//------------------------------//
// Ch. 3 Haste 
// Story: Friendship: the Gathering 
// by Arcanum -Phantasy 
//------------------------------//

The skies over Ponyville were clear, letting the warm summer sun grace the land with its embrace. Anon had decided to take advantage of that, laying in the shade of one of the trees about ten feet from his front door. While calm on the surface, his mind was wandering into a dozen different directions. For all intent and purposes, he was an active cryptid on this world and he was not sure how that would affect how things went for him moving forward. Sure, Pinkie Pie and Rarity were friendly, if not a bit irritating, but there was no guarantee that he could expect that to be a continued trend. That was even assuming both mares had been honest to him in the first place and weren't secretly planning to have him end up in a lab somewhere.
There are too many things I don't know for sure, he frowned, reaching for a red deck box at his side. The easiest way to fix some of that would be to spend some more time with the locals, but I don't know if that's safe. I mean, what if there's some kind of rare creature hunter out there and I end up having my head decorating their wall or something? 
He let out a groan as he took the cards out of the box, each sleeved in the same bright crimson as their container, and started to shuffle.
The only other thing I can do is try to study them from a distance. Shouldn't be too difficult if I stay close to the surrounding forests. If I need to, I could use my telescope to spy on the town from here.
"I should probably keep an eye out for any.....Pegasuses? Pegasi? Whatever - Flyers too. Bad enough I have someone possibly strong enough to snap me over her knee like a stick or could do gods-knows-what to me with magic. Throw in someone that can just swoop me off like a hawk and I'm pretty sure I'm fucked."
He let out a defeated sigh shuffling his deck as he stared up at the sky.
A bit of movement in said sky made him raise a brow and wonder if he had accidentally put something funny in his coffee this morning. A rainbow was moving through the sky, slithering through it with surprising speed and dexterity. At the same time, he could swear he could hear what sounded like a plane flying over him. Perplexed, he put the cards back into their case, leaned further up against his tree, and watched the strange anomaly. When the thing finally stopped moving, his heart sank into his gut.
Upon stopping, the rainbow quickly faded to reveal a light blue Pegasus.
That was about as far as he got in regards to identifying the Pony before he grabbed his deck, got up, and bolted to his house as fast as he could. At the same time, he heard that same jet sound from earlier along with the steadily growing sound of flapping wings. He cursed under his breath as he forced himself to move faster. When he reached the door, he threw it open then slammed it hard behind him before he turned and drew his knife. A second later, something slammed into his door before a scratchy female voice could be heard whining from the other side.
"I don't want any trouble!" Anon shouted, knife held steady as he moved into a fighting stance with it. "Get the fuck away from here and things won't have to get ugly!"
"Buck that freak!" the mare cried. "You pulled a knife on my friend!"
I'd say 'It takes a freak to know a freak' , but I guess I kind of am one here, he thought with a grimace.
"We already worked that out!" he retorted, still glaring at his door. "Now fuck off!"
"Yeah, right!" the mare barked. "Now, get out here or I swear I'll bust this stupid door down and-"
A deep feline growl on the other side of the door cut her off.
Anon let a smirk grow on his face at the sound and  he relaxed his stance a bit. There were two things people need to know about Maine Coon cats; they are affectionate to their owners and the closest thing a person can get to legally owning a Bobcat. Even by his own breed's standard, Jinx was huge, the feline hulk measuring a whopping three and a half feet long and a foot and a half tall at the shoulder. He was also technically feral, having spent most of his kittenhood roughing it in the woods before the human took him in. On top of gifting the cat with stronger fangs and sharper claws, it also made the cat extremely protective of his human.
A fact that was becoming very apparent to the mare on the other side of the door 
"Uh....nice.....kitty?" the mare offered.
She was answered with a fierce growl from the cat, followed by a loud hiss.
The mare yelped and the door let out a loud bang as something ran into it. Jinx let out a furious yowl at that before the mare let out a pained scream. Anon jumped when a flurry of frantic knocks rang out through his door along with desperate pleas.
"HELP! I'M GETTING MAWLED!"
He would've been lying if he said that some small part wasn't enjoying this, but he liked to think he wasn't a complete asshole. Besides, if this Pony really was Pinkie's friend, it would be kind of hard to explain to her why he let his cat murder her. That, and he was really not in the mood to hide a body today. Anon sighed, put his knife away, then started making his way towards the door. 


