Shake Things Up!

Chapters

1- In Which Great Power Comes With Great Sacrifice
2- Shake it Off! Shake it Off!
3- Girl Talk
4- Everybody Mix it Up
5- Life’s Too Short, Gotta Stand for Something
6- It's a Coinky Dink World

1- In Which Great Power Comes With Great Sacrifice

So far, Rainbow’s move to Canterlot for university has been cool. After having put up with years and years of dickheads in Cloudsdale schools (her parents insisted on enrolling her in those prissy private institutions where everyone seemed to only like talking about their new phones and new cars and new boyfriends or how ugly the girl sitting over there was), Rainbow had fully planned to spend her three years in uni putting on her surly face and avoiding everyone just so she wouldn’t have to go through the same thing again.

Instead, now she had friends. You heard that right: plural. At first, the only person she had known in Canterlot had been Fluttershy, who was from Cloudsdale but not a dickhead; they had gone to the same kindergarten together and occasionally hung out. Despite Rainbow having been an absolute asshole of a kid and the fact that she had lobbed a ball of playdough in Fluttershy’s face the first time she approached her, Fluttershy had still, incredibly, continued to talk to her. Anyway, Rainbow had only ever been good at making enemies, but Fluttershy was good at making friends, and that was how Rainbow got to meet Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, and Pinkie Pie.

Now, Rainbow doesn’t want to seem… ungrateful. Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie and Twilight are all wonderful people in their own right. They get along well, Rainbow cares about them like they her, and they’ve helped each other out countless times. But when it comes down to certain things that Rainbow likes, none of the four of them are really… up to it. You see, Rainbow is a, well, YOLO kind of gal. She likes getting up to hijinks, y’know, doing challenges and other stupid shit for fun. But Fluttershy, Rares and Twi get embarrassed easily or care about things like personal safety, and refuse to join Rainbow in racing to the train station. Pinkie’s great for pranks, but she’s not exactly as athletic as Rainbow is, and it’s no fun armwrestling someone you can beat in ten seconds flat.

So there’s that. But Rainbow’s happy enough with where she’s at.

That is, until the Apple Shake Girl comes along.

There’s a juice bar in one of the quieter malls in Canterlot’s main shopping district. Sweet Apple Shakes is a hidden gem: small, locally-owned, and produces the greatest fruit shakes you will ever taste ever—or so Pinkie Pie claims. Because Pinkie won’t stop raving about it, Rainbow Dash allows herself to be dragged along with the others to the store one cloudy Tuesday afternoon, even though fruit shakes aren’t really her thing.

It’s quiet for sure: they’re the only ones there when they stroll up to the store. It has a bright and colourful shopfront, fruity pinks and oranges and greens. The counter has the pattern of pink shapes on a yellow backdrop while the signboard above has a simple illustration of a cup of fruit shake and an apple symbol in the centre. The menu boards behind show there are more than just apple shakes sold here; there’s a range of different fruits and vegetables, and a choice of juices, smoothies, milkshakes, et cetera. An interesting choice of music pumps from the speakers: country music, instead of the typical pop one would expect to be playing at a mall juice bar.

Behind the counter in the kitchen, a girl in a similarly gaudy uniform—neon green polo and orange apron—methodically chops the skin off a watermelon. Her blonde hair is wrapped back in a hair net.

“Jackieee!” Pinkie squeals her way over to the counter. “So good to see you again! I’ve brought some friends along this time.”

The blonde girl looks up, setting the knife down. The four others stand around awkwardly as her green eyes travel over each of them.

Finally she nods. “Howdy. What can I get y’all?”

They each order something. Fluttershy gets a strawberry milkshake, Rarity gets the tropical fruit blend, Twilight gets grapefruit juice, while Pinkie’s order is some abomination like a banana peach smoothie with… chocolate milk and raspberry ice cream? Rainbow can’t even remember what she said. But the blonde girl, ‘Jackie’, carries out each of these orders swiftly, weaving her way around the juicing machines and blenders with mesmerising ease. She gets even Pinkie’s nightmare of an order perfectly.

Which is why it’s so strange when it reaches Rainbow’s turn.

Rainbow doesn’t think her order was that complicated. Apple smoothie. Yet the girl seems to take… longer to put together her drink. She lingers over the box of apples before choosing them, cuts up the fruit in slow movements, and drops it into the blender slice by slice instead of dropping in the whole handful.

And also—Rainbow might just be imagining it, but—the girl keeps looking at her. It’s like she feels the need to glance over at Rainbow Dash every few seconds, as if Rainbow’s going to steal a pear or something while she’s not looking, which is frankly insulting because Rainbow doesn’t even like pears. When the girl finally passes Rainbow her smoothie, her intense green gaze doesn’t let up one bit.

Understandably, Rainbow is super weirded out. She takes the smoothie and hightails it out of there. She tells Pinkie and the others about it, but Rarity says,

“Well, rainbow hair isn’t exactly common, dear, of course people are going to stare.”

Rainbow Dash already knew that, but this was different.

Pinkie grins, “As for the longer wait time, well, the apple smoothie’s their specialty! The owners of Sweet Apple Shakes are really serious about their apple drinks, so they pay a little extra attention while making them.”

“Besides, I reckon that she’s just tired,” Fluttershy adds. “She just prepared all of our orders in one shot, after all, and she had to work alone.”

She hadn’t looked tired at all to Rainbow, though.

“Especially after preparing Pinkie’s smoothie, too,” Twilight adds thoughtfully.

Okay, fair. Rainbow looks over to where Pinkie Pie is sipping on her chocolatey-brown monster concoction, humming in blissful enjoyment. The others are wearing similar expressions as they sip on their drinks. Well, good for them, but no matter how amazing these fruit shakes are, there is no way in hell that Rainbow Dash is going back to Sweet Apple Shakes again.

“Go on then, try yours!” Pinkie pauses to gesture at her.

Rainbow Dash looks down at her own drink: a rich, creamy cinnamon colour. Lifting the cup to her lips, she braves a sip.

What the fuck.

~~~

Rainbow tries visiting the shake store at different times other than Tuesday so she can avoid the blonde girl. There’s just a problem that she realises once she’s visited the store on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday (they close on Sundays) — Jackie seems to work an incredible number of shifts. Some days a tall ginger-haired man takes over, but there’s no reliable pattern to their shifts. It seems completely random. Or maybe it isn’t random and it’s just Rainbow who can’t figure it out, but Twilight refuses to pause doing her maths tutorial to help her chart out their shift patterns (“you could just not go to the store” yeah, and with apple smoothies like that? Ridiculous.).

So Rainbow Dash sucks it up and continues to visit Sweet Apple Shakes every Monday morning, because that’s when she really needs the energy boost before her 8 AM class. That’s a shift that Jackie works consistently, but Rainbow is prepared to do anything for that heavenly, ice-cold, sweet-spiced apple smoothie. And if that means waking up earlier so she can endure Jackie’s tortuously slow smoothie-making process and her long green gazes, Rainbow’s fine. More than fine.

Until one day, Rainbow’s alarm doesn’t go off.

“Shitshitshitshitshit,” Rainbow swears as she rushes down the street, dashing across traffic lights and ignoring all the loud honks that blare her way. She’d be able to run much faster if it weren’t for the peak hour crowds in Canterlot, but instead once she’s in the city centre, she’s forced to trundle at a snail’s pace behind douchebags looking at their phones and impenetrable gaggles of gossiping youngsters.

By the time she reaches the mall and tears through the atrium to reach Sweet Apple Shakes, it’s 7.50 AM instead of 7.15 AM like she intended. Really though, 7.50 shouldn’t be an issue with her uni being 5 minutes’ walk from this place, but Jackie, sweet Jackie insists on taking up to half a goddamn hour making her smoothie. Rainbow timed her.

“What can I get for you?” Jackie asks her. Rainbow fights the eye-roll. She sees the corner of Jackie’s normally stoic lips twitch and wonders if the girl discreetly enjoys this. She absolutely does, the bastard. It’s all a game to the sadist Apple Shake Girl.

Rainbow watches as Jackie turns away and begins to roll apples around in her freckled hands. Having selected her apples, she lays them out on the counter individually. She looks them over again, before finally grasping one and setting it on the chopping board, all of this at an agonising pace.

Rainbow coughs.

And then Jackie gives her this look. Rainbow Dash becomes acutely aware of the huge knife in her hand and wisely keeps quiet.

And also, it’s like. Look, Rainbow doesn’t want to be a Karen. She’s had more than enough time spent with her mother whenever she kicks up a huge fuss over anything imperfect given to Rainbow. One time Rainbow had gotten a kiddy meal that came with a Lego Robin figurine even though she had originally wanted Batman; Rainbow had been like “eh, whatever”, but her mom had yelled at the staff to get it replaced and threatened to call the cops if they refused, and Rainbow had to stand there the entire time bearing all the pointed stares and generally looking like the world’s most entitled brat. Hence Rainbow Dash makes it a point to be extra nice to service workers, if only to make up for a fraction of the suffering her mom extols upon the minimum wage worker population. She gets out her phone and starts to scroll through memes in an attempt to distract herself.

But then the time in the corner of her screen blips from 7.52 to 7.53, and her professor’s face flashes in her mind. She has Dr Svengallop this semester, a small and grouchy man who Rainbow is solidly convinced has never felt love in his life for anything or anyone. He’s basically Severus Snape IRL, and Rainbow’s no Hermione Granger, alright, she’s already struggling in assignments and really doesn’t need more points taken off her course evaluation for being late.

She looks up from her phone to see where Jackie is at in the smoothie-making. Only to realise that there is no smoothie, and there is no blonde-headed girl. Jackie is gone and there’s no one else behind the counter.

What. The.

Shoving her phone in her pocket, Rainbow whips her head this way and that to try and find her, but the door to the storeroom in the back is ajar and Jackie’s not in there either. Rainbow eventually figures out that Jackie must have gone to the toilet.

Fucking insane! Rainbow thinks to herself as she glances furiously at the half-cut apples on the chopping board, only one red glistening apple left uncut. Couldn’t Blondie have just held her piss in until she finished making the smoothie for her only customer? If she doesn’t finish chopping those apples, it’ll be Rainbow’s head that’s gonna go on the block!

This would probably be where a reasonable person would give up on the smoothie and just head to class. But Rainbow Dash is tired and annoyed and hungry, and also, she’s a YOLO kind of gal. She’s a YOLO gal who needs an apple smoothie, pronto. She looks at the empty storefront, looks at the half-chopped apples just sitting there, and thinks to herself: why the hell not?

Twilight Sparkle would have been able to answer that question, but Rainbow’s not Twilight.

Before she can deliberate it too much, Rainbow clambers over the little door and enters the mini-kitchen of Sweet Apple Shakes. Now it’s important to note here that Rainbow Dash has never done anything remotely resembling cooking. Yes, she’s 21 years old and yes, she lives alone in her dorm now, but her parents hardly cooked, and when she moved to her current residence in Canterlot there was only a shared kitchen that was so grimy she didn’t want to use it, and eating out was cheap enough that it wasn’t necessary for her to learn to.

But hey, it’s only making a smoothie. There isn’t even a stove to burn down. Can’t be that bad, right?

Rainbow picks up the last apple that lay on the chopping board. Moving aside the other apple slices, she holds the apple flat on the board and gets the knife. She aims it at the stem and sinks the knife into its soft flesh. Alright…

But then her knife hits something hard. Rainbow frowns and presses harder, but the knife only digs in a little more before stopping again. Rainbow clenches all the muscles in her hands and forgoes stabilising the apple for leaning her whole weight on the flat of the knife.

“Raaaaaarghhhhhhh!” she cries out with the effort. She struggles and heaves and pants, only managing to get the knife to squeak down a little fraction before the base of the apple slips away, and Rainbow’s weight and the knife goes crashing down onto the board, scattering the cut apple slices while some drop to the ground. Meanwhile, the whole apple has gone Superman. It flies into the air, ricochets off the fridge door and goes rocketing for the row of glass blenders.

Rainbow, with a sudden surge of inhuman reflexes, dives desperately in the way of the rogue apple. She nearly topples over the blender behind her, but turns around rapidly to steady it. The apple pinballs off her shoulders and falls to the ground. It goes rolling until it bumps into the corner of the walls, coming to rest in a position that clearly displays Rainbow’s failed knife-cut. Only then does it occur to Rainbow that she shouldn’t have tried to cut straight through the core of an apple.

Well. That could have gone worse. And it’s only 7.56.

Quickly, she salvages the apple slices on the floor, rinsing them in water before gathering all the fruit in her palms. She runs towards what she hopes is a blender and not a juicer. Surely, (hopefully,) conventional wisdom would not fail her at this point. She dumps the lot in, and then tries her hardest to recall what else went in the smoothie. Now she wishes she paid attention to what Jackie was doing instead of pointedly averting her gaze every time while she waited.

Trial and error it is. She speeds towards the fridge, finds an open carton of milk inside, and pours some into the blender. Okay… she looks around until she glimpses something that looks like a spice cabinet. She had always tasted a touch of cinnamon in the smoothie, so there should be cinnamon in it. Opening the cabinet, she gets on her tiptoes and grabs the shaker that says CINNAMON. She shakes a generous amount over the blender. Rainbow is a genius. Because she’s feeling smart, she also grabs shakers for ginger and nutmeg—even she knows those are apple-y spices. Ha! Who said Rainbow couldn’t cook?

She stares into the mixture of apple slices, cold milk and brown dusting between the blades of the blender. It’s lacking something… Rainbow remembers that in the smoothie, there was a crunch to it. Not like the blended apples, but like that of crushed ice. She stomps for the fridge once more, flings open the freezer door, and sticks her hand in the ice tray. A lot of cubes had stuck together, but she managed to pry out a few good blocks. She plonks them into the blender and checks her watch. 7.58. Oh fuck, she’s going to have to run like mad later. She punches the big red power-on button on the machine.

The blender doesn’t move at first. Rainbow moves to punch the button again, maybe check the main power switch, but it’s at that moment the blender lets out a terrible groan. It’s like something out of a horror movie soundtrack. And then, the blender starts to shake all over. Rainbow gets the feeling that something has gone horribly, awfully wrong, but is too horrified to move, and so she just stands there like an idiot, watching as the blender jar rattles in its housing like it’s experiencing a seizure, its contents sloshing about inside dangerously. The groaning doesn’t stop either, but only keeps growing louder and louder. On top of the groaning, a high-pitched buzzing noise starts.

Then suddenly, a hand grabs the back of her shirt and hauls her away seconds before the blender shatters.

~~~

So, things are looking ugly.

Very ugly indeed.

For one thing, the time is 8.05 AM, and there is still no apple smoothie.

For another, Rainbow Dash is currently standing in the middle of Sweet Apple Shakes’ kitchen, drenched in sour-smelling liquid, brown cinnamon and nutmeg smeared like soil across her face. There’s apple slices, ice cubes, and shards of glass all over the floor. Several of the blender machines lie tipped over, smashed on the ground, their different contents pooling together with the spilt milk to form a large, chunky puddle swimming in fruity colours. Someone walks past the store and their footsteps slow as they pause to stare in amazement at the carnage.

