band, still playing, didn’t answer him.

Wild Fire’s lips drew perilously close to Flam’s own, his mustache brushing against her face.

“Now, stud.”

Flam’s horn took on a brief glow.

Flim gulped.

The pegasus staggered backwards. “Owww – augh. Oooh.”

Flam grinned. “Well, baby? You ready or not?”

“Ugh – not tonight. I’ve got a headache.”

The pegasus pony retreated the other direction, galloping down the tunnels, away from the painfully bright light.

The brothers trotted past the light, noting that it belonged to the headlamps of a very nice looking convertible carriage that unfortunately did not have the keys in it.

“And you said there was no reason to ever learn the reverse of the hangover-curing spell,” Flim said, laughing.

Flam shook his head, irritated. “You owe me so bad.”

El Jefe finally secured a working microphone, cutting off the band and shouting into the sound system. “Night Guards! The Flimflam Brothers have left the building! Get after them!”

Pandemonium could hardly be said to break loose; merely that one kind – a disorganized aerial mob of dancing pegasus ponies – was replaced by another – disorganized aerial mob of Night Guard ponies looking to retrieve their spears and make their exits, with civilian ponies mostly looking to get out of the way. Mostly.

“Shoot!” Rainbow Dash looked around for Applejack and Twilight Sparkle, but couldn’t see them through the chaos. “Ah, I’ll meet up with them in Ponyville. I’ve got to get to those guys!” She found a window, and flew out it, into the night.

The chaos was thorough on the ground as well, as ponies leaving the air tumbled, and ponies getting out of the way of those leaving the air scrambled. “Wha – what?” Twilight asked, shaken from a reverie. She looked around; Applejack had already vanished, squeezing through the crowd and trying to get to an exit, to pursue the Flimflams. “Uh, right!” she said to herself, taking a step forward before being bowled over by a panicked pegasus pony.

She scrambled back to her hooves, the chaos becoming a bit uncomfortable. “I just – I just need to – ”

“Miss Twilight Sparkle?” a voice asked her.

Twilight looked; a brown earth pony, with a dark brown mane and mustache, was standing in front of her. After a moment she realized he had been on the stage during the show, at one of the pieces of sound equipment.

“I must insist that you come with me,” he said. “You are in physical danger as well as legal peril if you stay here.”

“What’s this about?” she asked, confused. “Legal peril?”

“I’ll explain on the way – let’s get out of here. It should be safe backstage, for the moment.”

Outside, scores of pegasus ponies flew to their carriages, activating the Manewell daemons to quick-start the boilers and bring the turbines up to speed. El Jefe flew Pearl out to one particular carriage – the one operated by the two pegasus ponies who had pulled Flam over a few days prior – where they took their seats for the pursuit.

The carriage in front of them went to full throttle, so theirs did as well – and then the driver front wheel of the forward carriage snapped, sending it sprawling into yet another carriage.

In ten seconds, a third of the Night Guard carriages had crashed into another third, leaving the final third blocked in.

El Jefe grabbed a megaphone from his carriage, and looked at Pearl. “Go signal ahead – I want all units on this.” He put the megaphone to his mouth, to give the order. “Alright, Night Guard! Then we’ll take them on wing!”

“Wow, it’s a lot less crowded back here,” Twilight said, visibly relieved once to the backstage. “But who are you? And what is that about legal trouble?”

“I am a humble attorney, Miss Sparkle, by the name of Nickel Guise – and I must confess to a touch of deception on the legal peril, though it still may be so, in some jurisdictions.” The earth pony put his hoof on his chest. “For while you are a Canterlot native, you must be aware that, in some parts of earth pony country, ‘alienation of affections’ is still an actionable tort at common law. And, having enchanted me long ago with your brilliant mind and bewitched me tonight with your stunning beauty, you indeed have alienated my affections from any other mare who might trot the earth, now or ever again.”

The part of Twilight’s brain that had not completely ground to a halt trying to comprehend this – as the part of her brain that read romance novels and the part of her brain that considered things anypony might ever actually say to her in real life were not particularly well-acquainted – offered only this tidbit: “Oooh, he’s the Flimflam’s lawyer, all right.”

Vinyl Scratch, having gotten an escort through the panicked crowds by her minions, took her place at the helm of her omnibus. “Let’s move this thing!” she shouted.

“Ma’am,” her road engineer said, “There’s, ah, an awful lot of wrecked Night Guard carriages in the way.”

“I paid good money for the cow-catcher. Let’s use it. Start this bad boy up!”

With a final magical heave-ho (a process involving a surge of magic that left them with a bit of horn pain), the brothers hurtled their carriage from the house-boat parking space back onto dry land, and with a physical lally-ho (a process involving jumping over the carriage doors that left them with a bit of flank pain) entered it themselves.

Flam brought the carriage to life, and looked at his brother solemnly.

“It’s a hundred and six miles to Canterlot, we got a full hopper of fuel, half a case of cider, it’s dark, and our hats are over our eyes.”

“Hit it.”

Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, Lyra, Bon-Bon, Octavia, Vinyl Scratch's Sound System, Some OC Attorney, and Fancypants' Money...

“Come on, come on…!” Flam desperately muttered as the wheels of the carriage spun on the slick lake shore gravel.

“There they are!” an airborne Night Guard shouted, and, barely looking at where he was pointing, dozens of pegasus ponies hurled their projectiles.

“Gah!” Flim eruditely shouted as he ducked his head to dodge the storm of spears.

“Yes!” Flam offered as counterpoint, as a back wheel of the carriage finally found traction, in the form of a spear tip freshly lodged into the earth, and jerked the vehicle forward. The carriage lumbered up from the shore onto the road, and the unicorn spun the wheel hard to get it pointed the right way.

“Begin pursuit!” a pegasus pony sergeant shouted, and his nearby subordinates shouted a battle cry as they flew in an arc towards the carriage.

“Need a little more juice, brother…” Flam said warily, looking into his mirror at the pursuers, who were now in V-formation, grinning savagely. Flim nodded, blasting a fresh round of unicorn magic into the turbines, pulling every extra joule possible out of the burning biomass.

“It’s working!” Flim cried, seeing the carriage pull forward from the pursuing Night Guard. “It’s working! It’s – oh no.” A blue pegasus pony with a prismatic mane was now growing closer. “She’s already on us!”

