“...Are you still there? Did the phone die while I was talking? Crap. Maybe I should have used a better phone for this…” the Nowhere Man mused. “Convincing Cheese to slip a phone into Shimmer’s pocket was hard enough the first time, doing it again is gonna be a nightmare.”
“N-no, we’re still here, just,” Sunset closed her eyes and started to massage her temple with her free hand. “What in Eque- I mean, what on earth are you talking about!?”
“[Alicorn Fantasy] is a nightmare. An all-powerful monstrosity that has no place in human hands. If you decided you should rule the world I can’t think of a single Stand User, living or dead, who’d be able to stop you. Now, you don’t deserve to die, and I don’t know enough about the Stand Geode to tell if depowering you would let Cinch loose, but if I can just keep Canterlot safe from the threat you present I can sleep with a clear conscience.”
Sunset and Pinkie stared at the phone in mute shock. The worst thing about it was his tone of voice: steady, earnest, and deadly serious, like his words were some immutable fact of life instead of the snap judgement of a paranoiac. Their eyes met, their expressions hardened, and Sunset brought the phone back up to her face.
“Yeah, no. That’s not happening. This is my home. These are my friends. And we didn’t stick together through everything Cinch threw at us just to split up because some crackpot telemarketer thinks I’m gonna grow a god complex! If you’ve really been watching us, then you should already know we’re not going to sit here and let you tear us apart. We’ve already beat one maniac who thought she could control people’s lives, and you’re delusional if you think we can’t beat a second.”
“...So that’s a ‘no’ on leaving Canterlot?”
“I. Refuse.”
“...Fine,” he said at last. “Hard way it is, then. I’m sorry for what has to happen next.”
With no further warning the ceiling above them cracked open as an orange blob larger than both of them forced its way through the panelling. The translucent hulk tumbled towards them in an avalanche of motion,crashing onto their table and lashing out at its surroundings with several gooey pseudopods.
The impact knocked Pinkie to the floor, and - thankfully - out of harm’s way, but whether by their enemy’s design or sheer bad luck, Sunset Shimmer had been engulfed completely. Sunset started flailing, fighting against the cloying thickness trapping her in place to claw her way to the surface. Pinkie shook the stars out of her eyes just in time to watch her movements slow, then stop.
A smaller part of the mass stayed in place, hardening around Sunset and trapping her in a silent scream. The rest of it split off and lurched towards Pinkie, who scrambled backwards on all fours and summoned her Stand.
“[Golden Ticket]!”
Punching the blob that just swallowed her friend whole was clearly a bad idea, so the dapper spectre instead grabbed a door from inside its coat and slammed it down on the enemy Stand like a magazine on a spider. Through her Stand’s senses she felt the blob flatten and buckle under the impact, but it quickly recovered and began to wrap itself around the door, creeping towards her Stand’s hands. Switching up her tactics, Golden Ticket pulled with all its strength and ripped the door - and the enemy - off the ground. Struggling under the combined weight it flipped the door over so the enemy Stand wobbled around on top like a plate of orange jelly, then slammed it back down. The impact shook the blob loose, and before it could react further the door swung open to the sewers beneath the building. Again it dropped like a stone, clawing at the walls and air but unable to stop its descent, before it slammed into the fast-flowing water below it. Pinkie watched for a moment as the current dragged the writhing mass out of sight, and then pulled the door shut and dismissed it to wherever she had taken it from.
With her life no longer in immediate danger, she looked back to the person whose life might still be at risk.
Sunset hadn’t moved, literally still frozen in amber. Humans can survive two minutes without oxygen, and it hadn’t taken Pinkie more than a minute to deal with the Stand itself. She probably had enough time to get Sushi out of there, but attacking the Stand meant touching it, and getting both of them trapped would mean Jojo and Dashie wouldn’t know what happened to them, or how to defend themselves if the Nowhere Man came after them next. But the Stand had split itself in half after engulfing Sunset, and the remains hadn’t moved to attack her after she’d disposed of the rest of it. Maybe the residue couldn’t absorb anything else? A tossed dessert fork bounced off the mass and confirmed her theory, meaning she had freedom to try anything and absolutely no idea what she was doing. Business as usual, then.
