The second lemonade glass of the night rolled to a stop across the tabletop with a rattle of ice cubes.
“Thing is, I’m not in any worse straits than usual, y’know?” Rainbow Dash scooted her chair closer to the four ponies and grasped the glass with two hooves. She focused very hard so as not to tremble as she raised the thing to her mouth and took a sip from the straw. Then, after sucking in the sour taste, she leaned back and sighed. “Not enough bits rolling in? Constantly being threatened with eviction? All applications to the Wonderbolts being turned away?” She shrugged. “It’s all water off the back. Or, at least, it should be… it would be...” Her words trailed off.
All four ponies stared at her. Caramel leaned forward. “Only…?”
Rainbow’s nostrils flared. She slumped forward and pressed her chin to a forelimb. “I dunno. I guess I’m in a different mindset.”
“Well, you’ve certainly been hanging with a different crowd as of late,” Vinyl said while sketching a few more music notes. “It’s bound to change your outlook somewhat.”
“Yeah.” Lyra nodded with a smirk. “We’re jealous as Hell!”
”Lyra! Bon Bon hissed.
“Fine! Maybe just me!” Lyra swished what was left of her cider and remarked, “I’ve caught glimpses of you with your five new marefriends! You seem happy as all get-out! Nothing to be ashamed about, girl!” She took a sip, exhaled, and winked. “Just as I’m not even remotely ashamed to say I’m friggin’ jealous. Heck, if I found myself wading muzzle-deep in a cavalcade of squeaky-clean estrogenic sweetflankery, I’d be up in the clouds! And I wouldn’t even need wings!”
“Heh…” Vinyl’s lips curved. “Tell me about it.”
“They’re not marefriends!” Rainbow Dash snarled. “They’re just…” She sighed, her ears once again drooping. “Friend friends…”
Caramel raised his eyebrow at that. He glanced at Bon Bon. Bon Bon glanced at Vinyl who glanced at Lyra who glanced at her drooling reflection in the shot glass.
”What?!” Rainbow grunted.
“Well…” Caramel brushed a hoof through his silken mane.
“A part of you sounds… uhm…” Bon Bon squirmed. “Slightly disappointed.”
“In what?” Rainbow Dash asked. “In my friends? Pffft! My friends are perfect!”
“Evidently.” Lyra leaned back, her face relatively neutral. “They won you a ticket to the Gala, after all.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just sayin’...” Lyra shrugged, smirking out the side of her muzzle. “Friends with benefits are beneficial indeed!”
“I’ll have you know that I’d leap into a burning volcano for Twilight and the others!” Rainbow growled, her wings flapping slightly as hard lines formed across her brow. “What would you even friggin’ care about the Gala anyway?”
“She wouldn’t,” Vinyl said with a sharp laugh. She adjusted her shades and smirked. “She just wants to sow chaos--the type that stains.”
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again!” Lyra cackled wickedly. “The first Gala that a mare sweeps another mare off her hooves on the ballroom in front of all those rich Canterlot yokels?” She aimed her hoof high and glided it down to the table while making a whistling sound, followed by a breathy “explosion.” She smirked. “I’m tellin’ you guys! Poetry in motion!”
“Poetry in a dungeon would be more like it,” Bon Bon muttered.
“Oh, I could go for that too!”
“Ungh…” Bon Bon rolled her eyes.
“I wish I could have gone to the Gala…” Caramel muttered, his eyes misty and sad.
“Awwwwwwww…” Lyra gulped down an ice cube, crunched it, and spoke in a muffled voice while patting the stallion’s shoulder. “Cheer up, princess. You’ll get to go someday. They just gotta invent a glass slipper in size ‘moron.’”
“Hardy har har…”
“For what it’s worth…” Rainbow sighed, glancing up at the group with dull eyes. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around lately.”
“Oh, it’s alright, Rainbow!” Bon Bon said with a sweet smile. “We know you’ve been busy doing your own thing.”
“But I haven’t been! Not r-really!” Rainbow swiveled the lemonade glass around in a pensive pattern. “I’m supposed to be a loyal pony… the loyalest pony.” She gulped. “That covers all my friends. Including you guys!”
