//------------------------------// // 2014 project - Sons and Girls of the Badlands - 2 v2 // Story: RoMS' Extravaganza // by RoMS //------------------------------// Who Would Remember This Story? [ α Ω α ] No one ever disliked that kind of night, peaceful and devoid of life – the perfect bride of the weary thieves. I was cold, scratching my nose until I stained my creamy fur with a sneeze. The wind blew over our faces while my friends and I shared amused grins. We were standing in silence in front of a massive marble building. In its ebony door was etched the two sisters’ insignia: a finely merged sun and moon, leafed with gold and silver. I really struggled not to scrap the precious metals of it. I had a bigger and more worrying concern. Two royal guards lay in front of us, left unconscious after Kril’s swift strike. The changeling mare cracked a giggle as she pranced over her victims, stretching her exoskeleton. Her translucent wings buzzed with satisfaction and she winked at me with her bluish-glowing eyes. I gave her a toothy smile before a deeper voice vented out right next to us. “The bodies? What’re we going to do with them?” Macahauilt berated as he pointed his finger at the passed-out guards. “Hush,” Kril and I growled under our breath, a hoof or paw against our lips. We were supposed to keep a low profile and the wide stares Maca earned from us reminded him about that. We were counting time. “It’s not like that they’re not going to wake up at some point,” Maca hissed at the changeling, switching to an ushered whisper. “They’re going to fuss all around when they get back up. Leaving them just… here… it’s numbskulled, Kril.” Disgruntled, Maca dragged the two guards closer to each other. He was definitely hard to spot with his dark blue coat. In the dead of the night, only the faint moonlight that poured on the two yellow markings that travelled along his back did gave his position away. It was hard to forget he was akin to the ahuizotls, great scoundrels that roamed the lands beyond the Bad Lands. Maca was still bigger than anypony. At least his size had him looked less of a chimera in a room. “By jove,” Maca growled, breaking the silence. Our little dramaqueen was definitely not the sneakiest though. We should have had his mouth snitched before coming up here. “Let us think,” I bashed back. The ahuizolth closed his eyelids to a knife’s width and sneered at me, showing off his sharp fangs. “I know how to deal with them,” Kril giggled with her shrilling voice, rubbing her holed hooves together before she prodded the nearest guard’s flank. “Let’s do a barbeque.” Dagger-throwing glares answered her call. “What…?” she defended, throwing her hooves theatrically over her cocked up head. “I’m. Just. Joking.” Maca shook his head and looked at me with his glimmering yellow eyes. “Can’t you dig a hole and dump those two down the bottom?” he asked me. I looked at my paws and stretching the claws out. As a diamond dog, it would have been easier done that said. I may have lived up to the stereotype of dog dirtiness but I did wish I could outlive the one saying we were blood-thirsty ignorant… “I’m not a savage, Maca,” I slurred. “I ain’t burying ponies alive.” “Why are you doing here?” a female voice that was definitely not Kril’s called out with anger. We jumped and swerved. Kril instantly reached out for the knife sheathed under her green belly. Maca had already pulled a small baton out of his strapped bag and I nearly grabbed the wooden box settled on my back. My fellow box had met some bumpy heads and earned dents along the way. One mare was standing in the ominous shadows cast by the columns circling the building and holding up its imposing porch. We summoned the ancient martial style of the scoundrel stance, ready to run away like butt-clenched, fearful chickens. “Come on. It’s me, idiots,” the mare hissed after a short pause. A light blue unicorn slipped out of the darkness. Her slightly glittering, purple cape sporting shiny yellow and silvery stars waved behind her as she closed in. In the dim light of the starry night, she seemed to float all the way up to us. As the cape gave a final flap, I caught a sight of her saddlebags. The pony had especially emptied them and it made me smile. “Trixie! Don’t do that ever again!” Kril gargled before she tensed and growled severely. “You were supposed to keep an eye on the patrols.” “You’re sitting butts,” Trixie warned. “The patrol was nowhere around… I could see you even from my spot. What were you at…?” She finally looked down at the two knocked-out royal guards and stopped cold. She pointed her hoof at them in silence and opened her mouth. No word slipped out. Instead she sighed and buried her face in her hoof. “Luna…” she muttered as small shivers crawled down her spine. “Does the Great and Powerful Trixie have an idea on how to deal with those two?” Kril teased with