CHAPTER ELEVEN
AT THE RIGHT TIME
Sweetie Belle sat up with a jolt. Apple Bloom gasped and shook her head. “Sweetie! It’s just me.”
“Oh, Apple Bloom,” Sweetie Belle said, brushing her mane from her eyes and untwisting her sheets. “Gosh, you scared me.”
Apple Bloom slid a box under her own bed on the other side of the room and leaned against the raised mattress. “Yeah, back atcha. Sorry fer comin’ in so late.”
“What time is it?”
“Prob’ly four in the mornin’. Close to that, anyway.”
“Jeez, you’re out there longer every night.” Sweetie yawned and rubbed her cheek. “Hey, Bloom. Somepony came by looking for you today.”
“Oh yeah? Who?”
Sweetie was quiet for a moment. “The police.”
Apple Bloom leapt across the room and stared Sweetie straight in the eyes. “What!? What’d they say? What did you say?”
“Eep!” Sweetie let her mane fall over her face. “All they wanted to know was if you still lived here.”
“And what did you tell ‘em?”
“The truth.”
“Sweetie Belle!”
“No, wait, listen!” Sweetie was wide awake now, pushing her bangs up between her ears and meeting Apple Bloom’s glare with innocent eyes. “You told me that somepony saw you on the train to Ponyville, remember? So I figured maybe they were going through and finding any students who went missing from campus and it was actually less suspicious to tell them you just dropped out and stuck around and are looking for a job instead of saying that you just vanished, because then they might put two and two together and figure out you’re Mare Do Well and—” She ended abruptly and bit her lip. “Are you mad at me?”
Apple Bloom sighed and pressed a hoof against her forehead. “No, Sweetie, I ain’t mad. I think you’re right, it’s better they think I’ve just stuck around all this time.” She turned around and stumbled to her bed, slinking noiselessly under the covers. “Are they gonna come back?”
“Maybe… they didn’t say.” Sweetie’s head hit her pillow hard. “Oh, gosh, I hope I didn’t ruin everything.”
Apple Bloom laughed. “No, Sweetie, you’re right. Don’t worry none. I need a better alibi than a student who just vanished but stuck around town lookin’ fer a job.” She closed her eyes. “Maybe it’d be best if I went back to school next semester. When does this one end?”
“Uh… we have another month or so, I think,” Sweetie said.
“If I can bring down the Mangled Marks by the time this semester ends, I’ll look into comin’ back to school. That might ease some minds, at least.”
“Are you… close?” Sweetie whispered. “I mean, do you really think you can do that?”
“Yeah,” Apple Bloom said, smiling. “With a little help from my friends.”
Sweetie Belle gasped quietly. “Have you finally thought of something I can do to help?”
“Yeah,” Apple Bloom said through a yawn, “but I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. There’re some… new developments I wasn’t expectin'. I think we can use it all to our advantage, but—yaaaawwww—I gotta sleep on it.”
“Ugh. Can you at least tell me what I get to do?”
“It’ll be more’n a mite dangerous. I’ll have to really think it through, make sure nopony gets hurt.”
“Hurt from what? What do you need? Come on, Bloom, I gotta prep for this kinda stuff! Not everypony’s a secret ninja, for peat’s sake.”
Apple Bloom chuckled. “Let’s just hope it runs in the family.”
“Hope what runs in the family?”
Her only response was Apple Bloom’s gentle snores.
(/\/\)
A griffon dove, smashing through the outskirts of Cloudsdale’s foundational stratocumulus clouds. He clutched the metal pan holding an unbroken sheet of crystal sap in his talons, looking over each shoulder in quick succession for his small assailant.
“Did I lose ya, pony?” he said under his breath, grinning with the unscarred corner of his beak.
“Nope,” came a voice from below. The griffon looked down in fright. The pony was upside down, all four hooves snaking around the tray. With a snap of his wings, the pony yanked the sap from the griffon’s grasp and seemed to vanish. The griffon roared and pumped his mighty wings in an attempt to turn around.
“Too slow,” whispered the pony. The griffon lashed out a claw to catch the pony behind him, but suddenly it was in front of him.
“You puny… stop that!” The griffon thrashed about wildly, but the pegasus dove and swept around him like a hummingbird. “Raaaurgh! That’s impossible! No pony can fly that fast!”
“Buddy, you should see my sister,” the stallion said, suddenly directly above the griffon. The large creature looked up.
“Good night.”
BAM! A flat hoof between the eyes disoriented the griffon enough for the pegasus to raise the sheet of freshly cooked drugs above his head and slam it against the back of its skull. The griffon began its long fall to Equestrian forests below. The stallion snatched a shattered piece of crystal sap from the air and let the rest of it fall with the tray. “Where is this stuff coming from?” he asked.
