‘Idea’ was the right word. It couldn’t be told it had anything in common with what’s called a plan – neither organization or reflection about the procedure to follow. It was an idea and they still had to determine whether it was a good one or a bad one.
As far as Twilight was concerned, no doubt, the balance weighed against the good. She couldn’t understand in what following this Pinkamena everywhere she went would help them to prove she and Rainbow Dash had nothing to do with each other. Even, if someone from their school caught a glimpse at them, it could be taken like a detrimental testimony and to draw them, Applejack and her, in all this shady matter.
“Err… Are you sure of yourself, Rainbow Dash?”, she dared to ask.
“She’s goin’ to tell ya she is even if she got no idea of what she’s doin’”
“Don’t fret, Twilie and put a little faith in me.”
The fact she called her in this unusual nickname didn’t exactly fill her with confidence. Conversely, the impact it had on her was to confirm what Applejack had just assured. Her friend wasn’t like her, attached to order and organization. A lot of her actions were guided by the flow of the moment, and she too often acted before she thought.
Despite it all, because it seemed to be important for her and that she herself didn’t have other ideas, though she’d read many books about how to exonerate an innocent person accused of a crime, Twilight decided to follow Rainbow Dash without turning a hair.
The three young teenagers only followed the fourth wherever she was going, and for now, her process seemed to be completely incoherent. She never entered into any building, and kept on looking all around her in a distrustful manner, what forced her stalkers to hide in the first place within reach to escape from her piercing blue eyes.
She had spent quite a time with her head stuck through the window of a bakery inside of which a girl was celebrating her birthday surrounded by her whole family, then she had turned around the main department store of the Grand Rue, before she went to a costume boutique, then waited near the skate park where a lot of yobs were hanging around and finally admired another window top-full of party accessories.
To be completely honest, none of the three girls knew exactly what Pinkamena was up to, and why it seemed to have so many contradictions in her choices, as if she was unceasingly hesitating between coldness and light-heartedness.
Rainbow Dash, Twilight and Applejack stopped behind a set of leafy bushes to hide, while the pink haired-girl walked in the direction of a small alley beside a bank. It was a place where it was best not to be seen when considered someone good, a place known by anyone in Canterlot to be the landmark of the city’s worst troublemakers.
“Ah, here you finally are, Pinkie Pie…”
The latter jumped, then did a double take, her hands in her pocket. A very few persons were allowed to call her this way. In the alley’s half-dark, she had to squint after she’d turned around to make sure it wasn’t her surly of a big sister, Limestone.
The illusion only lasted for a couple of seconds, and she quickly saw jumping off the trashcan she’d been sitting on, Minty, the leader of the rival gang, with her deep and dark violet eyes. Against the wall, at the back, were leaning some of The Rebellious, the gang which she was a part of, but the enemies weren’t far, of this she was sure. The Crushlotters never come out on their own.
It smelled a rat but she wasn’t scared. She knew she wouldn’t hesitate to fight if necessary, and even had convinced herself no one would miss her anyway.
“What do you want?”
“You dare asking me that!” Minty answered, her bleached hair not matching her pastel name. “If Berry Twinkle’s in the slammer, it’s your fault!”
This information made Twilight jump behind the bushes, and her both friends had to hold her back so she wouldn’t try to run away. Indeed, the sound caused by her hiccup had alarmed the two girls who were looking beyond their shoulders with distrust. Applejack and Rainbow Dash stuck their forefinger in front of their mouths intended for their friend and ceased any movement until the conversations were resumed a little farther.
She had to type a message on her phone that she showed them in order to explain the girl named Berry Twinkle was the leader of one of teen gangs that raged lately, and that her brother Shining Armor, a rookie officer then, had taken part in her arrest.
It gave a new and little encouraging clarification about Pinkamena – that the other girl had called in another way… She really was a part of a gang as well.
