//------------------------------// // Strangers on a Train // Story: The Mare Who Knew Too Little // by Alabenson //------------------------------// “Canterbury station! Next stop, Trottingham!” Fluttershy smiled as the train slowly screeched to a halt at the small station. Just a little while longer and she’d finally be at her destination. It wasn’t often that Fluttershy traveled away from Ponyville, and even less often that she did so by herself. But, an invitation from her friend Natural Harmony to tour the inner workings of the Trottingham Zoo had proven to be just the thing to lure Fluttershy out of the (relative) security of Ponyville. “I think this trip is going to be exactly what I need. A nice, peaceful little vacation with no monsters or horrible villains trying to destroy Equestria. Just rest, relaxation, and plenty of rare magical creatures. I just hope Angle Bunny doesn’t mind running our Furry Friends Book Club meeting while I’m gone. Speaking of which, I should probably finish reading that myself. It’s still going to be a while before we get to Trottingham, so I’ll have plenty of time.” After taking a moment to confirm that she hadn’t packed the book in her saddlebags, Fluttershy got up out of her seat and stretched up to reach the overhead luggage racks as she poked around looking for her suitcase. At that moment, the door to the train car burst open, and a frantic-looking unicorn stallion rushed inside. After glancing about for a few moments, the unicorn charged down the aisle, slamming into Fluttershy as he ran past with enough force to knock her back down onto her seat. “Ow! Hey, you shouldn’t—” Fluttershy’s admonishments regarding proper train behavior ended mid-sentence as she saw that the mystery stallion had already cleared the entire length of the car and was already moving ahead to the next car down. There wasn’t much time for Fluttershy to process what had just transpired, however, as no sooner had the stallion disappeared into the next car than another pair of stallions, one pegasus and one earth pony, entered the car from the same way the unicorn had come. “Pardon me, folks, I hate to be a bother, but did anypony see an older unicorn gent run through here?” the pegasus asked in a voice that reminded Fluttershy of Dr. Caballeron’s henchponies. While Fluttershy internally debated whether or not to say anything, a few of the other ponies in the car pointed towards the door the unicorn had run through. “Thank you. Alright, let’s go. The egghead only has so far to run, and I don’t want to risk him doing something stupid before we have a chance to ‘talk’ to him.” With a quick nod, the two ponies rushed down the length of the car after their quarry. “I wonder what that was all about?” Fluttershy thought to herself before pushing the issue from her mind. Whatever was going on, it likely wasn’t something that she needed to get involved with. Sometimes creatures just needed room to work things out for themselves. ********* “This is ridiculous,” Hired Muscle grunted in his thick accent as he and Strong Armer rushed through yet another passenger car. “We have gone through almost entire train.” “That might not be such a bad thing, if you think about it,” Strong Armer replied. “If anything, I’d prefer the idiot be in the caboose or the baggage car when we catch him. Fewer witnesses that way.” “As long as he does not jump off train first,” Hired Muscle replied before grinning evilly. “Once doctor returns sample, then he can jump off train. I will even help.” “He might actually prefer that to what the boss has planned for him. Speaking of which, caboose or not we need to make sure we get that sample back or we’re going to be the ones getting fed to the boss’ pet.” As Strong Armer spoke, he pulled the handle on the door leading to the next car, only to find that it wouldn’t budge. “Son of a nag! He’s jammed the door shut somehow to buy himself time.” “Trying is right. You, fly to other end of train. I will deal with door. We end this now.” Strong Armer nodded his head before taking off into the air and sailing off towards the caboose. Once his companion was airborne, Hired Muscle turned around and delivered a double-hooved buck to the door with enough force to knock it completely off its hinges. “Come out, doctor,” Hired Muscle called out as he stepped into what he saw was the train’s baggage car. “I just want to talk to you. Just give us the sample and maybe we let you go. Is good deal, yes? Is better deal than you will get from boss.” Hired Muscle’s cajoling was largely met with silence, but his trained ears picked up the squeak of the floorboards coming from further inside the car. “Aha! There you are! I am coming for you!” As Hired Muscle charged forward, the unicorn stallion who had knocked into Fluttershy earlier frantically opened the door on the far end of the car. Shutting the door behind him, he saw to his dismay that he had reached the caboose of the train, with Hired Muscle