The horizon turned pink with the first hints of Sunrise. Silver Medal frowned in its direction. “Aw, come on! Really?” He grunted and tucked the shard of cooked sap into the pockets around his core. “I swear, Princess Twilight must be raising the Sun earlier just to throw me off my groove.”
A gust of wind blasted Silver Medal from behind. He yelped and tumbled forward through the air, turning around as quickly as he could. The massive, scarred griffon flapped steadily in place, one eye closed in pain. His beak was partially open, revealing a menacing row of sharp, clenched teeth.
“You break into my lab,” the griffon growled, flapping slowly with one hot eye trained on Silver Medal, “incapacitate my hired hooves, destroy most of my equipment, chase me through the entire city, destroy my hard-earned product over my own head, and then leave me to fall to my death!?” With a powerful flap, he rose above Silver Medal and spread his wings, baring his crooked claws at his sides. “What sort of a hero do you think you are, pony?”
“Why do griffons have teeth?” Silver Medal asked, crossing his hooves over his chest as if in deep thought. “Is that the lion part of you? Because birds don’t have teeth.” He chuckled and added while waving a hoof, “It’s just kinda weird, y’know, seeing teeth inside a beak like that.”
“It’s to rip your flesh to bleeding shreds!” the griffon shrieked, diving at his would-be prey.
But Silver Medal moved out of the way with a minute flick of his wings. The griffon pulled up and turned around, glowing with anger.
“You weren’t falling to your death, anyway,” Silver Medal said, rolling his eyes. “Look at you! You’re five hundred pounds of muscle and natural armor, inside and out. Those trees would have broken a few bones at best.”
“I’ll break your bones to make my bread!” The griffon charged again and clutched at open air.
“Shouldn’t that be grind your bones? Broken-bone-bread sounds dangerous, dude.”
“Gaaaaahhh!”
Another charge, another fruitless swipe, another taunt. “Do carnivores even eat bread? Well, yeah, I guess you could make a sandwich or something. Ew, meat on a sandwich. That’s just wrong.”
“Hold still, you slimy—” The griffon lifted his wings for another flap, but howled when the joints were punched by swift hooves.
“Hiya! Heeheehee! Take that, Beaky!” Silver Medal twisted in the air, biting the end of the griffon’s tail and yanking it hard. The beast squeaked and thrust out a lion paw. It hit Silver Medal on the side of his snout, pushing him away from the griffon and spiraling a few times.
“You don’t know who you have angered, pony,” the griffon said. He flew to Silver Medal and finally caught the stallion by the throat.
“Oh yeah I do,” he choked, grinning nonetheless. “And I’m gonna be the pony who singlehoofedly took down Falcon himself.”
The griffon shook his head and blinked in surprise. He pointed to himself with his free claw. “You… you think I’m Falcon?” He began to laugh, softly at first, each guffaw tightening the grip around Silver Medal’s cracking neck. “Ha ha ha haaaa! You think that I am Falcon the Griffon?”
He pulled Silver Medal’s face close to his own. His mane hairs twitched in the wind of the griffon’s constant flaps as a single, murky brown eye seared into a nervous, bright blue pair.
“You will not bring me down, pony,” the griffon jeered through one side of his beak, “and you will never lay a hoof on the majesty of Falcon.”
“That’s gross, bro,” Silver croaked. “I didn’t wanna touch him down there anyway.”
“Gaaaaahhh!” The griffon pulled back a claw full of talons and aimed them at Silver Medal’s exposed chest. Continuing his battle cry, he thrust the claws against Silver’s suit and squeezed.
The shiny material around his chest buckled under the griffon’s strength, but the claws did not pierce. Surprised at the strange substance in his grasp, the griffon gave just enough time for Silver Medal to lift a limber hind leg and kick him square in the beak. The beast cried out in pain and released Silver’s throat. He then dove, picked up momentum in a large but tight circle, and ran the front length of his wing along the griffon’s meaty thigh.
A high pitched howl shook the air beneath Cloudsdale and griffon blood dripped from the open wound stretched through his fur. “What did you do?” he cried.
“What, you’ve never seen blood before?” Silver asked. “That’s the stuff that keeps you alive, buddy. And I’m making it go bye-bye.”
“How…?” The griffon’s eye chased Silver through the air, finally taking notice of the pony’s criss-crossing outfit. The armor covered all of his chest and back, then spiraled along his limbs, exposing the graham colored coat beneath. The silvery suit stretched along the fronts of his wings as well, leaving the feathers exposed while covering the joint and bone in—
“Blades…”
“I call ‘em razors,” said Silver Medal, pretending to tip a hat. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m Razorwing.”
The griffon snorted. “That’s a stupid name.”
Silver Medal’s jaw dropped. “Hey! That’s rude!” He jetted forward, using his wings to cut into the flesh above the griffon’s claws.
He shrieked again and pulled away, trying to fly higher.
