//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: Longshot // Story: The Royal Thief // by LTBroski //------------------------------// Chapter 7 – Longshot Az woke up the next morning to somepony knocking on his door. At least it’s only one this time. Yesterday’s wake-up party would have been akin to Tartarus after all that booze… He thought back over the previous night, as it had ended with a drinking contest between him and Hammer. The contest ended when Hammer drank Az under the table with fifteen shots of high-proof whiskey. There was now a small mouse with a hammer going to town on the inside of his skull directly between his eyes. Az rolled out of bed, noting that sunlight was streaming into his room through a crack in the curtains. They let me sleep in. How nice. He chuckled at his own sarcasm only to cringe as it caused a twinge of pain from his hangover. He made his way over to the door and opened it to find Flow waiting for him. “Damn, kid, you look awful.” Flow began chuckling at seeing Az’s ruffled mane and bloodshot eyes. “Shaddup.” Az walked back into his room and began rooting through his saddlebags. He retrieved a small phial containing a white liquid, opened it, and measured a small amount into the cap. Bottoms up. He swigged the liquid down and grimaced as the taste finally hit him. “What you got there?” Flow had walked up beside him and watched as Az drank the liquid down. Az capped the phial and put it back in his saddlebags. “Hangover cure created by one of the Zebra tribes out on the Plains. If you’ve ever drank with camels or elephants, you have this. They can hold their liquor better than anypony I’ve ever met. Must be because they’re so big, I dunno.” “So you’ve been drinking out on the Plains?” “Yeah. I don’t remember much of what happened afterwards though. Like I said, elephants can hold their liquor. Ponies, not so much.” He was already beginning to feel better, and the mouse had finally received a cease and desist notice. “Well in any case, the Captain wants to see you in his office. Best clean yourself up.” Flow left the room, and Az went about eliminating his bed-mane. Once he ensured that he looked presentable via the mirror in his bathroom, he left his room and made his way down to the main hall. He took a right upon entering the room and made for the back corner, where Captain Shade’s office door resided. He knocked, and upon hearing the Captain respond, entered the room. Captain Shade’s office was Spartan in appearance as he maintained only a desk and a bookshelf in the room. On the bookshelf rested several large volumes detailing the records of members of the Guard over the years. On the top shelf lay what Az presumed were trophies from various missions. Captain Shade sat behind his desk looking over a document and glanced up once Az entered the room. “Private Wind, thank you for coming. Please have a seat.” Captain Shade placed the document back on his desk, which was bare other than the presence of a few quills, an inkpot, and a gas lamp. Az sat on the seat directly across from the Captain’s desk. “Good to see you’ve recovered from last night. But down to business. The reason I asked you to be here is to determine how far along in the course curriculum you actually are, since you had a professional career before joining us. The best way I can do this is to understand your best and worst moments, so give a rundown of you best heist, your most complex heist, and your most recent botched job.” Az thought a moment before responding. “My best heist was probably this one job I took in Draconia. The client hired me to steal the crown jewels from the then-present dragon king. I’m guessing he wanted them so he could seize power for himself. In any case, I snuck into the king’s chambers, found the crown and returned it to the client. The hitch in this job was that the crown was bigger than me, and weighed easily four times as much. I had to drag it past his guards since I couldn’t carry it out the window with me. Definitely made things interesting. Pay was worth it too. What made it the best though was that while I was grabbing the crown I happened upon some books that had to be centuries old, so I nabbed them as well. They turned out to be the books on runes that allowed non-unicorns to use magic. “As for most complex, I was hired to steal a few family heirlooms from a business owner in the Tigran Empire. The business owner, to my knowledge, was a ruthless bastard who had a habit of doing a bit of thieving himself, and he apparently stole from the wrong family of tigers. I was offered knowledge, more books, in payment for my services, so I readily accepted the job. Getting onto the business owner’s property wasn’t difficult as he left the external walls unguarded, but inside the security was tighter than