a rightly placed smirk. Trixie’s backside slopped in a thump as her bottom hit the ground. With a hoof on her chest, she breathed in and out the slowest she could. It was her first time after all. “I shouldn’t have come…” she complained, breaking her whisper. “We saved your ass back in the Badlands,” Maca brought forth. “You owe us one on that heist.” The mare rolled her eyes, pouted, and slumped her head in defeat. “Hush!” Maca commanded as he pulled his pocket watch. “There is a patrol about every ten minutes around the building. The next one is set to come very soon. Remember the plan? Stick to the plan.” I nodded silently and looked back at the two unconscious guards. We still didn’t know how to deal with them. “I…” I started. “I have an idea,” Kril cut me off. “Help me out.” Without a word, we dragged the two ponies away from the building entrance and left them beneath a nearby boutique that had been built on short stilts. Canterlot had such weird architectures sometimes. Who would build a house on stilts… on a mountain!? After Kril had stripped the guards off their armours, she swiftly slid her hoof in Maca’s backpack and took one of his ropes. “Make yourself at home,” he sneered. She licked her black lips and gave him a small wink. Maca grunted and sat, turning his back to her while his hand-tail gave her the middle finger. After she had worked on the first stallion, tying him to one of the wooden piles, Kril drifted her attention on the second guard. She stared at the remains of the rope with narrowed eyes. A short moment passed by before a wicked grin drew on her face. Rummaging through her own saddlebag with a chuckle, she pulled out one single bottle. It was Whiskey, and not a no-name brand. “I’m sorry,” Kril apologised with deep religious respect as she hugged the bottle. “May you find peace once your tasty life is drained outta ya.” With a pop, Kril opened the bottle and spilled half of its content over the first guard. She then dragged the second guard over his strapped comrade. She finally spared what remained in the bottle over him. Maca gave a short laugh at the full sight and shook his head disapprovingly. Kril was still unhappy with her misdeed. The playful changeling looked at Trixie with a haughty, playful look. The wink that followed forced a grimace on Trixie’s face. The unicorn prudely looked away. Kril’s wide and smug grin grew wider as she took the empty bottle and stuck it up in the untied stallion’s manly flower. With such a job done, it was really hard not to laugh. Meanwhile, one guard patrol had finally reached the street corner and started walking down the boulevard. Each scanning their surroundings with their torches, they walked past the set of stairs on top of which we had taken out the two guards. They never caught up on their disappearance. Lucky as we were, we hid until they vanished by the next corner. I looked back at the building, a massive five-storey high marble construction which colonnades stretched out all around it. It was that kind of classical era type of building I’d say, all majestic and pompous and probably a thousand years old. The tympanum, decorated with warmongering sculptures, sported three massive words: Equestria Central Bank. Reading those words somehow let me with the sour taste we had gotten far too ballsy. “Sit on a dragon’s log!” Kril growled through her gritted fangs. “Uh?” Maca whispered. Kril had been silently picking out any items the guards had in their armours and equipment. Anger seeped out of her. “The key,” she rumbled. “They didn’t have it.” “The key…?” I began, “… of the front door?” I shot a look back at the bank’s carved, ebony door. Fuck. “So,” Trixie initiated, febrile, “are we still going with plan A?” “No,” Maca broke in the conversation. “We’re going to take another way. I hope Dire Teeth, our dear leader, has an idea hanging around the back of his head.” At the mention of my name, his eyes rolled back to me with a long deadpan. I pinched my lips, my ears hung low, and I sheepishly smiled. “Sorry,” I mouthed. “What do we do, now?” Trixie breathed. “I think we should bail out.” “Calm down first,” Kril brought out with a grunt, putting a hoof on the mare’s shaking lips. The changeling paused and looked at the stars that hung in the sky. “We missed the first opening,” Kril finally opened. “We don’t have the key. We could hack our way through even though Teeth is as noisy as Trixie is egomaniac.” Trixie and I tried to set the big-mouthed changeling on fire with our glares. “I don’t want to go through the sewers,” Trixie whined after a long silence. Kril shook her head, staring unfocused at the ground. “No, we still need to clear the building in full before trying to hijack the vault,” the changeling mentioned just before her glowing eyes rose and locked on Maca and I. “I hope you like climbing.” We both grimaced. “Clench yo butts, kids,” Kril