Toaster hyperventilated steadily and desperately clutched the edge of the hot air balloon’s basket. She was suspended hundreds of feet over the air- -by wicker. In a basket. Wicker chairs were already a stretch- -a highly flammable stretch, as Toaster had learned- -but that anypony had ever figured this out was mind boggling.

“Um, are you okay?” asked the stallion who was commanding the balloon.

“No!” cried Toaster emphatically. “This is too scary!” She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Ponies were not meant to fly!” This, of course, being said just as a small group of Pegasi passed by effortlessly.

“Don’t worry,” said the stallion, adjusting his scarf and goggles. “I haven’t dropped one yet!”

“‘Yet’…”

“Yet…”

Toaster gulped and looked below. They were passing over a lake. She realized that she was not sure if she knew how to swim. The deepest water she had ever been in was the communal bath at the brothel, and even then, she almost never bathed- -because, of course, it was not a good idea to put a toaster in a bathtub, which was actually something Toaster had learned from experience. Several times.

“We’re almost there,” said the pilot, pulling the string to pour more hot air into the balloon. “Ponyville sure is a nice place. I think you’ll like it there. Going to see family, or business?”

“Business,” said Toaster, curled in the bottom of the basket. She peeked out from under her foreleg. “I intend to accumulate large sums of bits by selling my body on the streets.”

The stallion’s eyes widened, and even in the small basket of the hot air balloon, he backed away.

“Um…okay…”

They were silent for a moment, and the pilot pulled the string again, as if trying to make the balloon go faster.

“Say…” said Toaster, her special talent overtaking her fear. She smiled and stood, causing the basket to tip slightly. “That reminds me. I need to pay you for this journey.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s normally thirty bits. But for you, I’ll go with ten.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Oh…well, I guess that’s okay- -”

Toaster smiled manically and the stallion shrank away from her. She slowly started to cross the basket. “I am aware of the rule, though. I have no cash, and no grass to eat…so that means you’re getting…”

She flipped around and lifted her rump to him. “Go ahead,” she said, softly. “Join my mile-high club. And I am about eighty percent sure I won’t give you anything that can’t be cured with antibiotics!”

“That won’t be necessary!” said the stallion, his voice going oddly high as Toaster pushed herself against him, swaying her tail in preparation. “It’s on the house!”

“No it isn’t,” snapped Toaster. “I do not accept charity. I HAVE to pay for this ride! By giving you a ride, as the case may be.”

“I’d rather not…”

“Oh come on,” said Toaster, folding her upper body down and beneath her lower legs, turning upward to look at the stallion from below and momentarily admiring her own genitals and mammates. “I mean, look at that. I would totally penetrate that. If I were a stallion. But, as you can clearly see, I am not. I mean, look right there.”

“I’d rather not,” said the stallion, blushing heavily and turning his head away.

“Oh,” said Toaster, immediately understanding. “So you want it in my mouth, then.”

She folded her body back into the proper conformation so that she was now facing the stallion, a maneuver that caused him to shudder violently for some reason. Then Toaster got on her knees and pushed herself against him.

“Just like eating a soysage,” she said. “Except with less biting. Or more.” She snapped her front teeth together with a loud click that made the stallion jump in fright, closing his rear knees together suddenly.

Then Toaster moved in for the metaphorical- -or, based on past experiences, potentially not so metaphorical- -kill. She shoved her head between his legs, extending her tongue, and the stallion promptly responded by jumping out of the hot air balloon entirely.

Toaster immediately stood up and watched him fall. He took a surprisingly long time to drop into the lake below, where he hit with a loud splash. As the balloon, now pilotless, drifted away, Toaster saw him bob to the surface.

“Well, that’s just great,” she said, looking up at the balloon. “Intended to be sarcastic, of course. Because this is not at all great. I have no idea how to fly a balloon.”

She pulled the string, and it released a plume of fire that caused the balloon to rise slightly.

“Okay,” she said, not knowing where the steering was but confident that she knew how to make ti go up. “Well…how hard can this be?”

