The Salmon of Harmony

Chapters

Looks Like You Need a Map
Mostly Inconspicuous
Nothing Good About the Morning
Jus' Hitchin a Ride
Button-Mashing Engine Repairsponies

Looks Like You Need a Map

Tax Reform Day

The Prodigal’s Explorer’s Map wasn’t a particularly nice map. As a matter of fact it wasn’t a map, unless somewhere out in the vast expanse of land that encompasses Equestria and It’s Beyond, there is a race of civilized beings who have nothing better to do with their lives than wear digital watches and consider large encyclopedias of information ‘maps’. There was, of course, but this story is not about them.

If not nice, it was, at the very least, the only guidebook in all of Equestria and It’s Beyond that encompassed everything, and I mean everything, known to existence. In fact, its vast well of information was so large that it would’ve taken forty two million, fifty three pages to print out the first three chapters alone. Tree huggers be glad that its medium of distribution was in the form of a tablet twice the size of your palm, a massive technological feat wasted due to the fact that the editors were too lazy to sell its blueprints, and the fact that the citizens of It’s Beyond were far, far too stupid to learn how to reverse engineer.

It has been argued, and some have made whole careers out of arguing, that there is no way that the band of incompetent drunkards that were the editors of the Prodigal Explorer’s Map could have possibly created an encyclopedia containing everything, and I mean everything, when half of them haven’t even gotten off their lunch breaks yet. Rather than address the issue, the editors of The Map decided not to give them a write up. It was an unorthodox, yet completely effective solution. I’m sure the editors didn’t even think they were making a solution to anything at all.

Shortly after, conversations with the arguers and a random civilian would go like this:

Arguer: You have been lied to! There are things The Map doesn’t have entries for!

Civilian: Hold on a sec, lemme look you up on my Map. Strange, there’s no entry for you. You must not exist then!

Arguer: But I’m standing right here!

Civilian: Well then, I must be going insane. That’s a shame. I was planning on having turkey tonight.

Of course, this would never happen in Equestria, because the editors had decided that getting The Map published in Equestria wasn’t worth walking all the way from It’s Beyond to Canterlot, where they would in turn have to wait 6 months for an audience with the princess and ask for a publishing license. Instead, half of them went on a lunch break while the other half waited for their turn to go on lunch break. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Map has been praised by wholly unbiased media sources such as Fox News, MSN, and LIBERALS FTW as a decent, somewhat reliable guidebook that you might want to take out with you if you plan on getting kidnapped by aliens on the way to buy some milk. However, its lazy writing, frequent omissions, and straight up lies have made it responsible for 42 deaths, 3 assassinations, 5 ponies being lost in a jungle and found 50 years later bashing a rock with a stick, and one odd case of a mare gatecrashing a university party and making fun of all the astrophysicists she could see before getting thrown out.

But it was the only guidebook they had in It’s Beyond, and it would serve its purpose until somepony came along with a more reliable, somewhat cheaper, guidebook.

Mostly Inconspicuous

Chapter 1

Bonbon woke up with sun in her eyes. This was odd because she could have sworn that she lived facing towards the west. It was as if the sun had purposefully risen in such a way that it bounced off the mirrors of the mirror shack next door purposefully shining into her eyes with a cold, dark glint in its eyes.

Bonbon got up, grudgingly pasted her toothbrush, and stared at herself in the mirror. She decided that she wasn't a very good sight at all, as the juxtaposition of her eyebrows combined with her angry frown and overall disposition seemed to come together to scream, ‘I’m bored oh god I’m so bored someone kill me now I’m so damn bored’, which wasn't a very nice thing for a pony’s face to scream. This was especially true if that somepony spent her mornings selling candy to little foals.

Now, Bonbon’s boredom wasn't the kind of boredom that could be cured by taking a purple pill at the beginning of every day, for it was the kind of boredom that could only be formed by the oh-so-dreaded horrors of routine. Her day was completely and utterly predictable, from the candies that the little foals would buy at her candy shoppe, down to the surprisingly predictable oddness of her best friend and roommate, Lyra Heartstrings.

She descended the stairs, and saw little grooves from where Lyra would stand and think whatever it was that she thought before descending the stairs. "She's paying for that," muttered Bonbon.

She opened the fridge, and wasn’t surprised in the least to find that the slice of cherry-banana cake she’d specifically asked Lyra to not eat was gone; presumably eaten, though it was altogether possible that the minty unicorn had sold it to her next door neighbors.

She poured herself some cereal and wasn’t surprised in the least to find that it tasted wonderfully, delightfully, completely and wholly awful.

This was because one of Lyra’s socks was inside her bowl, soaking in the milk.

Bonbon continued eating, because that was just the kind of day she felt like she ought to have.

***

If one were to record all the thoughts that Lyra Heartstrings had had in all her lengthy sojourn in Equestria, the number one most thought thought on that record would be: ‘Normal pony walk. Normal pony walk.’ While this would most definitely be an odd thought for a perfectly normal Equestrian to have, Lyra Heartstrings wasn’t that normal, nor was she an Equestrian, so it was perfectly alright.

Lyra woke up early that day; she woke up even earlier than her roommate Bonbon, which was quite unusual for her; a perfectly unnormal resident of someplace that wasn’t Equestria.

She stepped out of bed, and immediately thought, ‘Normal pony walk, normal pony walk,’ for she was tempted to do the ‘wake up walk’ often done by the ponies in Beatlejuice, her hometown.

She descended the stairs, and only a ridiculously long amount of time thinking ‘Normal pony walk, normal pony walk’ could keep her from descending the stairs like a Grackle Hound from the magical city of Ponipropolis.

She walked into the kitchen, and searched for some food in the cupboards. There was none except for a tiny packet of cereal which, for some odd reason, had one of her own socks in it. The only food inside the fridge consisted of a half-rotten cabbage roll, which she didn’t even like that much anyways, and a tiny slice of cherry-banana cake.

The minty unicorn levitated the tiny slice of cake out and ate it as quickly as she could, hoping that Bonbon wouldn’t catch her eating the slice of cake that she’d promised she wouldn’t eat.

Of course, she had eaten it, which meant that she was now morally obligated to pick up another one from Sugarcube Corner, offer Bonbon a tiny slice, and eat the rest. This also meant that she was morally obligated to put the cake on Bonbon’s tab, since it was her fault she’d had to buy another cherry-banana cake in the first place.

As Lyra stepped outside, into the bright, warm, forgiving light, she relished the fact that she didn’t have a hangover, and didn’t feel the blinding pain of half a thousand suns burning into her eyes.

It was a very nice day out, she decided, one of the best. Perfect to have breakfast at Sugarcube Corner, if she were in any position to judge such a thing.

Surprisingly, she was. In fact, she’d written hundreds of restaurant reviews, when-to-eat timetables, and quite a few editorials on ‘Why lunch is, without a doubt, the best meal of the day’, none of which would be read by anypony in Equestria. This was because she wrote things for The Prodigal Explorer’s Map, no copies of which, in part or in whole, have been printed in Equestria.

