If there was one thing I had learned about DJ Pon3 in the couple days I had known her, it was that the mare was beyond stubborn as hell. As I stared down the barrel of her shotgun I began to wonder if I had mistaken insanity for stubbornness.
“Buck you, Mossy Hooves. We’re coming with you whether you like it or not!”
I spat my axe onto the floor and shoved the barrel of the gun aside with my hoof.
“Buck you; you are not coming with us! Golden Prose and I are going into the Everfree, the place where all these damned things are coming from. We’ve… we’ve been there before. It’s too dangerous for anypony else to come with us.” At least I was pretty sure I had been there before. Where else would I have taken Bookmark during the time I had lost?
“Besides!” Golden Prose chimed in.” Didn’t you think it was a little suspicious that I was able to march right into a police station and raid the evidence locker for Mossy’s flare gun? Where do you think all the other deputies are?”
“Bronze Valor had the entire force out looking for us, didn’t he?” I turned my attention to Ironbars. “And where do you think that search culminated?”
Ironbars scrunched up his face and touched a hoof to the radio microphone on his shoulder, realizing that he hadn’t heard any chatter over the police frequency for a while now.
“Well if theyah in that damned faarest than ahm goin’ in after em!”
I face-hoofed. My plan was backfiring.
“You’re missing the buckin’ point here. You’re the only law in town right now. You and Vinyl Scratch need to stay here and keep watch in case any of those things wander into town.”
Vinyl Scratch wasn’t happy with that either. She took an exaggerated step away from the deputy as if not wanting to be associated with him.
“We can’t protect the entire town! We need to send out a warning to everypony so they can defend themselves! My radio station is the best place to do that, AND it’s halfway between the town and the Everfree.”
“We can take one’a the police chariots!” Ironbars perked up. “Theyah parked only a couple’a blocks away from’ere. If we get one I can fly us!”
“That settles it!” Vinyl Scratch stamped her hooves loudly on the tile floor, suddenly seeming fonder of the pegasus. “Deputy Ironbars and I are taking a chariot to the radio station and then on to the forest. If you want to come with us then so be it. Otherwise do whatever the buck you want.”
They had us over a barrel. Even an overcrowded chariot would still be safer than walking the entire way to the forest. Golden Prose and I would just have to find some way to leave them behind at the radio station, even if it meant locking them in a broom closet.
The street outside the Ponyville Police station was unnaturally dark. The air seemed to shimmer and wave with shadows like a heat mirage moving on every surface we could see. It was disorienting and I could tell that Vinyl and Ironbars were unsettled. I wanted to tell the DJ she would probably be less disoriented if she took off her broken sunglasses, but the way she continued to touch and adjust them made me wonder if they didn’t provide her some kind of psychological comfort .
The deputy and the DJ led the way slowly and quietly down the deserted street. Apparently the police station had been built while the town was still small, so other buildings had popped up around it rather quickly. When the town had approved the purchase of three flying chariots to assist in airborne operations the landing platform for them had to be built some distance away.
It was a minor issue for the town, but right now I personally felt like it was the biggest blunder in Ponyville history.
“All QUILLS… fifty percent… OFF!” The distorted, demonic voice ripped through the silence.
Scratch that. The biggest blunder in Equestrian history.
The shop front to our right exploded in shower of glass as the Taken earth pony lunged through it. His speech was miraculously unimpaired considering the large, curved blade of a paper slicer he gripped between his teeth.
Golden Prose and I spun around to bring our lights to bear, only to be driven to the ground by a swarm of writing quills. Each sheathed in a shroud of darkness the quills buzzed through the air like angry wasps. They dodged around the small beams of our flashlights and raked their angry, jagged tips across our skin.
Vinyl Scratch set her eyes on the Taken shopkeeper while Ironbars spun on his hooves and swung his spotlight in our direction. The quills couldn’t avoid the wide beam of this light and burst into ash as it washed across them. The DJ’s efforts didn’t go as well.
Showing no fear the DJ magically leveled her shotgun at the Taken pony’s head and fired. The muzzle flash blinded the creature for a moment but otherwise seemed to have no effect. It began to swing the paper slicer wildly, sending Vinyl Scratch scrambling to avoid being hit.
“The shadows! You have to burn off the shadows first!” I yelled as I rolled to my hooves and tried to focus the beam of my light on the Taken.
Vinyl deflected a close blow with the barrel of the gun, shouted an expletive, and then rolled toward the beam from my light. Golden Prose got to her hooves as well and together we caught the Taken between our three beams of light. The creature thrashed angrily as the shadows evaporated from it, revealing a darker version of the shopkeeper as he had once been. The DJ mercifully put him out of his misery with another round of buckshot to the head.
