Thief
Chapter 11
A Well Structured Plan
The ringing in my ears continued to worsen my condition as I scanned my surroundings, my eyes half shut. The three Princesses watched me confused, and a bit concerned. Twilight walked up to me, and reached out a hoof. “John?-”
“D-Don’t touch me.” I stuttered, taking a stumbled step forward. So this is what being drunk and having a hangover at the same time feels like. “Just, do whatever..”
Twilight turned to Celestia, who nodded in response. Before they started walking forward, they also looked around, noticing there wasn’t a soul in sight besides them. “Where is everypony? Did the virus already get here?”
“I’m sure we would see more, panic if it was. The Royal Guard might have evacuated everypony.” Celestia thought, walking forward, close to her sister while Twilight stood semi-close to me.
“Then the Royal Guard should be here waiting for us, sister.” Luna replied.
I sighed, clearing my throat. “Okay, I’m good...Now, where are we going?”
Twilight pointed up to the large castle. “My brother should be in there-”
“Hey, you three! You have to leave, right now-” Suddenly, a white unicorn stallion with purple and gold plated armour, dark and light blue tail and mane with turquoise eyes ran up to us, then stopped when he realized who it was. “P-Princess!!”
“Shining Armour!” Twilight ran up to him, hugging him tightly. Probably expressing and describing everything that’s happened through physical contact.
Shining Armour quickly hugged back once he realized who it was, though the second he looked up at me, he pulled away from the hug and pushed Twilight behind him. “..You. You’re the monster that killed all my men..”
“Stand down Shining Armour, he’s our ally now.” Celestia stepped forward beside me. I couldn’t give any less of a shit at the moment, so I held an arm in front of Celestia and pulled my knife out of its sheathe. I glared back at Shining Armour with the same look he gave me.
“Maybe if you actually taught your men to fight, you wouldn’t have lost as many.”
Twilight growled at me, trying to push past Shining. “Don’t push it John!”
Shining kicked the ground. “Maybe if you weren’t such a soulless pony you wouldn’t kill for sport!”
I gripped my knife tightly, lifting up and throwing it at him fast. Enough with his attitude. I saw Twilight charge her horn, about to do something when the knife suddenly stopped just before hitting Shining Armour.
A light yellow glow coated the hovering knife, before it dropped to the ground, and Celestia turned to me angrily and stomped her hoof. “Enough!! I will not have you hurt any more innocent ponies!”
I hesitated for a moment, a bit taken back of how she spoke to me. I spoke the second I remembered why I do stuff like that. “Don’t expect anything of me. If you don’t want to me hurt anyone, then keep them away from me.” I took a step closer to her. “You, should know that.”
Shining Armour sighed to calm himself, or to stop himself from biting my head off. “Why, would you put any trust in, this…”
“Monster?” I suggested, I couldn’t tell, but I think Twilight might have frowned at that word. I didn’t care enough to ponder on it.
Shining furrowed his eyes on me. “Yeah, monster is a good word to describe you. But WHY, would you ally someone like him?!”
“Because he is the only one that knows about what’s going on. So he offered to help us stop this, thing.” Twilight replied, though I think we all know that the word “offer” doesn’t suit my decision.
Shining Armour’s face went blank, then his eyes went down. “Yeah. I don’t think anypony knows what’s going on, or how it happened. But a lot of ponies are dying, and a lot more are going to if we don’t do something about it.”
“First of all, what’s happening now is an apocalypse, a zombie apocalypse. And the infection that creates walkers is everywhere. It’s naturally transmitted through bites and scratches from the walkers, but it’s even airborne. Technically, we’re all infected. The infection just doesn’t have enough power to overtake us; yet."
Shining Armour finally took his mind off the arguing and about me being a mass murderer, and showed interest. “Is it possible to stop it?”
“The infection itself, no. Nobody has found a cure as far as I know, and it’s probably too late for that anyways. The only way to stop it, is to overrun the walkers, and the only way it’s possible is because we are much smarter than they are. And because the infection just started here, it might be probable to take out all the walkers before it spreads any more. But there’s only one problem..”
“Yes?” I noticed that all four of them seemed to be very intrigued, as they asked at the same exact time, craving an answer.