In front of Rainbow Dash, there is also a very angry blonde-haired girl. She’s splattered in the milk-cinnamon-apple debacle; less than Rainbow, who had taken the brunt of it, but still a sorry sight. The girl doesn’t even say anything to her, just vaguely waves her dripping palms about the wrecked store and then gestures at her in a silent question:

How?

Rainbow can only shrug. Rainbow fucks up a lot, but this is a new level, even for her.

Jackie actually looks murderous. Rainbow is unpleasantly reminded of the fact that Jackie is standing within reach of the big knife on the chopping board. Rainbow decides to open her mouth to salvage the situation, which is only the second-dumbest thing she’s done all morning.

“Hey now, Jackie, I know this looks bad-”

“Do not call me Jackie!” the girl roars. Rainbow clamps her mouth shut, quivering in her sopping-wet sneakers. The girl looks ready to continue on her tirade, but then she pauses to stare at Rainbow some more, and Rainbow guesses that this is the point where she takes in the shell-shocked, absolutely misery-soaked state that Rainbow is in and takes pity on her.

The girl takes a deep, deep breath and runs a hand over her frazzled blonde hair. Then she retreats to the storeroom, emerges with a broom, and with the other hand tosses a roll of paper towel and a bundle of clothes at Rainbow.

“Go to the toilet and get cleaned up,” she says gruffly. “Don’t go runnin’ off, now—I want ya back here lickety split. You and me, we’re going to talk.” Her piercing green eyes stare daggers into Rainbow. Welp. She hopes Dr Svengallop won’t miss her too much today.

Rainbow squelches her way to the nearest toilet, cleans up as best she can, and changes into the clothes the girl gave her—the same bright green polo shirt and knee-length blue skirt that the girl is always wearing. By the time she gets back to the shop, the girl has swept up the shards and fruit and has gotten started on mopping up the smoothie swimming pool.

When she sees her, the girl cocks her head and asks, “Why aren’t you wearing the apron?”

“Uhhh,” Rainbow says, her hand still holding the neon orange apron that was wrapped into the bundle. “Look, I’m grateful for the change of clothes, but I don’t need the apron.”

“The apron’s part of the uniform.”

“Thanks, but I’m not really looking for employment right now-”

“It’s not a request.” A hard look, and the reality of Rainbow’s situation begins to sink in. “In return for the property and equipment damage that you have caused, and the amount of loss that we’re going to make while waiting for new sets to come in, you will work here for the next year.”

What? She can’t do that! Rainbow’s a full-time uni student, for goddess’ sake, with assignments and exams she can barely keep up with; a permanent job on top of that would most certainly kill her.

Rainbow considers offering to compensate monetarily instead—her parents are rich, they could afford whatever sum this damage costed—but then there’s the nightmare of actually asking them for the money. Not that they wouldn't pay up, but Rainbow also knows that they would force her to pack up her bags and return to Cloudsdale at once, deeming her too irresponsible to handle things on her own. It had already been so difficult convincing her parents to let her move here.

There are fates worse than death, Rainbow thinks grimly. She puts on the apron. Smiling cruelly at her, Apple Shake Girl reaches out and hands her the dribbling mop.

2- Shake it Off! Shake it Off!

The blonde girl’s name is Applejack.

Rainbow prefers to call her Asshole. But only in her head, because if she said it aloud Applejack might really kill her this time (or worse, extend her contract another year), and also because Rainbow was cognisant of the fact that she had brought this mess upon herself and entirely deserved it. Knowing that fact, however, did not lessen her frustration any.

Rainbow met with the manager of Sweet Apple Shakes first. To her surprise, it’s a little old lady called ‘Granny Smith’, who turned out to be Applejack’s grandmother. The other worker, the well-built ginger-haired man, had also come. His name was Big Macintosh, Big Mac for short, and he was Applejack’s brother. Apparently, that was the entire company. Pinkie Pie had said the store was small, but Rainbow hadn’t quite imagined that it would be three-people small. That did explain why Applejack had been such an unavoidable presence at the store each time Rainbow went there; the girl was working there half the time.

Granny Smith had been far kinder and more forgiving than her granddaughter. The old lady let Rainbow bring over her uni timetable and they planned a schedule that would work for her over hot tea and a tin of butter biscuits. Unluckily, during enrolment period, Rainbow had chosen to cram all her modules in the first three days of the week so that she would have Thursday and Friday free for partying, but now she’s going to have to work both days plus Saturday.

When Rainbow complained about this, Applejack reminded her stonily that Granny Smith was being generous, and shewould’ve had her work the entire week. Rainbow Dash really didn’t get why Applejack hated her so much. But again, she didn’t really have a choice, so she just chewed her butter biscuits a little more angrily.

Come Thursday morning, Rainbow Dash reports for her first shift at 6 AM. None of the other shops in the mall are open yet at this time, so at least it saves her the embarrassment of being seen in the gaudy company uniform of Sweet Apple Shakes. She drags her feet up the escalator, which hasn’t been turned on yet, and walks up to the unlit shake store.

Framed in the shadows like the high villainness she’s become in Rainbow’s life, Applejack’s already there, busily putting her hair up in a hairnet while holding a hairpin in her mouth. Seeing Rainbow arrive, she rummages around before tossing a hairnet at her too, soundlessly gesturing at her to put it on.

With a grand sigh, Rainbow wrangles her hair into the net, definitely messing up the colours she had just separated that morning.

For the first hour or so Applejack teaches her to do stock-taking, a task which bores Rainbow Dash out of her skull, and she keeps losing count of the strawberries because she keeps thinking about the crazy bash at Gilda’s house last night that she couldn’t go to because she didn’t want to start her shift on a hangover. After the strawberries, Applejack makes her count the blender machines. The sheet says Blenders - 5, and Applejack makes Rainbow tell her that yes, there is only one blender and four are missing, and by missing she means smashed to smithereens because a customer tried to make her own apple smoothie because she couldn’t wait for the worker to come back from the damn toilet.

They couldn’t possibly work with just one blender, so Applejack brings out a small, cheap Kmart blender that would be their temporary replacement while they waited for the new ones to be shipped in. They cross out the 5 on the list so now the sheet says: Blenders - 1.5.

And then comes the prepping of fruits and vegetables.

“Now, I normally like ta’ peel and chop my fruits and veggies fresh,” Applejack drawls, condescension dripping off her every word, “but I reckon you’re gonna need a whole lifetime more of practice before you can do that. We’re going to start with something very simple, but very important if you’re gonna be workin’ here.”

She raises a hand, and on it is a ripe red apple. It’s got a jagged cut at the top near the stem. The apple that Rainbow had unsuccessfully tried to cut.

Applejack walks toward the chopping board, Rainbow trailing behind her. She motions for Rainbow to pick up the knife.

Rainbow does. The withering look on Applejack’s face does not make her feel like the armed one in this situation. Goddess, if she knew lessons in Fruitshakes 101 were gonna be this bad, she wouldn’t have turned up here sober.

“Why’re you holdin’ the knife like it’s a baton?” Blonde brows knit together. “Hold it properly!”

Rainbow tries to move her fingers further up the handle, but Applejack hisses and smacks her own forehead. “No, not like that, just—give it here.” She takes the knife and holds it into position, with her index finger on the flat of the blade instead of all four fingers on the other side of the handle like how Rainbow had been holding it. She moves behind the chopping board while Rainbow scuttles out of the way in shame.

“There’s a lotta ways to cut an apple, some of ‘em more dangerous than others,” Applejack talks while she demonstrates. “Them pros, they go into the core like this,” she mimes a position where she holds the blade near the tip, making a circling motion around the stem using her thumb as a pivot, “and pop, it comes right out, but it’s also easy for you to cut your thumb tendon along with it.” She pretends to swivel the knife in a full circle until it rests on the skin of her thumb. “And for you, I’d reckon you’d saw your whole thumb off, which means you wouldn’t be able to keep working at the store, and we can’t have that happening.”

“We can’t,” Rainbow says gloomily.

“So there’s an easier method. This is the easiest one. You’ll get it; a kid could do it.” Yeah, maybe if every kid popped out of the womb knowing how to chop apples like you. “Just cut the apple the same way you tried to, see, like this; but place the knife further away from the stem, so yer not hittin’ the core.”

“Okay. I get it.”

Warily, Applejack cedes the knife to Rainbow. “No, you’re holding it wrong again, hold it right,” and then Rainbow makes the first incision further from the stem as Applejack had showed her. The knife sinks further down into the hard flesh, but can’t quite cut through to the bottom. Rainbow’s hands start shaking with effort as she tries to lean her weight on the blade without removing her stabilising hand.

“Dude. Stop, no, just do a see-saw motion,” Applejack’s voice interrupts. Rainbow glances up to see Applejack mimicking a back-and-forth motion while holding an imaginary knife. “Our blades aren’t that sharp around here, so you need to ease it through.”

Rainbow copies the motion. Applejack corrects her so that she is rocking the blade up and down as well, and surely, the knife chinks lower and lower until, with a soft shhhp, the half falls free from the core and wobbles on the chopping board.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Applejack quips. “Now do the other side.”

The other half was slightly harder since there was less apple left to grip onto, but with proper grip and the see-saw motion, Rainbow manages to slice it off in seconds. And it may be idiotic, but Rainbow’s feeling pretty proud of herself. Applejack must pick up on it, because she asks, slightly incredulously, “Was that your first time cutting a fruit?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow goes to scratch her head, only she can’t because the hairnet’s in the way. She puts her hand down. “Uh, my parents never really taught me to do any cooking… or any cooking-related stuff. Or anyone else. Wasn’t allowed in the kitchen.” She stares down at her shoes, heated embarrassment crawling up her neck—Rainbow was good at a lot of stuff, and a show-off at heart, so feeling out of her depth at something that most people her age knew how to do was a foreign…and deeply unpleasant feeling. “That’s why you’re going to find that I’m a bit… heh, clueless about anything here.” She laughs nervously.

At that, Applejack’s face is unreadable. Her expression doesn’t soften, but it doesn’t harden neither. She turns away from Rainbow Dash and continues to core the apple, then slicing up the halves into chunks. Sighing, Rainbow reaches and swipes another apple from the box, grabs a knife and starts cutting that up too.

When Rainbow’s gone through four apples, Applejack holds up a hand for her to stop.

“I’m gonna teach ya to make the apple smoothie now,” she says. “But first I’ll tell you exactly what went wrong with the smoothie you tried to make.” She points at their lone surviving big blender. “Our blender can’t handle big pieces of tough fruit, so the fruits have to be chopped into chunks approximately this size,” she waves at the apples she had just cubed on the board. “Secondly,” she opens the fridge and brings out the milk carton that Rainbow had grabbed, pointing out the expiration date printed on it, “this milk’s gone bad. I just hadn’t gotten around to throwing it out yet. Thirdly, our spices are very potent; you don’t need to shake on a whole dayum mountain, just a pinch of it would do.

And lastly, our blender can’t handle blocks of solid ice, which is what caused it to explode. We have an ice crusher for that,” Applejack scoops out a handful of ice and walks toward the other end of the store, towards an appliance that looks like one of those big pencil sharpeners with the rotating handle you crank. Removing the lid, she drops the ice in. Then she cranks the handle, and shkshkshkshk, ground ice collects like pencil shavings in the box below.

Rainbow groans. “How was I supposed to know any of that?”

“That’s why yer not supposed to break into other people’s kitchens!” Applejack retorts. Her brief moment of patience seems to dissolve away. She unscrews the box of crushed ice from the appliance and storms around the kitchen, seizing bottles and jars from here and there without caring to explain anything. Rainbow watches with poorly-disguised envy as Applejack snatches the spice shakers from the cabinet without having to tiptoe like Rainbow had. Midget oppression, man.

After everything, Applejack turns around. She pours out a cup of gorgeous, light cinnamon-coloured concoction. Rainbow thinks she’s never seen an apple smoothie made with such pure rage before.

Applejack jerks her chin at her. “Well? Drink it.”

Rainbow wastes no time in downing it. No doubt about it, it’s the creamy, heavenly beauty that graces Rainbow’s dreams every night. She would swear off alcohol if it meant getting to drink this smoothie every day.

Intense green eyes study her. “How is it?”

Rainbow licks her lips. “Fast.”

“I beg yer pardon?”

“I said what I said,” Rainbow leans on the counter. “Jeez, Jackie,” she ignores the sharp look shot her way, “you always take forever making my drink. Don’t think I haven’t noticed: I’m dumb, not blind. And you kept pausing to look at me all the time, like I was gonna rob your shop or something. Which is real offensive, by the way, if I’m shoplifting for the funsies, I’m not gonna steal something as lame as fruit.”

Applejack looks completely bewildered, as if Rainbow had just spoken in a completely different language. But something in her face changes; her green eyes shrink, and she glances downward, avoiding her gaze.

Rainbow Dash waits for Applejack to respond, but she turns away and says nothing. So they continue to open up shop in silence, and then the rest of the week blurs by in a haze of complicated recipes and snobbish customers and too much citrus.

Ah, hell. At least she’s getting a free apple smoothie out of this.

~~~

Despite what literally anyone else would have you believe, Rainbow actually does have a sense of social awareness. It takes the form of a small voice in the back of her head that she likes to call Tiny Tank, because just like her pet tortoise Tank, he’s her confidant and the unfortunate witness to all her bad decisions. Tiny Tank is what stops her from blurting rude things impulsively, tells her when she should back down from a life-threatening stunt, and when sometimes, retreating is a better option than punching back. As it is, Tiny Tank is pretty overworked, and it doesn’t help matters that Rainbow doesn’t listen to him ninety percent of the time.

Still, Rainbow is working 3 days a week with the least talkative coworkers on planet Earth, and Rainbow is as allergic to awkward silences as she is to shellfish (hives on a good day, anaphylaxis on a very bad one). Even though it’s in her best interest to just shut up, do the work and go home—so Tiny Tank advises—Rainbow just doesn’t think she can stand another 10-hour shift with nothing but the monotonous drone of the juicing machines in her ears.

She glances over at her coworker. Rainbow’s still in training phase, so she’s not allowed to work alone yet. Today, she’s with Big Mac, the ginger-haired man, instead of Applejack. Where Applejack gives snippy, curt responses, Big Mac is a guy that Rainbow’s pretty sure is mute. The only sounds he makes are a low, affirmative “eeyup” when he takes someone’s order, or a grunting “eenope” when someone asks for 10,000th time if they sell chocolate milkshakes here. Still, with Rainbow’s irresistible charm, it’s worth a shot.

“Hey,” Rainbow starts when there’s a lull in the crowd. Honestly, the lulls are long, and customers are few and far between, only picking up a little during lunchtime, which is when Rainbow gets really stressed out by having only one-and-a-half blenders. It truly is a quiet establishment. “We’ve been working together for a while now, but we’ve never really talked. Um… how are you?”

Big Mac looks up from where he’s rearranging the towering stacks of cups. He tilts his head politely. “Good.” A pause. “You?”

So, not mute then. “Um, cool! Yeah, I’m good too. Thanks,” she says, cringing at herself internally.

The silence somehow feels even more stifling than before. Even the juicer has rumbled to a stop. Rainbow can already feel the hives coming on. Desperately, Rainbow reaches out mentally to Tiny Tank for help, but Tiny Tank seems to be on strike.

So Rainbow opens her mouth again. “How’s your sister?”

“Hmm,” Big Mac hums. Rainbow has no idea what’s that supposed to mean.

“Y’know, I think your sister hates me,” she continues anyway. “Do you know why? Because I don’t remember ever having met her before, let alone done something to wrong her. I mean, other than that day, of course, but even before that.”

“What makes you think she hates you?”

“Uh, duh!” Rainbow waves her hands summarily. “She always takes forever making my apple smoothie!”

A long pause. Then Big Mac says, “She doesn’t hate you.”

“Sure she doesn’t,” Rainbow drones. Great, this entire family is full of cryptids. Granny Smith is the only normal person in here.

Then Big Mac continues, slowly, “Applejack does tend to take quite long to make the apple smoothie… it’s a special drink to her and all of us, and she’s very proud of her work. Y’see, there was once when another company, the Flim Flams, tried to buy over Sweet Apple Shakes by making apple smoothies faster than us, but they didn’t succeed because our apple smoothies were of better quality. She likes to impress others with the smoothies she makes—she takes it as a personal challenge to never be outdone.”

Rainbow stills. Very proud of her work, huh.

“...And if it comes across as dislike to you, that’s simply not true. She’s just not very good with people. I reckon you should try talkin’ to her directly about it…”

Big Mac’s still talking, but Rainbow Dash isn’t listening anymore. Applejack’s proud of her work… Takes it as a challenge to never be outdone… The gears in her mind are spinning, whizzing at top-speed. Big Mac cuts off his words in lieu of giving Rainbow a strange look when she stomps her foot on the ground and victory pumps the air.

Rainbow’s got it.

