//------------------------------//
// Fieldwork 
// Story: Griffon The Brush-Off - Extended Cut 
// by AdmiralSakai 
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After his outburst in the study, Twilight was initially worried that Goldstone’s staff would refuse to show her the library, or otherwise look unkindly on her attempts to explore the mansion. However, when she asked the scrawny little serving-cockerel who’d come by to bring her lunch -‘library’ being one of the few words she knew in nearly every language- he’d just set aside his plate of fruit, nodded, and set off down the corridor. Perhaps Goldstone was worried that she’d go off wandering by herself if she didn’t get directions, or perhaps she was simply reading more strategy into the tiercel than he in fact possessed. Nonetheless, she felt safer with Gilda, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash all accompanying her.

She was pursuing something of a hunch, but a strong one. Based on the apparent age and quality of the amulet Lord Goldstone was now wearing, as well as the family crest of interlocking talons that made up its interior, Twilight suspected it was of some historical significance- which meant its properties might be written down somewhere. She just needed to find where.

The servant stopped in front of a door indistinguishable from the several others in this particular hallway, and silently pulled it open.

Twilight stepped inside and whistled softly to herself. The library was easily three stories tall, the last third built into a cupola extending above the rooftops of the rest of the manor. Shelves extended uninterrupted from the floor to the distant four-gabled ceiling- the winged griffons, of course, having little need for ladders or balconies. Above, glass panels vaguely reminiscent of those at Innsbeak Station -but in somewhat better condition- admitted watery sunlight from the gray afternoon sky. She pulled in a deep breath, savoring the musty smell of old paper and leather. Then she paused, and muttered “Oh, rut me, that’s black mold, isn’t it?”

Peering at the shelves more closely, Twilight noticed a distinct and alarming lack of organization. It was suddenly clear to her that the library was in fact several distinct libraries’ worth of books: shoved anywhere there was shelf space, packed in mildewy cardboard boxes, or simply stacked in leaning heaps on the floor.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “All right. Gilda and Rainbow, you’ll have to take the top half- I don’t think my telekinesis can reach that far, not accurately at least. Rarity, it’d be great if you could help me out with the bottom half.” Spotting their servant guide still lurking in the doorway, she lowered her voice, “If you see anything that looks like it might be remotely related to that amulet- a picture or drawing of it, or just a general book of heraldry or whatever, go ahead and bring it down to me.”

“You got it, boss.”

“My pleasure, darling.”

Rainbow Dash took wing, pulling her unkempt mane back into a passable imitation of Twilight’s more practical style. “Don’t worry, the Reading Rainbow’s on the case!”

Slightly, almost imperceptibly, Rarity winced.

Gilda just cackled, already in the air and on her way to the upper level, “Hehe, nerds.”

“Aww, shaddup,” Rainbow Dash admonished as she followed.

“Right.” Twilight began scanning the nearest assembly of titles. Most were in Ponish, luckily enough, and appeared to consist largely of reference books.The Grayson & Webber Ponish-Griffish Dictionary was a fortunate early find; ironically enough, Decline and Fall of the Griffon Empire accompanied it; and that in turn was next to the ubiquitous Encyclopedia Equestria’s 1090 edition. Looking further, Twilight selected a few authoritative texts dealing with the Lunar Rebellions- Princess Luna: A Biography, Mass Hysteria and the Lunar Cults, Equestrian Populism, and Corruption, Paralysis, and Revolution in the Late Council Period. All had been rendered staggeringly out of date by her own recent work, of course. But, after shooting another look at the servant still lurking in the doorway, she settled herself at a reading table and opened them anyway.

It was then that she noticed the pages had never been cut. Nogriff had ever read them. Typical.

She took a few meaningless notes, and then headed back to the shelves. A copy of the Luna Bay Fragment lay crumpled among a pile of other books, next to a vertical stack of art portfolios belonging to some noblegriff Twilight had never heard of. “I paid eight grand for this, and he just pitches it into a heap of moldy… what even are these, young adult novels?” she muttered, “Why are these here?”

Thinking better of exploration, she returned to her table and scribbled a few more notes, trying not to let her telekinesis flicker as her heart felt like it was about to burst out of her chest. It was strange, really, some disconnected part of her mind supposed- she hadn’t been nearly this nervous when she’d been sneaking around Lunar revenants that could easily have killed her back in Ponyville. That, though, was a matter of personal survival first and national defense a close second, and the stakes were incalculably high. This, however, was in preparation to rob a corrupt noblegriff, just to arrange a meeting with a different corrupt noblegriff, and Twilight simply didn’t feel the hero. Rather, she thought her situation was more comparable to Daring Do knocking over a fruit stand rather than paying for lunch. Which, given the explorer’s attitude towards property rights and lawful authority in general, would probably not be unexpected, but that was beside the point. What she was doing was important, certainly, but Twilight considered herself a pony who did things the proper way, and this did not seem at all proper. If her friends hadn’t been so enthusiastically supportive of robbing Goldstone, she doubted she’d even be entertaining it right now.

Looking up from the index of Princess Luna: A Biography, she decided that the servant at the doorway looked suitably bored by her woolgathering, so she turned back to the shelves and began hunting in earnest.