***


Anon glared daggers at the mare now sitting across from him in his living room, said mare doing the same with her arms crossed.  Jinx stared at her like one would a turd on the ground from his seat on the human's lap, most likely the only reason the mare wasn't actively trying to strangle him. The fact that he treated her wounds probably had something to do with it on some level, but he was not banking on it.
Like he was able to deduce when he first saw her, the mare was sky blue in color with a lithe, yet toned physique one would expect from a track runner. Her hair and tail were messy in a way that showed that aside from washing them, she didn't really care all that much about them. Both of them had grown to the border between long and short and held all of the colors of the rainbow. Her eyes were her most striking feature, not just because of their sharp magenta tint, but because the mare was trying to use them to glare holes through his head. She wore a dark blue tank top with a yellow lightning bolt cutting across her modest chest from her left shoulder to her right hip with two holes set in the back for her wings, a pair of black denim shorts, and light gray tennis shoes. The near full roll of gauze wrapped around her right leg from her ankle to her hip was Jinx's contribution to her style.
The whole thing at the door was resolved a lot quicker than one would think.
With a few quick clicks of his tongue, Jinx pulled his fangs and claws out of the mare's thigh and casually walked into the house. When he got a good look at said leg, he didn't waste any time dragging her into his home. Her leg was covered with so many wounds that it almost looked like she dipped her leg in red paint.  It was going to take him a while to wash all of the blood off of the floor. 
On the plus side, the fact that he was trying to patch her up kept the mare from clocking him in the face for a couple hours. Instead, she decided to spend the whole time silently glaring at him and probably thinking of decking him later.  Not one to back down from a challenge, he met her glare with his own. Now the two of them sat, mad-doging each other in heavy silence while Jinx purred smugly on Anon's lap.
Alright, I have a royally pissed off horse lady that wants to kill me in my living room. What the fuck do I do know?
"Hey!" the mare snipped, snapping the human out of his musings. 
"Yeah?" he guardedly asked.
The mare broke eye-contact, still looking sullen as she muttered, "Um...thanks for....fixing my leg and stuff."
"You're welcome," he frowned. "Now get out of my house."
"Not until you answer a few questions!" she declared, glare back in full.
"No," Anon growled. "You came after me and threatened to hurt me in my own home. You should consider yourself lucky I didn't knock your lights out instead of patching up your leg."
"Tell me why you pulled a knife on my friend and I'll go," the mare growled, crossing her arms in defiance.
"Fine," Anon huffed, lightly running his hands through Jinx's fur to settle his nerves. "I doubt you'll believe me, but here's what happened."


