Dealing in milkshakes

Tayari shook his head. "Besides the matter of it being a terrible idea... How, exactly, are you going to join? Besides the difficulty in finding someone who can and will help you join, there's the matter of Si- er, the leader or a higher-up allowing it."

"Why wouldn't I be allowed to join?" She asked, continuing the assault of her glare. Though it probably wasn't very intimidating.

"Do you think I can't handle it, huh? Just cause I'm a filly?!" She slammed her hooves against the table, ignoring the 'command' to keep quiet. "I can handle myself much better than you! I've lived this, you shut yourself in a house all day!" She shouted at the top of her lungs. She was angry now, one emotion that was rarely associated with the filly. She didn't care. She was tired of being put down and ignored.

Tayari thought for a bit, shocked and unable to argue that. "...You know what? You're right. Being a filly doesn't make you less capable, and it was unfair of me to suggest that, even unconsciously. Especially since past experience with you has subverted so many stereotyped ideas of fillies. So for that, I'm sorry."

Taking a breath, he continued, more focused and less apologetic. "However, I still don't believe you should join the rebels. Firstly, because convincing me that you're capable doesn't mean convincing the leaders that you are.

"Secondly, because I'm offended by your assumption that because you've never met me outside my shop, I must be incapable of handling myself outside. Even if I hadn't learned a fair few ways in the past, I could and in fact will learn more of such methods in future.

"And thirdly, because I don't know what is suddenly compelling you to think you should. You've just gone and declared you will on what seems like a whim."

Hijinks calmed down when she heard Tayari's apology. She silently berated herself for loosing her cool like that. From now on, she will be the very definition of cool.

Hijinks laid back in her chair, resting her hind legs on the table. She looked at Tayari with a slightly forced smug smirk. "C'mon TayTay, you didn't even try stop me from going out into the riots. What's the worst thing that could happen? It's not like I'm going to rat you out to the griffons." She isn't a tattle-teller thingy.

Moving closer to Tayari, she spoke in a softer voice. "Aaaaand I got exploooosives. Doesn't that sound fun? Who could resist explosives? The leader will adore me! Trust me, I've got this."

Tayari thought about it, and leaned forward to whisper. "Alright. You know what? I've been meaning to meet with the leader again anyway. Whenever that happens, I will tell them you want in, and give an unbiased description of your abilities and age, and I'll leave it to them to say whether you can join." A question leapt to mind, then. "How old are you, anyway?"

Hijinks also leans in closely and speaks in hushed whispers. "Nuh-uh, I want to be there. You don't know my 'abilities'. You haven't even seen one of my explosives yet!" She will have to fix that one day.

Remembering the question, she added, "And I'm twelve."

Tida continued to quietly play on instrument, while listening to the conversation that Hijinks and Tayari were having.  He was surprised that Hijinks became angry at Tayari... she seemed to be the type that would not get angry at something like that.  It showed how much Tayari meant to Hijinks for her to follow him in trying to join the rebels.  He frowned, as he knew that trying to dissuade Hijinks and Tayari from joining the rebels would be very difficult, as they seemed to have made up their minds about the matter.  He didn't want to see more ponies die fighting the war, especially Hijinks, since she is very young.  Ultimately though, he can only suggest to them why it would be a bad idea to join the rebels... whether they listen or not is completely up to them.

Sighing, Tida stopped playing his instrument "I know that both of you are probably going to join the rebels, but you should think about the possibilities, both good and bad of being a part of the rebels before you actually decide to join.  If you do join however, I hope that both of you stay safe... I wouldn't want you to die when you didn't need to."

Hijinks slumped back into her seat and regarded Tida with a bored yawn. "Kitten, you know I don't like to think." She paused, staring blankly up into the sky. She watched the clouds slowly drift forward.

"But." She looked back at Tida. "If I were to think, I would think it would give me a chance to learn something. With every failure, every close call, every near death experience and... every loss, you learn more and improve your chances the next time 'round. Cause you don't learn nothin if you stay inside a boring old house all day." She threw a look at Tayari.

"Plus TayTay needs protection! What would he do without me?" She winked at Tida, ignoring the highly probable look/comment that Tayari would be giving her right now.