Flam nodded, and spun the wheel hard left.

“Whoa!” Rainbow Dash cried, as she nearly slammed into the side of a mountain, deflecting her collision with her hooves and correcting her course back into a pursuit of the brothers.

Just behind her, a formation of Night Guards was less adroit.

“Landslide didn’t get her, brother,” Flim said, and Flam nodded again, spinning the wheel hard right.

“Not this time, chumps!” she shouted, making the correction much faster this time. Her wings flapped hard and fast, and she was getting a lot closer.

“Seem those insurance policies are out of date,” Flim said, as the carriage’s turbines screamed.

“Keep trying, brother!”

Both forelegs extended forward, the pegasus pony was completely prepared to move into a sonic rainboom, when – something flew straight past her head. Then another thing.

“Oh I know you didn’t just – ”

She dodged upwards to avoid a third flung projectile, and made one of herself, instead – into the keystone of a tunnel entrance.

“Whoa!” she shouted again, tumbling off the ground and darting forward to avoid falling rock and masonry. “Not this time, not this time – ” she thought, keeping her wings tightly clasped against her body.

Success! The entrance to the tunnel had finished caving in, and her wings were unmolested! She took a triumphant canter forward, only to feel a tugging at her backside. Rainbow Dash looked over her shoulder, and sighed – half her tail was pinned under the rocks.

She could cut it, but that would be aerodynamically unsound and could throw off her game for weeks while it regrew. She lied down and waited for help to arrive.

“Were you just throwing empty bottles of cider at Rainbow Dash?” Flam asked, as he turned on the headlamps to illuminate the long mountain tunnel.

“You want I should’ve thrown full ones?”

Hearing a deep rumbling, Rainbow Dash looked up.

“No – no no no no no…” she moaned, tugging desperately now at her tail.

“Ma’am – the tunnel entrance – ”

“Full power! We’ll push right on through!”

“Stop!” the pegasus pony pleaded, shouting into the night at the approaching iron monstrosity. “I – I don’t want to die….”

A flash of orange came into her peripheral vision, and she was forcibly tumbled to the right.

“AJ?” she had just a moment to ask, as the two ponies tumbled over a pile of rubble, and then a pile of rubble, shoved aside by a giant iron cow-catcher, tumbled over them.

When the chaos of tossed earth concluded, the two ponies found themselves pinned, snout to snout, staring through a chance air passage up at the moon.

The echoing sound of the terrible iron beast faded into the distance.

Applejack squirmed briefly against the rubble, and found it unyielding.

The two took a moment of companionable silence.

“That was a pretty good show tonight,” Rainbow said, trying not to think about where she was or how long she might be there.

“Yeah, well, they actually knew the words to your song,” the earth pony replied, of much the same mindset.

“You’re gonna complain about the guitar solos on yours? Dang, but Lyra can play.”

“What is that?” Flam asked, as they emerged from the tunnel onto a cliff-hugging road.

“I think I saw it in the parking lot on the way in – I thought it was an old chapel, not something that ever moved!” Flim replied, magically preparing an empty bottle to throw, for all the good it might do.

It finally came into full view, as it burst out the tunnel, in all its terrible majesty.

From what little Flim had studied of architecture, he might have characterized it as ‘Gothic’: though with an exterior seemingly sculpted entirely from black iron, it had pointed arches, it had spiky bits on top, it had crenellations – it even had flying buttresses. Those buttresses ended in carriage wheels, but they were still there.

And yet at the front of the thing, a large glass viewport showed an illuminated room, looking every bit like the bridge of a large vessel – and the iron beast was clearly divided into multiple decks, with the bridge being only the upper most of them. It seemed to ride atop a central spinal core of the vehicle, itself easily fifteen feet all, covered by a sliding steel hatch, and even that was fully above the bottom deck of the vehicle. The last and lowest of these was fronted by an enormous cow-catcher, rubble, pegasus feathers, and bits of Night Guard carriages still snagged in its bars.

Ports opened on the sides of the beast, and speakers emerged. They began to glow as power surged through them, and powerful bass rumbled across the cliffside.

In the front lobby of the Roan Palace Hotel, a certain unicorn paced back and forth in front of a large fireplace.

Fleur-de-lis checked the clock yet again, and sighed.

“Do something, Flim!”

“I did!” he shouted in reply, near to tears. “I threw an entire case of empty cider bottles at it!”

It was not faster than their carriage, but it had momentum. When the mountain roads went down, it kept speed. When the mountain roads went up, it kept speed. Every mistake Flam made cost him an inch or a foot or a yard that he couldn’t take back.

In the bridge of the beast, Vinyl Scratch grinned. “We’ve toyed with them long enough.” She smashed a button at her control station with her hoof.

Nothing happened.

“Dude, what gives?”

Her road engineer checked the panel. “Ah – the capacitors have to charge up first.”

“What?”

“Do recall that this is the largest bass ever built, ma’am. Needs big capacitors to do its thing.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got, like, a five megawatt coal station on-board. I should know; I had to pay to fuel it all the way from Whoa-maha.”

“Largest bass ever built, ma’am.”

“Dude, this sucks!”

“I told you it needed more testing, ma’am.”

“I’m worried,” Octavia said, rejoining the band backstage after a reconnaissance outside. “There’s no sign of Vinyl Scratch, and she didn’t come for her equipment. And I haven’t seen the brothers, either.”

“Well, obviously,” Trixie replied. “The brothers already left. They’re trying to beat the angry mob to Canterlot.”

“Wait – they left without us?” Iron Will stomped his hoof. “How could they leave us behind?”

“They – were concerned about our safety,” Trixie said, defensively.

“Mmm, no, I really can’t agree with that line of thinking,” Octavia said, shaking her head. “The whole point of this exercise is to get that money to the Canterlot office by tomorrow morning, and if they get caught, it’s really all been for nothing.”

The earth pony attorney trotted up to join them, Twilight Sparkle still accompanying him, for reasons even he was unsure of. “Guys, relax. Nopony alive has more experience running from the feathers than Flim and Flam.”

“Yes, well…” Octavia shuffled her hooves. “Do they have much experience running from Vinyl Scratch? A fully-prepared, not-surprised-by-rap-battle, vengeance-thirsty Vinyl Scratch?”

Nickel Guise shrugged. “Does anypony?”

