Before I knew it, I was flipped over onto my back. Just a moment ago we had been face to face, throwing insults at each other. But then my lone foreleg had been swept out from under me and he was on top of me. The blue colt was scrawny. Unfortunately, I was scrawnier. I tried to fight him off, really, I did, but kicks with my hind legs and flailing my wings at him didn’t really do much good. All I could really do was watch as he raised up his foreleg, preparing his strike, and try to take the blow as best I could.

But then I heard a whistle which caused the hoof to freeze in the air just above my face. Somehow, despite being saved the pain, I was even more embarrassed now than I was a few moments ago.

“Run!” The earth pony colt turned and leapt right off of me, headed in the exact opposite direction of the whistle, all three of his friends hot on his tail.

I fell limp as I watched the four of them run off, then laid my head back, closed my eyes, and let out a sigh. What a day.

“Buck!” The sound came from the same direction as the earlier whistle. The voice was accompanied by the sound of galloping hooves. But not one set. There were two. What? “What the hell did you do this time?”

I rolled my eyes behind my closed eyelids before opening them. “I didn’t do nothin’, High!” I rolled over onto my side and looked in the direction of the stallion running towards me. Oh. The filly who was galloping after him instantly slowed down and fell further behind when I looked at her.

The big green earth pony stallion finally came to a stop next to me and took a few deep breaths before letting out a snort. “Don’t give me that, Buck. You did something. And if I let you get two black eyes at one time, your sister is going to kill me when she gets back.” He reached out a hoof to help me up, which after a few moments I finally accepted. Once I was back onto my hooves he continued, “So what did you do?”

All I could do was roll my eyes again and look anywhere that wasn’t at him. I did speak, though. “He started off all normal… Then he started insulting Lily.” As I finished speaking, the dark green filly that had been following High finally caught up to us.

High sighed after I spoke then looked past me in the direction the four foals had run. “Look. Fighting ain’t the answer. You’ve heard me say that a hundred times now. I’m wasting my breath.” He looked back down to me. “At least try to come get me next time? Huh? Go get yourself cleaned up. I’ll go see if I can get Powder and them to admit to it.”

“Yeah… yeah sure.” I finally worked up enough courage to at least look at him. “I’ll try to find you next time.” High smiled and lifted a hoof to pat me on the shoulder, then stepped around and started to trot off after the other foals.

I nodded and turned my head to look after him, letting out a soft snort after he was out of earshot, the feathers on my wings ruffling some. Then suddenly I felt a nose on my cheek. The touch made my ears pin back, the embarrassment coming to a head.

“C’mon, don’t be that way, Bucky. High Times means well and you know it.”

I turned my head back to look at the filly, who was now standing right next to me. She was shorter. Half a year younger. Unicorn. One of those manes that was always covering her eyes which made her constantly have to use her magic to flick the hairs to the side of her face. In a cute way, not an annoying way. Was there even a difference? Well there had to be a difference. I liked it when Inkblot did it, hated it when everyone else did. Obviously there was a difference.

I just rolled my eyes and lifted the tip of my wing up to rub off the area where she’d nuzzled me. “Do ya have t’ call me Bucky?”

She smiled a little. “I will call you Bucky as long as you call me Inky.”

“But that’s yer name!”

“No, it’s Inkblot.”

“Same thing!”

Inkblot huffed then turned and started walking away. “You should thank me.”

I watched Inkblot turn to go, but then tilted my head when she spoke again. “What for?”

“Saving you a beating.”

I just snorted and shook my head a little bit before letting it fall so I could look towards the ground. Dirt was interesting, right? It was all brown and stuff. Sometimes it had rocks in it.

“Are you coming or what?”

I blinked and looked up. Inkblot had stopped walking and turned around to look back at me. “Why would I go with you?”

“Because your cape is ready.”

“Oh!” My cape! Well that made today a lot better. A cape is definitely worth an almost-beating and a massively painful black eye. My wings pushed out to my sides and gave a flap in the air to help push me in the direction of Inkblot, then I hit the ground again and trotted after the filly.