“Once you heal up and come back to Cloudsdale,” Silver Medal shouted in close pursuit, “tell all your friends that Razorwing is on the hunt, and it’s Falcon season.”
He pushed forward, spun quickly with wings outstretched, and sliced into the griffon’s own feathered appendages. Too injured to fly, too shocked to scream, the griffon’s eyes both opened wide and locked on Silver Medal as he began to fall again.
“If there are any friends left at that point, of course,” the pony said with a wry smile. He waved as the bleeding griffon plummeted into the distant trees below. The smile vanished. “Dang it. I thought for sure a bird that big would be the boss.”
He shook his head, turned skyward, and rocketed through the layer of clouds that supported Cloudsdale’s outer districts. The fluff cleaned the blood from the blades along his wings and he burst through the top like a dolphin aiming for a hoop.
“Well, whatever,” he said to himself. “A job well done, Razorwing. That’s one lab discontinued, one mini-boss defeated, and one shard of pre-crushed powder to analyze… somehow.”
He patted the piece in the pocket of his armor and his hoof brushed against the crumpled clawmarks. “Oh, shoot… and I need a repair. Crap, that’s gonna be expensive.” He glanced down at the pocket. “Maybe I can just sell the… no, no, that’s stupid. Totally defeats the point.”
He flew home, talking to himself intermittently, commenting on the stupidity of cloud-based graffiti and the beauty of the sunrise. Quieting completely upon reaching his family’s large apartment, Silver Medal gently slid open the window to his room and flew in. He shut the window behind him, made sure no one could peek through the blinds, and tried to shed his armor. Damaged as it was, it proved difficult to take off of his chest.
“Dang it… stupid…” he muttered, wrestling with the metal. It slid a little around his neck, but a twisted piece cut into his chest. “Youch!”
“What’s the point—”
“AH!”
“—of closing the window all quiet if you’re just gonna yell and scream taking your clothes off?”
“Rainbow Dash!” Silver Medal spun around and glared at his sister leaning against the bedroom door. “How did you get in here?”
She smirked and raised an eyebrow at him. “Youuu left the window open?”
“Oh… right.”
“Guess that means you’re pretty confident that nopony knows it’s you out there,” Rainbow said, spreading her left wing and glancing it over. “Pretty bold move, seeing as your mane isn’t even covered.”
He glanced in the mirror and checked his windswept, periwinkle mane above the silver mask that protected his snout, eyes, and forehead. Truth be told, all of his colors were clearly visible behind his armor. His golden coat looked great between the silver spirals on his legs, and his sky blue eyes were never brighter.
“Yeah, well, it’s a good thing I don’t have all that many friends out there, then,” he said. He slid off the armor from all four of his legs and unlatched the blades from his wings.
“Yeesh, those look like they could do some damage,” Rainbow said, grimacing.
“You bet.” Silver Medal beamed and fit all the removed armor into a box on the ground. He returned to the stubborn chest piece and yelped again when the pain in his chest sharpened.
“Need help?” Rainbow asked.
Silver Medal sighed. “Yeah. This part here got crushed and it’s poking me pretty hard.”
“Crushed?” Rainbow trotted to him and lowered her head to his chest. “Holy smokes, Silver! How did that happen?”
“I, uh… got in a fight.”
“With a freaking dragon?”
“Griffon, actually.”
“Whoa!” Rainbow leapt back and looked her brother over as if for the first time. “You fought a full-grown griffon?”
“Yeah.”
“And… did you win?”
Silver grinned. “Yeah. He’s somewhere down in the Everfree bandaging up as we speak.”
Something like a smile flashed across Rainbow’s face, but then her expression hardened and she stomped a hoof. “Silver, you’ve gotta stop this vigilante nonsense! You’re gonna get yourself killed, and then what’s Dad gonna do, huh?”
“Oh, so you wouldn’t care if I died, but you’re worried how Dad would take it? Thanks, Rainy Day.”
“Don’t call me that. Hasn’t Dad already been through enough?”
“We’ve all been through a lot, and personally I’d like to make it through the Battle of the Broken Armor. Would you please help me?”
Rainbow pushed her lips to one side. “For a favor.”
“Ugh! I’ll just do it myself.”
Rainbow laughed. “It’s a good favor! You’ll like it.”
“…okay, fine.”
They worked together, pushing and pulling and squeezing at just the right angles, until Silver Medal managed to slip out one end of the chest piece. His sternum was bleeding a little where the metal had scraped him, so he opened a drawer and began to clean up while Rainbow explained her favor.
“I need you to come to Canterlot with me,” Rainbow Dash said. “Tonight.”
He dabbed a bit of alcohol on the cut. “Hngh… what? Why?”
“Do you wanna be a superhero or not?”
Silver rolled his eyes. “I’m not a superhero, Dash. I’m just trying to help improve the lives of these pegasi.”
