PART(ie) Hard

Pinkie Pie and Rarity exit the Academy Center in a hurry. Pinkie Pie's steps are long and quick while Rarity struggles to keep up, and as she walks, the team leader scratches her hair, really loathing how her scalp feels like it is shedding and her hair is falling loose. She makes a mental note to get new shampoo the first chance she gets.

“Pinkie, slow down,” says Rarity.

Pinkie Pie turns and speed-walks backwards, peeling off pink strands of hair that has wrapped around her fingers.

“Slow down?” she says hysterically with wild eyes and her ankle bracelet beeping. “How can I slow down when Discord has all the gems in the city? You saw what he can do with a walking stick! Now imagine him with enough gems to arm a small army! Jesteśmy przykręcony osiem sposobów! Pijany, I tell you! Pijany!”

“Equestrian, please, Pinkie. Equestrian," says Rarity. "Besides, I'm sure the police can handle him.”

Pinkie Pie grabs Rarity's shoulders and shakes her hard, sending her eyes twirling and her head flopping.

“The police can't handle jack diddly squat!” screams Pinkie Pie. “They arrested me for doing a citizens arrest and then they didn't do anything when Discord blew up the pier! They are useless!”

When Pinkie Pie is finished her ankle bracelet is beeping, her face is red, her chest is heaving from her heavy panting and grinded teeth match perfectly with her crazy eyes. Rarity, however, is bobbing back and forth, groaning sickly with her loose hair now tangled and sprouting up in random spots. Seconds later, Rarity finds her balance and Pinkie Pie sighs and tilts her head down, grabbing Rarity's arms.

“Something is wrong... Something is very wrong. I can feel it,” says Pinkie Pie quietly. She lifts her wet eyes up to Rarity's and squeezes her arms. “Can't you feel it?”

Rarity hiccups and blinks a few times, and after a few more seconds of swaying she finds her balance with the help of her good hand gripping Pinkie Pie's arm.

“Pinkie, I know you're worried, but think about this,” says Rarity sickly. “Discord was out of our league when he had a walking stick. Now he has gems, we're still injured, and we have these trackers.”

Rarity and Pinkie Pie look at their ankle bracelets. Ever since they were recovered after the fight with Discord they had those monstrosities to deal with for “safety reasons”. The devices' tightly sealed nature squeeze at their skin and their constant weight feels like their flesh is being dragged down. Not only that, but Pinkie Pie really hates how hers beeps the most out of the others. In fact, she has yet to hear the others beep. That said, the little hamsters turn the wheels in her brain, trying to generate a useful idea.

Then she hears it.

Voices!

Familiar voices!

Familiar voices of Team DAFT!

And that one guy with the ugly hair.

She does not know what they are talking about, but if the universal annoyance shared by DAFT is any indication, there might possibly be a murder in the courtyard by midnight. But Pinkie Pie does not care about that for she gets an idea. An awful idea. Pinkie Pie gets a wonderful, awful idea, and she turns her wonderfully awful, toothless grin to Rarity.

Rarity shifts her posture and eyes uneasily, and Pinkie Pie's lips continue curving up and her eyelids drop until just her eyes are slits, and she drums her fingers together.

“Hey, Rarity, remember when you said you can sway any guy you wanted?” asks Pinkie Pie.

=====OOOOO=====

Luna sits at Celestia's desk, legs crossed and resting on the table, her chair leaned back and her nose in her game device. On the desk is a missing persons report for Silicon Chip and basic police reports of the gruesome murders of the Flim Flam Brothers. At first glance one would assume that Luna's carelessness of the recent events is nothing but pure ignorance. That assumption is wrong.

Luna prides herself on lacking ignorance, and she does not consider herself arrogant. She is only a realist who does her job as it should be, which includes reading the reports and giving zero cares for the fates of vermin. It really is win win for her since the blights are gone and the collected evidence from the trio is more than enough to go digging for more evidence about the matters at hand. However, as much as Luna would love to make some phone calls and coordinate a purge of biblical proportions based on the evidence gathered, Celestia already had a plan in place with her wimpy scalpel method, leaving Luna bored and without much authority to oversee the operations. Such restriction was apparently faxed to all the appropriate leaders of law enforcement, but boredom will not get the best of Luna, for she has a game to keep her company. That, and she is expecting other forms of company soon enough.

Luna's thumbs are like striking vipers on her device's screen and her eyes like those of a hawk on the hunt, and echoing in the chamber is the holy symphony of: pew-pew, bang, blam, BOOM!, pop-pop, bang, pew-pew-pew-pew-pew.

Luna's brows scrunch and her tongue wets her lips as her little pixel man slaughters hordes of mutant enemies in a glorious display of blocky blood splatter. Her little man runs and jumps and shoots without missing a beat. The bullets rip apart the horrible mutants that writhe and scream in agony as they break apart in pixilated dust, and right when Luna reaches a pit of spikes a big crystal heart with a fancy lace around it appears in the middle of the screen with a ringing phone below it, freezing everything.

Luna stares at the heart, eye twitching and an internal screaming rising in her throat. The symbol is familiar, but the glittery fairy music accompanying it is not what she had put as its ringtone. She knows only Celestia would troll her like this and wishes to plot her elaborate revenge, but the ringing prevents her brain from working right, and when it becomes apparent that the person will not be hanging up, Luna answers.

“Luna speaking,” says Luna gruffly.

“Don't sound too happy, Mom,” says a female on the other end.

Luna leans over, rubbing her brow. “Have you landed?”

“Yes, and we had a nice trip, too.”

“Uh huh.”

“The flight was lovely and Shining says Equestrian Air has the best airline peanuts.”

“Right.”

“Did you remember to reserve that room for us like you promised?”

Luna's muscles lock in place and her eyes flick to a hotel rental website with an incomplete application on the computer screen. She cringes and leans over, typing in the rest of the information with one hand.

“Of course I did,” says Luna. “How could I possibly forget?”

“TIME EXPIRED!” suddenly appears on the screen, and Luna growls and slams her palm on the desk.

“What was that?” asks the female.

Luna quickly straightens out in her chair and waves the pain off her palm, leaving a perfect indent of her hand on the table. “Nothing. Listen, I just remembered that Celestia said you could spend the night in her room.”

“Really?”

Luna now inspects her fingers. “Yes, but she just recently left for a trip so you won't see her for a couple of days.”

“Oh..." The speaker's voice sinks. "What is the trip about?"

"Classified."

"Like classified-classified, or running away to a tropical retreat-classified?"

"Classified-classified."

"Okay... Well, there is something I got to tell you.”

“What is it?”

The door to the office suddenly slides open, revealing two people. The first, and tallest, is near Luna's age, is a skinny man with blue hair and eyes, wearing a red long coat with a blue suit underneath with polished black shoes, blue gloves and a golden scarf wrapped around his neck. Next to him is a girl about Luna's height twenty years her junior, with purple eyes and thick curly hair that is colored in stripes of violet, rose and gold. She is wearing open toed sandals, a sleeveless pink dress with a V-cut giving a generous view of her chest and a pink sash wrapped around her waist and held in place with a clip of a blue crystal heart that has a gold lace.

“We actually landed a little while back and I wanted to surprise you and Auntie, but I couldn't wait, so I decided to call while walking down the hall, but Auntie isn't here, so this is awkward,” says the girl, still on the phone and grinning anxiously. She finishes with a pathetic wave and squee. "Hi, Mom."

Luna frowns and hangs up her phone.