The Long And Short Of It

While Anon was busy trying to figure out what in the world a Kirin was, Nocturnal Pike was hard at work. Apparently a lot had happened over the weekend, because as soon as she got in, she found herself up to her neck in paperwork. Possibly literally; she wasn't willing to stack it all up and check. Instead she sat at her desk, and worked through the mess of documents.

‘Let’s see here, what’s next.’

‘Ooh, some missive from a higher up?’

‘What could it…’

Pike could only stare in bafflement. What in the name of all that lives under Luna’s sky did the rookie do this time!? This was the third straight month someone higher up had personally ordered her to mare the Blue Shift. ‘”From the Office of His Esteemed Prince” my sorry flank!’

They were lucky Pike was in such a good mood; this was her squad, dang it, and she did not like having others trample over her command. Nopony could run a unit effectively if middle managers were constantly meddling! She was going to have to talk to the rookie about this asap, because this obviously wasn’t happening for no reason. And the only way Pike would be able to weasel her out of it was if she knew what ‘it’ was.

Unless, of course, the ‘it’ was something from Blueblood himself, but what were the odds of that? Either way, there went the weekly duty roster Pike had assembled for the east wing. She rubbed a hoof on her forehead, wondering how she’d sort out this mess.

‘If I’m lucky, maybe Astral could—’

The loud crash of her office door flying open tore Pike out of her thoughts.

‘Oh hey, speak of Discord; it’s Astral.’

“Well hey there, Pike. You look like somepony who’s day just got worse.”

Figuring it’d be faster to show Astral rather than tell her, Sergeant Pike tossed her the missive, which the new arrival deftly snatched right out of the air. Taking it in her wing, she gave it a quick once over.

“Hmmm, I’m surprised.”

Pike was too, honestly, and she heaved a sigh. “I know. They can’t just—”

“I wasn’t talking about the note, Pike.”

Astral Blade knew one thing for certain: Pike hated it when other ponies messed with her squad.

“On any other day, this would have you stomping up to Blueblood’s office to ‘shove your hoof up their plots and out the other side.’” And she’d do it, too. Astral actually saw Pike do it once to the day guard sergeant before Sepulcher. It was horrifying, and something she hoped to never see again. “So, you must have had one damn good weekend.”

Astral knew she was right, and Pike evidently did too, if the smile and sigh she gave was any indication. “Yeah, I did. And those bitches are damn lucky for it.”

Astral matched her smile, immediately guessing what made her so happy. “Your coltfriend finally decide to put out, then?”

To her great surprise, that comment sent Pike straight from ‘annoyed’ to ‘bucking furious.’ “He did not ‘decide to put out!’ WE decided the time was right to take the next step!”

‘Oh sweet Luna.’

“In fact, I’ll have you know that before that, we had a wonderful romantic evening!”

Astral could barely believe what she was hearing.

“And you know what Astral, not every relationship needs to revolve arou—”

She couldn’t take any more of this. Before Pike could dig herself any deeper, Astral cut her off. “I never thought this day would come! You, Nocturnal Pike, the mareliest of mares… have been bridled!”

Astral spat it out like a dirty word, and Pike recoiled fittingly. “I am not bridled!”

Crossing the office in a heartbeat, Astral threw her hooves over Pike’s shoulders and desperately shook her. “Pike, LISTEN to yourself! I was kidding, but you were ready to duel for his honor like the days before Luna's return!” She leaned back, a haunted look on her face. “Face it sis, your reins are in his hooves.”

Pike looked away, either unwilling, or perhaps unable, to meet her eyes. “I-it’s not like that...”

Astral was not convinced. Sure, she didn’t have the full story, but that was anything but her own fault! Every time she’d bugged and pressed Pike to introduce her coltfriend, the mare just kept putting it off! So how was she supposed to know how to help—

‘Wait... this might be my chance!’

Astral realized that Pike had just unintentionally handed her the opportunity she'd been waiting for on a silver platter... A chance to finally force Pike to let her meet him! She barely suppressed a grin. “Oh yeah? Why don’t you introduce me, then? I can judge that myself.”

Pike knew Astral had her number, as her eyes widened in panic. “What? N-no. It's fine!”

No longer able to keep the devilish grin off her face, Astral went in for the kill. “Come on Pike, I’m your best friend aren’t I?” She brought her face so close to Pike’s, that the sergeant almost couldn’t not look her in the eye. “And you can’t keep your best friend from meeting the stallion that turned you from a one night stand addiction, to ‘waiting till the time was right.’”

In a last act of resistance, Pike's eyes flitted around the room. She was desperate to avoid Astral's gaze, heedless of the closeness of her snoot.

“I-it’s just... you’ll...”

‘Come on, Pike! Commit! Quit dodging this!’