Down below, on the floor of the Everfree Forest, Zecora trudged through swampy mud, as she did most days. The forest indeed had prodigious quantities of mud, as well as trees, but being unable to fly, Zecora was unable to trudge through those.

She scanned the swampy floor for signs of plant life that she might use in her potions. After a moment, she found a small plant that was one of very few that she did not recognize.

“A new plant?” she said, approaching it. “This could indeed be worth a king’s ransom…but there is only way to find out if it is indeed not poison.”

She reached down and ate the small spring. She chewed on it for a long moment. It tasted sweet, but also sulfurous and weirdly spicy.

Then, from above, she heard a distant sound. She looked up. Passing above her were the flaming remnants of a hot air balloon descending rapidly over the treetops, crashing into branches and treetops. Zecora had never once seen a balloon move so quickly, and within seconds it was out of sight.

She looked down at the plant, and then turned away. “Either I just saw something quite incredible,” she said to herself. “Or that sprig is DEFINITLY not edible…”

As the balloon broke past the treetops, the basket finally lost integrity. Toaster fell through the bottom, slamming into tree branches for nearly forty feet one after another until she finally fell to the ground below, producing a small crater.

The impact had been substantial, and momentarily disoriented her.

“Ohhhh…” she said, turning her head. “What happened…?” She looked behind her, and saw the hot air balloon slam into a nearby field and burst into a tremendous fiery explosion- -which was strange, considering how it was just full of air and not any flammable gasses at all. “Oh, that.” She sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t see that coming.”

“Are you alright?” said a voice. Toaster looked up at the edge of her shallow crater, and the face of a blue unicorn stallion came into view.

“Hold on,” said Toaster. She patted herself down with her hooves. “Let’s see…no broken bones, not impaled, horn is…” She touched it, and felt a tingle go through her body. “Still there. So yes. I do believe this rather rocky soil broke my fall.”

“Well, then, that is good.” He reached down into the shallow hole, and Toaster took his hoof. The first thing she noticed was how weirdly cold it was, colder than any pony rightfully should be.

“Thank you,” she said, momentarily inspecting the stallion. He was of ordinary height and build for a unicorn, colored pale blue with white hair. He looked rather ordinary, save for his cold, gray eyes and how he seemed almost to be glaring even with a neutral expression.

Of course, Toaster did not care much. She instead noticed that he was completely naked, aside from his cutie mark- -a snowflake- -and therefore had no place to store bits. He was not a potential target.

“You were lucky that you were not in the balloon when it crashed,” said the gray-eyed pony, looking back to the nearby flaming wreckage.

“Yes. It was quite lucky that I fell forty feet through various branches and birds and landed onto rocky soil.”

“Birds?”

Toaster coughed, and a plume of feathers and a small starling popped out of her mouth. It squawked angrily, and then flew away. “Birds.” She looked at him again. “Do you know the nearest way to town?”

“To Ponyville?”

“Probably. Rustic town, big weird castle? Probably infested with hillbillies?”

“It’s over that way,” said the unicorn, pointing. “Just go back that way…”

He turned away from her and started walking into the opposite direction.

“Where are you going?”

“I have business to attend to.”

“So do I,” said Toaster, more to herself than to the stallion, who had now shambled out of earshot. “So do I.”

By the time Toaster reached the edge of the settlement, the sun was on its way to late afternoon. That was not in and of itself a problem; Toaster did her best work at night. That, and being dark brown, sunlight made her heat up quickly, and nobody liked a sweaty prostitute. At least not when they started.

The fields of grass eventually gave way to a path, and then to buildings. They were not large, and their architecture was quaint. Toaster was surprised to see that the rooves were actually thatched. It was not at all like Canterlot. Looking behind her, Toaster could actually see her former home clinging to the side of a distant mountain.

Before she could enter the city proper, though, Toaster suddenly stopped.

“I suddenly feel as though I am being watched,” she said to herself. She slowly turned her head to the right, and found her nose less than an inch away from the nose of a bright pink pony with a poofy pink mane and a pair of blue eyes staring directly into hers. “Ah. I am. How very…pink…”

The earth pink pony gasped deeply and jumped back. “GASP! How did you know my NAME!” She leaned closer and whispered. “Are you psychic?”

