The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi


Everyone Hides

Purple blackness hit Starlight like a numbing, temperatureless fog, causing her to instantly lose all sense of direction and acceleration and removing her ability to understand what she saw. Her chest tried and failed to draw in air; it was as if her mouth and nose weren't even there... and she instantly recognized the sensation from when she had used the crystal spell on herself in the mountains. With an irrational calm born of excess shock, she stopped trying to breathe. That allowed her to recognize the presence of something tugging where her shoulder should have been, trying to drag her through what might have been liquid. She went limp.

What was probably only seconds later, there was a sudden sensation of lacking in her ears: the absence of a rush she hadn't noticed before. Then, sensation broke over her head in a wave that felt more like plunging into something than out of it, and after a few blinks, she could see clearly again.

There was also a fuzzy black hoof clasped tightly over her muzzle.

"Sorry about that please don't scream," Valey mouthed urgently in her ear, then turned and said the same to Maple, who was also emergency-gagged.

Starlight looked down. The floor was closer than it ever should have been, unless she felt like taking a nap on bare concrete, and she bobbed slightly, as if swimming. All of her body sans her neck and head, she realized, was beneath the ground, the shadows of a loading platform next to her bending and fluctuating like ripples as she moved. Quickly, she nodded in understanding.

Maple had other thoughts. "You had to do that?" she whispered back, barely putting air to the words. "Without warning us? Shouldn't that be a last resort? What happened to your confidence that you could handle every guard that came our way?"

"Shhhhh," Valey answered, keeping a firm wing on both of them. "That's a lot of dudes. We gotta check them out first and see what they're up to before running in."

As if on cue, the group of ponies Starlight had noticed entered from a doorway, fanning out and illuminating as much as possible with their headlamps in a practiced stance. Their leader, a tall stallion with a buttoned felt coat, glowered from under a wide-brim hat, a lone feather bobbing merrily above.

Having swam atop one of the loading conveyors for a better vantage point, Valey held a hoof to her own mouth, suppressing a snicker. "Seriously, some of Ironridge's fashion statements never get old," she giggled to Maple and Starlight, chancing a slight amount of tone in her voice.

The feather-hatted stallion didn't notice. "Bah," he pouted, swiping a hoof. "At this rate, we shall lose the trail entirely! You all!" He pointed upwards in a rallying cry, hat downturned and still managing to cover half of his eyes. "Spread out and search for clues!"

Maple frowned. "Are they the Spirit?" she murmured, laying close to the ground at Valey's side.

"Nah," Valey muttered back. "Exposition later, though. Looks like they're already being messed with by somebody else!"

As the ponies below poked around, one stood up with a vague shout, drawing the attention of the leader and most of the other searchers. Starlight, Maple and Valey peered closer... to see him holding Neon Nova's abandoned coat, which Maple hadn't had time to pocket when Valey grabbed them and dragged them out of the way.

Maple frowned. "Well, there goes that."

"Good riddance," Valey added.

"Anyone know anypony around here who wears a coat like this?" the one holding it asked. "Doesn't look like much for good Earth District attire, but it might look nice with the right hat?"

The leader sniffed. "Don't touch that, it's evidence!" He paced around, inspecting its sides. "Hmm. Big, and bulky enough for a pegasus to conceal their wings... I would say there is a high probability of this belonging to tonight's culprit! Mares and gentlecolts, we have our trail back!"

He hoofed the coat off to one of the following ponies. "Beetroot, hold that and keep it safe. Grainwave, you're the only one of us who can fly, so keep watch here! Now..."

"Yes, sir!" Two ponies simultaneously saluted, one a dark red stallion with a face that looked as if it had been pressed into flatness with a brick wall, the other a younger pegasus with a textured amber coat and a mane that matched her namesake.

Valey licked her lips. "They're leaving her alone, are they? Oh, this is gonna be fun..."

"Obviously, to shed such a disguise, the culprit must have been intending to make use of their wings," the leader said, touching the bridge of his nose with a hoof. "This I have deduced from the fact that the garment is filled with useful tools, which an active criminal would not easily sacrifice!" He pulled a knife from the coat for emphasis. "As such, they must have intended to leave us sniffing their dust through a flight route... which in a closed building such as this could only lead to there!"

He pointed straight up, to an observation balcony connected to a doorway a significant height above. "Clearly, the culprit thinks they can elude me," he continued. "Well, not today! Now that their plan is back in our sights, let us hurry to apprehend them! Forward!"

"Hey, hold on," the pegasus, Grainwave, interrupted with an outstretched hoof. "You want me to stand watch here alone? What do I even do if they come back?"

"You stop them, of course," the leader said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "The two-prong attack is one of the most classic of military maneuvers."

Grainwave gave him a disbelieving look. "Sir... with what? You've been talking them up like some sort of criminal mastermind, and I'm..." She shrugged, showing off empty hooves.

Valey whistled under her breath. "She's not stupid, either..."

"The importance of a mission is not necessarily correlated with its difficulty," the leader proclaimed. "What we are dealing with here is a petty fruit thief, not a member of some organized crime syndicate. At least... I hope not. Regardless, you shouldn't have to deal with direct combat! Simply tag and follow the culprit should they attempt to double back on to escape us. Nevertheless, if you are feeling underprepared..." He held out the confiscated knife. "What could be more poetic than turning the villain's own blade upon them?"

Grainwave took it with a blank stare. "You know," she said, "there are a bunch of carts in here, which means there's a door to the outside, and the water on the floor is still fresh so it must have opened recently. You don't suppose they just... flew away?"

The leader recoiled as if stung. "Don't question my deductions! It was my initiative and investigative skills that exposed this string of robberies in the first place! We are using a two-pronged attack, and that is my decision. Now, the criminal could be on the move at this very moment, and we have no time to lose!"

Feather bobbing, he led the rush down another corridor, leaving a single protesting pegasus in the middle of the room, a dagger held limply in one wing.

Valey watched them go, eyes wide and eager. "She's in a horror story and knows it," she mouthed. "Give them a few minutes to get farther away and let her nerves get to her, then we'll turn out the lights, make some noise, and spook her enough to get her to go find them and spook them too, and we'll be so set..."

"Do you have to?" Maple hissed back, ears folded, mindful of the ultra-vigilant mare on the floor who was already being cautious and not leaving her back unchecked for more than seconds at a time. "She looks nice... Can't we just hide until the rain stops? Please?"

"Yeah, she is pretty easy on the eyes," Valey agreed, nodding.

"That's not what I meant!"

"You're really going to be a killjoy about this, aren't you?" Valey frowned.

Her last remark was slightly too loud, because they heard Grainwave take a sharp breath below. Her wings flapped, and she rose, flying up to investigate the source of the noise.

"Oh, bananas," Valey grumbled, grabbing Maple and Starlight and dipping back into shadow.


When Starlight's vision normalized, they were in a chamber of blackness with a single rectangular hole in the wall providing light... the room the loading conveyor fed in from, she realized. It smelled heavily of fruit, and for all she could tell was filled with the stuff.

Suddenly, a pair of dark brown eyes opened in the darkness next to her, and she blinked. Valey's eyes were green, and Maple's were red...

"Hey, move it!" a low voice growled, trying not to be heard outside the room. "I was here first! Get your own hiding place!"