a needle’s eye. Guards everywhere. Plus they were all manner of big cats, so their hearing was better than anything I’d encountered up until that point. This was the last mission before I bought those enchanted horseshoes, but I really wished I had them. It took me a solid half hour of sneaking around and winging from cover to cover to get into the house, and from there I needed to make my way around a decent amount of security systems. My favorite was a hallway with a pressure sensitive floor and tripwires strung up at flying height that triggered arrow traps. Luckily, I’ve learned how to fly at a pretty low altitude, so I just needed to be careful my mane didn’t clip the wires. I found the valuables right at dinnertime, so the guards cleared out and I made a hasty retreat. “Most recent botched job goes to the one that brought me here. I picked a mark to make a little extra coin between jobs, snuck onto castle grounds, found an expensive looking necklace and beat hooves back to my apartment. Little did I know that I had stolen an Element of Harmony of all things, and Princess Twilight tracked down my place using some kind of crazy magic. Her and her friends cornered me, and they let me go on the condition that I use my talents to benefit Equestria.” Captain Shade nodded. “So you’re an expert infiltrator and have mastery of stealth that likely rivals our most experienced members. I also gather that your agility and flying abilities could have landed you on the Wonderbolts if you had put your mind to it. I didn’t hear anything about your skill at sabotage or your combative skills. Granted, you defeating Proxis was pretty good, but it was over far too fast to get any good read on how skilled you are. Got any stories for me about that kind of thing?” “As for sabotage, my experience is limited to cutting gas lines, destroying alarm systems, that kind of thing” Az replied. “But I do have a good story about some decent hoof-to-hoof combat. I took on a pride of lions out on the Plains once. They jumped me on the road and attempted to “relieve” me of my possessions. It was hairy, but I managed to fend them off long enough using smoke and flash pellets to take them out one by one. No fatalities, but there were several broken bones and a couple concussions. I came out of it with a couple bad gashes, lions really like to lead with their claws, but outside of that, no permanent damage. That was the hardest bit of combat I’ve been exposed to, but as far as taking on multiple enemies at the same time, the Palace Guard has a couples stories about me I think. Their hoof-to-hoof skills are pretty appalling, even when they outnumber you fifteen to one. First thing I did was begin lopping off spearheads, which made for a bit of fun. I didn’t even need the pellets, just good old flak-whooping. That pretty much what you were after Captain?” “More or less. We can advance you out of combatives now though, since you’re obviously able to handle yourself when alone. Things will probably turn worse for the enemy when we put you in a squad too. Sounds like you’re also able to take care of simple sabotage. You won’t see anything more advanced than what you’ve already done unless we somehow find ourselves at war, so you’re good there too.” He looked back down at the document in front of him. “That leaves assassination methods and you’ll have graduated out of the recruit phase. From there, you can work on team tactics with some of our other new members.” He looked back up “of course by new I mean having been with us less than five years. We’ll get you set up with Longshot for assassination. She’s the best markspony we have in the Guard. Plus, the number of ways she knows how to kill is pretty frightening, since she worked as an assassin before joining us. Go grab some food and we’ll have you working with her in an hour or so. Any questions for me?” “Since I’m not going to need infiltration training, can I have my horseshoes back?” “Not until you’ve passed the assassination course. There is sneaking involved in that, and we have to sure you can do it without any artificial aid. Anything else?” Az shook his head. “Alright. Go grab some food and I’ll get Longshot spun up on the details about you.” Az got up and left the room, entering the main hall to find it half full of Guard members getting in a late breakfast. As opposed to the previous night, none of them were wearing their armor, and looked to be feeling the effects of their inebriated revelry. Az walked up to the counter to find Hammer giving a red unicorn, Morning Breeze, if Az remembered correctly, his tray of food. Hammer seemed to not be feeling any of the effects of the previous night’s festivities. As Morning Breeze walked away, Az walked up to the counter. “You look better than I thought you would, kid” Hammer