Flim and Flam Save an Orphanage

by KFDirector

Flim, Flam, Trixie, a New-Found Passion, Iron Will, Lyra, Bon-Bon, Octavia, Vinyl Scratch's Sound System, Some OC Attorney, and Fancypants' Money...

“Come on, come on…!” Flam desperately muttered as the wheels of the carriage spun on the slick lake shore gravel.

“There they are!” an airborne Night Guard shouted, and, barely looking at where he was pointing, dozens of pegasus ponies hurled their projectiles.

“Gah!” Flim eruditely shouted as he ducked his head to dodge the storm of spears.

“Yes!” Flam offered as counterpoint, as a back wheel of the carriage finally found traction, in the form of a spear tip freshly lodged into the earth, and jerked the vehicle forward. The carriage lumbered up from the shore onto the road, and the unicorn spun the wheel hard to get it pointed the right way.

“Begin pursuit!” a pegasus pony sergeant shouted, and his nearby subordinates shouted a battle cry as they flew in an arc towards the carriage.

“Need a little more juice, brother…” Flam said warily, looking into his mirror at the pursuers, who were now in V-formation, grinning savagely. Flim nodded, blasting a fresh round of unicorn magic into the turbines, pulling every extra joule possible out of the burning biomass.

“It’s working!” Flim cried, seeing the carriage pull forward from the pursuing Night Guard. “It’s working! It’s – oh no.” A blue pegasus pony with a prismatic mane was now growing closer. “She’s already on us!”

Flam nodded, and spun the wheel hard left.

“Whoa!” Rainbow Dash cried, as she nearly slammed into the side of a mountain, deflecting her collision with her hooves and correcting her course back into a pursuit of the brothers.

Just behind her, a formation of Night Guards was less adroit.

“Landslide didn’t get her, brother,” Flim said, and Flam nodded again, spinning the wheel hard right.

“Not this time, chumps!” she shouted, making the correction much faster this time. Her wings flapped hard and fast, and she was getting a lot closer.

“Seem those insurance policies are out of date,” Flim said, as the carriage’s turbines screamed.

“Keep trying, brother!”

Both forelegs extended forward, the pegasus pony was completely prepared to move into a sonic rainboom, when – something flew straight past her head. Then another thing.

“Oh I know you didn’t just – ”

She dodged upwards to avoid a third flung projectile, and made one of herself, instead – into the keystone of a tunnel entrance.

“Whoa!” she shouted again, tumbling off the ground and darting forward to avoid falling rock and masonry. “Not this time, not this time – ” she thought, keeping her wings tightly clasped against her body.

Success! The entrance to the tunnel had finished caving in, and her wings were unmolested! She took a triumphant canter forward, only to feel a tugging at her backside. Rainbow Dash looked over her shoulder, and sighed – half her tail was pinned under the rocks.

She could cut it, but that would be aerodynamically unsound and could throw off her game for weeks while it regrew. She lied down and waited for help to arrive.

---

“Were you just throwing empty bottles of cider at Rainbow Dash?” Flam asked, as he turned on the headlamps to illuminate the long mountain tunnel.

“You want I should’ve thrown full ones?”

---

Hearing a deep rumbling, Rainbow Dash looked up.

“No – no no no no no…” she moaned, tugging desperately now at her tail.

---

“Ma’am – the tunnel entrance – ”

“Full power! We’ll push right on through!”

---

“Stop!” the pegasus pony pleaded, shouting into the night at the approaching iron monstrosity. “I – I don’t want to die….”

A flash of orange came into her peripheral vision, and she was forcibly tumbled to the right.

“AJ?” she had just a moment to ask, as the two ponies tumbled over a pile of rubble, and then a pile of rubble, shoved aside by a giant iron cow-catcher, tumbled over them.

When the chaos of tossed earth concluded, the two ponies found themselves pinned, snout to snout, staring through a chance air passage up at the moon.

The echoing sound of the terrible iron beast faded into the distance.

Applejack squirmed briefly against the rubble, and found it unyielding.

The two took a moment of companionable silence.

“That was a pretty good show tonight,” Rainbow said, trying not to think about where she was or how long she might be there.

“Yeah, well, they actually knew the words to your song,” the earth pony replied, of much the same mindset.

“You’re gonna complain about the guitar solos on yours? Dang, but Lyra can play.”

