The Long And Short Of It

Something was very wrong; Anonymous could feel it in his very bones.

He wasn’t sure what, considering everything seemed to be going perfectly. Cut had agreed to skip work, Pike agreed to go with the two of them; everything’s been coming up Anon! Yet, as the three of them traipsed through the snow, he couldn’t help but feel there was a certain electricity in the air. An electricity that was only debatably real, seeing as Pike and Cut very obviously didn’t feel it at all. They were happily trotting along without a care in the world! Well, Pike was holding at least one care. She was trying not to show it, but even with her jacket she was obviously still feeling a little chilly.

‘Ha! So much for superior Thestral genes, they pale in comparison to my Unicorn might!’

He didn’t even have a jacket on and he felt as comfortable as if it was a crisp spring morning! Its things like that that he hadn’t properly appreciated when he’d first gotten turned into a horse. Staring at Pike shivering though, he started to wonder: did Unicorns ever donate their coats to the thermally deficient tribes? Like locks for love, but for warmth? Anon supposed he wouldn’t mind rockin’ a short cut if it helped Pike out. Or maybe there was such a thing as warming spells? Either way, all he could do right then was give her something to focus on, other than the cold.

“So, about this extended vacation you’re taking…” Pike perked up, but the uneasy look that passed over her was as plain as day. Anon would bet his life that had something to do with her early rising. “Did you have anything specific planned? Cuz Cut’s right, we probably can’t pull this kind of stunt too many more times before Jargon gets genuinely pissed.”

Pike quickly looked between Anon and Cut, before sighing. “No, not really. I just—” She hesitated, her wings shuffling uncomfortably. “—wanted to do some things, you know?”

Anon resisted the urge to mirthfully roll his eyes. In his own, very unprofessional opinion, the time for being cagey about this stuff had passed. “Things like...?”

“Things like... the things I never really got to when I was a filly.” She looked out into the distance, a wistful smile tugging at the edges of her lips. “You know, the... domestic stuff. The arts, all those things I’ve been too scared to enjoy.” She spread her wings wide, pantomiming some foreign motion for him with the claws on the ends. The motions almost seemed like some kind of knitting? “And then I’d... just see where that takes me, I guess.”

It didn’t take a genius to read between those lines: she didn’t know. Pike was flying blind as a bat, and in a way that had Anon more than a little worried. The concept of taking some time off of your career to find yourself wasn’t foreign to him — it’s just that in his experience, that usually involved traveling, or a similar major change: not just sitting cooped up, alone in their apartment.

Plus, just the very idea of Pike taking a sabbatical from being a guard honestly had him a little freaked out. It went without saying that she loved being a guard. Love loved it.
Anon would go so far as to say she was a bit of a workaholic! So this idea of her taking an extended break to just... hang around the house and cook? VERY unlike her.

Distressingly unlike her, even.

It was clear that even after their breakthrough moment yesterday, something was still eating her. Anon would bet his horn on that.

‘And I am going to do everything in my power to soothe those anxieties, God damn it!’

He’d already been planning to find some excuse to keep the three of them together, and ironically the breakfast debacle provided both that excuse and more evidence to its necessity.

‘I’m going to give Pike a nice, relaxing day out if it’s the last thing I do.’

“Well this is uh... a little eerie.”

Nocturnal Pike had to agree. Honestly, her feelings on Canterlot’s main market had always been a little mixed. A labyrinth of stalls and shops, laid out in a way that had probably only made sense to ponies back during the unification era. It could be a real cluster when it got busy, and the constant incident report calls to the area only reinforced that idea. But compared to now? She’d almost prefer it that way.

The place was a ghost town.

Every stall and shop was set up and ready to do business, but...

“Where is everypony?” Cut finished the thought for Pike.

“Did we get here too early?” Anon asked. “I thought places like this opened at the crack of dawn.”