She scanned past Return to Form: Equestria’s Draconian Foreign Policy in the Modern and Pre-Rebellion Eras, Abyssinia on Trial, and Dragons and the Dragonlands, followed by a host of other jingoistic titles that rambled against the hippogriffs, dragons, zebras, and most especially the Abyssinians. She wasn’t sure what else she’d been expecting. Then, to her surprise, she spotted a few undecorated leather covers mixed in among a pile of horrendously overwrought romance novels. Vaguely curious, Twilight extracted one from in between Hoard of the Dragon Prince and A Long Night In Las Pegasus and flipped it open, revealing lines of numbers with brief Griffish annotations- a ledger, or perhaps some sort of logbook.

Quietly, she waved a hoof and motioned for Rarity to join her. The tailor cantered over, scanned the text for around ten seconds while idly adjusting the curl of her mane, and then nodded. “These look like accounts books,” she whispered, “quarterly reports on all the intakes and expenditures of House Goldstone. This one’s about two hundred and fifty years old.”

Twilight nodded. “I’m a little surprised these were out in the open,” she whispered back, “I’d think that kind of information could be pretty damaging in the wrong talons… or hooves.”

“Well, we are in Goldstone’s private library, darling. It’s not like anygriff off the street can just walk up and check them out for some easy blackmail… oh, and, Twilight, would you mind passing me that dictionary?”

“Right.”

Twilight waited, shuffling her hooves nervously as Rarity scanned through ledger after ledger, Grayson & Webber floating off to one side, for a little over five minutes. Then she smiled, flipped around the book she was holding, and tapped at one line in particular with a spare quill.

“Wedding… gift… honor… Geraldine the Fifth,” Twilight read, making frequent detours to the dictionary, “Medallion… gold… protective? Is that ‘five thousand guilders’ written next to it an estimate of how much it was originally worth?”

Silently, Rarity nodded.

“Good work.”

“I’ll put these back the way they were when we found them. Keep looking,” the tailor muttered, and set about reconstructing the pile as best she could.

Twilight, for her part, circled the lower levels once more, looking for any texts that might’ve had something to do with Geraldine V or, more specifically, her marriage. The first three books of heraldry and genealogy she consulted proved to be dead ends, although Twilight did learn that Geraldine V had consolidated House Goldstone’s hold over the Innsbeak fishing industry, that she’d died in some sort of jousting accident while entertaining a Chicoltgo industrialist, and had caused some scandal by marrying a commoner- although, presumably, not in that order.

She struck pay dirt in the fourth book: a critical volume documenting House Goldstone’s patronage of the arts, commissioned -of course- by Geraldine V herself. It contained a detailed, full-page drawing of the amulet, complete with a written description of its security enchantment on the facing page.

Twilight copied down both as accurately as she could, and tucked the pages in among some of her notes on radion, counting on the dense technical language to deter casual inspection. Then she returned to her pointless Lunar research for what she thought was a suitable period, and finally asked for herself and her friends to be shown back to the guest wing.



Dinner that night was smaller and much less awkward, consisting of more tinned fruit shared between the four visitors in Twilight’s room.

“Twilight?” Rarity asked, after perhaps ten minutes of dining in silence.

The other unicorn closed her copy of Who Lies Sleeping and set it aside. “Mmhmm?”

“Are you sure it’s… well, safe for us to be staying here? Now that Goldstone really, truly doesn’t like us?”

Gilda nodded. “I think so, yeah. He still wants to set up that textile mill shit with you, and I bet he thinks he can squeeze full price for that stupid skull out of Twilight, too. He wouldn’t’ve invested so much money into us if he didn’t think he could get something out of it. Plus, Twilight's still paying for us to stay here, which includes this... perfectly generic dinner." Gilda poked at her cold curried peaches in demonstration.

Rainbow Dash smiled a school-photo smile, somewhat undercut by the fact that her mouth was stuffed full of apple slices. “Aww, you mean he ain’t fallin’ for your charming personality?”

Gilda visibly lurched backwards, retching dramatically. “Fuck, Dash, I can do better than that! Scrawny fucker’s all beak and no crest, on top of being a complete and utter douchebag.”

The pegasus waved a hoof in front of her and chuckled, “Aw, you'd be perfect for each other!”

Gilda broke into a low, quiet laugh. “Fuck you, Dash.”

“Anyway,” Twilight addressed a somewhat wide-eyed Rarity, “We’re also all Equestrian citizens… or at least long-term residents,” she looked over to Gilda, and the big tan hen nodded. “And that counts for a lot abroad. If Goldstone was going to try to kill us, or lock us up or something else violent, he’d have to be a hundred percent sure Equestrian Strategic Services couldn’t trace it back to him- otherwise, he’d just be painting a target on his back. Ponies’d tryto trace it back to him, too- I don’t remember, like, names or anything, but Shiny’s told me a lot of higher-ups in the military are always looking for excuses to throw their weight around on ‘interventions’.”

She took another bite of apricot, paused to make sure she’d remembered all of her facts properly, and continued, “That’s actually how Goldstone’s maternal grandfather Gerald XI died. He’d had some two-bit cattle trader from Foaledo arrested, I think for starting a bar fight or something stupid like that. The Wonderbolts got sent in to spring her from jail, and the Equestrian Consulate put a bounty on his head.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember hearing about that,” Gilda paused, then chuckled again, “A way bigger force was gearing up in Trottingham to follow the ‘Bolts across the border. Army and airships and the whole nine yards. Equestria probably would’ve invaded, for real, to stay, if a couple of… heroic mainland bounty hunters hadn’t gone ahead and slit the old fucker’s throat. In his bedroom. In the middle of the night.”

