We rented a gym a block away that closed at 10 PM. It wasn't as if the owner was going to refuse, but I ensured he got well paid. Citron took the 49 bus up from his parents' flat and the team met for training. I had included others the last few nights who didn't meet my standards on Carne Asada's guard staff, but not tonight. I didn't want distractions.
I went up to the speed bag and went for it as if I would tear it apart. Safe ambushed me and I teleported away, and so it went until—despite all the frost I dragged out of in-between—we were all sweaty and exhausted. After a slovenly half-hour not saying much at a late-night soda fountain—I had a strawberry oatshake—we went off to collapse in our beds.
I had a nightmare about racing around never arriving in time for what I never knew what before I raced off again. At least it didn't involve blood or my family.
Carne Asada stopped getting visitors. No surprise there. It left her more agitated than normal. If she was stuck in the city, she wanted to see ponies. I knew what that eventually meant for me, so I trained harder—magically and physically. I studied the map of the neighborhood. I took long walks at various times of the day, usually with either Citron or Crystal Skies shadowing me. I dressed as much like everypony as I could manage. I took the hotel concierge out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and spent time talking about all the great restaurants, shops, and stores within the surrounding eight or so blocks.
When Peytral gave me an address three days later, I was ready. I thought it inconceivable that the Marvel Gang would try anything again, let alone so soon. Still, I hadn't met anypony named Rose Thorn, or somepony who had a telltale cutie mark. I couldn't gauge the mettle of the stallion.
I presumed he was a stallion...
Regardless, I felt I was back in top form. My head felt clear. I could hold Teleport with ease just shy of casting it. I had picked a short, easy stroll to the office building along sidewalks that wouldn't be too full of pedestrians. I double-checked it with a trusted pony and Citron. Crystal Skies mustered another pegasus to watch the roof tops, apartment windows, and fire escapes along the route for suspicious ponies. I felt we knew all the steam-grates, alleys, and doorways.
With repeated magic treatments, Carne Asada no longer needed the chair, but she was visibly slow. She didn't care. She wanted out. A carriage could get caught in one-way unpredictable midtown traffic, so we agreed to walk. I couldn't dissuade her.
Four city blocks distance total. Two bus stops if she needed to rest. We set off out of the workers' rear entrance through the kitchen, with her wearing a blue windbreaker, a black scarf, and dark sunglasses.
I suspected we would have the coppers for an escort by the time we got halfway there. "Out," I subvocalized.
Crystal Skies, Pig Pen, Broomhill Dare, and Safe all said back, "Clear." Citron looked both ways out of the underground carriage park and nodded.
A sunny day in the city. Hot but not so muggy. Lots of little clouds scudded across the sky, but otherwise nice. All I had to do was scan my surroundings for city ponies acting out of the ordinary, making sure Carne Asada wasn't getting tired, and walking. Citron watched, too, but focused on me and looking the opposite direction I looked. We had gotten pretty good at the coordination. He sometimes hummed an urban beat, so as to keep us in rhythm and turning to look 180° in the opposite direction.
I spotted our office building up ahead, but something nevertheless didn't seem right. I said, "Eyes?"
"Nope." "Nothing." "Can you give me a clue?" "I think there's an EBI a block behind us."
I swiveled my ears about and said, "I'm sorry. Let's go faster."
Carne Asada looked tired but increased her gait just shy of switching to a trot. Around me I heard the sounds of hooves on cement, metal horseshoes and wagon wheels on cobbles, steam pipes hissing in the streets, a horn blaring, one pony yelling about the ancestry of another's, a myriad of conversations, the squealing of brakes, a distant subway train...
I started calculating vectors for the third floor of the office building. I made sure to touch my side against Carne Asada's.
And a whistle? Did I hear a whistle? Like the wind, but different. Compressed. Dopplered. "Are there pegasi approaching?" I asked loudly so the other guards might also look. I looked at roof top level, but saw nothing.
Louder.
Above me?
What?
I looked straight up as Crystal Skies cried out, "Sweet Celestia!"
I saw death.
Instinct made me flank butt Carne Asada away toward the stone side of the building even as I cast Teleport. She had only a half pony length until she bounced into the red granite façade with her injured side. I did my best to jump back even as my equations balanced.
Between one adrenalized racing heartbeat and the next, the dive-bombing griffon appeared, wings flared and booming like a struck drum, her index claw slicing into the skin of my flank as my spell triggered.
Contact.
Time slowed as the world jerked 5° rightward.
Me.
And...
The griffon hen.
The bird had eyes as green as emeralds and as bright as fire. They turned to focus on me. I hadn't thought to ask if others experienced time the way I did when I teleported, but I got that the bird lioness realized I'd stolen her prey, prey that ought now be splintering into fragments of bone and wet sinew.
She had a white feathered head, with a yellow crest and a hooked raptor's beak that could snap off a hoof like the end of a carrot. It faded into dark brown feathers, streaked with grey, into thin legs that ended in a yellow talon. Not satisfied with an average sharp eagle talon, this griffon wore chainmail gloves that ended in scythes. One turned red with my blood. Beyond, her lion parts were similarly equipped on her paws to render anypony into a sum of her parts.
Death. I saw death.
The darkness of oblivion formed up around me as a spark of lightning crackled, outlining a sphere to encase the two of us. Her mouth opened measurably to inhale. I did not correct this mistake on her part. Instead, I calculated what I could do next.
Force came to mind.
Of course it did.
It wasn't entirely the wrong instinct as it usually was. I could push, pull, or shove. I could flash a light in her face. I could try Teleport. Maiden's Cure would do no good. In that tenth of a second before I could separate us, her muscles could react. I would find myself eviscerated.
