//------------------------------// // Secret Passage // Story: Consequences // by GJT_Productions //------------------------------// Captain of the Canterlot Guard Gibraltar spent most of the morning after the rebellion in a tired, stunned haze, wondering how in all Equestria that one of his highest subordinates had managed to get as far as he had in building up a rebel force. After managing to cobble together enough ponies to cover the depleted morning shift, he immediately moved into "deep-searching" Lieutenant Captain Aten's abandoned office. As it turned out, Aten had not only locked and deadbolted his office door before executing the rebellion, but moved furniture to block the door on the inside. All this meant that it took a lot of shoving, some hoof-smashing and finally the application of saws to get in, and the sun was already high by the time the splintered door finally yielded to the exertion. Immediately afterward Captain Gibraltar orders the search to commence. The office floor was covered by a spongy mess of randomly scattered papers soaked in spilled coffee - Aten had put the entire coffee supply he had in his office to the task, not only to destroy any potential evidence that could be used against the Agents of Chaos membership, but to force further delay in the searching effort, as Gibraltar realized to his frustration. As the soaked papers and anything else on the floor were carefully picked up and disposed of, Gibraltar did a visual check of what else could be found. The "replica" weapons previously decorating the walls of the office were all missing from their mounts - some of these weapons would later be rediscovered abandoned in the city, confirming the suspicion that the very-usable "replica" weapons were given out to the rebels by Aten. The top of the office desk had been swept clean, adding to the debris on the floor, and all the drawers inside pulled out and dumped on the floor. The filing cabinet used for records had previously been emptied and already carted away after being used as part of the barricade. But what struck Captain Gibraltar the most was how Aten could've escaped from his barricaded office - flying out a window wasn't an option as the office faced into the mountainside, and the only door accessible from inside was a utility closet that was subject to regular searches for secret passages. Gibraltar was stuck, but he had to find something to explain how Aten could conduct such an elaborate campaign of deception and rebellion right under everypony's snout deep within the Royal Guard... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The utility closet door was unlocked when Gibraltar ordered it opened - there was no artifical lighting and apparently equipment was deliberately placed to trip up potential searchers, so gas lamps had to be brought in and equipment cleared out before the search inside could commence. The Guard Captain at this point was ordering Aten's office desk to be hauled away and having the searchers probe the walls with hoof rapping in an attempt to find something. It was just after the desk had been hauled out of the office that one of the searchers inside the utility closet called out he had found something, and Gibraltar rushes into the utility closet in reaction - both relieved and mortified that the searchers had apparently finally found the secret passage Aten had used to escape. The unicorn Royal Guard captain finds one of the searchers on hindlegs, pressing hoof on a loose ceiling tile which is now pushed aside to reveal a carved shaft leading into the mountain, just large enough for a pony to squeeze through. Gibraltar looks up the hole in stunned incredulity for several seconds, and then turns to the searcher on hindlegs: "There's inspections for these kind of secret passages every year, how was this missed for so long?!" "I wish I knew the answer to that question, sir." the searching guard replies with stunned honesty as he returns to all fours. "The old mineshafts inside the mountain are not well documented - most of the information we have on them either came from incomplete old records or more recent batpony surveys. Neither of these sources suggested the mining tunnels ever got to this part of the mountain, so the inspectors never would've bothered to look at the ceiling." "Then we'll have to do our own surveying." Gibraltar comments with a frustrated growl as he stands on hindlegs trying to pull himself up through the hole in the ceiling. Several times he tries to reach through the hole only to end up swatting at thin air - he can't even land a hoof on the outside of the hole in order to try to push himself up. "Very clever, to get up in here you either need a pair of wings to push off the floor or somepony giving you a boost. A crude but effective means of keeping out anypony you wouldn't want in there." Gibraltar comments, glaring up in continued frustration through the hole in the ceiling. "We're going in I'm assuming, sir?" one of the searching guards nervously asks. "Yes, I'm going to take two Upper Classes with me and search whatever tunnels are accesible through this passage." Gibraltar firmly answers. "We need to know what Aten and the Agents of Chaos were hiding in there, get some answers on how they managed to set up this rebellion without us having a clue." "Yes, sir." "I want everypony coming with me issued a lantern and one pony issued parchment and ink for note-taking and mapping out the tunnels. I also want gas masks in case there are traps waiting for us. As soon as we are ready we're going in, and going to document as much as we can." "Yes, sir. I'll get the supplies, sir." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As the speaking Guard rushes away to gather the supplies, the other searchers post themselves to prevent unauthorized access to the office and its secret passage. Meanwhile, Gibraltar sits on haunches in the half-darkness of the utility closet, still trying to process what he had already seen and dreading what he would find next. The tangled web of the Agents of Chaos had already been shown to go far deeper - and been protected by forces he had no idea even existed - than he had ever thought possible. And what he would find next would surely be almost as earth-shaking as the reality of the Nightmare Moon legends...