The Long And Short Of It

“I’m not apologizing.”

Anonymous the Unicorn found himself standing dumbfounded in the Canterlot Canterer offices. He could hardly believe what he was hearing! Cut, apparently, felt incredibly strongly about something he’d said to one of the mares he kicked out of the apartment last night.

It was all a little fuzzy around the edges; apparently he’d actually teleported? Anonymous had been studying up on how to do it, sure, but he’d never been able to work up the nerve to try it out.

‘Guess all I needed was a little liquor to grease the wheels.’

That was neither here nor there, though. What was there was Cut, and she was very upset that he’d screamed at one of their coworkers about how ugly her coat was.

“Come on. That was really mean!”

He didn’t feel the same.

‘Really, why’s she making such a big deal about this?’

Even as the two of them whispered at each other just outside of the mare’s cubicle, Anon couldn’t bring himself to feel bad for her. “So? I’ve personally heard her talk shit about how you look, Cut! If anything she deserves it!”

Not to mention all the catcalling she’d done to him. She was one of the worst when he’d started, which is probably why his tipsy brain had singled her out to begin with! It used to be every fucking day.

Besides, she’s a mare! Shouldn’t she be able to handle it? If some dude back home shouted that he’d had an ugly skin color, Anon would probably just think they were insane. Or racist, he supposed.

As if she could read his thoughts, Cut gently stomped one of her forehooves. “That’s wrong, Anon, you shouldn’t think like that.”

‘Look at her, sticking to her guns! She’s come a long way.’

“P-Ponies don’t hold things against each other like that, we apologize and forgive each other!” Anon just barely caught when Cut started to nervously turn her other forehoof. “Besides, hearing a stallion say things like that... it really hurts.”

And now he saw why she felt that way. She’d probably been there.

‘...who am I kidding, she's definitely been there.’

The crushing weight of that knowledge and Cut’s puppy dog eyes weighed heavily on Anon’s resolve. But he had his own guns to stick to. This mare had certainly never apologized to Cut, why did she deserve better from him?

‘Fuck being the bigger person that shit’s bull. I’ve been dealing with these mares’ crap for MONTHS!’

He’d earned a little pettiness, as a treat.

“I get where you’re coming from, Cut, I really do. But no.”

Cut sighed, hanging her head. Her disappointment in Anon was palpable.

It was almost enough to break him.

“Alright... I didn’t want to do this...” Suddenly she met his gaze, a newfound fire in her eyes. “Do it or my bra won't come off for a week.”

‘Fuck!’

J. Jargon Justification found herself doing what she did on most days: sitting at her desk and doing absolutely no work.

However, for once she was focused on something most ponies might actually consider important: her employee Anonymous, apologizing to one of her editorial columnists, Printed Word.

It was something that made her sigh in relief.

For an office with only one stallion, word still got around fast. Oh yes, Jargon knew about the party. She knew how it ended, too.

It was... troubling news, to say the least.

While most of the office mares were willing to write it off as a classic case of a stallion blowing things out of proportion, Jargon wasn’t so sure. She didn't get to where she was today by being clueless about stallions' feelings after all: just willfully ignorant of them.

‘And I’d be a fool to willfully ignore this colt’s feelings! Not only is my niece’s future riding on this lad, but so’s my dang paper!’

Looking down at the menagerie of papers on her desk, Jargon’s eyes were immediately drawn to the sales figures. She’d freely admit she’d never really been a humble mare, but even her pride couldn’t hide the truth. Tender Care was right, stallions were an untapped market. Jargon’s paper’s growth had been nothing less than explosive. So much so that even the other newspapers were looking into recruiting stallion reporters now. Never in her life would she have thought she’d refer to a colt as a “moneymaker” in this sense!

Which made this outburst all the more troubling.

Jargon bet she knew where it came from at least, and it wasn’t because her niece wasn’t draining his balls enough. The answer lay on the calendar stuck midway up the wall over to her right.

Hearthswarming.

Hearthswarming may be a time for community, but it's more so a time for family. For herds just starting out, it can be fairly nerve-wracking, especially for the stallion; their family is their life, after all. That first time, everypony always looks back on all their wonderful memories from when they were growing up, wondering if the family they’re building will be as happy and carefree as theirs was...

Jargon was fine for her first, of course; there was never any doubt that she’d knock it outta the park. But her husband! Ooooh mare, he nearly wore a hole in the floor with all the pacing he did. That was the real reason stallions shouldn’t be in the workforce: their temperament. It's too fragile. Her poor Press couldn’t get a hold of himself until the lot of them had made it back to Ponyville to celebrate with his parents. Which Jargon imagined was the story of almost every herd’s first Hearthswarming.