~~~

5 AM on a Saturday morning, when Applejack shows up, she finds Rainbow Dash behind the counter an entire hour in advance, myriad of fruits chopped and ready on the boards, blenders whirring pleasantly in the background.

“What in the hay do you think you’re doin’?”

“What does it look like?” Rainbow shoots back, slapping the lid aggressively on top of the Kmart blender before turning to the stack of drinkcups. “Smoothies, baby!”

Applejack squints at her suspiciously. “Just what are you up to?”

Rainbow puffs out her chest, whirling around to point a wooden spoon at her. “I’m going to prove to you that I can make a better smoothie than you!”

Two seconds pass. Then five. Applejack continues to stare at her blankly, and Rainbow feels her smirk starting to falter. Not quite the mouth-hanging-agape, oh no! my smoothie business is under threat! shock and panic she had been expecting.

Then suddenly Applejack’s an inch away from her, and a hand presses against her forehead, her palm warm on her skin. Rainbow, who’s been backed up against the counter, just about stops breathing.

“Ya have a fever or somethin’?” Applejack asks, her voice deep, softer than usual.

And, staring into those eyes of concern, having calloused fingers brushing over her temple, Rainbow gets this super weirdfeeling in her chest that she would rather not describe. It’s probably the queasiness from challenging the Fruit Smoothie Goddess to a shake-off.

“No I don’t.” Rainbow bats Applejack’s hand away and shoves her way past to the blenders. She grabs one smoothie cup and holds it below the tap, allowing a beautiful amber liquid to fill the cup. “I’m serious. Drink up!”

“An’ I suppose you remembered to do stocktaking while you were so busy doin’ things you weren’t supposed to be,” Applejack says dryly.

“Checkmate, sucker, I did,” Rainbow rummages in her back pocket and brandishes the fully-filled stocktaking list, shaking it vehemently. “All fifty-three bags of berries. I counted them all and I didn’t squash any.” The look on Applejack’s face is making this so worth it. “Now drink!”

Still unyielding, Applejack folds her arms. “Those are your basic responsibilities. There’s still no reason for me to drink the smoothie that you made unprompted, just ‘cause ya felt like doing a silly competition. It’s a plain waste of shop ingredients, I’d say.”

Well. It’d be a low blow, but Rainbow didn’t spend a week watching smoothie-making videos, borrowing every drink recipe book from the library, and practising smoothies in her dorm’s grimy-ass common kitchen for nothing. Taking a deep breath, Rainbow sidles up to her, holding out the orange smoothie in both hands like a peace offering, hopefully close enough for her to get a whiff; Applejack’s nostrils twitch. And then Rainbow says sweetly:

“You’re just refusing to drink it because you’re scared it’ll be better than yours.”

Applejack’s nostrils flare. Rainbow grins as Applejack snatches the cup from her hands and takes the world’s tiniest sip. Her freckled cheeks move as she appears to swish the drink in her mouth; an unreadable look crosses her face. The awkward silence where Rainbow’s just watching Applejack taste the smoothie stretches on for so long Rainbow thinks she’ll need to be stabbed at any moment with an Epi-pen.

Rainbow clears her throat. “Weeeeeeell? Is it or is it not the best thing you’ve ever tasted?”

“It’s,” the girl says, “good.”

“Better than yours?” Rainbow waggles her eyebrows.

To her surprise, Applejack actually nods. She takes another mouthful of the orange smoothie, licking her lips thoughtfully. “How did you make it? It’s different from the one I taught you to make.”

It’s a genuine question, with no snark behind it at all. Stars, Rainbow didn’t expect Applejack to really admit if it was good, let alone entertain the suggestion that it might be better than hers. Suddenly, Applejack doesn’t seem as unreachable and high-and-mighty as before. Still, Rainbow’s here with a game plan in mind.

“I’ll tell you if you make a smoothie better than mine,” she says. “I challenge you… to a shake-off!”

“Pfffft-” Applejack clamps a hand over her own mouth, evidently fighting not to spew out the smoothie in her mouth. A gulp as she swallows, and then she roars, a litany of hearty chuckles spilling from her lips, reverberating through the tiny juice bar.

“Alright, ya dang varmint,” Applejack laughs, a sound deep and full—the first time Rainbow has ever seen her laugh. “Since yer so insistent and all.”

Mission success. Rainbow returns with a brilliant grin of her own. “Let’s shake on it!”

“You are so not funny.”

Their hands clap together.

~~~

Cons of challenging your coworker at the local juice bar to a shake-off: one, Rainbow hasn’t been to a party in weeks because she’s been too busy researching smoothie recipes and grocery shopping for fruits to practise her smoothies with. Two, she’s started having to up her game by asking the people around her who are good at cooking for advice, so much so that she’s becoming known as a smoothie fanatic and she gets ribbed at whenever drinks are brought up in a conversation or when they pass by some other juice bar, which is super embarrassing and not congruent with her ‘cool’ image at all. But Rainbow’s a committed soul, so she keeps at it.

And now she’s at Sweet Apple Shakes, whipping up smoothies at a maddening pace. Twisting within the small space of the juice bar, Applejack chops and mixes and measures in precise, decisive movements, going slow but steady. Rainbow’s going fast but assuredly not steady. She often grabs things without looking, sighs frustratedly, and goes back to switch it to the right one, or dumps too much of an ingredient in and has to try skimming the top of it off with a spoon.

Their customer, a middle-aged man with a kid on his shoulder, stands behind the counter. Both sets of eyes are wide, two heads turning in tandem like they’re watching a table tennis match.

The system goes like this. Because neither of them nor the Apple family members can truly be impartial judges, they turn the customer into their judge. They set up a Buy One, Get One Free deal for a select few drinks on the menu that rotates every day. When a customer orders the deal, it’s a contest to see who can slap down the drink in front of the customer first—often a close call—and who can make the drink they like more. A chart hangs on the wall on the side of the juice bar: a large sheet of paper with a line down the middle, an apple symbol for Applejack and a lightning-bolt for Rainbow Dash. Below each symbol, tallies are marked for each ‘shake-off’ won.

“HAH!” Applejack barks as she smacks a cup on the counter, the raspberry smoothie within sloshing. “I’m first!”

“Too late, boss,” Rainbow smirks, gesturing ahead. Applejack’s head swivels to see the man already holding a cup of pink concoction. The blonde girl lets out a long and loud groan, folding her arms.

“Well, it’ll just have to come down to how it tastes,” she harrumphs.

The customer laughs as he passes the cup to the kid on his shoulder. “Look, I’m sure they’re both lovely—” his voice wilts as he apparently takes in the stone-hard stares of the both of them. “Ah, so I do have to choose…”

“Uh-huh.”

“No question about it.”

The man takes Applejack’s smoothie and tastes it. After a lengthy pause, he purses his lips together. “Well, I honestly think both are really good, I just can’t decide. Maybe I’ll ask the little peekaboo here,” he shifts the kid on his shoulder, who is already sipping on Rainbow’s smoothie. “Maymay, try this smoothie? The other lovely young lady made it for us.”

The kid blinks. Pigtails swinging, she leans over to take a gulp of Applejack’s smoothie, blissfully oblivious of Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s hyperfocused glares. A beat. Then, they watch as she relinquishes her previous cup so fast that that the man had to lurch with a “whoaaaa there” in order to catch the falling cup with one hand as the kid greedily grabs Applejack’s cup and begins to gurgle it down happily.

“I guess we have a winner,” the man says. Sighing, Rainbow smooshes her face into her hands. Behind her, she can hear Applejack crowing in delight and the scribble of the pen on paper as she adds two points to herself on the chart and one to Rainbow. One point for being faster, two points for being better. Then, she hears Applejack waving off the customer cheerfully, who gives her an amused chuckle in return, while the kid lets out a particularly loud burp.

Rainbow collapses bonelessly onto a stool, exhausted.

Does this whole challenge make Rainbow’s job a lot more stressful than it has to be? Oh, absolutely. Rainbow goes home every work night and crashes, lights out at 9-freakin’-PM. Her legs ache when she runs to three separate markets across the city to fetch the best-quality ingredients. And then there was last week, which she texted Fluttershy about:

I am seconds away from committing a felony

Fluttershy

What happened?

I went to the common kitchen just now

and guess what

cheese.

Fluttershy

Cheese???

There was cheese splattered over literally the entire kitchen

Like if someone was trying to make a cheesecake

and they looked at the kitchen walls and thought to themselves

gee this sure looks like a cake pan

Fluttershy

my goodness

So I’m guessing you didn’t make your smoothies this week?

no. i just had to pick the cheese off the power socket so i could plug my blender in

it was mouldy btw

I am so sick of people

and i still have to go buy a kilo of oranges after this

And then Fluttershy would ask her:

If it’s so tiring, then why do you still do it?

Well. That’s certainly a question. It’s hard for Rainbow to explain, but…

She cracks her fingers apart, peering at Applejack from between her fingers. The girl is practically glowing with her victory, humming as she chops a banana with renewed vigour. She stops for a moment to fix her hair, which has almost escaped her hairnet completely, sticking out in blonde whorls, but instead of looking like she’s out of energy, there’s a fire in her eyes, what could even be called a manic gleam. Rainbow feels her heart pound just slightly harder, watching her.

You see, it’s the way Applejack comes absolutely alive when she’s hell-bent on making the best smoothie ever. It’s the way she doesn’t hold back. She doesn’t think it’s a waste of time or effort, or a silly game to be ashamed of; she’s taking the challenge seriously, giving it her all. And after a lifetime of being told to tone it down, to compromise, to let others have the win sometimes—Rainbow finally feels like she doesn’t have to hold back either.

And it’s such an amazing feeling, Rainbow would scrape cheese from an entire basketball court just to feel it again.

So, lying on the bed at night on her phone, this is what she replies Fluttershy with:

cuz I think I’ve found it.

My rival.

3- Girl Talk

“Hey, Dashie.”

“Uh huh…” Rainbow scrolls on her phone. Chemistry notes are spread out in front of her on the table. Half of them belong to Twilight sitting across from her, thickly scrawled with neat annotations in the margins, pieces of highlighted and underlined text. Meanwhile, Rainbow’s are pristine, almost sparkling in how white and clean they are, the only clean thing that Rainbow Dash owns.

“Dashie. Rainbow. Rainbow Daaaaash.”

Rainbow double-taps another meme.

“Rainbow, I’m eating all your snacks. Your hair’s on fire. A bird pooped on your bag.”

No response.

“Oh, look, Applejack’s here.”

“Huh?” Rainbow jolts, dropping her phone over her stereochem assignment. “Where?” She looks up, casting her gaze around the uni study hall, packed to the gills as always. Students gather hunched at the tables, clattering away on laptops, scribbling notes or deep in discussion, but no familiar blonde-headed girl in sight.

“Where is she?” she demands, turning to Pinkie, only to find her with a hand down Rainbow’s cheese crackers. “Hey- those are mine!”

“If thou wants not thy snacks to be eaten, thou shalt not leave them out in the open for others to take,” says the fiend matter-of-factly as she shoves her ill-gotten booty into her mouth. “And stop looking around for Applejack, she doesn’t even go here. It’s payback for ignoring me.”

Indignantly, Rainbow clutches her half-empty cracker packet, mourning the loss. “Well, what is it then?”

Pinkie wipes the crumbs on her fingers on her skirt and brandishes her phone. On the screen is a TikTok featuring a very familiar-looking juice bar. “You’ve gone viral!”

This wasn’t news to Rainbow. Ever since they had introduced the two-for-one deal, unusually large crowds of people had begun turning up. People pulling out their phones and filming them in amusement wasn’t exactly unexpected, but apparently, the videos had gone on to kick up quite the fuss on social media.

“Yeah, I’ve seen that one.” It had appeared on Rainbow’s For You page the night before. Several clips spliced together, ranging from them chopping fruits at scary paces to wrestling over the ice crusher like it was a rope in tug-of-war, as well as that one time when Applejack was using up both blenders (jerk) and Rainbow was trying to whip bananas with a fork.

Rainbow blinks and leans over, looking closer at the numbers below the video, a string of digits that had only grown longer since she last saw it. “Oh shit, that’s a lot of views.”

Nodding, Pinkie Pie grins from ear to ear. “You’re a celebrity!”

“Meh,” Rainbow folds her arms behind her neck and leans back, though she can’t deny the feeling of her ego swelling up within her. “Just means more hell at work for me. I need a raise, I swear.”

“With all the good business, I’m sure Applejack’ll will give you one.” Pinkie assures her. “Sweet Apple Shakes has needed some… well, juice for quite a while, after all. Applejack rewards fairly.”

“Hm,” Rainbow squints at her. “Just how did you come to know Applejack, anyway? Is she in your course?”

Pinkie wriggles her fingers. “Gimme more cheese crackers, and I’ll answer you.”

“You already ate so much, no, fuck you. Get your own,” Rainbow opens the packet and slobbers all over the remaining crackers. Pinkie wails—earning a death glare from Twilight across the table—then relents.

“Nah, Applejack doesn’t go to uni,” Pinkie says. “I just passed by the store by chance, and while she was making my drink, I chatted her up!”

Jesus. Rainbow considers herself an extrovert, but even she can’t match up to Pinkie’s level of social confidence.

Then it’s Pinkie’s turn to give her a strange look. “Wait, why don’t you know she doesn’t go to uni? Aren’t you friends?”

“Uhhhh,” Rainbow sweats. “We’ve might’ve been a bit busy just focusing on making smoothies…”

“......”

“And I may or may not do all the talking in the conversation…”

Pinkie slams the table and snatches up a calculator, pointing at her with it. “Rainbow! You spend, like, three days of your week with her. Stop subjecting the poor girl to your endless tales of high crime and start actually talking to her!”

It’s at this moment when Twilight covers her ears and snaps, “Will you two kindly shut up? Some of us are trying to study!”

“Sorry, Twi…”

~~~

It’s nearing the end of shift when Rainbow’s phone buzzes in her pocket. On the screen, the caller ID flashes: it’s a call from her mum. Rainbow knows that ignoring her mum’s calls brings nothing but disaster, so she glumly forfeits her three-pointer kiwifruit smoothie and hides herself in the storage room.

