Rarity Belle, teenage lesbian sociopath and self-proclaimed fashionista extraordinaire, was not having a good day. Neither was Sunny Flare, her technical mistress. After all, Rarity had not only managed to fail completely and utterly to cook her an edible breakfast but she also had proceeded to skip choking it down with her - scribbling an illegibly-smudged note on a napkin before stealing her car.
That all Sunny could look past.
Having her house trashed was also a forgivable crime. It had happened before and it would likely happen again the next time her birthday or Halloween, Christmas, a discount at Nordstrom - anything worth celebrating, really - rolled around. Besides, it wasn’t going to be her money responsible for ensuring the wallpaper was stuck back on the right way and the 50-inch plasma flatscreen tv was replaced and the gunk was scraped off the floorboards. It was, however, her money Rarity had driven off in to who-knows-where in order to do who-knows-what.
It wasn’t like she was answering her phone either, Sunny found, sighing with frustration and tossing hers across the room. The iPhone X landed in a bail of fabric which was unsurprising, considering how much of her personal workshop/laboratory/hacker’s sanctum was full of them; they were strewn about in various states, mostly as incomplete dresses. Otherwise, the room was stuffed to the ceiling with various bits of partly-disassembled technology; modems, trackball mouses, motherboards; all lay heaped on and underneath a row of stainless steel desks like ravers on the street after a particularly exerting evening out. Sitting beside them, almost nonchalantly, were fashion magazines and mannequins and sewing machines - some of the latter looked straight out of science fiction, beeping and blinking with soldered-on “improvements” and adjustments.
Sunny groaned and slouched back in her office chair, idly spinning it around a few times. After the third rotation, an unwelcome twinge in her gut told her not to push her luck mixing centrifugal force with a skull-cracking hangover. She came to a halt staring into the script code on an open laptop. Like most of the stuff in her workshop, tt was half-finished.
For a few seconds, she glared intently at the glowing blue-light screen, until her eyes began to tire from the artificial brightness in the otherwise-dark room. What curtains there were had been drawn shut and, over them, forgone projects had been stack.
The code was indecipherable in her current state - if it was ever decipherable at all. It reminded her of Rarity’s message, on the napkin: all she could make out in that were the words “porsche” and “sugar” and that was about as useful to her as an incomplete SQL injection. If this was an SQL injection - the jury was still out on that.
Sunny sighed, saved the document, closed the program, and stood up. Considering walking over to fetch her phone out from the bundle of chiffon, she eventually considered against it; instead she lifted an arm and tapped on her bracelets. After a few painful seconds of startup, the devices winked to life and displayed precisely zero messages, zero missed calls, zero things to do.
Zero distractions...
Sunny called Rarity again. Tenth time today.
The phone rang, both from the pile of material and from the homemade Pip-Boy’s speakers. After a second or two of realizing that her girlfriend was unlikely to pick up immediately, if at all, she lowered the device to her lap and stared at it with reddened eyes, puffy from a sleepless night and a sickening morning.
“Rarity,” she asked, “Dearie, where are you? Why’d you have to go?”
One place where Rarity wasn’t was the Canterlot City Hospital. However, her father, Hondo Flanks, sports journalist and self-proclaimed #1 Dad - he had a mug to prove that one - was at the hospital. He was also having a bad day. As was Indigo Zap, his goddaughter.
Trudging through the labyrinthine mint-green and chalk-white hallways, the smell of sick people and medical soap getting in his nose, the noises of intensive care and whooping cough echoing all around him, Hondo realized that he had never really liked hospitals. In fact, they mildly terrified him. However, he reminded himself as his fingers tightened around the conciliatory teddy bear, he was doing this for a friend. This was no time to let his nosocomephobia get in the way.
Since said friend - Red Tailspin, two-time Cup Series champion and racing veteran - was currently trying to bail his other daughter out of prison in Indianapolis after she cracked a baseball bat over a competitor’s skull the day before the race. And sinceRed’s wife was currently deployed in Sudan and since his loser of a son wasn’t currently answering his phone, it had fallen to Hondo to check up on Indigo and make sure that she was still alive and also still handcuffed to the gurney.
Eventually, the portly man arrived outside the appropriate door. Beside it, a pasty-faced and immensely bored police officer stood guard, leant against the wall like it might collapse if not for his support. The way Hondo’s day was going, he feared it might just do that.