---

“What is that?” Flam asked, as they emerged from the tunnel onto a cliff-hugging road.

“I think I saw it in the parking lot on the way in – I thought it was an old chapel, not something that ever moved!” Flim replied, magically preparing an empty bottle to throw, for all the good it might do.

It finally came into full view, as it burst out the tunnel, in all its terrible majesty.

From what little Flim had studied of architecture, he might have characterized it as ‘Gothic’: though with an exterior seemingly sculpted entirely from black iron, it had pointed arches, it had spiky bits on top, it had crenellations – it even had flying buttresses. Those buttresses ended in carriage wheels, but they were still there.

And yet at the front of the thing, a large glass viewport showed an illuminated room, looking every bit like the bridge of a large vessel – and the iron beast was clearly divided into multiple decks, with the bridge being only the upper most of them. It seemed to ride atop a central spinal core of the vehicle, itself easily fifteen feet all, covered by a sliding steel hatch, and even that was fully above the bottom deck of the vehicle. The last and lowest of these was fronted by an enormous cow-catcher, rubble, pegasus feathers, and bits of Night Guard carriages still snagged in its bars.

Ports opened on the sides of the beast, and speakers emerged. They began to glow as power surged through them, and powerful bass rumbled across the cliffside.

---

In the front lobby of the Roan Palace Hotel, a certain unicorn paced back and forth in front of a large fireplace.

Fleur-de-lis checked the clock yet again, and sighed.

---

“Do something, Flim!”

“I did!” he shouted in reply, near to tears. “I threw an entire case of empty cider bottles at it!”

It was not faster than their carriage, but it had momentum. When the mountain roads went down, it kept speed. When the mountain roads went up, it kept speed. Every mistake Flam made cost him an inch or a foot or a yard that he couldn’t take back.

---

In the bridge of the beast, Vinyl Scratch grinned. “We’ve toyed with them long enough.” She smashed a button at her control station with her hoof.

Nothing happened.

“Dude, what gives?”

Her road engineer checked the panel. “Ah – the capacitors have to charge up first.”

“What?”

“Do recall that this is the largest bass ever built, ma’am. Needs big capacitors to do its thing.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got, like, a five megawatt coal station on-board. I should know; I had to pay to fuel it all the way from Whoa-maha.”

“Largest bass ever built, ma’am.”

“Dude, this sucks!”

“I told you it needed more testing, ma’am.”

---

“I’m worried,” Octavia said, rejoining the band backstage after a reconnaissance outside. “There’s no sign of Vinyl Scratch, and she didn’t come for her equipment. And I haven’t seen the brothers, either.”

“Well, obviously,” Trixie replied. “The brothers already left. They’re trying to beat the angry mob to Canterlot.”

“Wait – they left without us?” Iron Will stomped his hoof. “How could they leave us behind?”

“They – were concerned about our safety,” Trixie said, defensively.

“Mmm, no, I really can’t agree with that line of thinking,” Octavia said, shaking her head. “The whole point of this exercise is to get that money to the Canterlot office by tomorrow morning, and if they get caught, it’s really all been for nothing.”

The earth pony attorney trotted up to join them, Twilight Sparkle still accompanying him, for reasons even he was unsure of. “Guys, relax. Nopony alive has more experience running from the feathers than Flim and Flam.”

“Yes, well…” Octavia shuffled her hooves. “Do they have much experience running from Vinyl Scratch? A fully-prepared, not-surprised-by-rap-battle, vengeance-thirsty Vinyl Scratch?”

Nickel Guise shrugged. “Does anypony?”

“Yes, but I’m not there right now, and that’s the problem.”

Iron Will folded his arms. “Pity those fools! If they had just let Iron Will know earlier, we could already be helping them. There’s just no way that the M-Squared-C-Squared™ could catch up after this long.”

“Oh! I could teleport you out there!”

The band turned to face a certain purple unicorn. She grinned sheepishly. “Oh, hi, sorry, I’m Twilight Sparkle – uh – Mr. Guise here said it was okay if I came backstage – it’s great to see you again, Trixie, that was a really good show tonight!”

Trixie stared blankly.

“We all know who you are, Twilight,” Lyra said, smiling. “You can teleport us to them?”

“Well, sure, it wouldn’t be – ooh, actually, landing inside a moving target with a stationary one is actually kind of hard and dangerous. Hmm….”