said as she pointed at the bank’s roof. “We’re going for a ride.” With a smile, Kril gave us a small slap on the back of our whiny heads. We. Hated. Climbing. At least, I had an excuse. I was a sand dog! And even though I was an educated one, I belonged to the underground. Walking on the surface still had me on edge. How could ponies or anybody walk up around there without a ceiling above their head? What if… what if suddenly we all started falling upward? Damn physics scare! “Hey?” Kril called me out of my reverie with a second slap behind my head. Climbing would have been made easier if I hadn’t had to carry Trixie on my back. Her wiggling ass was a danger to my balance. With my claws deeply buried in the stone, we soon stood on the bank roof. “Damn you’re heavy, Trixie,” I panted, my head between my legs. Trixie huffed and pouted away, her chin pointing at the starry sky. “So?” I growled between two breaths as I looked at Kril. “Why did you take us up there?” “You’ve got pretty sharp claws, don’t you?” she asked me with a smirk. I showed up my middle claw to join proof to the word. She nodded with that same stupid grin cast on her face. I didn’t like where it was going. “Come with me,” Kril ordered. As we followed, my glare wandered across Canterlot’s skyline. We had a good view on the city from our venture point. The view on the castle was breath-taking and though it was very late at night, some rooms were still lit up. The four of us were hoodlums, outcasts… sometimes outlaws. There was no way we could understand the luxury that was lying up there. I sighed heavily. This whole city reminded me that we lived out of the derelicts of the society. However, this all would end that day I had thought. We had a plan and even if it wasn’t perfect, before the sun would rise, we would be rich. “If I remember the map we stole,” Kril thought out loud, “Here. Dig a hole here.” Kril lifted one of the roof tile, unveiling the wood plank that lay below. With the tip of her hoof, she drew a small circle on it. “Saw it off,” Kril ordered. With my left claw buried in the wood so that the sawed-off part wouldn’t fall and alert anypony below, I unsteadily began to cut it out with my other paw. It was slightly noisy but by slowing down I could make it nearly unnoticed. Let’s just hope there hadn’t been anypony below. After a long stream of sweat spent on holing up the roof, I finally saw light below. We were right above a sharply lit corridor. Its floor was littered with crimson carpet and the walls were decorated with paintings enclosed in massive golden frames. “Give me some space,” Maca asked. Taking a pocket mirror out of his own bag, Maca slipped it in the opening, holding it with his tail like only ahuizolts could do. “There is nobody down here,” he concluded after looking at the reflection. “Fine,” Kril said. “Do you see a window? I don’t want us to cut out a bigger hole in the roof. That’s a give-away.” “Yep,” Maca replied. “But it’s too small for Dire’s fat ass.” “Hey!” I boomed. Trixie’s eyes widened as clanging noises broke out on the streets below. “Somepony’s been roof-walking again!” a voice called out. “Don’t let that Mare-Do-Well fly away once again!” “Mare-Do-Well?” Kril wondered with a cocked-up eyebrow. “Hurry up!” Trixie panicked, kicking me in the flank. I resumed cutting out the roof, breaking the tiles that barred us access one after the other. I finally broke open a hole of Trixie’s size who jumped in and crashed on the carpet below. Kril followed and landed right on the unicorn’s comfy rear with a giggle. “Sorry,” Kril apologized as she dragged a distraught Trixie away from the landing position. Meanwhile, Maca and I worked relentlessly to get a hole large enough for both of us. “What are you doing!?” a new voice barked just in front of us. Slowly, we both looked up and our eyes met the piercing glare of a pegasi stallion. The lad wore the tight Wonderbolt uniform. As we stared in silence at each other, he slowly reared up on his two backlegs and lifted his hooves above his head. Maca and I gulped. Kril jumped from beneath. Propelled by her buzzing wings, she hit the stallion right between the legs. Maca and I cringed and gargled at the sight. The stallion didn’t even gasp. His eyes bulged and rolled over as he gagged, a bit of frothing drooling from his hung-open mouth. The pegasus slumped over and fell through the hole. His face hit the carpet first in a small thump. Hovering with just her head hanging through the hole, Kril looked at us with a sickening and toothy smile. As we stepped back from her, she smirked and with a little gesture of her head motioned us to come down. “What are we going to do with the hole?” Trixie muttered. “It’s not like the wonderbolts aren’t going to notice it or…” Trixie looked at the febrile and passed-out stallion slumped on the ground with a grimace. Kril was already