“How would you like to help unicorns, too?”
He looked at her sideways.
“And earth ponies.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why’d you start doing this, Silver?”
He ripped off a bandage and stuck it over the cut. “Lots of reasons.”
“Tell me ‘em.”
“Why? So you can tell me they’re stupid and dangerous?”
“Just tell me. I’ll listen.”
Silver closed his eyes and sighed. “Well, first of all, like you said, Dad’s been hurt more than once by all this crime that’s popped up since your friend took over the country.”
“She’s not my....” Rainbow shut up.
“So I was already angry. Then I started looking into it and realized that this one group, this Falcon the Griffon guy’s big gang, was basically running the whole city, getting money with drugs and buying out whatever they wanted, including the police. And nopony seemed to be doing anything. They were all just letting it happen.” He sighed again, rougher. “That’s just not right, y’know? You don’t just stand by with that kind of crap.”
“Right.”
“And then somepony didn’t,” he said with a grin. “Over in Canterlot, somepony rose up. That was so inspiring. I’ve never felt like I did when I heard about Mare Do Well. So I made this.” He kicked the broken chest piece on the ground. “I guess my special talent came in hoofy after all.”
Rainbow looked at the silvery-blue anvil on his flank. “Guess so. I wondered about that, to be honest.”
Silver laughed. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Rainbow cracked her neck. “Well, whattaya say to this, then, Silver Boy: Let’s go to Canterlot tonight and meet Mare Do Well.”
Silver Medal snapped to full alert. “What? Are you serious?”
“Yessir. I met her tonight. Er…” She opened the blinds to the brightening sky. “Last night. And she needs our help.”
“No way!” Silver jumped up and hovered in place. “Are you freaking serious!?”
“Heck yeah! She needs our help taking down this gang called the Marble Marks or something.”
Silver’s smile slowly faded as he drifted to the floor. “I can’t, Rainbow. I’ve gotta find another job so I can save up enough to fix this armor. I’d be useless without it.”
“How long would it take if you had all the bits?”
He bent low and checked the dents. “Oh, I could get it done in a day easy.”
“How much would it cost?”
He opened his mouth to answer but Rainbow waved it off.
“Look, I don’t even care, I’m freaking loaded. I’ll pay for your repairs if you agree to come with me tonight.”
“Ha!” Silver Medal squinted incredulously. “What’s gotten into you, Rainy Day? I thought you were against all this vigilante nonsense.”
“Well, that was a joke when I said it earlier,” Rainbow explained, tossing her mane. “But honestly it was Mare Do Well that changed my mind. I went over there to give her a piece of it—my mind, y’know—but she was actually really impressive. She knows what she’s doing. I think.”
“You think?”
Rainbow grinned. “Well, she’s unfolding her big plan to us tonight. So whattaya say, bro? Is Silver Medal ready to help the Mysterious Mare Do Well?”
He picked up the chest piece and spun it around his hoof. “No. But Razorwing is.”
(/\/\)
“Rainbow has a little brother?” asked Lyra.
“She said so last night,” Apple Bloom said with a shrug. She adjusted her hat.
“Are you sure Rainbow will remember which building you met on? You’re kinda hard to see in the dark.”
“I know. But she ain’t.” Apple Bloom looked up and pointed to a rainbow streak painting the sky in her direction. Beside it was another stream of colors—silver and gold.
“Is that somepony with her?”
“Looks like it.” Apple Bloom cleared her throat. “Think I should use the accent?”
Lyra laughed. “Uh, which one?”
“My Mare Do Well voice,” she said, “or is this colt gonna need to know it’s me?”
“Maybe Rainbow Dash already told him,” Lyra said. “Disguise your voice for now. If Rainbow says anything, you can probably trust him. What’s his name?”
“I think she said Silver Medal.”
“Wow. That’s kind of rude.”
“Huh?”
Lyra snorted. “You don’t have a kid like Rainbow Dash and then name your next kid Silver Medal. It’s like reminding him for the rest of his life that he’s not as good as her.”
“Jee. I didn’t think of it like that.” She watched the duo land on a rooftop closer to the docks. “All right, I’ll move to them.”
She began to turn the pedals of the Wishing Well. The black blades above spun quickly and quietly while the craft rose off the ground. She leaned forward, left, and used the levels in her forehooves to guide the craft to the pegasi. Her ears tuned in to their conversation before she was noticed.
“So who is she?” asked Silver Medal. His voice was low, but scratchy like Rainbow’s.
“I dunno. Just a mare trying to save the world or whatever,” Rainbow replied, glancing around. She bounced her front hooves against the ground.
“You nervous?” asked her brother.
“Excited! I haven’t had any adventures in, like… forever.”
“We’re just gonna talk, aren’t we?”
“I dunno! Depends on her plan! Maybe she’ll ask us to go storm the palace and—”
“Assassinate the Princess?” Apple Bloom finished in her dark Canterlotian accent.