There were currently three copies of The Prodigal Explorer’s Map out there in Equestria, one of which is currently residing in a dusty little cupboard in a desk in the basement of the Sugarcube Corner. Another one, quite coincidentally, could also be found in the Sugarcube Corner, though it resides in a satchel hanging off a certain pink earth pony’s neck, containing a well used towel, a small toolbox, a travel visa and a small black tablet twice the size of her hoof.

The third one could be found in the Royal Canterlot Chambers, sitting there looking terribly lonely and out-of-place on Princess Luna’s nightstand.

On her way to Sugarcube corner, Lyra passed by several ponies, some of which she knew by name, and the others which she just guessed based on their cutie marks.

‘Good morning, Sugar Grape,’ she said to one pony she knew by name.

‘Good morning, Lyra,’ replied Sugar Grape.

‘Good morning, Hammer and Chisel Flank,’ said Lyra to another, who she didn’t know by name. She wasn’t very good with these, you see.

Smith Black waved stupidly at her, because he didn’t know Lyra’s name by heart, and didn’t want to end up accidentally calling her Flank Harp Lady, which he had always thought had been her name until he’d sat down and thought about how utterly stupid a name it would be. So he just wore a silly grin and waved stupidly at her every time he passed her by.

She managed to make it to Sugarcube Corner without meeting anypony she didn't know, which she was grateful for. She took a seat just close enough to the windows to be considered a window seat, yet far enough that the sunlight didn’t get into your eyes. Within seconds, Carrot Cake was at her table.

‘Good morning, Lyra. What can I do for you?’

‘I’ll take some cherry-banana cake and some coffee, if you wouldn’t mind,’ she replied.

The orange earth pony furrowed his brows. ‘That’s it?’ he asked.

Lyra nodded, wondering why he would ask such a question.

The truth was, while Lyra had done her absolute best to blend in with society, she’d always seemed quite odd to some ponies in Ponyville. Carrot Cake was one of these ponies, and he'd been trying to get Lyra to order some weird dish that could prove to his wife Lyra was indeed quite odd.

‘Of course. It’ll be right there in a jiffy,’ said Carrot. He thought for a minute and decided that a cake and coffee was a perfect way to start the day, which meant that he still didn't have any proof. Some day, he thought, someday.

One jiffy later, a prancing pink pony prattling proudly pranced her way over to Lyra. "Good morning, Lyra! Isn't today’s gona to be an awesome, splunderific funtastic day?" said Pinkie Pie.

"Eh... sure, why not?" responded Lyra.

On top of the pink earth pony’s back was a platter with a square box and a steaming cup of coffee. And hanging off her neck was-

"Hey, Pinkie, how’d you get that satchel?"

"Oh this! I found this when Mr. Cake told me to go clean up the basement, and then I went to the basement and I found this really really neat satchel and I just really wanted it but I can’t get it open so I just put it around my neck!" She poked at the neckstrap to prove her point. "See?"

"That’s my satchel," said Lyra, who could see nothing about Pinkie’s point, and was sincerely hoping that she wouldn’t try to restate it. She levitated the flap open with her horn and pulled her travel visa out, to prove her very own point, which was byfar more important than Pinkie’s point.

The pink earth pony made an 'ooooh' sound when she realized that you were supposed to lift the flap.

"See?"

Pinkie Pie could see a lot about Lyra’s point, and decided that the satchel was, in fact, Lyra’s.

"Okie Dokie Loki!" she said. She gave her the satchel along with the platter, and bounded away as all prancing pink ponies prancing do.

***

There is a race of vaguely equine not-ponies who reside in the Forest of Ragerock Quadra Deno. They spend every single waking moment of their every waking lives losing stuff in places in which they’d never think to look, simply so that they could wake up, eat breakfast, and experience that feeling of ecstasy that one so often feels upon finding something that they lost and never thought they’d ever find again.

There is even a little shop in the forest that sells inconsequential trinkets for moderately low prices, which specialize in getting lost and being found days later. It also sold copies of The Prodigal Explorer’s Map.

It has been said that so many copies of The Prodigal Explorer’s Map have been sold and ‘accidentally’ lost that if one were to get kidnapped on their way to the convenience store to buy some milk, it’d be an easy task to bend down, scrape some dirt away, and pick up a copy, thus allowing you to read the article on escaping alien kidnappings.

This wasn't as helpful as it should have been, as the entry on escaping alien kidnappings, should the aliens allow you to read it, consisted of "Run. Run really fast."

***

It was this feeling of intense ecstasy that Lyra felt as she rifled through her old satchel, containing all the belongings she’d brought over from It’s Beyond.

She’d lost her satchel when she’d moved into Ponyville, in a freak accident involving a grass seed, some lemons, and a banana-cherry cake. She’d decided that she could do without a satchel, as it had made her seem gangly and discouraged ponies from picking her up. And then she remembered that she needed a travel visa in order to cross the border between Equestria and It’s Beyond, and that her toolkit contained all of her tools of hitchhikery.

It has been said that in order to obtain a new travel visa, one would have to go to Princess Celestia’s in Canterlot, wait six months for an audience, and personally request a travel visa to replace the one you’d lost.

Lyra had went, waited three months, witnessed the eternal night brought upon them by Nightmare Moon, decided that life was too short, sold her audience slot to a gangly looking vagabond, and planned to live a nice, placid life in Ponyville.

Even now that her satchel was right there, sitting in front of her, she had second thoughts about continuing her adventurous life of hitchhiking. Except...

There was a note in her satchel. It wasn’t the best note in the world, nor was it written with the best paper in the world, but the very fact that there was something unfamiliar in her satchel was enough to draw a fair amount of attention to it.

'Morning, older Lyra,' it read, 'this is younger Lyra. I’m just here to remind you, in case you’ve drank too much booze to remember, that Tax Reform Day is coming. You might wanna prepare for it.'

Ah. Tax Reform Day. The 21rst of June, 1000 years after Princess Luna lost her travel visa on the moon.

‘Hey, Mr. Cake?’ she called.

‘Yes?’

‘What day is it?’

‘The 21rst, dearie.’

‘June?’

‘Yes, June.’

‘I see.’

Lyra slowly unwrapped the cherry-banana cake, ate a slice and washed it down with a cup of coffee. So it’s gonna be one of those days, isn’t it? thought Lyra.

***
According to any modern day health magazine, coffee is a poisonous substance, with such high amounts of caffeine that it can drastically alter your body and mutate your childs. It also gives many charts, quotes, and tables, all set on proving that caffeine was the worst substance in the known universe, and that it should probably be banned from every shop, sub station, and restaurant out there. Also, it states that you probably shouldn’t be drinking it, either.

The Prodigal Explorer’s Map states that coffee is the best substance in the known and unknown universe, that it does everything that you need it to do, that curing a hangover and waking up are the only things that you ever need your drink to do, and that you should drink as much as you want, when you want, because ‘think of it as a cup of boiled bean soup, which has never killed anypony before, except for all those ponies it killed.’

It also tells you where to find coffee, which shops give you the best coffee, and includes numerous falsified tables, charts, and quotes, all set on proving that the people writing the modern day health magazines were complete and utter incompetent drunkards.

One of these books drastically outsold the other.

