"Istilljustcan'tbelievethatI'mfinallymeetingallofyoubecauseIwasosuperdupersadthatImissedyouguyswhenyoufirstshowedupandyouwereinthehospitalandIwassupposedtogetthegirlsbutImetsomeponywhoneededmyhelpsoIhelpedhimwhichiswhyI'moutherebutnowhereIamtalkingtoyoualllikeInevermisseditandIcan'twaittofinallygetbacktoPonyvilleandfinallythrowyouthebestestwelcomepartyeverexceptit'llbecalledSorryIMissedYourFirstDayButWelcomeToPonyvilleAnywayLet'sPartyParty!"

Delirious sank his prior existing frown against his two cheeks and promptly stuck fish hooks into them, forcing it deeper and deeper until it mirrored his current posture perfectly. Splaying his ears back and retreating from the pink mare merrily bouncing and skipping next to him, he felt a grimace cross his lips and about sprained his neck when she suddenly appeared in front of his face.

"AlsoIreallyloveyourmaskitdoesalotforthedirtandotheryuckystuffunderneathisthatfromPie-dayTheThirteenthoramIgettingmymoviesmixedupIwasneverabigfanofmoviesbecausethere'ssosomanyofthemtochoosefromandIcan'tchoosetowatchallofthembecausethat'sreeeaallyhardbutIalwaysgetthebiggesttubofpopcornIcanandjustsitinthebackandstuffmyfaaaace!"

She hopped back over to her position to Delirious' right and flashed him a grin, still jumping up and down like she was on a perpetual sugar high. There's no way someone could be this fucked up on sweets. Last time he'd checked, none of them had snuck her an EgoChaser while the others weren't looking, and that was the only thing all five of them knew that could cause such a rush without going into the suspect borderline of being helplessly illegal.

As they all continued trotting down the dark streets of Appleloosa, Delirious could see the eyes glaring at them from the buildings to their left and right. This mare was drawing a shit ton of attention, and she wouldn't shut the fuck up no matter what they said against her.

"Who the fuck told her she could come with us?" Wildcat asked from Delirious' left. Looking over at the pig, he raised a brow and attempted a shrug, which—seeing as how he was a pony, and couldn't do much else when he was walking—appeared to be a cross between a mentally handicapped seal trying to wink and a cat throwing its furry ass into the sun-kissed air.

Vanoss clucked his tongue in a similar vein to the owl he wore on his head. "No one."

Nogla chimed in almost immediately, "Yeah, I don't think any of us said she could."

Even underneath his pig mask, the guys could see his eyes widen as Wildcat mashed his teeth together and whispered in a low hush, "THEN WHY THE FUCK IS SHE STILL HERE?"

They collectively sucked on their lips as Pinkie Pie turned their ways with a reflexiveness not too unlike the bird they'd left a few hundred miles back southeast, her eyes narrowed and her mouth in a telling "O" shape. Putting on their most casual faces—which didn't amount to much from the small, fat pig with a pig mask and helmet, the young colt with a smoking monkey on his head, the tall, dirty Unicorn with a bag over his ugly face, the eternally angry orange owl, and the Pegasus wielding a serial killer's bloodied and tarnished mask—they blinked at her as one single unit and attempted to display innocence.
leg

"Heeey..." She started, rubbing at her chin as she, surprisingly, still continued walking normally.

The guys shifted.

Pinkie pointed a hoof at Nogla. "Aren't you the janitor at Cloudsdale High School?"

Wildcat snickered.

"Fuck you," Nogla said small-ly, almost choking underneath his paper bag. He shook his head and turned to her. "No."

Pinkie tutted. "Darn, I always get that wrong." She looked back at Nogla. "You are a janitor though, right?"

"No."

"Are you sure? I'm getting a reaaally big janitor vibe off of you."

Nogla raised a hoof, almost tripping, but was cut off by Pinkie, who pulled out a mop and water bucket and began scrubbing the sand beneath them... while still trotting at their pace... on her hindlegs.

"Being a janitor's suuuuper fun though! Once, I went with my friend Rainbow Dash–" Vanoss flinched. "–to her old school, and I got to mop the floors, and boy was I good at it!" Holding her mop like a guitar, she fanned her right hoof over its sopping head, elicited a nice chord, and began singing, "Mopp-in' around, like I know my duty–"

"Shut up Godsdammit!"

The six all looked up and to their right to find an old stallion shaking his wrinkly, arthritic hoof at them from the second story of the local inn, a horrible frown fixed on his sagging face.