The pegasi whipped around, startled. “How did you—”
“I do not know the Princess’ motives behind her violence,” Mare Do Well continued, “but her regime has proven deadly. Storming the castle would be suicide.”
“Wow, it’s Mare Do Well!” Silver Medal rattled off. “I'm such a big fan.”
“I wasn’t gonna say assassinate Twilight,” Rainbow snapped. “Besides, you can’t kill an Alicorn.”
“But you can change them,” Mare Do Well breathed.
“Or send them away, which seems to be a popular option,” Rainbow Dash said. “Anyway, I thought we were here to talk about the Mushroom Marks, not the Evil Princess of Dusk.”
“Mangled Marks,” Mare Do Well corrected. “We’re here to discuss a plan I’ve already set into motion. Stopping the gangs is the key to inspiring an uprising among the citizens of Canterlot itself. I can do it by myself if you choose not to join me, but your help would greatly increase our odds of success.”
“Oh, heck yeah. You talk like a comic book. Count me in!” Silver Medal saluted. “It really is an honor to meet you, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” repeated Lyra, snickering into Apple Bloom’s brain.
“So what is this big scary plan of yours, anyway?” Rainbow asked.
Mare Do Well tilted her head. “You seem edgy.”
“I don’t like being snuck up on,” Rainbow said. She craned her neck to look beyond the hat and cape. “How did you do that, anyway? You don’t even have wings.”
“You don’t need wings to fly,” Mare Do Well said.
There was a heavy silence in the air as Rainbow waited for her to go on. “That’s it?” she finally said. Taking a quick glance at her brother, she gave a frustrated wink to Apple Bloom and added, “What, is that supposed to be some kinda cryptic—”
MMMMMMRRRRRRRP. A fog horn sent all three ponies into a crouch. They snuck together to the edge of the roof closest to the docks and peeked down. A huge blimp was sinking toward one of the mountainside docks were a dozen ponies waited.
“They look like insects from up here,” Lyra said. “Can you see anything I can’t, Bloom?”
Mare Do Well scanned the scene. When the blimp was close enough, ropes were thrown from its hull to the ponies at the dock. Several of them grabbed the ends, some with magic and others in hoof, and anchored the blimp with several knots along the sides.
“Unicorns and earth ponies,” Mare Do Well noted. “I don’t see any pegasi.”
“Me, neither,” said Rainbow. “What in the world are they doing out here so late?”
“Could just be a late shipment,” Silver Medal whispered.
“Could be,” Mare Do Well said. She squinted, watchful. “It seems rather dark down there.”
“Apple Bloom, look at the blimp,” directed Lyra. She did. “No logo. Have you ever seen that?”
“No,” she answered.
Silver Medal turned to her. “No what?”
“No logo,” she said. “This isn’t right. Something’s up.”
“Sweet!” Rainbow squealed.
“What should I call you?” asked Mare Do Well, her blank face turned toward Silver Medal.
“Razorwing,” he answered. He spread his wings, revealing thin, jointed blades that stretched along their fronts.
“Whoa.” Behind her mask, Mare Do Well’s eyes grew wide. “Do you… use those?”
“Uh, yeah, duh.” He tucked his wings back at his sides and smirked. “But I don’t kill, I promise. I’m careful.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“About as long as you.”
Mare Do Well was quiet. She turned back to the docks. “Good enough.”
“Okay Bloooooo…ue eyed hat wearer,” Rainbow slurred, “what’s the plan?”
“We need to get down there and figure out what’s going on. Maybe it’s nothing. Better safe than sorry.” She pointed at Rainbow. “You don’t go anywhere.”
“What!? Why not?”
“Because you’re too bright. They’ll see you.”
Rainbow threw both hooves toward her brother. “He’s wearing silver all over his body!”
“It’s not silver,” Razorwing said, “and it doesn’t shine if there’s no light on it. Look over there—they’ve turned off every light in the Skyport District to bring this sucker in.”
“That’s suspicious,” Rainbow said. “Okay, fine, I’ll stay here and watch. If there’s trouble I’ll dive in and help.”
“That’s fine. Razorwing, you go up to the blimp and see if you can tell what they’re importing. I’ll listen to the ponies on the ground. If either of us notice something awry, we’ll signal to Rainbow Dash.” She turned to the older mare. “Rainbow, watch us closely. If either of us signal to you, take off. Once you’re airborne, we’ll know it’s time to take these guys out.”
Razorwing’s feathers twitched. “And if it’s just some… I dunno, late night doughnut shipment?” he asked.
“Then we don’t signal to Rainbow, she doesn’t take off, and we meet back here,” said Mare Do Well. “And then we discuss the Mangled Marks.”