The blurry, extremely zoomed-in, upper half of her mum’s face appears on the screen, cut off at her nose at a very unflattering camera angle.

“Honey, how are you?” she asks, face wrinkling,“You haven’t been calling lately, you had me and your dad so worried.”

“I’m fine, mum,” Rainbow rakes a hand through her hair, only to wince in frustration with the hairnet in the way. She puts her hand down. “I’ve just been a bit busy. You know, uni stuff.”

“I’m sure it’s busy, but you still have to make time to call,” her mum says. Then her eyebrows scrunch as she leans even closer to the camera, eyes peering at the screen. “Just what are you wearing? ”

“Uh! Um,” Rainbow’s brain scrambles. Shit, her video was turned on. Rainbow pivots the camera up away from where the collar of her Sweet Apple Shakes uniform had been visible. “Normal clothes, what do you mean?”

“It just seems… rather gaudy. And why’s your hair netted?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, it just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you would wear.”

“Yeah well, it’s trendy lately. Hahaha!” Rainbow sweats. “I’m getting on with the times, yeah.” And then it occurs to her that Rainbow never wears trendy clothes, so she tacks on, “Uh, my friend made me wear it, so. You know, Rarity, the girl who likes fashion.”

Rainbow's mum squints some more. “And where are you right now? That doesn’t look like your dorm room.”

"Uh! Um. I'm at the mall. Just out, shopping and stuff. Haha."

Her mum raises an eyebrow quizzically. Oh hell, Rainbow never goes shopping. Her mum doesn’t seem to entirely believe her, but luckily, she also seems too confused to ask any questions. She instead goes on with her usual nagging, “Well, if you’re outside of the dorms, I hope you remembered to bring your Epipen with you.”

“-yeah, I did-”

“And remember, if you’re getting anything to eat or drink, you have to ask if it contains shellfish. Or if it could contain shellfish. Or if it could have come into contact with shellfish-”

“Yeah, yeah…”

“-it’s for your own good, okay? Your dad and I worry a lot when you’re living alone interstate, you know. Look both ways when you're crossing the road, and remember not to talk to any strangers.”

“I know all that,” Rainbow groans. “Okay, I’ve really got to go now. See you, love you,” and then she hangs up. She opens the door.

The shift had already ended by then. Leaning against the counter, Applejack looks up from her phone at Rainbow. “Good news. The new blenders have arrived.”

Rainbow throws her hands up in the air. “About damn time!”

Exasperated, Applejack splays her fingers. “Look, t’ain’t me who controls how fast the shippin’ is.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Rainbow thumps her weary body onto the counter.

Much like any other day these days, throngs of people had visited just to watch Rainbow and Applejack compete over their smoothies like it was some kind of local attraction or performance in the vein of Great British Shake-Off. And while Rainbow thoroughly enjoyed fame, it remained insanely stressful working with just two blenders. Just thinking about it gave her a headache. Though Rainbow had been trying to make it a point of pride that she could run the shop on just two blenders, she’s secretly and seriously relieved.

She whistles. “Well, at least today’s the last day of that hell.”

Applejack’s chewing her lip. “About that…”

Rainbow’s heart, which had just begun to soar with relief, plummets. Her gaze narrows into razors. “What?”

“I would probably only be able to get the blenders in on next Monday,” Applejack says, apologetic.

“Whaaaat?" Rainbow gasps. "Why not today?”

“Yeah, well, it’s late today, and I don’t wanna go anywhere when it’s all dark,” Applejack responds as she locks up the storage, keys jangling. “On Friday, shift starts before the post office opens. They’re closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Only on Mondays, Big Mac is taking the morning shift, so I can go get ‘em. You’ll be able to use the blenders next Thursday.”

“But it’s Thursday today,” Rainbow moans. “That’s like- two whole more work days!”

“You’ve survived this long,” Applejack says dismissively, “You’ll live.”

No, she fucking won’t. “Can’t Big Mac go get the blenders?”

“He’s busy at his babysittin’ job on those days.”

“Rnnnrnrnrnnrghhhughhhh,” Rainbow racks her brain because she is not spending another hour with two blenders if she can help it. Then it clicks.

She snaps her fingers. “The post office is still open now, isn’t it?”

“Uhh, yeah,” Applejack frowns. “But it’s dark out.” With the onset of winter, sunsets had become very early. “I don’t wanna go anywhere alone at night.”

“Aaaaand?” Rainbow crosses her arms. “You have me!”

Pocketing her keys, Applejack shakes her head. “I can’t make you do that.”

“What, stay up late? Pshawww, I’m already doing that every day!” Rainbow flaps her hand. “And don’t worry about safety! I’ll fight anyone who comes at us!” She throws a few mock punches in the air. Then she sobers her tone. “I’m serious, by the way, I can actually hold my own in a fight. Remember the petrol station story?”

Applejack gives her a look, that mixture of disapproval and concern that bubbles up whenever Rainbow brings up her slightly-more-than-dodgy history. But then she lets out a soft sigh. “You really want those blenders, huh.”

“Darn tootin’, fam.”