“Yes, but I’m not there right now, and that’s the problem.”

Iron Will folded his arms. “Pity those fools! If they had just let Iron Will know earlier, we could already be helping them. There’s just no way that the M-Squared-C-Squared™ could catch up after this long.”

“Oh! I could teleport you out there!”

The band turned to face a certain purple unicorn. She grinned sheepishly. “Oh, hi, sorry, I’m Twilight Sparkle – uh – Mr. Guise here said it was okay if I came backstage – it’s great to see you again, Trixie, that was a really good show tonight!”

Trixie stared blankly.

“We all know who you are, Twilight,” Lyra said, smiling. “You can teleport us to them?”

“Well, sure, it wouldn’t be – ooh, actually, landing inside a moving target with a stationary one is actually kind of hard and dangerous. Hmm….”

The attorney smiled slowly. “Could you land a moving target next to another moving one?”

“Oh, definitely!”

“Iron Will shall start the bus.”

“Capacitors at one hundred percent!”

The DJ slammed her hoof on the console. “FIRE!”

The brothers stared in the mirror as the steel hatch covers on the front of the monster retracted. The glowing blue mega-woofer pulsed with energy.

“You know something, brother?”

“Yes?”

“I have no regrets. If we’re to die here, we’re dying at the hands of something amazing, and not just a stupid spear hurled by an underpaid Night Guard who’ll be up for an excessive force investigation afterwards.”

Flim nodded.

The bass cannon flashed, and went dark. Flam felt a powerful twist in his gut.

“That’s – I didn’t hear anything – ” he started to say, before tossing his cookies up on the windscreen.

Flim would have admonished him, except for being engaged in precisely the same activity.

“That was it? What gives?” Vinyl said, clearly disappointed.

“It would appear, ma’am, that this is in fact more accurately called the Sub-Bass Cannon Express – we may even be toying in the depths of infrasound.”

“You’re telling me we spent twenty-five million bits retooling a rejected Royal Guard prototype artillery piece into a mother-bucking dog whistle?”

“That would be ultrasound, but same idea, ma’am.”

“Weak. Get the roadies to retool it so we can actually hear the thing. I’ll keep after them.”

“That sounds incredibly dangerous, ma’am.”

Flam peered over the top of the windscreen, squinting against the rushing pre-dawn air, as Flim hurriedly cleaned the screen and dash with a magically wielded rag. On hearing a loud but distinctly unmusical thump, he spared himself a glance over the shoulder to see what was happening.

Aside the pursuing vehicle, there was now also the M-squared-C-squared™, also at full speed – about eighty-eight miles per hour, Flam knew from experience. Flam marveled briefly that the mountain road was even wide enough for the two behemoths to drive side-by-side, before returning his attention to the front.

“Do you think it worked?” Nickel Guise asked, staring at the spot where the accelerating omnibus had vanished.

“I – don’t know. I’ve almost never teleported things without accompanying them myself. It should have, though.”

“Oh, okay,” the earth pony said, staring a moment longer in wonder. A lantern went on over his head. “Wait – wasn’t I supposed to go with them?”

“No. You were going to give me a peer review on Late Paleopony Theories of Law and Magic. I can’t believe somepony actually read it!” She tittered.

He brightened. “Are you kidding? I cited it a dozen times in my seminar paper – hey, you think the hotel’s coffee bar is still open?”

Vinyl looked out the port side of the bridge, to see who the new interlopers were.

“Huh. A goat’s driving.”

She spun the helm, smashing the side of the Bass Cannon Express into the omnibus – impressively, the omnibus managed to keep on the road.

She looked over again, to see the goat making eye contact with her. It gestured at its eyes with a cloven hoof, then at her, and shook its head.

“Ah buck no. Is that little beast threatening me?” She swerved into the interloping omnibus again – this time, it swerved back. A terrible screeching of iron erupted, as the sides of the two buses intermingled, the M-squared-C-squared™ tearing through a row of the flying buttresses.

“No – no!” the DJ ranted. “You’re not going to stop me! I’m going to catch the Flimflams, and I’m going to get my stuff back!”

“Er – ” her road engineer said, scratching his head with his hoof. “We kind of abandoned all your stuff back at the Roan Palace when we took up the chase.”

With a blank expression, Vinyl considered this for a long moment, as the two omnibuses continued to hurtle down the mountain road as more-or-less one unit.

Finally, she face-hooved.

“I’m an idiot.”

“Well,” a refined, feminine voice said, “I wasn’t going to be the one to say it.”

Vinyl lowered her hoof from her face, a menacing grin spreading. “Leave us,” she said to her road engineer, who fled for the stairs to the belowdecks, darting around Octavia.

Octavia stepped forward, and Vinyl turned to meet her.

“I always knew it would come to this,” the DJ said. “I always knew our old score would be settled this way.”

“Really?” The earth pony asked, skeptically. “You knew that your refusing to do your fair share of the dishes would end in us battling inside a pair of flaming, screaming omnibuses plummeting down a dark mountain road?”

“Well, yeah; pretty much.”

Octavia thought about this reply, and had to admit that she had a point. “Hey – do you want to do this up on the top deck? You know: open-air, wind blowing, lots of railings and iron spikes?”

Vinyl chuckled. “You know me too well, Tavy.” Her magic opened the hatch to the top. “I’m still gonna wear you like a coat, though.”

The rest of the intrusion team – promptly dubbed by Iron Will as “the Omnibus Marines” – forced their way through the belowdecks. The tactics were fairly simple: Iron Will led the way through a tight corridor between the spinning turbines, and Vinyl Scratch’s roadie minions retreated.

“Using a minotaur is almost cheating,” Trixie muttered, as Iron Will continued to simply walk forward, earning the panicked shouts of fleeing ponies.

Iron Will shouted back, not turning his head. “Ever consider that Iron Will feels that using you ponies is a handicap? Seriously, it’s like being in an escort mission in one of those games the goats are always playing.” He punched a hole in the side of the bus, adding a large after-market window, and grabbed one roadie who had thought to put up a fight. “TOO SLOW! MOVE YOUR FLANK!” he shouted, and hurled the hapless pegasus into the night.

In the rushing winds of the night, Vinyl Scratch raised herself on her two back legs, and took up a fighting stance, horn glowing. “You’re gonna wish you stayed back in the countryside, Tavy.”