tying him up, putting a bit of carpet in his mouth to keep him put. “Or a missing comrade…” “I may have an idea,” Maca retorted. The corridor was lit with a long series of candles, throwing everything into a stark fanciness. Maca rushed around and left behind nothing but fuming, put out wicks. Soon we were drowning in darkness. I guessed that without lights pouring through, a hole was less visible. “Well,” Kril smirked, her eyes glowing like lamps, “I don’t know if you come with in-built night vision but I do.” “I do too,” Maca added. Trixie and l looked at each other’s general direction. At least I could see her outlines. Trixie however… that was another challenge. “Eeh… guys,” I called out. I pointed my claw at Trixie who had clamped up on my leg. Kril flew up to us. “So mu pupils, hold your hooves and do not let go. Would be a shame to lose you up on the way down to wealth and glory,” she mused. I smiled, hearing Trixie sticking her tongue out at the changeling. “Creep,” the unicorn whispered. The bank was nearly empty with only a few guards to roam its corridors. One guard had been sleeping on duty. A second one was too busy humping the girlfriend he’d sneaked in the place. The third one wasn’t even a guard, just a simple accountant from an obscure treasury team, far too focused on closing his fiscal year to hear us walking around him on the creaky parquet. All in all, this bank was a big cheese-holed pile of gold. Let us blame equine pacifism. They had never known the wickedness of the Badlands. At one point though, Maca had to choke out cold one guard. The unlucky stallion had been doing his own stuff in the toilets. He had unfortunately caught us red-pawed while we were putting out the nearby candles. His face when he had opened the toilet door had been a mix of panic, surprise, and unconsciousness... Maca’s large hands had done their work quicker than I would have though. We left the guard in a fancy wooden locker. Though the bank had a big name on the front porch, we had expected it to be an easy target. It had been two hundred years since the last time somepony tried such a cocky stick-up. We were sure to break the tradition that very night. “Hey, guys!” Kril called as we closed by corner. “Look at the beauty.” Kril had found a massive mirror. Bolted to the wall on our left, it stretched all the way up to the next corner where a sign mentioned one among many staircases. If changelings were mostly brainless drones, I can testify before a court and under an oath that the one remaining percent of those mind-gifted insects do make it up in terms of ego. I buried my head in my head, trying to avoid watching Kril waving her belly in front of the mirror. “I’m such a shame,” she smirked at me, “Aren’t I, sweetie puppy?” “You’re a walking embarrassment,” I retorted. “Because I’m worth it,” the changeling cackled, throwing her messy, pitch-black and dark turquoise mane behind her horn and ears. As I stood in the middle of the hallway, I let Trixie and Maca pass by me. The Unicorn had finally shaken off the quirks and shivers. She wasn’t an outlaw like us for sure. Soon enough she will be one, though. Trixie’s cape hid the major part of her leather saddlebags. One bump in the fabric acknowledged she still had her hat neatly folded in there. Since she had nicked it up in the Badlands where we’d found her, she had grown very protective of it. I still wondered why she kept that cape, with all those flashy stars and all. It wasn’t a good outfit for a yet-to-be good burglar. I laughed to myself… As if Kril, Maca, and I had ever been good at that game. At least, I hoped that would change that very night. Maca called me out of my reverie and motioned to me to move forward. With his baton slowly clicking against his shoulder bag as only background noise, I looked at the mirror. I met my own yellow eyes, small between my large and furry eyebrows. My white fur contrasted badly with the crimson walls and carpet and my relatively small and anaemic build for a sand dog gave me a ghostly look. Maybe could I have scared ponies away for fun, who knew? I just wore a ripped apart linen short and my only possession was my loyal long and thin wooden box, strapped to my back like a backpack. I smiled; this sole item of mine had seen a good load of travel. Twenty years it had belonged to me. “You’re alright, Teeth?” Trixie asked, making me jump. “Yeah,” I lied. “Just checking on my health.” Sticking a claw in my mouth, I stretched my cheek to see the bottom of my dentition. No tooth decay. Never had one anyway. “Come on, then,” Trixie hesitated. “The stairs goes down to the hall. There’s nobody in sight. The vault is down in the basement.” I nodded and followed. The basement was deprived of all the fanciness we had experienced above. Shaped in a long and large alleyway, the bland, white concrete alleyway was slowly flacking its paint