Pinkie, suddenly mopping the sand again like she'd been caught snoozing on the job, grinned and waved back, "Sorry Mr. Dinkleberry!"

Mr. Dinkleberry, shaking his head, issued a very quiet, "Fucking kids," before being drowned out by Pinkie, who let out a sigh and dunked her mop into the wheel-mounted bucket still rolling by her side.

"I forgot to get him a present for his birthday last week, so he's still a little cranky about it." She pouted out her lips and gazed up at the other five. They shied away. "He didn't even like my Sorry I Forgot To Give You A Present On Your Birthday Belated Birthday Gift! I got him a nice new pair of teeth." She began mopping the floor, then shook her head and jostled the dark pink curls towering atop her head, adding, "Came with a rooster and everything..."

She quieted down in an instant, and, with slow movements and weary sideways glances, the guys quickened their pace and took a left to head toward their destination, thinking her one-sided conversation finally finished. They all sucked in a collective gulp of air to find that she could match their pace in a blink of an eye, as if she weren't creating a trail of water with a phantom mop from the perch of her little birdy hindlegs.

Vanoss leaned in toward Delirious. "Okay," he whispered, eyeing the mare up all the while, "on three, we're gonna book it and see if we can get rid of her."

Delirious shooks his head at the Canadian to silently tell him how astronomically stupid his plan was, but could only watch as he repeated the plan to the others, who nodded with him in agreement. As Pinkie hummed a little tune that practically screamed Top Ten Videos and cyborg birds, effectively drowning out anyone else, Delirious heard Vanoss start.

"Alright. One..."

"Two..." came Wildcat.

"Three!" Nogla spat, raising a hoof and getting ready to book it.

All five lunged forward with the need to dash, but leaned back and created pairs of dirt trails behind them as an obstacle blocked their way.

Pinkie Pie, her neck waaaay too freakishly long to the rest of her body and creating a kind of roadblock, smiled at them, chirping, "Oh yeah! How's Ponyville since I've been gone?"

The guys had made stupid noises all their careers, but the ones they made at that moment were among the most unintelligent.

"Duoh..."

"Uhfg, sh..."

"Yeeahoohh...?"

"Tuuuhm."

"Fuck."

Their lack of eligible answers caused Pinkie to walk the rest of her body over like a dog. Raising a brow, she turned her head around and looked up at the five of them from the ground, frowning.

Taking this opportunity, they took up a nice canter and walked around the mare, who popped her neck back into place and suddenly appeared from underneath Wildcat's helmet. Wildcat, letting out the most girliest of shrieks, took off the article, wheeled about on a dime, and promptly baseball chucked it against the side of the nearby building. Pinkie Pie, her back still hidden beneath the helmet, turtled her legs out and bounced off the wall, did a backflip, sailed over Wildcat's head, and threw her "shell" back onto his pig mask. Wrestling it back on with a little whimper, he looked down at his chin, cleared his throat, and found the two clips of the chinstrap, then clasped them together with a resounding click.

"We haven't been back there for, like, a few weeks," Lui finally replied, his voice completely normal and betraying his other remaining friends' bout of giggles.

"Yeah? Shut the fuck up you dicks–"

"Haven't seen them since the Harvest."

"Aww," Pinkie Pie pouted peevishly poorly, "I missed that too?"

Delirious nodded. The others, though he couldn't see, were probably too busy trying to think of a way to escape this hellish nightmare of a... mare.

He would've laughed at the pun if it wasn't life or death.

"Well that's gonna be a long list of things I missed." Reaching into her mane and pulling out a quill... then reaching back in with her other hoof and yanking out a long scroll, she raised both items up to her eyes and glared at them. Licking the end of her quill—which Delirious noted as looking... familiar somehow—she mumbled nothings to herself, still keeping pace with them, and scribbled something down. "Right below Scootaloo's birthday too."

His heart took up a storm, beating into his eardrums and tearing them to pieces in the span of a single, split half-second.

Not another later, he felt something push him with a little hoof and rushed back to reality, the voice of Wildcat chuckling, "Yeah, well, sure sucks to not be there... or something."

Adjusting his blue sweater, and tucking away the red cape underneath it, Delirious swallowed a lump down his throat and resumed his trot.

"I'll be back in Ponyville by the end of the week though, so it's no biggy! I'll just have to make up for all of it the day I get back!" Pinkie exclaimed, rolling up her scroll and placing it back into her mane. Turning, she regarded Delirious, "Oh, and thanks for letting me use this," and grabbed at his right wing, shoving her quill back into its rightful place.

