Twilight couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Considering what had transpired in the last ten days, this was easily the least of her problems, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that among all other things, she had just received confirmation from no less than two stallions that Princess Luna had recently destroyed Rarity’s boutique in a misty explosion—leaving behind a very attractive crater, as far as craters go.

And things like that should be met with all the grace and sanctity of one-hundred proof alcohol in quantities more accurately measured in gallons than ounces.

“But—it’s—it’s like your job!” stammered Twilight.

She really wanted alcohol and wasn’t getting any, and was therefore becoming frustrated, which unfortunately only made her want the alcohol more. Because that’s how life works, and it sucks.

“Ah’m not gonna say it again, we’re all out. Berry Punch came by and cleaned us all out,” said Applejack. To be more accurate, she didn’t simply say that to Twilight. She said it as rationally as a pony could be after working in the hot sun all day and then coming home to this kind of attitude.

“I know you, Applejack. You’re holding out on us! How can you not have apple cider? You’re an apple farmer. You don’t see me running out of books!”

“Twilight, darling,” said Rarity, quite normally. “When you said that we were going to steal a keg of cider from Applejack, I was loosely under the impression that we were going to—you know? Break in and steal it. I was actually quite excited by such mischief. Not that I approve of lawbreaking, but she’s our friend, so it’s all in good fun, no?”

Applejack gave the thirsty unicorns a cross look. “Oh, so y’all were gonna steal mah harvest?”

“No,” said Rarity.

“Yes,” said Twilight in unison.

They glanced at each other stupidly.

“So, why’d ya knock on the door and ask me if y’all can have some liquor?” she asked skeptically. “Given yer plan, it’s like y’all didn’t even think it through.”

The two unicorns looked rather ashamed of the lack of burglary focus, both of them refusing to make eye contact with Applejack. By the look on her face, Applejack was almost as confused and frustrated as they were desperate and potentially horny.

“Well,” started Rarity. “Twilight was going to distract you with a funny story about how Luna blew up my house, and I was going to deftly sneak into your basement and acquire that luscious liquid.”

“But y’all just walked up all pleasant, like nothin’s the matter, and asked in good faith for some of my liquor like a good friend should?”

“There was a breakdown in communication it seems...” said Twilight, rubbing her chin. “I thought we were going to try and subdue you. Maybe tackle you and knock you out.”

“Oh, fair enough,” agreed Applejack. “Well, you can’t have any cider. What I have left is for me and Rainbow.”

“Darn,” said Twilight.

At that moment, Rainbow Dash slowly descended in from the top of the threshold of the doorway. She was flying, but  upside-down instead of right-side up. She managed to lock eyes with both Rarity and Twilight at the same time and then looked to Applejack. That scene was held for an agonizingly long and awkward minute.

With no discernable emotion on her face, Rainbow Dash spoke plainly.

“Hey, what’s up guys?”

“Not much,” said Applejack.

“So, umm...” said Rainbow Dash to Applejack. “I have a headache.”

“How long have y’all been flyin’ upside-down fer?”

“About four hours,” replied the directionally challenged pegasus.

“Ah think Ah may know why ya have a headache,” she replied flatly.

“Yeah, I probably won’t do this again tomorrow. Anyways, I’m going to go to bed.”

“But what about tonight—?”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

And as slowly and awkwardly as Rainbow Dash appeared, she glided upside-down up the stairs. She neither spoke or gave warning for her sudden ejection from the conversation. It was quite awkward.

“Gosh darn it,” swore Applejack to herself.

“You’re seriously dating her?” said Rarity.

“Who said we were dating?”

“Sonic rainboom,” said Rarity dryly.

Applejack’s hind legs grew weak and limp. She fell to her rump, and subsequently to her side, twitching profusely. Her face twisted over into a sudden, stupefied cross between pleasure and that wild lip-flapping motion of moving at mach 2 without closing one’s mouth. She laid there nearly comatose, and, even after being held up and slapped several times by both unicorns, was unable to do so much as speak coherently. Instead, she opted to make several groans reminiscent of an excited goat.

The two unicorns stepped over their friend and walked in her house.

“Rainbow?” called out Rarity. “Where does Applejack keep the hard cider?”

“Go down into the cellar and look to your left behind the hay,” said a voice from above. “Big, huge keg. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you, sweetie. I hope you feel much better in the morning,” replied Rarity.

Without much further hassle, Rarity and Twilight found the prize they had so doggedly sought, and began their night.

There is something to be said about how many drinks of alcohol it takes to reach that very pleasant and sociable “buzz”. With some ponies it takes maybe four drinks, while others take eight or nine. Given weight indexes, gender, and genetic predisposition, that number can be very hard to pinpoint without trial and error.

Rarity had learned her sweet spot, five, through one-too-many dates with a porcelain bowl during high-school. It wasn’t an easy road to becoming the social butterfly she was today, and she definitely didn’t accomplish it without unpleasant experience. Twilight on the other hand, learned hers, four, by studying weight indexes, gender, and genetic predisposition, and then calculating precisely how much she required. Both are admirable ways to discover one’s tolerance of alcohol, but all it was was self-perception.

Self-perception subject to change.

Throughout her life, Rarity had always noticed that the number of prevalent problems in a pony’s life could make that number seem to rise, almost on a one-to one ratio. Did the pony worry about rent? That would add one more to that perception. Did the pony recently lose, or almost lose, a loved one? That would be another. Did the pony recently get out of a love pentagon with Fluttershy,Rarity, Luna, and Trixie?

You see where this is going.

To tally up the scores fairly, Twilight's perceived number of drinks to get pleasantly tipsy sat around fourteen, and Rarity’s, twelve. And this is considering they wanted to get “tipsy” and not “completely-plastered-across-the-Canterlot-throne-room”. After applying that multiplier, the scores would sit at twenty-eight and twenty-four, respectively.