away. We weren’t assessing the design though. We were focused on the massive, twenty-ton worth of steel, round-shaped door that stood at the basement’s end. The cherry on the cake? There was just one guard standing behind a metallic counter next to the vault. Unfortunately, he saw us before we did. “You shall not pass,” he shouted shakily, lowering and pointing his spear in our direction. “Yeah, sure,” Kril mocked out loud. The guard was pinned between the bank’s vault and our ragtag group. He had absolutely no way out. Giving way to panic, he dove and reached out to something under his metal desk. Kril triggered her wings and blasted forward. She slammed into the guard who fell short of air. Both hit the wall and sent specks of paint flying aloft. A small brawl followed as we ran to reach her but the fight was already over. Standing above the knocked-out guard, Kril shot a glare back at under the counter, screamed in rage, and decapitated the desktop with a swing of her right hindleg. Though her leg’s exoskeleton did crack, she didn’t flinch. She just stared with a hellfire-spewing hatred at a series of cables that had been linked to a red button. “Classic,” Maca smirked. “What do you mean?” Trixie urged. “How long?!” Maca asked Kril, leaving Trixie unanswered. “Five minutes at most!” Kril barked. “Teeth, Maca? Get over with the door.” We ran and clung up to the metal wheel that sat in the middle of the vault’s thick door. Kril engulfed herself in bright turquoise flames and melted away into one large male griffon. Trixie had rushed towards the entrance of the vault antechamber and positioned herself to spy for any sign of activity. With beads of sweat rolling down our brows, we gave to the wheel up to seven turns until a breath of slightly fool air washed over our faces. Grunting, we dragged the vault’s door aside on its rusty and creaking hinges. When the opening had been made large enough to let Maca in, we ushered forward. “Trixie!” Kril called out. “Nopony yet,” we heard back. I finally got a full view of the vault’s inside and I dropped on my haunches. The hall was empty. “Fuck…” Maca said. There was no gold nor silver. Nothing. Only rows and rows of drawers covering the walls were there to greet us. I felt played, cheated… defeated. In the background another vault door stood, nearly mocking at us. “It wasn’t on the blueprint,” Kril growled, boiling with anger. This time there was no wheel that would have let pass. Only a single hole inside an esoteric circle had been etched in the metal. “A horn lock,” Maca whispered. “Trixie! Come back here!” Trixie slipped in the vault room, trembling terribly from stress and fear. Kril flew out above her head, blowing her in her dishevelled light blue mane. Trixie’s eyes widened as she looked over the magical lock. “I’ve never touched one,” she muttered. “I… I can’t!” “Try anyway,” Maca called. While they berated each other as Trixie hastily slipped her horn in the lock, I took a closer look to the drawers that completely surrounded us. The occupied every space available, from floor to ceiling. Each had a name written on a sticker and, aside from a very few ones, all their locks had dust on them. I looked over the recently used drawers and smiled. I praised the ponies who had designed such weak locks. I drew a claw out and easily slid it in the nearest lock. Pressuring the inside mechanism, I pressed my other paw against the wall pulled as forcefully as I could. I heard a mechanic screech. Something fell and the drawer popped open, unveiling a block of paper sheets. “Damn it,” Maca growled as he looked above my shoulder. “Ain’t no gold in here.” I took a few sheets out and read flew through their content. Those were companies’ records, net income statement, balance sheets, cash flow statements. There were even a few unaudited minutes. I could have traded those to greedy insider-traders in Manehatten for sure; so sad I weren’t there at the moment. One paper, twice folded and sealed with a small red wax patch attracted my attention. “Do you know what this is?” I laughed as my grin grew on my face. “Ain’t no gold,” Maca complained. “All gold doesn’t shine, Maca” I answered, scrubbing my furry chin. “This is a promissory note.” Maca looked at me with a dumbfounded look. I shook my head and sighed. “It’s a note payable. Companies use them to pay other business partners,” I said with a lick on my lips. “Those notes are blanks.” The best? There were more of them inside the drawer. The pony called Filthy Rich was going to have a bad wake-up call from his bank in one or two days. I could guarantee that. “We’re so fucking rich,” I cackled. “I hear noises!” Kril shouted outside the vault. “A minute!” I screamed back before I turned to face Trixie and Maca. “Take everything you can.” I started shredding drawers open at random. We would sort the booty later. As Maca was shoving paper en