The interior of Hampton Holistic Healthcare looked like a medicine lodge had exploded all over the place as the Spectacular Seven (as Rainbow insisted on calling the group) walked in. The man approaching them didn’t fit the tribal image the store presented, however, being a clean-shaven, middle-aged fellow in a decent suit. He also looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“Mister Hampton?” asked Twilight, “Nightfox sent us,” she continued when the man nodded anxiously, “We understand you need something retrieved?”
“Not something, someone,” Hampton replied as he flipped the door sign over to “Closed”, “The mob took my daughter, Moxie,” he explained, “I pay them a protection fee to keep the gangs away from my property, but business has been slow lately, and I couldn’t pay this month’s fee. Now the Fratellis are holding her hostage until I can pay them, and if I don’t …,” Hampton shuddered, “They already chopped off the ring I gave Moxie for her sweet sixteen, I don’t want to see what else they might do.
“I can’t offer much – seeing as how I can’t even ransom my own daughter – but I can pay you five hundred each, plus a free toxin flush or a colonic,” he continued, looking at the seven women with the first stirrings of hope.
“Oh, you poor man,” murmured Fluttershy, fighting the urge to hug Hampton, “Of course we’ll help you.”
“Thank you,” Hampton smiled gratefully at the women, “I think your best lead for finding where they took my Moxie is to follow Vic Fratelli. He tends to hang out at the McHugh over on Birch, and is a few crayons short of a full box, so you might be able to pump him for some information without him realizing.”
“We’ll get right on it,” Rarity assured him, “Hopefully we’ll have your daughter back in your arms in a few days.”
Taking their leave of Hampton, the women headed back to their truck, along the way Applejack punched Sunset lightly in the shoulder, “So what’s goin’ on, sugarcube, we jus’ took a low-pay job ta help somepony out, an’ ya didn’t even roll yer eyes.”
“What would be the point?” grumbled the razorgirl, although there was a hint of a smile on her lips, “You six would still take the job, and I’d just get drug along somehow anyway. Besides … I think your whole pie-in-the-sky idealism may be starting to rub off on me.”
“Hee, there’s hope for Sunny after all!” cheered Pinkie as she wrapped the taller girl in a quick embrace.
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The women could smell the grease from inside their truck as they sat in the McHugh’s parking lot. The chain advertised its security and super cheap food, but forgot to mention that ordering anything off the menu inevitably ended in sadness and regret, and that whoever was making all their “food” should probably be charged with violating a dozen different environmental laws and health hazards.
But, man, did it smell delicious.
“Alright,” Twilight said, “We’re just going to talk to Mister Fratelli, in a public business, with a number of innocent bystanders around, so no long arms, okay?”
Applejack and Sunset resignedly removed their rifles and put them into the overlong tool box attached to the truck’s floor, while Pinkie just frowned down at the shotgun in her hands.
“It’s okay, Pinkie, I had a feeling Sparky would insist on leaving the heavier stuff behind,” Sunset assured her hyperactive friend as she pulled a short-barreled Roomsweeper and a bandoleer of shells from beneath her longcoat, “Already loaded up with rubber shot and everything.”
“Can we go, darlings?” asked Rarity, “I’d like to get inside before the rain starts.”
With the fashionista’s urging, the group got out and strolled to the restaurant, although Fluttershy shuddered as they passed the statue of McHugh’s clown mascot that flanked the door opposite a huge potted planter, “And now I’ll be seeing that face in my nightmares,” she lamented.
As they entered, the women could see that McHugh’s standards had gone down in recent years; the macroplast tabletops and chairs were battered and scarred, there was dirt caked in the tile grout, and instead of three security guards, there was only one bored looking sentry standing out in the open in his red and yellow plated vest, which was either incredibly arrogant or extremely foolish.