laughed. “Not many can go shot for shot with me, but you put up a good fight didn’t ya?” “Good morning to you too. I just have a Zebra hangover cure tucked away in my room. Speaking of which, think you might be interested in the recipe for it? The damn stuff tastes atrocious, but it’ll fix you up within a few minutes.” “That’d be much appreciated. Given the amount of drinking we do around here, it’ll probably be worth its weight in gold. In any case, can I get ya some breakfast?” “Toast and fruit, thanks. I’ll run the recipe to you later. Just make sure you have a chemistry kit, otherwise the stuff can turn out to be a little poisonous. Making it’s more chemistry than cooking I guess.” Hammer returned with Az’s breakfast. “Thanks for the head’s up, kid. Here’s your food, enjoy.” Az took the tray and made his way to a bench along the middle table. No sooner had he sat down than there was a puff of green flame, once again ruining his breakfast, and a rolled up scroll plopped onto his tray. “Bucking again?!” He could hear laughter sounding around him as the others in the room noticed what had happened. This mare doesn’t want me to eat toast or fruit apparently. Let’s see what she wants this time. He pushed his now ruined food to the side and slipped the red ribbon off the scroll before unrolling it. Az, I had those scrolls translated by a friend in Ponyville. Who would have thought she knew ancient Zebraic? In any case, the first scroll is a list of ingredients needed for a potion that has remarkable healing capabilities, the second details the methods needed to create said potion, and the third seemed to be instructions on storage. It’s a remarkable find, and with your permission I’d like to send the research to Canterlot General since it could be used to help heal many sick ponies. Other than that, I hope your training is going well, the girls are still skeptical that you’ll follow through on your word, but I have faith that you won’t disappoint anypony. In the meantime, I’m going to keep going through your library, there’s so much to learn in here! One of these days you’re going to fill me in on how you got some of this stuff. Regards, Twilight Sparkle. Az sighed, flipped the note over, and began writing his response with a quill that was sitting close by on the table. Princess Twilight, go ahead and use the research as you see fit, but please leave the original scrolls in with my collection. Thank you for the well wishes, and I hope to not cause you too much grief due to your friends. I’d like to reiterate my wish that you remain careful with the older texts in my collection, and as to your last sentiment, maybe once I’m done with training we’ll be able to have story time. Sincerely, Az. He rolled the scroll back up, replaced the red ribbon and said “send.” The scroll disappeared in a puff of green flame. “Writing your marefriend again?” Flow had sidled up next to Az while he was writing and shot a look over his work before it got sent off. He then noticed the ruined food “she really doesn’t want you eating breakfast, huh?” “First of all, she’s not my marefriend. I am simply repaying a debt to…” he lost the word describing Twilight. “To a friend.” Might as well call her that. I’m losing my touch, letting ponies get close to me. “Uh huh.” “We’re not romantically interested in each other.” “Uh huh.” “Shaddup.” Flow was about to make another snide remark when he noticed a unicorn mare with a black coat and midnight blue tail and mane walk into the room through the front doors. Az noticed her as well, since her presence in the room caused everypony else to become quiet and look intently at their food. “No shit.” Flow gave him an odd look. “When the Captain said Longshot, I didn’t think he meant the Longshot. I’ve worked with her a few times on jobs. I always just had her pegged as a thief though, not an assassin.” He got up from his spot on the bench and approached Longshot, who was still standing in front of the main doors. Once she caught sight of Az, she let out a small laugh. “Well, well. Never thought I’d see you here. Get pinched did you?” “In a manner of speaking. How’ve you been, Longshot? It’s been a while.” “Yeah, since that job in Draconia, right? You made me use sleep darts instead of crossbow bolts if I remember. Things have been going well, I got recruited by Princess Celestia herself. The Guard here had set up a sting to catch me and then she showed up and offered me a job. I’m assuming you had a similar situation?” Az nodded “yeah, I accidentally stole one of the Elements of Harmony.” She gave him a surprised look. “I know, I know, but in my defense I had no idea what they looked like. So as I hear it you’re going to give me the rundown on assassination?” She gave him a small smile. “Pretty much. Time for me to take you