But Anon wouldn’t get that. She’d never found out why, admittedly having given up at the first missive she’d received that was covered in black bars, but Jargon knew that whatever brought him here was one way. He’d probably never see his family again.

To be perfectly honest, she would’ve been more worried if he hadn’t started acting up as it got closer to the holidays. Sure, he told Care that he was, “as social as any other average Amareican,” and she was too polite to call him out on it.

But Jargon had seen right through those whimsical horseapples since day one!

There are more ways for stallions to act up than there are stars in the sky, and it’s obvious that for Anonymous, the closer to the end of his rope he is, the more antisocial he gets. Abnormally so for a stallion.

‘Shame that such a big sack comes with such a big red flag.’

But Cut, her niece, was the exact same way — which is why Jargon had stuck them together in the back in the first place. She’d figured they’d make a great couple, and she was right (of course)!

She’d hate for those antisocial tendencies to undo all the progress he’d made over the past couple of months though. Anonymous had come so far from being the hermit who only showed up to deliver his stories and nothing else. And it was with no small amount of pride that Jargon watched Cut’s long-dormant marely instincts awaken. She was over there with him at Printed’s cubicle, leaning over his shoulder to try and coax him out of acting up.

If only Suck wasn’t off in Manehattan, she’d cry tears of joy seeing this.

But Jargon’s poor niece was clearly still naive in the ways of stallions, because if she wasn’t, she’d know it was a losing battle; the deck was just too stacked against her.

But Jargon was going to help out the best way she could! Anonymous was far too stubborn to admit that he needed some time off from work, so she’d just make him take it. The mare knew he was on the trail of something right now, so she’d let him see that through and then put him on leave.

Provided his behavior didn’t get too much worse before then.

‘Whichever comes first, really.’

“See, didn’t that make you feel better?” Cut asked, a pleased smile on her face.

As much as Anonymous the Unicorn wanted to stay obstinate, apologizing did make him feel a little bit better. Seeing the look on that poor mare’s face...

She was crushed.

He’d really fucked with her self esteem — much more than he’d realized. Which made it occur to him that his earlier analogy wasn’t quite right. If a girl screamed at him back home that his skin color was ugly, he probably would’ve taken some of it to heart too. Which he supposed made apologizing to her the right thing to do after all. Her coat wasn’t even that ugly, either. The neon orange went with her mane! ...mostly.

Anon was still feeling a little petty though, leaving him content to sit at his desk and grumble. “Yeah, yeah. I guess.”

Cut didn’t even need to see his face to see right through it immediately. It was that pathetic. But instead of gloating, she just giggled to herself before taking her seat next to him and diving back into her work. Of course, with a brand new smug smile he spied in the corner of his eye.

‘Yeah, yeah, yuck it up.’

‘She earned it this time.’

Anon noticed the two of them even got to chatting for a little bit after he’d awkwardly left. Maybe Printed learned a lesson from all this too?

‘God, I hope so.’

One less nuisance around the office would be a serious win in his book.

A win to counteract the absolute loss he had this morning; he couldn’t get anything meaningful out of Pike about what happened last night. She’d claimed it was all a blur, but the way she dodged his questions made it patently obvious she was actually just being evasive. Unfortunately, seeing as how it was the early morning and the three of them still had to go to work, there was basically nothing Anon could do about it. It was certainly not the ideal time for a heart to heart, especially considering how hungover the poor mare was.

Cut wasn’t any better at the time, but she really bounced back fast.

‘Perks of being an Earth Pony, I suppose.’

Unfortunately, that still left Anon stuck putting the issue on the backburner until the three of them were home today. Thank God today’s work will actually have him out and about; if he was stuck there at his desk all day, all he’d do was worry about it. And that small amount of worrying he’d just done simply thinking about thinking about the issue? It was enough to leave him feeling like he could crush a stress ball into a singularity. He shuddered to think what a whole day of worrying might do to him. The mares would probably call whatever happened “whimsey” but he doubted it would feel particularly whimsical.

‘Man, how do those harem anime protagonists do it? Just having two fillyfriends is stressing me out.’

‘Better find something else to focus on, FAST.’

With just a pinch of desperation, Anon started digging through the mess of drafts and research materials he called a “desk.” He’d been grabbing up everything he could about the Wonderbolts as of late; something had to reference the supposed charity show that mare was talking about last night.

‘Let’s see, summer camp recruitment flier? No.’