There was a moment of incredulous silence.

“This really is a miserable place, isn’t it?” Rarity finally said.

“Yeah, actually I dunno why we didn’t just invade and get it over with,” Rainbow Dash spoke up, “It’s not like anygriff here could put up much of a fight, not against the Equestrian Army.”

Twilight nodded. “There’s a lot of ponies in the government who feel the same way, just for a lot of different reasons.”

“Huh.” Gilda just cocked her head, “I always thought you'd justify it as a way to make everything suck less, you know, ‘equinitarian reasons’ or whatever. That, and whoever holds Innsbeak gets a cut of every customs charge, shipping fee, tariff, and bold-faced bribe for goods coming and going from the mainland.”

“That’s true for some ponies, yes,” Twilight amended, “the sapient rights mission idea, I mean, I don’t think anypony’d admit to wanting to take bribes. But they’re mostly private citizens and activists, not the ponies who actually work in the government. That goes double for the military, where you’re a lot more likely to get ‘ponies first’ types, like Defense Minister Wind Rider. They’re more interested in taking Innsbeak out to cut down on griffon immigration into Equestria.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Gilda nodded, “With the right tailwind, you can fly over here from the mainland… well, if you’re lucky, and if what passes for a harbor patrol around here doesn’t shoot you down first. Then, once you’re here, if you’ve got the money for a train ticket it’s an easy ride into into Trottingham. I mean, what’re ponies gonna do if they arrest you, toss you in a heated cell and feed you twice a day? Lotta griffons’d kill for that kinda’ treatment.” She scratched underneath her beak with one talon. “But turning the whole island into a shoot-on-sight no-fly zone under the military… yeah, that’d shut things down pretty quick. Ponies are better shots, and they don’t take bribes.”

“This is a pretty strategic location, too, if you were trying to push on into mainland Griffonia,” added Rainbow Dash, “Tartarus, not just Griffonia… there’s a pretty straight shot from here right down to the Dragonlands, and a good launching point into Zebrica too.”

Twilight nodded. “Of course, there’s also a lot of more extreme nativists out there who don’t like the idea of occupying foreign territories at all. In their minds, that just means more griffons living alongside ponies, and pony soldiers risking their lives for foreigners. Then the sapient-rights activists are pretty broken up, too- some of them like the idea of ‘saving’ all the griffons here from House Goldstone and its various flunkies, and some of them just don’t like the idea of using military force at all, for any reason, ever. If the different pro-war factions could just work together they could probably put enough pressure on Celestia to authorize military action, but they all hate each other more than they hate the moderates so… I’m rambling again, aren’t I?”

“A little, yeah,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Basically, all of it boils down to shit being fucked,” added Gilda, “and nopony's gonna do anything about it.”

A few more minutes of silence followed after that, not uncomfortably. Then Rarity spoke up again. “Do you think Goldstone blames Equestria? For the whole affair with his grandfather, I mean, on top of whatever political reasons he might have to distrust ponies? Or do you think he respects the, ah, the ‘hustle’?”

Twilight didn't bother following up to clarify if ‘the hustle’ meant Equestria nearly invading a strategic port city under flimsy pretenses, or arranging the murder of Gerald XI; she suspected the answer was 'yes'.

Gilda chuckled again. “I think whatever grudge he might have against ponies, and whatever political reasons he might have too, are inversely proportional to however many bits are coming into his city at any given moment.”

“You’re probably right,” Twilight stood up, and telekinetically assembled their plates and silverware into a neat stack on the end table near the door. Then, she circled the room, muttering cantrips to detect divination and nearby eavesdroppers. When none were found, she stopped in each corner and laid out a simple silencing enchantment. “Okay. Okay, that takes care of anygriff who might walk by. Are you girls ready?”

Three heads nodded in synchrony. “Alright, boss,” Gilda asked, “whaddaya got?”

Twilight stuffed her copy of Who Lies Sleeping into the saddlebags slung over the back of her chair, then extracted her sketch of Goldstone’s amulet. She dropped it in the center of the table. “Based on what I was able to research, this amulet used to be attuned to a system of wards all around the Goldstone estate, to detect burglars and things like that. Any attempt to exert a spell from outside, to affect anything inside, would not only be absorbed and attenuated by the wards, but also transmit a minute amount of power to the amulet. A similar process would occur if anything living passed through the wards’ field of influence. That energy, in turn, would cause the gem in the center to luminesce and vibrate audibly until it was deliberately discharged. A competent diviner could even sample the traces of the spell left on the gem to learn information about the intruder, or magically affect them at range. Finally, a second enchantment was set up to sink the ambient mana the wards would always be collecting, and engage if that ever cut off- a different alarm that went off if the wards were broken. All very impressive for the Ninth Century, if rather unsafe going up against modern high-thauma or fractal replication spells.”

Rainbow Dash shook her head as if to clear it. “So, it sounds like what you’re saying through all that egghead-ese is that you can’t cast spells on the house, you can’t go inside yourself, and you basically can’t mess with the security at all. If you do, it sets off an alarm?”

