I sat in Berry Punch's bar with a mug of hard cider in my hand, Vinyl sitting beside me as we both drank in silence after what we had discussed.

"It's a long story..."

"Well then give me the shortest version you can."

Vinyl took in a breath and closed he eyes. "I ran into some trouble with the mafia."

I stood there wide eyed, not believing what I had just heard. "I'm sorry could you repeat that?"

"I got in trouble with the mafia ok?!" I put my hand over her mussel to shut her up.

"Ok Ok, you don't need to yell something like that."

She pushed my hand away and glared at me. "You told me to repeat it since you didn't hear."

"Yeah. but I didn't expect you to yell." I sighed and slumped against the wall of the hall. "Ok, what kind of trouble?"

"On the tour at one of the shows, these guys showed up and demanded a refund, we weren't the ones that handled the admissions so we told them it wasn't our problem and to go to the admissions desk. They didn't take being brushed off and stated making threats. Security came in but they were taken down by the group who then told us they were in the mafia, we didn't believe them at first but then this big guy showed up, about the size of Big Mac and told us his name, a name we were warned about before the show. Things started to get out of hoof, they hen took some of our staff to be sacrifices to some 'Cult of the Rings' and told us the only way to save them was to do a few jobs for them. We tried fighting back, but they had these two stallions with them, looked really young, but they took everyone of us down. After that we had no choice but to follow their ores for awhile, that's why I got here so late." She hung her head in shame.

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. "Well ain't that just fucking dandy..."

"I thought you'd be more shocked." Vinyl looked at me with her head tilted. "If I told anypony else this they'd freak out."

"That's because Symbol and I come from a mob family back on earth."

She starred at me wide eyed. "Y-You're part of a mob?"

"The Rayleigh Family, biggest criminal organisation in the world, at least on my version of earth. Symbol and I never wanted to hurt people or anything like that, we were forced to by our father who took our sister hostage and demanded that we work for him, in return our sister would remain alive. He didn't stay true to his promise, there is no one in the whole damn multiverse who I want dead more than him." I looked to my hand and noticed a soft yellow glow, shrugging it off I turned back to Vinyl.

"Is that why when you came here you and Symbol broke down into tears? Because you realised you were fighting for nothing?" She had tears in her eyes.

"Since when were you ever this emotional?"

She froze and looked away slightly. "A lot of things happened in those few months."

I sighed and looked into the room, watching Screwball suck on one of Marx' boney fingers. "Come on, let's go forget about all of this at Berry's bar." Vinyl nodded and followed me down the hallway.

So that's how we ended up here, drinking our problems away while the others celebrated my niece's birth. Taking a huge swing of my drink I looked to Vinyl who was starring at hers. Sighing I signalled Berry to give us another round, who nodded and placed two more mugs in front of us.

"You know, I've been thinking." I turned to listen to the slightly tipsy mare beside me. "Everyone around here's getting into some kinda relationship, what about me? Should I start lookin for somepony? If so who?" She took another swing of her mug before moving onto the next.

She wasn't wrong, a lot of our friends have gotten themselves partners. Twilight and Octavia were still together and their relationship was growing strong, Lyra and Bonbon got themselves some stallions from some candy company, Wasp and Zanny are with Aloe and Lotus, don't really know about the mane six, I know Derpy has started seeing that Dr Whooves guy, I heard that Symbol killed that guy's brother at some point last year, I'm sure he had his reasons. "I don't know hat to tell ya Vinyl, you'll probably know the right guy when ya see him." I started feeling a little tipsy myself.

"Yeah, maybe."

We remained silent as we finished our drinks. I places some bits on the bar and we walked on out of there. As we closed the door we both turned in opposite directions, walking towards our places of residence. As I was about to take a turn I looked back and watched Vinyl walk into her home with a drunken limp.

I sighed and put my hands in the pockets of my overcoat, walking down the streets of Ponyville as the moon appeared from behind some clouds. "What are ya doing to yourself Zero?" I rubbed the side of my face before walking into my house. Looking over on the coffee table I saw Scary looking into the lit fireplace, deep in thought. "You're up late little guy."

He turned his body around and looked up at me with sad eyes.

"Something wrong bud?"

He nodded and looked back at the fire.

"Well, whatever it is I'm afraid it'll have to wait until one of the changelings are up so I can understand you. Goodnight Scary." With that I retreated to my room.

Author's Notes:

Things got a bit dramatic didn't they?

And looks like Zero may be able to use magic if that glow was any indication.

Also, a new story for Symbol will be released soon. It will be called 'The One Who Searched' just waiting on a response from my possible editor.