out of that comfort zone. Luckily for you, I have a bunch of ponnequins set up with fake blood outside for you. Should be nice and messy. Outside of that, you know more poisons than I ever will, with that damn encyclopedia you have sitting in your skull. So I can skip over that, I just need to put everything away. Give me a few minutes to take care of it and then meet me outside and we can get down to massacring cloth dolls.” She left the building leaving Az shaking his head with a grin on his face. Flow walked up next to him. “You know, none of us have ever seen her smile before.” Az gave him a surprised look. “Seriously, freaking queen of the ice cap that one. Half of us were afraid she’d kill us in our sleep. What was that she said about poison though? Pretty much everypony I know struggled with that for, Tartarus, weeks at least.” “With the amount of traveling I’ve done, I’ve been exposed to countless toxins. That also goes without saying that I know all the antidotes too. Paralytics and sleep poisons are my specialty, but I’m capable of cooking up most of the known deadly poisons too.” “I’m definitely calling shenanigans on that. No way somepony your age could know that kind of stuff.” “I have pre-Discord runes stitched into my armor.” “Fair enough. You’d better get going then, don’t want to leave your buddy the ruthless assassin waiting.” Shaking his head, Flow walked away. Az took his advice and walked out of the building and began looking around for Longshot and her set of messy practice dummies. As the door closed behind him, Az noticed that nopony was out on the training grounds. I have a bad feeling about this. He could feel the hair at the base of his skull start to stand on its ends. He rolled to his left just as Longshot landed where he had been standing. “Good to see you too.” He stood up out of a defensive stance and flashed Longshot his most winning smile. She fixed him with a scowl and proceeded dusted herself off. “Dammit, almost had you that time too. You’ve always been too paranoid for your own good. In any case, that was lesson one. Use your environment to eliminate your target. You’ll likely lead with your dagger on that one, and be able to get out of the area before anypony recovers from shock.” “Got it. Pretty sure I’ve done that drop move on a couple guards. Only knocked them out though. This whole killing thing is going to take some getting used to. So what’s lesson two?” “Follow me.” She began to walk towards the obstacle course. “Lesson two is the locations of vital centers. A clean, quick kill is always preferable to causing undue suffering. Plus, that whole no unnecessary suffering thing that we have going around here adds to it. I have a couple practice dummies set up in the obstacle course so you can get a feel for where you need to hit for an assassination, or for any sort of armed conflict for that matter.” They passed by the initial stage of the obstacle course, which displayed a number of easily navigable obstacles such as low walls to jump over, sets of wire Az supposed he would need to crawl under, and a few weaving poles. As they approached the second section of the obstacle course, there were plenty of open areas interspersed with sections behind which one could conceal themselves before advancing. At the very back of the second area was a large opening, where four practice ponnequins were set up in varying configurations. The one on the far left was standing, followed by one sitting, next was a ponnequin laying down, and finally one where the avatar was arranged as curled up in a ball. Longshot approached the standing ponnequin, which Az noted had circles drawn on it in various locations. “This is the dummy we use to teach new recruits vital striking, piercing, and slashing points on pony anatomy. Granted the Guard has not performed an assassination on an Equestrian citizen since the War of the Sun and Moon, but we still need to know. Foreign combatants include griffons, dragons, members of the Plains nations, and members of the Tirgran Empire. With the exception of dragons and elephants, the vital points remain constant for the remainder of any enemies we could face. “The first point anypony thinks of hitting in an assassination is the throat. Quick bleed-out, and it prevents the target from calling for help.” She showed the line underneath the ponnequin’s chin. “This is messy though, and is hard to conceal if we need to continue along a mission. My preferred point of contact is the base of the skull.” She showed a stabbing point between the ponnequin’s ears and back a few inches. “This produces instantaneous incapacitation with little clean-up. The only other point for an instantaneous kill is the heart. This typically proves difficult for you pegasus types though, as your knives aren’t always