Applejack spun the bottle on the ground and watched as it stopped on Twilight for the third time in a row. She had the slightest notion that Twilight might’ve been using her horn to have it stop on her more than the rest of them, but didn’t make mention of it. It was nice to see the six of them all able to unwind together; even if “unwinding” actually meant round after round of hard apple cider shots.

“Oh, jeeze!” Twilight exclaimed with highly reddened cheeks. “Me again? This bottle must be broken or something.” She hiccupped and laughed, then raised the glass in front of her for Applejack to fill. Whoever the bottle landed on had to take the next shot; Twilight made her latest drink disappear as quickly as it was poured. She pointed a wobbly hoof in Applejack’s direction. “You know Applejack, if you’re not careful, I’m gonna get rather tipsy soon.”

Applejack chuckled. “I’ll make sure to keep that in mind, Twilight. Okay. Who’s next?”

She spun the bottle in the center of her friends again, only to notice Rainbow Dash had left her spot. Applejack found her near one of the many closets in her room.

“Hey, AJ,” Rainbow Dash asked. “I never understood why you had so many closets in your room before. What do you even put in them?”

Applejack nodded to the first one. “Well, that one there’s full of all my extra hats.”

“And the second one?”

“We leave that one empty in case we ever buy too many hats and there’s overflow. I remember this one Hearth’s Warming Eve when practically every one of my relatives bought me a new hat. You’d think that was the only thing I wore or something…”

Rainbow Dash nodded. “And in this third closet? Let me guess: lassoes?”

Applejack pursed her lips. “Why don’t you quit exploring and come rejoin the game, Rainbow Dash. Nothing in that closet, but—”

“A giant apple costume!?” Rainbow Dash shrieked as she opened the last closet. Inside on a wire hanger was a pony-sized red apple costume with holes for their face at its center and holes for their legs at the sides. It even had a fake brown stem at its top.

In response, Applejack sucked in a mouthful of air and turned about as red as the apple costume was. Her mouth soon followed suit and became as thin as piano wire.

“What in Equestria is that garish garment for?” Rarity asked, rising off the floor to give the costume a closer look. “This material doesn’t look cheap, either! Not like the rest of Applejack’s things. No offence, Applejack. Did you hire someone to make this special for you?”

Hovering in midair, Rainbow Dash grabbed the costume off the hanger to get a better look at. “I think the better question is why she got someone to make her an apple costume in the first place. Like, I know you like apples, Applejack, but there’s a limit to liking stuff, you know?”

“It’s for business!” Applejack blurted, the moment a good answer came to mind. “Yep! Let’s go with that! A giant apple costume to… to help sell apples! Why, I wear that costume everyday I’m out in town with my apple wagon. Yep, indeed! There be some rather tasty truth right there!”

“Tasty truth?” Rainbow Dash cocked a brow. “Then how come I’ve not once seen you in this thing before? I buy apples from you all the time, AJ.”

Fluttershy anxiously tapped her hooves together. “Maybe Applejack doesn’t want to talk about it. I know if someone found a weird costume in my closet, I wouldn’t—”

“Oh, dear sweet Celestia’s Equestria!” Rarity cried, holding a hoof to her forehead. “There’s a hole in it!”

“Well, yeah,” Rainbow Dash replied dryly. “It’s for the head and the legs, obviously.”

“No!” Rarity said shocked. “There’s a sixth hole! Right where a stallion would slide his—”

“Rarity!” Applejack shouted.

Rarity pursed her lips. “Well I for one have never called them ‘Rarities’ before, but whatever floats your boat, Applejack.” She chuckled to herself. “And by the looks of it, quite a lot ends up floating your boat.”

Pinkie Pie came to happily bounce beside them. “I don’t get it! Why is this making Applejack so uncomfortable? I have loads of costumes at home! Even fruit-based ones! The best is when I dress up like a giant banana and trip people in town!”

Using a hoof so as not to be overheard, Rarity leaned close to Pinkie Pie to whisper in her ear. At once, Pinkie Pie’s eyes shot open. “Oh! Now I get it! It’s a costume you wear while having sex!”

Having already gone as red as physically possible, Applejack turned her attention to the set of windows just beside her bed. She knew she could always leap out of them and start a new life somewhere else. Possibly change her name so no one would know it was her anymore—something like Apple Sack or Apple Smack or something similar. Anything to get out of this horrible conversation she was currently trapped inside.

Rainbow Dash was now writhing along the floor because she was laughing so hard. “So Applejack loves apples so much she actually has sex with them? Oh, my gosh! I can’t even. My ability to ‘even’ has been destroyed. Really, Applejack? Really!?”