“Essentially, yes.” Twilight nodded, and smiled her best schoolteacher smile. “Now, the Goldstone estate’s expanded significantly since Geraldine V’s day, and the original wards are long gone- modern magic could get past them without too much trouble, anyway. So I bet, what Goldstone had that University mage do, was rebind the enchantments that were already on the amulet. She attuned it to a new set of modern wards, right around the skull, with the same reception behavior. Those wards are maintained by the chalk circles Rainbow and Gilda saw this morning- if you’d gotten a better look and written down the inscriptions, I could say for sure.”

Gilda opened her mouth to protest, but Twilight raised a hoof in objection, and continued. “However, what I just outlined is also the absolute cheapest way Goldstone could reasonably get the amulet functioning again, so I’m pretty confident that’s indeed what he did.”

Gilda’s beak closed again, and she snickered good-naturedly.

“Rarity,” the scholar asked, “Do you think you could put together a replica of that amulet that’s physically similar enough to fool Goldstone?”

Rarity picked up the drawing in her telekinesis, turning it this way and that. Then she nodded. “I wish it hadn’t come to that; one of them is gaudy enough… and I’ll need some additional supplies… but, yes, I don’t see why not. If we plan to stay here, I’ll need to go down into the city and pick up some raw materials, regardless- I don’t think any of you thought to bring along outfits appropriate for a formal reception like what Goldstone’s planning.” She paused and made a little huff noise. “Tweed and elbow patches, Twilight. Really!"

Rainbow Dash snickered quietly, and the tailor instantly rounded on her. “And I shudder to think of what ‘tacticool’ nightmare you brought, Rainbow!”

Twilight shrugged in her seat, and continued. “Good. Once we have a physical fake, I can apply the same enchantments to it, then attune it to a similar ward circle here. Assuming we can switch out the fake amulet for the real one at some point before we make our move for the skull, we’ll be able to just walk through Goldstone’s original wards, or scratch them out, and he won’t know any different.” Twilight extracted a quill for the specific purpose of playing with it in her telekinesis. “Hmm…Do you think he sleeps with that thing on?”

“If he sleeps at all… but I bet I can get up to Goldstone at the party and make the switch while he’s awake,” Gilda spoke up. She stretched, somewhat theatrically, and her outstretched wing briefly hovered over Twilight’s back. Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, the unicorn leaned forward. “I used to palm food and money offa’ griffons back home all the time…” with a theatrical flourish, she waved Twilight’s copy of Who Lies Sleeping about in one talon. Incredulous, the unicorn looked over at her saddlebags, and found Rainbow Dash’s Sapphire: Equestrian Commando comic where the book had been tucked. “Haven’t lost my touch. Goldstone’s gonna be more of a challenge, of course, ‘cause there’ll be more eyes on him, but if I act falling-down drunk and bump into him it shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Actually, that’s a good way to get us out of there and into the rest of the mansion,” added Rainbow Dash, “Gilda makes a scene, and then I can volunteer to take her back to our rooms. We both know the way back to the chapel, and I bet with the both of us on it we can handle those four guards quick, clean, and quiet enough not to attract any attention.”

Twilight nodded. “Impressive.”

“I’ll stay near Goldstone, and make sure he doesn’t have a chance to notice the amulet, or that anything else is amiss,” Rarity chimed in, “And since I’m already outfitting the both of you, I suppose I might as well sew in a few interior pockets, for the fake amulet and any reasonably compact weapons you might need…” she shot a warning look across the table, “that means no wingblades or charger’s sabres, Rainbow.” Then she turned to Twilight, “But… what do you suppose we do about the box? I don’t want to risk it being too heavy to carry, or stuck in place, and I can’t exactly forge the key for it along with the amulet… unless you want to go back to the library again?”

“I doubt there’s documentation there,” Twilight replied, “but we don’t need it. With the amulet out of commission, if you can just disrupt the wards -scuffing out one of the chalk lines should be sufficient, we’re lucky Goldstone didn’t have time for anything more permanent- then, if I can get just maybe ten or twenty minutes off by myself…” the scholar paused, and looked over at Rarity, who quietly nodded, “with some equipment available at pretty much any magic shop… I can scry on the skull and arrange a long-distance teleport without ever opening its container.”

Rainbow Dash looked at her, wide-eyed, and whistled. “You can do that?”

“Well, usually I can’t. But between having significant prep time, knowledge of the skull’s approximate location to center some basic divinations, and the fact that it’s reasonably small… I’m pretty sure I can pull it off.”

“So, why not come with us, then?” Gilda asked, “An extra blaster’d come in pretty handy, and it’d be way faster to teleport the skull out of the box if you were looking right at it… right?”

“Actually, Gilda, it wouldn’t,” Twilight explained, “The instrumentation needed is the same whenever I’m trying to teleport anything without myself as the departing terminus, and I wouldn’t have the luxury of setting it up in a safe place ahead of time- it’s not something I can pull out of my saddlebags, we’re talking about a mercury-filled scrying dish and calibrated pattern amplifiers here.”

“But we know the… the what are they called, the dimensions, though,” Gilda slid her talons along the flat surfaces of an imaginary cube, “so just teleporting everything inside the box, to a, say, half-inch margin should get the skull, and whatever packing material it's in.”

