The Incredible Happening of Golden Gates

by totallynotabrony

Chapter Five- "Small bits of crispy cookie and slips of paper"

The elevator stopped at the ground floor. The doors opened on a wasteland of a convention center, looking worse now that the staff were up close and personal with it.

Everyone was now committed to restoring order. The hurried, impromptu planning on the elevator ride had resulted with little in the way of tactics, but plenty in the motivation department.

The changelings had to be stopped. The staff might be the only ones who could do it. Besides, bronies didn’t take crap off anyone, especially not changelings.

Golden trailed slightly behind the group. This wasn’t her convention, regardless of how invested she was in it, or how much of a literal mascot she was. She did wear a staff badge, however, a spare given to her by Sonya. After all, Golden was nothing if not an honorary guest.

As the group moved forward, Sonya led the charge. While her motivational speech had been improvised on the spot, even she was surprised at how awesome it sounded. Everyone was pumped, and ready to take the fight to those who dared wreck their convention.

The staff fanned out in maneuver groups of twos or threes and bore down any targets they could immediately recognise as changelings. It was honestly very easy to recognize them. The false staff had foolishly forgotten their badges.

A few of the real staff members had picked up what remained of metal poles and improvised shields and used them to their advantage, or rather, ‘for their enjoyment’. The shrieks of broken changelings soon followed.

Some others in the group had resorted to the primal instincts of a defensive lineman, tracking down and brutally tackling the shape-shifters back to size. Sonya was among them, unfortunately unable to utilize Hadouken, but making use of a variety of other skills picked up from Street Fighter as she did back in the collective dream. A lot of knock-outs were scored, the exoskeletons of their foes performing poorly in the impact department.

Golden was amazed at how well the real staff handled the real-life changelings. If Equestria had the shield-bashing brutes that Sonya had right now, Canterlot would’ve never been invaded. She had to give people credit. They were as ferocious as they came.

“You!” Ghreshlomatrique called out from behind Golden. “Once I get my hands on you, you’re through!”

“Play ball!” one of the staffers yelled out as they gracefully jumped through the air and smacked the changeling across the head with a wooden bat branded with the name ‘Sandman’, soon running off with a victory laugh.

Golden took her gifted moment and scattered from the scene. Ghreshlomatrique rubbed his head angrily, wincing as his hand made contact with the large bruise left from the blunt weapon. “Damn her!”

As she vamoosed, Golden spotted a group of changelings trying to corral Nicole Oliver. The VIP was in the process being kidnapped, and hauled from the convention center by her captors.

Chrysalis looked around, not spotting anyone close by to help. She charged forward.

The changelings pulled Nicole out the door, heading for the parking garage, the four-story structure the hotel had used for guest vehicles. Sprinting after them, bobbing and weaving around pillars and sedans to keep her profile hidden, Golden kept up the pursuit.

They had made it to the second level when she struck. Bowling over the changelings assaulting Nicole, Chrysalis managed to get her away from the kidnappers.

“Sorry, I can explain.” Chrysalis held up her badge. Behind Nicole, the changelings began to stir.

“But I’m afraid that I don’t have time right now. Come on, we have to get out of here.” Turning, and making sure Nicole was following, Chrysalis galloped away, looking for a way out. And then she saw it.

Golden came to a skidding halt on the driver’s side of an orange muscle car with Michigan license plates. The window was down two inches.

She swept a wing through the gap in the window and unlocked the door. Inside, she pulled a mess of wires down from under the dashboard. Working with her hooves, wings, and teeth, she managed to get the ignition hot wired in seconds.

The engine came to life with a rumble. Golden got into the driver’s seat and unlocked the doors, allowing Nicole to step in on the other side.

“So, mind telling me what’s going on here?” Nicole turned to Golden, strapping on her seatbelt.

“What’s there to tell?” she quipped in return, putting on her own seatbelt before putting her hoof over the shifter.