That thought brought a bit of a smile to Pike’s face. The universal Thestral experience was worrying about getting to a place before it closed, so she supposed getting to a place before it opened was a nice change of pace.

Cut’s brow knitted together as she thought. “I... don’t think it’s a holiday today? Hearth’s Warming isn’t for another few weeks, at least.”

Anon paced in a small circle, his eyes searching all around the market for signs of… something, instead of looking at either of them. “Could be one of those random national holidays? We had those all the time back home, like President’s day.”
Pike chuckled, remembering the conversation when Anon had attempted to explain the finer points of his “democracy” to Cut and herself.

‘A holiday for something as ephemeral as a president? Ludicrous!’

Pony national holidays were reserved for the eternal, divine princesses; something WORTH celebrating. Something that was also not being celebrated today. Nocturnal Pike was a public employee; she’d had those dates memorized for years! Today was just another day, like any other.

Or at least, that’s what she’d thought until the first shopkeeper showed up.

She moved with the trudging steps of somepony who desperately didn’t want to be there, and her eyes were sunken in like she’d borne witness to countless horrors.

She looked like somepony walking to her own grave.

“Uh, Pike?” Cut asked, while fearfully eyeing the mare. “I-Is there something we should know about?”

With the appearance of the first mare quickly came a dozen more, as the whole market rapidly filled up with employees. All of wore equally haggard looks, but what was most peculiar were the hoofful of them that had dressed up. Head to hoof, they’d taped pillows and other protective things all over their body.

‘It almost reminds me of...’

“...makeshift riot gear?” Pike finished out loud.

She, Anon, and Cut all shared a disquieted look. “We should go,” the three of them said simultaneously.

But it was too late. Their only warning as they turned was a low rumble, and then, like a lightning strike, they were upon them.

The stampede.

“A-Anon? P-P-Pike?” Cut N. Paste tried to call out, but the effort was wasted. All the noise her feeble voice made was drowned out by the ocean of stallions that now surrounded her. She honestly didn’t even know how it happened. One minute she was standing beside her herd, the next she was being literally swept away by a tide of ponies.

Now, Cut was well and truly lost in the crowd. All around her, what felt like every stallion in the city had descended into an unrelenting shopping spree. Every public aisle, alley, and road was flying room only, and despite wishing for them every birthday she was six, Cut didn’t have wings. It made her miss the creepy empty market; she didn’t know how good she had it. It was like a scene out of her nightmares...

...or it would have been, a year ago. Sure, the noise was still a little—

“I CANNOT believe she said that to you!”

“By jove! And here I thought those fillystines destroyed all of these for being a ‘public health hazard’!”

“Excuse me, but does this come in mauve?”

—overwhelming, but Cut knew herself well. This had the hallmark of all the things that should have given her the mother of all panic attacks. Suddenly being trapped in a crowd of strange stallions, surrounded on all sides, even occasionally physically being pressed into... The familiar tightness in her chest was there, but it felt more distant than it would have before. More manageable. Almost like she could do this.

‘I... I can do this.’

‘Holy buck I can do this!’

This time when Cut spoke, her voice cut through the crowd. “Anon? Pike? Where are you?” And before she knew it, her hooves were moving, cantering through the market as ponies moved out of the way for her. She didn’t need to dodge through the crowd, constantly excusing herself to an ocean that didn’t even know she existed. No; these ponies were seeing her, acknowledging her, and moving aside because she had somewhere to be. If anything, they were asking her to be excused.

A massive, goofy grin bloomed on Cut’s face.

‘This feels great!’

Moving anywhere through a crowd like this would normally have taken hours, but she’d already managed to pass through two whole aisles. Hopefully Anon and Pike weren’t in either of them, because she was definitely so caught up in the moment that she wasn’t actually looking for them.

Coming to the dead center of the market’s square, she stopped to take stock. Cut should’ve been able to see Anon’s head above the crowds, and Pike had probably taken flight out of sheer annoyance by now. But even standing on the tips of her hooves, she couldn’t see them.

