The Long And Short Of It

Anonymous ended up going to the show alone. As fun as it would have been to go with Cut, the unicorn stallion really wanted to keep his trip focused on business, not pleasure. Plus, Cut was right: going without Pike felt wrong. So popping his Wonderbolts’ cherry turned out to, unfortunately, be a solo event.

And he certainly saw why they’re so popular: the show was thrilling.

To his human mind, it struck him as an interesting blend of a trapeze act and a flight show. He was a little worried they’d make it a light program, since the majority of the crowd were foals. However, much to his delight, they didn’t skimp out on the action and the stunts seemed just as death-defying as he presumed they always were. Cut was right about their program too: it was primarily made of group formations with almost no speed-running to be found.

Anon was fine with that. The group stunts seemed much more up his alley anyway.

He’d have to carve out a time for the three of them to go to a real show sometime; it would probably be a lot of fun!

But that was something for future Anon to take care of. Present Anon had a much more pressing matter to attend to: getting backstage.

Canterlot stadium wasn’t really that large (Unicorns must really not care for sports), and that was working quite to his disadvantage. A smaller stadium meant less places for Anon to slip past security, and so far, just about every possible avenue to get behind the scenes seemed to be closed off.

He could SEE the room that all the Wonderbolts went into from where he was standing. It was just down the hall, and all that was standing between the crowd of rowdy fans and the ‘Bolts were two ornery security mares. Two mares who were eyeing Anon like he was just another groupie they’d need to beat away with a stick. Well, him and every other cheering fan that’d managed to make it this far, as their eyes continued to scan the crowd for troublemakers.

‘Hmm, what to do.’

He’d tried flashing his press pass at an earlier choke point, but the security there just stonewalled him, and he doubted it’d go any different with these two.

‘Maybe I could try to disguise myself as a worker?’

‘No, where would I even get the outfit?’

Anon wracked his mind trying to come up with some clever way in, but he was, frankly, coming up with bupkis.

Well... except for one thing.

Teleporting.

He knew he could do it, he’d already done it. But without a couple beers in him, the idea of molecularly displacing himself was a little bit daunting — to say the least. Sure the spell boasted a dozen or so safeguards like “quantum tunneling in the event of geometric interface,” but jargon like that didn’t exactly fill him with confidence.

But then again, he had already done it once.

Odds are, if the spell could put him halfway through things, Anon would have ended up with a plate embedded in his leg last night. And he really didn’t fuckin’ feel like climbing through a window or something equally desperate.

With his mind made up, and attempting to stay as nonchalant as possible, he trotted away from the security guards. He would’ve attempted to disappear into the crowd of fans around him, but being no less than a head taller than everyone in the group kind of pushed that option off the table. He’d just have to settle for going around the nearest corner. Which technically violated one of the spell’s precautionary measures, that being keeping line of sight with your destination. But he’d seen the inside of the room he was aiming for, and he could easily see the area’s layout in his head. He could even rotate it!

That was something he wasn’t entirely sure any of the ponies could do, but Anon had long been too afraid of looking like an idiot to ask.

‘It’ll be fine, I’m only displacing myself in space-time by what, twenty meters?’

‘...Through a wall into a room I only kind of saw...’

‘Maybe I should just warp into the hallway itself? No, those two guards would grab me in an instant.’

It was either into the room or nowhere, and now that he’d made it around the corner, he needed to do it now — before he managed to talk himself out of it.

‘Alright.’

He took a deep breath in order to hype himself up.

‘Here goes...!’

Visualizing the magic formula in his mind, he sent the necessary energy into his horn to make it real. He could feel the rules of reality bending to shape themselves to his will. All of his senses compressed to a point, and then...!

‘THIS WAS A BAD IDEA!’

‘THIS WAS A REALLY BAD IDEA!’

“Bucking DONKEY! GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN!”

“Chef, you can’t say that!”

Instinctively, Anon ducked his head right as a frying pan sailed over it.

“What in Celestia’s name is wrong with you chef!? You almost hit that stallion!”

“GOOD!”

Anon’s hooves were thundering on the shitty tile as he charged full speed ahead through the kitchen. All the while, his eyes frantically darted around the room, desperately looking for an exit — or at least direction that put as much space as humanly possible between himself and the crazy mare behind him. Turns out the reason the spell recommended line of sight is because concepts like “relative position” and “distance” don’t mean a whole lot when you’re tearing a hole in the fabric of space.

“WE’RE GONNA NEED TO DEEP CLEAN OUR GRILL’S ATOMS! YOU KNOW HOW LONG THAT TAKES!?”

Thanks to that, instead of ending up just behind the Wonderbolts, Anon had ended up in the stadium’s kitchen.

INSIDE one of their grills.