Tayari shook his head at Jinks' idea of being there for the discussion. "I'd rather not take the chance; If I ask for you to be able to join the discussion, I won't be able to provide the information on what you can do. It'll be dismissed before anything happens. And I don't want to bring surprise guests, I imagine that would go poorly."

He couldn't think of any response to Tida's statements, other than, "I'll... I'll certainly need to think about it."

For Jinks' last added words, he put on a slightly exaggerated offended voice, saying, "What? But being in my house all day, I can learn how much dust settles in my home, or the average length of time of no customers! ...To be serious, though, I am aware of the need to get out. I may have needed something of a reminder, admittedly, but I am aiming to leave the store more, such as... well, now."

Hijinks looked at Tayari and nodded. "You are absolutely right! You have convinced me, I will not go." She tried to hide her sarcasm, and was pretty successful in doing so. Hijinks thought she was getting pretty good at doing that, cause she's done it so many times. Though, even if she didn't sound 100% sarcastic, TayTay will probably expect her to show up anyway, which was her plan exactly, even if it meant following him around for the next few nights.

As non-sarcastic as Hijinks' statement was, it left Tayari unconvinced of the filly's sincerity. Playing along, though, he said, "Right... Now that matter's settled, I suppose, what should we do now?"
While he waited for an answer, he began finishing of his shake.

Tida started to play on his instrument again, thinking about what to do next.  He didn't really have anything to do, or rather, didn't want to do much at the moment.  He probably would continue to get things in order for his farm that he was going to start to get built later, but not doing much seemed really good now.  "Well... I think that we should just enjoy the moment.  Meeting with others just to relax doesn't seem like it happens often anymore" Tida responded to Tayari while continuing to play on his instrument.

'Relax' Hijinks thought. She shuffled around on her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. Her tail would not stop moving! It was a naughty tail.

Eventually, Hijinks gave up and groaned. "Bored! I don't know how you guys can put up with the quiet for so long."

Hijinks clapped her hooves together and announced, "Story time! When I was in Las Pegasus, it was non-stop action every day! There were, like, tons of games there and there was candy clouds. The night too, cept all of the parties were inside. It was great but nopony would let me drink any alcohol, said I was too young. Me, being the rebellious youth I still am, decided to use the sneaky sneak to acquire myself a bottle. I followed a couple down to the train tracks, young ponies in their early 20's. They were walking right next to the tracks and the train was coming up. The bloody stupid mare stumbled on something in her drunken state, an empty bottle methinks. She fell right in front of the incoming train. She made a noise, sorta like a splatting watermelon and I watched as the train dragged her bloody, mangled body further down the track, tearing it to pieces. There was no scream, there was no cry, just a wet, bloody splat. The stallion threw up and fainted.

It was hilarious. I never did get a sip of that alcohol, though. I stopped caring after that whole display. I figured what I was doing was lees of an act of defiance and more of an act of stupidity."

Hijinks sighed contently and leaned back in her chain. "I left Las Pegasus after that. Was good times but I found out that drunk people were just sad people without their minds. I couldn't stop seeing it! Everywhere I went, I saw the same dang thing. Got sick of it, hopped on the next train to Ponyville. Although, I did hear that the stallion at the train tracks got arrested for going out at night, was sent to one of them work camps. That would have taught him a lesson, eh?"

Tayari couldn't have hidden his look of horror if he'd tried. "That was... disturbing. Was the 'watermelon' description necessary?" Thinking for a bit, he asked, "Well, if we're going with story time... I hope you don't mind if I tell my cutie mark story."

"Many years ago, I was raised in a fairly distant small village in Equestria. My father raised me and taught me alchemy and a bit of zebra culture, but technically I wasn't homeschooled. I went to the local school, learning all the same things as anypony else. And of course, every school has a few things in common: Some ponies will bully others. And everypony is interested in Cutie Marks.

"Back in that time, not a single one of us had our Mark yet, so we all had to organise our hierarchy based on who could beat anypony else, whether with words, allies or brute strength. I was the little zebra foal too quiet to build up a force of allies and too weak to fight back, so I was fairly low in the ranks then. So I ended up getting the attention of the current leader, Rock Solid, who decided I needed to be put down or something... he wasn't bright even for a young foal, so I don't know why, really. Anyway, he taunted me for a while about family and stuff until I got angry, then shoved me off school grounds. I just went home, at that point, while he yelled that it wasn't over, we'd meet again tomorrow... I really hoped so.

