//------------------------------// // This Is Our Quarrel // Story: The Olden World // by Czar_Yoshi //------------------------------// "Your Majesty. We have arrived." The pegasi bowed low. The majestic mare turned her head to the northeast, staring at the night sky. "What is the status on the distress signal?" A pegasus whose armor had been exchanged for a complicated box of meters and antennae bowed low. "Their codes are changing in compliance with the actively manned protocol. Someone in the garrison must be still alive." "The chariot is ready." The team of stallions harnessed to the golden construct turned about, kneeling. "We fly at your command." Gunther pulled back into the grass, far enough that he could whisper safely. "Princess Celestia," he breathed. "Looks like the big-shots are finally responding to that distress signal we picked up two weeks ago." Red gritted his teeth and grinned. "I say we wait until she's gone and sabotage the train." Slipstream winced hard. "Let's not make enemies with someone as powerful as that?" Blue shook his head. "Strictly speaking, they made enemies with us first." "Quiet, all of you!" Gunther hissed. "You two aren't with them, right?" Gerardo and Slipstream shared a look. "Give me the thing you've been using to communicate with your friends." Gunther held out an urgent talon. "Red, interference." Red grinned viciously and disappeared. Gerardo squinted. "Why, exactly?" "Shut up and comply," Gunther whispered, beckoning with his talon. "Or warn your friends yourself. Unless you want to tell me it's a coincidence your friends are stranded in this particular part of the world two weeks after a distress signal that started two weeks ago. The only place you could be from is the north, and if you broke through their fort, a friendship with them won't be one money can buy." Gerardo pulled out the sound stone, reaching inside the flash club assembly and switching its improvised power device on. "It may take a while for them to reply..." "Well, hey," Neon Nova's voice called back through the stone. "What's the update? Everything's working smooth as can-" His voice was just slightly too loud. "What's over there!?" a pegasus guard called, pointing a spear. "Did you hear something?" "Scatter!" Gunther hissed, and the griffons expertly broke apart, Violet grabbing Slipstream as every one of them soared low to the ground in different directions on silent wings. Gunther grabbed Gerardo and raced, hiding the sound stone in a pocket to muffle any sound. Seconds later, the air where they had been hiding shimmered. Princess Celestia stared at it, horn aglow, projecting a cone of heat designed to suppress and flush out. It lasted for several seconds, long enough for the grass to curl and emit wisps of smoke. "Show yourselves," she declared once it was over. Gerardo and Gunther landed behind another hill, faint muffled questions coming from the stone in Gunther's pocket. "Maybe it was a false alarm?" a guard suggested from over the hill. "There are no false alarms in these hills," Celestia replied. "Especially not with an active distress signal coming from the border. I suspect this is the work of the Forest King and his allies." "Establish a perimeter and fly in formation," another guard barked. "And protect the train. If this is an ambush, we need to stay moving!" "Maybe they turned it on by accident?" Felicity's muffled voice drifted from Gunther's suit. Celestia's head slowly rotated, her ears alert. "Show yourselves!" she repeated. Suddenly, a hilltop across from them burst into flames. "Ambush!" The guards reacted with instant coordination, forming a defensive wedge between Celestia and the flames. Celestia frowned, her horn aglow, and the flames seemed to bend toward her before vanishing entirely, their heat siphoned by the princess of the sun. Grass atop two more hills rustled. With a blink of teleportation, Celestia appeared in the chariot. "Take to the skies where they cannot hide," she ordered, horn still aglow. Gunther slid down the hill, holding the sound stone low to muffle any replies. "Hey," he hissed into it. "Wherever your camp is, you have minutes to make it look abandoned from the air. You've got soldiers in the skies, and they aren't in a mood to trust anything suspicious. Now keep quiet and don't reply, because I don't know how to turn this thing off!" Gerardo reached a talon. "Here. Let me-" A rush of air blasted overhead, Princess Celestia's chariot taking off directly over them. Gunther backflipped before Gerardo could reach him, grabbing onto the axel and pumping his wings to reduce the shock of his impact as he pressed against the bottom. In barely a second, he was gone. Celestia was both headed and tailed by guards, and one of the ones after her looked down. "Hey!" The guard pointed his spear at Gerardo. "There's a griffon-!" "SCRAWWWWW!" A bolt of flame arced through the night, cannoning up from an adjacent hill and singing the pegasus's feathers. With wings of lightning, Red soared down the valley, grabbing Gerardo in his free talon as the hill he had sniped from exploded in a swirling column of sunfire. His other talon clutched his axe, the nozzle on the tip smoking. Gerardo clung on, the image of the burning hill stamped into his mind, not about to resist running from anything that could cause that. Starlight, Harshwater, Felicity, Howe and Neon Nova all stared at the sound stone, the faint sound of rushing wind carrying through. "Utmost silence," Felicity breathed, her mane styled fancifully, clad in the regalia of the Forest King. The five stood on Starlight's well-mowed hill adjacent to the shipwreck, their plans for exploiting the griffons completely upended. "Whoever that was, we oughtn't give them away." "If only we knew what to expect," Howe muttered. "Our home base will be laying low from griffon mafiosos, but is there some other manner of miscreant he meant to make us more wary of?" "I am going to warn them." Harshwater stood up. "Out of all of us, I'm the fastest." She spread her wings and jumped... and Starlight jumped too, grabbing her hind legs as she took off. "Not without me!" Starlight growled. "If there's danger of an attack, I'm coming too!" Harshwater didn't waste energy fighting her. As the two soared away, Felicity opened her mouth to call out... but held her silence, not wanting to shout around the sound stone. Whatever conversation ensued was rapidly left behind as Harshwater pumped her wings, making record time across the distance to the Immortal Dream. After two minutes of frantic flight, the scattered griffons rendezvoused. Violet still had Slipstream, and Gerardo panted as he touched the ground, his host depositing him roughly. "Our fearless leader is last to return?" Blue quirked an eyebrow. "The idiot stowed away." Red shook his head. "Hogging all the action for himself." "Sooo what do we do now?" Chartreuse rolled her shoulders. "Call me a scaredy-cat, but fighting an immortal sun alicorn is just a little out of my league." Slipstream folded her ears. "Why are they enemies, again?" "It's personal." Violet dismissed her with a wave of a talon. Gerardo cleared his throat. "Would it be a problem if we'd prefer the Equestrians as our friends?" "Not if you have a plan to do that, perhaps," Blue haughtily replied. "But if you came from the west, you'd already be familiar with them, and if you're from the south? Hah. You'd never have come this way if Equestria is your target." "And if you messed up their fort at the border..." Chartreuse gritted her beak, drawing a talon threateningly across her throat. Then she broke into a wide grin. "Then you'll be our best friends forever! But not theirs. Just ours." "So what's our next move?" Red growled, ignoring Slipstream and Gerardo. "Pack it in and go home? Messing with them won't be easy while they have their princess on their side." Gerardo held his silence, the past few minutes having transformed the abandoned food delivery from his foremost priority to the least of his worries.