Now feeling vaguely insulted, Twilight sucked in a long breath. “That’s really not how teleportation works, Gilda. The zero-scale manifolds aren’t uniform, there’s… ‘hills’ and ‘valleys’, I guess you could call them, of expanded and contracted subspace that distort the bilocational envelope. It’s like…” she cast around mentally for her Introductory Liminology notes, “imagine the Material Plane is a stretchy rubber sheet, and the box with the skull is a square drawn on it in marker. Now stretch that sheet over an uneven surface- the square won’t stay square anymore, will it? The teleportation spell will only naturally compensate for those irregularities when the arcanetic barycenter -me, the caster- is inside the envelope. Otherwise, I need my instruments.” Gilda raised one talon and opened her mouth to reply, but Twilight kept on going. “And before you ask, no, I can’t just shear off the pedestal the box is on and teleport the whole thing. That ratty old carpet outside Goldstone’s study is pretty much the absolute upper limit on what kind of solid matter a teleport can effectively sever. You’ll notice I didn’t also bring any of the floor along? Anything too rigidly affixed to any object outside the envelope, or too enclosed in such an object, stays behind.”

Rainbow Dash cocked her head and squinted, mouth moving soundlessly for a few seconds before she asked, “Wait. So… you mean… you can’t just teleport somepony’s head off their body?”

“Believe me, I have tried.”

“Could we just take the box off-”

“Gilda, whatever you’re thinking, it’s not going to work because you clearly don’t have a sufficient understanding of the liminology involved here!” Twilight snapped.

“And even if we could move the box to a safe location, and it isn’t bolted in place,” Rarity spoke up for the first time since they had begun arguing, “we still need twenty minutes at least to open it, and there's no guarantee that nogriff will pass by the chapel and notice the guards are gone!”

The griffon shrugged, seemingly unperturbed. “Okay, so, new plan. I’ll just swipe the keyring at the same time I’m switching the amulet, open the box, and grab the skull that way.”

Rarity shook her head “I can’t make a fake key because I don’t know exactly what it looks like, and Goldstone could easily notice the real one is missing!”

“So, we just leave a ring of slugs or random keys instead!” Gilda shrugged again, “It’s not like Goldstone’s gonna count the teeth on ‘em in the middle of his big fuck-off party or whatever…”

Twilight shook her head. “No, I… I really don’t think that’s worth the risk. The pickpocketing is already the most dangerous part of this plan, and I don’t want to make that two pickpocketings. We need to keep our interactions with Goldstone to an absolute minimum, so we shouldn’t even bother with the key and I can just teleport the skull.”

“Hey, now, boss, I’m sure I can get both.” Gilda braced both arms against the table, pushing herself up to a half-standing bipedal position. It was at about that point that Twilight was reminded how physically large the griffon was. “And you’re saying you’ll need… what, thirty minutes to do your weird magic thing? Twenty at least? The key to a successful burglary is timing. I don't want my ass hanging out in the breeze for twenty fuckin’ minutes.”

“Twilight, I think Gilda’s got a point,” Rainbow muttered, shifting awkwardly in her chair, “All this magic stuff… that’s what sounds risky to me. I think we should go for the key.”

Rarity shook her head. “No… Gilda, darling, I’m sorry, but… I don’t know if we can pull that off. The less time any of you have to spend around Goldstone, the better. I’m sure I can keep him from noticing Twilight’s even gone, but he’ll be paying dreadfully close attention to those keys. I’m with Twilight.”

“Yeah,” the scholar muttered, “and Goldstone knows I’m the one who hired you, Gilda. I know enough about griffons to know that means it’s my ass on the line here if this all goes south.”

“Yeah, well, it’s my ass, too!” snapped Gilda, “You think those guards’re gonna care who hired who when they start swinging swords around?”

“It's all our asses, which just means we can't cock it up!” shouted Rainbow Dash. Rarity arched a single, elegantly-styled eyebrow. “Sorry, sorry, the local slang’s kinda’ infectious.”

Twilight looked from Rarity, to Rainbow Dash, to Gilda as the silence drew out into a long, strained pause. Then she sat back down and crossed her forelegs on the table- she hadn’t even noticed she was standing up half-out of her chair. “Listen, Gilda, I understand your concerns, but if there’s one thing I know about in this world, it’s magic. I think teleportation is our best shot, and I’m the one who’s paying you. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

That seemed to make some impact on the griffon. She also sat back down, and quietly nodded.

“If Goldstone’s even paying attention to me at all during the party, I’ll grab some bacon or something and fake sick. I’ll have everything set up and ready to go right here in my room. Goldstone won’t even know the skull is gone until it shows up in Gordon’s collection, courtesy of his new friends from Equestria.”

Gilda nodded again, and gave a low whistle. “Shit. So, I guess we’re actually doing this, then.”

Grinning, Rainbow jabbed a hoof into her shoulder. “Just like old times, huh? ‘Where making this hapen’?”

“Yeah. Yeah, RD, I guess we are.”



“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay on your own?” Gilda asked Rarity the next morning.