[1:37]
Golden Ticket sprang into motion, raining a flurry of punches into the gemlike surface. Even if she preferred winning fights through trickery and creative application of doors, her Stand still had the brute strength to defend itself in a straight brawl. Surely it could crack this glorified paperweight open. But hitting the enemy Stand felt like hitting, well, a rock, and throughout her onslaught it didn’t even look dented. Even then, her Stand kept punching until Pinkie felt the skin of her own knuckles start to split. She took a step back to catch her breath and massage some feeling back into her hands.
[1:04]
Okay. Plan A.
Golden Ticket pulled out the smallest door she had - a type of trapdoor used to access wiring in floors - and fixed it over Sunset’s face. If she couldn’t dig her out entirely, she could at least give them both room to breathe. But no matter how hard she pulled the door refused to open, as if the mystery Stand had turned fluid just long enough to gum up the hinges.
[0:32]
She was running out of time, she’d already run out of options, and she wasn’t sure if she was more likely to start screaming or crying. She was seriously considering eating her way through the Stand when a glow from under the table caught her eye: the crappy little flip phone, with the call timer still counting up. Even through the utter chaos of the past minute the Nowhere Man hadn’t hung up, and that gave Pinkie an idea. If she could still talk to him maybe she could convince him to let Sunset go? He’d already shown he wasn’t Shadowbolt levels of killcrazy. If it could save Sunset’s life, she had to try. Golden Ticket grabbed it and held it up to her face, and she almost screamed into the phone:
“I know you can hear me!”
“What the fu-”
“You said you didn’t like how many people got killed because of Principal Cinch, right? You said Sushi didn’t deserve to die. I know she’s still alive, you’ve still got time to let her go! Are you really that willing to go back on your principles?”
“I-I’m not going to kill her! I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.”
The abrupt shift between the level of threat the Nowhere Man posed created such a sense of whiplash that all Pinkie could manage was a bewildered “...Huh?”
“[Mudhoney] doesn’t kill. It… it simply keeps things it engulfs in stasis. The transferral of energy is ubiquitous with the flow of time, and neither is permitted in Mudhoney’s domain. Motion, change, life and death; all are impossible beneath its surface. To Sunset Shimmer, time no longer exists. When I release her, it will be as if she jumped forward in time.”
“‘When’? You’re gonna let her go?”
“Of course! I’m not a monster, Pie.”
“You know who I am!? Wait, you’ve been stalking us, of course you know who I am, but how do you know what my voice sounds like?”
“I don’t have to, I just have to know what you look like.”
Oh. Long range Stand or not, someone like this Nowhere Man would be too cautious to attack Sunset without keeping an eye on the situation, and if he didn’t have access to a decent phone, he wouldn’t be able to get some kind of hidden spy camera. So he had to be watching them in person, and therefore in direct line of sight to their table. Pinkie sidled closer to the window, checking for anyone suspicious in her field of vision. The sidewalk, the cars parked outside, the park across the street-
There. A young man, about Pinkie’s age, was using one of the park’s rarely-remembered payphones; one hand holding the handset, the other holding binoculars pointed at the cafe.
Something about his clothes looked familiar, but she didn’t let her gaze linger; if he thought his cover had been blown he’d make a break for it, and if he got away they’d probably never see him again. She needed to get closer, get a few more details on his identity at the least, and for that she needed an opening. And for that, she’d have to keep him talking.
“You said you were gonna let her go, right? What are you waiting for? Why not let her go right now?”
“I already told you. The moment I find a Stand user who can, ha, stand up to Alicorn Fantasy, I’ll be happy to let Shimmer go.”
“What happens if you can’t find one?” He fell silent, and she pressed on. “I know you’re scared of what Sushi could do if she felt like it, but she’s not like that, and even if she could be, you don’t need to do this. You can step out of the shadows, we can all talk this out, find some way to answer your questions. Just let my friend go. Please.”
