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// 9 
// Story: The maned ape 
// by sykko 
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Dave ambled around the padded track of what looked to be a workout room for little horses that had injuries that physically impaired them. As he limped around the padded track with the aid of the wooden crutch, he took notice of the different injured little horses that were doing physical exercises on padded equipment, or walking on wobbly legs on treadmills secured by a bar strapped to their bodies, or were performing tasks, such as picking up objects of different sizes with their mouths or wings or hooves and placing them on pegs. This was a physical therapy room. He remembered going to one when back in high school to show moral when his buddy broke his back in a four-wheeler accident that had left the guy wheelchair bound.

"Ow! Fucking goddamn piss-gutting shit!" Dave stepped wrong, which caused a white-hot jolt of pain to shoot up his leg. Hobbling over to the rail that ran the inner circumference of the track to sit down. It barely came up to his hip joint, so it was awkward to sit on. As he rubbed his injured leg and gingerly bent his knee to work out the pain, he looked around the room. Sitting at a table was a grey winged mare with a blonde mane and tail. She had bandages on her head and one of her golden eyes seemed to move independent of the other. Sitting next to her was a smaller horned horse that had the same color fur, eyes, and mane and tail. The smaller horned horse was nearly the spitting image of the winged one. He mused that the smaller one must be the child...foal?...of the bigger one.

She was currently using her wings to pick up a small plastic cup. Occasionally she would miss and her wing would hit the table or she'd accidentally knock the cup off the table. Whenever the plastic cup would fall to the floor, the little grey horned horse would hop up from where she was sitting, pick up the plastic cup with her mouth, hop back to where she was sitting and place the cup back on the table, then let out soft chattering nickers.

"Must've taken a pretty nasty blow to the head to mess up you depth perception that badly."

The blonde-maned mare with grey coat looked over at him and gave him a genuinely warm smile as she waved a hoof at him. Dave grunted as he stood back up. He waved his hand back at her as a smile graced his lips. He continued his trek around the padded track. He rubbed the sore spot on his forehead. He knew it was going to bruise and would probably make him look like a raccoon for a few days. He silently swore that the first chance he got, he'd get his hands on a hacksaw and cut out head holes in every doorway in this horse town.

There came a chattering nicker from behind Dave and a horse with their rear legs in a wheeled contraption quickly trotted by on his right. "Oops, sorry." He stepped to the side as the little horse passed. Though he couldn't understand them, he understood 'Passing on your right.' or 'Passing on your left.'. It was good track etiquette when not competing to let others know when you were passing so you didn't accidentally clip them or have them accidentally bump into you.





Twilight had finished talking with the doctor and was now walking to the physical therapy room. She pushed open the door and walked in. Big Red was limping around the track on the crutch that Apple Bloom had carved for him. Occasionally he would stop and sit on the railing that ran along the inner circuit of the padded track. For a moment she wondered why he didn't sit on one of the benches or chairs around the room, then let her gaze linger on him for a moment longer. She softly said to herself, "He's too tall for one of those seats, plus with his injury, it's probably difficult for him to sit in something that low for him." She made a mental note to inquire at Sofas & Quills how much it would cost to get some furniture made to fit Big Red's measurements.

Twilight trotted up to the padded track and gestured for Big Red to follow her. As the maned ape limped up, she said, "Come on. We're going to Carousel Boutique. I'm going to commission Rarity to make you some better clothes rather than a folded up sheet and have some coverings for your hind paws made. Winter will be here soon and nopony needs you getting hypothermia."





After getting the information from Cross Stitch, Sunset had sent a quick missive to the local Equestrian Royal Police. The ERP had quickly shown up with the Whinnyapolis Metro Police. The streets around the illegal shop were cordoned off to keep the lookie-loos, rubber neckers and snatch-thieves at bay. The sniffling Cross Stitch was cut down from the lamp post, placed in hobbles and led into an armored wagon to be sent off to jail.

As the ERP began to haul out the goods from the shop, Sunset had cast an illusion on her armor, making it look like standard Equestrian Royal Police barding and slipped away. She had the name of the griffon poacher and his last known location. His name is Gordon and according to Cross Stitch, he was last known to be operating outside of Manehattan, the city where that maned ape was captured when it was being pursued by poachers. He would have moved locations long since and his trail gone cold, but clues could be gleaned from his camp...when she found it, that would help to figure out where he was heading to.

Sunset entered into the Shadow Guard secret house, one of many across the nation, that served as her base of operations while in Whinnyapolis. She made her way to the small room that served as her private quarters and pulled a map of Equestria from its case. She studied the map. Manehattan was south of Whinnyapolis. She pulled open the drawer on the nightstand by the gad to retrieve a quill and inkpot. Her eyes lingered on the small keepsake locket, the only personal item she carried that wasn't necessary for her mission. Opening the locket, she looked at the small wedding photo of her and her wife, Wallflower Blush, on their wedding day. Seeing the photo made her heart ache, this was the first time in ten years she had spent this much time away from the mare she loved.

Sunset remembered the day she had first met Wallflower. The green earth pony mare was attending Maretropolis University as a botany major. The moment her light teal eyes had made contact with those brown eyes, she was instantly smitten. Between Wallflower's near-crippling social anxiety and hectic school schedule, it made talking to her nearly impossible. But being the captain of the Shadow Guard and Celestia's sword meant that she'd often accomplish no less that three impossible things a day.

Sunset let her mind linger on Wallflower. Her wife would be thirty-three next summer. Sunset was eighty-seven. Being the mortal foal of an alicorn, plus being heavily imbued with Celestia's magic to become her sword and flame meant she aged slower than other ponies. The only other ponies who understood this were the members of the Twilight clan, Their clan founder had been the sword of Celestia and Luna. The history books had hailed the founder of the Twilight clan as a hero, losing her life thwarting an iron wolf hunting pack. The history books were often wrong, with Celestia being the one who levitated the quill that edited them.