The attorney smiled slowly. “Could you land a moving target next to another moving one?”

“Oh, definitely!”

“Iron Will shall start the bus.”

---

“Capacitors at one hundred percent!”

The DJ slammed her hoof on the console. “FIRE!”

---

The brothers stared in the mirror as the steel hatch covers on the front of the monster retracted. The glowing blue mega-woofer pulsed with energy.

“You know something, brother?”

“Yes?”

“I have no regrets. If we’re to die here, we’re dying at the hands of something amazing, and not just a stupid spear hurled by an underpaid Night Guard who’ll be up for an excessive force investigation afterwards.”

Flim nodded.

The bass cannon flashed, and went dark. Flam felt a powerful twist in his gut.

“That’s – I didn’t hear anything – ” he started to say, before tossing his cookies up on the windscreen.

Flim would have admonished him, except for being engaged in precisely the same activity.

---

“That was it? What gives?” Vinyl said, clearly disappointed.

“It would appear, ma’am, that this is in fact more accurately called the Sub-Bass Cannon Express – we may even be toying in the depths of infrasound.”

“You’re telling me we spent twenty-five million bits retooling a rejected Royal Guard prototype artillery piece into a mother-bucking dog whistle?”

“That would be ultrasound, but same idea, ma’am.”

“Weak. Get the roadies to retool it so we can actually hear the thing. I’ll keep after them.”

“That sounds incredibly dangerous, ma’am.”

---

Flam peered over the top of the windscreen, squinting against the rushing pre-dawn air, as Flim hurriedly cleaned the screen and dash with a magically wielded rag. On hearing a loud but distinctly unmusical thump, he spared himself a glance over the shoulder to see what was happening.

Aside the pursuing vehicle, there was now also the M-squared-C-squared™, also at full speed – about eighty-eight miles per hour, Flam knew from experience. Flam marveled briefly that the mountain road was even wide enough for the two behemoths to drive side-by-side, before returning his attention to the front.

---

“Do you think it worked?” Nickel Guise asked, staring at the spot where the accelerating omnibus had vanished.

“I – don’t know. I’ve almost never teleported things without accompanying them myself. It should have, though.”

“Oh, okay,” the earth pony said, staring a moment longer in wonder. A lantern went on over his head. “Wait – wasn’t I supposed to go with them?”

“No. You were going to give me a peer review on Late Paleopony Theories of Law and Magic. I can’t believe somepony actually read it!” She tittered.

He brightened. “Are you kidding? I cited it a dozen times in my seminar paper – hey, you think the hotel’s coffee bar is still open?”

---

Vinyl looked out the port side of the bridge, to see who the new interlopers were.

“Huh. A goat’s driving.”

She spun the helm, smashing the side of the Bass Cannon Express into the omnibus – impressively, the omnibus managed to keep on the road.

She looked over again, to see the goat making eye contact with her. It gestured at its eyes with a cloven hoof, then at her, and shook its head.

“Ah buck no. Is that little beast threatening me?” She swerved into the interloping omnibus again – this time, it swerved back. A terrible screeching of iron erupted, as the sides of the two buses intermingled, the M-squared-C-squared™ tearing through a row of the flying buttresses.

“No – no!” the DJ ranted. “You’re not going to stop me! I’m going to catch the Flimflams, and I’m going to get my stuff back!”

“Er – ” her road engineer said, scratching his head with his hoof. “We kind of abandoned all your stuff back at the Roan Palace when we took up the chase.”

With a blank expression, Vinyl considered this for a long moment, as the two omnibuses continued to hurtle down the mountain road as more-or-less one unit.

Finally, she face-hooved.

“I’m an idiot.”

“Well,” a refined, feminine voice said, “I wasn’t going to be the one to say it.”

Vinyl lowered her hoof from her face, a menacing grin spreading. “Leave us,” she said to her road engineer, who fled for the stairs to the belowdecks, darting around Octavia.

Octavia stepped forward, and Vinyl turned to meet her.

“I always knew it would come to this,” the DJ said. “I always knew our old score would be settled this way.”

“Really?” The earth pony asked, skeptically. “You knew that your refusing to do your fair share of the dishes would end in us battling inside a pair of flaming, screaming omnibuses plummeting down a dark mountain road?”

“Well, yeah; pretty much.”

