Just to warn you guys, this chapter goes into deeper detail of what happened in the month that Fiery’s been there because I forgot to mention it in the last chapter.

Saturday, a day meant for everyone, no matter what size or age. To spend time with loved ones, kicking back and just relaxing. Perhaps one would go out and paint their house or do other chores of the sort; such as going out shopping in the bustling markets of town, or scavenging for scraps for the less fortunate. Or in Fiery’s case, ignoring the scolding of his roommates as he eventually gets out of bed, then immediately getting drunk off his ass at the local pub.

Yes, although Fiery had been living in the new world for the second week now, he had become a habit of his old self. With the allowance of one hundred bits given by Octavia, he would stay inside throughout the entire week from Sunday to Thursday, only to blow all the money she gave him on the last two days of the week.

Ponyville was a small town, only consisting of a few thousand ponies, meaning that there were only a few places that a stallion like himself could go enjoy himself. He often contemplated going to the nightclub that his other roommate Vinyl worked at, but he always knew that he wouldn’t really enjoy himself over there, he has never having been a real nightclub person. The only place that he could really enjoy himself was ‘Snoozin’ Speakeasy’, which was really the only place he could have a good time.

The creaking sound of the opening door to the pub/inn would only become familiar with him as he walked in searching for a place to sit. Even at seven in the evening, the first floor of the Victorian-styled building was nearly packed. Each hardwood booth, layered with multi-colored silk had been taken by some group or another. The tables were also occupied as ponies were drinking their drinks, sitting on their rumps as they gossiped and laughed, the typical bar-esque atmosphere. To one side of the pub there was a space made out specifically for any type of performance, directly across from the booths, for something scheduled ahead of time or some drunkard who wanted to embarrass themselves in front of the other patrons. Finally in the very back there was the bar itself, tens or perhaps hundred of different types of drinks lined up behind the barmaid, clean glasses hanging from the ceiling, multiple green-headed barstools laying in front of the hardwood surfaced bar.

Fiery was lucky enough to find a seat at the bar, squeezing through a couple of tight spaces formed by the patrons. Propping himself up onto the barstool, he waved to the barmaid, getting her attention as he begins his routine.

Over the two weeks he had been in Equestria, he had seen all types of stallions and mares of all shapes, sizes and ages. If he had to guess, the mare walking towards him from behind the bar would be in her thirties at best, a light plum coat with mulberry mane. Most knew her as Berry Punch, owner and proprietor or ‘Snoozin’ Speakeasy’, along with her filly, Ruby Pinch. “What’ll it be, handsome?” The barmaid asked with her usual business smile, adding the ‘handsome’ remark to most likely make the buyer feel more wanted, thus, more likely to come back another time.

“Can I get some Jack Apples?”

The barmaid acknowledged the order with a single nod, before getting a small glass from underneath the bar, along with some ice and a Jack Apples bottle. Unlike the regular brownish coloring of a Jack Daniels bottle back on Earth, this liquid was a dark greenish coloring, representing the apples that the whiskey was made out of. After pouring the alcoholic beverage into the glass, the barmaid placed the drink in front of Fiery. “One glass of Jack Apples.”

“Thanks.” Fiery responded as he picked up the glass, bringing it up close to his muzzle. With a swift motion, he leaned back as he opened up his mouth and tipped the glass backwards, the drink hitting the back of his throat, a few ice cubes falling in to soothe the burning sensation that was to follow. Needless to say, Fiery began to cough heavily as the burning sensation of the whiskey assaulted his senses, only for it follow up with the sweet taste of apples, all while Fiery placed the glass back onto the bar, demanding for another.

“Coming right up.”

This continued for almost three or four glasses of whiskey, each time ending with Fiery coughing and slamming the glass down asking for more. And even though he was an Earth Pony in this form, meaning that he could withstand the effects of alcohol more than the other two races, it was evident that the effects of this particular drink was too much for him. Asking for a fifth, he was given an unwelcomed reply.

“Sorry handsome, fours the legal limit. This is strong stuff, even for an Earth Pony like yourself, and I don’t want a lawsuit slammed on me saying I killed somepony from alcohol poisoning.” Berry said, putting the Jack Apples bottle back below, out of Fiery’s view.

“I said gimme ‘nother!” He replied, almost yelling as he began to slur his words, evident the drinks were already taking its toll on him.

“Or what? You’re gonna climb on over and puke all over me, just like you did with Ms. Dash?” Berry said with a slight smirk. She was always annoyed with having to deal with drunks, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have fun riling them up.

