"Aw, man!" Soarin' pouted as he watched yet another stack of chips being swept away from him. "I don't believe it! That's the fifth time in a row!"

"Yeah, you must be having a bad day or something," Misty Fly said, ducking her grin behind her not-insignificant pyramid of chips. There was an unspoken rule amongst the Wonderbolts to avoid inviting Soarin' to any card games; his poker face was so terrible even Echo could see through it. It didn't help that every time he got dealt a face card his wings would pop open---and they'd flutter if he got an ace. Their rule didn't hold, however, if he asked to play, and so a group of them were raking in his take-home pay in a dark corner of the hotel bar.

"Yeah," Soarin' said with a groan as Spitfire flicked out the next round. "A really bad day. A day from Tartarus. A---"

Blaze gestured towards the bar with a nod of his head. "Heh. Not as bad at that guy's, I bet."

They all put a protective hoof over their face-down cards and turned to look. The only patron sitting at the bar proper was a gangly stallion who was pounding back a long line of shots.

"Eighteen... nineteen... twenty? He's doing twenty shots in a row?" Misty frowned. "That can't be healthy."

"Oh, it's him?"

She looked back in surprise. "You know him?"

Spitfire nodded. "He's the one we went to speak to earlier. His brother went missing..."

"That's odd. If a family member's missing, don't you think he'd rather be out there looking for him instead of getting liver cirrhosis?"

Nopony at the table noticed Soarin' slowly sliding down in his seat.

"Odd is exactly the word I'd use," Spitfire went on. "He was a real character, that one. Acted completely dodgy when I offered help. In fact, you know what?" Out of the corner of her eye, she clocked Blaze moving to switch a card, and kicked him under the table. "As soon as I mentioned the Royal Guards, he looked like he was about to panic."

"Trouble with the law, huh?" Blaze said, rubbing his leg against the chair. "Should we keep an eye on him?"

Spitfire tapped her hooftip against the table and slid her cards towards her chest. "Hm... he hasn't technically done anything wrong. Yet. Strikes me as just a small-time hood. We don't really need to waste our time---"

The stallion's ear twitched, and he turned around to face their table; even though he quickly snapped his attention back to his shots, Spitfire noticed a flicker of recognition between him and her captain, who---

"FUCK!" Soarin' shouted as he jumped from his seat. "I just remembered somethingIgottagobye!"

They all watched as he slammed through the crowd and disappeared into the stallions' room.

"Jeez, what was that about?" Blaze said.

Misty shook her head with a tut-tut. "I told him not to eat all those burritos."

He turned Soarin's cards over and let out a low whistle. "Damn! Not a moment too soon. He had a Royal Flush!"

"Misty, shuffle the cards and deal out the next round. Keep an eye on that one," she said, "And on Blaze, too. I saw him trying to switch a card out."

"I was not!"

"Hey!" she called after her boss. "Where are you going?"

"To get to the bottom of this."

Applejack smiled sleepily as the sound of the rooster's crow came through the open window. She stretched her legs and hugged herself a little under the comforter; it had been so long since she'd woken up warm and sore from a long night of lovemaking. She'd almost forgotten how nice it was to fall asleep in another pony's embrace...

"Ugh. It's too early to be conscious." Flim rolled over and put a foreleg around her. "I suppose that bird doesn't have a snooze alarm."

Her eyes shot open. That had ripped her out of her early morning reverie like a bucket of cold water. "Aah! Yer still here?!"

"Hm?"

She sat bolt upright and shoved him. "Get out!!" she said. "Y'said you'd leave after I fell asleep!"

"Oh, shit!" He started scrambling off the bed. "I just closed my eyes for a second---"

"Move, move!"

They both froze when the doorknob started to turn.

"Please tell me you locked it," Flim whispered.

"Applejack!" Big MacIntosh began pounding. "Applejack, you open this door RIGHT NOW!"

They looked at each other in horror, and then Applejack began her first ever game of charades, frantically gesturing under the bed.

"I'm gonna count to ten, and then I'm gonna kick it open!"

"Hold on, I'm just wakin' up!" she called to the door as she shoved her hooves against Flim's rump; his back legs were skittering, and he seemed to be stuck halfway under the bed.

"One, two, three..."

"Hurry up!" she hissed, ducking her head under the bed. "What's takin' so long?"

"Four, five, six..."

"My horn's stuck on a spring!"

"Seven, eight, nine..."

With a mighty shove---and a sproinging sound---she got him unstuck, and his back legs and tail disappeared just as her brother shouted "TEN!"

Applejack gasped and jumped back on the bed as Big MacIntosh delivered on his threat, sending the door flying into the room. She quickly pulled the covers up to hide the evidence of their activities the previous night.

"What'd you do that for?!" she shouted. "Y'broke my door right off its hinges!"

He stomped into the room, nostrils flaring. "Where is he?!"

"Uh... he ain't in his room?" Technically, not a lie.

"A'course he ain't! Now. Where. Is. He?!"

"Maybe he had to get up and pee." Still not a lie.

"Tell me where he is," he snarled pushing his face right up against hers.

"Why?"

"So I can KILL him!"

"Mac," she said as carefully as she could, "Jes' because he ain't in his room don't mean nothin'. Maybe he decided to be nice fer once in his life and go make some coffee."

They stared each other down. Applejack never had a good poker face, but she managed to meet her brother's glare without blinking.

"WACHOO!"

"Son of a bitch," she said, closing her eyes.

"Well it's not my fault you don't vacuum properly!" Flim snapped as he crawled out, smoothing the dustbunnies out of his mane.

"You're DEAD!!!"

"No! Mac, don't!" she cried out as she jumped between them. "Please don't!"