“If that plan is anything like this one, you can count me in.” Razorwing flashed a smile and took off, flying far out from the mountain and behind the blimp before turning and disappearing from view.
“Why aren’t we telling him who I am?” Mare Do Well asked Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow shrugged. “I dunno. I wasn’t sure if you wanted him to know, and you went along with the secret thing, so… I dunno.”
“I like it,” said Apple Bloom, and she jumped from the roof.
The wind licked and pushed at the brim of her hat as she pulled taut the corners of her cape. She steered carefully and landed without a noise in the alleyways nearest the dock. She counted twelve ponies, ten facing the slowly descending blimp, two more guarding the front of the wide wooden platform. Both were unicorns. One of them was a mare.
“Distract them,” said Unsung.
Mare Do Well removed a white stone from the pouches at her waist. She smashed it hard against the ground—the enchantment activated, and the rock disappeared.
“Invisible stones,” Mare Do Well said, shaking her head. “Why in the world do you even have these?”
“Just throw it.”
She did, tossing it up and using her back legs to buck it through the air. It arced between the guarding ponies and thunked the deck behind them. They both spun around. The mare opened her mouth to call out for the ponies at the other end of the dock, but a pair of hooves wrapped around her neck and mouth. With a quick jolt, the unicorn mare fell unconscious and dropped to the wood.
The stallion was already out cold. Mare Do Well picked up the blunt M-shaped shuriken lying by his head.
“We’d better hope these ponies are up to no good,” Mare Do Well whispered, “or I just knocked out two innocent traders.”
“Believe me,” Unsung answered, “we’re gonna see Rainbow’s signal any second here.”
Mare Do Well crept along the edge of the dock. The platform stuck out from the mountainside, supported by long wooden beams. She dropped over the edge and scurried along the beams like a squirrel, keeping close to the platform but entirely unseen.
“This is taking forever. We’re gonna get caught,” she heard one stallion say.
“Nopony knows we’re out here,” a mare answered. “We’ll get this to Base Six by midnight.”
Lyra heard it, too. “Did you hear that, Bloom? Base Six. Base Eight is where we took out all those Mangled Marks last month. Sounds like it’s our lucky night. Right place at the right time.”
Mare Do Well grunted and kept listening, scaling the intertwining beams around the outside-front of the dock so that she was hanging directly under the blimp.
“How many bases do you Marks have, anyway?”
“We used to have eight. One of ‘em was compromised.”
“Shut up, Arbor! You think these creeps need to know that?”
A chuckle. “Hey, no need to be hostile, Missy.”
Quick hoofsteps. “Look, I don’t know what our boss is trying to accomplish teaming up with your Satin and her cronies, but this is not a permanent union and we don’t have to pretend to like each other for one second.”
“I’m not pretending anything, Sweet Cheeks.”
“Oh, shut up!”
“I wouldn’t have to give you all these nicknames if you’d just tell me what to call you.”
“You can call me disgusted! Rrrgh, why are you Gonne always such creeps?”
“Go-nay,” Unsung repeated. “Isn’t that the third gang you learned about from the rooftop interrogation?”
Mare Do Well nodded.
“Bloom, we hit the jackpot!” Unsung squealed. “This group has been totally elusive until now! We gotta get more information on this Satin character from one of them.”
Mare Do Well raised a hoof to climb over the edge, but hesitated.
“Oh, right, Rainbow Dash,” Unsung said. “Get to the corner and wave at her.”
Too quickly, Mare Do Well began to shuffle right. Her back hoof slipped and for one horrible moment she started to fall. Her wrapped up forehooves caught the beams, but the resulting jolt forced her to look down.
From there it seemed there was no mountain at all, that the entire city was floating thousands of feet above solid ground. Unsung eeped and Mare Do Well could hear her waving her hooves about wildly.
“Don’t look down! Climb over, Bloom, you’re fine! Just get over to where Rainbow Dash can see you and make some sort of signal. Hooooooly horseapples, that was close…”
Mare Do Well gulped, adjusted her grip, and climbed around the corner of the dock much slower. When her eyes found the buildings along the edge of the Skyport District, they immediately flicked upward and followed the fading streak of a colorful—
“She already took off!” Unsung shouted. “Go, Bloom, go go go!”
Mare Do Well kicked hard straight down, throwing her body high above the platform. The frightened eyes of punkish Mangled Marks and business-suited Gonne found the emblem on her chest and sucked in a collective gasp. Mare Do Well angled herself at the closest mare and stretched out her cape, diving like a bird of prey and smashing into the pony’s neck before she could even scream.
The two tumbled along the wood. Mare Do Well leapt out of the roll and directly onto a suited stallion’s back. Two hard punches between his ears dropped the pony to his side. Mare Do Well jumped off him mid-fall and was met by a blast of magic.
She slammed into the ground, bouncing up quickly and crouching to gather her senses. Eight left.