“Where is Wind Wisher hiding? I thought The Rebellious had the most loyal of all the leaders of Canterlot. Yet, she’s been hiding for days and leave her Second-in-Command in charge of everything. Talk about loyalty, come on!”
Minty alluded to a fact they all knew about, among hers and the rival gang. Since Pinkamena’s “superior” had beat up the boss of a famous law office on a simple impulse, she made herself so scarce that she had given up on each members of her own mob, to whom she refused to answer.
She played dead because the circumstances stopped her from showing in broad daylight, but she would come back, Pinkamena wanted to convince herself of this fact.
Immediately, the provocation created an uproar within the members of the gang who all arrived in order to defend the honor of their leader. Minty wasn’t impressed at all, smiling with cynicism with her arms crossed. Quickly, the rest of her own team appeared like by magic.
They were up to nothing good, no need to be a mentalist to guess. Nonetheless, if they went out of their hideout now, Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Twilight would take the risk to be seen by both enemy mobs and to get meddled with their quarrels, which was precisely what they were trying to avoid.
No other choice was available. They had to stay where they were and to be attended to a fight that probably was going to be more dangerous than the only one they’ve been involved with until then, when Rainbow Dash had fought with this snotty girl who had made fun of Twilight.
As if to confirm one more time what they were thinking, when each side was preparing to attack, they saw with quite a surprise Pinkamena taking out of her boots a gleaming switchblade, that she opened with a half-smile.
“If you got guts, Minty, come a little closer… I’ll show you how superior The Rebellious are.”
“I can’t wait, b*tch!”
It smelled bad… Really bad. If they wanted to escape, it was now or never. Caught in their brawl, they wouldn’t see them running away. However, Rainbow Dash was bothered to leave someone from her school in such a situation. There were going to be injured persons, maybe dead ones… It was exactly the type of violence she was trying to flee, the type that brought her back one year ago, back at her personal definition of hell.
A miracle would be necessary for everything to end well, and she no longer believed in miracles since that gloomy afternoon of September…
As if some deity had listened to her, the siren of a police car resounded farther. In a few seconds, agents were going to arrive and to separate all these low society folks, out of necessity – or of arrests, rather. Someone probably had warned them… But this someone wasn’t Twilight, who shook her head no when Rainbow Dash glimpsed at her in interrogation.
Two choices were in front of them… To stay on the spot, at the risk of being taken for members of the gangs, or to run away. The second option was the one they chose, almost without hesitation… Though all three couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to Pinkamena – and in which all this was going to help Rainbow Dash to avoid a probable return to Green Haven for nothing.
The three teenagers ran at full throttle, in order to take refuge in the first place they would find and that wasn’t the bank nearby where they could be seen by the police or the members of the gangs. Seeing a door standing out on the horizon, they went towards it, always at the double.
They weren’t expecting, yet, to meet face to face with a raft of half-naked men with towels around their waists…
“Hi”, Rainbow Dash said with a forced smile, waving.
There were rumors about a gay sauna somewhere in Canterlot. Rumors that were now confirmed, obviously. It felt as if being three Alices that just happened to have fallen into the lecher rabbit’s hole.
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As soon as the sirens had roared, the members of The Rebellious had fled without further ado. Pinkamena and Minty had been the only ones remaining, busy to fight knife to knife. It wasn’t out of a deep-rooted hate… It was a question of honor.
It took Shining Armor as much as his coworkers a lot of grips to control the two enraged teenage girls. Never again one of them, yet used to arrest the tough cookies with protruding muscles calling the shots in the shutdown areas, would have thought it would be so hard to overcome young girls of barely one-hundred and ten pounds.
Because he needed to get trained for more difficult questionings which he could be confronted in the future, his boss had summoned Shining Armor to take care of one of these two “shrews”. He was nothing but a rookie officer, but major from the Academy, they kept on telling him he had a brilliant future ahead of him. Henceforth, it was up to him to show that the hopes invested in him weren’t unfounded.
