Equestria : 1940
Saturday 22 June - Norway
“Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations.
My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way,
and my arm will bring justice to the nations.”
— Isaiah 51:4
Norway was cold and wet, although most of that was due to the altitude and the clinging cloudstuff that abruptly appeared around them. Jon was instantly disoriented, and nearly screamed despite his best efforts while the damp wind whistled past, caught in the soft abyssal darkness of the midnight cloud cover. Several short breaths later, he had calmed down enough to see the dim violet hornglow coming from Twilight Sparkle’s ponybag, most likely from her taking notes. It was refreshing, a tiny speck of familiarity in the dark, which was all he could cling to for several minutes until they broke out of the bottom of the thick overcast into a open gap over broken cloud cover.
Ruby slowed her progress with wide-spread flaps until she landed in the fluffy top of an oblong cloud, one of many scudding along silently above the Norwegian countryside. Far away, he could make out the dim silver shimmer of a lake several miles upstream, as well as the pale line of concrete covered with thick pipes to the waiting hydroelectric generators below. Oddly enough, there were black dots down there scattered along the rocky ridge and around other buildings, looking a little like vehicles.
Still, he had a more important task at the moment, and he tore his eyes away from the enticing vision in the dank darkness for a much closer target.
“Puff. Thistle.” Jon fought to keep his voice firm but level as he addressed the transport pony bag on Ruby’s broad sides. “Come out of there but be careful,” he hissed when the wet bag’s top flopped open and the two little batponies popped out into the moonlit darkness.
“He made me!” declared Puff with a pointed hoof while hovering in place.
“Did not!” called out Thistle just as loudly.
“Shh!!” hissed Jon, Nightshade, and every other batpony mare who had emerged out of their pony carrying bag, in a veritable chorus of hisses.
“Voices carry in the night,” chided Jon before realizing that the bag the two troublesome little batponies had emerged out of was still occupied. “The rest of you in the bag, come on out.”
The dragon Ember emerged first, picking her way along the wet rope webbing until she could sit on top of Ruby’s broad back, but Spike only stuck his head out of the bag.
“I can’t fly,” he whispered before looking down with an additional squeaked, “eep!”
“Stop it!” hissed Nightshade at where the two foals had started to squabble again. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? All of you!”
“They wanted to help,” said Ember quietly, although she moved over to the two foals and hooked an arm around each of their necks. “So did I. And Spike. We snuck in one at a time and didn’t know about each other until we started dropping into the same bag. Thistle and Puff can be very quiet when they want to be, as you’ve just seen, and if things go wrong, you may need another dragon.”
“Two,” said Spike, although he maintained his vice-like grip on the bag and refused to look down again, or over at where Twilight Sparkle was glaring at him.
“This is dangerous,” hissed Nightshade, much like an irate teapot. She pointed down with a damp wingtip into the gloomy landscape. “Those are anti-aircraft batteries. They are not in the plan. I was just a tail-hair away from aborting the mission and ordering Ruby to fly us home before you four popped out of that bag.”
“There’s four ponies down there depending on us,” said Jon quietly. “Four frightened ponies far away from home, surrounded by enemies who only want to use them as hostages. Picture yourself down there. All by yourself.”
He let the silence of the night speak for a while as the four stowaways looked back at him. Puff looked almost as if she were going to break into tears, so he added, “You’re going to need to obey every order Nightshade gives you, when she tells you, exactly how she tells you, and not give her any backtalk. If she tells you to sit through this whole thing and not make any noise, you sit.”
Four earnest stowaways nodded, and although Spike opened his mouth to say something sarcastic, he gave a brief glance down and closed his jaws with a snap.
“Commander,” said Jon with a nod to Nightshade. “Your orders?”
The slim batpony looked as if she had just bitten down into an unripe lemon. “I can remember every time Ian gave me orders, and I always thought I could do better. Right. Binoculars?”
“Here,” said Twilight Sparkle, floating them over. “I put two vision sharpening spells and a defogger on them.”
While Nightshade studied the dim landscape below, Jon turned to Jimmy and switched to English. “Use your red filter flashlight and check your fuses again. If we go in, it’s going to be just as fast as we can make it, because when those anti-aircraft units spot us, we’re going to have to leave in a hurry.”
