"How much longer do you think she'll be?" Nano asked, leaning forward in his chair to get a better look at the door.

It was a boring white, much like the rest of the room they were seated in. There was plenty of space for ponies to pass through and get to their work, leaving them with absolutely nothing to do.

"Surely not too long, feels like she's been in there forever," Wish assured. "Have you spotted a clock around here?" Her eyes wandered the room, looking for something interesting.

Nano turned back to look at her curiously. "To keep track of how long she's been gone? Nope," he replied plainly. "Maybe one of us should invest in a watch," he suggested, pondering where to start with such a plan.

Before Wish could respond, the door opened, revealing a navy blue pegasus politely backing out to take her leave. The moment the door closed, she impulsively slammed her eyes shut as a powerfully bright grin took over her face.

Running towards her friends, she struggled to keep her voice down from her excitement. "Guys! We got it!"

"No way! You rock, Night! How'd you do it?" Wish said energetically.

"Yeah, what's our contract?" Nano added, half jokingly.

Midnight walked around to sit with them in the lobby chairs. "He's giving us full access to the staff room, up to half an hour of showtime-- just about anything we could need!"

"That's awesome!" Nano chimed.

"But, of course, there's a catch," Midnight sighed. "We only get one performance to prove ourselves. The crowd has to love it on the first try," she waved her hooves to put emphasis on her concerns.

Wish chuckled. "Ye of little faith. Crowds love me by default, there's no way we could lose," she declared, puffing up her chest subconsciously.

Night deadpanned. “Maybe the crowds you’re used to. These ponies are different, they’re higher class and harder to please.” she countered. “We really need to give it our all if we want to make an impression here.”

“That’s a good point,” Nano admitted. “We’ll need to give our best if we want any chance of really winning ‘em over.”

Wish thought for a moment, maintaining her confidence. “Alright, yeah…” she pouted. “Guess we should start planning out our act, then. Anyone got any ideas?” she asked, looking at both of them expectantly.

“Oh! That’s another thing,” Night exclaimed. “You can’t get dirty with ponies on stage, he saw way too many risks with that.”

Wish’s eyes went wide with shock. “But-- That’s half of my act! That’s what I specialize in!” she stood up, aggressively pointing a hoof at herself.

“Not on this stage,” Night restated. “That’s another challenge we’ll have to work with…” she groaned.

As the weight of the situation began to dawn on them, another businesspony walked past, reminding them of where they were holding their meeting. They quietly stared at him as he wandered out of sight, then turning back to look awkwardly at each other.

“I’m gonna start heading back to our place,” Nano decided, already back on his hooves. “We can organize our plans better there anyway.”

Midnight nodded. “Good idea, probably should’ve done that before going over all this,” she admitted, preparing to leave her seat.

Wish fell back into her chair, putting a hoof to her face. “How… how am I supposed to work like this?” she complained. “I’m the Wishmaker! That’s where the title comes from!” she lamented, throwing her hooves out in disbelief.

“We’ll figure something out at home, c’mon,” Night assured, smiling back at her comfortingly.

Wish let out a frustrated sigh and stood up, following the line they had created. “I guess I’m not just about fulfilling wishes, I do other stuff too,” she mumbled to herself as she trotted down the stairs. “Do crowds like my pole dancing?” she asked genuinely.

“I think so, but maybe keep quiet about that in public?” Night advised.

“They do, I can vouch,” Nano declared shamelessly.

Wish snickered. "Thank you, Nano."

Night rolled her eyes. “I can go over my data from past customers to see if we can find some trends, as a starting point,” she reasoned.

“Alright, that sounds good,” Wish smiled.

They stepped off of the stairs and entered the room at ground level, preparing to leave. Wish, however, subconsciously slowed to a halt as something caught her eye outside the glass walls. Several shops were lined up next to the road with bold, almost aggressive advertisements as they fought for customers.

Wish was unsettled at the sight of them, worrying about the fierceness of the competition she'd have to go up against herself.

"You good?" Nano asked bluntly.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Just thinking," she feigned.

Nano raised an eyebrow. "Alright, let's hurry up then."

Wish nodded, following closely behind as they made their way to the main road.