***

Bon-Bon found herself in an indoor coffee shop, barely conscious of how she got there or why she was there in the first place. She vaguely recalled that it was the closest coffee shop to where she was at the moment she remembered that she needed that coffee. Her steaming mug of coffee sat on a sparkly clean table. It was boiling hot, which, in her opinion, was the worst kind of hot. She resigned herself to sitting there and waiting for it to cool.

Her vision blurred.

The walls danced circles around her, singing badly done renditions of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’.

She took a sip, wishing desperately for the coffee to have cooled so that she could wake up, cure her nonexistent hangover, and end the oral tortures inflicted upon her by her mind.

Impossibly, the coffee seemed to have gotten slightly hotter.

Obviously, this meant that it was a Sunday.

She could never get the hang of Sundays. ‘You feel like you should be going to church, but then you realize that you have no idea what in Celestia’s name a church is in the first place,’ she’d say to anypony who would listen. Usually, it was nopony, but at times it was Lyra, who would nod her head sagely and say something about churches that Bon-Bon couldn’t possibly hope to decipher.

By strange coincidence, it was Lyra who barged into the coffee shop, yelling Bon-Bon’s name into the crowd of ponies. Everpony turned to glare at Bon-Bon, who was doing her absolute best to make herself seem as small as possible. ‘There you are!’ cried Lyra, dashing over to her.

‘We have to talk. Preferably at a bar.’ She said. Her minty green and white striped mane was disheveled, and she was panting for air, as if she’d run all the way from… wherever it is that Lyra had come from.

‘Why a bar?’ she replied.

‘I like alcohol.’

‘What about my coffee?’ asked Bon-Bon.

‘We don’t have time for this, Bon-Bon. What I’m about to tell you is about this much,’ and here she held her hooves apart as if measuring the size of some fish, ‘more important than your cup of coffee.’

‘Uh... how much more?’

‘Well, if your coffee is about this important,’ Lyra held her hooves less apart, ‘then what I’m about to tell you is this important,’ and she spread her hooves out fairly wide apart, as if she was measuring the size of a particularly large fish found in the Pan Raver Lake inside Pineconepropolis.

Bonbon nodded and followed Lyra, as this had sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation. They went into the best bar in town, which was whichever bar was closest to them, which happened to be next door. It was empty save for Berry Punch, the resident alcoholic, who was busy being drunk and poking at the glossy counter with one hoof.

‘Er, hi, Berry,’ said Bon-Bon, in a rather awkward tone that betrayed her unease.

She smiled nervously at everypony else in the bar, which was nopony, and it made her feel quite silly. Lyra sat down on a velvet bar stool and ordered two glasses of alcoholic punch for her, a third for Bon-Bon. She turned to her best friend and roommate and said,

‘Bon-Bon, what I’m about to say will shock you. It will scare you. I can’t even guarantee that you’ll be perfectly sane after I’m done telling you what I have to say. So here, drink this,’ she said in all seriousness, motioning for Bon-Bon to drink the glass of punch that the bartender had slid across to her.

Bon-Bon wasn’t much of a drinker, but if there was anything she knew, it was that alcohol was about as good of a cure for hangovers and woke you up as well coffee did.

So she downed it in one gulp, got alcohol burn in her throat, and spent the next half minute panting heavily and cursing Celestia for ever creating intelligent life forms who would somehow discover alcohol. Once Bon-Bon had stopped using colorful expletives that Lyra didn’t even know she knew, she laid a hoof on her shoulder. ‘Are you ready to hear this now?

Bon-Bon, who had just been cured of her hangover, was simply ecstatic to find that there existed a life in which walls didn’t dance around her, singing badly sung renditions of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ and nodded.

Thus approved, Lyra leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, ‘I’m not actually a citizen of Equestria. I’m from a little town in It’s Beyond, just in the boundaries of this little Kingdom called BeatleJuice.’

Bonbon decided that this was also perfectly reasonable, and nodded her head.

‘I’ve been staying here in Ponyville because I’d lost my travel visa,’ continued Lyra.

Bon-Bon looked at her quizzically for a while. ‘Well, why didn’t you get a new one? I’m sure that it would be perfectly fine with the Princess if you went to court and asked for one,’ she said at last.

‘What, and wait six months for an audience?’ replied Lyra, her voice full of incredulosity, as if that was the single craziest thing she’d ever heard in her life.

‘Well, why not?’ asked Bon-Bon.

‘Why not? Why not? Well if we’re doing that, we might as well wait six months for a publishing license, go six months without eating, or even go six months without drinking water! Nothing’s worth waiting six months for. Ever!’ Lyra cried passionately, throwing her hooves up, ‘It’s in the Map.’

‘What map?’

‘Just let me finish my story, Bon-Bon. I’ve been working on it the whole morning.’

‘Well, alright then.’

‘Now, as I was saying, I lost my travel visa sometime during my adventures in Equestria. I had to explore everywhere, you see, otherwise my entry on Equestrians wouldn’t be quite good enough for The Map-

‘You keep talking about this map. I’m starting to think it doesn’t mean what I think it means.’

‘The Prodigal Explorer’s Map! It’s an encyclopedia with an entry on everything, and I mean everything, in existence. I write things for it. It’s why I came to Equestria in the first place.’

Bon-Bon nodded awkwardly, attempting, and failing, to pretend as if she understood whatever it was that Lyra just said. ‘Um. Sure. That. Maps are actually encyclopedias. Sure. Gotcha.’

‘Anyways, I found my old satchel in Sugarcube Corner. Wonder what that was doing there? So I looked inside and found this!’

Lyra pulled a dirty brown satchel off her neck, and poured out all of its contents.

‘I’m probably going to leave Equestria in the next five minutes, to be honest.’

Nothing Good About the Morning

Chapter 2

Twilight Sparkle had always had a certain fascination with robots. Or, rather, a more accurate description of her condition would be a ‘Secret Obsession that she Never Shared with Anypony and Spent Every Waking Moment of her Life Feeding’. SONSASEWMLF, for short.

Sometimes, she would randomly give off a speech about the ‘the possible advancements that could be made in the field of bio-magical… stuff if somepony were to come along and make a sentient robot’ to anypony who would be there to listen, which was usually nopony. Now, this wasn’t due to a lack of friends, as would have been the case a few months back, but because she would never give the speech in a place where somepony might hear. This, on its own, was quite odd.

But Twilight Sparkle was an odd pony.

And, as all odd ponies are wont to do, she spent every minute she had alone attempting to make her very own robot. Everything she had ever learned, ever, was all in preparation for the one moment, of the one day, in which she’d finally finish her robot and advance the field of bio-magical… stuff so much that Celestia would be dead before the scientists could figure out what to do with their advancements.

She hadn’t been very successful, at first. The very first time she’d tried to create her own sentient equine life form, she’d ended up with a toaster. A very nice toaster, as a matter of fact, one that would brown the bread just right and give off a cheerful little ‘ding!’ as it popped the bread up. It wasn’t, however, a particularly nice sentient equine life form, so it counted as a failure.

She’d gotten better with time, of course. The second time she’d tried, she ended up with a vaguely equine shaped, quite sapient, toaster.

Some part of Twilight’s subconscious really, really liked toasters.

In the end, she had so many toasters that to put all of them in operation at once would both overload the local power grid and require enough bread to feed the entire race of consumerist numbskulls living just off the coast of the Mareific Ocean.

