Strange Vibes in the Gilded-Hoof Hotel

Waking up in the Hotel Gilded-Hoof is a strange experience, even for the usual dregs that this place seems to attract. It is not the place that a pony such as Fancy Pants would be seen dead in, but rather the place that didn't bat an eyelid when a strange, twisted hillpony from the south with a strange red case waltzed up to the desk and asked for their best room.

"Our best room, sir?"

"Er, yes, I need it - for an appointment, tomorrow. At the palace."

"At the palace, you say? Do you mind if I ask what type of appointment, sir?"

Sweet Luna! These coltscrewer was on to me! Damn, I knew that I should've stayed in Los Canter. Less problems, no questions asked. Damn this city of horn-headed freaks!

"I'm a doctor of Journalism, I'm doing a piece about -" How much should I tell him? Would he think me mad? I had the credentials and the papers, or at least, I believe I have them. Did I imagine that call in the Silver Bit? Was I just immensely twisted on dragon sugar and green fairy chasers, and was I actually in Canterlot? Nothing seemed straight to me, and I felt like I was being watched by more than this deviant unicorn before me... "- the Princesses. Very important."

Oh, I've seen that look he gave me, that look of somepony who either didn't believe you, or didn't care. But I knew he cared, they all do when a twisted like me comes to their gilded doors and says they have an appointment with the bucking sun-flanked goddess and her all right looking introverted moon reared sister. They care to laugh, and mock, and one time cared to arrest me and my absent attorney outside Dodge City for yelling the same thing. Then he speaks;

"Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"

Sweet Celestia! He was going to drag me to the guards and arrest me for sure! He was a sly junkyard pony, that was for sure, but I wouldn't lose my cool. I'm a professional. Even if I was about to be crucified above those marbled walls, as a warning to my kind.

"Er, no. Never been here before. Or to Canterlot."

This was a lie, a very obvious lie, as I had been here to cover last years Grand Galloping Gala, but things happened, and I'm now banned from Donut Joe's shop, while my attorney is now banned from Canterlot itself, but, somewhere in my twisted brain, there was a light that scream to me that it would work. Oh, but he knew. Oh, did he know.

"Come on! I recognize you! I'd remember those sunglasses and cheap ten-bit Appleloosa shirt! You're that writer ain't you?"

My hooves were sweating like nothing, and I could feel my pupils contract to crimson pinpoints. I needed to be calm; No need for a rerun of Las Pegasus.

"No...I'm Hunter Duke. I work...for a magazine. In Los Canter. First time...reporting in Canterlot, I mean."

He eyes me like I'm a bundle of daisies that he would like to consume, and I'm feeling like my coltscrewer jibe was worryingly more true than I had anticipated. It was even worse than the time I was amongst a Buffalo war-band, and convinced them another raid against Appleloosa was a wonderful idea. I needed that report, and it was one of the better ideas I've had after using a Buffalo peace pipe.

I wait with baited breath, and for a few minutes, I actually think that he's going to call the guards. Old grudges never die in a city as old as Canterlot, and I can see myself, rotting for the next hundred years in a small cell below the palace.

"Ah, well. Could've sworn you were that journalist that got banned from Fancy Pant's wedding, and some other places in Canterlot, a few years back. He stayed here, said he was from Los Canter as well. Ah well, best room, did you say?"

And, with that, all my fear falls away. Almost. He's still eyeing my cutie mark, and I suddenly wished that I had chosen the Brass Mane Hotel instead. At least they have an all female staff. Or did, until my attorney caused a few problems on our last trip here.

"Yeah. Best room, if you wouldn't mind."

"All right, Mr. Duke. Our best room is number two-six-seven. It has it's own en-suite and everything. Only twelve bits per night."

"Can you put it on my tab? And do the same with any room service as well?" I don't even know what I'm saying. I'm making it sound like I could, and would pay for my stay in this run-down hovel. I've stayed in zebra huts in the Borensis Desert that were more hospitable that the Gilded-Hoof, and probably had less parasprite infestations. But, you make do with what you have. And I don't really have a lot.