However, he wasn’t an avid supporter of Blue Lives Matter solely because he was racist, so Hondo sucked up his unease at the current setting and started over to him, nodding as he approached and tipping his trademark straw hat.
Shining Armor did likewise with his own cap.
“Morning officer,” Hondo greeted.
“Morning citizen.”
“I’ve come to make a visit to one Miss Indigo Zap.”
Shining Armor raised an eyebrow. “You realize she’s under police custody, sir?”
“I do indeed. Her father told me about that. I’m her godfather, by the way. Red and I are old friends.”
“That’s nice.”
“So, can I visit her? I bought her this teddy bear,” Hondo said, brandishing the stuffed animal in an attempt to add some much-needed veracity to his cause.
In response, the policeman narrowed his eyes at the bear. It was a seemingly generic model from the local giftshop, with plush brown fur, wide button eyes, and a big sewn-on smile and a red heart on his chest. Then he narrowed his eyes at the man holding it. He was a seemingly generic model from Columbus, Ohio with thinning mousy hair, a drooping beer gut, and a big moustache sagging down nearly to the collar of his stretched-tight and faded hawaiian shirt, one that was probably older than Shining Armor himself was.
He placed a bone-white hand on his chin., saying “I don’t know about that, man. That girl isn’t good news. She tried to whack a guy… with a football cleat.”
Hondo shrugged. “Well, I can assure you, officer, that I don’t plan on causing any trouble. I just want to see if she’s okay.”
Shining’s face broke into its typical off-duty grin with a chuckle. “Nah, I’m just joking with you man. We’re not pressing charges against your kid. Just let me pat you down and you can see her.”
Hondo breathed a sigh of relief. A minute later, Shining opened the door for him and he was in.
Indigo, to his mild annoyance, was awake. Furthermore, to his serious concern, she did not look good. While being injured was not an uncommon state for the teenage daredevil, being shot was. She lay like a beached tangerine dolphin on the hospital bed, tubes running in and out of her like said dolphin had wandered onto Dr Moreau’s island by mistake. One hand, that closest to the bedside table, was cuffed to the bed’s railing. Her breathing was faint, but her eyes lit up upon seeing Hondo and she smiled weakly.
“Hey kid,” he said, depositing the teddy bear on her nightstand “Good to see you’re still kicking.”
“Heh. Yeah. Last time I try to fight a cop.”
Hondo frowned harder and more uneasily than he had been since stepping out of the car and into the hospital parking lot. “Sorry, Indy. You tried to do what!?”
Indigo shrugged. It hurt. Instead, she shakily pointed to the mess of bandages wrapped around her shoulder, beneath which a half-covered tattoo of a paper doll was visible. Hondo winced.
“Yeah. For once, I lost. I’d be surprised if Dusty didn’t disown me for losing a fight like that, Uncle Hondo.”
Doing his best impression of a goldfish, Hondo opened and then closed his mouth a few times as his underworked brain tried its very hardest to come up with an appropriate reply to that. While doing so, a conversation began to unfold outside the door. Growing bored again, Indigo reached over the tv remote, wincing again as the handcuff forced her to turn her aching body over to get at it and, in doing so, put unwelcome pressure on the wound.
Hondo handed her the remote.
“So, Indy,” he asked, “how did this happen again?”
“Red didn’t tell you?” Indigo replied, turning on the television built into the opposite wall, tapping through channels until they all blurred together in a mess of flickering light and jumbled sound.
“He told me that you were injured. He asked me to pay you a visit since he was down in Indiana with your sister.”
“Why didn’t he send Shamrock instead? Uh, no offence.”
“None taken, kid. Red just said the boy wasn’t answering his phone.”
“Yeah. He does that. Keeps it muted while skateboarding so it doesn’t distract him or anything. Probably just got high and forget to check again. He missed Dusty’s graduation that way. Spitfire wanted to chuck him out her chopper, Pinochet-style.”
“Huh. I see. Well,” Hondo smiled nervously, “two out of three ain’t bad, I guess. Between you and Lightning, I’d say Red did pretty well for himself in terms of kids. Didn’t do too bad for a wife either.”
Indigo shrugged again. Wincing, she realized that she really should stop doing that. Maybe the nurse would let her have some morphine now?
