The Dark Mare

by MagnetBolt

Shot In The Dark: Mountebank

The glass rained down like a shower of glittering razors as Mare Do Well slammed into the table, cape blocking out the light and plunging the room into shadow. The smoke from the pyrotechnics she'd thrown in was starting to fill the room, making even the large warehouse feel claustrophobic. She kicked the bits off of the table, the bag spilling onto the floor.

“Mare Do Well?!” The unicorn exclaimed, surprised, taking a step back. “How did you even- this was supposed to be a secret meeting! No one knows about it!”

“You can't keep secrets from me,” Loopy said, with a smug smirk. This close, she was able to feel the emotions of the two stallions keenly. Behind her, the scruffy earth pony that had brought the stolen museum pieces to the meeting was grabbing them from the ground where they'd fallen. And she felt something else. A surge of anger. She turned just as he pulled out a crossbow, firing it with one hoof. Loopy deflected it as she dodged, not using enough magic to be obvious. To the two stallions it just looked like she'd moved barely enough to avoid being hit.

For Loopy, being Mare Do Well was more about style than substance. She had to keep the legend going or else there wasn't really a point to it. As the stallion struggled to reload while holding onto the medals, she jumped at him, bucking him in the shoulder with a flying kick. He dropped what he was holding and fell back over a crate.

“You're ruining everything!” The unicorn yelled. Loopy turned to look at him.

“You made a mistake when you thought you could run your little criminal organization in my town.” She'd seen the signs. The new thugs, the way that things were becoming more organized, the way criminals were starting to work together. Changelings were masters of conspiracies. They were usually the ones behind them, but they could see them coming from a mile away, too. There was something big brewing in town, and she was still working out just what it was.

“You idiot,” he growled. “I've been planning this for months-” before he could answer, the earth pony stood up, a flask in his hoof.

“I am sorry to cut our meeting short,” he said, shaking the flask. It started bubbling. “If you escape, perhaps we can do business again! But a wise stallion knows when it is time to leave!” He threw the flask at Mare Do Well, and it exploded into a ball of flame and light. Loopy knocked over the table, taking shelter behind it. She wasn't hurt, but a wall of fire was preventing her from getting to the earth pony, who was already escaping through through the back door.

“No!” the Unicorn shouted, running towards him and being forced to stop by the heat. “The son of a donkey slipped through our hooves again!”

“Again?” Loopy asked, frowning. The unicorn turned to look at the masked mare, and the front door of the warehouse burst open, a dozen ponies rushing inside, a mix of earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasai. Leading them was the pegasus the unicorn had come in with, having traded her bookish outfit and glasses for armor.

Royal Guard armor. All of them were wearing it. It changed their coat and mane colors, but she could still recognize most of them, thanks to her skill with memorizing faces. They were the odd new ponies she'd seen hanging around the docks. Suddenly, the military bearing made sense. The way they'd been watching other ponies. The way they'd always moved in groups.

They weren't just thugs, they were professional thugs, working under the orders of the Princesses. And Loopy had a feeling that they were very upset with her. The unicorn took out a small ceremonial shield and pinned it to his shirt. Loopy felt herself start to sweat, as much as a changeling could sweat. He wasn't just a Royal Guard. He was a Captain.

“You two, get after him,” the unicorn yelled, to two of the pegasai. “Maybe if we're lucky we'll still be able to catch him despite this mess! As for you-” he turned to Mare Do Well. Loopy was backing away. She could feel a cold grip of panic coming over her. “You're going to take off that mask and come with us quietly.”

“Sorry, that's not part of the plan,” Loopy said. She reached into a pocket and grabbed a flare, throwing it towards the guards. One of the unicorns caught it with magic, and it exploded into blinding light. In daylight it would have been bright, but inside, in a dark warehouse, with everypony's eyes used to the gloom, it was painful. They screamed and covered their eyes, Loopy the only one ready for the flash and turning to flee, jumping over a line of crates.

When the Guards' eyes cleared, Mare Do Well had vanished into the shadows and the fire was starting to spread. The flare was doused, and the only light in the warehouse was thrown by the flames creeping along the boxes.

“She can't have gone far,” the Captain said. “Keep this exit covered. Clear Waters, help me get this fire out before the entire waterfront burns down.” One of the unicorns stepped forward to help the Captain, each working from one end of the blaze to meet in the middle.

