A Sweet Apple Acres housebarn door knocking incident occurred, but after a literal minute, it went unanswered.

“Is anypony home?” Butterscotch said into the door. There was no answer. She looked up at the sun. Not directly into the sun, just enough to see its rough position in the sky. “I wish I remembered to bring my copyright-friendly iPad or I wouldn’t have to be using this weird sun time I heard about... but it looks like Apple Bloom’s at school, Applejack and Big Mac are apple-bucking, and Granny Smith is asleep. So I guess that makes sense. I guess I’ll stalk Big Mac.”

She looked for Big Mac and spotted him apple-bucking in exactly the position she predicted.

“I found him,” Butterscotch whispered into camerapony sqrt(2)’s camera. “He’s exactly where I predicted him to be. The trick is getting close without having him—or Applejack—notice....”

There was a stealth mission that would’ve been totally exciting if this wasn’t text, then Butterscotch managing to get herself nicely situated behind a hedge I may or may not have made up. I seem to remember one existed.

“Hi, Stalk,” Butterscotch whispered.

“Oh, hi, Butterscotch,” Wheat Stalk said in just as quiet a voice.

“How long have you been here?”

The wheat brown Wheat Stalk checked her product-placed iPad. “About an hour.”

“Cool. You get any good viewing done?”

“Yeah. Definitely better than usual.”

“Cool.” Butterscotch did some strategic scooting ten centimetres over and got a hoof in some strangely squishy dirt. “Um, why does this dirt feel moist?”

“Oh, well, I was clopping around there and....”

“Ew!” Butterscotch took her hoof off the ground. “Holy Faust....”

“Come on, is it really that bad?”

“Yes. I need to wash this off somehow, because this is....”

“This isn’t my fault, you’ve done the exact same thing. Another pony just happened to come here after I did it.”

“It’s still your fault. I think what you’re actually trying to do is call me hypocritical.”

“Why have you gotten so sane recently?”

“I’m pretty normal when I’m not around Big Mac.”

“But you are right now.”

“Look, I need at the very least a towel or something, because this... is that Applejack over there?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I need to do a scene with her. It’s my contract with the show.”

Just as Applejack was about to open the Sweet Apple Acres door, Butterscotch grabbed her opening leg.

“What the f—” Applejack quickly looked to her right. “Oh, it’s you. Whah did they hafta pair me up with you?”

“I like you. You’ve had sex with Big Mac. Don’t you realise what means to us? Not us us, like my community us, but you know.”

“Ah don’t care. Name one thing we ‘ave in common.”

“Um... we both wear a hat all the time. I sleep in this cap. Not like I constantly wear this or anything, I have more than one so I don’t have to wear a dirty one, and I take it off in the shower....”

“Ah need to go insahde for an unspecifahed reason.”

“I need to follow you.”

“You can’t come in.”

Butterscotch pushed Applejack and ran into the house. Applejack followed.

“Ah’ll just beat you to the knockout and throw ya outsahde.”

“You’re too moral to do that.”

“You sayin’ Ah couldn’t do it?”

“I’m saying you wouldn’t do it, because you’re Applejack and the only reasons you beat ponies up are if one, they really deserve it, or two, they’re Rainbow Dash.”

“Ah do lahke how she lahkes that. Big Mac doesn’t, and Ah really wish he did... uh, sorry, that was weird to put in the middle of a conversation lahke that.”

“So what are you inside for?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“Fine. So... any news?”

Apple Bloom should be here soon.”

“Why do you need to be inside for that?”

“You jus—”

Big Mac barged in.

“Hey, Big Mac.” “Can I touch you, Big Mac?”

“I caught a fangirl stalker,” Big Mac said. “She’s a fangirl and a stalker, not a pony who stalks fangirls. Well, she could be for all I know. But I put her in the dungeon.”

“Ah’ll go an’ see ‘er,” Applejack said.

“Dungeon?” Butterscotch said.

“We—well, we told Twilaht to, and she put a few cells in the purposeless base,” Applejack said.

“That sounds illegal.”

“It is.”

They went to the dungeon together. If you’re wondering how Butterscotch resisted touching Big Mac, he told her to again. Wheat Stalk banged on the bars of the roughly-cut cell. “Butterscotch, you’re here! Get me out!”