“Well, I’m in a stolen vehicle with a fictional cartoon character and last I saw, I was about to be kidnapped by-”

“I’ll explain in a minute! Right now, we need to right now vacate these premises right now!” Golden grabbed the shifter and put the car into gear. They shot out of the parking space with a screech of tires and zoomed down the ramp, hooking a hard right towards freedom.

Surprised changelings met the car head on, and some of them didn’t get out of the way in time, leaving green splats on the windshield. Golden turned on the wipers.

They roared out of the parking garage and into the noon sunlight. Golden made it across the parking lot and swung the wheel to the right, turning onto the northbound US 101.

“So tell me what’s going on,” said Nicole.

Golden glanced at her. “What makes you think anything’s going on?”

“Well, a real live pony shows up to a brony convention and so do a crowd of changelings. Something out of the ordinary is happening.”

“It’s complicated, okay?” said Golden. She ignored another motorist on the highway who did a double take at seeing a pegasus driving a bright orange car.

“Looks like someone’s trying to bring the party to us,” Nicole alerted Golden. She looked into the rear-view mirror, catching a view of an SUV and a sedan peeling out of the on-ramp before disappearing behind a big-rig. The car ramped up its RPMs as the pegasus hit the gas. Down the highway they went, the two vehicles in hot pursuit.

In the passenger seat of one of the pursuing cars, Ghreshlomatrique growled under his breath. “She’s running.”

“What do we do, boss?” asked the changeling who was driving.

“Let me make a call.” Ghreshlomatrique pulled out the cell phone he had bought and dialed for the changelings who were still out in the Castro District.

A scratchy voice answered. “Yeah?”

“Stop whatever or whoever you’re doing and meet up with us,” Ghreshlomatrique ordered. “We’ve got a situation.”

“Aw, really? Do we have to?”

“Just get moving!”

Back in the parking garage, some of the staff members had clambered into a large pickup truck, bringing along with them boxes of pony plushies to use as weapons against the aggressors.

“Hurry up!” Sonya yelled at Dusty from the passenger seat as his shaky hands attempted to turn the ignition.

“We’re busting our chops as fast as we can,” he retorted in spirit of the Rainbow Dash figurine on the dashboard. The engine roared to life as two more members of the staff, Welch and Leon, piled in with more boxes of plushies to as projectile weapons. Once secured, they drove out of the parking garage and in the direction that Chrysalis and her pursuers had gone, using the fresh tire marks as their guide.

Meanwhile, Golden was doing all she could to make the situation worse (for her pursuers). She wove in and out of traffic, trying to lose her pursuers.

“Where did you learn to drive?” Nicole asked, bracing herself as the car swerved.

“You’re lucky I can drive at all with hooves!” Golden shot back.

Nicole gripped the door as Golden swerved around an 18-wheeler, squeezing in front of one of San Francisco’s iconic battery-powered cars. Still quite a ways back but still in the fight, the changelings revved their engines and forced their way through the traffic, rendering drivers helpless as they pushed them aside with their front bumpers.

The 101 headed north into other neighborhoods. Passing residential streets and crossing under I-280, Golden tried to figure out where she was going. Unfortunately, the twisting streets of San Francisco were hard enough to navigate even if you weren’t a pony visiting for the first time.

So, she accidentally ended up in the Castro District. Golden and Nicole looked right and left as they drove through. Castro wasn’t the bad part of town, far from it. In fact, it was perhaps the most flamboyant part.

However, there were a lot of changelings there. Nicole locked the doors. Golden gave the car some more gas and they left the neighborhood as fast as possible.

Like any stylistic car chase set in San Francisco, the hills were bound to be a factor. The extra speed the car carried coming out of Castro set it up for a long roller coaster ride through the city.

101 soon turned into a fusilade of residential streets and avenues, which would prove to make Golden’s great escape further out of grasp. There was only one way to get out of this, and it had to be done.

Dodging a mini-bus, she swerved into oncoming traffic in the southbound lane. Horns beeped and honked as she turned back and forth between both lanes, avoiding vehicles by a mane strand. Nicole looked behind them and found three more vehicles doing the same.