“Yes, really!” Applejack answered, crossing her hooves tightly over her chest. “I like apples, okay? They’re juicy and delicious and nutritious and practically everything I’d want in a partner. So what’s wrong with taking that relationship one step further? I mean, I already used to have my pre-coitus apple… and my during-coitus apple… and let’s not forget my post-coitus slice of apple pie.”

Rarity’s eyes went from the apple costume to Applejack. “And stallions are actually willing to do this?”

“Most of them,” Applejack answered earnestly. “I only wish they’d stop making so many apple sauce jokes near the end. I’m being dead serious about my affection towards apples when I’m with them.”

Rainbow Dash snorted. “Clearly. Thankfully you’d never find anything that ridiculous in a closet of mine.”

Twilight hiccupped again and raised her head. “She’s lying. She always looks down and to the right when she’s telling a lie. So that means she does have something in her closet she’s not proud of.”

A mischievous grin wormed its way up Applejack’s face. “Really, Twilight? Say… you wouldn’t happen to be able to teleport us all over to Rainbow’s house to check, now would you?”

Twilight visibly wobbled on the floor. “Normally, I’d say no. But give me one more shot of cider and I’ll see what I can do.”

“See?” Rainbow Dash told them all in the center of her bedroom. “Nothing but a couple of Wonderbolts uniforms. Nothing wrong with that! Coming from a top-tier pegasus like myself!”

Applejack held the Wonderbolts uniform over a leg, eyeing it closely. “But what about this odd zipper here?”

Rainbow Dash raised a hoof. “That’s so I can get it in! Duh!”

“And this smaller zipper around the crotch area?”

“I can’t hold it in forever, can I? Practices can be hours sometimes!”

Rarity returned from Rainbow Dash’s closet with a few more items in hoof. “And what about these red-and-yellow matching wig and mane pieces? As well as these goggles and sunglasses? Aren’t these rather… Spitfire-ish, Rainbow Dash?”

Rainbow Dash frowned. “I refuse to comment on that!”

“So you don’t have a secret crush on Spitfire? It’s perfectly fine if you do.”

“I still refuse to comment on that!” Rainbow Dash glanced around the room helplessly, before locking eyes with Fluttershy. “Hey! I bet Fluttershy has a weird costume! Let’s go find out and completely forget about all of this! Sound good?”

Clearly intoxicated by this point, Twilight wrapped a foreleg around Rainbow Dash while holding an open bottle of cider with the other. “Let’s do it! And this time I’ll try my best not to teleport us into that volcano again!”

One teleportation trip to a swamp and then to Fluttershy’s cottage later…

“Figures Fluttershy wouldn’t have anything,” Rainbow Dash grumbled, as her and her friends searched the entire place to no avail. “I still don’t think my Spitfire costume’s anywhere near as weird as Applejack’s apple. At least I’m making love to a real pony and not some piece of fruit.”

Applejack shot daggers at her. “The bond between my apples and me goes well beyond anything you could ever hope to imagine. Our love is pure and sweet and—”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Please not another apple speech, AJ. Hey, let’s ask one of Fluttershy’s pets if they know anything.”

While Rainbow Dash bribed a nearby squirrel into giving up the goods, Fluttershy busied herself by sitting on her couch and trying to remain as calm as possible—which meant her eyes were about as big as dinner plates and she seemed close to passing out.

A single minute later and that same squirrel Rainbow Dash had just spoken to returned from Fluttershy’s shed with a long thin costume in tow. The collective response from Fluttershy’s friends was a mixture of both groans and grimaces.

Fluttershy regarded her animal friend that ousted her dourly. “Et tu, Squirrelly Face the Squirrel?”

Rarity was the first to grab at the costume. “Is this… it this supposed to be Discord?”

Rainbow Dash nodded. “Has to be. Can’t imagine any other pony with four different limbs and a set of antlers.”

Gently, Rarity went to sit beside Fluttershy on the couch. “Does this mean you actually have feelings for Discord, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy nodded without looking up.

“Then why not tell him you do? I’m sure he’d be rather flattered.”

Fluttershy sighed. “I did tell him—once. And he said he thought it was a great idea if we were together. He even said it made perfect sense.”

“So why aren’t you two together, then?” Rarity prodded.

“Because Discord said he doesn’t like things making sense in his life.” Fluttershy looked up again. “But it’s okay. Really, it is. Sometimes I have Angel Bunny wear my Discord costume and we just sit and drink tea together. There’s so much less chaos when it’s only the costume version of Discord. And sometimes when the real Discord is over, I have him wear my Angel Bunny costume—those are the only times when Angel Bunny isn’t completely terrible to me.”

“Oh, sweetie!” Rarity gasped, wrapping her in a hug. “We’re so sorry for doing this to you! It must be all that pesky apple cider inside of us that causing us to be so terrible! Twilight especially.”