“Yeah. I guess. I mean, I can’t have done that badly if I got myself a scholarship to Crystal Prep,” Indigo said, flicking through the channels. The hospital had disappointedly few of them. Then again, she guessed that not being charged for assaulting an officer had probably expended her good luck quotient for the month anyway - asking for a sports channel that played something other than poker might be pushing it.
Eventually, she settled on a news channel and started pretending to care about the war in the Middle East. Hondo settled on a chair and continued pretending to enjoy Indigo’s company. It wasn’t that he disliked the girl, that much anyway, it was just that he really, really hated hospitals. However, he had promised Red half an hour and half an hour he would get, like it or not.
Definitely not.
His mouth felt dry. His stomach felt knotted. Hondo began to contemplate spending most of that half hour downstairs, in the cafe or, better yet, in the Hooters across the street. Maybe his favourite waitress, the blonde with crossed eyes and the cute voice, would be there?
“What the fuck!” Indigo screamed.
Hondo looked up from unknowingly thinking about his daughter’s classmates. “What is it, Indy?” he asked.
“They fucking arrested Dusty!” she shouted.
“Oh, yeah. I well, forgot to tell you about that.”
“Just before the fucking Indy 500 too? I was named after that damn race and they arrested my sister! I wanted to fucking see her race! Shit!”
Shining Armor knocked on the door, before sticking his head inside and glaring at nobody in particular. Hondo hopped up to his feet and saluted. Indigo glared back.
“Keep it down, please. Other people are trying to sleep.”
“Yes sir!”
“Bite me, jackass. My sister just got arrested. I think I earned the right to be mad… uh... Twilight’s stupid brother.”
Swallowing his complaint, Shining Armor pointed to his nametag. “I have a name, you know. And seriously, keep it down, okay? I’m trying to talk to my wife out here.”
“Sorry about, sir,” Hondo grovelled, “it won’t happen again.”
“Okay. Good to hear. And you can stop saluting now, by the way.”
Hondo sat back down. Shining Armor removed his head and torso from the doorway. Indigo unpaused the news report.
“Seriously though,” she said, “the fuck did Dusty get arrested for?”
As he had grown it partly because he mistakenly thought it made him look rugged and partly for that exact purpose, Hodno twirled his moustache in thought. “Think Red said she got in a fight.”
“Oh. Yeah. That sounds like her. She win?”
“Well…” Hondo scratched the back of his head, “the other guy lost.”
Indigo grinned. “That’s my sister for you. Really does suck about the race though. Bet she’d’ve won that too.”
“Odds were 25-1 she’d place,” Hondo replied. “However, now that she’s not racing, there aren’t any odds. And I’m down $500 on those odds too, kid. Damn, I was going to get Sweetie a present with my winnings.”
Indigo was a sports prodigy, not a maths prodigy. However, she still realized that betting your daughter’s birthday present on 25-1 odds probably wasn’t the best idea. Hondo, to his credit, had also realized that; he’d realized it right after the clerk told him the bet was non-refundable in case of spontaneous outbreaks of aggravated assault.
“No offence, dude, but that was kinda really stupid.”
“Offence taken,” said Hondo, standing, “anyway, I’m glad to see you’re okay and all, but I’ve really got to get going.”
“Work? What is it today? Soccer?” Indigo asked.
Hondo shrugged. “Yeah. Can’t be late for the match, you know,” he said as he started for the door.
Said match he planned to watch at Hooters. If he hurried, he might even be able to catch the end of Derpy’s shift. Not that he knew that was her name; she was derped, not stupid - she went by Muffins at work.
“See you round, Big Man. One last thing, though. Can you get an autograph from the cop who shot me?” Indigo said, changing the channel to a cartoon station and lying back down.
“Er, sure kid. I’ll check with my friends about that… if that’s even legal,” he added, muttering under his breath.
At that point in time, Hondo wanted little more than a cold glass of beer, a plate of hot wings, and the company of a nubile young woman and maybe to get Indigo Zap to a psychologist. However, upon exiting the room and walking into Mi Amore Cadenza, he was reaffirmed in his suspicions that today was not going to be the sort of day where he actually got what he wanted in the slightest.
Cadance, although nubile and technically in the psychological profession by virtue of being trained as a school counsellor, was also about thirty-two and, due to her husband being forbidden from drinking and or snacking while on duty, she had brought neither Bud Light nor Taliban Wings along on her visit, which she had intended to be for her injured student, not her goofball husband who just so happened to be in the area. Furthermore, she was none too pleased with the man who had just walked into her. But that was to be expected - she wasn’t having a very good day either.