With Midnight at the front of the line, they started the trek back to home base. Though she herself stayed focused with a homemade map of the city in hoof, Wish studied every sign and storefront in sight. Around every corner there were countless restaurants and stores, like one huge mall. Some had lines going out to the sidewalk as ponies waited to get new gadgets early, while others saw seats painfully empty.

Again, worry crept over Wish's face. She shot a quick glance at Nano, but decided not to say anything.

"Still worried?" Nano asked, ever-smirking.

"Yeah…" she lowered her head.

"I get that," he assured calmly. "But do you know how many nightclubs and strip clubs there really are around here?"

"Hm? No, I hadn't thought about that-"

"Hardly any. I've been around here once or twice for… my own reasons, and they've got no variety," he answered with a hint of disgust in his voice. "I think the place you landed is the best by far."

"You really think that?" Wish beamed, her tail wagging like a dog.

"Yeah, it'll be perfect for you. It's all about weird girls brimming with personality and community. All the best stuff," A genuine smile grew on Nano's face.

Wish grinned with all her might. "Thank you! That makes me feel so much better about this!" she exclaimed, eagerly hopping along.

"Alright, slow down," Nano chuckled. "We still gotta get a plan and everything. Can't afford to mess up an opportunity like this," he reminded her casually, making eye contact to show seriousness.

Wish let out a big breath. "Right. This is important to all of us, we gotta take it seriously."

She prepared to say more, but found herself lost at the first step of coming up with an actual game plan. Midnight soon took the chance to butt in her own comments.

"If you two would kindly look forward instead of everywhere else, we've been at the door for a while now," Night proclaimed, only slightly annoyed.

Without saying a word, Nano put back on his default smug expression and went to hold the door open for the two mares. Midnight stared him down briefly, suspecting him of trying to get under her skin. Reluctantly, she proceeded, with Wish following closely behind. Nano allowed the door to shut without any further antics and followed the others up the stairs.

Midnight emerged from her room with a few binders full of paperwork and laid them on the table. One was labeled "formal" and contained the forms filled out by Wish's past customers. Those forms contained requests for what they wanted from the pretty mare alongside the price they were willing to pay. The actual formality of the requests was extremely varied to say the least, but all of them were approved by Midnight herself.

The other folder was labeled "informal" and contained every note, tip, and review left by those customers. A few were very nice, a few were unbelievably depraved, and some left only money.

"Ooh, we're gonna dig through everyone's secret desires?" Wish smiled impishly.

“More or less, yup,” Night nodded. “You should already have a good idea given that these are your customers, but this way we have over a year of honest data to work with.”

Upon opening the “formal” binder, she glanced at the information on the first page and immediately gagged at seeing the customer’s request. “Egh, I forgot this guy was at the top,” she recoiled, trying to keep her composure.

“Come on Night, it’s rude to kinkshame,” Nano taunted from the comfort of the couch. “What does it say?”

As Wish looked over the documents, her eyes went wide for a brief second, causing her to back away as well. “Oh, yea, I remember that guy,” she spouted in an attempt to cover up her embarrassment.

Nano looked genuinely worried at the fact that not even Wish wanted to confront that customer’s request again. “It can’t possibly be that bad. Let me see it,” he said sternly, levitating the binder to his face.

He scoffed. “Are you guys really that turned off by this?”

“Are you not?” Night protested, turning to face him.

“If you want a gross fetish I could tell you plenty. This hardly scores high on that list,” he explained, lowering his eyebrows in confusion.

“Well, yea, I can agree with that,” Wish replied, filling in for Night while she desperately tried to think of a comeback. “I still can’t say I’m too fond of… watersports.”

“That’s fair. I’m just surprised you’re not desensitized to it, being in the wish granting business and all,” Nano admitted with a shrug.

“Eeh, I’m pretty good about it. Just not something I want to boast about, exactly.”

“Okay, moving on,” Midnight snatched the binder back from Nano’s levitation spell and returned it to the table. “The average tip left by a private client is… zero… but this guy was generous enough to leave ten bits on top of his initial payments. No review card or anything, but this either tells us that you did well with that job, or he was just appreciative. We can’t really generalize that to everyone with kinks like that, but it’s a start.”

She removed the paper and placed it on the table next to the binder, beginning a stack. “Next up, something a little more reasonable--”

“Ooh, I think I remember the next one!” Wish interrupted. “That’s the one that booked three whole hours with me, right?”