Applejack barks out a surprised laugh. “Now I know you’ve lost it. Fine, follow me.”

~~~

After locking up the place, Applejack leads her to the shopping mall’s elevator, which they take down to the basement parking. They weave their way around roaring cars reversing out of their lots and exiting the carpark, headlights bright in the dim evening, leaving shining clouds of exhaust in their wake. Finally, they glimpse Applejack’s ride.

It’s a musty, old-looking pick-up van, the colour a sooty grey. Rainbow can’t tell if it had always looked that way or it had faded from white over time. Rainbow's seen Sweet Apple Shakes’ pick-up van before when she helped Applejack or Big Mac to unload boxes of the week’s ingredients. She'd usually challenge Applejack to a race there, from the white line of the parking lot to the door, but today she's way too beat for that.

This is also the first time she's actually going to get in Applejack's van. The thought fills her with a strange kind of nervousness.

“Hold on just a second,” Applejack says as she opens the door to the shotgun seat. The leg room is crammed full of random boxes that she begins to clear out. Rainbow helps to haul them to the boot, before Applejack motions for her to climb in.

Rainbow clambers into the seat. As she settles in, musty heating blows at her from the sidevents, making the dust in the air dance in the yellow interior lights. The engine of the van is a steady rumble that thrums through the scratchy polyester seats. And while Rainbow isn’t tall (midget rights), her legs are still awfully cramped in the oppressively-small leg room that Applejack had just cleared.

As Rainbow twists around to see if she could move the seat backwards, she spots a child booster seat folded in the back, where there was a small bench in lieu of seats. Huh.

Actually talk to her. Actually talk to her, the phantom of Pinkie chants in her mind.

At that moment, the door to the driver seat creaks open and Applejack climbs in.

“Yo.” Steeling herself, Rainbow cocks her head at the back. “You have a kid?”

“What?” Applejack stops midway through buckling her seatbelt, flabbergasted. Her eyes land on the booster seat behind. She chuckles. “Oh, nah, that was for my baby sister, when she was younger.”

“You have a little sister?”

“Oh, yeah. Apple Bloom’s a little runty thing. She’s usually at school, so you don’t see her at the shop,” Applejack says, plugging her seatbelt in. “Buckle your seatbelt too, lass.”

Reluctantly, Rainbow moves to untangle the seatbelt. It takes her a while, it being jammed in the gap between the door and the seat. “It’s not like you’re gonna be racing in this bucket of bolts.”

“This beauty’s long past her racing years, I’m afraid,” Applejack chuckles. She’s connecting her phone to the car radio system. Rainbow stares at her and thinks to herself, Twenty bucks it’s country.

Twangy guitar streams from the speakers. “Country rooooaaads…”

Happily, Applejack bobs her head and hums as she reverses the van out of the parking lot.

In her seat, Rainbow shifts. “I can’t figure it out. Are you from the country, or from here?” Applejack had an accent that wasn’t quite full-southern, but wasn’t Canterlot either.

There’s a lengthy pause at first. The van rolls over a speed bump, and then they’re on a side road leading out from the mall. Applejack’s green eyes remain fixed on the road ahead, but slowly, she replies, “I grew up in a village down south. I moved here with my family when I was eight.”

“Ohh, wow. That’s a long time,” Rainbow sits up. “I just moved here last year for uni. Just me though, my parents are still back in Cloudsdale.”

The van rolls onto the main road, rumbling. “Do you miss them?”

“Ehh. Not really,” Rainbow scratches her neck. “They’re textbook helicopter parents. I like my freedom here.”

A brief silence. Then, “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the sort to have overprotective parents.”

Rainbow laughs. “Yeah? Is it because of all my adventures? You thought I had the kind of parents who just let their kid run all around the neighbourhood unsupervised as long as they returned alive within three nights?” She taps her fingers on the dashboard, smirking. “Strict parents don’t make well-behaved children. It just means you learn to hide your tracks better.”

“...I see.”

“Mhm. I mean, they’ve been like this ever since the first time I got hospitalised,” Rainbow plays with her seatbelt in her hands. “8 years old. Uh, I ate a prawn. Dropped to the floor and started wheezing, it was really embarrassing. In the hospital, they thought I was gonna die. And it was really weird, because I’d eaten shellfish before with no problems, but it just happened all of a sudden one day.

Afterwards, my parents just got really scared of everything. Like, they discussed taking me out of school, because what if my classmate’s eating shrimp crackers next to me and I get a whiff of it and fall over? Stuff like that.” She sighs. “But I don’t wanna live my life behind glass, y’know? If I’m gonna die, I’d rather it be cool. Being killed by some shrimp? Totally doesn't suit my style.”

Applejack doesn’t have anything to say to that, which, well, fair. Great, you ended up just talking about yourself again, Rainbow berates herself internally. She’s never shared this much with anyone else before, not even Fluttershy. When it comes to Applejack, Rainbow often just ends up yammering everything on her mind.

But just as Rainbow’s about to ask back the obligatory ‘what about you?’, her eyes wander to the string looped around the rear view mirror. Hanging from the string is a pair of matching golden wedding rings.

Rainbow thinks back to the company meeting, when she had just seen Applejack’s grandmother and her brother. And fuck. Rainbow has a pretty good guess.

This is why you don’t have any friends, Tiny Tank dutifully reminds her. But seeing as Applejack isn’t keen on sharing more, Rainbow shuts her mouth and lets the country guitar on the radio pour into the silence left behind. It remains that way after Applejack has parked the van outside the collection centre, and remains that way when they walk in for the blenders, and after they've loaded the blenders into the back of the van. So much for actually talking.

Rainbow slides back into her cramped seat as Applejack starts up the van. Seeking a diversion, Rainbow checks her phone for new messages.

The name Bitchass flashes across the screen. It's Gilda, whose messages Rainbow has been letting pile up in greyticks for the past month or so. She sighs and opens the channel, skipping all the way to the most recent messages:

Bitchass

if you finally died

at least do me the courtesy of letting me know

so i can come piss on your grave

what the fuck do you want

Bitchass

why havent u been coming to parties

Gilda is… Gilda. Not exactly a friend, not exactly a foe. Rainbow may or may not have been involved in a six-month-long situationship with her. Even after Rainbow broke it off, they still keep in contact. It’s worth segueing around the woman’s piss-poor attempts at trying to win her back in exchange for her killer parties and free booze. Funny how life works out like that.

I’ve been busy with work and uni

Bitchass

Yeah like you have it in you to be that responsible

You have a girlfriend now? That why?

or a boyfriend. I don’t judge

What. no

Bitchass

Oh no you absolutely do have a girlfriend

I saw you in that tiktok

who’s that babe next to you

She’s just my coworker

Bitchass

I mean, u could do better than that, obviously

But I guess birds of a feather shit together

Something in Rainbow’s gut coils, hot and angry. Her anger must roll off her, because Applejack shoots a glance at her. What the fuck does she mean by that? Who does Gilda think she is, saying that Applejack-

Rainbow types rapidly.

Nah I’m not interested. Fuck off

Bitchass

Ur so cute when ur angry hun

But come on, I really need your help this time

I don’t need a lot, I just need someone to help me mix the drinks but no one else I know is free

pleaaaaaaaaase

And you can bring your gf along too I won’t try anything funny in front of her

You remember how many times I’ve helped you in freshman year, right?

…

What time

Bitchass

I knew you had it in you to help out a friend

Tuesday, 7 PM

you’re no friend

Bitchass

Then what am I

a bitchass

“Hey, Applejack,” Rainbow says cursorily, into the echoing air of the van. “Wanna go to a party?”

4- Everybody Mix it Up

Applejack is late.

And that’s perfectly fine, Rainbow mentally grouses as she skulks around the stairwell. Only an idiot shows up to parties on time.

Said idiot, Rainbow Dash, is currently criminally early to a party, held in a house so big it might qualify as a proper manor. At Cloudsdale, Rainbow Dash grew up surrounded by rich and stupid-rich friends. Gilda definitely falls in the stupid-stupid-rich category. Upon being let on the premises via the giant electronic gate, you walk through a sprawling lawn, past three fountains, before getting to the stone-sculpted front steps. The manor itself has four floors in total, and a small glass elevator that travels between them. That’s not even counting the basement, where there’s a private swimming pool and a separate jacuzzi.

The upper floors have the gym and the soundproof karaoke studio, but also the guest rooms. But the stairs are blocked off today, guarded by actual security guards, who will only let the people Gilda believes “won’t trash the rooms too much”—though Rainbow thinks people who want a way, will find a way in regardless.

Now, Rainbow generally pretends to be invisible, hiding behind the bar counter while checking her phone. She fiddles with her notes app and opens up the 37-minute long Youtube video on cocktail-mixing she has bookmarked. Unlike with smoothies, she hadn’t had the chance to practise, so she’s planning on winging it, but she’s sure Applejack will wing it too, anyway. Not everyone can waste alcohol like water the way Gilda does. Gilda’s bar counter (an actual bar counter, not two tables shoved together and hidden under a sheet) is insufferably well-stocked: Rainbow finds in the oaken drawers the exact gadgets that Mr. Jeff Solomon in How To Make Every Cocktail details. Shakers, strainers, jiggers, muddlers, everything’s in there, in all shapes and sizes. And, of course, no shortage of spirits, either.

Goddess, Rainbow fucking hates Gilda. With a bar counter like this, Gilda could absolutely afford to hire actual bartenders, but no, she just has to ask her ex who happens to have a couple hundred thousand views on Tiktok for fruit-blending. Whatever this weird fetish of Gilda’s is, Rainbow really should've stayed far away from it—but alas, here she is anyway.

At least Applejack will be here soon. She has to be here soon.

Instead, someone else strides down from the stairs. The security guards part ways to let the woman through. Rainbow’s heart plummets. Fervently, she wishes she could dissolve into the bar like sugar disappearing in an Old Fashioned, but instead she's like a big, fat chunk of ice, and she’s not melting nearly fast enough. She’s conspicuous. Trapped within a chilled-glass of her own making. Speak of the devil.

It’s Gilda.

Here’s the thing. Gilda is like, objectively hot. There’s no other way to put it. She’s straight out of a movie cast, a character like lady mafia gang leader that could beat you within an inch of your life and you’d beg for more, with her high cheekbones and narrow gaze. Her eyeshadow is deep, seductive glittering rings of violet around mascara-laden lashes, so sharp they could cut steel. And her dress, too—strapless, draping from below the cleavage, an opulent leopard print surely custom-tailored to cling to the curves of her body.

Rainbow does not care. She is done with Gilda and she’s never going back. But Gilda stalks across the room toward her like a predator cornering prey, and Rainbow has nowhere to run.

“Hey,” Gilda’s voice drips.

Rainbow’s hands are not trembling. She shoves them below the counter, pretending to search for cobbler shakers. “Fuck off.”

“So unfriendly,” Gilda tuts. “I must be the only person willing to tolerate you.” There’s a gold chain necklace dangling around her neck, with a charm in the centre.

“Far from it,” Rainbow grits her teeth. Her fingers find the cobbler shaker, grabbing it, and she slams it on the counter. She turns around, whirls back with a bottle of cold whiskey in hand. “I came here to mix drinks, not to talk. What do you want?”

“Just you,” Gilda’s eyes sparkle. Rainbow really wants to smash the whole bottle in her face, but it’s probably some kind of antique whiskey dating back to the Qing dynasty, so she refrains.

“Come on now,” Gilda continues. “How many friends from Cloudsdale have you actually kept, aside from me? Don’t say Fluttershy—we all know that girl would sooner chop off her left tit than offend anyone. The poor thing’s probably too scared to tell you the truth.” She laughs, an ugly sound, gesturing at the room around them, which is gradually filling up with partygoers. “And where’s your partner? Oh no, it looks like she bailed on you, too.”

“No, she didn’t,” Rainbow snaps, “She probably had something come up, she’s just late.” But even as she argues, she can’t wave the thought from her head. This is Applejack, who is the most punctual person she knows—even Twilight is late to classes sometimes, too absorbed in her work to watch the time.

Discreetly, Rainbow checks her phone again, but there’s no message there in the way of explanation. Her skin crawls. Of course. How many times had Applejack looked at her with that silent, judgemental gaze every time she related one of her crude stories? Even if she humoured her silly competitions, in the end, Applejack wasn’t like Rainbow Dash. She’s a normal, hard-working good-girl, with not a single thing in her life out of line. Applejack, at a house party? Rainbow can’t even imagine that woman dancing. She was a fool to think Applejack would actually come.

“How sad. You have to put on a nice front in front of everyone else. But who’s held your hair when you’re puking your guts out? Who’s picked you up when you were snivelling on the roadside with a black eye and broken knuckles? I let you walk through my gate and drink my booze, even if you refuse to get along with me. So what if I sleep around?” The gold necklace on her neck swishes, and Rainbow can see the charm clearly now—a heart-shaped locket, likely inlaid with the picture of Gilda’s latest conquest. “In the end, I’m the only one who sticks by you through everything, Dash. Why can’t you?”

She pauses before turning around. “Just think about it, alright? You’ll always have a room upstairs.” She nods to the staircase, then gives Rainbow a once-over. “It would be a waste, since you dressed up so pretty and all.”

Rainbow doesn’t think. She lunges over the bar and grabs the necklace, dragging Gilda up into a choke with it. From the stairwell, the security guards step forward warningly, but Gilda holds up a hand, stopping them.

The broad smirk on her face is the same as before. Sometimes it’s like she has a bird’s beak, when she smiles. Rainbow used to kiss that smile. Fuck. Muscle memory nudges at her, the urge to just pull Gilda in, like she used to. And objectively, there’s nothing stopping her from doing so. She’s not dating anyone, and if there’s nothing else to do, she might as well have some fun.

...Yet, she feels like it would be wrong, somehow. But why?

Before she can dwell on it further, the front door opens, and all her worries evaporate.

On the stone steps is Applejack. Except, this isn’t the Applejack that Rainbow sees at 6AM every week. Gone is the stuffy hairnet, garish apron and vomit-polo; in its place is a redwood waistcoat, showing the long sleeves of the cream blouse underneath. Instead of that poofy blue skirt, she’s wearing dark maroon leggings below her leather belt, stretching all the way down her legs, which have never looked this long. And curtaining the legs, there's also a goddamn white, flowy skirt hitched from the belt, which should look stupid but somehow works on her. Blonde hair spreads down over her shoulder, tied with a crimson ribbon, and she’s wearing a brown cowgirl-hat.

The people near her are too busy stumbling in intoxication to really notice the woman, but Applejack’s outfit eats up absolutely everyone else in Gilda’s foyer—a near-identical ocean of black body-con girls and T-shirt-hoodie-jeans guys. Rainbow honestly forgets how to speak, or do anything really, when Applejack crosses the room, the heels of her riding boots clacking on the polished marble floor.

Abruptly, in her stupor, she realises that she’s still been holding onto Gilda’s chain. She lets go far too late, but Applejack doesn’t even seem to care when she strides up to Rainbow. Released, Gilda goes off and does… something. She could have jumped into a volcano for all Rainbow cared; all of Rainbow’s attention is currently occupied.

Applejack grins, looking more confident than Rainbow has ever seen her. She tips her hat at Rainbow when she reaches the other side of the bar counter. “Howdy.”

Rainbow marshals her thoughts together enough to form a coherent sentence. “Yo,” she ends up saying, then, “you look different.” Great, absolutely brilliant. Rainbow wants to slap herself into next week.

Applejack’s smile is a distracting thing as her green gaze travels over Rainbow’s body. “You look amazin’ yourself, too.” You’re one to talk, Rainbow thinks, because she might have agonised over her emo-punk-rock-ish look—black croptop and box-plaid skirt, replete with stockings, curb-stomper boots and a million chains—for ages, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to Applejack's.

“Sorry for bein’ late,” the woman adds, “I hope it hasn’t been too tough mixin’ drinks on your lonesome.”

Somehow, Rainbow had completely forgotten about that part in the past 30 seconds. “Nah, I haven’t been mixing much of anything. People seem to prefer self-serve.” She gives a pointed glance at the already shit-faced man clambering over the counter to grab the bottle of whiskey she had left out. “But right, where were you?”

Applejack looks sheepish. “Well, Apple Bloom was released late from school today while I was picking her up. Aaand… I might’ve taken a mite too long with choosing my wardrobe. I haven’t been to a party in ages.”

Rainbow pauses. “Wait, you’ve been to a party before?”

Applejack raises a brow. “What makes you think I haven’t?”

“I… uh,” Rainbow struggles to find the nicest way to say I thought you were a prude. “I figured you weren’t really the partying type?”

Applejack snorts, letting out a gravelly laugh. “I didn’t think there was a type for partyin’, sugarcube. But I assure ya, I’m plenty capable of shaking one out at a hoe-down.”

She slides behind the bar by Rainbow’s side, leaning over to pluck the whiskey bottle out of the drunk man’s pudgy hands. As she’s doing that, her hair brushes past the skin of Rainbow’s arm, making Rainbow shiver. Cool glass touches her palms as Applejack hands the bottle back to Rainbow.

“Now, why not you mix a drink for this poor lad here?” She nods at the still-snivelling man.

Rainbow gulps, that weird flutter about her nerves again. Still, she steels herself and scoffs. “What, so you’re not gonna mix any drinks, after all? Is liquor is too much beyond the scope of Apple Shake Girl?”

“Oh, I know my liquor alright,” Applejack drawls, “I’m just giving ya a headstart.”

Rainbow feels the familiar fizz in her gut, the corners of her lips rising; and a matching grin spreads across Applejack’s freckled face. They don’t even do the countdown out loud, now—just meet each other’s eyes, and give a sharp nod. And then it begins.

Mixing cocktails is delicate work. This time, Rainbow actually doesn’t blast her way through the process. In her early smoothie-mixing days, she’d been prone to brute-forcing through everything like a tornado, but begrudgingly, she’s learnt over the time that she’s spent together with Applejack how worth it patience and careful measuring is. Even if the final product eventually took longer to make, the results yielded a taste evidently stayed with the recipient for a far longer time. And Rainbow wants to impress. Which is also why, even though she could’ve gone for an easy whiskey highball, she cranks the difficulty scale all the way up to a Vieux Carré—a cocktail supposedly as complicated as its name.

She watches Applejack out the corner of her eye as she’s finding a substitute for Benedictine in the cabinet. She knows she’s getting distracted, but she can’t help it. Beside her, Applejack rifles through the bar cabinet, selecting her ingredients with ease, and Rainbow is filled with a sense of… awe. Even though Rainbow Dash barely knows what she’s doing, armed with only Youtube as she is, she can tell from the way Applejack handles the equipment and drinks that this is far from Applejacks first rodeo. Rainbow wonders at it: has Applejack worked in a bar before? There’s still so many things about Applejack she doesn’t know. She wants to know more.

By the time they finish their first round of drinks, a small crowd has already gathered to watch them. Applejack has her drink out while Rainbow’s still straining out her Vieux-ish Carré. There goes one point.

“Old Fashioned?” Rainbow guesses, nodding at Applejack’s drink.

“Nah. That’s a Manehattan.” Applejack raises the glass. “Taste test?”

Rainbow’s about to reach over to take it when she blinks, realising that Applejack has held the lip of the glass right up to her mouth. From beneath the brim of her hat, green eyes sparkle. Feeling her cheeks flush involuntarily, Rainbow tips forward a little and takes a sip. It’s good, ridiculously good. Rainbow doesn’t have the professional cocktail-y terms to describe it, but the mixture of flavours is balanced, smooth and refined, nothing like the shit that Gilda’s friends slap together when they claim to be able to mix drinks.

Applejack’s tasting Rainbow’s drink, too. She puts down the glass, furrowing her brow. “A Vieux Carré? That’s a tricky one to make.” She looks over at her. “Not the worst attempt, but you definitely need practice.”

“Aw, c’mon!” Rainbow complains. But they move on rapidly to the next round. All shapes and kinds of orders come in from the party guests, and they have a wild time playing bartenders for them, and with all the phones out, Rainbow knows what’s gonna be the next video trending on TikTok tomorrow. But for tonight, she’s here, wrestling bottles of cognac and mashing syrups beside Applejack—her coworker, but also a woman who’s come to be her best friend, and rival.

Between the general chaos, though, she notices Applejack shooting her lingering glances. For some reason... she seems somewhat sad. But it must be a trick of the light; what reason could there be for Applejack be sad? Rainbow turns away and focuses on her mixing.