Loopy watched from the shadows, trying to decide how she was going to get out. They had one exit covered too well. Even though they were spreading out, there were still a half-dozen ponies waiting near that door. The skylight was unguarded, but she'd have to fly out into the middle of the warehouse to even get close to it, and one of the pegasai was still in there with her. She'd never get to it before he intercepted her, assuming the unicorns couldn't just pull her right down in a magic net or something.

That only left one way out. The way that the real criminal had escaped. Loopy crept towards the door, sticking to the deepest shadows. This was where her changeling magic came in handy. She couldn't turn invisible or teleport like a unicorn, but she could warp emotions and perceptions, make it so ponies looking at her were distracted or ignored her. She wasn't sure if it would work here with guards looking specifically for her, but she had to try. It could mean the difference between life and life imprisonment.

“Spread out! I want her found!” the Captain yelled. Loopy froze, pressed up against a row of crates. The fire was nearly out, and the warehouse was darker for it, but more lights were starting to take its place, the four unicorns using their horns to cast beams of light and search through the gloom. She wasn't sure she was going to be able to get out of this without a fight, and if it came to a real struggle she was probably going to lose. They were better trained, stronger, and armored.

Then again, she had advantages they didn't. She checked her remaining tricks. She was out of flares, and her smoke bombs were gone, but she had a good length of rope, a bolo, and most importantly, she had her changeling magic. She just had to hope the guards hadn't been trained to resist it. If they were, she'd only make a fool of herself.

Loopy ducked down further as a beam of light played over the crates she was hiding behind. She had to get to the door before they found her. Once she was in the dark again, she stalked forward, almost crawling along the ground to stay as low as possible, hoping that she'd be able to creep along the wall towards the door.

She hissed as a guard walked right up to her escape route and took a post at the door. That made her job even harder. She couldn't just sneak out. She needed a distraction of some kind. She stopped, sitting down, and considered her options, what few she had left.

“Do you see anything?” Kicker asked his partner. The unicorn shook his head, obviously annoyed. They were on the far left of the search teams, sweeping the area nearest the wall.

“Keep quiet. She could be anywhere. These crates are turning this place into a maze.” The unicorn swept a beam of light over a stack of crates and stopped. The very edge of a piece of indigo fabric, moving slightly, whatever it was attached to concealed by the wooden boxes. The unicorn bumped his earth pony partner and pointed. Kicker nodded, and the two crept closer, trying to stay quiet. If they nabbed Mare Do Well at least the night wouldn't be a total failure.

They jumped as they got close enough, leaping around the corner without looking. And they found that the fabric was just a patch, torn from Mare Do Well's cape and stuck on a loose nail. Just before they were able to groan in disappointment, there was movement.

The unicorn looked down, the light showing a coil of rope around them. They had just enough warning from that to yell before it tightened, the noose catching them both by the back legs and dragging them into the air, the rope flung around a hanging hook and a heavy crate serving as a counterweight as it fell from the top of a high stack of boxes.

Loopy smiled as her trap caught the two guards. The Filly Scout manual she'd been given by the foals she'd rescued from Old Hickory came in handy sometimes. The shouts of alarm and the crash of the falling crate served as a wonderful distraction, getting the attention of the guards. And once she knew where their attention was, she knew where it wasn't.

She edged around the approaching guards, trying to slip through their lines. Unfortunately, with the space in the center of the warehouse cleared out, she had to choose between making a break for it (and exposing herself out in the open) or barely making any progress at all. The Guard captain and two of his men were still there near the table.

Loopy's bolo wasn't going to do her much good. Even if she managed to entangle one she'd still have two more to deal with. She'd have to get clever. And the bits on the floor gave her an idea. She didn't need them, but a changeling was nothing if not familiar with greed.

Sergeant Pauldron saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look, and saw the bits lying on the floor, gleaming in the limited light. He sure could use a few more bits, it seemed to whisper to him. Sure, it was Guard money, but he was a Guard, and they sure weren't paying him enough for this, standing around in armor in the middle of the night in some strange town. Didn't he have somepony back home he'd rather be spending the night with?

A few more bits could go a long way towards making up for all those lonely nights. Maybe he could just pocket a few without anypony noticing. It seemed like a good idea. There were bound to be a few missing anyway and it wasn’t coming out of anypony’s pay. It was just lining his pockets a little.