"The next day, I was up bright and early in class. Rock mocked me for it while he sat down, opened his desk... and mysteriously got slime launched all over his face. Wasn't hard for him to figure out I was involved, so he stomped over to me. I pulled out a pouch and blew some powder in his face, he started sneezing uncontrollably while the teacher took him back to his seat.

"The sneezing powder didn't last forever, though, and he got himself together, looked at me, and said, "Nopony does that to me. I'm gonna teach you a lesson at lunch."

"I just smiled back and said, "Of course. Where do we meet, by the swings?" Which I think everypony found shocking; remember, this was one of the weakest foals smiling at a challenge by one of the strongest. Who, I might add, had a moment of wisdom and said it'd be by the tree, rather than the place I suggested.

"So it got to lunch, and I was already standing under the tree when he got there. He stomped up to me, trying to look threatening, while I dramatically rolled my eyes and pulled on a rope. A bucket of water fell on both of us. And by this point a crowd had gathered because nopony wanted to miss a fight... so basically, everypony saw when Rock, and only Rock, turned very bright pink all over his head when the bucket water reacted with the slime.

"He tried to look at himself when he noticed the whole crowd laughing, and by the time he fully understood what had happened, I was already drying myself off with a towel. When he tried approaching me again, I reached for another rope, so he stopped and demanded we fight somewhere else.

"We'd changed arenas a total of three times, getting to the ladder that only I seemed to be able to climb with water balloons at the top, when he asked, "Is there any place in the school that you haven't trapped?" And I laughed and yelled out, "Nope!"

"And it was when I said that, admitting I'd gone ahead and trapped everything in the school for the fight, that an image appeared on my flank. And there I was: The first one in our year level to get their Cutie Mark, having defeated the biggest colt at the same time. Even when other ponies started getting theirs, I had a unique spot in the ranks from then on: I didn't get any more friends than before, but I kept the reputation of winning a fight hours before it started for the rest of my schooling."


Tayari frowned. "I also got detention until I'd personally disarmed every single trap, but I think it was completely worth it."

Tida listened to the story of how Tayari got his cutie mark.  He stopped playing, then looked down to his, remembering how he got his.  Tayari is lucky that he received his cutie mark in the way he did...  Tida thought, as he stared blankly at the sky and mumbled "How lucky..." under his breath.  His stomach growled, which snapped him out of his train of thought.  He put down his instrument and reached into his bag for some dried leaves and took them out.  He then started to quietly eat them.

Hijinks raised an eyebrow at Tida before looking back at Tayari. "Don't listen to him, TayTay. I thought it was a great story. And worth!"

Hijinks stopped to think for a second. "Hmm... I don't have a cutie-mark story... I guess I could tell you the story of how I got this pink bow... Or maybe the story of how I invented the chicken bomb! Or... Maybe about my adventure in the griffon kingdom place, it was cold... Or maybe... maybe you'd be interested in the story of the first time I killed someone? Ooooh, so many to choose from... Climbing to the top rainbow falls, my adventure in the everfree forest, meeting a dragon, first time I found a party time bomb, the time I flew over the ocean and threw eggs at a shark or maybe the time where I invented a bomb chicken!" Hijinks laughed, "Those were good times!"

Tayari didn't quite hear what Tida had said, though judging by Hijinks' reaction to it, it didn't seem positive. In response to Jinks' words, he said, "Thank you. And it certainly was worth it." Even omitting a few details of the consequences didn't change the truth of the words; they didn't need to know about messing up the cleanup of the Poison Joke.

As for the filly's list of stories, he quietly hoped he wouldn't have to hear the ones about death, though he said, "I'm sure whichever story you choose to tell will be good."

Hijinks nodded and got into story telling mode.

She relaxed in her seat as she began to trail off about one of her adventure. "Okay, I'll tell you about the time-"

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End of thread

Characters: Hijinks, Tayari, Tida

Summary: Hijinks invites Tayari and Tida to a local milkshake parlor to discuss things and play a truth game. Each pony learns more about each other and Hijinks finishes by telling Tayari and Tida some stories of her adventures.