The double doors of Hope Hollow’s fashion shop burst open, with its owner dragging her potentially new customer inside.

“Hey! Hey! Easy! Easy! You got me inside!” Celaeno protested, trying to keep the pony from tearing off her sleeve.

“Oh, so sorry!” Kerfuffle spat out the sleeve, grinning sheepishly. “It’s just, I just took one look at ya and went ‘Oh. My. Gosh. I have to work my magic on you!’”

Celaeno tried to wipe the drool stain off. “Well, that explains why the moment I stepped foot in town, I heard a loud squeal and was suddenly being dragged away before I could say anything…”

“Well, I’m just…so excited! Oooh, this’ll be a fun little project for me!” Kerfuffle grinned as she swarmed the parrot, examining her from all angles.

Celaeno kept turning her head in all directions, trying to track the pegasus. “Not that I’m not grateful or anything, but could I at least get your name before you do anything for me?”

Kerfuffle took a step back to give Celaeno some room to breathe, though her hooves kept on moving, trotting in place or nervously rubbing against each other as she spoke. “Oh of course! Where are my manners?! I’m Kerfuffle, we, uh, actually met a while ago over at the Crystal Empire! Well, met as in we’ve been in the same place together. I guess you didn’t see me, but I definitely saw you! Aaaand that makes me sound like I’ve been stalking you. Ohhh I’m making this super weird aren’t I? I’m gonna stop talking now before it gets worse, like right now. Ohhhhh gosh.”

That was…quite a lot for Celaeno to take in. Though the one thing she could tell was that Kerfuffle was just barely keeping it together. “Allllright then. Well, I’m Captain Celaeno! It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kerfuffle.”

“Oh believe me, the pleasure’s all mine!” The pegasus let out a nervous laugh, her eyes darting around to look everywhere.

Celaeno decided to look around, too. Given how she was dragged in, she finally got a chance to look around, and see all the clothes and sewing equipment. “So…what exactly is this…project you wanted to talk about?” She looked over at a rack of clothes. All of them stylish and colorful, but all pony-sized. “Doesn’t look like any of these clothes…fit me…or match my style…”

“Oh, actually, I wasn’t thinking of clothes. I was thinking of working on something a little lower…”

“Lower?” Celaeno’s cheeks instantly felt blood rushing in. “L-Look, I’m flattered and everything, but it’s still really early in the month for-”

“Not that, ya dingus!” Kerfuffle lifted up her left hind leg.

Celaeno looked at Kerfuffle’s leg, finally noticing the prosthetic. She looked down at her own right leg. “Huh…”

“I know, right? It’s like we’re practically sisters!” Kerfuffle grinned, sidling up to Celaeno. “Well, sisters with really different parents!”

“Heh, so what, you wanna make me a new leg?” Celaeno mused, looking down at the pony.

“I mean, if that’s alright with you! I just thought it’d be cool for you to switch it up a little! Plus, it’s been looking a little…dinged up. No offense.”

Celaeno looked closer at her crystalline leg. The green gemstone peg, while still keeping most of its luster over the years, now had some noticeable cracks, chips, scratches, and a single set of bite marks. Given who she was hoping to keep company with later, perhaps it’d be in her best interest to not be eaten out in the wrong way.

“Well…I have been kinda attached to this version, but I guess having a backup wouldn’t hurt…” Celaeno said with a soft smile.

Kerfuffle immediately started squealing and dancing in place. “Ooooh, this is gonna be so good!”

In a blur of motion, Celaeno found herself being pushed into a reclining chair, her legs kicked up as Kerfuffle whipped out the measuring tape.

As the tape wrapped around the connecting stump, Celaeno took a closer look at Kerfuffle’s prosthetic. “So, you make your own leg, too?”

“Oh yeah, it’s just a little something I threw together, ya know.”

Celaeno let out a short laugh at the modesty. “Hah! Just threw together, huh? That thing’s shinier than half the stuff in my treasure hoard! Is that real gold?”

“Oh, you betcha!” Kerfuffle beamed, turning around to give the bird a better look. “Did the engravings myself, too!”

“No kidding! Where’d you get all the gold?”

“Why? Trying to find your next place to plunder?” Kerfuffle asked with a saucy waggle of her eyebrows.

“Hey, worth a shot,” Celaeno chuckled.

As Kerfuffle giggled along, she suddenly gasped in excitement. “Oh. My. Gosh! Do you want yours to match with mine?”

“Well, I-”

“Ooooh, it’s perfect! My left leg, your right leg, it’s like a matching set! It’ll be like we’re besties!”