Octavia reared back to her own, well-practiced, cello-playing stance, and brandished a bow. “We shall see.”

Faced with an advancing minotaur and no hope of defeating him, the cornered road crew took its last option.

The iron hatch at the back of the omnibus fell open, and the roadies hopped onto their designated steam velocipedes and drove off into the night, fleeing back up the mountain.

“And STAY OUT!” Iron Will bellowed, waving a fist in the dark. After a moment, he turned to his band-mates. “Iron Will apologizes for engaging in such stereotypical behavior.”

“Yeah, we’ll freak out about that later,” Lyra said, as she looked over a bank of control panels. “Anypony have even the slightest clue how this works?”

Bon-Bon and Trixie joined her in inspecting the panel.

“Nope.”

“Trixie hasn’t the foggiest.”

Lyra grinned. “Then we get to do this the fun way!” She yanked a lever at random.

The speakers mounted at the surface of the Bass Cannon Express started to boom with their randomly chosen track.

“Corn on…the cob….” a choir seemed to sing. “Corn on…the kabob!”

Vinyl’s glowing horn met Octavia’s parrying bow, and the two ponies clenched their teeth as they forced one against the other.

“Nope – maybe…this one?” Lyra grabbed another lever.

“Best of luck to you all,” Trixie said, putting on a helmet and taking her seat astride the last velocipede – its designated operator having already been thrown out a window. “Trixie shall go on ahead, and try to assist the brothers.”

Iron Will saluted, as Trixie plunged out into the night, spinning a quick bootleg reverse and darting back forward, down the mountain road, weaving a path between the two entangled omnibuses.

Vinyl’s magic flared, flinging Octavia’s bow away from it, and the earth pony stumbled backwards. The DJ lunged forward, but Octavia countered quickly, battering her aside – the floor tilted, as the omnibuses, guided mostly by the goat in the M-squared-C-squared™ now, hugged a sharp curve in the road – and both ponies went tumbling, landing atop each other.

Vinyl found herself on top, and pinned Octavia down with her forehooves, grinning wickedly as her horn glowed with renewed power, bringing its tip closer, and closer – Octavia gave a savage kick with her back legs into Vinyl’s gut, launching her airborne and backwards, rolling her across the roof and giving Octavia time herself to get onto her hooves.

“Figured out what that fifth lever does,” Iron Will said, carefully reading the schematics on the wall.

“Great!” Lyra said. “What’s that?”

“Blows the whole thing up.”

“Ah. So don’t pull the fifth lever, right.”

“No, not the fifth lever on the console. The fifth of the levers you’ve already pulled.”

Lyra looked at Bon-Bon, grinning sheepishly. Bon-Bon scowled. “There’s nothing you can say to talk your way out of this one.”

“I…love you?” Lyra tried.

Octavia scraped her hoof on the ground, preparing to charge.

“You’re kidding – you’re kidding, right?” Vinyl asked.

Octavia snorted.

“Fine, then – bring it!”

The two ponies charged straight at each other.

Sadly, this final challenge was not yet to be, as the Bass Cannon Express exploded.

It wasn’t even immediately obvious what had happened, to the two – they knew that they were now considerably more airborne, as was the iron plate that they were now clinging to – itself now more of a flying island than a omnibus’s roof.

“I blame you,” Octavia said, as they passed through a cloud.

Vinyl snorted. “For the record, I did, like, at least thirty percent of the dishes.”

They continued to rise into the air, their little metal island not yet at the top of its arc.

“We’re…alive….” Lyra breathed, clenched in Iron Will’s arms. Bon-Bon nodded, from much the same place.

“Are you – are you okay?” Bon-Bon asked the minotaur.

His eye twitched, as they continued to skid down the road on his back, not quite keeping up with the flaming wreck of the Bass Cannon Express, nor the M-squared-C-squared™ which had rolled off the side of the canyon into a lake below.

“Iron Will has been transported into a magical realm of infinite road rash,” he said, remarkably erudite for one who was in such a position. “Iron Will shall now scream in pain until the situation is amended or he blacks out.”

He then proceeded to deliver on that promise.

The Flimflams stared in shock as Trixie drove past them on a velocipede, waving at them.

“What just happened?” Flam asked.

“Does it matter?” The road continued to wind, and at last they left the flaming wreckage out of sight. “This is going well,” Flim mused. “We’ve lost the feathers, we’ve lost whatever the buck that was back there, the old girl is riding again, and – what?” Flam was wincing. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re doing it again, brother. You’re tempting fate.”

The lead buffalo narrowed his eyes, looking down the mountain at the valley below, and more importantly, the road in it.

“Now,” he said, in a low, even voice.

“Like that – see? There’s a mass of ominous dark figures pouring down from the mountain, and that absolutely wouldn’t have happened if you had kept your mouth shut!”

Flim turned around in his seat to get a better look at them. “Oh, they’re just the buffalo you ran off the bridge last week.”

“See? I didn’t even remember that I did that!”

“It appears that they do.”

The herd rumbled closer.

Trixie’s velocipede pulled up next to Flam’s side of the carriage. “Flam,” she shouted, “there’s a herd of buffalo after you!”

Flam nodded. “Yep.”

“Do you have a plan?” she asked.

“Keep driving and wonder how they’re keeping up.”

“I told you, braves – these unicorn-enchanted legwarmers were a good idea.”

“They are quite efficacious,” the second-in-command buffalo replied to his leader. “But lime green? Really? There were no other options?”

“The spirits and ancestors judge us by our deeds, not by our accessories.”

“Trixie doesn’t see how that’s a plan!”

“Can Trixie do better?”

“She can! Flim – I left some luggage in the back seat – get the green bag!”

Flim leaned over his seat, rummaging through an enormous pile of empty cider bottles, until at last he found the green bag.

“Open it up and toss Trixie whatever’s on top!”

Trixie was shortly rewarded with a large firework tube; while her horn glowed to cast a small spell on it, her fore hooves worked the throttle of the velocipede, propelling her farther forward.

Flam cast another nervous eye to the rear view mirror. “Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear,” it said, but Flam didn’t see how that could be possible, unless one of the buffalo was sitting in the back seat.

“What’s up?” a buffalo asked, from directly left of him. Flam turned and looked at him. “We’re gonna kill you now, okay? Tribal honor to avenge and all.”