Even her final model, which she had just completed earlier today, and was currently charging its battery in her basement, had two little slots on its back in which you could toast toast. Even after an hour of careful thought and days spent studying the blueprints, she had no idea how they had gotten there. Sometimes the universe just didn’t make sense.

She was in her basement now, of course, waiting for the battery to become fully charged. Spike was out at Rarity’s, doing Spike things while Rarity did her Rarity things, none of which mattered because today, on the day of days, Twilight Sparkle was about to turn on Equestria’s very first sentient equine shaped robot.

The battery was fully charged with enough batteries to last a year, maybe two.

The front hooves were loaded with a grappling gun, a Blasty Zarg Lap laser pistol, and a saxophone. It paid to be ready for anything.

The brain was loaded with all the processing power of a computer the size of a planet.

Twilight Sparkle reached a hoof over and pressed the power button, grinning gleefully. ‘Good morning!’ she cried happily.

And whatever she’d expected any sentient life form to say, ever, it wasn’t this: ‘What’s so good about it?’

Twilight frowned. He wasn’t supposed to talk like that. She thought she’d designed him with a little more... joie de vivre. But still, she thought, I’ve made a robot! Squee! ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘to begin with, today’s the day I created you! You’re officially the first sentient robot ever to be created in Equestria! Isn’t that wonderful?’

She clapped her hooves together.

The metallic equine sighed, then sat down on his haunches as if life, however short his was, was not worth living anymore. ‘Yes,’ replied the robot, ‘Wonderful describes it wonderfully. I have a brain the size of a planet and I’m stuck talking to a mutant deer horse who’s clearly just come out from the ocean.’ He said this in a bemoaned moan.

The lavender unicorn furrowed her eyebrows at him and felt a pang of disappointment. This wasn’t what she had been hoping for at all.

‘Well, er, uh, robot-

‘Well isn’t that just the greatest feeling on Earth? You can’t even bother to remember my name,’ grumbled the robot.

He proceeded to roll around on the floor in abject misery.

‘Well if you’re not going to tell me your name, then how am I supposed to remember it?’ She was frustrated now. She’d even begun to wonder if devoting her entire life to making a robot had been entirely worth it.

Marvin stopped rolling around and looked up at her in such a way that she felt guilty for ever experiencing the feeling of happiness in her life. ‘Well, if you must know, my name’s Marvin,’ said the manically depressed robot.

And with that, he trotted out the door, leaving Twilight Sparkle standing there with her mouth agape. Eventually, she began to wonder if it had all been a hallucination, and decided that robots were definitely a bad subject to base her SONSASEWMLF on.

‘That’s it,’ said the unicorn, ‘time to find a new SONSASEWMLF.’ She levitated a book and began desperately searching for something else to devote her entire life to.

***

Outside the Books and Branches library, Marvin suddenly realized that he had no idea where to go, or how he would get there even if he did have somewhere to go. The thought made him feel wonder why he was even bothering to go on.

So he did what any advanced being would do in his situation: math. He decided to do probability equations.

He calculated the probability of him being picked up by a motor vehicle in a country with no registered motor vehicles, and came up with a fairly low number.

He then calculated the probability of him being picked up by a particularly important pony in a motor vehicle, and came up with the 5th lowest number in existence.

Lastly, he calculated the probability of him being picked up by Princess Luna driving in an unregistered, homemade R.V. in order to escape the Equestrian Revenue Services and their tax reforms, and he came up with a number so impossibly low that the universe was more likely to condense, implode, explode, reform, and align in the shape of gummy the toothless alligator.

One second later, he was lying muzzle down on the ground, thinking, ‘Well, that’s odd.’

He thought this because it was a homemade R.V. that had knocked him into the dirt, driven by none other than Princess Luna, co-ruler of Equestria. She turned around and angrily shook her hoof in no general direction.

‘THOU SHALT NEVER CATCH US ALIVE, ERS!’ boomed the princess of the night.

Marvin lifted his head despondently. He didn’t like having his muzzle pressed against the dirt. To be fair, however, there wasn’t much he did like.

Princess Luna looked down at Marvin, and opened her mouth to boom at him.

‘THOU! HOW SENTIENT ART THOU?’

Marvin didn’t much like being boomed at, either. ‘I’m sentient enough to know that your question depresses me,’ he said, sighing.

‘WONDERFUL! WOULDST THOU LIKE TO JOIN ME ON AN ADVENTURE?’

He looked behind him, at the Books and Branches Library, where Twilight Sparkle, his creator, was busily reading book after book in a desperate attempt to find a SONSASEWMLF. A small purple dragon was making himself busy cleaning up after his friend, and an owl was staring at Marvin as if he were the single most interesting thing on the planet.

It wasn’t much of a choice, really.

***

In a quiet little town on the outskirts of Equestria, just bordering the Everfree forest, two ponies sat in a bar while a third, completely unrelated pony stood off in a corner singing drunken ditties of sadness, loss, and the inevitability of life, life, life, life, life, life, life, life, life- she was drunk, you see.

It was the second pony, of the cream colored earth variety, that sputtered and splattered a general mishmash of incomprehensible words at her completely related conversation partner, who was chugging down pints of berry punch as if it were the last time she’d ever be able to drink them- which it were.

It has been said, and argued, and argued over the saying of, that if a pony is subjected to too much new information at one time, even the slightest of shocks, mental or physical, would be enough to put their brain on hold. This, of course, would cause the brain to stop sending signals to the jaw, which would lead to the repetition of the first syllables to enter an equine’s mouth-neurons, which was usually but, um, or wha.

‘But- but- um- um-’ spluttered Bonbon. She paused, and once again opened her mouth, thinking that she might be able to form her thoughts into a coherent word, and spluttered some more, ‘wha- wha-’

Lyra, who could see that this conversation was going nowhere, interrupted. ‘Well, you said you were ready.’

She had the bartender refill Bonbon’s glass, and passed it over to her. ‘This might help,’ said the minty unicorn.

Bonbon closed her mouth, stopped spluttering, and took another swig of the berry punch. She could feel her brain begin, once again, to send signals to her brain, which was a fairly pleasant sensation, and she opened her mouth to say something coherent.

‘Why? What possible reason could you ever have that would justify you leaving Equestria in, say, three minutes?’

‘Tax Reform Day.’

‘Tax Reform Day?’

***

Tax reform day, according to The Prodigal Explorer’s Map, is a singular day in a thousand years, in which the ERS sends every living resident of Equestria a record of their entire lifetime’s taxes, in the form of a really, really long tax log. Every page would need to be read over and approved. Many pages were written in Griffin, and all tax logs would include such words as back taxes, yearly interest growth rate yield, yield logs tax years, growth yield rate logs, and back taxes year logs interest growth, effectively making them almost entirely indecipherable.

‘Well, why can’t we have our fun?’ Said Josy-Ki Nomana, head of the ERS, when asked about the ethics of Tax Reform Day.

If somepony were to not hand in their tax logs on time one week after receiving it, members of the Equestrian Revenue Services would hunt them down, forcing them to approve them whilst reading bad ‘My Little Homo: Sapiens are Magic’ fanfiction.