Our walk through town was a fairly quiet one. All the other foals were busy playing with each other. Mid-afternoon, they’d had lunch, all full of energy again. It only took a couple of minutes to get all the way across town. Wasn’t like it was big. It was only all of seven portable buildings. The sleeping tents didn’t really count as buildings. There was the General Store, the Adults’ Building, and the Hospital. I’d seen a real hospital, though. Real ones were huge, and had a bunch of floors and hundreds of rooms. They weren’t like ours with its one room. But then there were the Storage buildings, one for general stuff, one for food, and one for stuff we were going to take to Market. Then there was Inky’s place. It wasn’t the biggest, but it wasn’t the smallest, either.

Inkblot opened the door, then held it open for me as I followed her in. The inside was darker than the outside, but enough light came in the windows to make it easy to see still. It was actually one of the cleaner buildings in town. A couch was off on one side of the room, but everything else was dominated by clothing supplies. Fabric, sewing stuff, a dozen other things that I had no clue what their names were. Inkblot did though. She headed over to one corner, used her magic to pull out a cape from chest, then carried it back over to her sewing desk. The cape still had holes in it.

“I thought you said my cape was done.”

“Hmm?” Inkblot looked over her shoulder at me for a second then looked back at her work, her magic pulling off a needle and some thread as she started to sew in patches on the cape. “It is done. Almost.”

My mouth fell open, but ultimately I just let out a sigh. I stood there for a minute before walking over to the couch and simply collapsing onto it. “Why am I friends with you?”

“Because.”

“That helps, thanks…” She didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t see her face, but I could practically feel her smile. It helped ease my annoyance. Sorta.

A few minutes of quiet followed as she worked on the cape and I started to doze on the couch, but then it was broken by her voice. “So when is Lily coming back?”

I blinked my eyes back open when she spoke. “Huh? Oh… uh… I dunno. Probably inna couple days.”

“How long has she been out?”

“Almost two weeks… like… thirteen days?” I said.

“That’s actually her limit. She’s never been gone without you for more than two weeks at a time. Usually about ten days, but never more than two weeks.”

I lifted my head up and slowly looked over at her. “What are you, a calendar?”

Inkblot simply nodded and pointed over at her wall. I followed the direction in with my eyes and, sure enough, there was a calendar hanging on the wall. “How have I not seen that before?”

“You don’t see a lot of things, Bucky. Like how bad an idea it is to take on four colts all stronger than you at the same time.”

“Oh jeez.” I rolled my eyes and lifted a wing up to cover my face. There was Inkblot’s smile again. I could feel it. After a few minutes I rolled off of the couch and headed to her workbench. I took a seat next to her and laid my head down on her desk. “How long’s this gonna take?”

Inkblot gave me a quick glance but didn’t stop focusing on her work. “Longer if you keep asking. Besides, you can have a little patience.” She paused her work and let out a fake gasp. “Maybe you can get your cutie mark in having patience!”

I just sat there, dumbfounded, then looked up at her without taking my head off the desk. “You serious?”

Inkblot looked down at me and shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt, could it?”

“It could get me bored, that’s what it could do.”

Inkblot leaned down and blew on one of my ears, causing it to flick, then resumed her work once more. “If you’re so bored, how come you never go out with your sister?”

I stretched my wings out behind me as Inkblot spoke, then let them fall limp beside me onto the ground. “‘Cause even when I go out with her I still ain’t doing much. She won’t give me a gun cause she don’t want me to kill nothing. So I’m stuck with my rope. And that’s fine, but then she makes me just sit by the front door’a buildings while she goes in and clears ‘em… and I just gotta listen and hope she don’t die.”

Inkblot was quiet as she continued to work. She only spoke after she finished the patch she was working on at the time. “Can’t blame her, really. I’m like half your size and I can still take you in a fight.”

I let out a huff and rolled my eyes. “I get it, I’m weak, can we move on? ‘Sides… whenever I go out with her I always end up missin’ home and just wantin’ t’ come back. Warm, decent bed, not being on the move all the time, not bein’ surrounded by things that wanna kill, maim, an’ eat ya. Three legs is a good number, ya know? I don’t need less.”

I could hear the sound of Inkblot trying to not laugh too loud. As pleasant a sound it was, it unfortunately got interrupted by another one of her gasps. “You wound me, good colt!” Oh goddesses, what now? “You go on trips with your sister where you are gone for weeks, fighting off ghouls and worse, and all you miss from home is your bed?!”