Of the two, he’d been assigned with the one with a student card from Middle Canterlot, since they all knew his little sister Twilight was in this school and they probably had the same age.
This detail, obviously, was the most unsettling for the rookie officer. All the time, he kept on wondering what could lead such a young girl to these extremes, and how as a big brother he would react if Twilight would fall into something of this type. At the same time, he knew very well the latter was way too hard-working, if not a bit too serious for this to ever happen.
In front of the awkward attitude of the young girl, he said to himself the best to do still was not to behave with her like a policeman but like the older brother he was, and too bad if his coworker accused him of being too much of a push over, or too soft with teenage troublemakers.
It wasn’t a common lost cause crook facing him, but a young and suggestible person, who still had chances to emerge greater, should she be helped.
The first thing he did was to unlock her handcuffs and he immediately was struck by the fact that conversely to her rival at the nearby desk, she behaved herself like a girl raised in an appropriate manner, despite her menacing glances and the way she crossed her arms in front of her chest, which showed she wasn’t in the mood for an openhearted conversation.
It didn’t matter. He wanted to talk and he would make sure she would talk as well, somehow.
“So… Pinkamena”, he asked after he thumbed through her file. “It’s been a while we’re trying to get in touch with you. You’re not an easy catch.”
“Do I look like I want to get pinched?”
“You tell me… I know you’re the one who called us.”
Their unit hadn’t intercepted a call strictly speaking. The phone had rung and when one of his coworkers had picked it up, he had heard a part of her conversation with the girl called Minty. Quickly, they had understood they had laid hands on the rest of the gangs they looking for with frenzy, and had sent Shining Armor and a few more experienced agents to arrest each and every of them.
One of the first things he had done before he started to question her was to verify with the telephone company who had made this mysterious call, and Pinkamena Diane Pie’s number appeared, the one of the teenage girl in front of him wearing a pale pink sport jacket and a denim mini-skirt with buckled boots.
“I never wanted to call you. It was an accident.”
She hadn’t said this just to annoy the rookie officer or under the influence of a hesitation forcing her to deny the obvious… Her phone was in the pocket of her jacket and rubbing it against her hand probably had called the police haphazardly since it was the first emergency number of her phone directory.
“Maybe… Or unconsciously you wanted to avoid what was about to happen.”
“It’s stupid… I don’t care about what’s going to happen to me… In fact, nobody cares”, she affirmed looking away, as if to hide the shards of tears resounding in her voice.
Under the shell of tough cookie that nothing ever offended, Shining Armor was sure, a young girl in painwas concealed. She forced herself to play hoodlums in order to hide something, some kind of crack pushing her to self-destruction.
This story, it was undeniable, reminded him of another one, different yet similar. More than ever, he thought what she needed was to lend her an ear and a hand to reach to help her to emerge greater somehow.
“I think you’re wrong. You’re not a bad person, and I also think you got nothing to do with this bunch of troublemakers.”
“Do you want me to think you care? You say that to worm everything out of me about The Rebellious, but your tar with the same brush than the others. As soon as you’ll get what you want, you’ll let me rot all alone.”
Once again, despite the aggressiveness of her discourse, she had let him guess a flaw in the middle of the iron and ice shield she wore in order to protect herself. It was a disenchanted teenager, convinced her life mattered for no one that was in this seat. To be a part of this mob should have been all she had found to feel as if she was alive.
Yes, it reminded him of someone the same age he knew very well.
“What if you put a little trust in me? I can promise you’ll want for nothing if you promise you’ll stop having so bad a company.”
“They are my friends… I can’t do that to them.”
“Friends? I got friends and they don’t let me down when I’m in trouble. They give me news when something bad happen to them.”
She knew very well he alluded to Wind Wisher. That this cop was informed meant one thing – Berry Twinkle had talked. Yet, Minty sworn her loyalty was every bit as good as the one of her own leader.