The other patrons nearby began to laugh at Fiery’s misfortune, all knowing what Berry was alluring to. “How’d didja-”

“Oh come off it, honey.” Berry answered him with a flick of the hoof, not even bothering letting him finish his question. “Nearly half the village was at that party. Anypony who wasn’t there has obviously heard about your little scene there by now. Word travels fast ‘round here. Now, are you gonna order something less potent, or does my friend here need to escort you out?”

Fiery hadn’t realized it, but a white, brawny looking pegasus with a buzz cut was standing right behind him, the only thing that had given the pegasus away was a loud snort. As Fiery turned around to see the pegasus, all he could do once seeing him was thinking, ‘Oh shit.’ Despite the pegasus having tiny wings, almost as small as a foals, Fiery visibly shrunk at the sight of the muscular pegasus. For once he knew not to pick a fight he couldn’t win while drunk.

Grumbling, Fiery turned back to Berry, pulling out his cloth-wallet (a gift from his roommates) from his flesh pocket for her to see. “How’s much?” He once again slurred.

“Fifty bits.” Berry said with a straight face.

Fiery looked up, astonished. “Fi-Fiffy bits?!” He yelled. He wanted to leap over and really give the barmaid a piece of his intoxicated mind on the price, just like back on Earth where he would always end up getting pulled back by his friends or other patrons before he could get arrested, but with the pegasus behind him, the last thing he wanted was to get his drunk pony ass kicked. “Fuggin’ bullshit.” He said under his breath, or so he thought, Berry and the pegasus easily hearing him.

He counted out fifty bits for the bill, or so he thought, instead giving the barmaid an extra 8 bits on mistake, before getting off the stool and leaving the establishment.

Fiery wandered the streets of Ponyville for a few minutes, stumbling his way into multiple objects as he tried to walk on his four hooves. He was attracting much attention due to his obvious drunken self, and to add to that, it was 7:30 in the evening.

“Shtupid fuggin’ bar an’ their shtupid law.” He slurred out loud. Ponies that happened to be around him were shocked of the language they heard. One little light purplish colored unicorn filly nearby had also heard him, and had no idea what the special word he used meant.

“Mama, what does ‘fucking’ mean?” The filly asked in an innocent voice.

The mother, a grey, blonde maned pegasus with crossed eyes, gasped. Without even answering, she picked up her little muffin and began to fly away from the horrible stallion.

He continued to wander the streets for nearly an hour, continuing to crash into things and stumble upon himself as the alcohol slowly made its way out of his system. Ponies tried their best to stay away from the drunken stallion, as if he had the plague. The entire time, he was going the wrong direction from home, the complete opposite direction in fact.

10:30 in Luna’s night, and Fiery was standing on the edge of Ponyville, the house where he lived nowhere in sight. He was able to empty his stomach along the way, having not passing out but still managing to piss off another pony by puking into one of the stalls at the market, mistaking it for a trash can of all things. Now he just sat, sitting and staring up at the stars with a drunken gaze.

Luckily for him, the direction he had managed to walk in just happened to be the same direction of one of the humans he had met just the week before. Luck would have it in fact, that the said human-turned-pony was walking down the street to her house at that moment, along with two other pegasi. Both were lilac in color, one with a jagged blue and white mane, the other pale green with a pink bow on top.

“So I told him, ‘Buddy, if you think that tiny little thing is going to impress me, think again.’” The one with the jagged mane said as they walked closer and closer to Fiery, unaware of him being in their path. She began to giggle, along with the other two mares, as she continued her story. “Mare, if you could see the look on his face when I talked about his wingspan.”

“So, what happened after that Cloudchaser?” The other lilac pony asked, still laughing up a storm.

“Well, dear Flitter, he star- OOF!”

The one named Cloudchaser hadn’t been looking where she had been walking, thus, running right into Fiery. She collapsed back onto her rump, rubbing her head with her left hoof as she looked up at what blocked her path, the other two ponies helping her up. Seeing that the stallion had ruined the merry mood of the three by sitting in the middle of the road, the jagged-maned pony began prodding Fiery’s back, attempting to acquire the drunk pony’s attention. “Hey, buddy! What’s the big idea?!”

Fiery, having been oblivious to the mare bumping into him up until this point, slowly turned his head to get a better look at who or what was yelling at him. Lazily blinking one eye after the other, he began to stare at the pegasus with a bored look on his face, annoyed that his thinking, or there-lack-of, was interrupted by this ‘rude’ pony. “Wassa’ matta’ wit’ you?”