Admittedly I’d been the teeniest tiniest bit worried. But I closed my eyes and smiled after she spoke. “Oh alright, Ink, I miss you too when I’m out.”

“That’s better. Now get your head off of my desk,” she said as she started to poke my nose with needles.

I sat up and rubbed my nose with a wing. “Those things hurt, you know.”

“Think of them as payment,” she said with a smirk.

“For what?!”

“For the next time I have to run and get High Times to save your hide.”

I just growled at her. There wasn’t much else I could do.

The next several minutes passed quietly, Inkblot simply working away while I plotted my revenge. Breaking her needles? Too permanent. Locking her chests? Maybe. Oh! Stealing her thread! Her cutie mark was a roll of thread, that one oughta get her good. My thoughts were interrupted, however, by her voice.

“Cape’s done.” She was now definitely all smiles.

I let out a chuckle and turned my attention back to her. “About time, slowpoke. Lemme see.” Inkblot pulled the cape over and floated it out in front of my face. As I looked over it I started to smile. It was all nice and clean, back to its bright red colors. The little blue patch with a yellow pony on each flank were cleaned up too. All the holes had been patched. Wait. Wait a minute… All… all the holes had been patched. All of them.

I licked my lips slowly. “Inky…?”

Inkblot was still all smiles. “Yeah?”

“You put patches over the holes for my wings…”

Inkblot just blinked at me. “I… I… no.” She yanked the cape back towards her and started frantically looking over it. “I… I… no! No!” Her cheeks began to flush when she confirmed what I’d said. Reaching out with her magic and wildly gathering up her supplies to get back to work, she immediately turned away from me and began trying to fix her mistake.

It was all I could do to not bust out laughing so loud the entire town heard me. As it was, I was laughing so hard that anyone right outside the building would still be able to hear me. I eventually had to put my wing into my mouth and bite down to get myself to stop. After I had, I shook my head as I watched Inkblot’s needles and scissors fly around the cloak.

“Slow down, sheesh, yer going to hurt yourself.”

Inkblot didn’t even turn to look at me. “I can’t believe I did that.”

I laughed again then reached out with my wings, wrapping them loosely around her neck in a hug. “You’ll fix it. I’m going to go take a nap.”

Inkblot just nodded to the words, so after a few seconds I broke the hug and walked past her, heading on out of her building. Once outside, I looked left and right. Nobody was near the building. That meant nobody heard the laughing. Good. Last thing I needed was somebody going and rushing in on Inky with her so embarrassed. I spread my wings out to my sides, flapped a couple of times, then jumped up into the air and started lazily flying up over the buildings.

That had gone well. My nose said it could’ve gone a lot better, but I disagreed.

I flew over a few of them then came to a stop and landed on top of the General Store. Most of my things were up here. My bed, my saddle bags, the tarp I put over them when it rained. It wasn’t much, but it was away from… everything. My little perch all to myself. After taking a look around and making sure everything and everyone on the ground seemed okay, I let myself topple over onto my bed, close my eyes, and start to drift off to sleep.

Okay. Okay, maybe… maybe my little perch wasn’t away from absolutely everything. What had Inkblot called it? A roost! Maybe my little roost wasn’t away from everything. At some point during the day I was awoken by hushed whispers from the ground below me.

“Ya sure he’s up there?” I was pretty sure I knew who it was, but I’d never heard Adagio’s voice be that timid before.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” a filly answered.

A second colt spoke up. “What if he don’t wanna be bothered?”

The filly sighed. “Ain’t like yer gonna ask his permission. It’s the whole point of the bet.” Clearly she was the ringleader here.

“What if he gets mad?” The voice of a second filly that I didn’t recognize.

“Tri ain’t gonna get mad.” Ah! This voice is recognized. It belonged to a little unicorn filly named Sunny Sea. I started to smile to myself as I realized exactly what was going on here.

“He better get mad, that’s the whole point of the bet!” the ringleader said.

The second filly spoke again, “L-let’s just call this off. Ten caps and a box of cereal isn’t worth making him mad…” D’aw… There’s a good girl. Don’t let the mean ponies get to you!