“Do you think you could see your way through to…let’s say, not killing me?”

“Dude, you ran us off a bridge. Somebull could’ve gotten really hurt! It was very inconsiderate of you.”

“So now we have to die?”

“Well, yeah.”

Up ahead, in the darkness, there was an explosion of lights and sparks, white and red, mostly white – though the red sparks were spelling a message through the fire and flames.

“Chief Thunderhooves Polishes the Horn”

“Oh no she didn’t!” the buffalo at Flam’s side cried, and he ran faster yet – as did the rest of the buffalo stampede, which passed by the side of the Flimflam’s carriage to give pursuit to the insult further ahead of them.

Seeing that the buffalo were now pursuing her instead of the brothers, Trixie shifted her weight and turned gradually, taking an arc on the road. Ever-nearing thunder told her that her goal was being accomplished, although if she was really being honest with herself, she had to admit that she didn’t know what the next step was.

Slowing down was impossible – she would be trampled.

Going left or right was impossible – she would only strike the buffalo who were now on either side of her.

“When only one option remains,” she said aloud, “do it with gusto!”

She opened the throttle to maximum, and the buffalo strained to match pace.

“I…” she said, seeing what was coming.

“Am…” she added, lifting herself off the seat, and getting ready to jump.

“…Trixie!” she finished, as her velocipede went over the edge of a very tall cliff.

“Wuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!” the buffalo cried – or variations on that theme – as they realized what was happening and plunged over the side.

As soon as the velocipede stopped going forward and just started to fall, Trixie hurled herself off of it, scrambling to reach the cliff on the far side – her hooves couldn’t quite catch, and she was falling, flailing – she connected one hoof with the side of the rocky cliff, then another, and leaned into the cliff side, trying to make as much friction as she could, grinding one or two hooves at a time into the rock, sending up showers of sparks as she struggled desperately in a war with gravity itself.

The buffalo just fell straight down.

At the middle of the canyon between two cliffs, there was a river. On that river, there was a barge. On that barge, there was a donkey piloting it. Also on that barge was an enormous pile of all-natural organic fertilizer.

Seeing the buffalo achieve blessed if undignified safety, Trixie would have regretted not just falling straight down with them, if she had had time to do such a thing – but she was continuing to descend down the side of a cliff, trying, ironically enough, to slow herself down by running. A blazing trail went behind and above her as she continued to run, scraping more and more keratin off her hooves with each passing second.

“If this is a ‘pony-pedi’, Trixie does not see the fun of it,” she said, trying not to think too hard about death.

At last, the cliff began to bend inwards, and her aching, untrained muscles could not continue the run at this new angle, and she lost contact with the wall and began to simply fall.

She watched the road along the bottom of the valley get closer and closer. “Well, buck me,” she muttered.

“Not today!” came a sudden shout, as just beneath her, a carriage appeared – she struck the seat bottom, and then seat back, of the carriage an instant later, severely jostled.

After a moment of great pain, she yanked herself back up, to ask the brothers: “‘Not today’ what?”

Flam turned and grinned. “I assumed you were saying something like ‘goodbye world’, and I was saying ‘not today’, as in, I saved your life.”

Trixie put her hoof on her head, trying to steady her still spinning pupils. “Er – yes. How in the hoof did you beat me down here?”

“Old girl – you’re on a mission from Goddess, too.”

The rising of the sun brought morning at last, as the Flimflam’s carriage continued to barrel down the highway towards Canterlot. New pursuers had arrived when they lost the cover of darkness - a whale-shaped blimp, and a new fleet of Night Guard carriages freshly arrived; some reinforcements from outlying villages, some from the Roan Palace that had finally gotten out of the parking lot and caught up with them. Compared to the previous threats, Flam found these a positive relief – one being pursued by the Night Guard in such force was rarely pursued by much else, and it was a lot easier to keep ahead of their carriages.

Still, as nostalgic as the sirens made him, it was getting a bit tiresome – and a lot of the carriages were getting closer.

“Hang on, you two,” Flam said, “I’ve got to pull over.”

He swerved to the right, jumping one train track belonging to the Friendship Express, then the other.

“All units, be advised,” Pearl said, most traces of her accent temporarily abolished, from her station at the airborne command center into a magic communicator, “Flimflam brothers have left the highway. All units respond.”

“How did that help?” Trixie asked. “We’re still being followed.”

“That wasn’t the part that was supposed to help,” Flam said, gesturing to a tunnel up ahead on the train tracks. “This is.”

A horn sounded.

“I thought it only ran every twelve hours,” Flim said.

“I know full well that it doesn’t,” Flam replied, and swerved back the other way.

Seeing the oncoming train, the Night Guard carriages in pursuit pushed to maximum acceleration, desperate to get across the tracks in time – and, as a result, caught air.

Flam waved at the carriages as they flew overhead, slamming into the earthen berm on the far side of the highway. Rudely, none of the Night Guards waved back, although they did flail their arms wildly, some of them even taking wing and abandoning their posts.

Not all the carriages, however, were so quick on the uptake. At her command center, Pearl heard a familiar voice over the communicator. “Hi, this is Commander El Jefe, in carriage number – what number are we? Fifty-five! We are currently southbound on the Friendship Express….”

“All units, vehicle travelling northbound, approaching Canterlot outskirts. All Canterlot units are called up for local intercept. Maintain pursuit.”

Civil defense sirens sounded in Canterlot, and civilians fled indoors.

The golden-armored knights of the Royal Guard took hold of their spears, manning the gates to the city. Meanwhile, at the Royal Pegadrome, a squad of pegasus ponies pulled on their trademark blue-and-gold jumpsuits.

“You ready to buck some ass, Soarin’?” one pegasus pony asked, as she slipped a pair of goggles over her fiery mane.

“We’ll be back in time for morning pie, Cap’n.”

“Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the Flimflam Brothers…has been approved.”

“Hold steady, stallions!” The lieutenant of the Royal Guard shouted, as his elite squadron of pegasus ponies and unicorns stood outside the gates of Canterlot, spears and shields ready.

The Flimflam’s carriage crested the hill. The unicorns in the squad threw up pink magical shields in front of the squad.

“Steady!” The lieutenant shouted, confident. These magical defenses would be more than enough to halt the Flimflams in their tracks.

Forty more Night Guard carriages crested the hill behind the brothers.