“I... I think that was Davenport from Quills and Sofas…” Vinyl Scratch panted as she looked at the ground where the Taken
had dissolved to ash. Ironbars nodded in agreement but couldn’t seem to find words. It occurred to me that being stationed in a small town like Ponyville he may have never seen anypony killed before. I wondered what had occurred in Vinyl’s life that had made it so easy for her to pull the trigger.
“Don’t get distracted.” Golden Prose urged, nudging the deputy with her nose. “There is nothing left of the ponies they were left inside those things. We need to keep moving.”
Ironbars shook his head and found his composure, and then we were off again.
Windows all up and down the street were closed despite the heat. The curtains were pulled and the dim lights behind them were barely visible through the shifting darkness. Why hadn’t anypony poked their head out to see what the commotion was?
As we trotted past a clothing shop I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. My instinct was to duck away from the window, fearing another ambush, but when no attack came I carefully stepped back up to the plate glass. I peered into the darkened shop and tried to catch another glimpse of whatever it was I had seen.
Inside the store there were mannequins placed amongst the racks of clothing. There was a stallion in a fine tuxedo, a mare in pink frilly dress, and a foal in a bright yellow rain slicker. Beyond them all was a figure taller than the rest. I dropped my axe and pressed my face against the glass to get a better look. It was a black mare, almost indistinguishable from the darkness if not for the blotch of purple on her flank. She was familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember from where. My mind felt… fuzzy.
I turned to call Golden Prose over, but before I could open my mouth something in the storefront moved again. When I looked back inside the figure was gone. I knew it hadn’t been my imagination, and it probably wasn’t a Taken. They seemed too mindless to be that sneaky. Scooping my axe back up I decided to move on before whatever it was came back.
We encountered two more Taken on the way to the chariot platform. Vinyl Scratch dispatched one with the same gusto as she did her first. The other fell victim to the panicked flailing of my axe. After being touched by the shadow tornado, being up close and personal with the Taken ponies didn’t cause the same headache-inducing sensation it had before. I prayed that it was just my confidence beating back the fear.
The platform wasn’t quite what I expected. It looked more like somepony’s failed attempt to build a back porch onto their house. The entire platform was made from rough hewn wooden timbers without a speck of concrete or steel to be seen. Apparently the entire budget had gone into the chariots themselves, not the infrastructure to house them.
A chain link fence topped with razor wire surrounded the entire structure. It seemed like overkill. I couldn’t imagine any pony in this town trying to go for a joyride in a police chariot.
We trotted around the perimeter of the fence towards the gate. At the head of the group Ironbars suddenly skidded to a stop, causing a pileup behind him. We pulled ourselves up from the dirt to see what had startled the deputy.
The gate shuddered and twitched in its frame, a dark energy pulsing through it like electricity. Ironbars shone his spotlight on the gate for several seconds to no apparent effect. Out of curiosity he reached out with a hoof and touched it. The pain must have been incredible because it knocked him to the ground immediately.
In retaliation the rest of us aimed our lights at the gate and waited, but the darkness never gave way.
“How come this one ain’t goin’ away?” Ironbars dropped his spotlight and began to brush dust from his uniform. “Is it too dark ova’ heyah?”
I hadn’t really noticed it before but the entire platform was in the shadow of the building next door, then the platform itself cast its own shadow on the gate. The gate seemed to be pulling in the darkness around it faster than we could burn it off with the lights we had.
“Well we can’t waste our batteries standing here all night. Vinyl Scratch, do you think you can help me levitate Mossy over the fence?” Golden Prose trotted away from the gate, stopping at a point in the fence where the razor wire was flattened down a bit lower. “They can fly the chariot out the street and pick us up.”
I had to hand it to the mare, it was a good idea. I guess thinking outside the box was a prerequisite for being a good author. Personally I would have probably tried building a fire that would undoubtedly have spread to the platform and burned the chariots to a crisp.
The two unicorns first combined their magical power to lift my saddlebags up and over the fence. Vinyl’s blue and Golden Prose’s golden auras combined to create a nauseating shade of green. I hoped that didn’t reflect the way my stomach would feel when it was my turn. Levitation magic had always disagreed with me.
As Ironbars flapped his wings and sailed over the fence, I trotted up for my turn. The unicorns wrapped me in a magical embrace and I felt my hooves leave the ground. Almost instantly I felt my stomach roll and a familiar awkward tingle shot through my groin as I tensed my muscles in an attempt to brace myself. The face I made must have been terrible because the mares laughed so hard I worried they might drop me.
The deputy and I galloped up the ramp and onto the platform as the mares crept back out to the street. Ironbars relinquished his spotlight to me and began to strap himself into the lead chariot in the formation. They weren’t the fancy gold trimmed models the royal guard used; instead these sported a drab green paint job with the PPD emblem on the side.