"Certainly, Mr. Duke. Please, come this way." He levitates the key, and makes his way from behind the desk and made his way down through the hingeless doors to the rooms.

I followed him, like I was a little foal and he was the teacher on some form of trip. Same dangerous level of pain coming to my being in either case.

Soon, and not soon enough, we were at the room. The brass numbers looked a second away from falling off, and the dust in the air made my wings twitch even more than the drugs were.

"Right, here we are. Here's your key, and is there anything that you would like from room service?"

I pause for a minute, and find myself holding a sticky old key in one of my hooves. Natural instinct says I should throw it to the ground in disgust, but the drugs are calling me to lick it later, once I've broken into the hard cider.

"Yeah, I need twenty grapefruits, forty bars of cheap, off brand soap, and a daisy sandwich with no daisies." And then I left him standing in the hallway, trying to process my order, while I slipped into the room.

That kind of explains why the room is covered in grapefruit and smells of cheap, melted soap as I wake up in the morning, now that I think about it. I guess he did carry out the order. Now that's Canterlot service, right there. Wouldn't get that in Ponyville, I do believe.

My red case is still right next to the bed, and I've placed a clock on top of it, turning it into an extra table. The clock says I have three hours till Celestia raises the sun, so I have six hours until I need to be at the palace, and four hours until I need to meet my friend in the gardens and completely skip out on paying damages for this place.

Why is there an alligator in the bathroom? Why is there a stone angel statue in front of the window? Who filled the sink with silly string?

I still had so far to go, and it would be very tough going. Very soon, I knew, I would be twisted once more, even more so than yesterday. But there was no going back, and I had no more time to rest. I needed to ride it out. My meeting was scheduled very strictly, and I only had a twenty minute window to get to the palace and register, lest I be thrown out on my face again, like when I was trying to cover the Bit 400 out in Las Pegasus a few years back. Still tight, even if it was another six hours away. A fashionable unicorn magazine in Manehattan had taken care of the meeting, along with my transport here that I had rented off the Sunrise Avenue...and I was, after all, a professional; so I had an obligation to get this rare interview, for good or for ill.

Those magazine editors had also given me three-hundred bits in cash, most of which I have already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. That little red case of mine looks like a mobile guard narcotics lab.

I have two bags of sugar-grass, seventy-five pellets of sugar-pills, five whole sheets of very high powered blotter paper acid, a few syringes of good grade tranquillizers, several canned green fairy chasers, owl feather droppers, a salt shaker and a half full of dragon sugar, a small pouch of dancing sunshine pills, and a whole universe of dancers, chasers, prancers, canters and trotters, and also a box of dried peyote, a bag of sour grapes, a quart of hard cider, a quart of flower punch, a selection of cheap Hooviet beers, a pint of raw soda, and two dozen 'Tartarus' Angels' special pills.

All this had been rounded up three days ago, in a sheer frenzy of high speed sprinting all over Los Canter state - from Whitewash Boulevard, to Applewood, I picked up everything I could get my grubby little pegasi hooves on. Not that I really need this all for my trip, but once you get locked into a really serious drug collection, you tend to push it as hard as you can. At least, I do.

Now, the only thing in this collection that frightens me is the soda. There is nothing more vile and deplorable as a stallion in the depths of a soda binge. I knew that I would get into the stuff sooner or later, the only question was, would I be stupid enough to break into it just before I was to see the sun goddess?

I was, I concluded, as I held the soda soaked rag over my muzzle.

Sweet Luna, I needed that.

Right, onto see the princess, five hours earlier than I was expected. But first, I had someone that wanted to meet me.

That friend of mine. You know the one. What's her face?

Screwball! That was it. Now, time to face her, the day, and the world at large, while suffering from soda and sugar. Might bring her some of the dancing sunshine stuff. She'll love it.

I mean, what could go wrong on a day such as this?