Said magical defenses would not, however, be enough to halt those in their tracks.

“Steady…” He said, less confident, as the Flimflams neared and their pursuers did so as well, just as quickly.

“Oh buck this!” one recruit shouted, abandoning his magical field and darting to the side – which was all the crack in morale needed for the Royal Guard to abandon their post, leaving only the lieutenant facing the oncoming carriage.

“See this?” the lieutenant said, to nopony in particular. “This is why the Changelings were able to kick our pasty flanks this spring.” And with that observation, he tucked and rolled up the Flimflam’s oncoming carriage, bounced off the highway, and landed in a Night Guard carriage, just in time for the first vehicle in the chase to crash straight through the gates of Canterlot.

Through one street after another, Flam turned sharp corners, losing a few more each pursuers each time, as their carriages rolled or overshot – partially from the speed, partially from a lack of sleep and slow reaction times.

“Hey look!” Flim shouted, pointing. “The Royal Canterlot Opera House! Remember the time we got utterly hammered there?”

“That was a week ago, Flim,” Trixie replied.

“And it was a good time, wasn’t it?” he shouted, as Flam turned the carriage once more.

“Very good,” Flam agreed. “Now, if my estimations are correct, we should be very near the Canterlot Repair Committee’s Office of General Contracting Clearinghouse.”

“Good! Because now we’ve got the Wonderbolts after us!”

Trixie looked behind them, seeing three of the blue-suited pegasus ponies in hot pursuit. “Looks like – Spitfire, Soarin’, and Rapidfire.”

Flam grinned, and swerved gently in the street, decelerating slightly, as the Wonderbolts drew ever nearer.

“Flam – Flam! Look out look out look out lamppost!”

At the last moment, he swerved back and accelerated.

A satisfying ‘clang’ was heard as Rapidfire bounced off the gaslight; followed immediately by an expensive-sounding ‘tinkle’ as he smashed into a shop filled with glass figurines.

“Pass me a bottle of nectar – it’s all coming back to me now!” Flam shouted merrily, as he aimed the carriage for an as-yet-unrepaired pothole.

Abandoned in the streets by fleeing civilians when the sirens started, there was nopony to run in panic away from the florist carts before they were bashed into splinters by one carriage and two Wonderbolts, which, in Flam’s opinion, was half the fun.

“Was that supposed to stop us?” Spitfire yelled, as she pulled up directly next to the carriage, snorting pollen. She swung a hoof at Flam, nearly knocking his hat off.

Flim and Trixie’s unicorn magic quickly brushed the bits of flower and pollen off themselves and the carriage.

Soarin’, also caught up, set a hoof on the carriage door next to Flim, snorting furiously.

“No ma’am!” Flam yelled back. “That happens now!”

The carriage caught an impromptu ramp of an abandoned sandwich board, and bounced off a mailbox, spinning wildly. Both Wonderbolts kept their grip admirably as the carriage continued to spin, and even when it crashed through the glass windows of a store front and through a row of wooden tables, they remained in place.

For a moment, the carriage was at rest.

“Now you’re ours, punk,” Spitfire said, flapping in place as she put one hoof on Flam’s shoulder and pulled another back for a haymaker.

Flam grinned.

Spitfire spared a moment to look around her – at the pile of toppled tables, and the shattered wood-and-glass cases on the floor, spilling wax, jelly, and…

“Oh goddess! Oh not the bees!” Soarin’ yelled, already beating them away from his pollen-covered face.

Spitfire swatted under her face guard, which were meant for shielding from the wind and not to be airtight – proving no barrier to the insects. “The goggles! They – ”

Flam hit the throttle, and accelerated out of the apiary, leaving the Wonderbolts to deal with their new friends.

“There it is! There it is!”

With one last bootleg stop exhausting all the metal fatigue left in the brakes, the carriage screeched to a halt just inches away from a freshly repaired guardrail. The three unicorns hopped out of the carriage, galloping towards the entrance to a tall brick office building.

They were nearly to the door when the carriage exploded.

Flim, Flam, and Trixie turned back to see the flaming wreck of the carriage, mostly in pieces, some of those pieces tumbling down the side of Canterlot Mountain.

Flim and Flam took off their hats.

Trixie stared at them. “Move it, foals!”

They scrambled through the doors of the building.

“Excuse me!” Flim shouted, once they were inside. “Looking for the office in charge of taking orders for rush repairs?”

The receptionist at the front desk, a young earth pony mare with a frizzy red mane, pointed upwards. “Eighth floor, room 809.”

“You two go; Trixie will hold them here.”

She turned and faced the front doors with her horn. Her horn glowed, and its magic enveloped the doors, clamping them as tightly shut as she could manage.

“Godspeed, old girl. Godspeed.”

The Flimflams charged for the stairs.

Outside, the airship command center arrived over the top of the building, while hundreds of carriages surrounded it. Pegasus ponies, unicorns, and earth ponies alike surged towards the building, while some took up positions in the sky.

A crack team of champion apple-buckers kicked repeatedly at the doors, to no avail against the magic of Trixie – until one among them had the bright idea to go through the window instead.

Trixie yelped as glass shards came flying her way, and, concentration broken, lost control over her force field – the doors exploded inwards with a few more violent kicks, and in a moment the pressing mob of law enforcement ponysonnel was upon her, and over her.

The Flimflam’s advance up the stairs could have been faster, except that they were taking the time to magically implode to splinters about every third one of the wooden steps.

Smooth jazz was playing in the stairwell, and nopony could really say why. It just needed to be.

The mob sought out an elevator, realized one didn’t exist, and headed for the stairs.

Finally reaching the eighth floor, the Flimflams magically shifted some potted plants to block the door – and charging into room 809, that door too they sealed, this time with a desk.

“Can I help you?” asked the unicorn whose desk they had seized.

“Yeah – this is where they put in the rush orders, right?”

“Yessir,” the desk clerk replied.

The brothers sat him on his own desk, and placed a sum of coins next to him – exactly one half of a comically large sack of money. “This is for the quoted repairs needed for the Clover Home for Orphaned Unicorns, all expenses paid up front, flat rate, to be completed before winter.”

“Fifty thousand bits, all there, pal,” Flam reassured him.

“Okay – just hold on a minute, sirs,” the clerk said, digging through his desk for the files.

Angry shouts thumped against the side of the building, and out in the hallway, they could hear breaking glass.