“I think I can handle myself well enough,” the tailor replied, “I’m going back to the upper city, and this time I know to lead with the right hook, and leave the guards out of it"

Gilda, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash stood on grimy cobblestones, worn down by centuries of paw- and hoof-traffic, in the center of Innsbeak’s famous -or, perhaps, infamous- portside markets. Around them stretched a sea of faded canvas awnings separated by freestanding stone walls in no discernible pattern. Griffons hawked everything from exotic liquors to children’s toys- Gilda even spotted a fresh fruit stand, one of only three she’d ever encountered in the city. Even just after sunrise the place was crowded: mostly by griffons and a few desperate-looking ponies, rounded out by creatures from even farther afield. The scent of unwashed bodies, mixed with smoke and spices and alcohol and the omnipresent salty-fishy odor of the harbor, hung in the air under a pearl-gray sky.

“If, uhh, if you say so,” Rainbow Dash told Rarity. “We could probably just grab the stuff you and Twilight need ourselves.”

“No offense, Rainbow, darling, but I’m afraid I’m the only one here who could tell a jeweler's hammer from a rubber mallet. I’d really rather not get us all ripped off… again.” The tailor shifted her saddlebags, which Gilda abruptly realized resembled nothing other than a set of tackle-box containers of the type used by outdoorsponies and handymares, upholstered in a fetching floral print. “I’m halfway to a full toolset anyway. Most of my designs involve threading and setting gems, so I never travel without.”

Gilda reached out with one talon and twisted the notebook floating near Rarity’s head so that she could read it properly. Then she cocked her head, confused. “What even is a ‘loupe’, anyway? I figured a classy mare like you’d at least know how to spell…”

Rainbow Dash snickered, but the tailor just nodded politely. “Oh, and, before I go, I do want to run by you what you’ll be wearing at the party,” she flipped to another page in her notebook, revealing a collection of drawings of what appeared to be ballgowns.

Gilda didn’t feel remotely qualified to say the first thing about how any of them looked, but she realized each would be surprisingly light and allow for considerable freedom of movement. They were, however, somewhat overly elaborate in cut. “Could you maybe make something, uhh… smaller?” she suggested. “And in black. Black’s kind of important.”

“Oh, of course,” Rarity nodded again. “You can’t go wrong with the little black dress. Oh, but, I don’t want us all to be wearing the same thing…” She trailed off, staring at a point somewhere above Gilda’s left shoulder. “Now, what colors wouldn't clash with the highlighter-yellow carpet? And there'll undoubtedly be lots of gold jewelry and accessories, maybe something in silver, to contrast? Twilight will be easy enough, but Rainbow Dash… What in Tartarus goes well with that mane? Black, white, or scarlet, I suppose, but I don't see her going for scarlet…” The tailor tucked away her notebook and set off back towards the hill in the center of town, seemingly without a care in the world.

Gilda shot Rainbow Dash another skeptical look. “You’re absolutely sure she’s gonna be okay on her own?”

“Gil, did you see her take out that creep at the train station?” the pegasus answered, “She beat down a couple Lunar soldiers and a manticore in the Everfree, too, just with her telekinesis.”

“… huh. Your friends continue to surprise me.” Gilda paused, then shook her head. “But she wouldn’t wanna go where we’re going, anyway. She’s probably safer away from it, too. You, uhh, you grabbed your wingblades like I told you too, right?”

“Yeah.” Rainbow tapped the duffle bag slung at her side with one wing, producing a characteristic rattle of steel sliding against steel.

“Then put ‘em on and follow me.”

Navigating as much by intuition and the attitude of the crowd as by memory, Gilda led the way through ever-denser sections of the market. The maze-like stone walls grew taller and closer together, the stalls less colorful, and both the merchants and customers moreso. Along with griffons, and more and more ponies, she and Rainbow Dash found themselves shouldering past zebras, hippogriffs, and Abyssinians. At one point they even passed a strangely-proportioned biped completely covered in a hooded cloak, which Gilda suspected might’ve been an adolescent dragon. Many of the customers were discreetly or indiscreetly armed, and the wares on display had taken a turn from innocuous and cheap to decidedly lethal. Arms and armor were the single most common items on display; although drugs -hard and recreational- were a close second. A collective majority of the remaining stalls offered antiquities of dubious pedigree, gold and gemstones, and assorted magical contraptions Gilda couldn’t even begin to put a name to.

“I guess you could call this the ‘black market’,” she explained to Rainbow Dash, practically shouting to make herself heard over the constant babble of the crowd, “if there was ever a white market in Innsbeak, anyway.” She waved at the occasional flash of yellow barding visible through the crowd, as city troops stood idly on watch or made purchases themselves. “Most of the arms merchants here deal in bulk and just keep a few weapons out to show what they’re offering, but they’ll be happy to sell the display pieces as long as we’re paying good bits for ‘em.”

Rainbow Dash followed along at Gilda’s side, head constantly swiveling from one stall to the next. She whistled as they passed a group of harpies in roughspun militia uniforms, poking and prodding at a collection of old-fashioned Royal Guard helmets repainted camouflage green. Gilda tried to keep up with the papers back in Equestria -as best she could given her itinerant work schedule- and figured they were likely dissatisfied with the recent ceasefire Princess Celestia had brokered between Minos and the Parrot Isles.

“Okay, see, now this is more what I was expecting when Twilight said we were going to Innsbeak to cut a deal with somegriff,” the pegasus said.