Hondo had merely tipped his hat, muttered an apology, and had intended to continue on his way. However, Cadance, continuing her conversation, had uttered a name.
A very specific name.
A name whose owner Hondo Flanks tried to be very supportive of, even if doing so affording stroke-inducingly expensive spa trips and also bailing her out of trouble, from time to nerve-shredding time.
“And another thing,” said Cadance, “Twilight didn’t break up with Rarity. Can you imagine that? She stuck with her?”
Still though, this wasn’t his problem.
“I mean, she hit her!”
Okay, now this was his problem.
Hondo stopped getting lost in the hospital for the fifth time this day and turned right around, heading right back into the admittedly one-sided conversation.
Again, he tipped his hat. It had little effect. “Excuse me, Miss?”
Cadance ignored him and continued reciting her various woes and gripes, which had moved on from her sister-in-law’s poor taste in women to the dismal standard of babysitters these days.
“Miss? Sorry to interrupt, but…”
Talking to this man wasn’t Cadance’s priority right now. Her priority right now, in case Shining Armor was interested - which he wasn’t - was informing him that Pinkamena Diane Pie was the worst babysitter on the planet. In fact, she had actually been arrested just last night!
Taking a deep breath, Shining Armor rubbed his temples. Really, getting married felt like a mistake today. However, it had occurred to him that arresting Pinkie Pie had probably been a mistake too. And it wasn’t just because she escaped immediately after he locked the cell behind him. It was because there was nobody currently watching his infant daughter now. He placed a single finger on Cadance’s lips before unhooking his radio from his belt.
“Come in, Billy. This is Shining. Over.”
A voice jabbered on the other end. Cadance continued to complain. Shining shushed her again. Hondo vaguely considered being somewhere else and so checked his watch. 5 PM. Damn. Derpy’s shift was over.
“Yeah, a family issue came up. Can you cover my shift? Over.”
More jabbering, frustrated.
“Well gee, dude, sorry to cut your trip to Hooters short but the wife and I each thought the other one was watching the kid. Over.”
The jabbering was furious.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You dated Lens Flare, like eighteen years ago. Good for you, Billy Club. Good for you. Well, I married my girlfriend who was also a model and you owe me a solid anyway. So get your ass over here and watch the perp. Over.”
Hondo didn’t need perfect hearing - which a lifestyle of attending racing competitions ensured he didn’t have anyway - to understand that his old drinking buddy was none too keen about being dragged away from the game and subsequent double brandy and coke.
Guessing now was as good a time as any to defend his daughter’s honour and to also figure out why her girlfriend hit her, Hondo turned to Cadance. “Hey,” he said, “you mentioned somebody called Rarity, right? Rarity Belle?”
Cadance made a curt nod. “Yes, I did. Why are you asking.”
“Because I’m her dad, Miss. We kind of like to know why random people are talking about our children.”
“I’m her girlfriend’s sister-in-law,” Cadance replied confidently, as if she expected that to explain everything.
Alas, it did not. Shining, having terminated the radio call before his partner could protest further, walked over and give his wife a kiss on the cheek. Then he went home and was pleasantly surprised to learn that Twilight had arrived at the exact same conclusion he did and would’ve actually told him this if her phone had not been stolen, along with Shining’s patrol car, oddly enough.
Damn thing needed a service anyway, Shining thought, the transmission was on its last legs and it was about time he got one of those tracking devices installed in it anyway. In hindsight, he probably should’ve done that before it was stolen but, hey, life comes at you fast sometimes.
To Hondo, however, Cadance’s reply explained precisely nothing. “Yeah, sorry. Rarity and I don’t really talk. About that sort of thing. So, that’d make you... Octavia’s sister, right?”
Cadance blinked.
“No. It would not. Your daughter is dating Twilight Sparkle.”
“Oh, I see,” said Hondo, “thought Tavi’d just dyed her hair.”
And her skin and changed her entire personality and family overnight, thought Cadance. “Well, she didn’t, as far as I know.”
“Okay. So, didn’t you say that somebody, this ‘Twilight’ person, had hit my daughter.” Hondo said, his confusion gradually being replaced with a paternal desire to give this Twilight Sparkle a good talking to, once he figured out who she actually was.