The sheer amount of enthusiasm from Kerfuffle nearly left Celaeno at a loss for words. The past ten minutes had flown past in a blur, all because of how energetic this one pegasus was. “...Besties, huh?”

Celaeno saw Kerfuffle’s eyes twinkling with eager anticipation. She could hear the delighted squeal in her voice slowly rising from her throat, begging to be released out into the world.

“Well, how can I say no to such a generous offer?”

Babs Seed was seated outside the fence of Sweet Apple Acres, scribbling down more notes to herself. She had some general ideas in place, but they all seemed so…generic. One of the major hurdles was an unfamiliarity with the new participants. At best, she had a shallow understanding of who they were, but not enough to plan elaborate sabotage missions on yet.

She let out a resigned sigh. Maybe Cozy or Discord had some more information. She straightened up her papers and stood up to bring them over to the clubhouse.

Even as she walked, Babs was still trying to scheme. Who would be the best target to aim for first? One of those students seems like an easy bet, or she could take advantage of the new players and their lack of experience. Maybe one of the princesses? But would she even have the skill to get one of them? Maybe she should save that for-

Babs suddenly found herself knocked onto her rear, her papers scattered over the ground. She looked up to see the stallion that she had bumped into.

“Woah! Sorry there!” Feather Bangs said, offering a hoof to help her up. “I should’ve watched where I was going.”

“Augh, your fine, wasn’t payin’ attention neither…” Babs grabbed onto Feather’s hoof, being pulled up to her hooves.

After helping Babs up, Feather Bangs noticed all the papers, immediately moving to pick them up for her. “Here, allow me.”

Babs’s eyes widened in a panic. She instantly recognized the stallion from how Apple Bloom and the other Crusaders described him.

She was sure one of those scattered papers had her notes on him. She had to make sure that he didn't grab any of her files, or at the very least, not the one with his name on it. “Nononono, you don’t haveta-”

It was too late. Feather Bangs had already picked up a few of the papers, though he hadn’t looked at them closely. “Oh don’t worry, it’s no problem at all!” he casually laughed.

Babs scrambled to pick up as many of the papers as she could before Feather Bangs, hoping that at least one of the ones she got was about him.

Feather Bangs held a few of the papers in his hoof. The way that Babs was rushing, these papers must have been really important to her. Curiosity got the better of him and started looking at what was written down.

Babs had picked up the last of the papers and started leafing through them, relieved that she had Feather Bangs’s notes in her possession. Unfortunately, she looked up to see Feather Bangs scanning her notes.

Babs’s writing wasn’t the neatest, but Feather Bangs could see the notes that she scrawled down. He saw things about Twilight getting into romance novels, Chrysalis being overwhelmed by too much love, and Ember’s enjoyment of shiny gemstones. “Huh…”

“Yeah I’m gonna need dat back right now!” Babs hurriedly snagged her notes back. “You didn’t see nothin’!”

“Heh, a bit late for that,” Feather bangs winked. “I see what you’ve got planned!”

Babs nervously blew her mane out of her eyes. “Uh…no ya don’t!”

Feather Bangs responded with a mane flip of his own. “Hey now, don’t worry! I won’t tell a soul about your notes! Makes me feel a little bit better knowing I’m not the only one trying to find a date, though.”

“...What.”

“Aw, you don’t have to hide it from me!” Feather grinned, poking at the papers in Babs’s possession. “You’ve got all those notes about the others cause you wanna sweep them off their hooves and make them swoon over you!”

“I…” Babs glanced at the papers, then back up at Feather Bangs. ”Sure, let’s go wit dat.”

“Oh, right, I’m Feather Bangs. You’re Babs Seed, right? Your cousin Apple Bloom told me a bit about you! I love what you’ve done with your mane!”

“Ah…thanks? Apple Bloom told me a bit about you, too.” Babs laughed nervously, realizing that pretty much everything her cousin said about him was accurate.

“Well, I’m glad to meet a kindred spirit here,” Feather Bangs said. “I hope you won’t think of me as competition. I’d hate to be fighting an Apple over the same mare…again.”

Babs, still confused but obligated to continue with the lie, nodded along. “Yeah, sure.”

“Although, if you want, we could work together, cause there are a lot of lovely ladies to learn about,” Feather Bangs said with a wink.

Babs opened up her mouth, but then realized the opportunity she had in front of her. “Actually…dere might be a way we can help each other out…”

Author's Note

This is how the midwest deals with piracy