The restaurant was surprisingly empty, given the early evening hour; other than Vic, dressed in a suit jacket and tie as he worked on his pair of burgers, the only customers were a young man in his early twenties who was apparently working on his ninth cup of soykaf while he focused on his palmtop, and a middle-aged man sitting with a young girl, likely a father and daughter out for dinner.
Needing some time to look the place over, and not wanting to stand out, the seven women placed orders and then gathered at the large, central table, “While I admit that I am not a connoisseur of fast-food establishments,” confessed Rarity as she picked at her salad, “But don’t the workers here seem rather rough-and-tumble for burger flippers?”
“And Vicy called the guard ‘Lucy’ and the guy mopping the floors ‘Dipsy’,” Pinkie added as she started in on her second Jolly Meal.
Twilight frowned as she considered her friends’ words, “Alright, something is off here, but we still have a job to do, and I don’t want to risk spooking Vic by having all of us go up to him at once. Rarity, you’re the best of us at talking to ponies, so how about you approach him, maybe with Sunset tagging along, and we’ll wait here in case you need backup?”
The pair nodded and got up, with the razorgirl hanging back slightly to give her friend room to ply her schmoozing talents. As Rarity approached Vic and started to chat up the mobster, he gave both women a glare that practically oozed suspicion as he idly tugged his earlobe, ‘What the frag?’ Sunset wondered, ‘Yeah, getting your meal interrupted by strangers is annoying, but having two attractive girls walking up to you doesn’t normally merit a look like that.’
Sunset did her best to appear nonchalant as she kept an eye on the rest of the restaurant, only half-listening as Rarity smooth-talked her way past the mafioso’s hostility and began to ensnare him in her conversational web.
As the fashionista worked her verbal magic, the razorgirl resisted the urge to shake her head, ‘Hampton was right, this guy’s pretty slow on the uptake, he’ll probably spill what we want without Rarity having to do more than butter him up and imply an interest in a more “private” meeting.’
Unfortunately, Sunset wasn’t the only one who had noticed Rarity’s success at playing Vic, “Damn it, Vic, ya putz!” snarled the man working the register as he pulled a pistol from beneath the counter.
As her augmented reflexes triggered, Sunset’s own cry of “Gun!” was almost swallowed by the roar of her Ultra Power firing twice, dropping the staffer as all hell broke loose around her.
Vic immediately went for the pistol under his jacket as he started to stand up, only to take a blast of cornflower blue energy to the face that bounced his head off the wall behind him, while the lone guard tried to smash Applejack aside with his cybernetic arm as he pulled his Manhunter heavy pistol, tried being the operative word, as the farmgirl caught his blow on her crossed forearms as she surged out of her seat.
The man mopping the lobby had pulled a light pistol from under his apron, only to be tackled by Pinkie and Rainbow, while Twilight and Fluttershy both headed directly for the other customers, with Fluttershy pulling the young man beneath his table with a murmured “I’m sorry!”, while Twilight hurried over to the confused father and daughter and flung up a barrier between them and the rest of the restaurant. This proved to be the right decision, as an automated sentry gun dropped from the ceiling and, in a glaring example of why you shouldn’t buy your targeting algorithms from the bargain bin, started firing at the ten-year old girl.
Rarity blasted Vic again, leaving the mafioso in an unconscious heap, as she turned her attention to the sentry gun that was blazing away, ignoring everyone else in the restaurant in its single-minded effort to kill a child. After a quick glance confirmed that Twilight’s shield was holding up fine, she wrapped the auto turret in her aura and pulled until, with a bang and a shower of sparks, its supports twisted, the control cables snapping, as the sentry gun hung limply from the ceiling.
Rainbow crouched on the mop man’s back with one arm wrapped around his neck, pinning him to the floor as Pinkie zip-tied his wrists and ankles together while she chattered away at him, “Why were you wearing a gun? Doesn’t it make it hard to mop with a pistol in the front of your pants? Vic called you ‘Dipsy’, is that you’re nickname? We know a mare named Ditzy back home, she works for the postal office, do you know anypony named Ditzy? Hey, why were you and the cashier stallion carrying guns? Wait, are you ponies both mobsters like Vic? Is everypony working here a mobster?”