“That’s impossible – how did the guards get up here? We sabotaged the stairs!”

“Hmm?” the clerk asked, pulling out the file folder.

“You mean, brother, how did an angry mob of pegasus ponies get to the eighth floor of a building without stairs?”

Flam sighed. “…I’m an idiot.”

"I wasn't going to be the one to say it, brother."

The clerk hefted the bag of coins with his magic, feeling the weight with well-practiced senses. “Fifty thousand right on the nose, friends. We’re good to go.” He signed a piece of paper, and stamped it.

“And here,” the clerk said, magically passing the paper to the brothers, as they propped themselves up on the counter in impatience, “is your receipt.”

A pair of shackles dropped, locking Flam’s left foreleg and Flim’s right together. They turned their heads, slowly, to stare down the brandished tips of thirty-odd spears.

They raised their other forelegs in the air.

...Save an Orphanage (Epilogue)

“The princess threw a party in the royal jail;
The dungeon band was there and they began to wail.
The joint was jumping and the place began to swing:
You should have heard those knocked out jailbirds sing!”

“Your Honor, on behalf of my clients I would like to renew my motion for separate trials,” Nickel Guise said.

“And I’ll renew my denial of that motion,” the gray-maned judge said, from his bench at the head of the courtroom. “Now, you will be the attorney of record for the Defense?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Even though you are one of the defendants?”

“They say that an attorney who defends himself has a fool for a client. But I attended the Canterlot Legal Academy, Your Honor.”

The judge regarded the attorney with an even gaze.

“And, Your Honor, despite two years of taking any dumb case that trots through the door and living in abject poverty, I still owe them over a quarter million bits for tuition loans. This is hardly a time to stop being a fool.”

The judge looked down the defendants’ table. “Your attorney has just gone on the record as admitting to being a fool. Does anypony wish to request a new one?”

The Flimflam brothers shrugged. “He’s got to earn his money somehow.”

Trixie shook her head.

Octavia said “He’s quite acceptable.”

“Seems alright to me,” Lyra said.

“Like we can afford better,” Bon-Bon added.

“I like his spunk,” Iron Will said.

The goats nodded agreement.

“This is a bunch of horse apples! Why am I here?” Vinyl Scratch complained.

“I hear no objections to this attorney – we shall now commence the bench trial. Opening remarks from the Crown, please.”

“Let’s rock!
Everypony lets rock!
Everypony on the whole cell block -
They was dancing to the jailhouse rock!”

“So you see, Your Honor – no matter how counsel tried to present this case, it isn’t about any of those things. This case – it’s not even about these ponies’ noble search for redemption. No, Your Honor,” Nickel said, “this is about thirty-eight little unicorn fillies and colts who will get to remain in a loving, trustworthy environment, despite the trials and ravages of war. It’s about little Roo, here, and each of these others. I’d like counsel for the Crown to look into each of their eyes, if she can, and tell them one at a time why it was such a bad thing that their home now has the structural integrity to last through the winter months.”

“G and PT played the alto saxophone;
Iron Will was blowin on the slide trombone;
The drummercolt from Foaledo went crash boom bang -
The whole rhythm section was Vinyl's old gang!”

“Will the defendants please rise?”

The ponies, goats, and minotaur took to their hooves.

“After taking into advisement certain messages received from one or more Princesses…and having weighed all the facts and law, I have reached my decision.” The judge shifted his spectacles on his face and read from his paper.

“On charges one through seventy-four of the indictment, the felony counts: I am dismissing all of these charges with prejudice.”

The Flimflams high-hoofed their attorney. “Yes!”

“On charges seventy-five through nine-hundred-and-eighty-seven of the indictment, the misdemeanor counts: I am entering verdicts of guilty.”

“No!”

“And on each of these counts, I am entering a sentence of ninety days….”

As the mental math added up, faces fell. “Two hundred twenty-eight years…”

“…sentences to be served concurrently!”

“YES!”

“Furthermore, upon service of their jail sentence and release, the defendants will all remain on probation until such time as the full sum of their collectively-owed restitution is paid.”

“Oh, heck, that ain’t bad,” Flam smiled. “That’s practically boilerplate.”

“Er – how much do we collectively owe, Your Honor?” their lawyer asked.

The judge glared at the defendants. “After five weeks of calculation by an entire office of the royal government, the sum total is…

…seven hundred forty nine million, eight hundred seventy six thousand, five hundred forty three bits, and four cents.”

“Let’s rock!
Everypony lets rock!
Everypony on the whole cell block -
They was dancing to the jailhouse rock”

“That does sound lucrative,” the brothers said through the holes in the magic glass. “A quite intriguing offer,” Flim added.

Applejack nodded from the other side. “I reckoned you two might be interested. And shoot, only eighty-five more days – if you can get some paperwork signed, you might just be able to do it for this cider season! Maybe even set you all up in some buildings in Ponyville.”

“You’re pretty eager about this, Miss Applejack, given where things stood the last time we spoke.”

“Well, heck, I want to make money, too – just honestly, ya know? I mean, I know we’re only looking at your share being about eighty-thousand bits for the season, which’d pay off your debt in, uh…”

“About nine times as long as Nightmare Moon was banished. But no, friend, it is honest work, and that’s what we need. Our probation officer told us so.”

“Well number 47 said to number 3:
‘You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see;
I sure’ll be delighted with your company -
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me!’”

“So there was nothing salvageable of the omnibus?” Iron Will asked.

Applejack shook her head. “Sorry, hon’. Just be glad your little wooly friends got out okay. But hey! At least you didn’t get a felony! I hear they revoke your motivational speaking license for that.”

“Let’s rock!
Everypony lets rock!
Everypony on the whole cell block -
They was dancing to the jailhouse rock!
Let’s rock!”

“So, uh…what’s this going to mean for your career?” Applejack asked.

Octavia laughed. “Any musician worth her salt, in any genre, should do a little time in the dungeon. I’ll be getting even better offers than before, I assure you of that.”

“And, uh, how’re things going with that DJ character? She didn’t seem too happy.”

“I expect her career will also do better. She just needs some time to get over the shock, is all.”

“Of having her tour bus explode?”

“Of being propelled through the stratosphere on an iron plate and landing in the middle of Cloudsdale’s rainbow factory. Apparently a most distressing experience indeed; fortunately, I had already blacked out by then, and woke up comfortably in leg irons on a prison transport.”