Even the princesses would be forced to complete their tax logs, which usually resulted in a week of Princess Celestia being ridiculously grumpy and banishing to the moon any unlucky pony who dared approach her.

This also resulted in Luna taking surprise vacations, sometimes for years on end. It was altogether probable, if not likely, that she was never Nightmare Moon in the first place, and that she simply went to the moon because it was the only place she could ever go to to escape the ERS.

It was also fairly probable that she had managed to somehow lose her travel visa on the moon, spent 1000 years looking for it because she couldn’t be bothered to ask her sister for one, and had her sister invent a crazy monster named Nightmare Moon in order to disguise the fact that she was the kind of pony to lose her travel visa.

She was, of course. Always had been.

***

‘That’s Tax Reform Day?’ asked Bon-Bon.

Lyra nodded.

‘That sounds dreadful.’

‘Well it is,’ said Lyra. ‘And I’m leaving. Wanna come with?’

The earth pony looked outside at Derpy Hooves, who was struggling to fly under the weight of almost a hundred tax logs, one for each pony in Ponyville. One for her, as well.

It wasn’t much of a choice, really.

***

Marvin stepped into the R.V. and found himself in a long, white, circular room, with a white, circular couch in the center, a circular tray of various fruits and vegetables sitting on a plain white circular table in the middle. The walls stretched beyond the distance that they were supposedly supposed to stretch.

‘WE ARE HEADED TO IT’S BEYOND,’ said Luna, who was now at the steering wheel and driving forwards, ‘T’WOULD BE NICE IF WE COULD FIND A GUIDE.’

Marvin did some probability calculations. ‘According to my brain, which has the processing power of an entire planet, the chances of that happening are so infinitesimally small that-

The R.V. pulled to a stop in front of two suspicious looking ponies, one of whom had a foam thumb strapped to her hoof.

‘WHERE TO, FAIR TRAVELERS?’ shouted Luna.

‘Well, I do have a pleasant little summer cottage in It’s Beyond,’ said Lyra, ‘I suppose we could head there.’

Probability, it seemed, could go jump off a cliff and impale itself on some sharp-looking rocks, for all it was worth today.

Jus' Hitchin a Ride

Chapter 3

On the side of a wagon road out on the outskirts of Ponyville, Bonbon stood awkwardly while Lyra, her longtime friend, fiddled with some things in her toolbox. Every now and then, a cry of ‘Oh come on!’ would leave the minty unicorn’s lips, and she would stand up, kick her toolbox, and crouch down and fiddle with it once more.

It was sunny, which was perfectly fine weather for adventuring, supposed Bonbon. The clouds had been cleared the day prior, which was convenient because the pegasus ponies of Ponyville would be too busy to clear the sky, as they were trying to decipher the first page of their tax logs, which usually consisted of

‘Dear Mr/Ms (Insert name here), today is Tax Reform Day and, as you may very well know, it is the day you must read through every page of this hefty tax log and approve it. It has come to our attention that your back taxes log interest rate of growth years has reached unsustainably important unaddressable units...’

The ponies of the ERS would be having a fit of laughter over this, were it not for the fact that the majority of them were busily immersed in approving tax logs of their own.

Lyra stood up on her hind legs, styrofoam thumb fastened onto her right hoof. ‘Now, Bonbon,’ she said, ‘allow me to demonstrate to you the art of hitchhikery!’

‘Hitchhikery?’

‘Just go with the flow.’

And with that, Lyra stood on the side of the road, stuck her thumb out, and waited. And waited.

After about five minutes, Bonbon grew so tired of standing awkwardly and waiting that she felt the only feasible alternative was to proclaim her tiredness of the awkward standing and waiting that she was currently feeling. She did just that.

‘That’s the art of Hitchhikery? There’s no way that that’s ever going to wor-

An R.V. chose that moment to pull to a stop right in front of them, leaving Lyra with a smug expression on her face, and Bonbon with a stunned, surprise expression on her face. There was just no way that this was possible, but it had just happened, which made it perfectly possible, which it shouldn’t have been, which meant that there were a million and one things in the universe that she didn’t understand, which meant-

It was then that Bonbon decided that thinking was overrated, and that she’d have been much, much happier if she could have gone through today without thinking. By extension, she thought some more, it would be very, very nice if she could just stop thinking for each and every Sunday out there.

And, just to make everything even more surreal, Princess Luna, of all ponies, poked her head out at the pair and boomed, ‘WHERE TO, FAIR TRAVELERS?’

Bonbon immediately fell to her knees and bowed awkwardly in front of her princess. Lyra, on the other hoof, who was well-versed in the art of hitchhikery, decided that responding to her question was probably a better idea.

‘Well, I do have a nice summer cottage in It’s Beyond,’ said Lyra, ‘I suppose we could head there.’

‘THEN WELCOME ABOARD!’

Bonbon and Lyra stepped aboard, and the first thing they noticed was that the room they entered was bigger than it had seemed on the outside, which would’ve sent the former into a helplessly spluttery state of mind, had it not been for the pints and pints of alcohol she’d consumed prior. Lyra, on the other hoof, stared around her in wonder. It’d been so long since she’d seen technology like this.

‘No way in hell...’ breathed Lyra, golden eyes wide with the familiarity of it all, ‘one of those fancy dimension-space porter thingies. They have these everywhere in It’s Beyond, you know.’

‘WE KNOW. WE HAST READ THINE BOOK, ADVENTURER!’ boomed Luna. Nopony had the guts to tell her to use her indoor voice, save for Marvin, who had no guts at all and was too busy writing glum poetry to show off how glum he was to want to speak up in the first place.

Luna was at the driver’s seat, sipping on a martini, because martinis were classy and princesses were supposed to be classy. An open copy of the Prodigal Explorer’s Map hovered beside her, purple in her horn’s telekinetic glow.

If Lyra had any tact at all- which she hadn’t- she would have said something tactful, as everypony is supposed to do when talking to their princesses. However, as she had no tact, she didn’t say something like, ‘Well thanks for reading my book, I appreciate it and did you know it’s not actually mine and you’re totally best pony’. She’d read the article on tact before, as it had been written by her friend Blue Hoops, but she’d decided that there was no point in having tact and had berated her friend for writing such useless articles.

And, as she’d had no tact, she said, ‘Hoopy.’

There were no repercussions to this, as this was not one of those situations that called for the usage of tact.

The R.V. continued along its course. Lyra took a seat on a pristine couch, and a Bonbon, whose inebriated mind was now keeping her from doing anything but breathe, not splutter, and follow the green unicorn pony, followed her and fell asleep. The seats were soft and cushiony, slightly less so than a cloud, which would have passed through the both of them, and slightly more so than an ordinary couch. Just right, in fact.

‘Cloud-o-graphic holo couches. Hoopier,’ remarked Lyra. As an afterthought, she thought to ask Luna where she got her copy of the Map. She did so.

‘Hey, Princess, where’d you get your copy of the Map? Harry the Bear told me that no copies of it had been published outside of Equestria.’

‘OUR SISTER GAVE IT TO US WHEN SHE SENT US ON OUR JOURNEY. SHE FOUND IT IN SUGARCUBE CORNER.’

‘Hoopy.’