Contempt for her mother rose up in Sunset and she struggled to shove it aside, supplanting it with the memories of of the warmth of her wife's body pressed against her back and her breath tickling the hairs of her ear.

Sunset gently closed the locket and gingerly returned it back to its spot in the drawer. Pulling the stopper from the inkpot, she dipped the the tip of the quill in it, tapped it on the lip of the inkpot to knock away the excess and began marking out locations on the countryside outside of Manehattan where the poacher's camps might have been. She also marked out the location from memory of looking over many, many times the old maps of Equestria where a broken highway paved with crystalline cobbles ran. The old broken highway ran in a north-south route that, according to the old maps, looped towards the Everfree basin. Occasionally somepony would dig up a few crystalline cobbles of that old highway and it would kick off an archaeological dig in an attempt to uncover and preserve something from Equestria's ancient history. As a foal, Sunset had asked her mother about that ancient highway. Celestia would always become cagey and dodgy, changing the topic.

Sunset hated thinking about her mother. Though growing up in the palace in Canterlot, she rarely saw her mother. On the times she did, Celestia was always too tired or distracted to spend any time with her.

Sunset paused what she was doing to look at her left forehoof. She focused on the runes that were etched into it, though hard to see unless the light hit her hooves just right or she supercharged her magic, Celestia had personally etched them into her hooves herself. The thought of this caused phantom itches in her frogs. Celestia had put her through a brutal, grueling and torturous training regimen. The regimen made her physically stronger, faster and greatly increased her endurance, it also greatly increased her magical wellspring which allowed her to use much more powerful spells, and the training made her resistant to torture and interrogation techniques. Each time she completed a tier of the training, Celestia would etch a rune into one of her hooves with a tool made from sun-gold that looked like a very thin ice pick. Once she had finished the training and the last of the runes were etched into her hooves, Celestia funneled solar magic into her body until she thought she was going to burn away into ash.

Sunset had always had a natural knack for mind magic and fire magic. After Celestia had put her through the training regimen, etched runes into her hooves and funneled solar magic into her, her abilities were greatly increased. Before the training she could hear the thoughts of others if she focused her magic on them, now she could see and hear the thoughts of others with just a touch of her hoof, induce fear, panic, calm, or compel others to speak the truth by locking her eyes on them and focusing her magic, she could also induce mass fear or calm in crowds by focusing her magic on the area, not that she needed to use that ability as her reputation when in armor usually did it. Before she could light candles by focusing her magic on their wick or move tongues of flame in a fire place about the room in her magic, now she could unleash waves of flame that could turn a city block to ashes, hurl bolts and balls of flame that could make glass run like water, and fire a beam so hot that it could melt through the door of a bank vault in minutes. These terrible abilities she constantly had to keep in check lest she harmed an innocent bystander, or worse...her wife.

The thoughts of what Celestia had put her through put Sunset in a sour mood. She rolled up the map and returned it to its case. Putting the quill and inkpot on the nightstand, she walked into the small adjoining bathroom to get a drink of water. She looked in the mirror as she filled the glass with water from the sink. "Fuck you, you old nag. You always know how to get what you want from anypony, don't you? If it wasn't for poachers, like the ones who maimed Minty, I would have slashed your throat with my sword. That wouldn't kill you, but you wouldn't be able to talk to anypony for weeks until your voice box healed." She blew out an angry sigh before downing the water in the glass. "I'm not doing this for her. I'm doing this for the innocents that these poachers have harmed or will harm."





Gordon finished erecting the tent that would serve as his headquarters. It had taken him a few weeks travelling along that ancient broken highway, but now he was at his intended destination, a grouping of hot springs atop a plateau that gave him a vantage point of the surrounding terrain. Once camp was finished being set up, he sent three griffons off in the directions of Stalliongrad, Marescow and Whinnyapolis with identical letters. Their orders were to locate one of the employees of The Broker and give them the letter.

Gordon stood on the edge of the plateau and looked down at the broad circular plain that sat at the base of the ice capped mountains that marked the southern edge of the Frozen North. Ponies avoided this plain, telling stories of ghost ponies who seemed to be milling about aimlessly and a smoky apparition that would be floating along the rim of the glaciers. Normally he would have written stories like that off if it weren't the fact that there were watch towers and small forts sparsely dotted around the edges of that frozen plain. The solar princess had ordered them built a long time ago to watch for something, and he didn't know what was to be watched for.

Gordon's eyes traced along the edge of a large glacier and a shiver ran up his spine. It felt like something was watching him.


***


Nguyen Suchen1 lay curled up in the fetal position in this cage. Weeks ago she had given up on wishing to go home. She had given up on calling out for her mommy. All she knew now was this cage, those mean and scary cat-chickens, and those scary dog-monsters. Home was a slowly fading memory.

Her tummy ached and gurgled as it had been days since she had eaten. Those mean and scary cat-chickens rarely fed her, and when they did, it was usually a hunk of bloody, raw meat. At first she turned her nose up at the raw meat, but soon enough hunger overtook her and she would gobble down the raw meat when they tossed it into her cage. She was exhausted, but whenever those mean and scary cat-chickens caught her sleeping, they'd rattle the cage or jab her with the butt of a spear while squawking at her.

When Suchen did get sleep, there would be this nice and pretty dark blue horse who would show up in her dreams, singing soft songs to her, tell her silly stories and reassure her that help was looking for her, that she just had to be brave and hang on.