“PON-3 was sittin' on a block of stone,
Way over in the corner weepin' all alone;
The princess said ‘hey pony don't you be no square:
If you can't find a partner use a wooden chair!’”

"Actually,” the attorney said, “I might just stay in here - I actually get paid on time and in full as a dungeon lawyer, even if's mostly in chocolate coins."

"Well, do as you like. But if you do let yourself get released, remember that y'all owe Twilight another cup of coffee."

"Oh, yes." Nickel Guise smiled.

"Now, between you and me, I don't think you're anything like good enough for her, and I think you know that, too. But after you lathered on all that sweet talk and even made her believe some of it, she gets to realize that for herself and dump you on her own time. In the meantime, you break her heart; I break yours - straight through the ribcage. We clear, pardner?"

"Crystal, ma’am."

“Let’s rock!
Everypony lets rock!
Everypony on the whole cell block -
They was dancing to the jailhouse rock!”

“I can’t tell you how eager the Cakes are for you two to get out.”

“Why’s that?” Bon-Bon asked, skeptical. “I’d think they’d be glad to have a competitor out of business for a few months.”

“Oh, they were excited at first – for about two days, Pinkie said. But your customers have needs, pardner, needs that not just anypony can meet! Forty-two flavors! Forty! Two! Flavors! I swear, ninth time somepony asked Pinkie for a pumpkin smoothie, she dang near cried.”

“They were dancing to the jailhouse rock!
They was dancing to the jailhouse rock!
They was dancing to the jailhouse rock!
They was dancing to the jailhouse rock!
Everypony on the whole cell block -
They was dancing to the jailhouse rock!”

“Uh…Trixie?”

“Yes, Applejack?”

“You know Twi ain’t never been mad at you, right? Are you mad at her?”

Trixie crossed her forelegs and harrumphed. Truth be told, even she didn’t know anymore.

“Well, anyway, if you need a place to get back on your hooves when this is all over, Ponyville’d like to see you back. And heck, even if you don’t want to stay, a lot of your friends’ll be there, at least for a while, it’s as good a place as any.”

“Friends?”

“Well, sure. Flim and Flam got to build a cider press there; that attorney fella says he’s going to hang up a shingle while he tries and puts the moves on Twilight; of course Lyra and Bon-Bon will go back to run their ice-cream shop; Iron Will wants to do some consultin’ work with Fluttershy; and Octavia’s going to crash with some relatives for a while.”

Trixie blinked. “My friends.”

“Right. So, c’mon back to Ponyville with the rest – I’m sure we can find a place for y’all.”

“They was dancing to, dancing to, dancing to, dancing to
Dancing to the jailhouse rock!
Oh they was dancing to, dancing to, dancing to, dancing to
Dancing to the jailhouse rock!
Everypony on the whole cell block -
They was dancing to the jailhouse rock!”

“Spike, take a letter!”

Twilight Sparkle rubbed her hooves together in glee.

“I’m going to be able to milk this for at least six friendship reports!”

Flim and Flam, but Not Trixie ("Bonus" "Chapter")

In an alternate world that respects (inasmuch as I ever do) the Season 3 canon...

Following their summary and shouted dismissal from the orphanage, the brothers retired to a nearby bar, taking their drinks on the patio in the Canterlot sun and watching pretty mares trot down the cobblestone streets as they sipped bottles of cider and contemplated their situation.

"What about Trixie?" Flim asked. "She was near as much born at that orphanage, you'd think she could be of some use."

Flam's face darkened. "Oh, right. Trixie."

"...something wrong, brother? What happened to Trixie?"

"She...a few months back, she obtained a powerful ancient amulet, became drunk on evil power, and terrorized Ponyville for about a week."

Flim's eyes widened. "Oh. So she...."

The mustachioed brother sighed. "Now, at the end of it, Twilight Sparkle and her friends forgave her, and pressed Princess Celestia to pardon her for these things."

"Oh? So what's the problem, if Twilight Sparkle forgave her?"

"The Mayor of Ponyville, the legal guardian of two young colts, and Filthy Rich did not."

"But you said the Princess pardoned her...."

"Yes, but those other ponies pressed for an investigation of how a bankrupt rock-farmer was able to even obtain a powerful ancient amulet in the first place."

"...that is a good question. I assume it wasn't through Daring-Do-style feats of adventurous archaeology."

"Long story short, she's doing fifteen to forty in the royal pen for robbing three banks."

"There was nothing short about that story, Flam."

The two brothers whistled loud and wolfishly as a mare with a vibrant purple mane and a gleaming white coat trotted past. To their surprise, she did not ignore them.

"You two!" Rarity cried, turning and advancing towards them.

"Do we know you - horse apples, we know you." Flim grimaced.

"I should say you do!" the mare said, scolding. "I'll have you know my friend Applejack has been inquiring all over regarding your whereabouts!"

"I'll bet she has," Flam said, looking around for an escape plan - he'd needed one anyway, the cider here was expensive.

"She has a business proposition for you - and from one businesspony to another, I must say, it sounded very lucrative. You must contact her at once!"

Two days later, the brothers were sitting with their lawyer. "It looks good, fellows. Real good."

"But the payout isn't until cider season - how do we get the fifty thousand bits for the orphanage now?"

Their lawyer peered at them. "Seriously? Take this paperwork to the Canterlot Municipal Bank and get a loan on it. This is a solid business plan. Calculate some capital expenses, pad it by the fifty thousand you need, and take out, say, a five year loan on it, to be paid with your cider profits."

"Don't forget my eighty-five thousand in parking tickets."

"...okay, a ten year loan."

"That's...an awful long time to be pinned down in one place, brother." Flam brushed his mustache.

"We can leave whenever it's not cider season, Flam. Which is a lot better than doing those ten years in the dungeon. And if we don't take do this, that's probably how it ends - some zany scheme that puts us both in the dungeon."

Flam sighed. "By the Goddesses, I hate being responsible." But in spite of it, his magic summoned up a quill and ink to sign the documents.

"So let me give you a letter of introduction for a friendly loan officer at the bank - and then let's talk about my unpaid fees...."

As we can clearly see:

With Trixie: zany adventures.
Without Trixie: boring non-adventures.

Let's not make this mistake again.