As Astral’s excitement mounted, Pike finally stopped frantically looking around and settled her gaze on the floor.

It didn’t take a genius to see why it would be a bad idea for Astral to meet Anon, and Nocturnal Pike sighed heavily. “It's just... you’ll think he’s weird.”

That wasn’t some unfounded fear; Pike knew Astral would think he was weird. Tartarus, the fact of the matter was, he was weird. And while Pike was more than okay with that (that's why she loved him, after all), she definitely didn’t think Astral would be as understanding—neither of him, nor of how unmarely Pike acted around him. If she found out...

Pike really would be ruined.

As much as Pike would've loved for her coltfriend and best friend to be friends, she was all but certain it was just a pipe dream. Which was why Pike had been putting it off every time she’d asked. This time would be no different.

“Pike I remember how tall he is, and sure, that’s weird, but come on.”

Unable to help herself, a smile broke out on Pike’s face as she swatted Astral on the shoulder. Pike couldn’t tell if her besty was being sincere or just trying to lighten the mood, but she appreciated it either way. “Not that! It's... listen, I’ll introduce you soon. But, when you meet him, just keep an open mind, please?”

Astral gave Pike a look of genuine worry at that. “He’s not like a... stallionist, is he?”

“What? No no, Luna no. Just be patient, I’ll… I’ll put something together, I promise.” Finally willing herself to truly meet her friend's gaze, Pike could tell that Astral didn’t buy it. But she could also tell if that couldn’t get her to commit, continuing to push wouldn’t either.

“Alright alright, I promise I’ll keep an ‘open mind’. But you better introduce me!”

Relieved at the successful delay, Pike nodded her head. “Of course, now if you’ll excuse me,” she said, as she turned back to the Pike-sized mountain of paperwork. “I need to get these done before we start drills for the evening.”

In response, Astral simply gave an affirmative “Yes ma’am,” and turned to leave.

But as she did, Pike was reminded of the thing she wanted to speak with Astral about earlier, after being struck with the problem in the first place. “Actually, wait! Before you go, you think you can cover the east wing next month?”

Much later in the day, Astral Blade was getting ready for her shift's start. It wasn’t quite yet time for guard duty, but it was late enough for drills to be running.

Which she would not be taking part in. Pike had taken out some infantrymare privates from the day and night guard to run some laps, while Astral and some of the other NCOs were left to ‘coordinate between the units.’ Which basically meant she spent the time goofing off while Night Sky did all the work. All Astral was doing was ‘mirin' the legs on that new colt they’d put on the day squad. She had a perfect view of his legs as he ran around the track.

‘Mmmm mmmm! Maybe Celestia had the right idea letting colts in the guard after all…’

“Hey.”

‘YOWZA!’ Only by the grace of all of Astral’s years of training was she able to keep herself from yelling that out loud. Whipping her head around, she spied the culprit of her startling.

Cloak N. Dagger, professional night-stalker.

‘Mare that bitch is creepy.’

“Oh uh, hey Cloak.”

Moving up beside her without making a sound, Cloak also looked out at the track. And Luna’s teets, Cloak was right next to her. ‘Does this mare have no concept of personal space!?’

The personal space invader looked around for a little bit, before she eventually spotted her target: Nocturnal Pike, who was busy chewing out some poor day guardsmare. After Cloak stared at Pike for a touch longer than Astral felt was proper, she posed a question.

“Sarge seem like she’s getting softer to you?”

Keeping an eye on Cloak, Astral considered the question carefully. If she was being honest, Pike had seemed like she’d been mellowing out somewhat. But Pike almost certainly wouldn’t appreciate Astral saying that, much less to other guardsmares behind her back. Instead, she played dumb.

“What do you mean?”

Swiveling her head like an owl, Cloak proceeded to make very uncomfortable eye contact with Astral. “Oh come on, you had to have heard about Mulberry, right?”

Of course she had. Who hadn’t? Her stallion had recently ended their year-long relationship, seemingly on a whim. “Yeah, but I don’t see what that has to do with Pike.”

Cloak, defying all logic, somehow found a way to lean in even closer, as if the two of them were privy to some kind of mutual secret. “Well, she hasn’t been in for a few evenings now, right? That’s because four shifts ago, Sarge caught her crying in the shower.”

‘Oh Luna above, that poor mare. Crying over a stallion? Pike must have—’

“And Sarge gave her two weeks off!”

Astral’s train of thought vanished into the ether.

Her stunned surprise must have shown on her face, because Cloak leaned back (to a distance most normal ponies would’ve been at to begin with) and smiled smugly.

Astral supposed she couldn’t begrudge Cloak for it; her jaw had just hit the floor. It was no secret that in the past, Pike could be a real flankhole about anything remotely ‘colty.’ If that'd happened a few months ago, all Mulberry would have gotten out of Pike were extra laps and a lecture on ‘relationships and other things that only stallions cry about.’ For Pike to give her time off instead seemed inconceivable.