“‘What’s the matter with me’?! What the Tartarus!” Cloudchaser yelled out, clearly starting to get annoyed with the stallion. “What’s the matter with you?! Why in the Great Skies Above are you just sitting here in the middle of the road, blocking the path for other ponies with your fat, drunken ass!” She finished, covering her muzzle with her hoof as the stink of booze lingered in the air.

“Come on, sis, let’s just ignore him.” The other lilac pony suggested, in which Cloudchaser agreed, flicked her tail to show her annoyance, before walking around the roadblock. As the two moved a few yards away, the one named Flitter looked back to see that the third of their group hadn’t moved from their previous stop. In fact, she was helping Fiery up from the ground, back up onto all four hooves. “Arc! What are you doing? Come on!”

The last one named Arc, the one who was secretly a human-turned-pony, had noticed Fiery when Cloudchaser first bumped into him, instantly recognizing the pony. She had been wondering how the new human was doing in Equestria, but with how her work schedule worked out, she didn’t exactly have the time to go all the way across town for a talk.

“H-Hold on you guys, just let me help him up!” She called back, finally getting Fiery onto his hooves, only for him to fall back down. With a frustrated huff, she yelled to her friends again. “Just go on without me! I’ll be home soon!”

Cloudchaser rolled her eyes, and turned back towards the direction they were headed in, before walking away. Not worried for her friend at all as she knew she could take care of herself, she yelled that they would meet back at home before her sister followed.

Arc pulled Fiery up from the ground for a third time, trying to help a fellow human out. This time she finally managed to get him to stand up and not fall down, and with a relieving sigh, she smiled at the brown pony. “Hey... Fiery, right?” She asked, trying to remember his name. “How’d you been? Haven’t seen you around for about a week. The other guys and I were gonna go out tomorrow and talk and stuff. I was going to ask you if you wanted to come but I didn’t know where you lived, and I didn’t exactly have the time to ask somepony for directions, and... hehe, yeah...” She said, rubbing a hoof on the back of her neck in embarrassment.

The mare wasn’t exactly sure what to say, considering the entire time the brown musician just stared at her, not saying a word. Beginning to feel uncomfortable, even though she hadn’t seen him for nearly a week, she was just about to leave him when she saw something peculiar in his eyes. That peculiar thing, was tears. “H-Hey, are you alright? What’s the ma-”

“Maaahhhmyyyy!”

“What the?!”

Out of nowhere, Fiery, for one reason or another, had confused Arc for his mother. Without warning, he dove on to her, pinning her onto the ground as his eyes streamed out more and more tears. Arc continually tried to push the stallion off, but he continued to hug her and rub his snout into her shoulder, wiping away his tears and snot. “I-I-I mi-i-i-issed y-ou.” He confessed, hiccuping constantly. “Wh-wh-why did y-you leave me mommy?”

“‘M-Mommy’?!”

It had been late, and way past her bedtime.

Octavia “Philharmonica” Pie had been sitting on the living room couch, multiple sheets of paper spread out across the coffee table in front of her as she looked at all of them. Each sheet was filled with numbers and various types of mathematical formulas sprawled out. With the addition of the money that Vinyl had been stashed away up in Canterlot, tonight had been the first night that Octavia could actually sit down and begin to work on how to fix their financial troubles.

“Out of all the nights, why did she have to have work tonight?” She murmured to herself, frustrated that Vinyl wasn’t sitting next to her to figure out the numbers with her. What was she to expect though? Friday and Saturday nights were Vinyl’s biggest nights to work, so she could hardly blame her roommate for working.

Groaning out of frustration she fell backwards, melting into couch cushions as glanced up at the clock sitting up on the wall. Seeing that it had been getting close to 11:00, she suddenly noticed something that seemed to be out of place, something that should have been there but wasn’t, she just couldn’t put her hoof on it...

Pushing the thought out of her mind for now, she got up off the couch and began to trot to the kitchen to make herself some coffee. She knew that tonight was the only night that she could be able to work on the accounting. Wait anymore and she would have to wait near to the next full moon before doing it again thanks to her own work, and with how unreliable and sporadic Vinyl would get sometimes, she knew she couldn’t exactly count on her friend to sit down for one night and fill everything out correctly. Ironically speaking said friend was also the one who had all the cash in the first place.

Flicking on the overhead light for the kitchen and pulling out a grinder within from underneath the kitchen counter in order to grind up some of her favorite coffee beans, she yawned as she turned on the machine, clearly tired from the night’s events (or better said lack of).

Shortly after grinding up the beans, she began placing the grounded-up paste into the coffee maker, along with some water and programing the machine to make some coffee right away, groggily trotting back to her seat on the couch as she waited for the good ol’ Joe to be made. With how quiet the place could get sometimes, it was actually nice to be able to think for once, even if it meant that she had to use that thinking for something she didn’t really want to work on.

