//------------------------------// // The Great Escape // Story: The Price of Harmony // by Maverickthepony //------------------------------// Chapter 6: The Great Escape Rainbow Dash felt awful as she woke up. She couldn't remember anything after getting back to the cave. She groggily opened her eyes and started panicking. She had no idea where she was. "I see you are confused," said a voice in the shadows, "Allow me to shed a little light on your situation." The speaker came into the light. He had a sandy brown and gritty looking coat, his mane was the same color as his coat. One feature stuck out about him, he had a gryphon arm where his right front arm should have been. "Who are you?" asked Rainbow Dash, still a little groggy. "My name is Talon, and you are Rainbow Dash." "What do you want with me!" yelled Rainbow Dash. "I want information, but I will have to wait before getting it. The commander of the army of Forshan is on his way here and he wants to be here for the interrogation. Sadly, this means that I will have to leave now. I'll be seeing you in the morning." with that Talon left the room and as he walked out he lit a cigar. Rainbow Dash watched as he left. As soon as he was gone, she began to panic. "Oh no, I've been captured, he'll probably kill me when he's done. I'm going to have to hold out as long as I can. Maybe my friends will find me!" her face immediately dropped as she lost all hope. "Or maybe I'm doomed to die and nopony will ever see my body! I'll never get to see my friends again. My life is ruined!" with that she started crying. She kept crying for a few hours before finally falling asleep. "I don't care that he wanted to be there for the interrogation!" shouted Talon as he slammed his claw onto the table. "I could have her singing like a bird by now!" "But commander Iron Foot would not be too happy about that now would he?" said a gray pony next to Talon, "You work for him now. You agreed!" said the gray pony sitting across from Talon. "Ya, but still he should have given me the right to interrogate her out in the desert where there is no risk!" Said Talon who had crossed his arms at this point. "I don't exactly trust everyone here!" "I know you don't but you still have to do it or he will kill you." "Ya ya." said Talon who started looking out the window at the desert. "My only question is why, if he knew she was going to be here, did he not just start living here!" "I don't know, why don't you ask him when he gets here?" A few hours later, Rainbow Dash was awoken by a pony. "Shhhh, keep your voice down." said the pony, "I'm here to set you free." "Who are you?" asked Rainbow Dash in a hushed tone. "I'm a member of the Equestrian Rebels." replied the savior pony, "I don't have a lot of time so listen to my instructions. After you are free there is a ceiling exit, follow it and look for your friends. Don't stop for anything until you find them." Rainbow Dash nodded she didn't know what else she would have done anyway. "Oh, and one more thing. You cannot, and I repeat, cannot tell them about us. I don't have the time to explain this so you will just have to trust me. Now," he said as the ropes fell off, "get out of here, now!" Rainbow Dash flew up to the ceiling and found what she was looking for, a duct that led straight up into the sky. She heard a loud bang; she turned her head to see her rescuer fall to the ground and Talon staring up at her. She doubled her pace, moving quickly through the duct and into the night sky, flying towards freedom and her friends. "Damn, she got away." Talon was furious; he marched straight for the radio to tell Iron Foot the genius of his plan. "She got away and it's your fault!" he yelled into the mic. "I could have her singing like a bird by now and we could have started the invasion!" "Well then what are you going to do about it?" asked Iron Foot. "What I should have done from the beginning. Go out there myself and capture her. Then I will interrogate her in the desert, alone." "Fine then, just tell me everything that she tells you and we won't have a problem." "We already do." and with that Talon broke of communications. He went into his room and picked up his gun and cigars. He also picked up his lighter; he didn't need his special cigars, not yet. "Rainbow Dash are you ok?" asked Twilight seeing as the pegasus pony had just crashed into the camp. "Yeah, I'm fine, but I saw him." responded Rainbow Dash "Who?" "Talon" replied Rainbow Dash, "He was a pony, except for the claw, it was a gryphon's claw. He had a sandy brown coat and it looked gritty. His mane was the same color. His weapon, I don't know what it was, it looked metal, it had a hole in it. He definitely couldn't stab somebody with it, but that's not what was so scary about it. The pony that rescued me. All Talon did was point the thing at him and he died." Twilight and the others looked at each other in shock. They had heard about the gun but hadn't expected it to be that powerful. If their enemy had a weapon so powerful that all he needed to do was point it at them and they died, they were dealing with a truly fearsome opponent. "Did you see anything else?" asked Twilight. "No, I had just