"There they are!" A sadly already too familiar voice shouted. Looking towards the small pathway of the, the three of us found the woman (mare) from earlier coming our way. Oh and she wasn't alone, nah. Those guys are way too cowardly for this. Nope, she had an entire patrol of royal guards with her, considering of 1 mare and four stallions. She was accusingly pointing her hoof at me.
I titled my head in confusion as to why there were a bunch of guards with a citizen. From my side, I could feel Twilight scooping closer to me, intimidated by the stern looks the guards were giving us. Cadance leaned her head down and whispered: "Wait here."
She walked in front of us, so we were unable to see anything.
"Why are the guards here?" Twilight asked.
"I don't...actually, maybe I scared the woman a little bit too much." I admitted sheepishly. I kinda did want to murder her back there. I shuddered at the thought. I need to learn to keep a cool head or else I really end up killing a pony. Calm down, girl. It was just a reaction. Everyone feels that way at some point. You're a grown woman and not a girl. Heck, just a few days ago you wanted to strangle the cashier for being so slow.
"Gentlecoats. Can I help you somehow?" Cadance asked in a polite tone.
"Princess Cadance." the lead stallion and his underlings bowed to the pink alicorn, at least according to what I could see through the legs of the alicorn.
"Excuse us for interrupting your activities princess, but the Madame Dusky Sky reported a use of dark magic."
"Oh fuck." One week in Tartarus for teaching Twilight a swear word.
"Dark magic?" Cadance titled her head. "When? And where?"
"Oh please, Princess." Dusky Sky landed next to the squad leader. "Princess, with all due respect, you must have noticed it as well. This filly you have been with, the one with the green cutie mark. She clearly demonstrated her powers back at the...."restaurant"." I could see her making air quotes with her wings.
"That's...! Well, while it is true that Twivine has some rather unusual abilities, but you can be rest assured that my aunt is fully aware of this. There's nothing to worry about, really."
"Princess" the stallion spoke up again "as much as I would love to trust your word, there are standard procedures in this kind of situation. If Princess Celestia says the filly is no danger, then this will only take a couple of hours."
That's about when I decided to step out from behind Cadance. The gaze of the guards and that mare, I already forgot her name, because background pony syndrome, fell onto me. I'm usually not easily intimidated, but the size difference between me and the rest caused me to reconsider my decision to step up. After mentally shaking my head, I spoke.
"Okay, I'm here."
"Twivine." Cadance got down on my level. "Please, this is something we adults need to sort out." she carefully started rubbing my head. "Just wait a little more with Twilight, alright?"
"Just look at her eyes! Do these look like normal eyes to you?"
I gave the woman my best death glare, which did nothing more than causing one of the guards in the background to snort. The leading stallion took a closer look at me and nodded.
"I admit they do seem strange."
"Strange?" Cadance spoke up. "Oh please, just because she has unusual eyes, does not mean that she is some sort of evil tyrant."
You ever watch cartoons, Cadance? They teach you a lot.
"Princess, please be reasonable." The stallion said in an even tone. "As I said, if nothing is wrong, she can return to her family this evening. Just let us take her with us-"
"NO!" the shout came from Twilight. The little filly had her tiny legs wrapped around me, before anyone could say "changeling". "Please! Don't take my sister away!"
I looked at Twilight, not sure whether to be amused or touched. She just went with both.
"Twilight, I-"
"Mind control as well!" the so called noble exclaimed. "Dear me and why do they look so much alike? Is it possibly a shape-shifter?"
I could feel my left eye twitch. "We are twins." I lied perfectly.
"Hmph." She held her nose high. "Perhaps it would be best to arrest them both-"
"Arrest them!?" Cadance exclaimed angrily. "Miss Sky, I won't have you talking like that in front of the children!" she held out her wings in a defensive position in front of us. "The accusations you make are utterly ridiculous and without evidence to back up your claim."