Praise be that the spell’s “quantum tunneling” attribute worked as advertised, and he was able to quite literally slip out of the grill unscathed. It looked like he’d opened up the console and turned on no clip. It felt absolutely FOUL. It wasn’t enough for just his skin to crawl as he dragged himself out of it, oh no; his internal organs, sinew and bones had to crawl along with it. It was an absolutely terrible experience, and he never wanted to feel like that again for as long as he lived.

And immediately being accosted by a crazy mare who was out for his blood certainly didn’t help.

A silvery something went whizzing by Anon’s head.

‘Jesus Christ that was a knife! She just threw a KNIFE at me!’

“WHAT THE HELLS WRONG WITH YOU!?” He yelled as the knife clattered against the wall. The only response was more expletives hurled his way as he barreled through some hapless line cook. In a testament to his size—or at least his momentum—, the poor mare’s impact against Anon’s body barely even slowed him down. He threw a quick “Sorry!” her way, but the deranged smile on her face as she went down made him regret it. He may also have heard her say something akin to “step on me daddy,” but his brain had immediately blocked it out for the sake of his sanity.

“WHY ARE YOU STILL IN MY KITCHEN!? GET OUT OF HERE!” screamed the chef.

“FUCK YOU I’M FUCKING TRYING!” Anon was coming up on his second lap around the kitchen, and he could see the exit.

‘Thank God.’

Doing his best early 2000s movie impression, Anon Tokyo Drifted his ass right around that corner and out the door. Not even wasting a moment, he picked a direction and kept running.

Only to realize he was running straight for the security checkpoint he had just tried to bypass.

‘Wow, so I went in the exact opposite direction I wanted to, great. Now I’ll have to — is she STILL chasing me!?’

The sounds of rapidly approaching hooves and a panicked glimpse behind him confirmed just that; she was STILL chasing him!

‘God damn it I’m not even in the kitchen anymore!’

Well, if nothing else, he now had his ticket past security: honesty.

“HELP!” Anon screamed, “SHE’S GOT A FUCKING KNIFE!”

Okay, maybe not total honesty. He didn’t see her with another one, but considering she’d already thrown one at his head, her brandishing another knife was definitely not out of the question! All the fans gathered around the checkpoint had started to scatter at the sound of Anon’s howling, and the fact he was barreling at them with the force of a freight train.

Well, almost all the fans.

As the sea of ponies parted, he saw a lone earth pony stallion standing right in the way. Too absorbed in an argument with some mare, the wiry, neon blue pony didn’t pay Anon even a moment’s heed. He couldn’t grasp any of the specifics of their argument, but one look at the stallion was enough for Anon to pick up the gist of it. The danger-hair colored earth pony was wearing a jacket covered from sleeves to collar in pins and slogans like “down with the matriarchy,” while shouting some nonsense about “the Wonderbolts’ crimes.” And like those types often were, he was so totally absorbed in meaningless bickering that he didn't see the problem that was about to hit him head on. Namely, Anon, shooting towards him at ramming speed.

‘Oh well, sucks to be him.’

Trying to minimize the imminent hit to his momentum, Anonymous attempted a last minute course correction to simply pass by the earth pony instead of slamming into him head on. Unfortunately, Anon still managed to clip him. Thankfully the blue pony was such a shrimp that Anon’s speed wasn’t impacted in the least. The earth pony was blown to the side though, showering both of them and the surrounding area with dozens of pins and pamphlets.

Anon didn’t even bother shooting the stallion a “sorry;” that one was all on him.

Luckily for him, this has the unintended side effect of clearing the way for the security ponies. The two of them sprang into action, charging past Anon and making a beeline for the crazed chef hot on his heels. And judging by the sounds that followed soon after, they’d immediately tackled her to the ground. The sounds of a struggle continued from there, as the chef’s speech rapidly degenerated into a mix of exclusively nonsense syllables and expletives. Anon assumed that meant she was fighting back, but he wasn’t about to stop to look.

‘This is my chance!’

Keeping up the pace, he headed straight for the door he’d seen the ‘Bolts go through earlier and practically threw himself through it.

Which turned out to be a very bad decision.

He’d done that expecting the door to be closed, or even locked.

It wasn’t.

So instead of absorbing his forward momentum like it was supposed to, Anon sailed right through the door—which sent him face first into the floor. The green unicorn ate shit, comically sliding a ways forward across the ground, just to add insult to injury. By the time he finally came to a stop, he’d made it decently far into the room.

‘Ow.’

Anon elected to just lay there and catch his breath, as the gravity of what just happened came rushing up to meet him like the floor did.

‘Jesus, that really could have gone south in a dozen different ways. Next time I should just go for a window or something.’

‘...Where am I, anyway?’

It wasn’t a conference room, considering he didn’t feel the sting of rug burn on his face. Instead, it felt almost like wet tile. And the ambient noise he was hearing... was that the sound of a shower running?

“See, Fleet? I told you stallions would still be throwing themselves at us, didn’t I?”