Octavia thought about this reply, and had to admit that she had a point. “Hey – do you want to do this up on the top deck? You know: open-air, wind blowing, lots of railings and iron spikes?”

Vinyl chuckled. “You know me too well, Tavy.” Her magic opened the hatch to the top. “I’m still gonna wear you like a coat, though.”

---

The rest of the intrusion team – promptly dubbed by Iron Will as “the Omnibus Marines” – forced their way through the belowdecks. The tactics were fairly simple: Iron Will led the way through a tight corridor between the spinning turbines, and Vinyl Scratch’s roadie minions retreated.

“Using a minotaur is almost cheating,” Trixie muttered, as Iron Will continued to simply walk forward, earning the panicked shouts of fleeing ponies.

Iron Will shouted back, not turning his head. “Ever consider that Iron Will feels that using you ponies is a handicap? Seriously, it’s like being in an escort mission in one of those games the goats are always playing.” He punched a hole in the side of the bus, adding a large after-market window, and grabbed one roadie who had thought to put up a fight. “TOO SLOW! MOVE YOUR FLANK!” he shouted, and hurled the hapless pegasus into the night.

---

In the rushing winds of the night, Vinyl Scratch raised herself on her two back legs, and took up a fighting stance, horn glowing. “You’re gonna wish you stayed back in the countryside, Tavy.”

Octavia reared back to her own, well-practiced, cello-playing stance, and brandished a bow. “We shall see.”

---

Faced with an advancing minotaur and no hope of defeating him, the cornered road crew took its last option.

The iron hatch at the back of the omnibus fell open, and the roadies hopped onto their designated steam velocipedes and drove off into the night, fleeing back up the mountain.

“And STAY OUT!” Iron Will bellowed, waving a fist in the dark. After a moment, he turned to his band-mates. “Iron Will apologizes for engaging in such stereotypical behavior.”

“Yeah, we’ll freak out about that later,” Lyra said, as she looked over a bank of control panels. “Anypony have even the slightest clue how this works?”

Bon-Bon and Trixie joined her in inspecting the panel.

“Nope.”

“Trixie hasn’t the foggiest.”

Lyra grinned. “Then we get to do this the fun way!” She yanked a lever at random.

---

The speakers mounted at the surface of the Bass Cannon Express started to boom with their randomly chosen track.

“Corn on…the cob….” a choir seemed to sing. “Corn on…the kabob!”

Vinyl’s glowing horn met Octavia’s parrying bow, and the two ponies clenched their teeth as they forced one against the other.

---

“Nope – maybe…this one?” Lyra grabbed another lever.

“Best of luck to you all,” Trixie said, putting on a helmet and taking her seat astride the last velocipede – its designated operator having already been thrown out a window. “Trixie shall go on ahead, and try to assist the brothers.”

Iron Will saluted, as Trixie plunged out into the night, spinning a quick bootleg reverse and darting back forward, down the mountain road, weaving a path between the two entangled omnibuses.

---

Vinyl’s magic flared, flinging Octavia’s bow away from it, and the earth pony stumbled backwards. The DJ lunged forward, but Octavia countered quickly, battering her aside – the floor tilted, as the omnibuses, guided mostly by the goat in the M-squared-C-squared™ now, hugged a sharp curve in the road – and both ponies went tumbling, landing atop each other.

Vinyl found herself on top, and pinned Octavia down with her forehooves, grinning wickedly as her horn glowed with renewed power, bringing its tip closer, and closer – Octavia gave a savage kick with her back legs into Vinyl’s gut, launching her airborne and backwards, rolling her across the roof and giving Octavia time herself to get onto her hooves.

---

“Figured out what that fifth lever does,” Iron Will said, carefully reading the schematics on the wall.

“Great!” Lyra said. “What’s that?”

“Blows the whole thing up.”

“Ah. So don’t pull the fifth lever, right.”

“No, not the fifth lever on the console. The fifth of the levers you’ve already pulled.”

Lyra looked at Bon-Bon, grinning sheepishly. Bon-Bon scowled. “There’s nothing you can say to talk your way out of this one.”

“I…love you?” Lyra tried.

---

Octavia scraped her hoof on the ground, preparing to charge.

“You’re kidding – you’re kidding, right?” Vinyl asked.

Octavia snorted.

“Fine, then – bring it!”

The two ponies charged straight at each other.