***


Laughter filled the living room, human and Pony barely able to keep themselves from falling out of their couches. Two half-empty shot glasses, a tall bottle of apple rum, and a red deck box sat on the coffee table between them. Both of them wiped away tears as they struggled to catch their breath, a few stray giggles and chuckles still slipping out. 
After telling the mare what had happened, he was fully prepared to have her call bullshit and start some more trouble. Instead, she decided to throw him for a loop and apologized, saying that if she was in his shoes, she would've probably reacted the same way. Anon could believe that, given how she was acting earlier. He also didn't hold all of that against her too much. If he heard some weird creature pulled a knife on one of his friends, he would've broken track records to carve the damn things hide off with his knife. 
Of course, he would need to have friends in the first place.
Afterwards, the mare started asking him a few other questions about himself. In exchange, he asked her a few questions to see if any of the things Pinkie told him matched. As they traded information, they started to warm up to each other, slowly cutting through the tension that had dominated the room. As they always do, one thing led to another and Anon had brought out a drink to share.
"And then," the mare, giggled, teetering in her seat, "Pinkie said...said...*hic*.....what was I talking about again?"
"Hell if I know," Anon chuckled, setting his now empty shot glass down onto the table. 
A roguish smile graced his lips as he snatched up the deck box on the table, quickly pulling the red-sleeved cards out of it. The mare noticed, frowning in drunk confusion as she watched him casually shuffle them. the sight seemed to click something back into place in her dazed mind.
"That's what I was trying to remember!" she slurred, pointing at the cards. "Pinkie said something about you playing a weird card game. Something the Gathering, right?"
"Magic: the Gathering," he corrected, rolling his eyes.
"Yeah, that," she snorted, refilling her glass. "She said you were really protective of them and not to touch them."
"That's right," he huffed, drawing seven cards off of the top to inspect.
"She also said the game had some kind of philosophy mumbo-jumbo to it," she continued, downing her shot. "Sounds really dorky to me, but whatever."
"Hey," he frowned, setting his drawn hand onto the table far enough to be safe from the booze. "This dorky game's helped me get through a whole lot of shit back home."
"If you say so," she shrugged, leaning back in her seat. "It's just not really my thing, y'know?"
"Jock type, right?" he asked, raising a brow.
"Awesome type," she smirked. "And awesome Ponies don't play dorky games."
"Really?" he deadpanned.
"Yep," she giggled. "I mean, if it were a cool game, then I'd probably give it a shot."
"I don't know about cool," he smirked, staring down at the seven cards he had set on the table. "But the game can get pretty intense if you know what you're doing."
"Oh yeah?" the mare frowned. "Prove it."
His smile grew at the challenge.
He quickly grabbed the abandoned hand of seven, moved the bottle and his glass out of the way, and laid them out across the middle of the table.
"Like you mentioned, the game has some philosophy in it. Red's no different. Red is the color of emotion and chaos. This basically means that it is the most expressive and impulsive of the five colors."
"What the heck does that mean?' she asked, sipping at her glass.
"Put simply, Red feels with no real restraint," Anon continued, also nursing his shot. "Red hates, loves, mourns, and laughs openly and encourages others to be just as open. Hurt someone Red cares about? Get ready to get a fist in your face. Red loses a lover? Get ready to see some serious sadness. Become Red's lover? Get ready to walk funny for the next two weeks. Out of all of the colors, you will never find one more emotionally driven then Red."
"Huh, that's kind'a cool," the mare mused, then stubbornly huffed as she added, "Not cool enough though."
He chuckled at that before he continued.
"It also never wastes time over-thinking things. This makes it the fasted color with the most chaotically aggressive play styles."
That caught the mare's attention really quick, her flushed face suddenly full of intrigue.
"Most of Red's creatures have an ability called haste, which lets them fight as soon as they hit the field," he said, pointing at one card in particular. "Some of their best cards are also really easy to summon or cast, making it an extremely combo or spam attack happy color. It also loves to use what are commonly called burn spells."
"Burn spells?" the mare asked, confused.
"Cards that inflict direct damage to players without attacking," he explained, pointing to another card, this one depicting a red lightning bolt cutting through a darker red sky. "Red can spam these like crazy and can usually blow players away pretty easily."
"Really?" she blinked, furrowing her brow as she stared down at the card. 
"Yeah, but Red does have it's own issues," he shrugged. 
"Like what?" the mare asked, raising a brow. "I mean, Red sounds pretty solid to me."
"Well, because Red doesn't think twice about things, it's really easy to lure it into a trap. On top of that, Red is a bit of a glass cannon, with most of its creatures having pretty low toughness compared to the other colors. Red also has a pretty bad habit of blowing through its hand really quickly, making it a sitting duck in long games."
"Oh," the mare frowned. "That does kind've suck."
"All of that aside," he continued. "If you're the type to let your heart do all of the thinking, are loyal to the people that matter to you, and aren't afraid to take some risks to get things done, then Red is the color for you."
"Loyalty, huh?" the mare mused, a thoughtful frown gracing her muzzle as she stared down at the cards. 
He raised a brow at that, then shrugged as he put the cards away and downed his shot. The mare watched him, her expression slowly becoming more thoughtful. When he eventually set the deck box a crooked smile graced her muzzle and she plucked her shot off of the table.
"You know," the mare chuckled. "You're a pretty cool guy."
"Thanks," he groaned, leaning back in his seat and staring up at the ceiling.
"And, sorry I tried to beat you up," she sighed, ears drooping as she took a sad sip of her drink.
"Don't worry about it," he frowned, waving her apology away. 
"Still...." she frowned. "It was really uncool of me."
"I'm over it," he chuckled. "Wouldn't be the first time someone tried to clock me out over a misunderstanding."
Probably won't be the last either, he thought grimly.
"Okay, I'm not gonna let that happen, again," she smirked, dizzily offering him a hand, "Names Rainbow Dash."
"Anon," he snorted, giving the offered hand a firm shake. "Nice to meet you."
"Ditto," she chuckled.