“Even if their gunners are spot on, we’ve got a couple of minutes from the alert to first shot,” said Jimmy, who seemed to be digging out his flashlight by the red glow coming from his pony bag. “Unless there’s an alert on, artillery likes to keep its toys locked up. That way no private pops off a few dozen rounds in the middle of the night at ghosts. Plus, they’ll be relying on spotters to pass along word of any incoming aircraft. An’ in this murk, they ain’t gonna be expecting bombers. Probably huddled up around campfires, tryin’ to keep warm and dry.”
“I smell campfires,” said Ruby in a low rumble that sounded a little like thunder. “Wet and cold. Dragon weather. Give the word and I’ll warm them up.”
“They’ll blow you to pieces.” Nightshade swept her binoculars along the road that traced down the ridgeline with her lips moving as if she were counting. “No telling what’s out there in the darkness away from the campfires. All I can see are some 88s, a bunch of 20 millimeter guns, and some cobbled together pieces of junk they must have seized from the Norwegians. They’re still working on some of them, even in the drizzle, so they’re serious.”
“I’ll bet it’s because the Brits blew up a couple of cruisers in Trondheim last week.” Jon tapped one finger against his damp greatcoat. “Well, Commander? What do you think?”
“I’m thinking I should have dragged you off into some bushes before this started,” she growled, still scanning the ground with the binoculars. “Spike, you speak English, so you stick with Jimmy like glue. I don’t want any communication failures. Ember, go tell Stone we’re going to give this a shot. If everything goes to Tartarus, and only if we have to evacuate under fire, Ruby will drop down to the roof of the industrial building while he goes and distracts the anti-aircraft artillery. He’s to breathe and scoot, because I don’t expect Ruby to have to stick around on the roof longer than about ten seconds. After you tell him, get your tail back here and guard Team Harmony.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” The teal dragon vanished off into the darkness while Nightshade turned to the rest of the nervous batpony mares.
“Girls, go collect a good sized cloud. We’re going to want it fuzzy around the edges so it doesn’t stand out when we use it to land Team Harmony on the roof. Twilight Sparkle will use her cloudwalking spell on anypony who can’t stand on it now, and on the hostages when we retrieve them. Hopefully we can just float the whole load back up to Ruby and be gone before they even know we were here. Go.”
They went, in a flurry of silent dark wings.
“The rest of you need to stay here for a few minutes.” Nightshade took one last look through the binoculars and hoofed them back over to Twilight, who had used the time to climb onto Ruby’s broad stationary back along with her friends so they could be closer to their commander. “Jon and I are going to go down and pacify the landing zone.”
“They have sentries?”
“I could see four of them,” said Nightshade, baring her teeth slightly over thinning lips. “Two at the corners of the building and two just walking around. I could take them out by myself if I had time, but a pair of them is problematic. I’ll need you to distract one of them while I put the other one down. Quietly and alive,” she added. “I’ve got it under control.”
“And if I have to shoot the other one?” asked Jon.
“Then the jig is up, and we go home.” Nightshade shuddered. “Sentries mean there are other people around who will hear the gunshots. You shoot, they shoot, same difference. We come back to Ruby and we leave before the whole place turns into a shooting gallery, with us being the ducks.”
“Let me see that, please.” Jon’s revolver took flight, floating out of the holster and over in front of Twilight Sparkle, who scowled at it while her horn glowed brighter. The light seemed like a beacon that would bring anti-aircraft fire, but only lasted for a few seconds until she floated the revolver back over to him and slipped it back into his holster. “If you do have to use it, there won’t be any noise now,” she explained. “I used Starswirl’s… Well, it doesn’t really matter, as long as you try not to need to use it.”
“Trust me. Shooting somebody is always the last thing you want to do.” Jon checked the hold-down strap on the holster, the contents of his wet greatcoat pockets, and ran fingers through his damp hair before a complication became obvious.
“Wait a minute. How am I supposed to get down there with you? We didn’t bring the cob. Landing a cloud on top of the building when nobody is up there is one thing, but even an idiot sentry will notice a cloud dropping on top of their head.”
“Easy-peasy.” Nightshade produced a short length of black rope with loops on each end. During training, she had called it a field expedient human extraction and insertion device. The Brits had insisted on giving it a part number but her human partner had just called it the Peter Pan. It would make a user wish he was dead if they used it for an hour, but for short trips by air, it should be fine.