“How many unicorns?” she asked Unsung under her breath.
“I’ll count, you fight,” she answered. “Get—”
She was interrupted by a streak of bright color. Three of the ponies were suddenly gone, replaced by a zig-zagging rainbow. The remaining five panicked, running in place or yelling up to the blimp.
“Two unicorns!” Unsung yelled. “Both to your left!”
Mare Do Well sprung, galloping low to the ground and jumping at just the right time to spin and kick one stallion in the jaw with a back hoof. He crumpled and stirred, so she made sure to stomp on his ribcage on her way to the next pony.
Something moved in the corner of her eye. She turned to catch it with a jab, but it was farther away than she had realized. The three remaining ponies were engaged in a battle of their own, throwing kicks high and low to hit a fast moving streak of blurry silver.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Razorwing was saying in a voice sillier and deeper than his own, “no need for alarm. If we could just see your docking license and a registration—” He kicked one pony in the flank, sending it spinning to the ground. “—we’ll be able to get this all sorted out downtown.”
“What is he doing?” Unsung asked dryly.
“Quit playing with them!” Mare Do Well growled. She turned and dodged a blast of magic from the unicorn down the dock, then yelled over her shoulder, “Try to knock them out in one hit!”
“My one-hit-moves wouldn’t exactly knock a pony out,” Razorwing called back, leaping into the air and trying to kick two faces with the splits. Only one hoof made contact and he had to use his wings to steady himself out.
“Don’t try to look cool,” Mare Do Well counseled. “Nopony’s watching you. Just be efficient.”
She pulled a tiny pebble from her belt just as the unicorn’s horn flashed red. She followed the magical blast produced and held her hoof out at just the right angle. The stone caught the magic, doubled in size, and began to mimic the dark red glow.
“Whoa!” Razorwing said.
Mare Do Well ignored the grunts and punches behind her, zoning in on the surprised face of the unicorn. She leaned back, kicked off the dock, and hurled the pebble at the pony’s hooves. It made impact right under his belly. The explosion sent the poor pony flipping and screaming through the air… and disappearing over the side of the dock.
“Crap!” yelled Unsung.
Mare Do Well spun frenzied to Razorwing. “Save him!”
“Got him!” shouted a strained voice. Mare Do Well turned again to the welcome sight of Rainbow Dash with a limp unicorn dangling from her forelegs. “Jeez, he’s even heavier than you!”
“Huh?” Razorwing frowned. “Is that some kinda fat joke? I’m in great shape.”
“Uhhh… right, yeah, I was talking to you!” Rainbow said, dropping the pony on the dock far from the edge. "Fatty!"
“Thanks,” Mare Do Well whispered, then bolted to help Razorwing.
“That’s one for the money… two for the show,” he was saying, sparring against a furious mare with a wilting flower for a Cutie Mark.
“That’s enough,” Mare Do Well said, hitting the mare below the jaw so that she dropped without a sound. “Don’t toy with them. Get it over with.”
“Gah! That one’s getting away!” He pointed. “I’ll get him, you get the guy behind you about to smash your head with his big old hooves.”
Mare Do Well rolled to one side. The ground shook with the force of the large, suited pony’s hooves against the platform.
“Gonne wear suits,” Unsung said. “Classy. Let’s learn as much as we can from this guy.”
“Ahhh…” The stallion smiled and stood to his full height. “If it isn’t the Malicious Mare Do Well.”
“Malicious?” Unsung repeated.
“You know, we talked about you before this all went down,” he said. “Satin warned us you might come. A side effect of working with the Mangled Marks. We kept everything very secret, but you’re smarter than all that, aren’t you?”
“I am where I need to be,” Mare Do Well said, her voice like a distant storm. “What’s in the blimp?”
“Drugs,” he answered, smoothing out his tie. “And some other things.”
“What other things?”
“We don’t dabble as much with drugs as do our local competitors,” he said, still smiling. “Nor with telling trade secrets to successful vigilantes.”
“And I don’t dabble much with flattery,” she said, and dove for the stallion’s hind legs. He stepped back and lifted a front hoof to bat her away, but Mare Do Well had quickly wrapped herself around his back hooves. He tried to turn and swipe at her, but the movement offset his balance and he toppled to the platform. Mare Do Well dashed to his side, kicked him hard in the ribs to turn him onto his back, jumped high and, with a front flip, landed with all hooves squarely in the middle of his chest. She felt the bones of his ribcage fracture under the force.
“Gaaaahhh!” he screamed, spinning to the side and swatting her away. The wild hoof caught her back ankle. She yelped and fell, grateful for the tight-wrapped cloth that made a bruise of a possible break.
The stallion was laughing between loud wheezes. “I’ve heard stories, Mare Do Well. That seems to be a favorite of yours.”
“It’s something I do well,” she said, crouching low while watching him struggle to stand.