The ringleader’s voice shot back, “Don’t be a wuss.”

“I’m not! I-I-I’m just… just going to go get High…”

That got the ringleader’s attention. “No! No, okay, yer not a wuss. Jus’ go stand over there.” I could hear the soft padding of the scared filly’s hooves as she moved to follow directions. “Now is everypony else still on for this or what?”

“Yeah, let’s do this,” Sunny Sea said.

“I guess so…” Adagio whispered.

“Alright. Good. Now remember the plan. We get Tripod down here. We say the magic word. Last one to move gets ten caps and a box of Sugar Apple Bombs, got it?”

There was a stretch of silence that I could only assume was everyone expressing their understanding of the plan. Several seconds passed, then I heard a knocking on the wall of the General Store.

“Tripod? We have a question for you!” It was the ringleader’s voice, but I still smirked hearing my nickname. Inkblot had convinced me to start using it around the new arrival foals years ago. Turns out foals mispronounce a lot of words, and attempting ‘Buck’ got them in trouble with the adults a lot.

I decided to play it up and let out a long, low groan. “Whaaaaaaat?”

“We need you to look at something.”

I stood up and peered at them over the edge of the roof. “Hang on.” Making a show out of stretching, I cracked my neck and twisted my body as much as I could. Then I jumped off the roof and circled them as I glided to the ground. “What’s up?”

The five ponies took a collective step back as I stood up as tall as I could in front of them. I wasn’t muscular in the slightest, but being fifteen years old compared to their ten years or younger at least let me be a lot taller than them by default.

“We, uh... just wanted to, uh...” Little Miss Bad Influence reached into her saddlebag and pulled an item out, setting it on the ground in front of her. “Just wanted to give you this bottle of Buckweiser we found!”

I took my cue, closed my eyes, and went into full rage mode. Rearing up and flaring my wings out, I gave a shrill whinny. I pounded the ground hard when I came back down and snorted several times, trying to sound as mean as possible. When I opened my eyes, the only one still standing in front of me was Sunny Sea. The little filly simply had a big smile on her face.

I stared at her while I settled down and folded my wings back to my sides. “I don’t know why I let you convince them that I care about this.” I reached out and knocked the bottle of Buckweiser over with my hoof. It was a sore spot. Being named after alcohol was fine and all, but did it have to be the very cheapest kind? Were Whisky, Vodka, Bourbon, and Tequila all taken already? My full name just made me seem cheap and ordinary. Not.. that… Buck was much of an improvement, but still! It’s the principle of the thing.

Sunny Sea just laughed and walked over to me. She reared up and threw her forelegs around my neck in a hug. “Because I’m a good spy, you really do love me, and a few caps and a snack is the least you can do.”

I snorted as I got hugged. “You really know how to abuse power.” I slipped my wing down beneath her now exposed belly and tickled at it.

Sunny let out a yelp and dropped back down to the ground with a giggle as she kicked my wing away. “It’s fun!”

I chuckled and moved my wing to ruffle at Sunny’s mane after she successfully batted it off her belly, and I was about to speak when Sunny let out a gasp. What was it with fillies gasping around me today?

“What happened to your eye, Tri?!”

I blinked. “Huh? Oh.” I pulled my wing back and gingerly poked around my right eye with my feathers. It was still really tender. Didn’t hurt unless it got touched, though. “I uh… was practicing with my rope this morning. Had a beer bottle up on a fence.” I looked down at the bottle of Buckweiser in the dirt. “Actually it was probably this one. Anyway, lasso’d it, yanked it back, but I yanked it back wrong, bottle came and smacked me right in the eye.” I demonstrated the bottle’s movements in the air with my wing, ending up with my wing covering my right eye as I looked back at Sunny.

Sunny Sea giggled a bit at my motion, but then ran up and gave me another quick hug. “Don’t do that.”

I huffed this time, but used my other wing to return Sunny’s hug. “Not like I meant to.”

“Well then next time don’t!” Sunny broke off the hug then stepped back again.