Minutes ticked by, and with two and a half cups of coffee drained, Octavia was nearly done with all the work. A smile graced her lips as all the numbers tallied up to be the same on each side, her mind secretly thanking the heavens above for learning accounting one summer when she had been a bit younger. “Seems you make an excellent teacher, father.” She said softly to herself.

Her mouth stretched wide as a loud yawn escaped her after drinking the energy-filled drink, her body clearly ready for sleep as the caffeine crash came almost immediately. She made a mental note to get stronger coffee for late nights like this sometime soon.

The thoughts of the recent week brought another smile to her face as she finished her yawn, the usual antics of Vinyl always bringing a laugh that was sorely needed. And then there was Fiery... The distinct lack of the magically rotting smell of a Pixie Stick not being smoked inside the house made her actually curious as to where he could have been. She knew that he wasn’t in the house, as he had left it hours earlier, she having just begun her accounting work as he walked out the door. Granted the peace was nice, but... there was some, thing, that made her feel better when he was around.

He was out of work, and with no way of getting any source of income, he was nothing more than a freeloader, sleeping under the roof that she and Vinyl paid for, eating the food she bought with her own hard-earned bits. He was also often rude, always refusing to apologize to the Elements of Harmony for what he did, always exclaiming that “He had in it’s right to do so,” and “Everyone gets drunk, people do crazy things when they’re drunk, don’t blame me for being crazy.”

But, it was nice, wasn’t it? He could charming when he knew how to be, and he could be funny, and over the past two weeks, even seemed to learn a few things about cleaning up the house while she was at work, and Vinyl sleeping. Yes, he indeed seemed to be a valuable asset to the Pie and Scratch household. No, not an asset... a friend. But, was that all he was?

Her hoof touched her right cheek for only a moment, the thoughts of the week before coming back to her once again. The ‘kiss’ she had received from him, was that a normal way for how humans thanked one another? Her cheeks burned bright red as the thoughts of that ‘thanks’ meant more than anything she had ever received before.

Sure, she had received kisses from her sisters, and mother, and father, and other family members, but to have a stallion you had only met a week ago, a stallion you knew almost nothing about, suddenly doing something like that to you... She shook her head, her mind trying to change the subjects. ‘The kiss meant nothing!’ She thought to herself. ‘It was just a heat of the moment of thing! There’s no need to get so worked up about something silly like that... Still...’

Her thoughts began to wander once again, this time imagining of a stallion in shining armor, a stallion that would be one day meet her and be the perfect stallion, galloping up to her in a bed of roses, the stallion heeding no mind to the pinpricks of the thorns. She, in a beautiful pink gown made of silk, a small tiara upon her head, would stand upon a pedestal of white marble on this bed of roses, and as the valiant knight proceeded to get closer, she would lower her body, her stomach pressing against the marble as she would extend her hoof out for her steed. The knight, as he finally reached the pedestal, would grab the lovely hoof with his own, and with a polite bow, proceed to kiss the hoof once, and pledge his undying loyalty to her.

Oh yes, how wonderful that would ever be. How she couldn’t wait for the day that would happen either, the day that a stallion was truly loyal to her. Yes, a loyal stallion, one who wouldn’t lie to her in any way, or treat her badly, or... hurt her...

Her once happy moment of bliss quickly turned sour as thoughts of old took hold. Thoughts of her old college life, of the stallion she once used to call ‘coltfriend’. She’d love to be with him as he seemed to be the perfect stallion that she had been looking for. One that was good-looking, who was intelligent and funny, oh how she loved him. Then, on that fateful day, the day that Vinyl had come to visit from her own school, as they opened the door to her dorm, the horrors that were placed within...

Tears streamed from her face, her hooves trying their best to wipe them away for her to see, but at last, it would not work. Her final thoughts before falling into slumber were of the stallion she used to call ‘coltfriend’, and the mare that he embraced in bed.

Author's Notes:

Oh my Jesus, after three-four months of inactivity, I’ve finally released a new chapter! We finally realize what the ‘horrors’ Octavia had to endure in college were (though it should have been pretty damn obvious if you ask me), and what silly events will come of Fiery calling Arc ‘mommy’? Who knows?
In all honesty, I wanted to extend this chapter, but decided to cut it here because I’ve made you guys wait enough, that means what was originally suppose to be chapter 13, will now be chapter 15. Yay! Anyways, hopefully I’ll get back into writing more, and you guys will see more of this soon enough! Until Next Time, Poodicus Out.