There was a long, tense silence, and Pinkie allowed herself to hope that maybe the Nowhere Man would give up without a fight. Then he spoke.
“I… I can’t do that. I’ll, ah, I’ll think of something. I know I will. There’s no such thing as an unbeatable Stand. I’ll just find a way around her power, that’s all.”
Fine, Pinkie thought, disappointed but not surprised. Hard way it is, then.
He kept talking, offering worthless platitudes about how he’ll ‘gladly let her go once Canterlot is safe for us all’ and he’s ‘willing to cover Shimmer’s rent for as long as it takes’, but she was barely listening now, waiting instead for the perfect moment to make a move.
That moment came when he lowered the binoculars to adjust his grip.
Pinkie vaulted over the table, and would have smacked into the window if her Stand hadn’t replaced it with a door. She instead landed in the street in a handstand and let the momentum carry her into a forward roll, then launched herself into a run from the impromptu sprint crouch midway through. Luckily, she’d made her move during a lull in traffic, but frankly she wasn’t certain she would have slowed down anyway.
In the time it took for her to cross the street, the Nowhere Man had finished adjusting his grip, and Pinkie was unashamed to admit his full-body double take at the sight of her apparently teleporting through both solid glass and moving traffic was hilarious.
He fumbled with the handset for a moment, trying to hang it up properly, before giving up and sprinting for another of the park’s entrances; this one leading to a bustling market.
Pinkie’s world shrunk to just her and her target as she committed every detail of his appearance to memory. If she couldn’t beat him now, she could at least memorise as much about him as possible, making it easier to track him down later.
He’s got light blue skin, dark brown eyes, and neatly styled purple-black hair. He’s Asian - that might be racist but he’s a bad guy so it’s less important. From the way he runs, he’s not out of shape, but he’s not exactly an athlete either. He’s clean-shaven and dressed formally; he’s wearing a grey waistcoat, a tie with that weird eye symbol, a light blue shirt, navy blue pants…
Oh shit, that’s a Crystal Prep uniform.
Their top speeds were close enough to keep him out of her Stand’s range, and she forced herself to move even a little bit faster to close the distance.
Fifteen metres out of range.
Ten metres.
Five metres!
…Seven metres.
Twelve metres.
She almost had him - she was so close - but the sprint had taken a lot out of her, and she was breathing harder and slowing down. She was no stranger to quick bursts of exertion - cartwheels, tackle-hugs, somersaults and the like, but unfortunately endurance wasn't her strong point. Even worse, it looked like it was his.
The final nail in the coffin came, ironically, from a desperate attempt to slow him down. She’d pulled out another service trapdoor, planning to throw it at his head like a square frisbee. But she’d been forced to split her focus between aiming with her Stand and running with her legs, and she’d stumbled over an uneven paving stone. She’d barely managed to stay on her feet, and by the time she’d regained her balance he’d slipped into the crowd.
Her eyes swept across the crowd, one last-ditch effort to not lose him completely, but all she got was a glimpse of those dark brown eyes glaring back at her, before a passerby blocked her line of sight for a second, and he had vanished when she could see again.
Pinkie stood there for a long moment, gazing blankly into the crowd. Then she began to pace back and forth, like a switch had been flipped in her brain. She didn't have time to beat herself up over losing the Nowhere Man, not when Sunset still needed her.
In her head she went over his monologue again, picking through every word to see if he'd let slip anything she could work with. There were a few things he said that weren't sitting right, and there was one thing that stood out to her right now-
The pieces clicked together, and for a moment Pinkie felt like the world had stopped. She spun on a dime and bolted back to the cafe, ignoring her protesting legs. He'd said 'we'. 'Just some concerned citizens'. He wasn't acting alone, and it was possible he'd had someone waiting back at the cafe, that step two of his plan was leading her out here so they could abduct Sunset without her interfering. If there was someone, Pinkie had to beat them there.
She'd already failed her friend twice today.
She refused to do so again.