I rolled my eyes then started to look around the area. “If only it was that simple.” Wait, what? I tilted my head a bit and stepped to the side… yep. I wasn’t seeing things. The small, scared filly from the group hadn’t actually run off very far. She was hiding behind the food storage building, her head peeking around the corner, watching me. I reached out with my wing to tap Sunny’s side then nodded in the direction of the scared filly. “Who is she? I don’t recognize her.”

“That’s Beanie,” she said after following my gaze. “Only been here a few months. Nice, but shy. Don’t like most foals her own age. Too rowdy.”

“You should introduce me.”

“Probably not a good idea, Tri. After that little show she’s gonna be terrified of you.”

I turned back to look at Sunny. “Does she like you?”

“Everypony likes me.”

“Great. You’ll be right there with me and she won’t be so scared.” The look on the unicorn’s face told me it wouldn’t be that simple.

“Okay, okay, c’mon,” she sighed.

I tried to do the opposite of what I had done earlier and make myself look as small as possible as we walked over to her.

“Howdy, Beanie,” Sunny said when we reached the filly’s spot. “You know you don’t have to stand here anymore, right? Everypony else ran away.” Beanie never took her eyes off of me while Sunny spoke. “And hey, since you’re being so good at being still, maybe we can split the bet winnings.” After still not getting a response, Sunny shook her head and pointed at me. “This here is Tripod, he wanted to see you.”

Beanie’s voice was barely a whisper. “I don’t... I didn’t want...” She said more after that, but it was too quiet to hear.

I actually started to feel a little bad. Just a little. The tiny thing couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. “I ain’t really mad, Beanie.” I slowly worked my body down to lay next to her, then reached over with a wing and nudged some of her green mane away from her face.

“But... they said... and then you...”

“All for fun.” I put on a big smile. “Smiles and laughter and fun.”

Beanie still looked as scared of me as ever. It was kind of cute how she tried to hide her entire body behind her long mane. For several minutes I tried to make funny faces and noises, but nothing seemed to work.

“What am I going to have to-” SPLAT!

I recoiled from the sudden feeling of mud on my face. I looked around and saw Sunny a few feet away with a small hole in the ground next to her. Before I could ask her what she thought she was doing, I heard quiet giggles next to me.

“Oh, so you think that’s funny, huh?” I wiped the mud off my face, grabbed some more with my wing, and tossed a large mudball back at Sunny. The impact left her covered in mud from nose to horn, and the giggles from the little filly turned into full laughs.

After a few minutes, we had succeeded in getting mud everywhere and we had even gotten Beanie to toss a couple mud balls at us. When we were done, we simply laid on our backs in the middle of our battlefield and watched the cloudy sky.

Once again I was awoken by a voice above me.

“I’ve been looking all over for you.”

What was it with today? It had, like, themes. Fillies gasping, rude awakenings… I lifted my head out of the mud and started to look around. Sunny Sea was still on one side of me. You could still see most of her blue coat, but her yellow mane was nearly pure mud. I was going to be in so much trouble… On my other side lay Beanie. Both of them were still sound asleep. I finally looked above me to see Scroll. Paper Scroll, to be exact.

“Can’t say I was hoping to be woken, Scroll.”

“You did look mighty peaceful,” the earth pony colt said, “but we need you to sign out a shipment.”

I let out a sigh. “Can’t Knoll do it?”

Scroll let out a long, drawled, “Nooooo. He only has authority when you aren’t here, remember? You’re the oldest colt, he’s the second oldest.”

“An’ yer third oldest, why can’t you do it?”

“Because the last day you were both out of town at the same time was three years ago.”

I let out a huff and started to work my way up to my hooves. “Fine. What’s gettin’ shipped where?” Once I was up, Scroll started to head towards the third storage building, the one we use for holding things we intend to take to Market. I followed him dutifully, because I had to always do my job, not only do it when I wasn’t wanting to take a nap.

“Two groups of Crusaders came back in yesterday. Had a nice haul. High said that next week some sort of dangerous… things were going to be coming through, and if we wanted to go to Market soon, it had to be soon soon. Not sorta soon.” He continued on in front of me and opened the door to the building. He held it open for me too.