Astral had tried to get her to lay off on stuff like that before, but she’d always been unsuccessful. Now that her coltfriend was in the picture though… Bridled or not, perhaps Pike was far better off with him than without.

Seemingly sensing what she’d been thinking through, Cloak chose then to interject. “Not that I’m complaining mind you. Sure we probably won’t be running as efficiently as we were before, but a chiller Sarge means less work for us.”

Astral smirked. “Heh, can’t argue with that.”

Although at that point, any excitement Astral would’ve normally felt about doing less work had been replaced with an all consuming curiosity and desire.

A desire to meet Pike’s coltfriend.

“Speaking of work,” Cloak continued, once again leaning in way too much. “I heard you met with Sarge earlier. She say anything to you about those VIPs coming in?”

‘Ugh.’ Astral couldn’t keep herself from rolling her eyes. Is that really all that Cloak was leading up to? Her technique was practically night-stalker interrogation 101! ’Use information you have to throw them off balance, and then get the information you want out of them.’ Luna above, it was literally printed on the first page of their damn operations manual. Which Astral HAD read, thank you very much; sometimes she did go above and beyond.

The joke's on Cloak though, because Astral didn’t have any information! “You mean the Kirin? Nothing that we didn’t already know. Keep reporters off ‘em, make sure they don’t get so mad they burn down the castle, et cetera et cetera.”

Cloak frowned, clearly upset that her gambit failed. Astral didn’t understand why she didn’t just straight up ask that to begin with. Furthermore, why did she even care? Turning her attention back to the night-stalker, she noticed that ‘frown’ had become a gross understatement. Cloak’s face had twisted into a massive scowl. “Am I the only one who wants to know why they’re coming here? Are we really supposed to accept that they just decided to drop in for a ‘diplomatic summit’ after nopony’s heard from them in years? What do they want!?”

‘Ahhhh, now I understand.’

Night-stalkers like Cloak were all about information and recon, and not having all the details was really bugging her. She may not have raised her voice, but after about a year of working with her, Astral knew Cloak N. Dagger well enough to say one thing: she was bucking STEAMED about this.

‘Hahahahaha! Sucks to suck!’

Astral suppressed a grin. “If no one wanted to know, there wouldn’t be so many reporters showing up, would there?”

Clearly realizing Astral really didn’t have anything for her, Cloak looked down, defeated. Tribal politics were neither Astral’s forte nor her area of interest, and Cloak knew it.

The night-stalker snorted. “I suppose.”

They lapsed into a brief silence after that, and Astral was more than happy to get back to watching that shapely stallion go round and round. Eventually, Cloak started tracking her eyes to see what she was watching, leading her to the stallion as well. Which, seemingly, reminded her of something.

“Say...speaking of reporters, I heard there’s going to be a stallion reporter there when the Kirin arrive.”

‘Oh?’ Now that was something that grabbed Astral’s attention.

“No manure?”

Cloak continued watching the stallion on the track, leaning into Astral’s personal bubble for a third time. ‘Argh, again with the leaning in thing!? What is it with this gal!?’

“Nope. My aunt Jargon runs the Canterer. Seems like she wants to see if the stallion is really up to par with the mares. So him, and his F-cup balls will be paying us a visit.”

Discomfort quickly forgotten, Astral’s eyes widened at that. “F cup... woah... Wait, how do you know how big his balls are?”

The same smug smile Cloak had held earlier returned to her face. “When he first started working there, my sister, Cut, bought him a ball bra. I found the receipt in her trash.”

‘Well I guess that makes…’

‘Wait, hold on, what the buck?!’

‘IN HER TRASH?’

No amount of training could keep the horrified look off of Astral's face after hearing that. What the buck kind of crazy mare goes rooting around in her sister’s trash!? Luna’s teets, being a weird-flank must be a night-stalker thing.

Cloak, however, continued on, oblivious to Astral’s disgust. “I can’t wait to get an eyeful of this Anonymous myself.”

Luna above, Astral felt bad for that poor-

‘Wait a second.’

‘A stallion reporter, that works at the Canterlot Canterer, named Anonymous...!’

‘Pike’s coltfriend is coming to the castle!’

An evil smile spread on her face. If Pike wanted to keep putting off introducing Anon to her, Astral supposed she’d just have to take matters into her own hooves.

‘Oooooh this is perfect!’

Pike owed her for agreeing to take that east wing shift at the last minute, so Astral would have no trouble convincing Pike to set her up wherever she wanted; all she had to do was get herself posted in the place with the best chance of running into him!

‘Now then, if I was a reporter trying to get an interview with some VIPs, where would I break in…’