After a while, the guests dwindle away from the bar, most of them already with drinks in hand, migrating toward the centre of the foyer where people have begun dancing up a storm to the music pounding in from the speakers. Gilda shouts at some of her security guards to shut off the lights, and the bar goes dim, too dark for Rainbow to see what drinks she’s grabbing. Relentlessly, she squints her eyes, knees up on a barstool as she searches for the next spice she needs from the shelf.

It’s then that Applejack stops her with a quiet breath. “I think it’s enough for tonight, Rainbow.”

Rainbow turns. The bar is lit up only by the reflection of Gilda’s obnoxious party-lights, neons sliding along glossy oak. But it paints Applejack’s face with soft hues of pink and blue, catches in the rim of her silhouette, the edges of her blonde hair that have begun to tangle.

A movement distracts her. Applejack’s leaning over to rummage in the bag she’d brought with her, and belatedly, Rainbow realises that she’s been staring. Abruptly, Rainbow swivels her gaze away and tries to play it cool, drumming her fingers on the bar while she pretends to be interested in the gaggle of jocks jumping on the tables, shaking their butts and laughing to themselves.

It’s then that she hears Applejack clearing her throat awkwardly from behind her. Rainbow glances back to see Applejack holding a simple, corked bottle. It’s unlabelled, and Rainbow hadn’t seen anything like it while looking through Gilda’s collection. Whatever it was, must’ve been taken directly from Applejack’s bag.

“What’s that, a secret ingredient?” Rainbow quips, dropping off the barstool, holding a hand up to examine the bottle that Applejack passes to her. It’s hard to tell in the dim lighting, but the liquid within looks clear and golden, a faint bubble rising to the surface as she tips the bottle upside-down.

“It’s something I brought from the farm I used to live on,” Applejack says.

“Let me guess,” Rainbow says, “Is it… applejack?”

“Very original,” she deadpans. “But close enough. It’s apple cider. I’d mix you a drink with it, but I think that it’s the best on its own. Go on, have some. Don’t go crazy.”

“Hah, as if! It’s only apple cider,” Rainbow says, to the roll of Applejack’s eyes. Rainbow hasn’t really had apple cider before. She wasn’t that huge into apple-related drinks. Then again, she’d said the same thing about apple smoothies.

Tentatively, she uncorks the bottle.

From the mouth of the bottle, the aroma of the cider wafts upward. Closing her eyes, Rainbow inhales deeply. It’s musky, rich and intense, unlike any apple cider that Rainbow’s ever smelled before. She takes a hearty swig, and the aroma envelops Rainbow’s senses completely. This cider is warm, like a woollen blanket, if it were woven from an autumn breeze and woodfibre instead of yarn. Yet, there’s nothing soft about the flavour: there’s hardly any sugar in it to mellow the acidity of the raw, fermented apples. It’s tart all the way through, sending zapping-harsh tingles across her tongue and leaving her throat dry when she swallows.

Applejack eyes her. “How is it?” she asks, just like how she had on that very first day she’d stomped around the kitchen, making Rainbow an apple smoothie.

“It’s…” Rainbow wavers. “It’s a lot like you.”

“That doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

“I don’t know how else to put it.”

“Well,” Applejack tilts her head, “do you like it?”

Party lights glide over Applejack’s skin. In her eyes it glimmers, like fireflies humming over the still surface of a lake at night. Watching her, Rainbow can’t believe she used to be afraid of those eyes. Applejack’s gaze on her is still as intense as ever, but it doesn’t make Rainbow want to bolt, anymore.

“I-” Rainbow starts.

“—Heeeeeeyyyyyyy!”

Both their attentions are snatched away by a loud BANG on the bar countertop. Gilda has her fist on the counter. She waves her other hand at them, full nine-inch acrylic nails on display (on all but two fingers, of course), jagged-sharp like talons.

“I didn’t invite the two of you here to lurk around the bar looking like total losers,” she drawls, jabbing at them. Rainbow honestly cannot tell if she’s drunk or just being Gilda. “Join in on the fun, you chums.” She throws herself at them, looping her arms around both her and Applejack’s shoulders, dragging the two of them into the room’s centre.

The music is head-splittingly loud here, being so close to the speakers and all. Rainbow can feel the pumping of the beat in her ribcage, and she winces, covering her ears at first, before her hearing slowly gets used to it. The stench of cigarette smoke hangs heavy and cloying in the air. Elbowing past people, Gilda eventually pushes them into a large ring of people. They're standing in a circle, cheering and clapping for someone who’s in the middle of stripping themselves. It’s soon apparent that it's a game of Truth or Dare is in progress.

The people in the ring explode into hoots when they see who’s joined them. The stripping person is left forgotten, and they hobble awkwardly into the obscuring shadows, underwear trailing around their knees. “It’s the Apple Shake Girls!” someone hollers, and Rainbow wonders wryly when she, too, had become an Apple Shake Girl.

“Truth or Dare?!!” another voice screeches in their ears.

“Who are you asking? Me or her?” Rainbow yells back.

“The cowgirl, duh!” the person waggles their tongue. “Everyone knows you won’t ever back down from a dare. We want to see how the newcomer does!” The partygoers surrounding the challenger exclaim their agreement. “So, what is it? Truth or Dare?”

“Dare,” Applejack answers, voice low, but loud enough to be heard. An appreciative woooooooaaaaaaaahh rumbles through the crowd.

“Go easy on her, Smoky!” someone says.

“She’s dug her grave,” Smoky proclaims, “now she’s gotta lie in it! Pass her a glass.” A glass is passed around the ring. Applejack took the glass, weighing it in her palm as she looks at Smoky questioningly.

Smoky leans over and grabs another shotglass, gesturing at the line of bottles on the table with their hand, a collection diverse enough to be its own separate bar. “Outdrink me.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You’ll have to drink from the Mexican,” Smoky’s eyes glint as someone waddles over with a new bottle. Rainbow recognises that bottle—the Mexican Hooker. It’s the world’s most god-awful, life-ruining combination of ingredients known to mankind: tequila (not just any tequila, Jose Cuervo) with hot sauce, tuna fish juice and a ‘generous’ jizz of fucking mayonnaise, used as punishment for those who chicken out from their truths or dares. Anyone who’s been a victim of the Mexican before will tell you that it tastes like the marriage of rotting corpses and salmonella. And even after your tastebuds are nuked, you won't be able to scrub the taste out of your mouth for three days and three nights, no matter what you do. Rainbow can testify to that.

“You’re insane,” protests Rainbow, shooting a look at the woman beside her. “Applejack, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.” Did Applejack even drink? Sure, maybe she parties and maybe she dances and maybe she’s worked in a bar before, but Applejack is… she’s a good-girl. This is her coworker, who forbids her from running down the escalator, who makes her put on seatbelts, who tells her to stop eating so much junk food and to not get into fights and not pickpocket even from big soulless corporations. There’s no way she drinks regularly enough to have alcohol tolerance… right?

Applejack shrugs and steps forward, holding out her glass. “Deal.”

Smoky smirks, holding out their own glass. Both glasses are filled with bubbling shots. Then, everyone watches as the two of them knock it back. Drink disappears down bobbing throats, and both slam their emptied glasses down on the table only milliseconds from each other, waiting for the refill. The crowd shouts, egging them on. Beer, whiskey, vodka splash into the glasses, round after round after round—”pour more carefully,” Smoky sneers, “don’t waste it”—with no clear victor in sight.

Tension mounts in the air; Rainbow’s lost count of the number of shots by now. Smoky is the best drinker she knows—Rainbow’s no lightweight, but she can’t outdrink them, not by a long shot. Yet, as the contest wears on, Smoky begins to look wobbly, their cheeks flushed red, while Applejack remains tall in her riding heels, slamming her glass down for another shot.

Finally, Smoky looks at the refilled glass in front of them. She takes a deep breath, as if in dejected acceptance, and pushes the glass away. The audience jeers, and two people rush forward to haul the stumbling Smoky to their feet, and their head is tilted back. The mighty Mexican Hooker descends upon them like an angel delivering divine judgement, and after one glug from the bottle, Smoky’s eyes loll back, passing out.

Meanwhile, from where she’s standing, Applejack barely gives Smoky a glance. She downs the remaining glass, wipes her lips.

And then, everyone watches as she reaches for one of the bottles on the table. Without a second’s warning, Applejack tosses her blonde head back and plugs her mouth with the rim. The crowd screams.

“Chug! Chug! Chug!” the chant rocks the foyer. Applejack’s throat bobs and bobs as the remaining vodka in the bottle disappears down her gullet. By the tenth “Chug!”, Applejack's wrenched the bottle from her lips. She turns it upside down, shaking it, splattering droplets across the floor.

Applejack spits. The wild cheers of the crowd are so deafening it almost drowns out the music.

“Holy shit,” Rainbow gasps, though she can’t hear herself over the screaming.

Carelessly, Applejack tosses the bottle back on the table, letting it roll to a stop against the shotglasses. She walks back toward where Rainbow’s leaning against the wall, still gawking.

“Holy shit,” Rainbow repeats. “How?”

“When I told you I knew liquor,” Applejack says, turning her back to lean on the wall beside Rainbow, “I meant I knew it. Intimately.” She removes her hat from her head, leisurely fanning herself with it.

“Okay, well, I sure as shit hope you didn’t drive here,” Rainbow groans, running a hand over her face. “Don’t you have work tomorrow? It’s not gonna be such a fun night carrying your ass back to Canterlot.” She casts a nervous look at the glass, the emptied bottle. “Or to the hospital. You better not croak on me because of some stupid dare.”

“Heh.” Applejack’s eyes are thin and smiling. “Now who’s the naggy one?”

Rainbow cuts herself off mid-speech, mouth hanging open. Shit, yeah, she’d sounded like Applejack for a second there. It feels weird, being the responsible one for once.

“You…” Rainbow trails off, then laughs breathily, shaking her head. “And here I thought you were a good-girl.”

Applejack crooks an eyebrow at her. “Might as well go ahead an’ call me a stick-in-the-mud.”

“A prude,” Rainbow says. “Are you even drunk?” She reaches out a hand to touch Applejack’s forehead, still feeling a little more than buzzed from the drinks she’s had throughout the night. Applejack doesn't attempt to shrug her off as Rainbow slides her hands down her temples, feeling Applejack’s cheeks, her jaw, her neck.

“No,” Applejack answers, uncharcteristically placid.

“Right, and I’m a saint,” Rainbow scoffs. Applejack's face isn’t flushing visibly, but a fiery heat runs under her freckled skin, warm and alive. “You’re a hilariously bad liar, you know. And yet, for all that I’ve told you about me… I still feel like I don’t know much of anything about you,” she muses. “Like, yeah, Pinkie said that some of it is my fault, but it’s not like you’ve been upfront with what you do say.”

Quiet, Applejack watches her. Finally, Rainbow takes her hands off her.

“Tell me,” Rainbow prods. “Where’d you learn to drink like that?”

At first, Rainbow isn’t sure if Applejack will respond to her less-than-subtle interrogation. Drunk Applejack certainly seems to have been silent up till now, and she feared that Applejack may be more shutdown-drunk than blabbermouth-drunk. But then, after a long, stirring moment, she speaks.

“When I was fourteen, I ran away from home," Applejack says slowly. Rainbow's eyes widen, and Applejack continues, "That time, the reason why my family had moved out of our village was because of discrimination. My parents’ marriage was frowned upon by the neighbours, and my Granny would have none of it, so she took my parents, my brother and sister and me and left for Canterlot. But even though most of the Apple family had ostracised them so, my parents still wanted to carry on our knowledge of apples and other fruits in the city, and so they started Sweet Apple Shakes."

Applejack pauses. She stops fanning herself, and her hat rests on her chest. When she speaks again, her voice sounds thicker than before.

"But I.. I didn’t like Canterlot and its capital-city, glass-and-skyscraper industriality. I wanted to be in sophisticated Manehattan, living surrounded by grand archways and redbrick bridges. So, one day, when my parents left home on a business trip, I set a plan in motion: I told my Aunt Orange, who lived in Manehattan, that my parents had allowed me to stay at her place for the timebeing; and then I told Granny, Big Mac and Apple Bloom that I was going for boarding school out of town. It was at Manehattan where my Aunt had me learn to mix drinks.”

“Your Aunt let an fourteen-year-old mix drinks?”

“You’d be surprised,” Applejack said. “My little cousin Babs was 3 years old at the time and mixing martinis. Not very good ones, but the point stands. I also learnt all sorts of other things: ballroom dancing, dining etiquette, so on and so forth. It was goin’ well at first. I was livin’ the life I’d dreamt of. But it wasn't lost on me how my classmates looked down on me; I always got the sense of being left out.

Later, I realised why I wasn’t fitting in with the Manehattanites. After school, my classmates would strip off their evening gowns and sneak out to the backstreets. They would do all sorts of illicit things. Cigarettes, drugs, fights, vandalism, visiting escorts, stealing… I followed them, and began to finally find a place with my classmates.

Of course, it wouldn’t last. My parents hadn't gotten back from their business trip yet, but they called and found out from Granny that I was at a boarding school that they had never signed me up for. They panicked and went searching for me. On the road, they met with an accident.”

Applejack's fists are clenched on her lap. She's quivering; Rainbow can see tears shining at the corners of her eyes, but they never spilled. Rainbow isn’t sure what to say, if saying anything would even be appropriate. But then Applejack continues.

“I’m not a good-girl. I’m not even a good person, Dash. I’m selfish,” Applejack whispers, looking at her. “Even now, I still am.”

“What do you mean?”

Applejack takes several deep breaths, as if preparing herself for something. She lowers her head, eyes hidden by the brim of her hat. “I came to this party because I had something to tell you.”

Rainbow suddenly feels afraid, but still she braves and asks, “What is it?”

"Don't come to Sweet Apple Shakes anymore," is what she says. "I'm sorry."

"Wh-What??"

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Applejack retorts, jerking her chin up to glare at her with watering eyes. “You’ve served out your sentence enough. There—you’re released, dismissed, fired, however you want to put it. It’s for the best.”

“Y..you’re drunk,” Rainbow objects. “We can discuss this when you’re sober.”

Vehemently, Applejack shakes her head. “No. I'd already thought about this beforehand. The cider is a parting gift.” She shoves the bottle into Rainbow’s cold hands. “I’ve called a cab for myself, already. I mean it: don’t come back to to the shop, and don’t talk to me again. I’ll have mall security take you away if you show up.”

In a daze, Rainbow watches as Applejack lurches off the wall and stumbles away. A few seconds later, Rainbow breaks out into a run to chase after her, but at this moment, Gilda says something, and the crowd of partygoers surges, pushing her in the opposite direction.

After fighting her way through the crowd, Rainbow bursts out of the doors into the cold winter wind, running down the steps. But Applejack's already out of the gates, sliding into the cab waiting in the road.

And Rainbow… Rainbow's still feeling more confused than anything. And here Rainbow had been thinking she got to see a little more of Applejack today, delighted in the thought of them getting closer. Had Applejack really just spent the entire party goofing around with Rainbow, knowing she was going to drop the news on her at the end? How long had she been planning this for? And most importantly, who the hell does that?

Yet, another part of Rainbow reminds her that, just months ago, she would’ve been ecstatic being told to leave. The Rainbow of months ago would’ve jumped at the chance to be free of 6AM mornings and dumb aprons and annoying customers.

So why is the idea—of never clocking into shop to see Applejack scooping her hair into a net again, never unloading groceries from the van with her again, never laughing and blending and tasting smoothies with her again—so unbearable?

Rainbow realises, that, thinking back on it, she knows perfectly the reason why. She thinks she's known for a very long time. She'd just never wanted to face it again—giving her devotion to someone, only to have them treat it like it was nothing, nothing at all, and then leaving in the end.

It’s only now, standing on the front porch of Gilda’s manor holding a bottle of cider, watching the tail-lights of the cab fade into the black night, that Rainbow Dash admits it to herself.

She’s in love with Applejack.

And she's been proven right once again.

5- Life’s Too Short, Gotta Stand for Something

Because Rainbow Dash’s life is one giant, cosmic joke, Dr Svengallop is the first person who notices.

If that name doesn’t ring any bells, that’s Rainbow’s professor. You know, the one who hates her and is always one assignment away from failing her for this module. And, as it seems now, Rainbow has finally turned in that deal-breaker assignment. An assignment apparently so goosebump-raising, stomach-sickeningly bad that Dr Svengallop has called Rainbow Dash to his ~~evil lair~~ office, probably to have a very long and serious ~~torture session~~ talk.

Okay no but seriously though. Even though Dr Svengallop is just a professor and is supposed to just have one cubicle of the department’s staffroom to himself, somehow his stuff occupies an entire row of five cubicles. Rumour had it that he was such an insufferable presence that none of the other professors wanted to sit next to him, and so the row of cubicles essentially belonged to him.

As Rainbow Dash followed her professor down the Svengallop Lane of Certain Doom, she didn’t see any torture devices, but she was sure that they were there, just hidden out of sight. In contrast to other teachers’ cubicles, which were stickied with class-photos, colourful handwritten Teachers’ Day postcards, and tacky fake flowers, his cubicles were as monotone as an Ikea showroom, stacked only with folders of essays and schedules, textbooks and encyclopedias. Any moment now, the man was going to sweep aside a sheaf of exam scripts and reveal the guillotine beneath it.

But that doesn’t happen. What instead happens is that Dr Svengallop sits her down in the middle cubicle, then sits himself down across from her. He lays out her latest assignment in between them, like a paper-thin wall of protection from the incoming axe.

And then he asks her:

“What’s wrong with you?”

Rainbow might have preferred the guillotine.

Dr Svengallop goes on to detail how exceedingly trash Rainbow’s assignment is, which is really saying something about how mad he was, because uni professors usually just failed you without telling you what was specifically wrong with what you wrote. But truthfully, Rainbow didn’t need her professor to tell her where went wrong—the stuff she had written was just completely nonsensical. Tank could’ve written a better assignment than this one.

After what feels like hours, Dr Svengallop finally finishes his rant. He pauses to catch his breath, shoulders heaving up and down like he’s just finished playing ten matches of tennis with himself. He looks at her, bespectacled gaze full of such disappointment that Rainbow Dash feels like she should be getting to her knees and apologising for her existence. Then he closes his eyes and sighs.

“Unfortunately,” he says very slowly, like each word is being squeezed out from him by one of his concealed torture devices, “I am both legally and morally obligated to ask you about your well-being.”

Oh, goddesses help her.

Catching the look on Rainbow’s face, Dr Svengallop clarifies, “I’m not going to interrogate you. It’s none of my business how you actually spend your time. I genuinely do not give a shit if you are cultivating a farm of snails or planning the prime minister’s assassination. But you’re a bright student with a lot of potential-”

“Yeah, right,” Rainbow has to interrupt here, “and that’s why you’re always failing me.”

“You have the right ideas, Miss Dash, but you don’t follow the course requirements,” her professor dangles the marking rubric in front of her. “You could do great things if you took things seriously. I hate seeing a mind like that go to waste, so stop it.”

“That’s a very nice thought, professor, but have you considered that maybe I’m just stupid?”

Dr Svengallop stares. Abruptly, Rainbow realises that she’s broken character. Her ‘self-assured, confident, I-can-do-no-wrong’ character. Here lies the real Rainbow Dash, world’s most self-aware piece of crap.

He eyes her. He’s almost as short as Rainbow, so they see eye-to-eye in an unexpected kind of way. “Look, I know you… have friends. Those four girls you’re always with. And the blonde girl in that TikTok.”

Rainbow flinches. “You saw that TikTok?”

“Everyone and their mother has seen that TikTok,” Dr Svengallop drones. “But the point is. You have friends. Family. Support system, yada-yada. Talk to them. Whatever.” He sounds like he’s reciting hastily-scribbled notes from a compulsory teachers’ meeting on mental health. Yet, somehow, beneath the onion-layers of cynicism, Rainbow feels some undercurrent of… sincerity, even if it's extremely awkwardly delivered.

That porcupine-spiked way of talking reminds her of someone else. It’s funny how a few months has taught her how to push apart the spines to find the soft fur underneath. And once she’s learnt to see, she can’t not see it. Can’t unsee the man, hunched and alone in his five staffroom cubicles.

“I don’t want to have to fail you because you’re in some kind of mood, so get your sh-” his voice catches. He takes a shuddering moment, seemingly to try and mellow himself out, and in the end his voice comes out in a strangled attempt at gentleness. “Get yourself together. Okay?”

And it’s like. If goddamn Dr Svengallop is concerned about her, then Rainbow Dash really has to do something, doesn’t she?