Sadly, this final challenge was not yet to be, as the Bass Cannon Express exploded.

It wasn’t even immediately obvious what had happened, to the two – they knew that they were now considerably more airborne, as was the iron plate that they were now clinging to – itself now more of a flying island than a omnibus’s roof.

“I blame you,” Octavia said, as they passed through a cloud.

Vinyl snorted. “For the record, I did, like, at least thirty percent of the dishes.”

They continued to rise into the air, their little metal island not yet at the top of its arc.

---

“We’re…alive….” Lyra breathed, clenched in Iron Will’s arms. Bon-Bon nodded, from much the same place.

“Are you – are you okay?” Bon-Bon asked the minotaur.

His eye twitched, as they continued to skid down the road on his back, not quite keeping up with the flaming wreck of the Bass Cannon Express, nor the M-squared-C-squared™ which had rolled off the side of the canyon into a lake below.

“Iron Will has been transported into a magical realm of infinite road rash,” he said, remarkably erudite for one who was in such a position. “Iron Will shall now scream in pain until the situation is amended or he blacks out.”

He then proceeded to deliver on that promise.

---

The Flimflams stared in shock as Trixie drove past them on a velocipede, waving at them.

“What just happened?” Flam asked.

“Does it matter?” The road continued to wind, and at last they left the flaming wreckage out of sight. “This is going well,” Flim mused. “We’ve lost the feathers, we’ve lost whatever the buck that was back there, the old girl is riding again, and – what?” Flam was wincing. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re doing it again, brother. You’re tempting fate.”

---

The lead buffalo narrowed his eyes, looking down the mountain at the valley below, and more importantly, the road in it.

“Now,” he said, in a low, even voice.

---

“Like that – see? There’s a mass of ominous dark figures pouring down from the mountain, and that absolutely wouldn’t have happened if you had kept your mouth shut!”

Flim turned around in his seat to get a better look at them. “Oh, they’re just the buffalo you ran off the bridge last week.”

“See? I didn’t even remember that I did that!”

“It appears that they do.”

The herd rumbled closer.

Trixie’s velocipede pulled up next to Flam’s side of the carriage. “Flam,” she shouted, “there’s a herd of buffalo after you!”

Flam nodded. “Yep.”

“Do you have a plan?” she asked.

“Keep driving and wonder how they’re keeping up.”

---

“I told you, braves – these unicorn-enchanted legwarmers were a good idea.”

“They are quite efficacious,” the second-in-command buffalo replied to his leader. “But lime green? Really? There were no other options?”

“The spirits and ancestors judge us by our deeds, not by our accessories.”

---

“Trixie doesn’t see how that’s a plan!”

“Can Trixie do better?”

“She can! Flim – I left some luggage in the back seat – get the green bag!”

Flim leaned over his seat, rummaging through an enormous pile of empty cider bottles, until at last he found the green bag.

“Open it up and toss Trixie whatever’s on top!”

Trixie was shortly rewarded with a large firework tube; while her horn glowed to cast a small spell on it, her fore hooves worked the throttle of the velocipede, propelling her farther forward.

Flam cast another nervous eye to the rear view mirror. “Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear,” it said, but Flam didn’t see how that could be possible, unless one of the buffalo was sitting in the back seat.

“What’s up?” a buffalo asked, from directly left of him. Flam turned and looked at him. “We’re gonna kill you now, okay? Tribal honor to avenge and all.”

“Do you think you could see your way through to…let’s say, not killing me?”

“Dude, you ran us off a bridge. Somebull could’ve gotten really hurt! It was very inconsiderate of you.”

“So now we have to die?”

“Well, yeah.”

Up ahead, in the darkness, there was an explosion of lights and sparks, white and red, mostly white – though the red sparks were spelling a message through the fire and flames.

“Chief Thunderhooves Polishes the Horn”

“Oh no she didn’t!” the buffalo at Flam’s side cried, and he ran faster yet – as did the rest of the buffalo stampede, which passed by the side of the Flimflam’s carriage to give pursuit to the insult further ahead of them.

Seeing that the buffalo were now pursuing her instead of the brothers, Trixie shifted her weight and turned gradually, taking an arc on the road. Ever-nearing thunder told her that her goal was being accomplished, although if she was really being honest with herself, she had to admit that she didn’t know what the next step was.