Sergeant Pauldron reached down and scraped up a few of the loose bits.

Lieutenant Hardback stood next to the Captain, watching his back. The unicorn had a keen intuition that had saved his life more than once, and he didn’t like what he was feeling now. The orders to bring Mare Do Well in didn’t sit well with him in the first place, and now she was running them around in circles.

“How hard is it to find one mare in a warehouse?” He muttered. There was still smoke in the air that made the entire warehouse hazy and somehow sinister. And with most of the Guards running over to help Kicker and his partner it was a prime opportunity for something to happen.

His intuition told him to look to his left. Sergeant Pauldron was scooping up bits from the ground and secreting them into a pouch in his armor. Hardback’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to face the pony, stepping over and knocking the bits from his hoof.

“What are you doing?!” Hardback demanded. Pauldron frowned and pushed back.

“What’s it to you?” Pauldron shouted. Both of them could feel anger welling up inside them, an odd, uncontrollable, unfocused frustration and rage. Hardback shoved Pauldron hard enough to make the earth pony stumble, and then the gloves came off. Pauldron’s hoof flew into Hardback’s face, knocking his helmet off.

“What in the hay has gotten into you two?!” the Captain yelled, trying to pull them apart. Hardback grabbed the overturned table with his magic and slammed it into Pauldron, sending the pony crashing into crates hard enough to break them, packing straw and jars of zap-apple jam falling out.

As the fight escalated, Loopy dashed across the warehouse behind the fighting ponies, making a break across the open area now that everypony was looking somewhere else. She was just lucky the Guards hadn’t been trained to resist changeling mind tricks. All it took was a little push towards greed and desire, then a lot of anger to fuel the fire until somepony started throwing punches. With any luck they’d buck each other so hard they’d both be out of the fight.

She avoided the light spilling in from the skylight and got to the shadows on the far side of the building. Now she just had to make her way to the back door.

There was still one pony left there, an earth pony who was keeping his post despite everything going on. She felt a rush of excitement. She could handle one pony. She just had to get rid of him and keep him busy long enough that she could get past him and out into the night. Once she was out of the warehouse there was no way the Guards would be able to catch her. She knew this town better than they did, and once she was out of sight she’d be able to turn into anypony she needed to so she could escape.

She crept past the burned crates from the criminal’s escape, ashes softly crunching under her chitinous hooves. The Guard at the door looked uncomfortable, part of him wanting to go and help with everything that was going on, but obviously too professional to just leave.

Loopy was starting to hate that professional attitude. It was making things difficult. A lone changeling had a much better chance when her opponents were disorganized. She still had one trick left, though, and it was just the thing for this situation. She took out her bolo and twirled it above her head. The stallion caught the movement and looked, just as Loopy threw it.

The bolo wrapped around his legs, tangling him up and sending him to the ground. He grunted and, before he could yell for help, Loopy jumped past him and out into the dark. She felt a surge of elation as her hooves pounded on the cobblestones. She was out and free and there was no stopping her now.

That happy feeling lasted for only a few seconds before somepony streaked past her to land in her path, forcing the changeling to stumble to a halt. The banded-winged pegasus stood in front of her, the mare smirking as she looked at the masked mare.

“I knew you’d try to get out. I just wasn’t sure if it would be the skylight or the back door. Glad I waited outside.” She spread her wings menacingly, trying to make herself look bigger, and took a step towards Loopy. “Give it up. There’s no way you can outrun me. I’m the fastest flyer in the Guard.”

“I just want to leave,” Loopy said, growling. She could tell this one would be trouble.

“You aren’t going anywhere. With all the noise in there you’re guilty of resisting arrest, assaulting a Guard officer, and whatever crimes you committed with that mask on. If you give up I might not accidentally drop you a few times while I take you into custody.”

“Not an option,” Loopy said, jumping at the Guard. She might not have been able to outrun the pegasus, it was true, but there was more than one way to skin an apple. The usual tactics of fear and surprise weren’t going to work, so she’d have to rely on stupid brute force. Loopy hated doing it, because it meant using up her stored love faster than just about anything else.

The pegasus was surprisingly nimble, avoiding the pounce and ducking to the side. Loopy tried to shoulder check her, but the pegasus flew up to avoid it, coming down with a hard kick, bucking Loopy in the jaw hard enough to break a fang and send her to the ground. The changeling coughed, ichor dripping from her wounded mouth.