~~~

“Pinkie Pie, I need your help.”

“Yeeeeeeess?” Pinkie blinks up at her from the seats of the lecture theatre. The lecture had already concluded, and most people had left, but Pinkie was still packing up because she had been building a house out of her stationery on top of her table and currently took her sweet time detangling glitter pens from paperclip chains.

Well, it was good for Rainbow, because she had something to ask her. She stays behind, which isn’t that unusual really, because that’s what Rainbow does.

“Um, it’s,” Rainbow folds her hands inside her coat pockets. “I’m asking for a friend-”

“Uh huh.”

Rainbow wrings the inside of her pockets. “Do you know where Applejack lives?”

“Oho?” Pinkie raises her eyebrow dramatically. “Are you going to break into her house?”

“No!” Rainbow says, though the voice in her head adds ‘not unless I have to’, and she knows the both of them hear it. “It’s a house visit.” She jerks. “Not me! My friend. Wants to pay her a house visit.”

“Okaaaay, Dashie,” Pinkie says as she tucks away a sheet of gel stickers, bemused. “Introduce me to this friend of yours, and I’ll tell them where Applejack lives.”

“I can’t do that. Uhhhh… my friend’s really shy, they don’t like people. I can pass the message.”

Pinkie eyes her. “Give me their number then, I’ll text them.”

“Uuuuuuuh,” is the sound Rainbow lets out as she runs dry of excuses. She slumps. “Fine. It’s me, I am the friend. Now can you give me the address?”

“Oh,” she blinks. “I don’t have it.”

“Rnrnrnrnnrnrnrnrgh,” Rainbow tackles her to the lecture theatre seats. “I’m going to kill you!”

“Aeeieiiiiiiiiigh!” Pinkie squeals, rolling around like a trapped hamster. “You wouldn’t dare kill your only source of apple intel! If I die, the info dies with me!”

Rainbow finds herself laughing as she rolls back onto the adjacent seat, loud and echoing in the emptied theatre. Pinkie Pie sits up, grinning as she runs her hand through her messed-up hair, though the riot of pink curls looks exactly the same as before.

“Well, I’m glad you finally decided to do something about that mad-awful crush of yours,” she says, expression sly. Rainbow opens her mouth to retort, but not before Pinkie raises her hand. “Ah, ah, ah! Don’t even try to deny it. Pinkie knows all. Pinkie sees all.”

Rainbow holds up her hands in surrender. “I wasn’t going to say anything!” Pinkie levels her a flat stare. “Okay, fine, maybe I was. But… anyway…” she glances aside. “It’s not going to work out. I just want to end things on a better note than it did.”

“Mmmm…” Pinkie sobers, nodding to herself. “I see. So something had gone down between you two.”

“Why?”

“Hey, even if you didn’t tell us anything, I’m still one of Sweet Apple Shakes’ most regular customers,” Pinkie says. “Of course I’m going to notice when one of the workers is suddenly missing, or when Jackie is all sad. But she wouldn’t tell me anything, so I could only guess at what happened.”

“Wait,” Rainbow interrupts, “Applejack’s sad?”

“Yeah,” Pinkie affirms, “all blue like a kicked puppy! And if she had a colour, she’s supposed to be orange!”

Rainbow doesn’t know what the second half of the sentence was supposed to mean, but she sweeps it aside in favour of being filled with unspeakable fury. The fucking gall— “She was the one who fired me and told me to never see her again, and she has the nerve to act heartbroken? What the hell????!?!”

Pinkie sucks in a breath. “Ooooooh. Sheesh, gurl.”

“Forget the visit of peace,” Rainbow rages, “I’m going to break into her house and break all her stupid blenders.”

“I’ll literally help you,” Pinkie’s eyes are flaming. “How dare she mess with my bestie!”

Rainbow exhales through a weary smile. “Okay, but seriously though, if you don’t know where she lives, it’s fine. I’ll move on eventually. …….It might take a year of sobbing breakdowns, but I’ll get there.”

“Nonsense! Codswallop!” Pinkie rejects, as if the idea of Rainbow weeping like a widowed maiden affronted her. She zips up her bag, tosses the straps around her shoulders. “I’ll get you that address. Trust me.”

Rainbow watches her friend. They may be very different people, with not that much in common, but she’s still filled with so much conviction and determination on her behalf.

Slowly, she peels herself from the seats, standing up.

“Hey, Pinkie. Thanks,” she says, “for waiting for me.”

“? But you were the one waiting for me?”

“I said what I said.”

~~~

By hook or by crook, Pinkie does get ahold of Applejack’s address. It’s actually not all that far, which makes sense for how dastardly early Applejack gets to the store every day.

Rainbow Dash hops off the bus, twisting and turning around the apartment blocks while following the maps app on her phone. Even though she’s not really planning on breaking and entering, she’s still filled with the jitters. What would she even say when she got there? What if Applejack’s not even home? Is she just going to awkwardly eat butter biscuits with Granny Smith and ask for her permission to court her granddaughter?

Eh. Whatever. Thinking was never Rainbow’s strong suit. She forges onward.

She stands in front of the door with the indicated unit number on her phone. Praying to lords above that Pinkie Pie hadn’t decided to pull a practical joke and give her a random person’s address, she presses the doorbell.

Diiiiiiiing dooooooong!

Rainbow waits. Rainbow twiddles her thumbs. Taps her foot.

Finally, there’s a click of a latch, and the door behind the gate creaks open. Rainbow’s jaw drops, and her heart is filled with the same kind of irresistible delight that one experiences on seeing a puppy.

The girl that peeks out from behind the door literally looks like a smaller, cuter version of Applejack (not that Applejack wasn’t cute, though). She wore overalls and had a big bow in her red hair like a Powerpuff girl.

“Oh my goddess,” Rainbow can’t help blurting out, “it’s Apple Teeny.”

The girl crooks her eyebrow in a way that also screams Applejack.

“B. Starts with B. Uhhh. B-b-b-b-b-b- Apple Bloom!” Rainbow makes finger guns as the correct name finally surfaces in her memory. “AJ’s little sis!”

“Yes, Rainbow Dash,” drones Apple Bloom.

“Whoa,” Rainbow gawks, “how’d you know?”

With a withering amber gaze, Apple Bloom puts her hand out and gestures at her. Jabs her hand a few more times at Rainbow’s head for emphasis. Right. The rainbow hair.

Swallowing, Rainbow grins sheepishly. “Uh, I come in peace?”

Huffing, the little girl reaches up and unlocks the gate. It swings open.

“About damn time you came,” Apple Bloom says as Rainbow’s stepping out of her shoes and onto the welcome carpet. “If I have to hear Applejack mooning over you one more time, I’m packing my bags and moving to Manehattan.”

“Hey, your sister didn’t exactly make it easy,” Rainbow argues, “she blocked my number. And she has like, no social media presence. Like, come on, not even a ten-year-old abandoned LinkedIn profile?”

“Oh, no, she has social media. They’re just all secret accounts,” Apple Bloom replies. “If y’all don’t sort your… whatever out by today, I’ll tell you the usernames.”

“You’ll what????!?!” a familiar voice yells from another room.

“Here she comes,” Apple Bloom smiles savagely.

“Apple Bloom, who the hell did you let in the house-” Applejack’s voice dies as she sees Rainbow Dash standing in the middle of the living room. “Why are you here?”

“I come in peace!” Rainbow yelps. “And by entirely legal means! Also, you, you said ‘don’t come to the shop anymore’. You said nothing about coming to your house.”

Green eyes narrow. “Get out.”

“Nuh-uh,” Rainbow says.

“I mean it!”

Apple Bloom looks between them. And then, throwing her head back, she starts saying loudly, “Twitter. At.”

Both of them look at her, bewildered.

Undeterred, the girl continues, “Capital X, small x, dot, underscore, dot, small x, big X, big R, A, I…”

Applejack pales. “Don’t.” She looks to Rainbow, who already has her phone out and typing. “Nonononono, stop!”

Apple Bloom puts her hands on her hips. “Then y’all better talk it out!” With a flounce of her big bow, she turns around and storms into one of the rooms, probably her bedroom. Rainbow breathes out a sigh of relief. Thank the heavens for vicious little girls.

Applejack’s nostrils flare as she inhales and exhales. She gestures to the couch in the living room. “Sit.”

Rainbow does. Her shoulders sag as she relaxes into the couch, slinging the strap of her bag off her shoulders. She can feel Applejack’s eyes on her as she removes a thermos from her bag.

“What?” Rainbow says, uncapping it. “I wasn’t gonna visit a house without bringing something.”

“.......” Applejack watches her. “I’ll bring cups.”

~~~

Two mugs laid out in front of them on the coffee table.

In front of the coffee table, the television was still switched on, airing some kind of shitty local romance drama with a plot identical to a million other TV shows.

“You watch this?” Rainbow mutters as the female lead weeps in front of the male lead, her tears perfect and glistening under the staged lighting and CGI falling petals. But I’m Juliet and you’re Romeo, we can’t be together!

“No,” Applejack says. And then, she coughs. “Well, only sometimes. When I’m feeling… down.”

Rainbow eyes the screen for two seconds more. Then she reaches for the remote and zaps it off.

“You have some fucking nerve,” she says.

Applejack’s still staring ahead at the black screen. “Why are you here?”

“Because you owe me a damn explanation?” Rainbow hisses.

“What didn’t I explain at the party?”

“Nothing?? Everything???” Rainbow throws her hands up. “Ugh. Shouldn’t have listened to Twi. I knew I should have just muscled into the store and hammered all your new blenders.”

“You what.”

“I didn’t actually do it! But keep this up, and I’m going to seriously consider it!”

Applejack closes her eyes and lets out a sigh. “It’s not a good idea.”

“What isn’t? I think it’s a great idea. If I break all your blenders, you’ll have no choice but to employ me again for five years and twenty days-”

“I meant,” Applejack interjects, “it’s not a good idea for us to continue this.”

Rainbow’s heart pounds in her chest. “...Continue what?”

It’s at this moment Apple Bloom starts to cough really loudly from inside her room. Seconds later, anime music starts blaring from the crevice of her door.

Sighing again, Applejack leans back into the couch, blonde hair spreading out over the back of the cushion. She stares up at the ceiling. “My parents were an inter-racial couple,” she says. “Where I was from, they weren’t treated well for it. Sometimes I think, why did they choose to stay together? Even marry? It wasn’t like they were soulmates or something. They could just move on, find someone else, and their lives would have been a heck lotta easier. They wouldn’t have had to move here at all. They would still be alive.”

“But… then you wouldn’t have been around.”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t have been around to care about that, neither.”

“I would,” Rainbow says quietly. "Care, that is."

TENSHI WA HOHOEMI DE!~~TSUREDASHITE!~~~ blares from Apple Bloom’s room.

Applejack glances at Rainbow. She glances away.

“For two women, it’s the same,” she says. “It’s not worth the trouble.”

“Dude, it’s 2024,” Rainbow says, incredulous. “People are gay. Companies colour themselves like me for pride month. Basic bitches are listening to Chappell Roan!”

“And yet people still debate every day about whether or not we should exist.”

“Okay, so we’re getting there,” Rainbow pans her hands. “But why do you think your Granny let your parents marry? And moved y’all here? Cuz she believed in love, your parents’ love!”

“What kind of future do you even see for us? You’ll be a uni grad, and I’m stuck working a dead-end job!”

“How are you stuck? Oh, I think I know,” Rainbow says. “Look, you need to stop blaming yourself for your parents’ death. They married because of love. They moved here because of love. They drove to go find you because of love. And they’d have wanted you to do what you want and love who you wanted to.”

By now, Applejack was curled up into a ball on the couch, her head in her knees, trembling. She kinda looks like a tortoise, withdrawn into its rock-hard shell. “Just leave.”

Lucky thing, that Rainbow Dash happens to be real good with tortoises.

“Stop telling me to leave, I’m not gonna!” she proclaims. “The moment you asked me to put that butt-ugly apron on, you made me a part of your life! And now you bet your ass I’m never, ever, ever gonna budge!”

Applejack lifts her head. “But why?”

“‘Cause I’m fucking stupid!” she yells. She can feel her face getting all red already. “And I can’t think ahead. But even if I don’t have brains, at least I got heart. So stop talking yourself in circles and just, just,” she doesn’t know what to say anymore, so she just sits there and hyperventilates.

Applejack stares at her. Then slowly, she unfolds herself, dropping her knees over the edge of the couch. She leans forward to grab the thermos, and pours out a drink: one for Rainbow, one for herself.

She tastes it. Raises an eyebrow. “You did something to the cider.”

“Yeah, it’s my new recipe,” Rainbow blubbers, feeling absolutely insane. “And I’m not telling you what it is unless you let me back in for a hundred, million years.”

“Heh. Okay.”

“What? What ‘okay’—mmph!”

And Applejack was kissing her, the taste like sweet cider.

6- It's a Coinky Dink World

It’s winter, and Rainbow Dash is officially dating Applejack.

Holy fucking shit.

How did they even get here? Rainbow is trying to mentally retrace her footsteps, count the stepping stones that led her here. She gets to apple smoothie, and then it’s a blank. If she had to put it into an equation it would be apple smoothie + ????? = girlfriend. And Rainbow isn’t particularly good at math.