Slowing down was impossible – she would be trampled.

Going left or right was impossible – she would only strike the buffalo who were now on either side of her.

“When only one option remains,” she said aloud, “do it with gusto!”

She opened the throttle to maximum, and the buffalo strained to match pace.

“I…” she said, seeing what was coming.

“Am…” she added, lifting herself off the seat, and getting ready to jump.

“…Trixie!” she finished, as her velocipede went over the edge of a very tall cliff.

“Wuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!” the buffalo cried – or variations on that theme – as they realized what was happening and plunged over the side.

As soon as the velocipede stopped going forward and just started to fall, Trixie hurled herself off of it, scrambling to reach the cliff on the far side – her hooves couldn’t quite catch, and she was falling, flailing – she connected one hoof with the side of the rocky cliff, then another, and leaned into the cliff side, trying to make as much friction as she could, grinding one or two hooves at a time into the rock, sending up showers of sparks as she struggled desperately in a war with gravity itself.

The buffalo just fell straight down.

At the middle of the canyon between two cliffs, there was a river. On that river, there was a barge. On that barge, there was a donkey piloting it. Also on that barge was an enormous pile of all-natural organic fertilizer.

Seeing the buffalo achieve blessed if undignified safety, Trixie would have regretted not just falling straight down with them, if she had had time to do such a thing – but she was continuing to descend down the side of a cliff, trying, ironically enough, to slow herself down by running. A blazing trail went behind and above her as she continued to run, scraping more and more keratin off her hooves with each passing second.

“If this is a ‘pony-pedi’, Trixie does not see the fun of it,” she said, trying not to think too hard about death.

At last, the cliff began to bend inwards, and her aching, untrained muscles could not continue the run at this new angle, and she lost contact with the wall and began to simply fall.

She watched the road along the bottom of the valley get closer and closer. “Well, buck me,” she muttered.

“Not today!” came a sudden shout, as just beneath her, a carriage appeared – she struck the seat bottom, and then seat back, of the carriage an instant later, severely jostled.

After a moment of great pain, she yanked herself back up, to ask the brothers: “‘Not today’ what?”

Flam turned and grinned. “I assumed you were saying something like ‘goodbye world’, and I was saying ‘not today’, as in, I saved your life.”

Trixie put her hoof on her head, trying to steady her still spinning pupils. “Er – yes. How in the hoof did you beat me down here?”

“Old girl – you’re on a mission from Goddess, too.”

---

The rising of the sun brought morning at last, as the Flimflam’s carriage continued to barrel down the highway towards Canterlot. New pursuers had arrived when they lost the cover of darkness - a whale-shaped blimp, and a new fleet of Night Guard carriages freshly arrived; some reinforcements from outlying villages, some from the Roan Palace that had finally gotten out of the parking lot and caught up with them. Compared to the previous threats, Flam found these a positive relief – one being pursued by the Night Guard in such force was rarely pursued by much else, and it was a lot easier to keep ahead of their carriages.

Still, as nostalgic as the sirens made him, it was getting a bit tiresome – and a lot of the carriages were getting closer.

“Hang on, you two,” Flam said, “I’ve got to pull over.”

He swerved to the right, jumping one train track belonging to the Friendship Express, then the other.

---

“All units, be advised,” Pearl said, most traces of her accent temporarily abolished, from her station at the airborne command center into a magic communicator, “Flimflam brothers have left the highway. All units respond.”

---

“How did that help?” Trixie asked. “We’re still being followed.”

“That wasn’t the part that was supposed to help,” Flam said, gesturing to a tunnel up ahead on the train tracks. “This is.”

A horn sounded.

“I thought it only ran every twelve hours,” Flim said.

“I know full well that it doesn’t,” Flam replied, and swerved back the other way.

Seeing the oncoming train, the Night Guard carriages in pursuit pushed to maximum acceleration, desperate to get across the tracks in time – and, as a result, caught air.

Flam waved at the carriages as they flew overhead, slamming into the earthen berm on the far side of the highway. Rudely, none of the Night Guards waved back, although they did flail their arms wildly, some of them even taking wing and abandoning their posts.

---

Not all the carriages, however, were so quick on the uptake. At her command center, Pearl heard a familiar voice over the communicator. “Hi, this is Commander El Jefe, in carriage number – what number are we? Fifty-five! We are currently southbound on the Friendship Express….”