Fear—like that night of rain, mud, and lightning—hit full force. Breakfast wanted out. Only slowed-time prevented my shuddering from rattling my teeth. I could not muster anger. The griffon had aimed for Carne Asada, not me. I wasn't her target. I was a cockroach she had inadvertently tread on.
Intent made me no less dead.
The force of the fear made my limbs grow cold even before the darkness fully engulfed me. It froze me. I didn't want to end here. I had much to do, much to learn, yet. In seconds, I expected that in a flash of pain I would simply cease to exist. Or, maybe it would be a lot of long lingering pain first. The result would be the same.
Did the length matter afterwards?
I calculated vectors for Force, letting go of Teleport. I had no brain cells left for any spell other than the repeatedly primal one. She was in the process of flaying skin from my flank. The distance vector I needed was as precise as such calculations got except for when sewing, and couldn't be easier. A sliver of a hoof length would make no difference.
My fear tamped down on that part of my brain that wanted remind me how my magic worked. Had it not, I might have fainted or exploded, either equally fatal.
The absolute cold of in-between bit past my fur into my skin as I squeezed my eyes closed and clamped my nostrils.
I saw light beyond my eyelids.
I cast.
Blam!
I screamed at the flash and the whoosh of flames. I felt myself propelled backward and I hit a bookshelf. I knew it had to be a bookshelf because it wasn't a flat surface. My right rear cannon bone cracked with a pain so sharp, it erased the pain I felt hitting everywhere else on my right side, before I fell to the floor—dislocating the break. I screamed harder.
I opened my eyes.
I lay in a large conference room. Ponies scattered from their chairs for the door. I heard the thumps and yelling as they got stuck. The griffon had hit the black lacquer table, causing it to rock, knocking at least one pony unconscious. As the big, muscular griffon got up, I saw I'd burnt off all the feathers under her beak and blackened her right talon, the one she'd sliced me with. Two of the four knives glowed red. She belatedly realized that and flicked off the glove. It flew across the room, struck a window. The pane crazed and a hoof-sized area turned to snow, but it didn't break out. It had to be tempered.
The griffon was smoking, and it wasn't anything the syndicate sold.
Her green eyes locked on me; slit irises pulsed. I stopped screaming. Maybe it really was shock. Or prey reaction to recognizing a predator. Maybe dying didn't hurt that much.
Maybe it was the primitive horse's brain screaming, run!
I swallowed as she limped toward me, burnt feather smell reaching my nostrils.
It hit me. A realization. Blue Lightning had said he had been trained by a griffon master fighter.
Oh, Tartarus!!
What was I to do?
Digits whirled in my sensorium. I hadn't lost my Force spell? The vectors were wrong now, but it still spun! "Fight or flight," that was what the response was called.
All flight mechanisms were broken. Fear had queued fight instead.
In a shaky voice, I said, "These ponies are too soft for you. You could easily fight out of the building. I'm not worth it."
She continued to stalk across the room.
Other ponies whinnied in fear and pain, trying desperately to get out of the door, none thinking to let somepony else out first. They had to be Carne Asada's lieutenants, I decided.
It was was enough of a delay. The spell spun up with reasonable ranging vectors, counting down the distance. The fear-queued-fight-instinct, or the adrenaline, whatever, it allowed me to apply the alicorn simplification and the digits went crazy, spinning into a fiery blue line bisecting my reality. This was either going to be spectacular, or I was going to be scissored like that crab I ate a few days ago.
I tried one last time. "Do you really want to die?"
I guess griffons are more lion than eagle. This hen roared as she lunged. I didn't even aim ahead of her path as Citron the Force-expert advised, or into the ground where Broomhill Dare advised. I did as instinct commanded.
I lowered my head to point my horn at her, shut my eyes tightly, and yelled, forcing every last splendor from my core toward my head. I could not have made her strike zone clearer had I drawn a dashed cut-here line across the back of my neck. One swipe and I would be cleanly sliced into two bouncing pieces if my spell failed. Keeping my eyes closed was clearly the best thing I could do.
I let go as if I let go of life itself.
A blue-green flash and the recoil slid me through a pool of sticky wetness into the bookcase, flinging me back into the deadly not-flat wall. My head, back, and forelegs bounced. Pain from my leg stopped me from breathing. When your ears are ringing from a thunderclap, the second bang doesn't sound as loud.
I opened my eyes in time to see the griffon rocket into the opposite wall twenty pony lengths away. The marble shattered, then flaked off as she slumped to the floor, leaving a beast-sized indentation behind. She visibly breathed, but blood bubbled from the nostrils in her beak and streamed from her right ear.
When I gasped, the air smelled of ozone, burnt feathers, and the iron scent of my blood.
My magic hadn't incinerated her, but it had hurt her. Was my magic vs force paradigm flawed? I couldn't hurt ponies, but I could at least protect myself?
My leg really hurt. I made the mistake of looking down. Legs don't go that way. But I didn't faint. When you're bleeding like that, fainting without securing help isn't a good idea.
My magic blast had gotten the attention of the other ponies. That allowed their bodyguards to push them back into the room, they themselves coming to secure the griffon and take care of me and stop the hemorrhaging. A few even thought to calm their employers' fears.
In the end, all the lieutenants were thanking me even as a "company" doctor galloped in to deal with my serious break.
Ever resourceful, I told them all that I expected was for each of them to pay me a visit in the hospital. "I'll tell Carne Asada if you don't."
I smiled as I lost my battle with consciousness. Somepony had tattled. I would find out whom.