Toaster’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you and how did you get my psychological profile? I’ll have you know that I am probably not ACTUALLY psychotic!”

“Um…was that supposed to be a joke?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh, well, my name’s Pinkie Pie and I greet EVERY new pony that comes to Ponyville but don’t tell my YOUR name because I really am psychotic I mean psychic well not really but I do have a certain sense if you know what I mean…” Pinkie Pie then took an extremely deep breath, her dearth of punctuation having depleted her oxygen. “How about…Brownie Butt? Grassy Growth? Flushy- -um…what are you wearing?”

“Fishnet stockings, a skirt, and this little blouse,” said Toaster, taking inventory. That was a strange question; she had assumed that it would be obvious.

“Well…um…okay…” She paused for a moment, but then smiled and began to circle Toaster with a number of springy and oddly audible leaps. “But since you’re new to Ponyville, I’ll have to throw you a party! Or, if you don’t like crowds, I can always just have you over for cupcakes!”

Toaster looked directly at the oddly energetic pony. “Contrary to my appearance,” she said. “I am not actually mint-chocolate flavored.”

“Um…what? Silly, what does that have to do with anything?”

“I mean, if you were to convert me into cupcakes, they would taste pretty foul.”

Pinkie Pie froze. “You mean…make cupcakes out of PONIES? EEEEWWW! Why would you even think of doing that? Why would you ruin a good cupcake with so much…red, gooey flavor? I’ve never, EVER made a cupcake out of a pony, and I certainly don’t have a facility in my basement for processing meat!”

“I didn’t mention anything about your basement,” said Toaster. “And of course, I normally would offer you a free taste, but I have a strict no-mares policy. I’m not a lespony.”

“Taste? What kind of a…what kind of a taste?”

“A taste from wherever you want,” said Toaster, winking.

Pinkie Pie’s expression dropped, and she backed away slowly. “I knew something smelled fishy!” she said. “And more than just your socks! You’re- -you’re- -you’re a HARLOT!”

“Yes, I am,” said Toaster, taking a moment to recall what the old-timey word meant. “Well, most of the time. Not when I’m sleeping. Unless you pay extra.”

Pinkie Pie’s expression narrowed, and her hair suddenly shifted and uncurled, rendering it perfectly straight. Now it was Toaster’s turn to take a step back. The pink earth pony seemed to have become a different pony entirely, and she looked like a madpony. Toaster was afraid; she was only a common hooker, and had no way to defend herself in a fight.

Instead, though, Pinkie Pie turned around and ran back into the village, screaming to the buildings and to whoever she passed.

“Harlot! A harlot! Everypony run! She’s coming to corrupt the youth and steal our waifus!”

Toaster watched her go, and watched several of the ponies in the street turn to look back at her. Then she shrugged, not understanding what was going on, and started to make her way into her new territory.

As she did, the wind suddenly picked up. Toaster turned her eyes to the sky, where clouds were starting to gather. As she did, a raindrop fell into her eye.

“Gah! Blind!” she cried, rubbing her eye. She opened and closed her eye, trying to clear it of the rainwater.

Then the sky opened up, and it started to rain. Hard.

“Well,” said Toaster, looking down at her suddenly sopping body. “Now I am wet. And not in a good way. This is unpleasant.”

She looked to the town, and realized that she would need to find shelter. She needed to find a place to stay, like a house or some manner of dwelling.

“But how am I supposed to do that?” she asked herself.

As if in response, a newspaper blown by the wind suddenly slapped into her face, covering it.

“Noooo!” she cried, rearing. “Don’t eat my face! I need that!”

In all her protests, she suddenly inhaled, sucking the newspaper into her throat. For a moment she paused, blinking, wondering where it went, and then coughed it back up.

She took it in her hooves, and looked at it. It was most certainly a newspaper, and by the flavor of it, it was printed with some high-quality vegetable ink. Toaster made a mental note to eat it later.

“The Foal-Free Press,” she read, flipping it over. The ink was starting to run in the rain, but before it became totally illegible, Toaster saw an advertisement in the classified section. She smiled, realizing that she had just found her new home.