“All units, vehicle travelling northbound, approaching Canterlot outskirts. All Canterlot units are called up for local intercept. Maintain pursuit.”

---

Civil defense sirens sounded in Canterlot, and civilians fled indoors.

The golden-armored knights of the Royal Guard took hold of their spears, manning the gates to the city. Meanwhile, at the Royal Pegadrome, a squad of pegasus ponies pulled on their trademark blue-and-gold jumpsuits.

“You ready to buck some ass, Soarin’?” one pegasus pony asked, as she slipped a pair of goggles over her fiery mane.

“We’ll be back in time for morning pie, Cap’n.”

---

“Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the Flimflam Brothers…has been approved.”

---

“Hold steady, stallions!” The lieutenant of the Royal Guard shouted, as his elite squadron of pegasus ponies and unicorns stood outside the gates of Canterlot, spears and shields ready.

The Flimflam’s carriage crested the hill. The unicorns in the squad threw up pink magical shields in front of the squad.

“Steady!” The lieutenant shouted, confident. These magical defenses would be more than enough to halt the Flimflams in their tracks.

Forty more Night Guard carriages crested the hill behind the brothers.

Said magical defenses would not, however, be enough to halt those in their tracks.

“Steady…” He said, less confident, as the Flimflams neared and their pursuers did so as well, just as quickly.

“Oh buck this!” one recruit shouted, abandoning his magical field and darting to the side – which was all the crack in morale needed for the Royal Guard to abandon their post, leaving only the lieutenant facing the oncoming carriage.

“See this?” the lieutenant said, to nopony in particular. “This is why the Changelings were able to kick our pasty flanks this spring.” And with that observation, he tucked and rolled up the Flimflam’s oncoming carriage, bounced off the highway, and landed in a Night Guard carriage, just in time for the first vehicle in the chase to crash straight through the gates of Canterlot.

---

Through one street after another, Flam turned sharp corners, losing a few more each pursuers each time, as their carriages rolled or overshot – partially from the speed, partially from a lack of sleep and slow reaction times.

“Hey look!” Flim shouted, pointing. “The Royal Canterlot Opera House! Remember the time we got utterly hammered there?”

“That was a week ago, Flim,” Trixie replied.

“And it was a good time, wasn’t it?” he shouted, as Flam turned the carriage once more.

“Very good,” Flam agreed. “Now, if my estimations are correct, we should be very near the Canterlot Repair Committee’s Office of General Contracting Clearinghouse.”

“Good! Because now we’ve got the Wonderbolts after us!”

Trixie looked behind them, seeing three of the blue-suited pegasus ponies in hot pursuit. “Looks like – Spitfire, Soarin’, and Rapidfire.”

Flam grinned, and swerved gently in the street, decelerating slightly, as the Wonderbolts drew ever nearer.

“Flam – Flam! Look out look out look out lamppost!”

At the last moment, he swerved back and accelerated.

A satisfying ‘clang’ was heard as Rapidfire bounced off the gaslight; followed immediately by an expensive-sounding ‘tinkle’ as he smashed into a shop filled with glass figurines.

“Pass me a bottle of nectar – it’s all coming back to me now!” Flam shouted merrily, as he aimed the carriage for an as-yet-unrepaired pothole.

Abandoned in the streets by fleeing civilians when the sirens started, there was nopony to run in panic away from the florist carts before they were bashed into splinters by one carriage and two Wonderbolts, which, in Flam’s opinion, was half the fun.

“Was that supposed to stop us?” Spitfire yelled, as she pulled up directly next to the carriage, snorting pollen. She swung a hoof at Flam, nearly knocking his hat off.

Flim and Trixie’s unicorn magic quickly brushed the bits of flower and pollen off themselves and the carriage.

Soarin’, also caught up, set a hoof on the carriage door next to Flim, snorting furiously.

“No ma’am!” Flam yelled back. “That happens now!”

The carriage caught an impromptu ramp of an abandoned sandwich board, and bounced off a mailbox, spinning wildly. Both Wonderbolts kept their grip admirably as the carriage continued to spin, and even when it crashed through the glass windows of a store front and through a row of wooden tables, they remained in place.

For a moment, the carriage was at rest.

“Now you’re ours, punk,” Spitfire said, flapping in place as she put one hoof on Flam’s shoulder and pulled another back for a haymaker.

