Chapter 3: Race Against The Clock!

The room was silent after Big Mac had finally figured out what was going on, which was only after they had pretty much explained it to him. Everypony was waiting for him, or Rainbow, to say something, but both of them stayed silent. Big Mac seemed to be thinking about it, but it didn't look like he thought it was a really big issue, and Rainbow was just sit down with her eyes glued to the ground. Eventually Rarity got annoyed by this and decided to try and get the conversation going herself.

"So, what do you two plan to do now?" Rarity asked, hinting that it would be a very good idea for the two of them to figure things out now, while they were just hungover, not drunk. The two of them looked up at each other for a moment before going back to their private thoughts, which made Rarity want to hit both of them. Rarity believed that a marriage should be something special, and that it should be a big, expensive, and wonderful celebration, not something that was finished within the span of five minutes. After some more waiting Rarity nudged herself over to Twilight, hoping that she would know of some way to get the two of them to start talking.

"Twilight, isn't there anything you can say to them that'll make them talk?" Rarity whined quietly, which slightly annoyed Twilight, but she started to think as well. As far as they could tell Big Mac and Rainbow had slipped out of the house while something was distracting everypony else, and from there they headed into town to get married, but judging by the time there was only one place they could have gotten married at...

"Town hall!" Twilight said suddenly, getting everypony's attention. They all looked at her in confusion until they started to think about what the town hall had to do with the situation they were in, and as soon as they figured it out all of them began to stare blankly ahead. Big Mac and Rainbow looked at each other in silence as they both came to the exact same conclusion.

"If we get to town hall before they file the paper we won't be married!" they both said, a hint of sadness in Mac's voice while Rainbow sounded completely overjoyed at the thought that they could prevent themselves from actually being married. When Rainbow realized how excited she had been at the thought she blushed quite a bit, almost becoming as red as her current husband was. It wasn't that she didn't want to be married to Big Mac, it was that she didn't want to be married to him right now. He was a good guy and all, but Rainbow liked being free from restrictions, and right now, being hitched to somepony who was stuck on the ground was a big restriction.

"So..." Rarity began to say as everypony turned to look at her at the same time, "Should we get going?"

"Yeah, we probably should" Twilight said awkwardly as she started to back up out of the room, turning around when she was in the hallway. Once she had started walking down the stairs everypony else began to follow after her, all of them feeling a strange sense of hesitation as though none of them wanted to stop this from happening. Applebloom was going to follow after them but Applejack pulled her back, telling her to stay at home so that she could explain what was going on to Granny.

"What was that about?" Rainbow asked when Applejack joined back up with the group.

"I don't want Applebloom tagging along with us, if she did she'd probably blurt out what we were doing to everypony we passed by" Applejack said, remembering the last time Applebloom's blabber mouth got out of hand. Applejack had locked herself up in the house for about a week because of some stomach pains she was having, and Applebloom had assumed what the cause was. Within two days the entire town had known, and believed, what Applebloom had thought of, and it ended up making the weeks afterwards extremely hard and awkward for Applejack.

"Well, that's probably a good idea" Rainbow said in agreement as she happily remembered Applejack having to run around dispelling rumors for an entire month after the last time she told Applebloom something important. After that the group was pretty much silent for the rest of the trip into town, until Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo came running up to them.

"Rarity!" Sweetie Belle shouted as she jumped up to wrap herself around Rarity's neack, nearly taking her to the ground with her. Scootaloo on the other hoof just happily trotted up to see Rainbow and stopped perfectly in front of her, looking like an obedient little dog. Rainbow smiled at her and scuffed up Scootaloo's mane before pulling the little filly into a hug.

"What's going on?" Pinkie asked excitedly, bouncing up and down in a circle around the group, hoping that there was something really interesting going on with the Crusaders.

"Oh, we just got some news that somepony in town is getting married" Sweetie Belle said, making all of them freeze on the spot.

"What was that?" They all asked in unison, which freaked out Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo quite a bit.