Jon took the length of rope and tried to remember exactly just how it was supposed to be attached to Nightshade or himself. She showed him how to stick his hands through the rope loops and give a few wraps around his wrists until he was holding onto the rope like some sort of giant garrotte, then gave him a short nod.
“Yeah, just like that. And hold on tight. Real tight. You ready?”
“Yes, but isn’t this too fast… whoa!”
Nightshade ducked her head under the loop of rope and lifted, pulling Jon out of the pony bag like an ice cube out of a tray. He was suddenly and acutely aware of the several hundred feet of empty air between him and the unyielding ground as Nightshade drifted to one side and began to glide down through the chill damp air with the rope over her shoulders and her hooves right about where his nose was suspended.
He wanted to scream. The thought of just how abruptly the mission would be cancelled and what would happen to the four pony hostages reduced it to a brief squeak, a determined swallow, and a few short breaths.
Then he opened his eyes.
“Whoa. This is beautiful.”
“Stop looking up my tail,” whispered Nightshade back. “Later.”
“No, I mean Norway in the dark, from this… Yeah, it’ll wait. Mission first,” whispered Jon.
The square building below was only visible as a vague outline in the drizzle. His recent repetitive training allowed him to identify it due to the elevator machinery room that poked out on top, which is where the stairs down were going to be. Somewhere down there were four German soldiers who were going to find out how dangerous a trained batpony guard was, and if he could not see them right now, they could not see—
The surface of the building roof was a shock to his boots, and he sagged against the exterior wall of the elevator equipment room while trying to keep his legs under him. Nightshade touched down silently a few feet away and peeked around the corner of the building at something, most likely the German sentries she had mentioned before. Even with the short duration of the trip, the rope had bitten into his wrists, so he shrugged out of the loops and rubbed them.
“They’re headed this way,” whispered Nightshade. “Distract one, and I’ll take care of the other, then come back for yours.” Then she was gone behind him, most likely to circle around the short cinder block structure. The crunching of the sentries’ boots grew closer, and Jon pulled out a pack of cigarettes because it seemed like the natural thing to do. The two soldiers were hunched in their rain slickers with dripping helmets and a rifle over one shoulder, and looked up at the sight of another human on the roof with them.
“<Hast du ein licht?>” asked Jon in his best German, shaking out a cigarette from the pack. One of the two sentries gave out a grunt and stepped forward, looking as bored as Jon was nervous while removing a lighter from his pocket. The soldier took a second cigarette as implied payment for the use of his lighter, and proceeded to light both of them before the drizzle damped them too much. “<Danke,>” added Jon as he took a brief and far too needed puff.
A surreptitious glance showed only one sentry now, which meant the second German had been abducted by Nightshade and was probably in the process of pony subdual at the moment. Any hopes he had of waiting out the time until her return with a relaxing smoke vanished when the sentry scowled at the cigarette he was smoking, then darted out a hand to grab Jon’s pack of cigarettes.
Crap! They’re Camels!
The sentry tried to unsling his rifle at the same time Jon scrambled for his pistol, a race that he barely won as the revolver bucked in his hand before the German could untangle the strap, then two rapid shots to the soldier’s center of mass just in case. True to Twilight Sparkle’s word, the only sound that came from the pistol’s discharge was a flat slapping noise of the slugs hitting the soldier in the chest, and a gurgle as he hit the ground and twitched. The silencing spell did not suppress the bright muzzle flashes, which Jon sincerely hoped would be excused as some sort of distant flicker from sheet lightning off in the distance.
For a few minutes it seemed as if he was going to get his wish. Then he could hear a voice out in the darkness ask, “<Was ist das?>”
Saying anything in return was probably more dangerous than just staying silent, so he crouched in the darkness next to the cooling corpse of the sentry. The crunching noise of military boots grew louder as another German walked in his direction, out of his direct sight in the gloomy dark even if the bulk of the elevator room structure was not blocking a direct line of sight.
Then nothing.
His frazzled nerves were nearly gone by the time Jon heard a quiet Equestrian voice from around the corner whisper, “Got these two. Don’t shoot me.”
“Jesus!” Jon peered around the corner at where Nightshade was holding the curious sentry with one foreleg around his neck, both hind legs clamped around his body, and balancing on her wingtips while the human’s twitches grew slower. “I had to shoot mine.”
“I can smell the blood,” hissed Nightshade. “Get your cuffs and the gag on this one while I grab the last one.”