“Yeah, I used to spend a lotta’ time down here, looking for fun ways to spend those extra scholarship bits,” Gilda nodded, and then clapped her friend on the shoulder. “Just follow my lead and don’t say or do anything threatening. You’ve got Equestrian wingblades, so nogriff’s gonna think you’re easy to shake down, but that won’t get you too far if you start pissing off any of the serious buyers, like those harpies over there.” As if to underscore Gilda’s point, the leader of the group -a tall green-and-white hen with a Captain’s insignia on her uniform and a funny-looking metal brace wrapped around her left foot- dropped the helmet she was holding, and brandished a wicked-looking cutlass at the skinny griffon who’d been lurking behind her, one talon creeping towards her pocket.

“Gotcha.” Rainbow continued walking in silence for a little while, and then flicked out a wing at a pile of open crates labeled ‘EQUESTRIAN NAVY’, loaded with dogfighting gear. “Hey, I had a set of those flight goggles when I was, like, fifteen!” She paused, and peered closer, “Actually, I mail-ordered a lot of this stuff, outta’ surplus catalogs!” Then she whistled as they passed another open weapons crate. "Wait, is that the IL85? Boreas, it's the A1 pattern, that was a horrible crossbow!”

“Lotta’ this stuff actually comes down from Trottingham,” Gilda explained as she dragged Rainbow away from the display. She didn’t like the look of the gray leopard-spotted Abyssinian running it, and judging by his expression he didn’t like the look of them either. “It’s all outdated- or expired, for the combat drugs. Second-hoof stuff, but if it’s pony-made it always fetches a pretty good price.”

Rainbow cocked her head, “Wait, the what now?”

“This is naval gear, for airship crews," Gilda explained, genuinely surprised by her friend's inability to grasp the obvious, “Bennies for the Marines, dexy for the sailors. I wouldn't touch the stuff, though. Who knows how old it is.”

“Uh huh…”

Gilda gave the stalls one last look, before shuffling deeper into the market. She was convinced that a nearby beige-coated mare with a pink-and-blue mane was eyeing her up, although to what end was unclear.

Finally, she spotted a set of plywood tables arranged in a rough semicircle and filled with various items made from heavy black cloth. It was overseen by a zebra mare covered in equal measure by scars and heavy brass jewelry, who looked up as soon as the griffon approached.

“You got softpaw boots and blackfeather powder?” Gilda asked in Ponish. One tended to get somewhat better deals when one spoke the language used by influential foreigners.

The zebra nodded, mutely. She slid forward first a set of black, thickly-padded cotton slippers, and then a tarnished metal tin- according to its label, it had once held preserved herring.

Gilda cracked it open and confirmed that the powder inside was both sticky enough and dark enough to effectively black out a patch of feathers on her chest, then strapped on one of the boots and found it to be a decent enough fit.

“Seventy bits, or a hundred and thirty ducats if you’ve got ‘em,” the zebra rattled off in a thick South Farisian accent. Abyssinian ducats were accepted just about anywhere in the Known World, but one couldn’t go wrong with Equestrian bits, especially in Innsbeak. Guilders weren’t even entertained in this part of the market, and offering them was a good way to get oneself either laughed out of the district, or sliced to pieces and dumped in the harbor.

Gilda was fairly confident she could haggle the zebra down to two thirds her asking price, and opened her mouth to say so, when Rainbow flicked out a bladed wing and tossed all seventy bits onto the counter.

Both Gilda and the zebra stared, open-mouthed.

Rainbow Dash just shrugged. “Hey, as long as it comes out to less than what it’d take to just buy the skull, Twilight’s gonna be happy, right?”

“Sure. Fine.” Gilda turned back to the still somewhat goggle-eyed pawnbroker, and waved a talon side-to-side in a warning gesture. “None of this better get back to anygriff, you hear me?”

The zebra laughed, brass trinkets rattling. “What kind of shop do you think I run, here?”

“Good answer.” They kept on walking.

“All right, good. Now, what about NVG’s,” Rainbow asked.

Gilda briefly pulled to a halt, and cocked her head in bafflement. “What the fuck are ‘Envy-Gees’?”

“Oh. Night-vision goggles,” her friend explained, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, “I had a great pair of Wizard’s Peak AN/PVS-7 Obsidians, to go with the PEQ-2 luminous sight and PAS-13 mini thaumoscope, but then that creepy Shadowbolt broke them when he headbutted me and the replacements take like six months to ship.” The pegasus grinned, “They’re custom-built and enchanted, you know.”

“Griffons can see in the dark. In fact, the guards’d be able to see those big glowing lenses before you’d see them. Shitcan it.”

“Okay, what about tac-comms? We’ll need-”

“Two taps, corner’s clear. Three taps, quiet retreat. If you hear me running, haul ass too.”

“Alright. Alright. Umm… what else? Weapons!” Rainbow led the way to a nearby stand, and pointed her hoof at an open chest. Inside, Gilda could just make out some sort of monstrous amalgamation of cable, crystal, and rune-inscribed metal tubes that glowed faintly with an actinic blue light. It still managed to be vaguely crossbow-shaped, despite the presence of at least three different sighting scopes, a miniature crystal spotlight, a serrated bayonet, and some sort of big underbarrel cylinder of utterly unclear function. “That’s an ArcSpray 200-L,” the pegasus explained, almost breathless with excitement, “The ‘L’ stands for ‘Landsknecht Issue,’ but most of the ponies who use these are Guard hunter-killer squads in the Arimaspi Desert. It’s guaranteed to put down a griffon, it’s one of the more quiet models, and it’s got a four-charge chamber for extended use. Whaddaya think?”