Flam grinned.

Spitfire spared a moment to look around her – at the pile of toppled tables, and the shattered wood-and-glass cases on the floor, spilling wax, jelly, and…

“Oh goddess! Oh not the bees!” Soarin’ yelled, already beating them away from his pollen-covered face.

Spitfire swatted under her face guard, which were meant for shielding from the wind and not to be airtight – proving no barrier to the insects. “The goggles! They – ”

Flam hit the throttle, and accelerated out of the apiary, leaving the Wonderbolts to deal with their new friends.

“There it is! There it is!”

With one last bootleg stop exhausting all the metal fatigue left in the brakes, the carriage screeched to a halt just inches away from a freshly repaired guardrail. The three unicorns hopped out of the carriage, galloping towards the entrance to a tall brick office building.

They were nearly to the door when the carriage exploded.

Flim, Flam, and Trixie turned back to see the flaming wreck of the carriage, mostly in pieces, some of those pieces tumbling down the side of Canterlot Mountain.

Flim and Flam took off their hats.

Trixie stared at them. “Move it, foals!”

They scrambled through the doors of the building.

“Excuse me!” Flim shouted, once they were inside. “Looking for the office in charge of taking orders for rush repairs?”

The receptionist at the front desk, a young earth pony mare with a frizzy red mane, pointed upwards. “Eighth floor, room 809.”

“You two go; Trixie will hold them here.”

She turned and faced the front doors with her horn. Her horn glowed, and its magic enveloped the doors, clamping them as tightly shut as she could manage.

“Godspeed, old girl. Godspeed.”

The Flimflams charged for the stairs.

Outside, the airship command center arrived over the top of the building, while hundreds of carriages surrounded it. Pegasus ponies, unicorns, and earth ponies alike surged towards the building, while some took up positions in the sky.

A crack team of champion apple-buckers kicked repeatedly at the doors, to no avail against the magic of Trixie – until one among them had the bright idea to go through the window instead.

Trixie yelped as glass shards came flying her way, and, concentration broken, lost control over her force field – the doors exploded inwards with a few more violent kicks, and in a moment the pressing mob of law enforcement ponysonnel was upon her, and over her.

The Flimflam’s advance up the stairs could have been faster, except that they were taking the time to magically implode to splinters about every third one of the wooden steps.

Smooth jazz was playing in the stairwell, and nopony could really say why. It just needed to be.

The mob sought out an elevator, realized one didn’t exist, and headed for the stairs.

Finally reaching the eighth floor, the Flimflams magically shifted some potted plants to block the door – and charging into room 809, that door too they sealed, this time with a desk.

“Can I help you?” asked the unicorn whose desk they had seized.

“Yeah – this is where they put in the rush orders, right?”

“Yessir,” the desk clerk replied.

The brothers sat him on his own desk, and placed a sum of coins next to him – exactly one half of a comically large sack of money. “This is for the quoted repairs needed for the Clover Home for Orphaned Unicorns, all expenses paid up front, flat rate, to be completed before winter.”

“Fifty thousand bits, all there, pal,” Flam reassured him.

“Okay – just hold on a minute, sirs,” the clerk said, digging through his desk for the files.

Angry shouts thumped against the side of the building, and out in the hallway, they could hear breaking glass.

“That’s impossible – how did the guards get up here? We sabotaged the stairs!”

“Hmm?” the clerk asked, pulling out the file folder.

“You mean, brother, how did an angry mob of pegasus ponies get to the eighth floor of a building without stairs?”

Flam sighed. “…I’m an idiot.”

"I wasn't going to be the one to say it, brother."

The clerk hefted the bag of coins with his magic, feeling the weight with well-practiced senses. “Fifty thousand right on the nose, friends. We’re good to go.” He signed a piece of paper, and stamped it.

“And here,” the clerk said, magically passing the paper to the brothers, as they propped themselves up on the counter in impatience, “is your receipt.”

A pair of shackles dropped, locking Flam’s left foreleg and Flim’s right together. They turned their heads, slowly, to stare down the brandished tips of thirty-odd spears.

They raised their other forelegs in the air.

Comments

[River Road]

By Princess Twilight's Impenetrable Book Fortress, that was without doubt the best and most hilarious use of Checkhov's Gun I have seen this year.

This story is everything "Blues Brothers" was and so, so much more.