Like yeah, sure, there had been Gilda before, but that had felt way different. That had been more like, following in Gilda’s shadow, helping her hold her stuff, being forced to hang out with all her shitty friends, then maybe a kiss or shoulder-wrap if she was in a good mood.

This? This is something else. This is—

—her hand wrapped in another’s, warm and heavy. On the outside, it’s honey-coloured, brushed with freckles. Underneath, the skin is rough and calloused fingertips, caressing the back of Rainbow’s hand as it moves. And Rainbow’s heart feels like it’s about to explode everywhere like a rogue blender.

Rainbow tells Applejack this, and Applejack gives her a very unamused look in return.

Well. We can’t all be perfect. But Rainbow’s in love with imperfect, anyway.

“Everyone,” she tells her friends when they arrive, scarcely believing it herself, “this is my girlfriend, Applejack.”

“I’m Applejack,” Applejack says.

“Trust me, we all know,” Rarity says, eyebrows flat.

Rainbow’s jaw hangs open. “What? Since when?”

“Since like… November?”

“Huh? But we only started dating last week?”

Rarity frowns. “You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“She’s not,” Applejack says with grace, and because Applejack is not a chronic joker like Rainbow is, that’s how everyone knows that it’s the truth—and it is the truth—and then a palpable wave of horrified realisation washes over the girls, minus Pinkie Pie, who chews nonchalantly on her lunch, a chocolate doughnut.

Rainbow claps a hand over her forehead. “Why does everyone look so surprised?”

“I genuinely thought you were dating already,” Twilight says.

“How.”

“It’s blindingly obvious,” she says, and then the gal—get this—takes out her phone and brings up a whole Google Document. On it, multiple neatly-organised tables, diagrams, and images. Images of the two of them, studiously labelled with circles and arrows and zoom-ins of their smiles. There are various text explanations, with footnotes, and the footnotes have footnotes, all leading to one conclusion at the end, bold red text: they’re in love.

Rainbow howls in outrage: “So you had the time to do all this, but not when I asked you to plot out Applejack’s shift times so I could avoid her??? What about your assignments, huh?”

Pushing up her glasses, Twilight smiles mystically. “It wasn’t ever about the assignments. Obviously, I wasn't going to help you two to not meet.”

Wtf. Twilight Sparkle had been shipping them like they were one of her OTPs.

“Um, I thought so too,” Fluttershy added meekly. “That you were dating. Then broke up. And got back together.”

Rainbow claps her hand over her forehead and sighs. “Now I feel like literally everyone knew about this except me.”

“If it helps, I didn’t know this,” Applejack says.

Rainbow clasps their hands together. “And this is exactly why we’re meant for each other.” Applejack doesn’t say anything back, but when Rainbow leans in and bumps their foreheads together playfully, her whole face flushes this vibrant, apple-red. It’s so cute Rainbow wants to scream.

Pinkie interrupts the moment with a long, loud burp. “Okaaaaay!” she says as she smacks her lips free of chocolate sprinkles. “We’ve all gathered here today for something other than watching Applejack and Rainbow Dash make out for two hours.” She steadfastly ignores Twilight’s downward glance of disappointment. “Who’s ready for some fun?”

~~~

It’s a bright and sunny day at Equestria Land, the newly-opened amusement park in Canterlot.

At first, Rainbow’s kind of worried for Applejack, who’s always been kind of awkward with people she doesn’t know well. But Applejack warms up to the rest of Rainbow’s friends quicker than she would have thought. Somewhere between the spinning teacup rides and kiddy trains and overpriced finger food only justified after splitting six-ways, she slides right in, laughing and smiling and bantering like she’s always belonged there.

By the end of it, Twilight, Fluttershy, Pinkie and Rarity are just as much Applejack’s friends as they are Rainbow’s, in the same way that Fluttershy had brought them to Rainbow. It’s funny how the torch passes on, like that.

At the end, the others tell them that they should have some time for themselves. And so they do. The park’s closing soon, so they have time for one last activity.

“Maybe the Ferris wheel?” Applejack suggests.

Rainbow squints at her. “You seriously want the Ferris wheel?”

Applejack shrugs. “Ain’t that what a… romantic couple’s supposed to do?”

Rainbow’s gotten pretty good at reading Applejack’s minute facial expressions. She sees the furrow between her brows. “Dude. Fuck what romantic couples are supposed to do. What do you want?”

Applejack sees that she’s been caught. Sighing, her green gaze drifts off… and lands on a rollercoaster. It’s a hulking steel monstrosity of a construction, with tracks that loop and twist and swerve around each other in ways that don’t appear to follow the laws of physics.

“Hoboy,” Rainbow murmurs.

~~~

“You okay? You look kind of blue.”

“Maybe I’ve always been blue,” Rainbow shoots back as they’re pressing the safety bars from over their heads into their laps. Jolly music plays from hidden speakers behind painted cutouts of smiling clouds, oblivious and uncaring of Rainbow’s imminent death. Several cars are lined up in front of them on the coaster tracks, packed with people, friends and families with their kids. There’s some boy half her height that’s already got his hands in the air and screaming, and it’s frankly insulting because how is this kid not scared of his inevitable doom??!?

“Hey. If you don’t wanna ride this rollercoaster, we can still get off now,” Applejack says, moving to raise her hand.

“No!” Rainbow grabs her hand and drags it down. She gulps in a lungful of air, grabbing the safety bar. Her fingernails find little purchase in the smooth surface of the bar. Who made this bar so round and fat that you can’t even grip it properly?? “I can do this. I need to do this.”

“Are ya scared of rollercoasters?”

“Pfffft—hahahahhaha! Who the hell is scared of rollercoasters?” Rainbow wheezes. Then, sensing Applejack’s concerned eyes on her, she sobers. “Uhh… maybe a little. See, I’m okay when it climbs uphill. I love it when it does all those crazy turns and spirals. But the drops…” she shivers, curling her toes in her shoes. “The feeling of falling. That makes me afraid.”

She sucks in a deep breath before continuing, “But I want to face my fears. So I want to stay. I’m sure of it.”

“Okay. If you’re sure,” Applejack nods. On the safety bar, their hands overlap. Her thumb rubs comforting circles on the back of Rainbow’s wrist. Then the rollercoaster jerks, and they’re off.

The rollercoaster starts, as all do, with the massive ascent. It rattles as it climbs up the tracks, and Rainbow braces herself against the back of the seat. She tries focus up on the bright blue, cloud-streaked sky above them, and not on the ground that shrinks away below them, the array of carnival rides and the tops of tents and milling people. The ground that will be rushing up to meet them anytime soon…

Rainbow breathes in and breathes out. Breathes in and breathes out. She tightens her grip on Applejack’s hand as the coaster reaches the crest of the tracks, the wheels below them grinding to a momentary halt.

“Hey. Rainbow,” Applejack’s voice says, warm, “look at me.”

“H-huh?” Rainbow’s voice is several octaves higher as she tears her gaze from the clouds and settles upon Applejack.

Her blonde hair’s tousled in the wind, her green eyes sparkling like emeralds under the sunlight. And she’s smiling, so bright and beautiful that Rainbow honest-to-goddess forgets where they are. Only thinks about how fast her heart’s beating, how her breath swoops in her chest, how safe she feels with her hand under Applejack’s. Rainbow’s always had cold hands, but Applejack’s are ridiculously warm, even in winter.

It’s like she’s the sun. Her sun. Rainbow can’t even imagine where she would be if she hadn’t met her, really.

It’s then, at the top of the rollercoaster, that Applejack leans over and presses her lips to hers.

The drop comes. Rainbow’s stomach plummets twenty stories, as does the rest of her, and Applejack too. Screams are drowned out by the torrent of rushing wind.

Their foreheads are still smashed together, Rainbow staring down at Applejack’s freckled nosebridge, and she grins mischievously against her lips. Her hair’s flying loose everywhere and Rainbow thinks she has some strands of it stuck in her teeth. It’s awful. It’s amazing. They’re still falling, but they’re falling together. Then they hit rock-bottom, before they’re rising again.

“Oh my fucking god,” she gasps when she has breath in her lungs again. “You—”

“Shhh,” Applejack smiles, looking unfairly satisfied with herself. “Enjoy the ride.”

Now, no way Rainbow Dash is admitting defeat like this. So the next time they crest a wave, she takes her hands off the handlebars and kisses her girlfriend. And instead of screaming, they laugh all the way down.

~~~

Applejack stumbles as they’re getting off the rollercoaster. Rainbow catches her. Groaning, Applejack slings her arm around her shoulder and leans on her.

“Yo, you good?” Shit, I didn’t kiss her too hard, did I?

Applejack lets out another lengthy groan. “I forgot to mention this, but I get motion sickness.”

“You have motion sickness and you still got on a rollercoaster??!?”

“Look, I really wanted to go on the rollercoaster,” Applejack says defensively. She hiccups, bringing a hand over her mouth as she collapses onto a bench. “It’s afterwards that I… uh… don’t feel so good. But I just need a drink and I’ll be fine.”

“Kay, I’ll go get you one,” Rainbow says. Then she pauses. Before she can think about it, she slips her jacket off her shoulders and drapes it over Applejack.

Applejack gives her a wide-eyed stare, sitting there on the bench, engulfed in her blue jacket. Rainbow can see her fingers curling underneath the cotton, subconsciously tugging it closer around herself.

“Um, you, you can hug it or whatever. I-I’ll be back!” Rainbow’s voice actually cracks when she says that. She turns around and takes off running towards the nearest drink stall. Romance is turning her into the world’s biggest, most cliché sap and it’s embarrassing, okay, Rainbow’s cool aloof image is going up in flames. It’s not her fault that Applejack keeps… being… Applejack!

She reaches the drink stand. They’re selling different types of drinks, but of course Rainbow’s eyes zoom straight to the fruit shake menu. When it’s her turn, she points and says to the staff, “One apple shake please!”

“Sure thing,” the staff says, and before long she has a fresh cup of apple shake in her hands. She jogs back to where Applejack sits, still with her jacket folded over herself.

“Your order, siree!” Rainbow crows.

“Thanks, sugarcube,” Applejack says, taking it into her hand. Rainbow squeezes into the bench next to her, watching her as she sips on the drink. Gradually, colour returns to her cheeks, her breathing becoming easier.

“How is it?”

“Of course you got an apple shake,” Applejack remarks.

“Yeah, no shit I did. How are you feeling?”

“Peachy,” Applejack laughs. Then, after a moment, she asks, “What’s your favourite drink?”

“Your apple smoothie,” Rainbow waggles her eyebrows.

“Alright, but other than that. No more fruit shakes or fruit stuff. Surely you like other drinks too.”

“Well…” Rainbow thinks about it. “Peppermint coffee.”

“...What in the high hell is that.”

“Hey, don’t knock it till you try it!” Rainbow says earnestly, knowing she had very well knocked it until she tried it. Now she has a full-blown addiction to it. “That stuff wakes you up like nobody’s business. The more shots of peppermint the better. Really fires up your whole system.”

“If you put it like that, I may just have to try it,” Applejack chuckles. She looks up to the sky. After a long pause, she adds, “I… want to get to know you more. Sometimes I wish I met you earlier, so we could have maybe… I dunno… grown up together. I wish I knew you, past and present.”

“......” Rainbow cocks her head. “...Yeah, I get what you mean. Feels like we should’ve met earlier. But hey, we got each other now. That’s what matters.”

Applejack shifts against her shoulder. When Rainbow looks at her, she’s spreading out the jacket bundled on her lap to drape across both of them.

“Eh?”

“You were shivering,” she smiles.

“A-ah,” Rainbow makes another frankly embarrassing noise. But Applejack seems to find it adorable, chuckling and leaning over to boop her nose. Rainbow whines. Applejack chuckles some more.

“I’m really glad I met you,” she says.

“Glad I broke into your kitchen?” Rainbow can’t help but tease.

“Mmm,” Applejack hums, steady and sure. “But I liked you before that.”

Rainbow’s brain freezes. “Wait. Before that? Wait,” she can hear the comical record scratch of her mind as it rewinds to the start. “That’s why you kept staring at me? And taking forever making my smoothie? Because—”

“—I had a crush on ya,” Applejack affirms, cheeks reddening.

“And you decided to address that. By staring at me. And hoping I’d get the hint.”

“Eyup.”

Rainbow facepalms. “All that time, I thought you hated me! Or were a creep! Couldn’t you have just asked me? Written your number on my cup? What—instead you jumped at the excuse to sentence me to a million years of part-time fruit-shaking?”

Applejack shrugs. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. Fuck. It did,” Rainbow says, leaning back on the bench. “I shook them fruits. I shook them good.”

Applejack’s laugh is a stirring thing. It’s like sunlight and fresh fruit, glaring in its brightness, acidic in its sweetness. And Rainbow Dash realises that it wasn’t the smoothie that had made her keep coming back to Sweet Apple Shakes all that time ago. It was this girl; this girl that she had always wanted to know. And who she would get to know, starting from now.

Rainbow smiles. And she says,

“I’m glad I met you too.”

Author's Note

There were like a whole bunch more ideas that didn't make it into this fic. Some of these include
1. sus hand holding when AJ was teaching RD to cut apples. I KNOW ITS THE MOST OBVIOUS THING, but I forgot to write it DARN.
2. if this was a longer thing, let's say if this was an MLPEG movie, Rainbow would have let the fame of being a TikTok sensation go to her head and started taking credit for the shake store and stuff like that, but that would have been too long a story and frankly the self-indulgent me didn't want to write so much nonromance angst. But it really makes for a good movie with the whole moral aesop thing. Hasbro... looking at u...
3. I know this is a college au but I didn't end up talking about college very much at all LOL. One reason was because I could not for the love of Celestia decide on what Rainbow majors in, but I was kind of thinking pre-med, because the sheer juxtaposition of Rainbow Dash studying to be a doctor is amusing to me and because I think she could pull it off. Let me know what you guys think. I still think she goes to flight school, but otherwise, what would she major in?
4. Rainbow's fruity-ass hair incidentally makes her a very good mascot for a Fruit Shake store. Also, she helps Applejack dye her hair later on for fun at least once.
5. I liked imagining them shopping for Christmas decorations. Or any other holiday. The dynamic is that they basically become the twin bosses of Sweet Apple Shakes bahaha.
6. TikTok absolutely blows up once they find out Applejack and Rainbow are dating. I keep thinking about Rainbow 'ordering' a smoothie from Applejack behind the counter and Applejack keeps getting her order wrong and they keep flirting aggressively until Applejack pulls her up over the counter and kisses her. Something like that.
7. Can you tell how self-indulgent this was i was CRANKING the shipping

Thanks for being so patient and supportive with me I fr did not think this silly fic was going to be this long or at all serious. But goddess finally im DONE. Idk if I will be back because if you follow me on twt you probably know I've been working on a massive original novel thing which is consuming most of my braincells & creative energy BUT! If demand and inspiration calls, I may reawaken from my slumber. Until then, beloveds.