Twilight spun her head in their direction, blinking sluggishly. “Who said something about me and cider? I don’t have a drunken teleportation problem! I can stop whenever I want! What was I doing in Celestia’s bedchambers last week? I dunno. I was pretty drunk. You tell me what I was doing there, why not?”

“And sometimes,” Fluttershy continued quietly, “I wear my Discord costume myself, so I don’t feel so bad when I set things on fire…”

Lightly, Rarity patted her on the head. “We’ll all forget you said that, dear. Should we drop this whole thing now? This whole costume business is getting rather personal.”

Pinkie Pie deflated like a popped balloon. “What? No way! You didn’t even get to check out my costume yet!”

“I don’t think Twilight’s in any state to keep teleporting us around town, Pinkie,” Applejack admitted.

“That’s fine!” Pinkie answered happily. “I always keep my costume on hoof, incase of costume-based emergencies. Here! Check it out!”

That was when Pinkie Pie unveiled her ten-foot tall and six-foot wide costume with four sets of heads and thirteen arms, complete with four hundred eyeballs and a couple of grotesque features even Twilight wasn’t completely sure what they were exactly. By the time she tucked her costume away again, one of Rainbow Dash’s mane streaks had turned a solid white.

“What in Equestria was that?” Applejack shouted after the worst of her shakes abated.

“Who? The Almighty Gergathobbler?” Pinkie Pie answered with a giggle. “He’s the gatekeeper on the ninth level of Pony Heck! Chewer of souls and spitter of sunflower seeds! Talk about a hunk, am I right?”

“Just when I thought you couldn’t get any weirder, Pinkie Pie,” Rarity said with a head shake. “You’ve actually gotten stallions to wear that costume to bed before?”

“Oh, of course not,” Pinkie said with a laugh. “Only Maud so far. But only if I wear her Tom costume first. It’s only fair.”

“Too much information! Too much information!” Rainbow Dash screamed, holding her head with two hooves.

Twilight belched and finished off the bottle of cider in her hooves. “Well, is anyone going to ask me what sex costume is in my closet?”

Applejack snorted. “What? Some giant book? One that spanks you with a giant bookmark if you haven’t finished your last friendship report?”

“A dictionary?” Rainbow Dash ventured.

“I bet ten bits on it being Celestia,” Rarity wagered. “There’s something going on there that just isn’t right.”

“I bet it’s a Shining Armor costume!” Pinkie added cheerfully, before noticing the complete silence that followed. “What? Too weird? They love each other, don’t they?”

“Ha!” Twilight laughed. “You’re all wrong. I’ve even worn it out in public before. It’s my Starswirl the Bearded costume.” A dreamy expression enveloped her face. “It’s practically like making love to knowledge itself.”

Rainbow Dash asked, “So stallions actually wear that old wizard costume for you? I would’ve thought that long beard alone would’ve been a deal breaker.”

Twilight eyed her curiously. “Why would there be a problem? I’m the one wearing the costume, after all.” She thought on that. “Would probably explain the lack of second dates…”

Loudly, Rarity clapped her hooves together to gather their attention. “So are we done here, girls? I think it’s high time we call it a night and stop exploring each other’s deep secret closet contents. Agreed?”

Before anyone could say anything more, Twilight lit up her horn one last time for the night.

“That’s your sex costume?” Applejack asked thickly in the middle of Carrousel Boutique—Rarity’s hidden costume out on display for everyone to see. “I don’t even feel bad about my big apple costume anymore.”

Rarity huffed. “You’re all just jealous. The perfect stitching. The exquisite color design. The extreme attention to detail. That mane! Need I go on?”

Applejack grumbled. “It’s a Rarity costume, Rarity! Meaning you’re making love to yourself! You don’t see anything wrong with that?”

Rarity rose her chin a bit. “I only wanted the best I could find, Applejack. It just so happened that the ‘best’ was me all along.”

Rainbow Dash poked the costume a single time. “So last week when I got mad at you and told you to go screw yourself—”

“I went home and did exactly that,” Rarity answered curtly. “In simpler terms: Rarity hit Rarity with their very own Rarity. Repeatedly. And it was most wonderful.”

Applejack sighed. “And here I never thought you could possibly be more full of yourself. Only now you’ve literally dressed up a stallion to look like you so you could then stuff yourself with more of yourself. Holy moly! This is just giving me a headache now!”

“Can we all just agree to never speak of each other’s secret costumes again?” Fluttershy asked softly.

“As long as Sweetie Belle can borrow Applejack’s costume for her school play next week,” Rarity spoke. “She didn’t nail the tree part, so she got stuck playing the talking apple again. What say you, Applejack?”

Slumping her shoulders, Applejack eventually told her, “Just let me wash the blasted thing first.”