Button Takes Manehattan

“What… is it?”

Rumble considered the thing in front of them a moment longer. “No idea. Middle school art project?”

Button tilted his head, took a step to the left, and crouched. “But… what’s it mean? There’s soft parts over here and pointy bits over there. Is it supposed to look like a pony?”

Rumble shook his head slowly. “Nah, I think it’s one of those avant-garde things. Up to interpretation, or something.”

Button circled around it once more, then sat down. “I don’t get it.”

Rumble sighed and facehoofed. “It’s not supposed to be ‘got’, dumb-dumb. It’s art.”

“Hey, don’t call me dumb-dumb. If I was still five, I would’ve cried and made a big scene, right in the middle of this huge market.”

The pegasus looked around, confirming what he already knew. “It is a big market. Not exactly Ponyville’s dinky little street. I could definitely see myself getting lost in all this—” he caught himself mid-ramble. “Anyways, you’re not five anymore. So get up like the big grown stallion you are so we can see some actual sights around Manehattan. I’ve only got a week off from Wonderbolt training, and I’d rather not spend it on looking at…” he cast a glance once again to the object, “modern art.”

Button took one last look at it, leaning in close in an effort to make sense of it—

“Oh, please don’t touch that!”

Button recoiled, jumping up and away, looking for whoever just spoke.

A mare was walking up to them from a stall just a few meters away. “Sorry sirs, but this mount is currently broken. We’re trying to get a new one ordered right now, but due to a few complications, we may be unable to find a replacement for at least a week, maybe more. We’re looking for alternatives, but so far our search has come up empty.”

“A mount?” Button asked, inspecting it once again. He supposed it did kind of look like a mount, if one were to squint hard, take a step back, and tilt one’s head just so… “Why does it look so weird?”

The mare sighed and placed a hoof over her eyes in exasperation. “A rather large stallion with a bit too much energy to spare came in. By the time he was done it was completely wrecked.”

“I had heard that this city had a bunch of them,” Rumble started. “Part of the reason I wanted to go here instead of Fillydelphia, to be honest. Great stress relievers. Shame they haven’t come to Ponyville just yet.” He preened his feathers as he spoke, either so bothered by out-of-place feathers that it couldn’t wait or so bored by the conversation that he didn’t have anything else to do. Button couldn’t be quite sure.

“You’ve used a mount before?”

Rumble shrugged. “A few times, yeah. They have one set up in Cloudsdale. Didn’t have much time to use it though. Wonderbolt training is brutal.” He chuckled. “Kinda ironic, though. I was too stressed out to use the stress-relief. Wonder if I should talk to—”

Button had tuned him out. They were the greatest of friends, but Rumble had developed a bad habit of rambling on about not much at all for far too long a time.

Button turned to the mare. “What do you mean ‘looking for alternatives’?”

She blanched for a moment, but quickly caught herself. “Oh, we’re mostly just bouncing ideas around. Most of them are either not going to work once implemented or are too unlikely to get implemented in the first place. I mean, one of our ideas was to just put a pony out there instead! Of course, we quickly dropped that, because we figured nopony would actually volunteer for that sort of thing, as we don’t exactly have the bits to properly compensate them for their work. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting a replacement when you end up spending more bits on it than you’d make, don’t cha think?”

Rumble had stopped preening at this point. “Wait, really? You can just put a pony out there if they volunteered?”

The mare nodded. “Yep! There’d be a bit of paperwork involved, mostly just getting down contact info in case something inexplicably went wrong, but it’s perfectly legal, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Whoa… so can I volunteer Button?” Rumble pointed to his aforementioned friend, who raised an eyebrow in response.

She smiled. “If you know someone who would actually want to volunteer, please do send them our way. But no, you can’t volunteer somepony else.”

“Then I volunteer myself.”

The two ponies turned to the brown stallion to their side, shocked.

Rumble was the first to speak. “Uh, Button… I was just joking, dude. You don’t actually have to do this if you don’t want to. We’ve got plenty of stuff to entertain ourselves with in the city.”

The mare went next. “Sir, are you sure about this?”

“Yeah, pretty sure. I think it’ll be fun,” Button reassured. “Even if I’m here all day, we’ve still got lots of time to do everything on that list of yours, Rumble. I mean, there’s only, like, four items on it.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that there are actually six activities, and that those are very important and time consuming activities.”

Button facehoofed. “One of them is ‘Arcade’ and another is ‘Hang Out’. I think we’ll be fine.” He turned back to the mare, straightening his mane. “So… where do I sign up?”