“We’re happy to have you around in some way or another, Rainbow,” Vinyl said with a smirk, looking up from her music sheets. “So what if you’re not able to make it to every get together? Pffft. You’re probably better off.”
“Heh, that’s a fancy way of admitting we’re chopped daisies,” Lyra said.
Vinyl glared. “I was referring to her regular cider intake.”
“Oh, yeah. That. Good thing she’s rid of that.” Lyra shrugged before sucking whatever she could scrounge up from the leftover liquid in her glass.
“I know that a lot of years have gone by and I haven’t been all that talkative,” Rainbow muttered. “I kind of prefer to write out messages with my wings against the sky. Heh. But it’s more than that. I don’t want you all to think that… th-that I ever blamed you…”
“Blame us?” Bon Bon asked, blinking.
“You know…” Rainbow Dash bit her lip and glanced up with sad eyes. “For introducing me to Listing.” She sucked her breath in.
Caramel shivered, struggling at the last second to hide it.
“Eh… no need to bring up her name again,” Vinyl said. “She was the least snazzy member of our ‘club’ anyways.”
”She was never part of the club,” Lyra croaked.
“Oh come on, she was totally--”
“Listing Breeze was a walking miscarriage with wings and an ego. The royal guards should have shackled her and thrown her into the biggest pit of Tartarus before she was even born. Hell, even most of the monsters down there have a better temperament than she ever did.”
“Yeesh, a little harsh there, Lyra?” Bon Bon muttered.
“Well, this is Listing that we’re talking about,” Caramel said.
Bon Bon opened her mouth to protest, hesitated, and shrugged. “Okay. You got me there.”
“If we had all seen what Listing was capable of doing ahead of time, Rainbow, we would have bull-tackled her and hid her someplace where she wouldn’t have been capable of hurting anypony,” Vinyl said. She gulped and nervously added, “Like you.”
“Didn’t you guys hear me?!” Rainbow frowned. “I said I don’t blame you!” She sighed, relaxing back into her seat as she spoke into her lemonade. “I was my own worst enemy when it came to her. I was… a great deal stupider then. A lot less awesome. But, y’know what? Live and learn. I’m stronger and cooler now for having dealt with all the bumps in life. What’s the point in being a stunt flier if you can’t take hits every now and then, eh?” Rainbow smiled.
“Or every week,” Lyra said with a demented grin. “Or every Wednesday. Or--heck--after school each day once the final flight class was over--”
Bon Bon firmly pressed a hoof on Lyra’s shoulder.
The unicorn cleared her throat and stared into the tabletop.
Rainbow’s smile faded. After a few seconds of having a stare contest with the far wall, she grunted. “Yeah, well, buck it.” Rainbow Dash gulped down the rest of her lemonade.
“Heh… Buck it!” Vinyl raised her glass of cider.
”Buck it!” the entire table echoed.
Rainbow finished first, exhaling at the end of her intake. She wiped her muzzle and muttered, “I only look after myself these days. Oh… and my friends, of course.” She smirked.
“Yeah!” Caramel smiled. “It’s good to know that you’ve gotten over the past, Rainbow! I’d hate to think you were still a secretly clingy mare with untold amounts of insecure baggage!”
“Yeahhhhh…” Rainbow’s wincing expression pulled her head into a dumb nod. “So, how’s the operation coming, ‘Melody?’”
Caramel’s cheeks burned red. “I… erhm…” The stallion deflated in his seat. “I-I’m working on moving out of my folks’ house f-first.”
“Snkkkt--haah haah haah!” Lyra raspily laughed, slapping Caramel across the back. He winced as she wheezed forth, “Once in a tower, always in a friggin’ tower! Amirite?”
“Meh,” Vinyl meh’d.
“So tell us, Rainbow…” Bon Bon leaned forward with a gentle smile. “What really brings you to an old haunt like this tonight of all nights?”
“You… you wanna know?”
Everypony’s eyes locked with hers.
Rainbow groaned and ran a hoof over her face. “You won’t believe it, guys.”
“Try us, awesomeflanks.”
“Phweeeeeeeee…” Rainbow’s eyes peaked blearily from around the edge of her hoof. “I think I need to get a second job…” She gulped. “Again.”