“You’re not gonna finish me off?” he asked, rising on wobbly knees.
“I need your trade secrets,” she said. “And I’ll trade them for your life.”
“You don’t kill,” he hissed. “Everypony knows that.”
“I might.” Razorwing landed in front of the stallion and stretched out his right wing, holding its long blade to his throat. He smiled. “Hey there. I’m new in town.”
“Horseapples,” the big pony said. The grooves of his neck exaggerated. “Satin’s gonna be pissed.”
“I have three simple questions,” Mare Do Well said, standing tall. “You answer, he backs up. You don’t, he flies forward.”
The stallion barely nodded.
“What’s in the blimp?”
“Oh, I can tell you that,” Razorwing said, turning his head over his shoulder. “There’s a whole bunch of barrels marked with toxic symbols and stuff, probably full of that sap they put into the pills and crystallize for Falcon.”
A tiny smile crept onto the wounded stallion’s face.
Mare Do Well stomped a hoof. “What else is there? Talk!”
“Oh, he’s right. Nothing but barrels.” He sniffed. “Most of them are full of sap.”
Razorwing went pale.
“And the rest?”
The stallion looked at Razorwing. “Yeah. The rest?”
Razorwing shook his head.
The stallion chuckled. “I didn’t think so. If you were up there, Mare Do Well, I bet you would have noticed what this bird totally missed: some of the barrels have little holes in the top.
The vigilantes were silent.
“You know. For air.”
“What!?” Razorwing pushed his blade a little harder into the pony’s coat. “There are ponies up there?”
“I didn’t say that,” the stallion said, but his wide smile was all Mare Do Well needed to see.
“That is disgusting,” said Unsung, breathless.
“I suppose that answers most of my questions,” Mare Do Well continued. Her voice was noticeably more strained. “I only have one more. Razorwing, kick him in the chest until he answers.” She stepped closer. “Where is Satin?”
The stallion started to laugh. Razorwing lashed out a front hoof and kicked him between his front and back legs. The stallion coughed and gasped, shaking in an effort to keep from pressing his own throat against the deadly wing. “Why,” he finally said, anger splashed across his features, “would I ever tell you that?”
“Because you value your life.”
“I have a greater chance of living with my head cut off than I do if I answer that question.”
Mare Do Well nodded. “Interesting. Tell me whatever you can about her and we’ll let you live.”
A perplexed look softened the stallion’s expression. “What do you already know?”
“She runs the Gonne.”
After a long pause, the stallion asked, “That’s it?”
“I’ve been focused on the Mangled Marks.” She took another step forward.
“Right. Satin… Satin is a genius. Richer than sin. Started with nothing, then learned to con and steal and plot and heist and rose to the top of this city.” Something like admiration flashed across his eyes. “Once Princess Sparkle took over, she bought out most of the police force and hired her own followers. They’ll do anything for her.”
Mare Do Well’s stance stiffened. “Are hers the forces responsible for the killings among local rebellion?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the stallion said. “Some say she’s working with the Princess hoof in hoof.”
Razorwing growled.
“I’ll make a note of that,” Unsung said. “We need to talk about this, Bloom.”
“What else can I ask?” Mare Do Well said, but it was directed at Unsung.
“I think that’s enough,” she heard in her mind. “Let’s save the ponies in those barrels.”
“—never find her. Even if you manage to take down the Mangl—”
Mare Do Well leapt forward and shut him up with two uppercuts to the corners of his jaw. Razorwing tucked his weapon at his side so the stallion could fall forward and land on his face.
“You are amazing,” Razorwing sighed.
“You’re a goofball,” she replied, and pointed to the blimp. “Find Rainbow Dash and fly up there. Get the ponies out of their barrels and stay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Yeah, okay.” Razorwing blinked at her with a lulling smile. “How old are you?”
Mare Do Well looked him up and down. “I wear this costume for a reason,” she said. “You should think about hiding a bit more of your color.”
“Well, this stuff isn’t to hide,” he said, tapping the metal around his limbs. “It’s armor.”
“You’ll want to stay hidden if you plan to continue in this business,” she said.
Razorwing groaned. “But then no one will know how awesome I am ‘cause nopony will recognize me.”
“Exactly.” She pointed up. “The ponies.”
“Oh, right.” He started to flap, then looked down at the sleeping bodies strewn along the dock. “Uhhh… should we clean this up?”
“I’ll handle it. Ten minutes.”
“But how are you even gonna get up here? Do you need me to come down and give you a—”
“Ten minutes. Go help those ponies.”
“Right, sorry.” He saluted and, with three hard flaps, rocketed up to the hovering blimp. Mare Do Well began to drag the fallen ponies into a central pile.
“What’s the plan here?” asked Lyra. "Bring anything to tie them up?"
“Hopefully the fabric of these suits ain’t too hard to rip and knot,” said Apple Bloom.