One thing the hostage rescue forces had was handcuffs galore. A few months ago, some company in the US must have scratched their heads to no end as to why such a large order had been placed by a country with a negligible crime rate and no hands. He ratcheted the cuffs closed and gagged the unconscious sentry, dragging him to the side of the elevator structure so he would be out of the way before reaching around the corner and cuffing the other sentry that Nightshade had choked into unconsciousness.
“Three down and one out,” said Nightshade, drifting up to Jon with the last sentry wrapped up in her forelegs. “Tie up their legs too. I don’t want Candy and Cuspid to have to chase them.”
“You are so demandy. Like an ex-wife.” Jon got out the spool of nylon parachute cord and trussed the sentries, trying not to show how much his hands were trembling. He could not even get out his knife to cut the cord, so the three unconscious Germans wound up with their legs all tied together also.
“Here,” said Nightshade as he fumbled with the end of the cord. One of her wingtips flicked out and the thick nylon parted, allowing him to put the spool of nylon cord back into his pocket for whatever tying up he would do later. “Wingblades,” she added. “Going to check out the stairwell. Wait for me.”
“That’s—” Nightshade was gone, like a shadow in search of her Peter Pan, leaving Jon to check the knots on his captives and give the immobile corpse a nervous glance as if he were going to stand up at any moment. He checked for a pulse, just in case, and tied the legs and hands of the body together just to give himself something to do other than worry. At least his hands had quit shaking enough to cut the end off the cord with his own knife.
The flashes from the revolver had suppressed his night vision, but he could still see dim shapes on the rocky ridgeline above him, most likely the anti-aircraft guns Nightshade had mentioned. There were some low lights on the ground around the building, so there could have been other guns in the near vicinity, much as the rooftop sported its own squat and deadly gun emplacement.
Jon walked over to the sandbagged gun, which had a tarp over the barrels and the crates of ammunition to one side. It was small enough to have been carried up the stairs, which meant it was far too small to be effective on any kind of high-altitude bomber, and the odds of being able to make it work to defend their equine invasion were low indeed. At least there had not been any sign of alert Germans sounding sirens or warming up the guns on the ridge to shoot down at him.
Down… Oh, yes. Alerting Ruby and the rest of the All Amarezon Pony Assault team to hold in place.
He got out the flashlight with the red filter over the lens, put on the damp cardboard tube, and placed himself behind the small rooftop building where the light would not be seen from any alert sentries. Two slow flashes up into the dark sky were quickly returned, allowing Jon’s heart rate to slow slightly into what he feared would be a normal rhythm as long as he was in Norway. He flashed two more red blinks, then turned off the flashlight and sat it beside him while waiting.
There was enough time for him to eject the empty brass and reload the revolver before Nightshade ghosted back out of the stairwell door, giving him a hissed alert as not to test her armor against his reflexes.
“Building’s clear,” she whispered. “Thank heavens they’re doing maintenance on several of the chemical towers, so the power’s off to most the building, and there’s nopony downstairs. At least for now. The whole place stinks of ammonia, like some giant diaper.”
“Phase one is a go, right?”
“Phase one.” Nightshade dampened her lips with a quick lick and looked up at the looming shape of the dark ridgeline. “Signal them.”
- - ☾ - -
If anything, the descending cloud full of ponies was more stealthy than Jon had ever expected. It touched down on the roof like… well, a cloud. Moments later, Nightshade began leading the assault team down the staircase with the everpresent click and clatter of hooves sounding like castanets in the darkness. Jon was responsible for counting members of the assault team, and hissed quietly under his breath the designation of each group as they passed. Group One spread out on either side of the elevator machinery structure to keep watch, and the last members to come out of the cloud were Jimmy and his draconic shadow, who was holding the human’s hand.
“Spike can see in the dark,” said Jimmy in English. “Should be a great help setting the charges, sir. Did you want one of the knapsacks for your rescue mission, in case you see something that needs blowing up over there?”
It took very little thought to answer that question. “Yes, please. If I need it and don’t have it…” He slung the knapsack in question over his shoulder, trying not to think of how large an explosion he would make in the event of an accident, and how few pieces would remain. “You have enough explosive without it, right?”
“Yes, sir.” Jimmy grinned, his white teeth looking like pearls in the subdued light. “Boom Boom likes to keep a little in reserves. If there’s anything down there that takes more than a dozen bombs to blow, I’ll rendezvous with you at the second building and pick that up.”