“You like it rough, don’t you?” The pegasus asked, laughing. “You’re not as strong as I was expecting. I guess you’re just all legend and nothing to back it up.”

Loopy groaned and stood. “Come over here and say that.” The pegasus obliged her, flying up and coming back down to try and repeat the kick. Loopy panicked and let out a blast of energy, catching her in the face with a burst of green light. She screamed and fell back, smashing through a window. Loopy cringed. Now that was definitely assaulting a Guard. She’d put a lot more power into it than she’d intended, and it sounded like she’d actually gotten hurt instead of just being knocked out.

Still, Loopy wasn’t planning to stick around and find out. She could feel that the Guard wasn’t dead, and that was going to have to be good enough. She ran off into the dark, feeling her heart pumping in her chest.

Loopy stopped in an alleyway when she was far away enough, trying to catch her breath. Her mouth hurt, but it was already starting to heal thanks to the love she still had stored up. By morning the only sign that she’d been hurt at all would be one fang slightly shorter than the others. She shivered, her membranous wings fluttering for warmth. She’d almost been caught. She’d had to assault the Royal Guard just to get away. Whatever reputation she’d had as Mare Do Well was well and ruined now.

She took off the hat, looking at the cut in the brim, the places where she’d mended small holes and scrapes. She’d almost been really hurt a few times while putting on this little act, and if she kept going through with it, she’d probably end up like all the other changelings she knew about.

Loopy looked up at the sky. She’d been there when they’d taken them away.

A metal cage, really too small for the dozen changelings it was supposed to hold, was brought in by the Royal Guard. The townsfolk had been relatively gentle with the unconscious changelings, tying them up with rope and locking them in a closet in Town Hall.

The Guards were fresh from Canterlot, having made sure the city was secure and eager to get some revenge on the changelings that had made fools of them. Even with so many Guards in the city, they hadn’t been able to do anything to stop the swarm from taking over. All that warning and preparation and it had still been worthless.

Loopy wasn’t really surprised. They hadn’t understood the true nature of the threat. Ponies had almost no defenses against mind magic like what the changelings used. She watched with Jet as they loaded the restrained changelings into the cage. She winced as she saw them throw them in with no regard for how they landed. She saw at least one wing snap.

“You okay?” Jet asked. Loopy nodded.

“Yeah. I’m just… still kind of feeling strange after everything that happened. I got stuck in that gross bug thing for hours!” She feigned disgust. After she’d freed the townsponies as Mare Do Well she’d rushed back home and put herself in a cocoon so she could explain where she’d been all along.

“I get ya,” Jet agreed, nodding. “I heard they’re gonna take those things back to Canterlot so they can do experiments on them and find out where they come from.”

“Experiments?” Loopy asked, feeling sick for real. She imagined unicorns strapping them down, slowly taking them apart to find out how they worked. Growing up in the hive, she’d heard all kinds of stories about what ponies would do if they caught you without a disguise. They’d cut off your wings or seal you in a jar or pin you to a wall like some kind of grotesque display.

She hadn’t believed they were real, but she could feel the way the ponies around her felt satisfied at the display of force, even though almost all of it wasn’t needed. They liked seeing the Guards get rough with the changelings. It was scary, in its own way.

Fear of getting caught had kept her from becoming Mare Do Well until the hunger for fresh love was too strong to ignore. She’d had nightmares about being caught by the Guards and thrown in a cage of her own, a new set of fears to go along with the terror of what might happen if Queen Chrysalis ever found her. Just because a lot of changeling scouts went rogue didn’t mean she wouldn’t find ways to torture each and every one of them.

Loopy took off the rest of the costume and, in a flash, put on her real disguise as a normal pegasus pony. With the guards it was just too risky to keep being Mare Do Well. Her plan to win big and become a national hero were in the trash, and it was time she put the costume there too. She couldn’t take it home – it’d be damning evidence of what she was. She opened the lid of a trash can and dumped the costume inside, holding onto the hat for a moment. There were a lot of memories in the costume. It was hard to get rid of.

She sighed at her own sentimentality. It wasn’t like a changeling to get so attached to an identity, especially a faceless one like Mare Do Well. She tossed the hat into the trash can and walked away. Maybe it was for the best. With all the Guards in town it wasn’t like they needed another protector.

