The alarm clock, running on batteries, ticked over to 07:00, marking one hour before the store opened and seventeen hours since Pinkie Pie had pitched her tent as one of many hoping to get one of that particular location’s twelve Diamond Editions of Electronic Amusement 3. Would the travel to Battleknife all be for naught? Would she successfully stash a copy in the bags she was wearing, only for it to be wrestled away? Would she see a disk through someone’s window months afterward, find out they had a kid who was alone on weekdays from eight to five, and do the obvious thing, as had happened with another game not one month ago? Of course not; she would just steal it when she was walking him to flying lessons rather than do something needlessly complex like that. Getting the game a few days earlier wasn’t worth the risk of being caught.

She could never live the tent life forever without getting depressed, but for one day, granola bars, water, a couple books, and a confined space wasn’t so bad. Basically, being in prison for a day was worth it. Urinating in strange places? Worth it. She would do this for one day, with a possible payoff of having a Diamond Edition forever. “Just get it later on eCove,” Twilight once said. She may have understood far more things than Pinkie Pie, but this wasn’t one of them.

She had a pretty good place in the “line”, which was the term used for the irregular swarm of tents surrounding the game store as well as the adjacent supermarket and clothing shop, with just two tents occupying the straight line from her own tent to the front doors. She had her credit card if by some miracle she needed it; the brawl didn’t end once you got outside the store, and some strategies involved not going in at all, but actually getting the box from the shelf was a good way to increase your chances of eventually ending up with it. Whilst it was likely your box would be stolen if you had one early on, being one of the few lucky aspiring thieves who steal a box was far harder than keeping one.

She recalled that trio of statistics so many had waved at her. One in twenty-two end up in hospital, one in ninety-six die, and one in eight hundred who tent for special editions get what they desire. The only one of her close friends who didn’t implore her to not do this was Rainbow Dash, because race flying was obviously quite dangerous. She may not have been a tenter, but she understood.

T-minus thirty minutes. With the books and the spare bars and water in her bags, alarm clock forgotten until now and probably stolen, Pinkie and many others were sat in front of the two sets of double doors, waiting for them to be unlocked. Certain locations had it computerised, but this particular one didn’t, still using a physical key. Unlocking the doors on days like this was an extremely dangerous but well-paid job, only ever taken by those with severe depression, and only once in their life unless they completely blew the money.

07:50, as the clock visible to her through the doors said. It was typical for two or three of the first-timers to chicken out and leave from now to the opening, but Pinkie Pie was definitely not going to be one of them, because this was her second time. The first time, she went all the way to Wooch to lose a molar and gain six packets of marathon runner energy gels. Overall, not a successful outing. But this time had to be different, because finding exactly six packets of energy gel again would be really weird.

The analogue clock indicated one minute before opening time. A 25 km/h wind had picked up out of pretty much nowhere, waving branches, moving litter, and most importantly, getting dust in some ponies’ eyes. Though if a bit of dirt was all that got in her eyes, that would be a marked improvement over the pepper spray of the earlier attempt.

The slowest minute of her life wasn’t slow enough for Pinkie to mentally prepare herself, and seeing the clock tick to eight, the unlocker turned around, took the keyring, and unlocked the outer doors. The stampede began, and Pinkie’s hopes of being one of the initial possessors ended early when she was crowded out of the main beeline into a shelf full of games which weren’t Electronic Amusement 3.

The setup of the store was quite simple: on either side, six shelves parallel to each other, each about three metres long and one and a half tall; a centre aisle separating them; aisles down the sides; and a shelf with all that she cared about on the back wall. The paths through the store were meant to be two ponies wide, but three could barely fit, and suffice to say she wasn’t the only one crowded into a side aisle.

The force of more ponies being pushed out forced Pinkie to walk further down the aisle herself or else be pushed in some less predictable way that may well break an important bone. She was in the same sectioned-off rectangle as the checkout, and the cashier, behind acrylic glass in mini-mart fashion, tried not to freak out about seeing Pinkie Pie. Did no one else really notice? Were they just too focussed? But the cashier knew that wasn’t the number one thing she had to be worried about at that moment.

Because of the checkout jutting out, the corners in the front had more space than the rest of the store, which was more space for Pinkie to use to hopefully not get crushed. Just as she tucked herself into a ball in the very corner and hoped there was an afterlife, the force seemed to stop. Ponies finally recognised there was too much space, and were now waiting outside to strike or trying to get out.

Slowly most of them including Pinkie funnelled out. Most of the ones not funnelling out were either unconscious from knocks to the head or not being able to breathe, but there were two deaths, one each from a broken neck and punctured lung. The lack of deaths from asphyxia would make this one slightly notable in tenting history, but that was the least of anyone’s current concerns.

Pinkie had long since lost track of anyone with a box and was now just happy to be uninjured. Still, she thought as she rather leisurely walked down the road back to Ponyville as others ran after others who were probably running after someone running after a box-holder, it wasn’t very good to come all this way just for such a short experience where nothing happened at all. The last time she did it, it was a supermarket, and she spent hours in there, occasionally having to fend off an attacker. She only ended up with something that wasn’t even being sold, but it was much more of an experience. How would she get this lingering thirst for violence out?

It was an hour past noon. Pinkie Pie was now well clear of the madness, on a lonely rural road with soybeans either side. Not walking at the moment, but sitting and eating one of her spare granola bars. Another pony with bags approached her.

“Oh crap,” Pinkie said. “Look, I don’t have anything.”

The periwinkle mare tried to laugh, but only smiled. “I don’t have anything either. Just a little box of cereal like you’d find in a hotel. My knife got stolen.” Her forelegs looked like they had been slashed a few times, but for an apparent tenter that was fairly light.

“Yeah, I didn’t lose anything, but I didn’t get anything either. Other than losing a good weekend getting all the way there, waiting, and going back.”

“I know, right? Nothing fucking happened in there.”

“I didn’t get to do anything. I still wanna break a leg or two.”

“Yeah, me too. Well, I’m gonna keep walking.”

“You do that.”

It was beginning to get dark enough to be an actual problem as the first building of Ponyville came over the horizon, which the pink Equestrian baker was very pleased to see. Just a few kilometres to go, which considering she was walking and it was getting dark may have been just a bit too long. But she made it to Sugarcube Corner without incident, closed the door to her flat and sighed without incident, and pulled a muscle as she stretched out in bed. Next Chapter: Chapter 17 Estimated time remaining: 17 Hours, 30 Minutes