Golden kept her hoof pinned to the floorboard as the car soared over the crest of a hill, putting daylight under all four tires before smacking the pavement on the downslope with a shower of sparks and speeding for the next intersection.

It was something of a miracle that traffic was light enough to swerve out of their way, horns blaring at the miscreants treating the streets like a cross between a playground and a war zone.

Back in the truck, Sonya pointed ahead towards a bright orange vehicle making decent progress in lieu of the traffic conditions. “That’s gotta be her.” Her driver nodded and stepped on the pedal, the truck lurching back as it gathered speed among the swerves. She could also see the changeling’s vehicles working their way between the many drivers, and she bit her lip.

Sonya rubbed her head in anger, the Rainbow Dash figurine having hit her in the head mid-swerve before finding its new home between her feet.

“Sorry,” Dusty muttered as swerved to avoid a tanker coming into the city, doing his best to keep the behemoth from miller-rolling onto its side. They were getting close enough to initiate their first plan of attack.

The two changeling cars in front of them had no idea what they were about to experience, if you count having plushies angrily thrown into your window as such. Welch tapped Dusty’s shoulder, and he promptly rolled the back window down for him to crawl into the bed of the truck. More angles of fire would prove to be the best tactic in this type of warzone, and with their ammunition ranging into the hundreds, they’d hopefully get relief for Chrysalis to get away from these fools.

Golden hung a left and headed due north, charging through the gates of Chinatown. The roaring exhaust rattled off the tightly packed buildings and an unfortunately placed cardboard box of fortune cookies was run down by the speeding car. Small bits of crispy cookie and slips of paper flew everywhere.

The chase continued, racing through the narrow streets and dodging in close proximity to the sides of buildings. No way in heck was a side-by-side battle going to ensue.

Golden checked the rear-view again, her ears filled with sound of the roaring exhaust. The three vehicles were still uptight and keeping a mere car-length or two behind her.

Sonya kept her hand on the dashboard and peeked her head out the window, only to pull it back to avoid a lantern hanging down from one of the storefronts. Welch was lucky to have landed in the bed of the truck after nearly being flung away on the turn into Chinatown. Leon passed back a box of plushies for him to use, and he couldn’t be happier about it. Changeling-involved car chases were a once in a lifetime event.

Returning memorabilia to the manufacturer was also somewhat of a once in a lifetime event. No brony would ever willingly throw away their collectables, but as the staff members hurled plushies, some of them invariably ended up on the streets of Chinatown.

North of Chinatown, Coit Tower stood at the top of Telegraph Hill overlooking the city. Golden skirted it, not wanting to run into a dead end, but still managed to get a good view of San Francisco. Alcatraz Island was across the water to the north. To the south was the attractive downtown skyline. And to the northwest was her namesake, the Golden Gate Bridge.

One of the paper fortune cookie slips from earlier made it through the ventilation system and fluttered out inside the car. Nicole snatched it. Her brow furrowed as she read it. “You will soon go on a trip.”

Attention already distracted by the scenery, Golden turned her head to ask, “What’s that mean?” but suddenly they were on Lombard Street, known for its twenty-seven percent grade and eight switchback turns within the length of one city block.

That was a terrible place to be distracted.

The car was punted from the rear by one of the onrushing changeling vehicles and Golden’s frantic hooves on the wheel weren’t enough to keep it straight. They spun off the street and plowed into a house.

Groaning at the pain the seatbelts had inflicted but thankful the old car didn’t have an airbag to pummel her face, Golden sat back in the seat. She blinked and took stock. Oh, right. They wanted her dead.

The door was yanked open and Ghreshlomatrique appeared, pointing a gun straight at Golden’s head. She recoiled as far as the seatbelts would let her.

He hissed at her maliciously. “Going somewhere, Chrissy?”

Comments

[AppleTank]

The reveal was a bit obvious. You kept switching between Chryssi and Golden