As Delirious craned his neck and flexed the wing back and forth in a shocked stupor, he heard Pinkie suck in a breath and start.

"I've been too busy here in town though! First I was at Sugarcube Corner, where I met this guy with this bird, and he had lost his rock and needed my help, so I just had to step in and help him, and then we went to the train and went off to Baltimare, where we met up with this eeevil mare named–"

She suddenly stopped what she was doing, courtesy of the door now pressing against her Earth Pony face. Neck splayed up and her chin resting flat against the exterior, Pinkie opened her eyes and grit her teeth, wondering just what had happened a second ago.

Inside, the five criminals cursed, spat, and shot insults at one another, their hooves flying as they tried their hardest to lock the shed door as quickly as they could muster.

"Don't fucking drop it–"

"I'm not gonna fuckin'–"

"Shit!"

"You fucking dropped it!"

"Shut up just shut up where the fuck is it–"

"It's underneath your hoof dumbass–"

"Hoof?"

"We're ponies, you fucking–"

"Say foot!"

"Why would I say foot?! That's not right!"

"Shut up and get the lock goddammit!"

"Fucking idiots, move!"

Nogla fell to the floor, having been shoved to the side.

"Fock!"

"Wah wah."

Turning to the door, Wildcat clamped the lock shut and swiped his hoof across his covered forehead for no real reason and to no real avail.

"Step back step back," he told the others, fanning around and shaking his head at them as they did so.

Five pairs of eyes stared at the shed door anxiously.

Knock knock knock.

Wildcat lifted a hoof and turned to his friends, not a word on his snout.

"She's not fucking five dude, she knows we're in here," Vanoss retorted.

"Or does she..." Lui sang, slowly scratching at his chin.

"Are you guys playing cards?"

Four turned to one.

The one rustled his paper bag.

"Nope."

Pinkie, sitting on her butt, rose to her hooves as the lock on the door fell to the floor. Looking over to her left, she watched as the oak opened up ever so slightly, revealing a pair of brown eyes from underneath a paper sheath.

"Hi!"

Nogla blinked. "Uh, hi."

They stared at one another.

"What'cha doin'?"

Nogla looked at her. He looked to the ground. He attempted to go back inside, but something metallic and distinctly 12-gauge clicked at his retreat.

It was quiet for a time.

"Goin' to bed?" Nogla finally asked, almost hesitantly.

Pinkie smiled. "Oh! Sorry!"

She didn't even finish before Nogla fell back inside, shut the door, locked it, placed a magical lock on it as well, put a chair against the frame, and placed a slab of wood along its figure.

He turned to the others and raised a hoof. "All good guys."

"You're fucking dumb."

"Shut up," the Irishman replied, trotting toward the others as they fell onto their cots.

"This really where y'all sleeping at?" Delirious asked, shifting uncomfortably on his bed.

"You wanna buy a room at the inn? They've got hookers, but they've got police too," Vanoss responded, yellow eyes piercing the dark interior of the tool shed.

"Nah."

"Good night!"

"Good–"

They all shot up like a scene in Paranormal Activity, their eyes darting around like hawks to look for the unwanted voice's source.

From the window to Vanoss' left—one they hadn't accounted for—Pinkie waved wildly at them with a grin on her face. The five waved back, inwardly afraid of what would occur if they didn't. Winking at them, the mare reached down to something out of sight, pulled out a green M1 helmet, and slapped it on her head, then turned about and bounced away, the brain bucket shooting up and down with her movements.

Finally left to themselves, they shuddered like they'd just gotten out of a frozen lake, shook their heads, and placed their backs back onto their cots to get some shut-eye.

Feeling an itch on his ass, Delirious raised up his foreleg and turned over on his side, but stopped as something caught his blue eyes.

He narrowed them. Somehow, in the middle of the desert, he'd collected a healthy, green leaf. He hummed a low note, then brought his other foreleg up and brushed it away. It lifted ever so slightly, then landed back on his foreleg a little ways down. Letting out a low curse, he turned the appendage round and round, then sucked in a small breath.

Letting the leaf dangle, he mouthed something indecent and finally noticed that it was... attached to him. Leaning forward, he bit down on the stem and plucked it off his leg, then whispered, "Fuck!" at the pain he was met with.

"The hell's wrong with you?" Nogla asked in the dark.

Delirious set his jaw.

"Nothin'."

Hundreds of miles away, in a quiet, white-walled room, Big Macintosh opened his eyes.

Author's Notes:

Man that helmet Pinkie's got sure seems familiar doesn't it hmmmmmmmmm?