She was about to call out and continue searching, but then she spotted somepony unexpected: somepony she wouldn’t have noticed, if not for the many years she’d spent learning to watch out for her when she was young. Slipping in between the crowds, ducking and diving between the stallions, was Cut’s sister: Cloak N. Dagger.

“Cloak...” she growled, her mood turning on a dime.

Cut hadn’t seen her sister since the party. The party Cloak spent looting her herd’s underwear drawer for a piece of sex wear to drag out in front of everypony. Her coworkers, Pike’s coworkers... It nearly gave poor Pike a panic attack; it would’ve ruined her reputation! It probably would’ve ruined Cut’s and Anon’s reputations too, if they’d had reputations to ruin. And now she was here, stalking the market? Most ponies would have assumed that was just a coincidence, but Cut knew better. She knew Cloak.

“CLOAK.”

She practically leapt into the air upon being called out. Her wide eyes met Cut’s narrowed ones, and for a moment she thought Cloak was about to split. But she didn’t. She waited there, standing nervously until Cut finished stomping up to her, shrinking back with every step all the while.

Turning up to meet her sister’s eyes, she raised a hesitant wing and waved. “Hey... sis,” she said.

Cut’s anger exploded. “DON’T you ‘Hey sis’ ME! WHAT were you—”

She stopped, suddenly remembering where they were. If there was a metaphorical heart of Canterlot’s gossip scene, this would be it. A scant few stallions had already stopped dead in their tracks to watch them like hawks. Screaming her sister’s head off out here would just ensure everypony in the city knew Pike’s business by the end of the day. She’d be no better than Cloak at that point, buuuut she didn’t want to let her off the hook, either.

‘It seems a compromise is in order.’

Mirroring their mother from days long gone, Cut leapt at Cloak, biting down on her ear. Cloak was caught utterly off guard, and shrieked as Cut started dragging her away. She didn’t even fight back, allowing Cut to lead her through the overstuffed corridors of the market until she found the perfect place: an alley behind two of the shops at the market’s edge. Pulling her into the alley, Cut finally let her go.

“What the buck was that for!?” Cloak immediately cried, her bitten ear flicking in annoyance.

“What was tha— you know what that was for!” Cut harshly whispered, still not wanting to take any chances with eavesdropping stallions.

Cloak swallowed, suddenly looking as sheepish as when Cut had just walked up. This could easily be the maddest her sister had ever seen her. Cloak opened her mouth, but when nothing immediately came out, Cut pressed on. “YOU were the one who told everypony to come to our apartment, weren’t you? And then that stunt you pulled. Were you trying to humiliate me? Humiliate Anon? Humiliate PIKE? Huh!?”

For the first time in her life, Cut thought she saw actual hurt on Cloak’s face. “What? N-No! Sis of course not! I just... I wanted you to make some more friends. It was just meant to be a joke to break the ice.”

Cut’s blood boiled. “A joke? You thought pulling out our sex wear in front of Pike’s whole squad AND my coworkers would be FUNNY?”

Cloak rubbed one of her forelegs, unable to meet Cut’s eyes. “Well, yeah... We joke and brag about what we do with stallions all the time at work, and we both know the kind of mares Aunt Jargon hires. I... I didn’t think it would be any different. I thought she’d like showing that off...”

‘Oh.’

Cut’s anger, once burning white hot, flicked off like a light. Cloak had misread the situation; missed the important social context. Something Cut had done countless times before. What she did was still unacceptable of course, but suddenly Cut was the one finding it much harder to maintain eye contact.

“But now nopony’s seen or heard from Sarge since, and suddenly they announce she’s taking a sabbatical? I-I’m really worried I screwed something up, sis. Learning everything about everypony was supposed to stop this from...” Cut could see it plain as Celestia’s day on her face: that familiar spiraling sensation. That feeling when Cut had finally thought she had it all figured, but now it was tumbling away. “...that’s why I’m here. I followed your herd; I need to know what’s going on.”