“Right, and he left us lots of helpful comments,” Night confirmed. “‘Thank you so much for giving me the chance-’ blah blah blah… ‘I especially loved it when you-’ uhm, paraphrasing to spare his dignity, he likes your changeling abilities,” she recited parts of the review, starting to blush upon reading the details.

“I think he likes stallion parts more than mare parts,” Wish giggled, covering her mouth playfully.

Night couldn’t keep her face from turning red. “Yes, he was quite descriptive there,” she managed. “We still need more than a single case to do anything with this data.”

After a brief pause, Nano commented, "Why don't you just divvy out the papers between the three of us? We'll get through it way faster that way."

"Hm? Oh, yea. Probably should've been doing that from the start," she realized, slightly surprised at herself. "I'll divide up this stack first, then the informal ones should go much faster."

She raised the pages from the binder and placed them in a short tower on the table. Carefully, she used her wings to divide it into roughly three sections.

"Nano, could you distribute these? I'll take the top, you'll take the middle, and Wish can take the bottom," she requested.

"Hmm…" he pondered, tapping his chin with a hoof. "I dunno if I wanna be in the middle, feeling more like a bottom right now," he taunted, his smirk turning into a prideful smile.

"As you wish, you horny colt. Get to distributing," Night teased back, pointing at him impatiently.

Nano giggled, raising the papers with his magic and sending them out as he was told. Not quite willing to give up his seat on the couch, he switched to laying on his back and attempted to balance the stack on his stomach.

Wish mostly kept quiet, but seeing the chaos that could easily unfold, she morphed her changeling horn into a functional unicorn one so that she'd be able to catch anything that might go flying.

"Ah, so these are in chronological order?" she inquired. "I haven't thought about this guy in ages!"

"That's right," Night confirmed. "Who's that you've got? Aqua Shade? Jeez, feels like forever ago."

"I know, that's back when I was willing to go to a customer's house to do the job rather than meeting in the middle or near the wagon," she rambled. "Can you believe we were working out of a glorified wagon home for nearly two years? Feels like we've been in Manehattan forever, but it hasn't even been a month!"

"I know, it's crazy!" Night grinned. "And now look where we are!" she pointed toward the window, accidentally drawing attention to Nano, who laid just below it.

He bore a face of mild disgust, covering one eye with a hoof as if to say "I can't watch" but doing so anyway.

"Nano? What's up? What'd you find?" Wish asked politely.

He sighed. "My first customer form…"

Midnight couldn't suppress her laughter. "Oh Celestia, I nearly forgot you were in there. You blend right in with the rest of the degenerates," she teased, only a little seriously.

"Oh 'ha-ha', very funny," he scoffed. "I can't read this, this data's staying out of the stack-"

"Nonono, every file counts. Give it to me if you can't be bothered to sort it," Night commanded with a smirk.

Nano grunted his displeasure. "Ugh, fine, but it'll be face down." He reluctantly levitated the file over to one of the stacks, keeping his eyes on Night to ensure she wouldn't try anything.

Midnight smugly watched the file fall into place. "Thank you for cooperating," she chirped.

The team looked over the results of their work, wonderfully organized by Night's standards. They were ordered by level of kinkiness with vanilla stuff being on the left, really deviant stuff on the right, and a few that walked the line in the middle stack. Midnight sketched up some numbers and statistics as they read through everything, giving them solid trends to work with.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of clients just liked her with standard mare bits. Body type preference varied quite a bit, but most were more than happy with the body she chose by default. Lots of kinks and requests had to be ignored because they were exclusive to sex, and if anyone liked a certain accessory, it was probably a boring old lingerie.

"Alright, the numbers have been thoroughly crunched. Looks like these are our trends," Night announced, showing her work to the others.

"Bah, why do ponies have to be so boring?" Wish complained. "I wanna show off some crazy stuff on that stage! Like… audience controlled vibrators, or something. Anything!"

"Hey, it's all fine, this is just our basis to start with. When we learn what these crowds really like, we can start to diversify."

"I know, I know, this just seems all so… vanilla," Wish justified, putting emphasis on her dislike of such concepts.

Nano butted in supportively. "Oh, come on, Wish. I know you can sneak your special charm in there. Besides, everyone can tell if your heart's not in it."

"That's true…" she grumbled. "What do you think I should do for my show? What would win over the most ponies?" she cocked her head curiously.