woken up from something they did to me and everything was kind of fuzzy. When I got back to the cave I sort of blacked out. Then I woke up in that place!" Rainbow Dash responded to Twilight's question. "Well, did you see anything as you left darling?" asked Rarity "No, but I know which direction I flew." "That could really help us Rainbow." said Twilight, "If we know which direction you came from then we could work our way there and try to kill this Talon before he can kill us." "Ok." Rainbow Dash thought for a moment, "I flew towards the sun as it rose so I came from the west." "Ok girls, let's start moving west." Applejack said. Talon had packed all of the essentials: gun, bullets, water, cigars, food, lighter, knife, sedative, muscle numbing medication, tent, frying pan and his radio with anti-tracking capabilities. He didn't want anypony to find him while he had Rainbow Dash. He didn't need a map; he had lived in these lands for years so he knew where every settlement was. He was ready. He had informants in every single settlement around here and he began contacting them one at a time. He triangulated their position to be near a settlement that had one of his ammo caches. He could resupply when he was done. He took an escape bomb; these would release smoke if he needed to cover his escape. He also took his blow gun and put a sedative dart in it. He didn't need camouflage, his coat and mane blended in perfectly with the sand. Talon left the camp in the dead of the night. As soon as he was sure that the average pegasus search height was invisible to the sentries back at the base he dug into the sand and pulled out his blow gun. A pegasus passed overhead; Talon blew into the pipe and fired the dart at the pegasus. He knew Iron Foot too well; He had known that he would have had to worry about a scout watching him. He didn't dare light a cigar thinking that there may be another one. He waited for 10 minutes. Nothing. He immediately started moving quickly. He had to keep a pace faster than other ponies could keep up with. The wind had started to pick up; this would help to cover him as he made his way towards the heart of a heartless desert. He had a pony to find. Rainbow Dash and her friends had begun to move. They had decided to begin by going towards a town Rainbow had flown by during her escape from the base. Rainbow had told them exactly which direction to go and about how far they had to go. It had looked like a pretty empty town to Rainbow with very few ponies on the street and what seemed like even fewer buildings. They had eaten a breakfast consisting of a couple of grasses they had found growing and some water out of a cactus. Twilight, the least likely out of all of the six had been the one to acquire all of these items. Apparently before they left she had been reading about survival in extreme climates. Luckily for them, she easily remembered desert survival. The sun was high overhead when they decided to stop and attempt to get more water. Twilight found this as an opportunity to talk to Rainbow Dash. "Rainbow, you said that a pony rescued you?" Rainbow Dash's ears perked up, that pony had asked her not to tell anyone, not even her friends, about the rebels. He told her that the next contact would explain to her why she couldn't tell her friends, but she had no idea how a pony could talk to her without her friends noticing, however, she decided to trust this pony. "Ya, but he didn't say anything except how to get out. I don't even know his name." this was true as the gray pony's name had gone unmentioned during the rescue. "He's dead now anyway so it doesn't matter." with that Rainbow Dash refused to say anything further. Twilight wasn't convinced but decided to let it slide, they still had a lot of travelling to do. They reached the town that night; they camped outside since they didn't want Rainbow Dash to enter the city in case someone tried to capture her again. The next day Rainbow Dash waited in an alley while the others checked around. They decided that there were no wanted posters here so Rainbow Dash came out and walked around the town with them. They found a building similar to the one they had gotten information from in the last town. This time there was a mare behind the counter. She told them where the nearest town was and was even nice enough to give them some water and food before they left. They began making the trek to the next town at about noon; they decided that based on what the mare told her they could make more than half the trip by nightfall. When they finally did make camp that night Rainbow Dash flew up into the night sky and reported that she could see some lights in the distance. That had to be the town, they were making progress but they still didn't have any idea how they would tackle the base when they finally did get there. They didn't think about that at the moment as they each fell asleep with Rainbow being the last. She actually felt safe next to her friends. A few miles away, Talon stood on top of a sand dune as he watched the last flames die from the fire below. "Gotcha." he said as he lit a cigar and made his way towards the camp. Now he could make some progress.