Cloak couldn’t have known that would happen; any rational pony would have assumed that the lingerie was Anon’s. Heck, Cut had had her suspicions, but even she’d always assumed that apron was meant for Anon, too. Until yesterday, at least. The whole mess the other day was just Cloak trying to look out for her, like she did when they were foals. In her own, horrifically stupid way.

“Do you know anything about what’s going on?” Cloak asked with the ghost of a tear in her eye. “Please, I need to know.”

Before she could say anything else, Cut leapt in to hug her. At first she tried to jerk away, but when that fails against Cut’s Earth pony grip, she stayed. “Oh Cloak...” Cut said, all traces of anger gone. It was weird to say, but she’d never felt a closer sisterly bond to the mare than at that moment. Pulling back, she wiped away a single actual tear as she looked at her sister. “Pike’s... going through something right now. Best you can do is just give her some space.”

“But—”

Cut shushed her. “She’ll tell you when she’s ready. Trust me, digging into it will not help.” In fact, that’d probably just make it worse again, but, she didn’t say that part out loud. Cut gave her a surprisingly, genuinely confident smile. “Just leave it to me, alright?”

Cloak smiled, and for the first time in years it didn’t look freaky. “Alright, little sis,” she said quietly. Then, abruptly chuckling, she continued, “Feels like this is usually the other way—”

“I knew I recognized that voice! I had to search all over the market but I’ve FOUND you!”

The sudden voice shocked Cut and Cloak alike. It was a stallion, but it wasn’t Anon. Cut’s mind reeled, reaching for which other stallion could possibly have been looking all over for her. She thought she recognized the voice, but it couldn’t possibly be...

...Blueblood.

He was there, standing at the entrance to the alley, with some weird device strapped to his foreleg. Grinning like a lunatic, his horn lit up. “I hope you’re prepared...”

Cut felt the wind completely drop out from under her wings. …metaphorically speaking, since she still didn’t actually have any. The rapid shifts in mood had taken their toll, and she found herself in a familiar state: completely and utterly unable to process the social scene before her.

“Uhh, hey. We were uh, kind of having a moment here.” Turning away from the mad stallion, she’d intend to beseech her sister for help...

...only to realize she’d vanished.

Cut would be lying if she said that didn’t peeve her a little bit, but that’s exactly what she should have expected from Cloak. Besides, that’s the closest thing she’d gotten to an apology from her in years, so Cut was willing to extend her some grace.

Blueblood ran a hoof through his hair, still smiling like a lunatic. “Well, it seems the moment has passed.”

Cut blinked, her mind still struggling to play catch up. “What did you want again exactly?”

He barely waited for her to finish before shouting, ”A rematch of course!” He followed up by tossing a box her way. “And don’t even THINK about trying to use the excuse that you’re unarmed! I’ve been carrying an exact replica of your deck for this exact occasion!”

Deciding not to ponder the implications of that comment, Cut gingerly pulled the box from the snow.

‘Joy. The only deck he’s seen me play with was that awful new expansion, so it’s probably—’

Her heart stopped as she opened the box. It was one of her favorite decks. So much so that she didn’t want to bring it to that tournament for fear of damaging it. She looked back to Blueblood, wide eyed. His grin had somehow stretched even wider, and the thing on his leg had begun unfolding into some disk like dueling device.

‘How the heck did he...?’

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Cut took one more look at the cards in her hoof. Steeling her resolve, she turned to him and said:

“Nope. Absolutely not.”

And took off in the other direction.

“Hey WAIT!”

Cut charged out the other end of the alley like her life depended on it, hoping to put as much distance between herself and the mad stallion as possible.

“Get back here!” He shouted as his voice began to fade. “What about your honor!? What about...”

And just like that, Cut slipped into the crowd. Cloak would be proud. Now, she needed to get on to a much more important matter: finding her herd.