long enough to get to where you need to put it. This method is also very messy, and is generally not recommended.” The instruction on the best methods of assassination continued for several hours before Longshot called it a day and walked back to the main hall with Az. As they walked into the room, it once again quieted quickly, as ponies were suddenly very interested in their meals. Longshot sighed and Az caught a flicker of sadness pass over her face. She began walking towards the meal counter where Hammer quickly took her order then disappeared behind the kitchen doors. “What’d you do to them?” Az had caught up with her at the counter and continued looking around the room at the now whispering ponies. Scowling, he returned his attention back to Longshot. “That’s the thing, I don’t know,” she replied. “It wasn’t like this when I first got here last year. But then during the Changeling invasion, I single-hoofedly took out probably close to a hundred. Everypony’s been quiet around me since.” Hammer returned with her food and nervously gave it to her. Longshot walked off to an abandoned corner of one of the tables and sat down. “What’ll you have kid?” Hammer asked. “First, a reason why everypony treats Longshot like an outcast.” “Wha- oh, well... Honestly kid, she scares most of us. We’re all trained the same and all, but her ability to kill somepony else is frightening.” “Well she’s a good friend and I can vouch for her. Now then, can I have a couple potato patties and a side salad?” “Coming right up, kid.” Hammer walked back into the kitchen, looking slightly cowed at Az’s sudden question and response to his answer. Once Hammer returned with his food, Az took the tray and joined Longshot at her corner of the table. They ate in silence for a time before Flow walked up to them and sat down next to Az. “So, uh, you two know each other, huh?” Az gave him a once-over. Definitely nervous, his body language displays that much. But at least he’s making an attempt. “Yeah,” Az replied, “we’ve done a couple jobs together. Saved my sorry flank more than a few times too.” Flow relaxed a bit. “Sounds like a story to me.” He put his elbows on the table in front of him and looked intently between Az and Longshot, mischief apparent behind his eyes. “Shall I, or do you want to tell him about that time in Tigran when we had that heist that went bad in their capitol building?” Az looked at Longshot with a grin. She looked a bit stunned at actually being addressed by somepony in the main hall. “I think you got this one” she replied. Flow shifted his position to look at Az better. Az shrugged. “Well this one time Longshot and I were contracted to recover some artifact from the Tigran prince…” -------- Several hours later, a group of at least a dozen members of the Guard were gathered around Az and Longshot as they were acting out how Az had saved Longshot from a floor trap in a Draconian ruin, after they had finished taking out three guards posted at the entrance to the decrepit building. “So he sweeps in, catches me a couple hoof-lengths from the spiked bottom, and says “you’ve gained weight.”” There was an “oooh” from the crowd directed at Az, who had begun to wear a sheepish grin on his face. “And if I hadn’t thought he would have dropped me, he would have come back from that trip with a black eye and fewer teeth.” The crowd had a good laugh as Longshot finished. Az looked at the clock that hung above the food counter and was surprised to see that it read two in the morning. “Well folks, I’m about to pass out on my hooves here. If you remember last night at all, you know none of us got much sleep.” There was some laughter from the crowd. “So I’m going to call it quits for now, Longshot, I dunno if you want to keep telling them stories, but I’m bushed.” “Sounds about right, sorry folks, story time’s over for tonight.” She and Az jumped down off the table and began to walk towards the door leading to the hall where their rooms were located. As they walked through the door and up the stairs, Longshot turned to Az with a huge grin spread across her face. “Az, I just wanted to thank you for that. Well, you and the LT. You guys seem to have put the stigma about me to rest, and I just wanted to say thanks.” “It was no problem, L. What are friends for, right?” They had reached Longshot’s room, and she walked in. “See you tomorrow, bud. Keep that knife sharp, you’ll be using it.” Az continued down the hall, laughing to himself, but soon finding his mirth replaced with a sense of dread. Sure, they’re dummies, but what have I gotten myself into? Killing isn’t my style, there’s always a better way about it. He let out a snort. But if I don’t finish my training, she just might kill me instead. He continued on to his room to catch some sleep before the next day’s training.