closing in fast. With no real good option, the unicorn darted inside the caboose, closing the door behind him as he wracked his brains trying to think of what he could do next. “Hello there. Doctor Double Helix, I presume?” The unicorn stiffened and slowly turned to see Strong Armer standing right behind him with an evil grin spread across his features. “You’ve been making this a lot harder than it needed to be, doc. But, seeing as how there’s nowhere left for you to run, why not do the smart thing and give up now? You know what we’re here for, so just hoof it over already.” As Strong Armer spoke, the door to the caboose crashed opened and Hired Muscle stormed inside. “Of course, you could keep being stubborn if you really want to. But, I really wouldn’t recommend it.” Double Helix backed away from the pair as he took a deep breath to steel his nerves. “It…it doesn’t matter what you do to me, you’re already too late, I don’t have the sample anymore.” Hearing this, Hired Muscle let out an angry snort and started to advance on Double Helix, only for Strong Armer to stretch out a wing in front of him. “Let’s not be too hasty, now. Remember what our priorities are here,” Strong Armer said before turning back to Double Helix. “So, you’ve already made the drop off. That’s fine, we can work with that. Just tell us where the sample is.” There was an abrupt shift in Strong Armer’s tone as he spoke, making a silent promise as to what would happen if Double Helix failed to comply. “Oh, I’ll tell you where it is, but it won’t do you any good. I’ve already passed the sample on to La Mariposa! You’ll never track her down before she delivers it to the EID. No matter what you try and threaten me with, there’s nothing that can stop the sample from getting to the authorities.” Strong Armer sucked in a deep breath as he tried to control his temper. “Hurting you might not get us the sample, but a bit of catharsis will make us fell much better about that.” With that, Strong Armer pulled back his wing, allowing Hired Muscle to advance. Double Helix, however, wasn’t quite finished with his bout of defiance. Letting out a sudden scream at the top of his lungs, Double Helix unleashed a bright flash of light form his horn. With Strong Armer and Hired Muscle briefly blinded, Double Helix rushed out the back of the caboose and clambered over the back railing. “Tell Convoluted Plan I’ll see him in Tartarus!” Before either thug could recover enough to react, Double Helix leapt from the train and came crashing down into a patch of bushes near the tracks. Hired Muscle moved to chase after him, but Strong Armer quickly pulled him back. “Don’t bother. He’s useless to us if he doesn’t have the sample anymore, and that’s assuming that last stunt didn’t kill him. Besides which, we have a bigger problem to deal with right now.” “La Mariposa,” Hired Muscle grunted as he nodded his head. Both henchponies were well acquainted with the name of the most infamous master of disguise in the Equestrian underworld. A pony so adept at altering her appearance that there were rumors she was actually a renegade changeling. Regardless, changeling or pony, the only supposed way one could tell it was her was the butterfly motif she frequently worked into her disguises. “Look, the train hasn’t got to the station yet. We’ll double back and see if there’s anypony on board who might be La Mariposa. Once we find her—” “We crush her and take sample!” “No, you idiot! It was enough of a risk chasing the doctor through the train cars, if we start a fight with somepony like La Mariposa in a crowed train we could blow the cover on everything. At that point, we may as well turn ourselves over to the EID, because whatever they’d do to us would be nothing compared to what the boss would. No, once we’ve found her we’ll follow her until she’s somewhere nice and isolated.” “And then we crush.” “Yes. Then we crush.” ********* “Trottingham Station! Next stop!” “Already? Twilight’s right, time really odes fly by when you’re reading a good book,” Fluttershy said as she slipped a bookmark into her copy of Maresfield Park. As Fluttershy opened her saddlebag to stow the book away, however, she felt something unexpected inside. “That’s odd, I don’t remember bringing anything like this with me.” The offending object turned out to be an ornate fountain pen, the body of which appeared to be made of a colorful mass of fused stained glass. “I wonder where in Equestria this came from” Fluttershy thought as she glanced around the train car to see if anypony appeared to have misplaced the pen, before finally giving up and returning it to her saddlebags and securing the butterfly-shaped latch. “I hate to think somepony lost this, but it doesn’t look like anypony here lost it. I know, it must have gotten into my saddlebags when I visited Twilight yesterday. Oh well, I’ll just give it back to her when I get back to Ponyville. I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”