Lyra thought about how she’d found her satchel in Sugarcube Corner, and dismissed it as an improbable coincidence which, after the day she’d been having, it probably was.

***

The Prodigal Explorer’s Map defines Sugarcube Corner as a brothel in which Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple breasted prostitute living on the street Erotica 9 works. It also has a bar and a casino.

The Prodigal Explorer’s Map wasn’t very accurate, you see.

***

Bonbon woke up with a pounding headache. It was a terrible headache, more terrible than My Little Bromo fanfiction, more head splitting than Talking Tom’s signature head splitter, and it made her feel about as bad as she felt whenever she woke up on a Sunday. She wasn’t terribly used to headaches, nor was she terribly used to hangovers, so she spent the better part of five minutes cringing and holding her head in pain.

Some part of her subconscious wondered if she’d known that her day would turn out like this, and another part responded with ‘Well it’s Sunday, you dolt. Of course you knew,’ which was perfectly true.

When her cringing and holding session had ended, Princess Luna was standing over her, concern in her eyes. ‘ART THOU ALRIGHT?’ asked Luna, which sent great crashing tsunamis of pain into the squidgy purple matter that formed her brain.

‘I’m fine, princess,’ said Bonbon, who had tact, and was quite fond of using it, especially when she was talking to princesses.

Had she no tact, she would have said something like, ‘Oh for Your sake could you speak louder I think some parts of my eardrums are still intact and oh You do you not know how to use your You-damned indoor voice I mean the last thing that a pony with a hangover needs is for another pony- a princess, for Your sake!- to shatter their eardrums! LIKE SCREW YOU YOU PORMWRANGLER!!!!!!!!’

But she had tact, you see, and didn’t say that.

Still, she cringed and gritted her teeth and held her head and imagined vivid images of her using her princess’ entrails as cupcake ingredients, all the while justifying it with ‘It’s just the hangover talking, it’s just the hangover talking,’ which it was, though the images still did a fairly good job of disturbing her.

‘Wouldst thou like for us to use our indoor voice?’ asked Luna, quieter this time.

Bonbon nodded gratefully, though the act of simply hearing turned her brain into mush, swirled it around in a particle blender, and then toasted it in one of Twilight Sparkle’s toasters.

‘Dost there be anything we can do to aid thee in thy sufferings?’

Luna’s soft, kind voice grated on the inside of her skull like an extra gratey cheese grater on a brick.

‘Coffee,’ the cream colored pony whispered whilst wincing, ‘coffee would be really nice right now.’

‘We...’ said Luna uncomfortably, ‘we know not of this coffee that you speaketh of.’

Bonbon felt her headache get worse, and decided that tact be screwed, she needed her coffee. ‘BUT IT’S COFFEE! It’s- it’s-

At this point, she succumbed to the pain of her pounding headache and fainted back onto the couch.

***

Shortly after Bonbon had fallen asleep for the first time, Lyra had taken two bath towels out of the bathroom, and distributed them all around. Princess Luna already had one hanging around her neck, so she only got towels for Marvin and Bonbon. Marvin was about as grateful for the towel as any sentient equine born with a natural hatred of all things lifey could be, and Bonbon was too asleep to notice.

***

The Prodigal Explorer’s Map states that if you want to survive in It’s Beyond, you’d best know where your towel is.

This is true.

***

Eventually, Princess Luna got around to driving again, and Marvin took out a piece of paper and wrote depressing poems on it.

Lyra went to the bedroom, overthrew the communist mice currently occupying the bed she wanted, and began plotting points on a map. Not THE Map, just a perfectly ordinary map hanging off the wall.

Ponyville, she decided, could be Point A, marked with a nice little thumbtack. Since the wall was magnetic, she took a magnet from her toolbox that vaguely resembled an R.V. and stuck it on a road leading out from Ponyville, which was Point B. Point C was Lyra’s summer cottage, where her parents lived and where, if her luck held out, she’d be in a few days.

Luck, if you will, never held out for Lyra. More on that later.

She also thought to mark out Point E with a little piece of paper saying, ‘BEWARE OF BEAR!’. Point E was on the sparkling shores of Mareida, just off the coast of the great Mareific Ocean, in which the Editing and Printing Department of Useless, Overpriced Maps was, and where, by extension, Harry the Bear would be. She wasn’t overly fond of seeing Harry the Bear again, as the unicorn mare had run up quite a substantial tab over her sojourn in Equestria, and hadn’t written any substantial entries for the guide, either. She wasn’t sure if the Department was still in Mareida, of course, because she hadn’t been there in just over ten years.

Point D was off vacationing with IPv5, and they were both taking turns drinking beer and telling each other sob stories about how no one ever uses them.

***

When Bonbon woke up for the second time, she was immediately gratified to find that much of her headache had gone, and that there was a steaming mug of what appeared to be coffee on the circular white table next to her. It smelled like coffee. It looked like coffee. ‘If it had a voice,’ she thought, ‘it would probably say something like ‘I’m a cup of coffee,’’ which was a fairly odd thought to have.

According to the Duck Rule, which was one of the most important rules ever created, it was probably coffee.

She took a sip, swallowed it, and reasoned that whoever had invented the Duck Rule was most likely one of the biggest idiots in all of Equestria and It’s Beyond. The drink she had just sipped was actually quite a bit like a drink that was almost entirely unlike coffee. Which meant to say that she hadn’t actually taken a sip of coffee, but a drink that was so absolutely not coffee that the only pony who could have done this to her must have been the lovechild of Nightmare Moon and Discord.

Princess Luna turned Auto-Drive on and trotted over to Bonbon, as the princess had just noticed her awakening. ‘Your friend Lyra hath told me that this... ‘coffee’ that thou request is simply a cup of boiled bean stew,’ began Luna.

The alicorn levitated a now-empty can of Lima Beans. ‘So we made this for thou. We trust that it is to thine liking?’

Bonbon, the ever-so tactful, who didn’t like the drink at all, said, ‘Oh, it’s wonderful, your majesty.’

Princess Luna smiled and returned to her driving.

Marvin, who was seated on the couch next to her, spoke up. ‘I’m just about finished with my poem about the pointlessness of life. I suppose you would all like to hear it?’

Bonbon shook her head. ‘No, not really,’ she said.

‘I suppose you’re right. Nopony likes me. Why should I even bother with life?’ he groaned and hobbled off to the bedchambers, where he’d kill some communist mice, sit down and make grousy comments at Lyra, who was trying to sleep.

‘Sometimes we question our wisdom in taking him with us,’ said Princess Luna.

‘Oh, I’m sure he’ll make himself useful eventually,’ replied Bonbon.

‘Perhaps. Wouldst thou like to go and make thineself useful by telling everypony to prepare for hyperdrive?’

‘Hyperdrive? What’s that?’

‘’Tis like a- knowest what? Ask thine friend. She knows more about this than we do.’

‘Well alright then.’

***

There are few things more useful in this world than towels and hyperdrive. We’ll get to the towel part later.

Hyperdrive is, in layman’s terms, a state in which the vehicle that one is driving goes really, really fast. Fast enough, in fact, to cross all of Equestria and It’s Beyond 100 times in one second. It was surprising, then, that with technology like the hyperdrive, that the scientists in It’s Beyond had yet to figure out space travel.