"Well, uh, we heard that somepony was going to get married soon because the stallion had proposed to his marefriend" Sweetie Belle said, her eyes trailing over to Rarity, "I thought you would want to make the dress for the bride" Rarity seemed to think about it for a second before smiling at Sweetie Belle.

"Sure thing, now could you go back to what you were doing and leave the adults alone?" Rarity asked, giving Sweetie Belle a sweet smile, but all that did was make her suspicious. The two fillies turned their backs to the adults and started to talk quickly before turning back to stare Rarity down.

"What's going on?" they asked together, making the entire group of adults start to feel uncomfortable. They shifted uncomfortably as they attempted to come up with some excuse they could use on the girls, but nothing seemed to make sense so they all gave up and sighed.

"We're going to town hall" Twilight said in a defeated tone of voice.

"Why?" Scootaloo asked, raising an eyebrow at Twilight. It was strange for all of them to be going to the town hall at the same time when there wasn't some sort of celebration or announcement happening.

"Well, we were, uh..." Rainbow said, squinting her eyes to try and find out what to say to, "Going to go see Mayor Mare so we could plan for..."

"Bon Bon's birthday!" Pinkie blurted out, making everypony look at her as she hung out of a tree by her hind legs. For a moment they wondered how Pinkie got up there, but they simply shrugged it off as Pinkie being Pinkie.

“It’s Bon Bon’s…” Rainbow said as she tried to find out what Pinkie was trying to think about, “Yup, it’s Bon Bon’s birthday soon” Rainbow turned to nod at Pinkie to show that she knew what the plan was, but the two fillies noticed something new about her, specifically her ear.

“Rainbow, why do you have a wedding earring in your ear?” Scootaloo asked inquisitively.

“And why does it look like an apple?” Sweetie Belle added on, making Rainbow turn bright red. She tried to figure out what to say as an excuse but everything she said was coming out as a weird jumble of words that one would expect to come out of some crazy old mare. Twilight and Rarity knew that she wasn't going to be making sense anytime soon so they quickly formulated an excuse.

"Oh, Rarity is trying out a new jewelry design for Pegasi, so she wanted Rainbow to try it out" Twilight said, winking at Rarity.

"Yes... Yes!" Rarity said to reinforce Twilight's lie, "I knew that if she wore it then we could see if it would stay on when she started flying at high speeds" The two fillies seemed to accept that as an acceptable excuse so they shrugged and moved on down the path, hoping to run into Applebloom so they could do some crusading later. Once they were out of sight the entire group let out a sigh of relief, happy to be out of that awkward situation and that the girls hadn't noticed the earring that Big Mac had, so they started heading towards the town hall again.

When they got in front of the town hall they all froze and looked up at it as though it was some impossible obstacle that was standing in the way of their epic quest to keep a drunken marriage from going through. As they opened the door they were greeted by fifteen or so ponies running around as they did their jobs. In the midst of it all stood Lyra, who was happily lounging in her chair with a big smile plastered on her face.

"Lyra, we need you to get a form for us" Rainbow said urgently, which earned her a chuckle from Lyra.

"Sorry, but you're about ten minutes too late if you're looking for that marriage form you and big red signed last night" Lyra said, looking at them with a grin, "Thanks for that by the way, I got a raise out of it for some reason" Rainbow had to fight to resist the urge to jump over the desk right then and there so she could strangle her, but Big Mac stepped in and played the voice of reason.

"I guess we're too late to do anything now, we might as well head back to the farm" Big Mac said, only being somewhat sad because he knew Rainbow wasn't completely happy about marrying him now that she was sober. She nodded her head slowly and started to walk towards the door as everypony looked at her with sad eyes. As Rainbow opened the door there was a loud pop, followed by the cheering of what must have been all of Ponyville.

"What the f-"

"CONGRATULATIONS!"

"WHY ARE ALL OF YOU PONIES HERE?!" Rainbow shouted at the top of her lungs, and when she looked down she saw three little fillies with mischievous smiles on their faces, "Oh you little shits..."