Ignoring Pinkie’s babble, Sunset quickly moved over to the guard who was straining against Applejack, the wrist of his gun hand clamped in an iron grip that kept it pointed firmly at the floor, and calmly kicked him in the back of the knee. Dropping with a startled yelp, the guard’s eyes widened as the razorgirl pressed the still hot barrel of her pistol to his head, “You have two choices; one, you let my friend have that gun, surrender and get tied up like your buddy over there, two, I pull this trigger, which is it going to be?”
“I surrender! I surrender!”
“Good choice.”
The sound of running feet and a cry of “What the frag?!” brought the freelancers spinning around as a man in shirtsleeves and tie and carrying a shotgun, probably the manager, came pounding out from the back, only to stumble to a stop at the sight of his staff scattered across the floor and the assorted firearms pointed at him, “Well, drek.”
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Fluttershy, Rarity and Rainbow Dash elected to remain behind with their prisoners and the civilians while the rest of the group swept the building for any other staff that might be lurking about, “Hey, do ya hear that?”
“It’s coming from over here,” said Twilight as she led the others back to the walk-in freezer, from which a faint pounding and muffled shouts emanated, “Who puts a maglock on a freezer? Pinkie, if you would be so kind?”
“I got it Twilight,” smiled the partygirl as she pulled out a passkey.
“Where did ya get that from, Pinkie?”
“From the manager, Mister Frank, of course silly.”
The three girls shrugged at each other as Sunset and Applejack raised their pistols to cover the door, with Sunset silently counting down from three before Pinkie yanked the door open, causing the teenage girl on the other side to stagger back in alarm, “It’s okay! It’s okay!” Twilight hurriedly assured the frightened girl, “We’re not going to … Moxie Hampton?”
“W-who are you? How do you know my name?”
“It’s a’right, sugarcube,” Applejack said soothingly as she gently pulled the girl out of the freezer and wrapped a comforting arm around her, “Yer pa sent us ta find ya.”
“What happened in here?” asked Sunset as she looked at the large, unconscious man lying on the floor, partially buried by an overturned rack of shelves.
“He was guarding me,” explained Moxie, “I pushed the rack over when I hear the shooting, and that box hit him on the head, but then I couldn’t get out.”
“Hmm, ‘Processed Soyburger Patties, twenty kilos’,” the razorgirl read off the indicated box, “That’d do it,” while behind her, Moxie began to cry as the stress of the last few days finally overwhelmed her.
A concerned Pinkie stepped over to help Applejack soothe the distraught teen, “Twi-twi?” she threw a glance at the last two members of the group, “Why don’t you and Sunny take care of things back here, while AJ and I take Moxie out to Fluttershy and the others?”
“We can handle this, Pinkie,” the razorgirl promised her friend, shortly, the man was bound hand and foot, and his pistol, another high-caliber Manhunter, was resting in Sunset’s hands as she looked around the freezer, “Sparky? Is it just me, or do those look a lot like bodies?” she asked, pointing at a pair of objects wrapped in dark plastic.
The former alicorn shuddered as she glanced at the items in question, “Yes, yes they do, Sunset.”
“You’re going to insist we call Lone Star, aren’t you?”
“Yes, yes I am.”
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Fluttershy and Rarity both sniffled happily as the seven women watched Hampton tearfully hug his daughter, before they turned and walked away leaving the family to their reunion.
“Let’s see, we took out a bunch of mobsters, rescued a kidnapped girl, oh and we helped Lone Star solve two murders,” Rainbow grinned as she stretched, “I’d say we put in a good day’s work.”
“And didn’t it feel good to help the Hamptons?” asked Fluttershy as she reached over to nudge Sunset.
“Yeah … fine … it did feel pretty good,” the razorgirl conceded, “So, who’s up for pizza? My treat.”