"You call yerself a stallion? Huh? You proud of yerself?!" he screamed over her shoulder as he tried to get around her, "Cowering behind a mare like that?"

She made sure to keep a jump ahead of him; while she didn't like being a living shield, she liked the idea of disposing of a corpse even less. "Mac, easy!"

"And YOU!" He rounded on her, making her flinch back against Flim. "How could you? How could you do that with HIM in THIS HOUSE?"

"I... I don't know!" she said helplessly. "He jes' came into my room an' we started talkin' and one thing led to another---"

There were veins popping out on his neck. "Applejack, I could kill you right now!!"

"Stop it!"

"Y'think Ma would be proud a'you, huh?!"

"STOP IT!" she shouted, tears prickling under her eyelids.

"Look, MacIntosh... you're angry," Flim said slowly, "But you're not going to do anything stupid."

"TRY ME!"

Applejack squeezed her eyes tight and felt a hot streak down her face. "Flim, fer fuck's sake, jes' shut up!"

"Just listen, both of you. You're pregnant, and I'm a bleeder. He's got more honour than to hit either one of us."

Applejack swallowed heavily, but she did notice that his words had an effect---her brother had backed off, just slightly.

Edging out from behind her, Flim said "Now, I'll admit this wasn't the smartest thing we could have done, but it's not a crime. What is a crime, however, is murder, and getting thrown in jail wouldn't be good for the family or the farm. He's not an idiot; he knows that."

Big MacIntosh huffed, but he didn't move.

"Besides," he finally said with a little smile, "If I'm dead, you can't make me marry her, now, can you?"

The silence that followed stretched on.

"You do still want us to get married, right?" Flim's smile had turned to a cocky grin. "Well, think it through; what do you suppose is going to happen---and quite regularly, I hope---once we're hitched? We're not going to sleep in separate beds, I can assure you of that... even if she does snore."

Big MacIntoshed turned, bent over, and started rooting around under the bed.

"Uh, Mac?" Applejack pressed her lips together. "He ain't under there anymore. What're y---"

When he saw what Mac had retrieved, Flim's eyes flew open. "No! No, don't!! Anything but---"

Without further ado, Big MacIntosh emptied the chamber pot over both of them, dropped it to the floor, and stomped off.

"YOU DID NOT JES' DO THAT!" she screamed at him.

Flim looked like he was going to faint. "I... had...my...mouth...open," he whimpered.

Soarin' was pacing around in a little circle, but when he saw her walk in he yelped and took to his wings.

"Spitfire!" he hissed. "This is the stallions' room!"

"I took the 'out of order' sign off the drinking fountain and put it out front," she said as she moved in on him.

"What if somepony tries to use the drinking foun---"

She didn't let him finish. "You know something that you're not telling me, Soarin'. You know I hate that."

"I... I know a lot of things you don't know," he started.

"That stallion at the bar. What about him?"

"Uh, his brother went missing and we went in to---"

"Cut the bullshit!" she shouted, pinning his shoulders to the wall. "The second you made eye contact, you took off like you'd seen a ghost. What is it about him that made you go all squirrelly?"

To her credit, she pulled back a little when she saw his ears and eyelids droop. "Oh. That bad, huh?"

He bit his lip and nodded.

"How bad are we talking?"

"Really bad."

"Specifics, Soarin'."

He drew in a breath, and after holding it for a second, he blurted "Okay I was the one his brother was with last night and I know who took him and we made a deal but if his brother gets hurt he wants me to pay up and I don't know what to dooo!"

"...Wait," Spitfire said as she watched him panting. "You were the one with him?"

"Y-yeah."

A very strange expression was creeping across her face. "And I suppose you two weren't just having a tea party in there."

"No," he said, blushing.

"For the love of Celestia, Soarin'," she said, the bewilderment apparent in her voice, "Since when are you a coltcuddler?"

"Uh... birth?"

His ears perked back up when she started to laugh.

"So, you're not mad at me?"

"Oh, I'm furious," she said with a smile. "But you just made me a thousand bits richer."

"What...?"

"We all had a bet going."

She turned her back on his frown and landed by the sink; after staring at them both in the mirror, she turned the tap on and ducked her head down for a drink.

"Okay, okay. Fine. We've dealt with slander before." She sat down and pressed a hoof to her face. "Nopony's going to take the word of some scumbag over a Wonderbolt's. We'll take it to court if we have to."

"We, uh, probably shouldn't do that."

"Why not?"

"There might be, uh..." He swallowed and looked away. "Evidence."

She raised an eyebrow. "Evidence?"

With a nervous step backward, Soarin' mumbled "He... um... had a camera?"

For a second his boss didn't respond, and then---well, he sure was glad he'd made some distance between them when she turned around and punched the mirror, sending shards skittering down on the sink.

"Hey! That's seven years' bad luck!"

"A camera?!" she screamed. "A CAMERA? How could you be so STUPID?!"

"H-he said he'd keep them for himself---"

"And you believed him?"

"Well, he seemed really nice!" he whimpered. "At first."

"So now somepony out there has a camera full of---I don't even know what, and I don't think I want to---and you were just planning on letting me find out the hard way?!"

"No!" he said, holding both front hooves up in front of him. "I told you, we made a deal! He seemed to know who the coltnapper was when I told him, and... and he said he was gonna go get his brother and then return the photos!"

"And you think you can believe him, too?"

"Well, no," he admitted. "But I don't have much choice."

Spitfire shot him a nasty look. "Not much choice? Soarin', when was the last time you saw the guy you made a deal with?"

"Five minutes ag...OH!"

They both slammed the door open at once, and Soarin' flew above the heads of the bustling bar patrons; he quickly scanned the room for horns, but the only one he was hoping to see was...

"He's gone," he said hopelessly.