When she finally got home, having assumed half a dozen disguises on the way there to make it impossible to track her, Loopy looked at the notes she’d made, the mail she’d taken, the little world she’d built out of facts and figures.

It had all been useless. She’d been as much in the dark as everypony else. She’d thought there was some big criminal conspiracy but it had just turned out to be the Royal Guards, and the only one who’d almost fallen into the trap had been her. She tore down the letter she’d put in the center of her web of information, throwing it to the floor. It was all pointless.

She tore down another article. Then a note. Then more. She just threw it all down in a pile, feeling something in her chest. A pony would maybe have called it regret. She was a changeling, though, and Loopy had to remind herself she didn’t have emotions like that. The closest thing a changeling had was the annoyance of having missed an opportunity. She’d been pretending to be a pony for so long she was losing herself in the act.

Loopy sighed, resting her forehead on the wall. It was all such a mess. She’d hurt somepony she shouldn’t have. She’d almost been arrested by the Guard. Her moonlighting as Mare Do Well was truly over. What else could go wrong today?

She resigned herself to getting some sleep and hoping the morning was better. She threw the papers in a box and shoved it under her bed. She’d have to dispose of it properly in the morning. Then she turned out the lights and flopped onto the mattress, trying to get comfortable.

Loopy usually didn’t have problems sleeping, but the panic was still eating at her. And there was a sense that she had forgotten something. Even if most of the guards had been the ones she’d been seeing around, there were here for a reason. And if there was that scruffy stallion with his stolen Medals, there had to be more. Maybe there was a criminal conspiracy brewing after all.

Loopy rolled over, trying to quiet her mind. It wasn’t her problem anymore.

“Overall, it could have gone better,” the scruffy stallion said, sighing. “But at least we still have the Medals.” He put them on the table, the lantern overhead making the jeweled disks gleam. There were three other seats at the table. Two were occupied.

“Indeed. Though, at the least, I would say our time was not… entirely wasted,” said a voice from the darkness, a huge shape circling the table just out of the light.

“Only becauth of Doctor Caballeron’s dumb luck,” snorted a bandaged unicorn. She laughed and put a hoof on the table, frost forming around it. She leaned into the light, and stared at the stallion with uneven eyes, one glazed over like a marble of frost and the other blazing red and raw. She smiled with a lipless grin. “If Mare Do Well hadn’t been there you’d be rotting away in a thell!”

“Yes, Mare Do Well… she’s been a bit of a thorn in our side,” agreed the voice from the dark. “As has the dear Captain. I believe this is the third time they have tracked us down. I am surprised at the persistence they show.”

“We should skip town!” Yelled a griffoness as she leaned over the table and grabbed one of the Medals. “We haven’t seen a bit since we stole these! We were supposed to get rich and instead we’re just sitting here! We’re going to have to lie low for so long that the only way we’re gonna get anything from this take is as a retirement fund!”

A massive hand came out of the darkness and grabbed her by the back of the neck, pulling her up to look her in the eye. She cowered as she looked into the masked gaze of the minotaur prowling around them.

“We need patience. Do you not trust me?”

“Y-yes boss,” she said, going limp and looking down at the deck submissively, not able to meet his gaze. The minotaur put her down gently.

“Good.” He stepped away. “You are not entirely wrong, though. I don't want to hold onto these artifacts either. They do us no good on their own. But I suspect if we go to another town we will find that our dear Captain Brass Shield has simply laid another trap for us. He has already laid three in as many months, and I grow tired of the chase.”

“Didn't you say it was-” the stallion said, raising an eyebrow.

“It was amusing, yes. At first. But it has ceased to be so. He has gone from being clever to simply trying to drown us in horsepower. We are going to put an end to this little game of ours.”

“What, we're going to kill him?” the griffon asked, rubbing her neck.

“We're going to use this Mare Do Well situation to our advantage. It will distract him, and I intend to provide him with further distractions. When the time is right, and his army has been whittled down to nothing, then we will strike.”

“And then we'll kill him?”

The minotaur sighed. “If necessary.”

Jetstream yawned. She hated being on the morning weather patrol sometimes. Having to make sure things were just so at the break of dawn. Even Celestia probably didn’t have to wake up at this hour. A flash of purple caught her attention below. She flew down, curious.

Sitting in a trash can was a purple costume. Jetstream felt herself shaking with a mix of emotions as she picked up the hat that was lying on top.

Mare Do Well’s hat.