Shortly after going through hyperdrive, one generally tends to feel woozy and have an intense pain in their muscles, along with a deficiency in their body’s natural protein.

There are many things one can do to avoid/treat these symptoms.

Wrapping a towel around your fetlocks, surprisingly does wonders for the wooziness.

The intense pain is prevented by preemptive alcohol. Lots and lots of preemptive alcohol.

The protein deficiency is solved by eating airline peanuts.

***

‘And that’s how hyperdrive works,’ finished Lyra. She’d foregone sleeping, as she had recently been overcome with crushing depressions from simply being near Marvin.

‘I didn’t understand half of that,’ said Bonbon.

‘None at all?’

‘None at all.’

‘Think of it as... Luna’s R.V. moving really, really fast.’

‘Well, that makes sense. Why didn’t you say that in the first place?’

‘I did, didn’t I?’

‘Oh, that’s right. You did.’

‘Anyways,’ continued Lyra, ‘you’re going to want to do a couple of things before entering hyperdrive.’

She took a bath towel out of her satchel, and wrapped it around her fetlocks. ‘First, do this.’

‘Well why should I?’ asked Bonbon. This was all seeming ridiculous and pointless to her.

‘It’ll help with the wooziness.’

‘Alright then.’

‘Now, you’re supposed to drink a lot of alcohol beforehand, but I’m pretty sure that we’ve got that one covered. It’s muscle relaxant, you see.’

Bonbon nodded, even though she didn’t see at all.

‘And after this, we’re supposed to eat a pack of airplane peanuts, because of its unique physical properties.’

‘And what are they supposed to be?’ asked Bonbon.

‘Packing peanuts’ Lyra replied..

‘No, not that. The unique physical properties of an airline peanut. What are they supposed to be?’ Bonbon pressed on.

‘Oh. No idea.’

‘Well then why’d you bring it up?’ asked Bonbon, who was getting somewhat frustrated by the whole exchange.

‘I thought it was you who brought it up.’ replied Lyra.

‘Well no. It was you.’

‘Oh right, it was.’

Lyra passed Bonbon a packet of packing peanuts and went off to go drink the Princess of the Night under the table.

***

‘N-n-now w-w-w-we g-g-g-g-gooo and activa-activate th-the haaaaiipaaar d-d-d-d-d-drive!’ stuttered an incredibly drunk princess.

‘Uh, princess, shouldn’t you avoid drinking and driving? I’m pretty sure that that’s not a good idea.’ said a really concerned Bonbon.

‘S-s-s-s-sil-sil-silence! W-w-w-w-we are p- p- p- perfectly able bodied and mindied- thingy!’

Bonbon hurriedly trotted to the driver’s seat and gently nudged her princess off of it, and plopped herself down. She wasn’t the best driver in Equestria, but she was only five hours drunk, which was much, much more preferable to an experienced driver who was five minutes drunk.

‘Alright!’ she announced nervously to the motley crew behind her.

Lyra hurriedly wrapped Luna’s fetlocks with a towel, and tucked a package of airline peanuts under her wing.

‘Are we ready?’

‘Ready!’ said Lyra. The realization that she was only mere seconds, rather than days, away from her summer cottage with her parents excited her to no end.

Marvin was bored. ‘Ready, I suppose. Are you sure you don’t want to hear my poetry?’

‘Still no,’ replied Bonbon.

‘Same,’ concurred Lyra.

‘Alright then, let’s go!’

Bonbon pressed down on the large red button marked, ‘Hyperdrive: Do not press!’ and the R.V. rumbled and shook and did all sorts of R.V. things as the engine broke down and ceased entirely to function at all.

Button-Mashing Engine Repairsponies

Chapter 4

In It's Beyond, the two rulings sisters of Equestria were considered to be firm, lawful, and just about absolutely terrible at their jobs. While they certainly did think that they themselves were fairly good at their jobs, and the perfectly stable economy and unbearably happy ponies of Equestria said likewise, it was still taught everywhere that Equestria’s rulers couldn’t rule a real country if they were being held face down in front of a Kill-O-Zap blaster while bobbing for apples on a sunny afternoon.

This is most likely a piece of anti-Equestrian propaganda made to make conservative politicians feel better about themselves.

In Equestrian History and Other Useful Tidbits About Life, the Universe and Everything (a 3 week course that provides a rudimentary rundown on Equestria and all of its history), a few unflattering metaphors are used to describe the princesses.

Princess Celestia is described as an overly attached, goody-two shoes pony who seems more like your overly attached, goody-two shoes mother than anything else. It has been said that she would be more likely to scold a twice convicted serial murderer for being a bad pony than take proper actions against him.

Princess Luna is described as the kind of pony who’s altogether more likely to run away from her problems rather than face them head on, and one who loses her travel visa on frequent occasions and makes up ghost stories to cover it up. According to Gimbley Braker, a college major in Equestrian history who now lives on the streets because he spent his college years learning useless history,

‘Princess Luna is comparable to your deadbeat dad who left your reasonably attractive mother because of a tiny, insignificant financial crisis. When faced with a thrice convicted serial murderer, she would be too busy cowering nonchalantly behind her guards to address the problem at hand.’

The fact that two ponies comparable to your goody two-shoes mother and your deadbeat dad could run a country better than the ‘highly intelligent’ conservative politicians in It’s Beyond was a sore spot for many of its residents.

***

Bonbon was currently fiddling with the mishmash of buttons on the console, all of which had been labeled in such messy Equestrian that Cherrilee, master of deciphering crappy mouthwriting, would’ve had a hard time deciphering them.

So naturally, as all ponies are wont to do, she pressed all of them at once and hoped for something, anything to happen.

Princess Luna had passed out, drunk, on the floor shortly after her attempt to drink and drive, so that gave Bonbon liberty to press whichever buttons she wanted to and hope for an outcome that resulted in a fixed engine and slightly less drunk princess.

More buttons were pressed, and the clicking sound reverberated through the room.

Lyra groaned, and turned to her friend. ‘Bonbon, would you mind keeping it down? Your button mashing is making it really hard to pass out drunkenly.’

‘Pass out drunkenly? Pass out drunkenly? What kind of solution is that? I’m trying to fix an engine here!’ Bonbon yelled.

The words ‘Don’t Panic’ flitted across her mind, but it was immediately replaced the louder, more fitting thought, ‘Panic.’

So she pressed more buttons in her panic.

It was a bit after that Lyra replied.

‘Well it’s not much of a solution at all, if you ask me,‘but everypony else seems to be doing it.’

Bonbon looked around and noticed that Marvin, too, was passed out on the floor with a towel wrapped around his fetlocks and a can of berry punch dripping through the two holes on his back in which toast was meant to be toasted. The can must have tipped over when the R.V. had stopped, and Marvin must have been unfortunate enough to be standing next to the punch when it had tipped, causing his circuits to temporarily short out.

Princess Luna, as Bonbon had already previously noted, was passed out beside Lyra.

Lyra was closing her eyes and opening them again, trying, and failing, to pass out drunkenly like everypony else. It should’ve worked, as Bonbon had temporarily stopped pressing buttons to watch the scene below her.

