"Zipp," Pipp said, "I don't think you can afford to pay my rates."
"Then do it as a favor for your big sister."
Pipp flipped her mane. She took a short fly around her bedchambers, stretching her wings, and then fluttered down to a landing in front of Zipp. "No. My agent would kill me. It's unprofessional to give my services away for free."
"Don't you sleep with him for free?"
"That's just professional courtesy."
Zipp frowned and flicked her own wings. "I'll give you ten percent."
"Ten percent of garbage is still garbage," Pipp replied.
"Crypto isn't garbage! The ancient Equestrians used Bit coins! Sunny's dad's notebooks tell us that much."
"But Ziiiiiipp," Pipp said, flopping dramatically onto her bed and covering her eyes with a wing, "if crypto was worth anything, you wouldn't need me to advertise it."
"Pipp, you can advertise anything and make it worth something."
Pipp laughed. "I know, right? That parfume smells like butt and they can't keep it on the shelves."
"It smells worse than butt."
"I want twenty-five percent," Pipp said. "Gross, not net."
Zipp's feathers went straight out, leaving her looking like a downy cat whose tail got trampled. "What!"
"And another ten percent for my agent."
"He's not even here, Pipp! Why should he get a cut?"
"Because he's a good lay."
Zipp paced back and forth around the room, thinking. "I dunno," she said after a minute. "That might not leave me enough for what I want to do."
"What is it you need the money for, anyway?" Pipp asked.
"I need to build the supersonic wind tunnel so I can figure out how to repeat the Sonic Rainboom. And I need to build it at least two valleys over from town, in case it explodes, or I explode, or the atmosphere explodes. And that means I need to build all the infrastructure associated with a major physics laboratory out in the wilderness."
"Just apply for a grant from the Royal Science Foundation."
"I'm not allowed, it would look like bias if a princess won."
"It would be bias if a princess won." Pipp rubbed her nose. "Ask Mom for the money."
"She refuses to support my experiments ever since the thing, at the place, at the time."
"She's still winghurt about that?" Pipp said, looking at Zipp. "That seems harsh."
"She said the funds are going to pensions for the injured firefighters."
Pipp blinked. "How many—"
"Nineteen, okay? And I said I was sorry, like, weekly, for a year."
"Thirty percent, total, for me and my agent."
"Fine. You're quite a sister."
Pipp flipped onto her back on her bed and tucked her forelegs behind her head. "What would I have to do?"
"Shill another product, of course."
Zipp stacked piles of cash on her desk, humming happily, and looking at the chalkboard with the budget estimates for her wind tunnel lab.
Pipp's commercials and vlogs to her Pippsqueaks had built up so much frenzy over the Bit Coin crypto that Zipp had doubled her previous estimated take when she dumped her stash.
The door to Zipp's chambers slammed open and Pipp barged in, a pair of guards playing tinny electronic fanfares on their phones just behind her. "Zipp!" she shouted, flaring her wings angrily. "Why is all the Bit Coin you gave me and my agent now worthless? He's so upset he's impot—"
"It's a volatile market, I can't control its ups and downs."
Zipp continued counting bills.
"Why do you have... what is that, a million?!"
"Three point four million."
"Why do you have three point four million in cash?"
"I sold all my Bit Coin yesterday."
"You started the crash?"
"No, the crash was baked in once ponies started causing electrical brownouts by spending all their time and effort mining new Bit Coin."
Pipp fumed, frowning.
"You're cute when you're mad," Zipp said.
"I am not!"
"Mad because small."
"Mad because broke! You made me tell my Pippsqueaks lies and now they're furious at me! They all bought Bit Coin and now it's worthless..." It dawned on Pipp, her face turning red in rage. "They bought it from you! All this money was my Pippsqueaks' money!"
"Well, not... all of it."
Haven barged in.
"Good news!" the Queen said. "I've put the Sovereign Wealth Fund into Bit Coin!"
Zipp and Pipp looked at each other, horrified.
Zipp lay on her back on Hitch's bed. Hitch laid next to her, rubbing her chest floof with a hoof.
"Thanks for letting me crash here," Zipp said. "Sunny's place is too crowded with Mom and Pipp there."
Hitch kissed her. Zipp slid a wing under him and pulled him on top of her, his heavy earth pony weight pressing down on her body as she tented her wings over him. His weight and warmth were like a reassuring blanket.
In the stove in the corner of his bedroom, three point four million in Zephyr Heights bank notes burned to keep the room warm against the winter night. With the revolution and the rise of the Committee For Public Safety, the old royalist bills were a crime to possess in ZH, and it's not like Zipp could ever show her face there and spend them, even if they were still legal tender.
She kissed Hitch back, letting her eyes close and the tears start. Her entire life, the life she had known, was over. From birth she was Crown Princess, Heir to the Throne, and now... now... now there was no throne. It was all gone. She was just an unemployed pegasus, her most important remaining descriptor being "The Sheriff's friend."
Somehow, she knew, she would find a way to start over. Her friends here in Maretime Bay would stand with her, and her sister, and her mother. She was smart, she was athletic, she was determined. And, who was she kidding? Hitch was her lover, not just her friend, and that seemed to be the only thing that was keeping her sane—
Pipp, Haven, and Sunny barged in the room.
"It's so 🎵spec-TAC-u-lar🎶!" Pipp singsonged. "I know what we're going to dooooo..."
Haven nodded, smiling. "Sprout has talked to us. We've got the plan we need."
Zipp opened her eyes and looked over Hitch's shoulder at them. "It's a good thing we weren't, ya know, having sex when you barged in without knocking."
Hitch's face burned bright red.
Pipp said, "Oh, like I've never walked in on you having sex before. Even if it was always alone."
Zipp coughed.
"And I changed your nappies when you were little," added Haven.
"And Hitch and I were an item all through High School," Sunny concluded.
Zipp facehoofed. "Fine, fine, what's your brilliant idea?"
"Sprout found something in Sunny's dad's notes. It appears to have been the cause of the Fall of Ancient Equestria, but we think we've got the bugs worked out."
"What—" Hitch said.
"We just need to plant some fields and figure out how to brew it, once it's harvested," Sunny gushed.
Zipp felt herself getting dizzy.
Haven, in her most melodious Queen Voice, said, "They're called 'enneff teas'."