“This facility is shut down, so the natural gas pipeline probably isn’t under pressure. Place your charges in the building anyway and catch up if we’re not back yet. One A and B,” added Jon in Equestrian, turning to the two nervous batpony mares. “We’ve got three unconscious Germans on the other side of this wall, and one… I had to shoot. Puff and Thistle.” He grabbed the two foals, who were trying to sneak down the staircase. “You two stay here and watch for anything, anything out of the ordinary and tell A and B. Four pairs of eyes and ears will be better than two, and if anything goes wrong out here, I’ll need one of the adults to come get us. And most of all, stay quiet. Away from the body.”
Both little batponies nodded and paired off with their larger counterparts, giving him one last big-eyed glance as Jon headed down the stairs by the light of his red-lensed flashlight. At the bottom of the stairs, Team Two had taken their places with the door wedged open and a flickering red light of Jimmy’s flashlight visible in the pipe-clogged building indicating that he had started the process of setting the demolition charges. Hopefully he was abiding by the plan and had not crushed the timer capsules on any of the detonator fuses yet or the next hour would run by faster than anybody wanted, and end with a bang.
In the gloom of the bottom floor, the towering steel columns and thick pipes everywhere gave Jon the sensation of sneaking through some futuristic jungle with hidden monsters and quicksand around every corner. At least there were no German soldiers or construction workers to deal with at the moment, which was a blessing. Picking his way down a corridor with clusters of construction equipment scattered around, he drew up next to the colorful group in front of the steel doors to the underground tunnel, the one bottleneck in the plan that Jon was most worried about.
“They’re not just locked,” said Twilight, who was standing in front of the doors with a look of intense concentration and a low glow around her horn. “There’s something blocking my—”
“Move,” said Ember, striding up to in front of the doors and puckering up as if she were about to kiss somedragon. A thin jet of actinic fire blazed violet from where she played her fire up the center of the doors, then they swung open with a few droplets of molten metal when she gave them an additional push. “Ponies,” she scoffed, walking forward through the wisps of smoke curling around the dark corridor.
“Your fire could have been seen, or you could have cut through a steam line or something flammable,” said Twilight Sparkle, trotting along beside the fast-moving dragon.
“Shh,” chided Nightshade about a heartbeat before Jon was about to hiss the same thing. “Stay.”
Then she glided forward into the stygian darkness of the tunnel, leaving Twilight and Ember to exchange sharp glances in the gloom of his flashlight. “Ladies,” said Jon, trying to take on the role of a peacekeeper. “The building where the ponies are held is up ahead, so the Germans must have manually barred this doors to keep the construction workers from getting into it. We don’t need an argument now, so if either of you want to go back onto the roof and wait until we’re done, go.”
It did not eliminate the impending argument between unicorn style and dragon force, but it did quiet the two until Nightshade glided out of the gloom.
“Double doors at the end of the hallway, locked. Didn’t hear anything on the other side, but that’s not a certainty. I need you and you—” she pointed at Twilight and Jon in turn “—to come with me, quietly open the doors, and deal with any guards.”
Jon checked the cylinder on the pistol to make sure he had gotten the expended rounds replaced, then followed Twilight up the corridor by the reddish glow of her horn. The steel doors at the end had a pair of sliding latches which had been drawn back, most likely the same latching mechanism which had caused the mission to delay a few minutes ago.
This time, Twilight barely needed to light up her horn before the locks gave a quiet click. Jon eased the doors open, peered through the gap at the empty room beyond, and gave a short nod. It could have been a basement from anywhere in Washington D.C., with an open cage elevator, a few underwatt light bulbs making a valiant attempt at dispelling the gloom, and featureless grey doors scattered along the grey painted concrete corridors.
“Looks like an elevator lobby, couple of basement rooms, and a staircase going up.”
“Stinks like humans,” whispered Ember from just under Jon’s elbow, which nearly made him jump out of his boots. “Got bored back there,” she explained. “All I can smell up here is weapon oil and humans all over the place.”
“Any unicorns?” he asked. “Since you’re here, after all.”
“They’re up above us,” said Twilight Sparkle, who had her horn lit again. “The note said an upper floor.”
Nightshade shook her head. “Ember, sniff out those doors, just in case. Try not to be seen if anybody looks down the elevator shaft.”
