//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: Unstoppable // by Snaproll //------------------------------// And two days later, I was in Canterlot with Tequila Sunrise. Canterlot is a lot different from Cloudsdale, and beyond just the architecture. It's a much older city, and things are just that much more compact. The houses are closer together, and while a single home might have a footprint half the size of your average Cloudsdale home, they generally consisted of two or sometimes three stories crammed into the Castle on the Mountain. The city's historical atmosphere is so thick you can swim through it, and it can sweep you away if you aren't careful. Furthermore, Canterlot is where Princesses Celestia and Luna reside, and so anypony who wants to be somepony eventually finds their way there. After all, if you're going to sell something to Equestria, you start in the main Canterlot market... Tequila and I had pooled our funds and managed to afford a not-quite-outrageously expensive suite of rooms overlooking the main square at Canterlot, with a view of the main castle keep in the background. She had a room to herself, and I shared one with Slipstream and Cloud Cover before they left on the second day. By the fourth day, we'd settled into an easy routine: Tequila would take a shower first thing in the morning while I made toast and coffee, which I managed not to burn too badly. After she emerged from her morning ablutions, a vision of loveliness: her hair glowing with a soft luster that smelled like strawberries and ginger. The sight of her was enough to wake me up more than the coffee did, that's for sure. Over lunch we shared light conversation, where she impressed me with her quick wit, sense of humor, and charm. For my part, I exercised my listening abilities, since it gave me fewer chances of breaking down and blurting out "Durr... you're preeeeeetty... ". It was a near thing, but I succeeded in not coming across like a complete moron. After breakfast, we traded off duties. One of us would fly a search pattern around Canterlot, while the other would stay in town. And we'd watch the show... This had been my fourth time seeing it. We'd all found Flim and Flam on the first day. It wasn't that hard, to be honest. In their line of work, the job gets easier if you make a great, gaudy spectacle of yourself, and the brothers had raised that to an art form. They had a stage set up in the main market square, a fancy affair with a drawn blue-striped curtain with silhouettes of the brother's profiles on either side. With a drumroll, a calliope, tuba, bass drum and glockenschpiel crescendoed into a tinkling, jolly tune. The curtain parted, revealing the brothers, dressed in their trademark straw hats and blue vests. With winning smiles, they launched into their act. I cant give a full account of their act, because trying to give the full experience of a musical sales pitch just by writing it down is an exercise in futility. You miss out on the experience of the music hitting your ears, as the dynamics and harmonies play upon your psyche in ways that you don't understand. It's the difference between looking at a picture of a hayburger and eating one. Instead I'll try to give you the pertinent details. The brothers opened up with bemoaning the time it took to send the Royal Mail. The weeks it would take, the hazards of long distance letters being lost, delivered to the wrong address... you get the idea. In short, the number of the things that can happen with an organization as big and complex as the Royal Mail. The solution, therefore, should be Flim and Flam's Revolutionary Dragon-grams! Instantaneous communication with the four corners of Equestria, blah blah blah. What interested us more than the showmanship was their practical demonstration. At this point, they brought a dragon onstage, and promised to send a letter to Baltimare and, in enough time it took to write it, receive the response. As the music hushed, the adolescent dragon took the scroll tied with a blue ribbon and, blowing it away with a gentle breath of fire. The crowd hushed, and waited with baited breath until, minutes later, the dragon belched a ball of azure flame that dissolved into the form of another tightly wrapped scroll, this one with a red ribbon, and read it aloud. He-I presume, though it's hard to tell with dragons- barely got through the first sentence of the scroll before the crowd erupted with thunderous cheers and hoof stamping. And so it went. They performed the show twice a day every day without fail. What's more, they displayed all the letters they received nearby. Looking at them, each received letter had different writing, so it was clear that they were different from sending to sending. I also made a point to pay attention to the crowds. Canterlot was big enough that two shows a day for five days running gave them a pretty different audience day to day, and I started recognizing some who brought friends the next day to see the spectacle. Today, though, the press made an appearance, so the first performance ended with a stuttering of flash-bulbs. Afterward, a half dozen reporters surrounded the brothers, peppering them with a hail of questions. I was standing near enough to catch that not all the reporters were from Canterlot newspapers either. The Las Pegasus Times, Fillydelphia Gazette and Manehattan Chronicle all wanted to know how soon dragon-gram service would be extended to their cities. The brothers fielded questions and dealt back snappy quotes to keep the reporters happy until a distinguished, blue haired and mustached stallion with a monocle stepped through the circle of reporters. A dun colored earth pony standing by me nudged me and nodded in his direction. "Old Fancy Pants there must think there's something to those two." And sure enough, over the noise of the crowd, I could make out talk of Investing in the Future of communication, etc. That was something I hadn't thought of. Worried, I faded back into the crowd, bought some lunch, and scouted out my next vantage point for the afternoon show. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I got back to the hotel that afternoon, I found Tequila Sunrise waiting for me, with the customary chilled Appleweisens already opened on the table. We traded notes on the days findings, I relaying my account to her. She'd spent most of her day flying a perimeter around Canterlot. We reasoned that the brothers had been fraudsters before, so we were looking for an obvious sign that they were corresponding, not with Baltimare, but rather an accomplice in a farmhouse or dirigible somewhere. However, each day we had come up dry. Tequila had just finished telling me about her flight when we heard a knock at the door, followed by the sound of envelopes being shoved under the door. Tequila rose and brought back two envelopes stamped by the Royal Mail, and tossed one to me. We each read our letter in silence. "Well," I said, "it looks like we can forget about the search flights." I waved my letter idly. "Looks like Slipstream and Cloud Cover got to Baltimare yesterday. From the looks of it, that demonstration of theirs is legit." Tequilas pretty eyebrows rose at that. "Really?" I nodded, still scanning the letter. "Yep. They had another unicorn and a dragon there selling the same thing. They said their act wasn't as good, but the results spoke for themselves." I looked up at her. "You know, I was really hoping that it'd turn out to be fake." "Me too." I nodded at her letter. "What's yours?" "There's two. This one's letter from Gale... Stormy Gale," she corrected, flushing prettily. "She's recovering well in the hospital. She got the picture of the dragon we sent her, but she doesn't recognize it. This one, " she held up the other letter, "came from Rubberstamp. He says there've been two more attacks. Everypony's okay!" She hurried to say, at my expression. "Mostly. But in both cases the mail parcels were lost." "Dragons?" She nodded. "I'm afraid so." I shook my head. "I'm starting to think that the dragons we find doing these demonstrations aren't going to be the ones attacking us. For one, there's two that we can account for here in Canterlot and Baltimare. We've seen the one here every day, so we know he can't be doing the attacks. We'll have to assume that the one in Baltimare was doing the same." I sighed. "I think we've done all we can here. Let's head back to Cloudsdale tomorrow." Tequila nodded and sleepily sauntered off to her bedroom. I showered off the day's funk from the crowd before I did the same. And so ended my time in Canterlot as a tourist.