That was started to involve doubt inside Pinkamena. Until then, she had repeated to herself The Rebellious’ leader was the most upstanding person she had ever met since she had arrived in this city in which she had felt lost and abandoned. After all, she had welcomed her inside her mob with so much ease and generosity…
She didn’t want to believe in the words of an adult, had he been as young and as apparently benevolent as that Shining Armor whose ridiculous name made her think about the character from an unrealistic fiction. Yet, he had tugged a heartstring, and she hoped something would save her or this compassionate discourse would get the best of her.
She didn’t want to be the one to bite the hand that fed her, all the more if it meant she probably would be wanted by all of The Rebellious, who wouldn’t miss inflicting her the good beating she’d deserved.
“Hm, excuse me…” a male voice said patting Shining Armor’s shoulder.
As a simple rookie officer, he wasn’t granted access to the questioning rooms and had led this whole discussion in the middle of his other coworkers, in the wide main office of the police station, where the delinquents of lesser importance were brought or where complaints for small theft were taken.
When he turned around, he noticed one of his promotion comrades working at the reception desk, obviously embarrassed.
“I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of work but a young woman wants to see you… and she says she’s your girlfriend, but…”
Beyond the other officer’s shoulder, Shining Armor caught a glimpse at Rarity, dressed with an elegant flowery pencil skirt and a strapless green bustier which highlighted her breasts. The other agents and officers around didn’t bother to ogle at the one who, back then, actually was his girlfriend.
They both had met during a party when he had just got into the Academy of Police, back when Rarity still was a teenager going to Canterlot High, through a friend who knew her family. She was the prettiest girl of the reception, and quickly, an attraction had bloomed.
Since he had started to work and the young woman had entered in her fashion design school, however, their schedules rarely coincided. Each time they saw each other, it either was briefly either in the most awkward of situations.
Moreover, it seemed she had developed for Twilight and her fellows a friendship of the entwined type which had surprised him, but which also made their relationship a little complicated. It had become harder to know how to behave with her.
He really loved her, but right now wasn’t the right moment.
He got up and hurried to come in her direction. As soon as she would have left and he would have been done with Pinkamena, he knew it, his coworkers would tease him again about Rarity, praising her amazing figure and her refined manners. He had to admit that he hated it.
“Since you’re working so hard all the time, I thought I could bring you coffee and cupcakes from your favorite bakery to cheer you up”, she told him, proud of her action.
It was adorable, a gesture of a generosity as her only knew how to dispense, and usually, he would have been more than happy to share this surprise snack with her, but he dreadfully feared the teenage girl he wanted to save from delinquency would start thinking again he didn’t care about her fate, as she had implied.
“It’s very nice of you… Unfortunately, I can’t take a break now. I’m in the middle of a questioning… Can we see each other later tonight?”
Rarity opened wide her eyes as blue as sapphire, and fluttered her eyelashes, simpering. She didn’t seem to understand what he had just said, as if he had talked to her in a foreign and exotic language he were the only one able to decipher.
“Which questioning? There’s no one at your desk. If you don’t want to see me, just tell me.”
She probably had mistaken his desk for the one nearby of their common acquaintance, who also worked in this police station. To draw from this the conclusion that she did it grudgingly, that is another part of the story.
“Why, no one at my desk? Can’t you see that…”
Arms wide opened, he turned around and jumped discovering the chair in front of him, empty.
His coworkers had been so monopolized by the entering of his charming girlfriend none had noticed the young Pinkamena Diane Pie had left, probably going out by the bathroom’s window that it was about time to seal off.
This was what happened when surrounded by males. A female presence would certainly had saved him from a disaster.
To think he’d been that close to succeed. Now the young girl was left to her own devices again in the big city, free to circulate and to keep on ruining the chances life had in store for her.
If only he hadn’t taken off her handcuffs thinking it was a blessing in disguise… He was going to be the police station’s laughing stock.