“No, I most certainly did not say that. Mr...?”
“Hondo. Hondo Flanks, a sports journalist for the Canterlot Bugle” he said, offering his hand.
Cadance took it gingerly. “My condolences.”
“Anyway, I’m pretty confident you did mention that, Miss.”
“I didn’t. I know what I said.”
“Then what did you say?”
“I said that your daughter, who you seemingly don’t actually talk to, beat her girlfriend, who is my sister-in-law. Can you understand now why I’m somewhat annoyed?”
Hondo did his goldfish impression again.
Come to think of it, knowing his daughter for as long as he did, that this series of events was bound to happen sooner or later, again. However, if there was a way of preparing yourself for the uncomfortable experience of justifying your offspring's latest act of delinquency, Hondo didn’t know it. Red Tailspin might; next time they went drinking, Hondo thought, he should really ask him about that.
“Yes. I can see why you are annoyed now, Cadance.”
Cadance frowned. “That’s Mrs Armor to you.”
“My condolences,” Hondo mumbled.
“So yes, kindly tell your daughter that it would be immensely wise for her to end her relationship with my sister-in-law.”
“I think you’re misunderstanding something here, Miss Cadance. Namely, my daughter is a good person. She’d never hit anyone,” Hondo lied, “I think you might be mistaken.”
“I can assure you, I am not.”
“Yeah. Well, I can assure you that, last time I checked, Rarity wasn’t even dating a Twilight Sparkle at all,” Hondo shot back.
Cadance raised an eyebrow and gave Hondo a stare that would’ve broken a lesser, schlubbier, more ill-dressed man where he stood. However, Hondo, having put up with his wife doing the same thing for the past twenty-nine years, was more than capable of being stared at. He was also more than capable of getting his daughter out of trouble, whenever the need arose.
Which it did, from time to time.
“When was the last time you checked who your daughter was dating?”
“About four years ago, why?”
Cadance, at that point in time, gave up on the day. No matter how much she tried, it was not going to be good. She palmed her face and cursed her luck.
If only she’d stuck to modelling for Hoity Toity, instead of becoming a school dean, marrying the village idiot, and having the baby from hell…
She might not be talking to this brick wall of an idiot if that were the case.
Alas, it was not.
“Mr Flanks. Mr Hondo Flanks,” Cadance growled, devoting a breath to each word. “Please, kindly, go talk to your daughter. About something other than… whatever it is you two talk about.”
“Alcohol, usually,” Hondo answered.
“The legal drinking age in this state is eighteen. If I am not mistaken, your daughter is not of that age.”
“Hondo shrugged. “Back in Ohio its twenty-one. Your point, Miss?”
Cadance gritted her teeth. Maliciousness, she could handle. That’s why she chose Crystal Prep over Canterlot High. Stupid, however? She never could get a handle on stupid.
Yet here she was, visiting Crystal Prep’s resident moron and talking to a Buckeye who’s idiocy no single village could hold.
Hondo noticed the steam leaking from Cadance’s ears. He noticed that her strawberry-pink complexion was now burning a habanero red. He noticed that the noise her teeth were making was drowning out the buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead.
“My daughter’s a good person, Miss Cadance,” he said, turning and tipping his hat and walking faster than he usually did down the hallway.
Rarity reclined in bed, twirled the stolen cigar in her fingers and blew a smoke ring into the air that was thick with the scent of overpriced perfume and the funk of a very exciting evening. Beside her, a thoroughly tired-out Sunny Flare lay dozing. Both she and Rarity were naked. A bottle of Remy Martin XO cognac lay empty on the floor beside a pair of snifters, beneath a discarded Victoria’s Secret pair of panties.
What a day it had been.
Murder in the morning - adultery in the afternoon.
“You know, Darling,” Rarity mused, infinitely grateful that all of Fleur’s clothes fit her like a glove - or a blouse, or a skirt, or a bra, or whatever - “this day turned out rather well after all.”
Sunny mumbled a reply.
She did so with a smile. Her car was returned safely, the code had been deciphered, and she had been bought her a cake and a pair of earrings as an apology; courtesy of Twilight’s credit card, not that she knew of course. Most importantly though, Rarity was back. And she was in bed with her.
At last.
“Indeed. Spectacularly well. A marvellous day, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yeah, Dearie,” she said, running a hand up her lover’s chest. “It did turn out pretty good.”