Nano smiled. "If you want to win over the most ponies, listen to Night. She's the one with actual data here," he looked over at Night and nodded.

She smiled back, raising her chin to indicate how much a compliment from him could raise her self esteem.

"However, if you want to have fun doing it-" Nano began, glancing over at Night to see her smile immediately crumple into an annoyed scrunch.

"Picture this: You're up on that big stage, dancing to your heart's content for a crowd of adoring fans, when suddenly, you lay on your stomach, playfully kicking your legs like you'd do relaxing in bed. Then, after a flash of green magic, you sit up all sexily and, ta-da! Marecock!" Nano smiled, blushing slightly.

"That's nice, Nano, but not everyone's turned on by that," Midnight advised, once again annoyed. "Shouldn't she focus on the dances? Or customer interaction?"

"Exactly," he held his grin. "Swinging around a pole with a big, semi-erect cock probably looks like dancing with streamers, or something…" his blush grew deeper as his voice trailed off.

"Probably!? This is too important to be taking shots in the dark like that!" she exclaimed. "Alright, listen up, here's what I think," she clapped her hooves together to get their attention.

She motioned for Wish to stand in the middle of the room, to which she obliged. Night immediately began walking circles around her while scanning her body for inspiration. Wish just smiled, very comfortable with posing for things like this.

"Compared to a normal pony, you're pretty out there. Changeling-esque eyes and horn, some fairly unusual colors, a fine set of accessories… can you morph holes through your legs like a changeling?"

Wish shook her head. "Nope, that'd break 'em. I can put holes in my tongue though," she smiled, her face flashing green for an instant before sticking her tongue out, now with a big hole near the front.

"Dang, does that feel good to pleasure someone with?" Nano commented, only half teasing.

"Hm, never tried it. Wanna find out?" Wish suggested happily.

Nano’s face went red again as he got to his hooves. "Alright, hold on-"

"No. No the hay you are not. Get back on the couch, perv," Midnight demanded. "Wish, please put your tongue back to how it was. I think I've got some ideas."

"Awh, okay." Wish said, zapping her tongue back to normal. "Run 'em by me."

"So, there isn't one definitive trend for what a pony in your career should do to maximize profits. I think we can take advantage of this and give you a little breathing room to do what you want. Keep our limits of course, but there might be enough leniency with the audience to put in some exotic spice, too," she explained, content with herself.

"... Isn't that basically what I said?" Nano protested.

"No, you suggested that she wave her cock around like a flag. I said we should know our limits," Night grumbled.

"Same thing," he teased.

Wish stepped between them to put out the conflict. "That sounds good, Nightie. I do think we should start planning out the actual routine, though."

"Right, sorry," she straightened her shirt to clear her head a little. "What if we… went… down to the club to look for ideas? It's one of the things we need to do anyway, and having actual knowledge of what goes on in there would help a ton."

"Ooh, sounds fun. What about you, Nano?" Wish asked hastily.

"Same here. I think I've got a couple of bits to burn," he replied casually, going to his stash to check.

"Awesome. I know I've got plenty for now, so we can get something to eat and spend a couple hours there," Wish assured them.

A faint gasp could be heard from Nano as he opened his bag. He quickly closed it back and took a moment to calm himself before facing the others.

"It would appear that I will not be paying for anything tonight, but, Wish, if you would be so kind as to cover my costs for food, I'll repay in favors," he winked, smiling weakly.

"And you'll repay me with actual money soon after?" she pushed.

"...yes," Nano agreed, defeated.

"Good. Alright gang, let's head out!" Wish immediately headed for the door, escorting Nano with her own levitation spell.

Midnight lingered inside for a moment, going over things in her head. She quickly threw some pencils and paper in a saddlebag and made her way out in a hurry, nodding her thanks to Wish, who was still holding the door open.

With her friends out of the room, she let out a stress-filled sigh. "One shot. We get just one chance at this place. We gotta make it count."

Author's Note

Thank you for giving my story a try! I know this is very different from my first post, but I promise there's a lot of great content ahead. I'll be doing my best to post new chapters as often as possible, but truth be told, this isn't my number one priority, so there may be the occasional extended break. Stay tuned to find out what happens next chapter, when the horse gang attempts to "professionally" scout out a strip club.