Unlike Inkblot’s building, this one didn’t have as many windows, which made the inside be a whole lot darker. And it was a lot more cluttered, too. Sure, a lot of the goods were lining shelves and such along the walls, but a fair amount of it all was just tossed into the middle of the floor to be picked out and sorted later. By the door there was a large chalkboard hanging on the wall which we used for keeping inventory.

I walked my way over to the chalkboard and went about finding a piece of chalk. “Dangerous things? That’s incredibly specific.”

“Don’t blame me, blame High.”

“Maybe I’ll ask him.”

I found a suitable piece of chalk, then turned and started to look around the room. The layout was messy, but it had a system. Brand new stuff to the middle of the floor. Eventually it got sorted and put on the shelves in the back. The oldest stuff had worked its way down to the shelves in the front, so when we packed up carts for Market we could just take that stuff and be sure to keep the cycle running. Normally nothing stayed more than five or six weeks in this building.

As the oldest colt in town, it was my responsibility to make sure all three storage buildings were kept in line. I had to make sure the food building was fully stocked and that we always had enough in reserve in case a few of our scavenging parties didn’t come back with any. I had to make sure that everything in the item storage building was properly inventoried and that all items taken out were both returned and put back in their proper place. Also, it was my job to keep track of the building we were currently in, to make sure we would always have a good amount of items for trade or sale, and to make sure it didn’t overflow or ever actually empty out.

“Who’s all goin’?” I asked as I looked back at Scroll.

“Me, my brother, and Inkblot.”

I had asked so that I knew exactly how many carts would get pulled, and thus would know how much of the inventory here to sign out. I turned back to the chalkboard and started to write, but then stopped. Inkblot was going? I tapped the chalk against the board a couple of times, then wrote down that two carts would be pulled, hauling all of the first eight shelving sets in the storage room. I followed that with the names Paper Scroll, Paper Plate, and Inkblot. I paused for a couple of moments then added 'Buck' onto the end of that list.

“Woah,” said Scroll when he noticed my name, “You wanna go to Market?”

I bit my lip then nodded as I put the chalk back down. “Yeah, I think so. Change of pace, ya know?”

Scroll just stared at me. “You love your routine.”

“Well, you know, nice to try out new things, right?”

Scroll’s stare continued. “You hate new things.”

I huffed and looked back at him. “Well too bad, I’m going! My name is up there, no going back now.” He started to move past him towards the door.

“You could just era-”

“NOPE! It’s up there forever!”

I walked through the door and let it fall closed behind me, separating myself from Scroll in the process. Once it had, I spread my wings and took to the sky again, once more heading right for the General Store.

Preening was usually relaxing, but the horrible taste of mud was putting a damper on the usual effects. In the past half hour I had coiled my rope twice, packed my saddlebags three times, and made sure there was nothing wrong with my leather vest once. I had no idea why. We wouldn’t even be going to Market until tomorrow. That’s why I had settled down and tried to relax myself with some preening.

Today had started out pretty bad. Don’t forget it got worse. But then it got better. Is embarrassing yourself in front of High and Inky really all that much better? Well, no, but- Well then you’re an idiot. But we had fun! And got to laugh, and then were was a mud-ball fight, and those are always fun. And you’ll get in trouble as soon as High has to be the one to give Beanie a b-

I huffed and spit the mud out of my mouth onto the roof. I hated arguing with myself. I always lost, every single time. The only thing I could do to win was just stop the arguing and think about something else. What else… Today really was a good day. Only a couple of things could’ve made it better.

As if the clouds were reading my mind, a drop of water fell onto my nose. Moments later, more drops of rain started to hit the roof all around me. I stopped my preening and smiled. Rain always made a day better. Tilting my head up, I looked towards the clouds to watch the rain fall. Right up until a raindrop fell directly into my eye. I sputtered and dropped my head to rub at my eye with a wing. That was a stupid idea.

My stupid idea was followed with a better one, though. With all the rain, everyone else was sure to go inside, right? Absolutely. I could finally get that nap I’d been trying to take all day.

As the rain picked up, I curled up and tucked my head under my wing to keep the rain off of it. With any luck, my dreams would be about how awesome tomorrow was going to be.

Author's Notes:

Big thanks to Scrap Metal, Kibu, and No One for helping me out with catching any errors in plot or grammar and spelling thus far.