“Are you sure you can airborne with three ponies on this thing?” I asked the deputy as I wedged my axe into a looped strap inside the chariot that looked like it might have been meant to hold a flag. “It barely looks big enough to hold just the mares.”
Ironbars shot me a quick, determined look over his shoulder as he adjusted his straps,
“Oh boo hoo fa you, you gotta get cozy with some pretty mayahs.”
Once airborne we made several quick loops around the platform so that the pegasus could reacquaint himself with the sensation of pulling cargo. When he was comfortable with the weight behind him we soared up and out to the street where the mares would be waiting. Or at least where they were supposed to be waiting.
They weren’t there.
“Wheyeh the hell ah they?” Ironbars growled quietly, bringing the chariot in for a soft touchdown in the middle of the cobblestone street.
I gave him an exaggerated ‘I don’t know’ look and stepped off the back of the chariot. I wanted to call out for them but I knew that was probably a bad idea. Instinct told me they were hiding from something we just hadn’t managed to spot yet.
The sound of hooves scuffing on cement drifted out from a nearby alley and I whirled around to face it. Pressing themselves between a dumpster and the alley wall I spied Vinyl Scratch and Golden Prose. They were waving frantically trying to silently get my attention. When they realized I had seen them they began frantically pointing their hooves skyward.
I looked up and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Flying in a delta formation high above us were three Taken pegasi. Most likely part of the police force dispatched to hunt down Golden Prose and I. They didn’t seem to have noticed us yet but that probably wouldn’t last long. Wide-eyed I waved equally frantically for the mares to get on the chariot. If the chariot parked in the middle of the street hadn’t already given us away then them leaving the alley wasn’t going to be much worse.
Golden Prose flicked her flashlights off and the pair quickly scampered onto the street. The pegasi still didn’t seem to take notice as we all piled back onto the chariot. It was a snug fit and I was glad that none of us smelled particularly fresh if only for the fact that no one in particular had a right to complain.
Ironbars began to gallop down the street in the opposite direction of the pegasi, groaning as he flapped his wings and tried to get the chariot airborne. My fears were coming true; we were too heavy for the lone deputy to lift.
“Can’t you two use the levitation spell you used on me to make the chariot lighter?” I hissed, somehow worried that the pegasi might hear me even though Ironbars’ grunting and straining were much louder.
“You do know that means you’ll be the only one with a gun, right?” Golden Prose floated her revolver in front of my face and held it there. “I don’t know about Vinyl but I can’t focus on levitating the entire chariot and still use my magic to fire my weapon.”
Vinyl Scratch shook her head and clicked the safety on her shotgun, then stashed it on the floor of the chariot. Her horn began to glow and a magical aura surrounded the right wheel of the chariot. I quickly snatched up Golden Prose’s revolver, and she in turn wrapped the left wheel in magic.
Slowly but surely the chariot began to rise into the air, much to Ironbar’s delight.
There wasn’t much conversation during the flight out of town. I was the only one not focused on doing something to keep the chariot aloft. Instead I just fidgeted with the spotlight between my hooves and tried to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. We hadn’t seen any of the Taken deputies since we left town, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more on patrol.
Anxiously I tapped a hoof against the floor of the chariot, willing it to go faster.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
The floor of the chariot sounded back at me. I raised an eyebrow and tapped the floor again, this time in a familiar five beat pattern.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
The knocking sounded back at me again, ignoring my pattern. Maybe it was just a loose strap slapping against the bottom of the chariot.
Awkwardly squeezing around the mares I turned around and lay on my stomach, then peered over the edge of the back of the chariot. It wasn’t a strap.
Staring back at me from the underside of the chariot was the shadowy form of a pegasus deputy. He stood upside down with his hooves planted firmly on the bottom of the chariot just as calmly as if he were standing on the ground.
“Flight speed… VIOLATIONS… pull OVER THE CHARIOT!”
I scrambled back into my original spot in the chariot, nearly kicking both Golden Prose and Vinyl Scratch in the process. Their concentration broke for a moment and the chariot lurched violently in the air.
“What the hell is going on back there?” Golden Prose shouted above the sound of the roaring wind.
“We’ve got company!”
I grabbed the spotlight in my teeth and squirmed back around to dangle off the chariot once more. The wind threatened to rip the light out of my mouth along with a few teeth. My jaw ached as I swept the beam of illumination back around forth over the chariot’s undercarriage, only to find that the unwelcome passenger had already departed.
“Did anypony see where he went?” I yelled as I got back to my hooves, just in time to be knocked off them.
The Taken pegasus shot straight down from above and slammed into Ironbars. The chariot pitched into a nosedive as the deputy flailed in his harness, trying to dislodge the Taken that had wrapped his wings in a bear hug.
Visions of the previous night immediately flashed before my eyes. I wasn’t ready to endure another crash landing.