Kids, drinking is a sin.

Some time later, Twilight awoke amidst an auditorium of aloof academics asking if another donkey had aspired to aggravate their assembly.

“Professor Sparkle,” said a stallion that Twilight had apparently called upon during her dissertation defense about the use of standardized testing to assess educators. “Let me just say, your thesis is truly inspired and your study is astounding, but I see a few inconsistencies between the quartiles in your eighth and ninth grade studies. Your variance is a tad on the high side. Despite your sample being large enough to eliminate extreme variance, it still exists; care to give your insight?”

“Ugh... My head...” said Twilight, rubbing her forehead just below her horn.

The faces of a hundred eager scholars bore down on her, carefully judging her every word. They were that of mixed enthusiasm and skepticism. Unfortunately, she wasn’t entirely aware of this, and had snapped to alertness mid-blink. As far as she knew, she had just fallen asleep standing up.

She opened her eyes and immediately regretted it. She was on a stage, and stages had a funny way of being well lit. While she may have preferred to have been in a dark, quiet room with smooth jazz playing, or no music at all, she was on a well-lit stage, and that was just how things were going to be.

“Bwah!” she cried out drunkenly as the searing glare assaulted her retinas, flailing her hooves at whatever made the horribly poor decision of being around her.

Fortunately there were no ponies around her, but she did manage to knock over her lectern and the huge stack of notes that sat on top of it. The many papers went flying, spinning and swirling through the air like a dense fog of shame and academic expulsion. Twilight did her best to fight off her own hard work, but to no avail. Only time and gravity would settle that fog, no amount of flailing or drunk cursing hurrying the inevitable horror she was soon to face.

The entirety of the Canterlot academic community.

When the last of the papers had fallen, Twilight managed to open her eyes and get a real good feel for exactly where she was. Up until this point, she had just assumed that some random pony asked her a question about educational leadership and then assaulted her with paper. However, that wasn’t the case. She immediately recognized the building by its very unique interior.

She was in the Royal Canterlot Grand Assembly Chamber. A place characterized by portraits of the greatest artists, engineers, scientists, and magicians of Canterlot lining the walls, the ceiling was occupied by many free-floating chandeliers of the light pastel colours of the rainbow, employed in the reception booth was a haughty unicorn who was currently seeing if she could make a paper clip float in her water cup, and in the bathroom were two mares studying anatomy.

Yet, Twilight didn’t know most of this. She was more concerned with her inability to form a sensible thought out of her senseless situation, whilst completely out of her senses.

“Wh-whearr’s Rarity? She can answer questions about my B.A.C. I love her,” stammered Twilight, standing up and immediately falling back over in a puff of papers.

The looks of befuddlement ranged between the disgusted looks of her dissertation committee, and the sudden, slightly morbid, academic interest of the psychology students. Yet, none of them acted, not wanting to be the first one to point out the catastrophe on stage. It wasn’t that any of them didn’t know what had happened by this point in time, but that they didn’t believe it, and, frankly, didn’t want to deal with its implications. Whoever pointed it out would have to deal with it, and no one wanted that job.

It was a younger co-ed who was the first to speak.

“She’s totes wasted, teacher,” said the mare to her professor.

“I think the proper term is, plastered,” he replied.

“I think I disagree,” said an older mare sitting next to him. “I think this transcends plastered, and falls into the ‘hammered’ category.”

“Haaavve you guys seen Rar-ity, like everr? Shesh so attractave!” said a very drunk pony on stage. “Like this one tieme affter I broke up with Twixie...”

“You know,” said a frat colt. “My bro told me that there is a level of super-drunk that is so faded that you’re almost sober, but you’re drunk anyways. Called it ‘splonkered’. Pretty sick word, am I right?”

“Please, don’t assault my ears with your words,” said the older mare.

“Well, if that is the case, and this ‘splonkered’ is how one categorizes such a level of intoxication that he describes, then she would indeed be ‘splonkered’,” commented the professor. “As vulgar as it sounds, the qualification sounds about right.”

“Thanks, Mr. Philosophy Major,” said the co-ed.

“That’s Dr. Major to you.”

“Hey babe, you want get out of here and go see how many V-necks I can buy before my parents cut off my trust fund?” said the bro pony to the co-ed.

Rarity fluttered her eyes in the morning’s light. She took a deep breath as a tiny jolt in her heart sprung her to wakefulness. The smells that filled her lungs were that of fresh lavender and curiously of  parsley. She awoke with a smile on her face as something at the back of her mind told her that whatever she’d done since that fourteenth shot of Apple Vodka 32 was enjoyable.

Her headache was mild and was sure to vanish after a good breakfast, which she craved ravenously. Maybe after a few more minutes of snuggling in her warm bed, she’d find the will to break free of it and go downstairs to cook something up.

She pulled her down comforter sheets around her tighter and cooed. Yet something strange happened; they pulled back. An even greater smile grew across her face. It only just occurred to her what partner she had spent her great, drunken excursion with.

“My love, is that you?” said Rarity sweetly, turning over to see the source of the disturbance.

“It is indeed,” replied a voice.

Rarity’s ear perked at the sound of the unusual voice. Twilight Sparkle had always had a sweet, soft voice, yet this one was harsher and more shrill. She looked down to see a set of hooves wrapped around her.

And they weren’t lavender, as she expected, but baby blue. A bushel of silvery hair laid on the pillow just behind her, and a pair of amethyst eyes flashed before her.

“Trixie…?” said Rarity, still hazy and groggy.

“Yes, darling?” replied the mare.

Approximately eight seconds later, the meltdown that ensued was that of one bordering nuclear.