Gilda shook her head. “Nah, too clunky. Grab a rolling pin.”

“A… what?” Now it was the pegasus’s turn to stare in confusion, “Is that some kinda’ slang or something?”

“Nope, just a solid hickory rolling pin. You know, for baking. And also cracking non-paying customers’ skulls.”

“Um, okay…” Rainbow looked rather nonplussed, but continued, “You know what? I'm me. I fought Nightmare Moon. I won, because I'm that good. I think we can handle some bored rent-a-cops hoof-to-claw. So… camouflage. Gilda, you, uhh, go first.”

“Well, I guess that’s mostly Rarity’s job now, but, a nice flowing black dress would blend in with the party, and also break up our outlines and help out in the shadows. Nothing too poofy, though, and no loud fabrics. The powder’ll cover everything the dress can’t. Oh, and you’ll want a hat, I can see that stupid mane of yours from Hyperborea…”



“… my parents offered me a five-thousand-bit loan, right after I started buying bulk fabric, but I didn’t think it was necessary,” Rarity explained, “although they did insist they pay for college.”

She and Twilight sat at opposite ends of the little dining table in Twilight’s guest room. Twilight’s half was covered in chalk circles, pages full of calculations, and copper-and-glass scrying equipment; Rarity’s with her jeweler's tools and piles of gems and fine gold stock.

“Please be aware I don’t mean anything by this,” said Twilight, “but… I didn’t actually know you’d been to college. What’d you study?”

“Small business management, with minors in accounting and geology.”

Twilight finished another small magic circle, squinted at it critically, and scuffed out a few runes with the frog of her hoof. “Huh. I would’ve guessed, you know, design. Also, can you pass me that red chalk on the end table? And do you know when Dash and Gilda might be coming back?”

“They went off by themselves not long after we got to the market, and that was the last I saw of them. I only had to stop at two or three stores on my way back to the upper district, and I think they were after quite a bit of equipment, so I suspect they’ll be a while yet. Oh, and design always came naturally to me,” Rarity continued as she floated over the appropriate implement and went back to pressing inscriptions into a warm gold band, “so I didn’t really see the point. Ponyville University is quite affordable, especially for locals, so it wasn’t as though my parents paid for Oxenford or Bayle or something… Twilight, can you hold the other end of this?” she asked, extending a length of gold wire in her telekinesis.

The scholar did as she was told, quietly impressed.

“… and since I worked full-time during college, I was able to graduate with enough money to buy the Boutique myself. My parents can be… embarrassing, sometimes, especially my mother, but they mean well. I just wish they’d take more of a hoof in raising Sweetie Belle instead of leaving her at the Boutique all the time -she’s just as much their daughter as I am, after all. They weren’t gallivanting off and leaving me with my grandparents when I was her age, but then Father read some book that said ten-through-twelve-year-olds need space, and that was the end of that… Twilight, have you seen the three-sixteenths needle I had?”

“Oh, sorry, I was using it as a replacement ground probe, here…” Twilight paused, and blinked. “Wait, Sweetie Belle’s your sister?”

Rarity snickered. “Who do you think she was, then? Some street urchin living in my shop?”

“… I actually thought she was your daughter?”

The tailor carefully set her tools down, and then broke into open laughter. “I know it’s been a while since my last spa visit, but, ouch!”

Twilight cocked her head, utterly confused. “What? You’ve been running your own business for years, so you have to be what, twenty-eight or thirty, right? Older than I am, certainly.”

Rariy just grinned a little wider. “… Twilight. I’m twenty-four.”

“… Oh. Well, you… certainly look it?”

Both ponies worked in silence for a few more minutes, and then Rarity spoke up again. “Twilight?”

“Mmmhmm?”

“If you thought Sweetie Belle was my daughter… who did you think her father was?”

Very briefly, Twilight’s chalk paused in her telekinetic field. “I have no idea, and I wasn't going to ask. You weren't bringing it up, and Spike hasn't mentioned anything, but between Everfree Forest, and all the dangerous stuff out in the swamps on the edge of town, and the stress of running a small business..." She trailed off, realizing she had no idea where she’d been taking the conversation.

“Twilight?”

“Mmmhmm?”

“I think it’d be best if you stopped talking now.”

“… yeah, you’re probably right. Oh, and can you pass me the amulet?”

“Of course.”

“Good,” Twilight floated it into the center of the spell circle, “It’ll need to sit here for about three hours, and then it should be attuned. That way, when-” She was cut off by a sudden banging on the door- hooves or talons, it was impossible to tell. “Shit. We need to hide-”

“Already have you covered,” Rarity extracted a bolt of some sort of black, iridescent fabric from her saddlebags against the wall, and telekinetically draped it over the whole of the table. “… so to speak?”

At about the same time, she heard a familiar voice call through the door, “Girls, it’s uhh, it’s Rainbow…?”

The pegasus sounded shaky and nervous. When Twilight slid back the deadbolt and pulled the door open, the scholar noted with some alarm that she was also wearing her pair of stainless-steel wingblades. She stumbled inside and dropped a rather full-looking duffle bag on the carpet. “Look, I don’t wanna, you know, alarm anypony, but there’s… uhh… been kind of a problem. Gilda’s… well, Gilda’s… she kinda just got arrested?”