‘Article about bootleg flight suit sales being on the rise? No.’

‘Expose about some dude named Bench Warmer? No.’

“Uh, Anon? Are you alright?”

He looked up from his desk to catch Cut gazing at him with a great deal of concern.

‘But why? I’ve just been—’

‘Wait a second.’

Now that his focus had been interrupted, Anon realized he’d become covered in something. Little pieces of paper, to be exact. Because his magic had been shredding every piece of paper he’d picked up instead of putting them aside.

‘Fuck, I actually wanted to read that thing about Bench Warmer at some point.’

‘Maybe I should get an actual stress ball.’

Anonymous awkwardly cleared his throat before stuttering out, “I-I’m fine.”

He had to count his blessings that the only other person back there with him was Cut; he’d never live it down if anyone else saw that.

‘Say, while I’ve got her attention…’

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a Wonderbolts show coming to town, would you?”

Cut blinked owlishly at him for a bit. Which was understandable, really. He supposed that would feel like a total non sequitur, coming right after she’d just watched him shred several documents.

“Well uh, I think Aunt Jargon mentioned something about how they threw together a show for Fountain’s Little Brother’s Orphanage. I think it’s...” She trailed off, before glancing toward a calendar stuck to the wall of her cubicle. “Oh, it's today! Starts in a couple of hours.”

‘A couple hours? Perfect!’

That gave him more than enough time to prepare. It might even be worth trying to reassemble that article about Bench Warmer.

“Why? Did you want to go?” Anon was about to answer when Cut’s face suddenly lit up. “Oh! You haven’t seen the Wonderbolts yet!” She said giddily, before adorably clapping her forehooves together in excitement. “We have to see if Auntie Jargon will give us the afternoon off! Although... we really shouldn’t go without Pike...”

Anon smiled to himself and slowly started to gather his things. The second the Wonderbolts came up, a familiar energy came into Cut’s voice. He could feel one of her excited tangents coming on, so it was best to just sit back and listen.

“Besides, I heard this is mostly going to be a group performance show. The stuff you really ought to see are the solo obstacle runs!”

Honestly he was a little surprised to see that she’s into the Wonderbolts. He’d figured an athletic show would be outside of her areas of interest, for obvious reasons.

‘Suppose you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and all that. Now where’d I put my hat?’

“I was in the crowd the day Firefly set the current record for the Triple Hoop Deluxe course. I couldn’t BELIEVE how lucky I was! Between you and me, I’m pretty sure she did it by adjusting her wing twelve degrees upward juuuuust after the second hoop.”

‘Wait a minute.’

Anon was midway through shoving papers into his saddlebag, but he stopped what he was doing to really listen in.

“Some ponies say she did it by flying an inch closer to the left side of that hoop, but that’s preposterous!”

The realization hit him like a bag of comically colored bricks.

‘Speedrunning, she’s talking about speedrunning.’

‘Cut goes to watch death-defying flight shows for the speedrunning!’

“She was going at least fifty miles an hour! How on Hearth would she have made the next turn if she flew that close to the hoop?”

‘Don’t laugh, Anonymous. Do NOT laugh.’

He did not want to have to explain the world of speedrunning to the poor mare. Channeling every bit of what Anon could call his “inner zen,” he desperately contained all the mirth inside him within a big, goofy smile on his face.

A smile that Cut noticed, causing her to trail off with the cutest blush. “A-And I uh, well, I think that makes it obvious why, um. Phew, is it hot in here?”

‘Awwww.’

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Anon realized he probably looked like a love sick puppy with his big dopey grin. Which wasn’t even untrue really, Cut loving speedrunning was adorably on brand for her. So seizing the moment, he leaned in and gave her a quick little peck on the cheek. It's something he’d done to her a hundred times by now, but she still lit up like a Christmas tree. She was redder than a tomato and feeling so bashful she could barely make eye contact with him!

As a guy back on Earth, he’d never have thought he’d be able to fluster someone this much with just a kiss. It was a bit of an odd feeling, but a nice one nonetheless.

‘Hmm, I should probably say something, cap the moment off.’

He had never been good at lovey-dovey stuff.

‘Uhhhhhh… Shit, just say something!’

“You’re my little sperg, Cut.”

‘...’

‘Of all the things to say…’

‘Why the FUCK did I say that!?’

“I’m your little what...?”

All at once, Anon was the one blushing madly.

‘How embarrassing!’

He turned away from her in a vain attempt to save his dignity and coughed into a hoof.

“Ahem. Don’t, uh, don’t worry about it.”