“Now I’m a dog,” grumbled the dragon. She slipped into the illuminated lobby, gave each of the steel doors a brief sniff, then returned while shaking her head. “There’s some older pony scent on that back door, but I can only smell one human in there now, as well as ozone and some really odd chemicals.”
“Then up the fire stairs it is,” said Jon. “Hopefully they segregated the ponies from the soldiers.”
- - ☾ - -
Leaving two batponies standing behind the tunnel doors was the hardest thing Jon had ever done, but if a German came down the elevator to use one of the rooms, having a couple of dark pegasi just lounging around the lobby would have been a dead giveaway. He left the last pair of batponies at the bottom of the stairwell just in case there was some sort of a tussle, because having four ponies swarming a lone sentry would be much quieter than one or two, and now he was feeling awfully vulnerable following the diminished line of ponies upstairs. There were only six colorful ponies now, not counting Nightshade leading the whole herd and himself bringing up the rear.
The quiet batpony stopped at the door, lifted her head up to peer through the tiny glass window, then flattened back down against the staircase landing. She whispered something to Applejack, who nodded and started up the stairs, followed one at a time by the rest of Twilight’s friends, until Jon reached her.
“Stay down,” she hissed into his ear. “There’s a couple of Germans in the hallway. If the anti-aircraft units are bivouacking in the offices here, they’ll stay to the lower floors first. I sent Twilight’s friends up to the top floor, and we’ll work our way down.”
Jon nodded and slipped a wooden wedge into the bottom of the door frame before following. He noticed out of the corner of his eyes as he passed the door that the locking mechanism was glowing just the faintest shade of violet. It was redundant, but made him feel a little more confident that some soldier was not going to slip into the stairwell for a smoke behind them, although he still stayed as quiet as possible while climbing. The second floor corridor behind the stairwell door was dark, but Nightshade took only a short peek through the door’s tiny window before flattening against the stairwell floor and continuing to climb.
Then they reached the third and final floor.
“Lights are on, but I don’t see anybody,” whispered Nightshade, peering through the tiny window in the fire door. “We don’t have time for me to search the whole place by myself, so spread out and stay quiet.”
“That means you too, Rainbow,” whispered Applejack while all of them slipped through the open door. Jon put another wedge down to make sure it would not close and lock behind them, then moved to where the ponies had gathered into a circle.
Ember opened her mouth to say something, but Fluttershy got there first. “Shh,” she chided. Somehow during the short trip she had picked up two rats and several mice, which she placed down on the ground and watched as they began scurrying down the corridors. Behind them, the slinking ponies lifted and put down their hooves with great care as not to make any more noise than Jon with his boots. Even the slightest noise echoed in the empty corridors, from the scrape of a hoof across tile to the creaking of doors being opened to check what was behind them.
It was Applejack who found the hostages first, or at least an indication of where they were. She stopped at the corner of a corridor and waited, collecting other ponies as they too noticed her immobile stance. Moving slowly, Jon slipped past the other ponies, took a quick peek out into the corridor, and slipped back.
“One guard,” he mouthed to Nightshade, then pointed to her.
Nightshade took a brief peek around the corner too, shook her head, then held her forehooves a distance apart, indicating she would be unable to get close before the guard might be able to fire his weapon. To be honest, Jon had to agree. The German was holding his weapon in an entirely too alert fashion for an ordinary guard at midnight in a peaceful building. Frankly, Jon would have much preferred him to be sleeping in a corner.
Rainbow Dash promptly stuck up a hoof and waved it like a student who desperately needed to use the bathroom. Jon ignored her and pulled out his revolver, slipping up to the corner and bracing himself for—
Rainbow made a face, then vanished almost faster than the eye could see, followed by the muffled sound of a body hitting the ground. When the group of ponies came around the corner, Rainbow Dash was sitting proudly on the unconscious green-clad guard, looking much like a smug cat who had just caught a canary.
“See,” she declared, only to have all the ponies, one human, and one dragon all silently shush her. The resulting floppy-eared droop was too much for Jon to take, and he patted her gently on the head before getting another set of handcuffs out of their cardboard box. A few seconds later when the guard had been cuffed, the submachine gun moved well out of reach, and Jon’s hammering heartbeat had calmed down to something a little more reasonable, he added a quick ear-scratch as a reward.
“Anything?” Jon mouthed to Nightshade, who had one fuzzy ear up against the now-unguarded door. A bubbling scream from the inside of the room cut off any answer, and things promptly happened fast.