“How?” Butterscotch said. She looked towards Applejack and Big Mac. “Can I bail her out or something?”

Applejack and Big Mac whispered to each other for several seconds.

“Four bits,” Applejack said.

“Two bits,” Butterscotch said.

“Butterscotch?” Wheat Stalk said.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not worth four bits?”

“Shut up, I’m negotiating.”

Applejack and Big Mac whispered to each other for several seconds.

“It’s four bits,” Applejack said, “Take it or leave it.”

“What, so I can’t haggle a bail price? Fine. I’ll take the four bi... where did my bag go? Fuck, I don’t have it.”

“You can get ‘er when you have the money,” Applejack said. “Until then, she gets to stare at that soil an’ eat apples.”

“I know what prison is. I’ll run to my house and come right back, okay, Stalk?”

“Okay.”

Rainbow knocked on the door of the house of Octavia. Octavia proceeded to answer said door.

“Hello, Rainbow Dash.”

“Look, I’m just here ‘cause ah the fic, I don’t wanna be with you.”

“I like you. What don’t you like about me?”

“I never said I didn’t like you. You’re good Rarity, I love that. It’s just that you’re not really a friend of mine, so....”

“Sorry. You want to come in?”

“Sure.”

She came in.

“Your house is like Rarity levels of clean.”

“Um, Rainbow?”

“Yeah?”

“Lyra doesn’t want anypony to describe the house. And I don’t have a preference, so don’t describe the house.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No, it’s okay, you didn’t know. Come on, sit down on the—um. Well, you see it.”

“Yeah.”

They sat down on opposite ends of the television-facing couch.

“So do we have any common interests?” Rainbow said. “At all?”

“Not that I can immediately think of....”

“So... you hate Vinyl Scratch?”

“I don’t hate her, I just hate her taste. And her personality. And her moral values. I guess I do hate her.”

“You’re just stuck-up.”

Octavia rolled her eyes. “You’re... I don’t want to get into an insult fight.”

“I hate your music. Well, I don’t hate it, I hate the genre. But I still hate it.”

“You can’t make me angry, I’m Octavia.”

“I could kill Lyra, that would make you pretty angry.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I would.”

“That wasn’t ‘you wouldn’t’, I meant an eye-rolling ‘no, you wouldn’t’.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

“I wonder how Twilight’s doing with Lyra,” Rainbow thought.

“I wonder how Lyra’s doing with Twilight,” Octavia thought.

Knock-knock!

“Who’s there?” Spike said.

“It’s Lyra for the pairing up thing.”

“Lyra for the pairing up thing who?”

“Lyra is an employee at Bon Bon’s—”

Spike opened the door.

“Welcome to Twilight’s,” Spike said, “Tonight we have a—”

“Did she tell you to do any of this?”

“No.”

“Where is she?”

“Copyright-friendly Facebooking.”

And so Lyra went up to the bedroom.

“Twilight?” Lyra said. Twilight looked to her left.

“You’re here.”

“Yes. They want us together in a scene.”

“I know. I wish they’d stop interfering with our lives and just go back to documenting Rainbow and Applejack having sex.”

“I know, right? We should write a strongly worded letter.”

“No, it needs to be something classy and polite. We need a calmly worded epistle.”

“We should write one.”

“We will.”

“So how should it start?” Lyra said, sitting with Twilight, at a desk, in front of a blank piece of paper, strategically placed on the desk.

“Dear Programme Productions?” Twilight said.

“I thought that much was implied, I meant....”

“Oh. Yeah, I’m not sure.”

“We...?”

“...Want...”

“...A? Or do we want something uncountable? Well, let’s think about it. We... want... a...”

“Rock.”

TWO DAYS LATER!

“Calmly,” Twilight said as she wrote it, “Twilight and Lyra.”

“Hey! Why do you get to be first?”

“Because I wrote most of the epistle.”

“So? ‘Lyra and Twilight’ sounds better, and it’s alphabetical.”

Twilight magicked an envelope. “I’m sending it like this.”

“You know what? I’ll write my own epistle, with myself as the sole author.”

“Fine. Ours will be way more persuasive, though.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 138: Meal of Love Estimated time remaining: 8 Hours, 37 Minutes