‘Huh,’ said Lyra, ‘looks like it ain’t working. Ah well.’

And here Lyra levitated some peanuts off of the circular tray on the circular table next to where they were currently laying down, and began to munch casually on them. This frustrated Bonbon, who, in turn pressed a bunch of buttons on the console to deliberately annoy Lyra.

It did, though Bonbon eventually decided that pushing buttons was neither the answer to her life’s problems nor the proper way to fix the R.V.’s engine.

‘Hey, Lyra. Do you know how to fix an engine?’

‘Well, the guide knows, and I have a copy of the guide with me. That counts, right?’

‘You wanna help me fix this one?’

Fixing engines was a tedious and boring process, and generally not one you should partake in often. For somepony who’s never dismantled an engine before, it involves dismantling the engine in its entirety, forgetting which piece goes where, and giving it a half-flanked diagnosis before reassembling it in an order which was definitely not the proper order, but who cares because it works anyways.

In fact, at one point a certain moon-themed alicorn princess had done just that, and ended up creating Equestria’s very first Chaotic Improbability Drive, a magnificent feat that would’ve advanced Equestria’s science and stuff by a lot, if not for the fact that Luna had just figured out how to use it on a particularly pleasant Sunday. This Sunday, in fact. But that wasn’t the point.

The point is, fixing engines is really hard work, and involves far too many, ‘Are you ****ing kidding me this is a Phillips head I asked for a goddamned screwdriver!’ and ‘What the hell is wrong with you have you never disassembled an engine before?!!’ and ‘Are you stupid or something? Of course I haven’t and you very well know that!’ to ever be an enjoyable process.

But Lyra had nothing better to do.

***

Fun fact: Chaotic improbability drives are powered by chaos.

***

Princess Luna woke up, and found that she was both perfectly undrunk and unhungover, which was always nice.

Immortals didn’t get hangovers.

She looked outside, and found, to her utter dismay, that Ponyville was a distant dot on the horizon. This didn’t reassure her much, however, as Ponyville shouldn’t have been visible if they were going as fast as they were supposed to, which they should have been doing. And even if they weren’t, they’d started in the morning, and the sun was already well on its way down.

She searched around for the hitchhikers she’d picked up, to see if they could possibly tell her what had happened.

They were nowhere to be found.

This worried her, as her sister had warned her of Hoopers, thieves who went around with styrofoam thumbs and cans of beer, drinking the drivers under the table and running away with their stuff, but Luna had never listened.

So it was with a note of relief that she performed her stuff-checking spell and found that everything in her R.V. was as it was before she’d passed out, save for a few peanuts, a Phillips head, and the metal plate covering her engine.

Her console, with its mish-mash of various levers and buttons and switches, looked a mess, as if somepony had been mashing them in a desperate attempt to get them to do something. The engine was also off, but that was no matter. With a casual flick of her horn, the engine starting switch was flicked. It was a powerful yet casual flick, done in such a way that it would send a spark of magic into the engine and turn it on.

Nothing happened.

With a slightly less casual flick of her horn, she flicked the switch again. Once again, nothing happened.

With an entirely angry flick or her horn, that angrily betrayed the true angry depths of her angry anger, she flicked the switch again and nothing happened, which served to make her angrier than she was before, but not by much, because anger isn’t at all classy and princesses are classy.

‘Stupid foreign engine,’ she grumbled classily.

‘I take it that this means we’re not going anywhere?’ muttered a voice behind her.

It was Marvin, with perfectly dry and functioning circuits, good as new save for the distinct punch flavor that would come with the toast he toasted.

Luna shook her head.

‘Oh fooey.’ moaned Marvin.

Luna opened her mouth to say something, but it was blocked by an entirely unexpected scream of , ‘The horror! The horror!’ coming from her engine room.

It was then followed by a dull thud on the floor.

A thought flashed by her mind; one involving a certain draconequus, a chaotic improbability drive, and a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick.

‘It... looks like we have some explaining to do,’ she said awkwardly.

‘Oh, joy. Why I just love having stuff explained to me in archaic Equestrian,’ replied Marvin.

‘Oh hush. Thine sarcasm is not needed at this moment.’

‘See what I’m talking about?’

***

‘See, Bonbon? That’s exactly what I’m talking about,’ pointed Lyra as she pointed at an entry on the Map, ‘It says to dismantle everything and put it back together again, somehow.’

‘But- but how’s that going to help our current situation?’ spluttered Bonbon, who was significantly less inebriated, and once again prone to stuttering.

‘Well, the engine’s broken now, right? Nothing can be worse than a broken engine,’ replied Lyra.

‘But- but- but-’

‘Don’t try to fight my logic, man. It’s soundproof.’

‘Well alright then.’

Bonbon watched as Lyra tucked her copy of the Map into her saddlebags and pulled out her toolbox.

They were in a hot, dusty room down the stairs from the sleeping quarters. It wasn’t the largest room, and had a fair amount of stuff inside, so Bonbon was stuck in between a furnace and a water cooler. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

Lyra was in front of a metal plate that read, ‘Remove for Engine’.

The minty unicorn tried a Phillips head on a screw, kicked the metal plate, and searched around in her toolbox.

‘Hey, Bonbon?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Can you pass me the Frearson right beside you?’

Bonbon looked to her side, and found nopony named Frearson in the immediate vicinity. There was nopony there, save for Lyra, and so Bonbon wondered if the unicorn was having alcohol based delusions. Besides, how does one even pick up a pony named Frearson in the first place?

‘How many fingers am I holding up, Lyra?’ asked Bonbon in a patronizing tone of voice.

When testing patients for sanity, one must always talk to ponies in a patronizing tone of voice. It’s only polite.

Lyra stared at her blankly. ‘None. You have hooves. Just pass me the Frearson.’

Bonbon looked to her side again, and again found nopony named Frearson.

‘Who’s Frearson and how do I pass him to you?’ asked Bonbon, who was getting quite a bit concerned for her friend’s health.

‘It’s a screwdriver head,’ replied Lyra whilst slapping her forehead.

‘Oh.’ Bonbon picked up the screwdriver beside her and handed it to Lyra, who examined it carefully and frowned.

‘That’s a Phillips head, you tool.’

Lyra rummaged through her toolbox once more and with an exclamation of ‘ahah!’, triumphantly pulled out what Bonbon imagined to be a Frearson and began unscrewing some screws.

The metal hatch fell open with a resounding clang, and it’s contents were so absolutely horrible and terrifying that Bonbon let out a bloodcurdling scream of ‘The horror! The horror!’ and fell over with a dull thud.

Lyra just stood there with her mouth hanging open.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the door opened, two sets of hooves clanged down the stairs behind them, and Princess Luna stood silently, staring at the scene before her.

Marvin also stood, though he was doing so many things inside his planet-sized brain that to write them down would require slightly more paper than it would take to print out a whole copy of the Prodigal Explorer’s Map.

‘Tis... better than we thought,’ the princess said at last, ‘Our slice of lemon remains wrapped around the gold brick, the Chaotic Improbability Drive seems in order-

‘And that statue of Discord sitting on top of it doesn’t emit a foreboding atmosphere at all,’ interjected Marvin.

‘Ah. Yes. There is that.’

And there was.