I exhaled. “It’s obvious that I’m not from around here, and the very first walker that showed up where we were, wasn’t either. It was a human walker. I don’t know how I showed up here, so I don’t know about that walker either. So no matter how many walkers we kill, we can never destroy the source. They’ll just keep co-”
I was cut off mid sentence when, shockingly, a green cloud formed right in front of us all, then exploded into dust. In the middle was a scroll wrapped with red ribbon and a gold medallion.
“That must be from Spike.” Twilight told to no one in particular, then levitated it, grabbing it before it hit the ground. She opened in, and within seconds her face was filled with terror.
“Twilight, is everything okay?” Celestia worried, and Twilight nearly dropped the scroll. She read aloud what must’ve been written on the paper. “Dear Twilight. Come back immediately, Pinkie Pie went missing.”
“One of them is missing already? We’ve barely been gone 10 minutes.” I sighed, but I don’t think Twilight was in the mood for my attitude.
“Oh, this isn’t good. We have to go back to find her!” Twilight panicked, and Shining Armour walked up to her and put a hoof on her shoulder.
“I’m sure she’s fine Twilight. She probably went for a walk to shake off everything that’s happening.”
Twilight quickly shook off his gesture mid sentence, shaking nervously. “We can’t just assume she’s alright. What if she got hurt? What if she got lost?! What if one of those things-”
“Twilight Sparkle, do not worry. We will gather up our guards then head back to Ponyville to search for Pinkie Pie.” Luna spoke reassuringly, and although it did seem to lighten Twilight’s mood a bit, she was still far from her normal self.
“Then we had better get moving. I have the WonderBolts searching the rest of the town for anypony else. After hearing about what happened, Cadence offered to take in as many ponies as possible into the Crystal Empire to help protect them. We suggest you do the same.” Shining offered, and although I haven’t seen this place it sounded like a good plan. I would rather stay at the farm.
“That sounds good. Me and Luna can come help you at the Crystal Empire. I’ll leave some guards for you Twilight to keep you and your friends safe. Until I return.” Celestia added, turning to Twilight.
“Of course.” Twilight nodded in response, trying to calm herself down.
“Good. I’ll round up some guards for you Twilight. They’ll have enough magic to help you teleport back to Ponyville, too.” Shining explained, and I shivered at the thought of teleporting again.
“Thanks Shining Armour.” Twilight barely smiled, walking up to him and hugging him, still fearful.
“Anything for my little sis.” He replied, pulling away. “Just wait here and I’ll send some guards over. And Princesses, if you’ll follow me I’ll get you back to the Crystal Empire.”
The Princesses nodded, and all three of them headed off, leaving just me and Twilight to wait.
I glanced over at Twilight, who was squirming slightly, moving her hooves and flicking her tail and mane to keep distracted. I felt a little bit bad, so I went to speak before I really thought it over.
“Twilight, stop worrying over this. She’ll be fine.”
All I earned was a grunt, making me realize that my words came out a little more harsh than I wanted them to be.
It was silent for a minute or two, until Twilight broke it easily with a quiet inhale. “What if, she doesn’t come back?”
I thought about my answer, but I didn’t really know what to say. It was in my nature to just tell her the truth that Pinkie was a goner, but I found myself turning to her. We caught each other's gaze, and I could see all the worry in her eyes, mainly showing through the small pool of tears that had formed in her eyes. I realized that she really cared for her friends that much. I thankfully caught myself before I got too destroyed over her emotions and turned away. She did also.
“She will. We’ll get back and she’ll probably show up a few minutes later.” Although it wasn’t the most reassuring sentiment, it seemed to be enough from me. Good, because that’s all she was going to get.
A distant gallop was heard in the distance, drawing closer as a platoon of guards came into sight, soon stopping in front of us. They quickly formed up, and bowed down to the Princess, and most of them glared at me.
“Rise.” Twilight stopped them from saying anything if they were going to. She was still in a hurry to get home. “We need to teleport back to Ponyville immediately.”
A mixture of “Yes your highness” and “Yes ma’am” filled the air for a brief second, before they all charged their horns, and I prepared for hell again.