Cashing in

The Royal Sisters finally dismissed myself, Petina and Carousel in my Equestria dreamscape. By the time we left the Royal Box the stadium was rapidly becoming an empty facility as most of the attendees had already flown off.

    Twilight left with us although she walked about dozen strides behind us with a slightly dazed look on her face. As we exited the stadium proper I spotted four of the Mane Six standing outside and chatting. Pinkie Pie was bouncing around and discussing Dash's performance with Rarity who was making her own comments in much more understated fashion. Applejack had a somewhat confused and bewildered expression on her face, Fluttershy was sitting alongside AJ. She was very still and had a slight blush on her face as she gazed off at the afternoon clouds.

    Around the rest of the stadiums groups of young pegasus ponies were laughing, singing, dancing and partying. From their actions it was obvious they were reliving Dash's afternoon performance. In particular there were several young mares who were attempting to replicate RD's performance with varying degrees of fail. After watching Dash for so many weeks I had almost forgotten how much training and effort it took to pull off some of the moves she'd done today. Now seeing rank amateurs attempted the same moves reminded me again of RD's commitment.

    I turned to say something to Petina when I noticed she was no longer by my side. Instead she'd trotted over to the same old pegasus stallion and was merrily chatting away with him. The merriment was not shared by the stallion who looked like he'd rather be at the dentist then talking with Petina. Finally after a couple of minutes of Petina's cheerful onslaught he slowly nodded his head and gestured to one of the two massive stallions who were accompanying him. From a pannier the stallion was wearing he withdrew a ledger and looked at some entries and showed them to Petina. Then he withdrew another smaller book and proceeded write in it. Then tore a page from it and passed it to Petina. The white mare grabbed the paper with her levitation and then carefully folded it so it would fit in her purse; with this accomplished came trotting back to our party with a look of absolute capitalistic glee.

    “Well! Today has been very satisfying, very entertaining, and very, very profitable for our household!” Exclaimed the unicorn. “Our financial position has just improved immensely! Rarity when we return to Ponyville I need you to submit a final invoice for your services. We'll have no problem pay them off in full now!”

    The fashionista raised an eyebrow and smiled at Petina. “Why darling if I am not mistaken I'd say you placed a wager of some type today and it has paid off handsomely?” Petina nodded her head.

    “Yep! I checked the rules and since I was not a family member I was allowed to wager on RD so I made a little wager with that fine stallion before the competition began that has paid off most handsomely!”

    Twilight looked confused. “But Rainbow Dash didn't win the title of Best Young Flier again. How did you win?”

    Petina nodded her head. “True but I was fairly certain that the judges would be unable to come to a conclusion concerning Dash's performance and when that occurred they'd do the safe bet and dump the problem in Celestia's lap. Now Celestia is an expert of the political game. She could see from the reaction in the stands that a large majority of the crowd thought that RD should've won, so she played her best card and awarded the Princess Cup to Dash!”

    Applejack slowly tipped her stetson back and glared at my roommate. “So yer telling us ya knew that Dash would probably not win but ya still had her go out and do that performance today?”

    “No, she won. She just didn't win back-to-back Best Young Flier.” Petina said. “But instead of winning Best Young Flier two years in a row she did something even more amazing. She won Best Young Flier and the Princess Cup back-to-back. In the hundreds of years that pegasi have held this competition no pony has ever done that. There have been a few back-to-back winners, but RD is the first in history books with this!”

    Petina started to grin and fire seemed to dance in her eyes. “So when I asked that nice bookie over there what kind of odds he gave me of Dash doing just that he laughed and said they'd be 300 to 1. Then I put a 100 bit bet on that exact wager!” Petina levitated the piece of paper out of her purse. “Of course he didn't have 30,000 bits on him and besides it would've been way over our weight limit for the airship, but he was kind enough to write me a check from his 1^st Bank of Equestria account which the Bank of Ponyville will accept. He also showed his bank ledger to prove that his account was good to cover the bet! And wagers are considered legal contracts under Equestrian law so if he tries to pull any funny stuff I'll have him over a barrel in the blink of an eye. Folks dinner and drinks is on me tonight for anyone wants to join me!”

    “You just made 30,000 bits on this bit of public debauchery!” Exclaimed Twilight. “You manipulated my friend and just made ton of bits in the process! By the fires of Celestia's sun you are the most insidious creature in all of Equestria! And this!”

    The purple unicorn waved a front hoof at a mare who was still attempting one of Dash's moves with continuing encouragement from watcher ons. “You're like some highly contagious disease that is spreading across the realm! You're worse than Discord!”

    Petina stared cooly at her magic teacher. “First off I manipulated no pony. Rainbow Dash came to me and Carousel around the first of the year and asked us if we'd use are skills to develop a dance routine that guaranteed her last performance in this competition would be one ponies would be talking about for years to come. Mission accomplished.”

    Petina then smiled. “And if I'm contagious it is only because I've shown ponies something that was always there in a corner of their minds but they either couldn't describe it or were too afraid to say it. All I did was show them another option, another choice, a chance to express some part of themselves in a new amazing way. If that is my crime then guilty as charged! Now are you or anyone else coming to dinner with us or not?”

To be continued.

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