masse in his backpack, not even caring about the integrity of his snatch. Trixie on the other paw was searching for known names so that I was not wasting time opening empty and anonymous drawers. “Open that one, this one I think and…” She paused with a frown on her face. “This one.” Many drawers contained wills and other useless documents that held no face value for us. Sometimes we befell on one or two old books and even one drawer had stored a sword. Trixie slipped as much things as possible in her bag with her telekinesis and she looked already weighted down. The minute passed and Kril cried out for help. Maca reached out for something in his bag as I rushed outside. Trixie grabbed one last thing that weighted on her right side and scrambled in our trail. Kril was facing five royal guards now pointing their spears at us. “Surrender now, you criminal…” Kril jumped and struck, leaving no time for the captain to finish his sentence. The hit brought him down and his head bashed against the tiled floor. His helmet had not already ricocheted that mayhem broke loose. Kril shrieked when a guard thrust his spear in one of her hoove-holes. Swung around like a flag, Kril crashed on the ground as the guard brought his weapon down. Maca swept his tail around and smacked down the spearpony before he stepped over the spear head and breaking it off. With two guards down, the three other stepped back, at least until the only unicorn lit up his horn and shrouded Maca in a restrictive blue grasp. He fought back only to make the magical vice tighten. It last until I took my wooden box off my back and smashed it in the guard face. The wood got a new dent, his jaw got worse. It left two guards up. “D-drop your weapons,” one blared at us. Kril zipped over them, propelled by her wings and dove. The guards, rushed aside and her hoof struck the ground, cracking the thin marble tile open. Kril cried out and fell on the ground with a sludgy green smudge drooping out of a cracked open hoof. With Kril’s scream of pain echoing in the basement, I closed my eyes as her wails were like dagger jab to my ears. Maca bounced and swept his tail under the two guards’ legs, sending them to scramble down. The ahuizotl scrammed over them and bashed their heads together like coconuts. I could nearly see the stars in their eyes. “Trixie,” I urged, holding my ears. “Help her.” Kril’s wails turned into grunts as she curled up in a ball, holding her broken hoof. Trixie rushed to her and grimaced at the cracked limb. “I… I’ve never treated someling,” she apologised. “I’ve never treated anypony!” “It’s easy,” Maca explained, rushing up to her. “Changelings heal fast but you have to make sure the exo’ is back where it is and is not slicing in the flesh.” Kril threw some death threats at the two improvised healers. She screamed louder when Maca resettled an exoskeleton plaque out of her green and gooish meat. “Guys,” I called. “Sit on Chrysalis’ horn and twist!” Kril howled. As Trixie hauled the panting changeling, they turned and joined my stand-off with a dozen of guards. Staring at us, they smirked, seeing that we had definitely not breached in the second vault. “Sad thing,” the captain snarled. “Skanks like you should stay out of the upper city.” “Well, I’m sure there is still some place for your clenched up butts,” Kril growled. “Ponies do like it tight.” The captain narrowed his eyes and huffed. The eleven soldiers of his squad took a step forward and lowered their spears. “Surrender now and no harm will be done unto you,” he proposed. “Why don’t you…” Krill tried to up the ante before I held a paw against her mouth. “I’m sure we can get to a deal. There is no reason to blow smoke between all of us,” I said, looking down at Trixie with over-the-top widened eyes. “Don’t you think?” Trixie didn’t answer, she simply stared at me with her mouth slightly open. “You know Trixie, this conversation would end pretty soon if we were to get… some smoke…” The mare’s eyes turned to pinprick and she glanced a second at the captain. The armoured pony suddenly got the hint. “Stop them!” he ordered. Pushing Kril over Maca’s shoulder, Trixie’s horn glowed bright. Engulfed in a blinding aura, Trixie reared up, stopping the unassured guards in their track. “Bow before the Great and Powerful Trixie!” she emphased, rolling her tongue in delight. “Bow!” She brought her hooves down and struck the floor. The basement vanished in a thick, grey, and irritating cloud. “Onward,” I shouted over the dim. I grabbed Trixie’s hoof and hearing Maca’s feet drumming behind me, I pushed over three guards and forced my way up to the outside. Coughs and shouts echoing in my back, I ran until cleaner air brushed over my face. “Eh, sir?” somepony said. I had been holding a guard’s hoof. We looked at each other for a split second until I buried my fist in his face and sent him whining on the ground.