To this Dusky Sky only grinned. "Oh, I am afraid I indeed do have the evidence. Namely my dear friends. Witnesses."
Cadance growled, but couldn't do anything.
"Indeed." the guard said. "Miss Sky's companions already gave testimony. I'm sorry princess."
"AH!"
Without any of noticing, one of the guards had sneaked up behind us and put a ring on Twilight's horn, a magic restraining ring to be precise.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Cadance shouted.
"Get away from her!" I shouted at the same time, the guard levitating her into a freaking cage?!
"Stop that! Twilight has nothing to do with this!" the princess continued.
"Just safety precaution. Don't worry, she'll be fine."
I lost my mind, when he said "safety precaution" so casually. An event like this could possibly traumatize the poor filly. And thus, I summoned the plunder vines out of the ground. This time it wasn't only those thorn ranks, but also the venus flytrap like things, the ones that emit poison gas. The flytrap thing managed to knock out the guard, who levitated Twilight into the cage, the others attacked the guards, successfully taking out a good bunch of them.
I didn't mind what was going on behind me. I solely focused on Twiligh, quickly running up to her. One smaller vine removed the suppressor ring from her horn.
"Twilight?" I asked.
The poor filly was frozen up, unresponsive.
"Twilight?!" I shook her a little.
In the meantime the guards threw their spells at one of the vines, which had grabbed Dusky Sky. The pegasi and earth ponies used their weapons, with little success to be honest.
"Twilight!" I slapped her on the face. Another century in hell for me, but it had the desired effect of snapping her out of her stupor.
"Owie!"
"Sorry, Twilight." I gently rubbed the place where I hit her. "Are you alright?"
She threw herself at me. "I am scared." she whimpered, her body shaking. I held her tightly, ignoring the screams of pain and agony in the background. To be honest, I completely forgot about the guards at that moment. The only thing I wanted to do was to make sure that Twilight calmed down.
"Twivine!" Cadance turned me around with her magic, making me a little dizzy. "You need to stop the magic, NOW!" she waved with her hoof at the scenery of the guards. Dusk and a fourth of the guards were tied up, one was unconscious from the gas the fly-traps were giving off and the rest was still fighting the- my plants as I realized.
"Oh.
...
Uhh...how do I....let go?" I asked Cadance, who was looking at me in disbelief and then sighed.
"Right, I forgot you're just a few days old." Her horn started to glow in a blue color. "I'm sorry, Twivine. This might hurt a little now."
"Huh?"
Cadance touched my horn with her horn. Almost immediately, there was a bright flash of light from where she touched and I felt pain drill itself from my horn into my brain. Heck, I even felt it in my spine.
The effects on the outside world were just as immediate. My plants kinda cranked up in pain, only to disappear in black smoke. The ponies that weren't pegasi landed on the hard, uncomfortable ground. I would have probably laughed at their misery (I am a bad person), if it wouldn't have been for the pain. AGAIN! Seriously, do you know how often I got hurt the first days? From learning how to walk, to situations like this. But, I digress. We come to the interesting part.
Needless to say, the guards were rather pissed off after my display of power. Well, not really pissed off. More like scared or cautious. And that damn girl Dusty Skies had that winning smirk on her face, oh I just wanted to punch her really, really hard.
But I had more important stuff to do at the moment. Like sightseeing.
"Later suckers." I saluted and made a mad dash.
Why did I run? Panic, that's why. When I see a bunch of unicorns lightening up their horns, I expect them to shoot fucking LAZORS at me. Maybe they would not shoot fucking lazors at me, if I would have just stayed in place and let them apprehend me. Eh, too late for that.
I was running down one of the main streets used in Canterlot, with the guards on my toes. I was able to keep my distance from them, simply because it was so crowded and thanks to my small size, I was way more agile than them. Besides, as long as I was near a group of ponies, they wouldn't shoot their lazors. They did only at the beginning, when I ran under a cart or hide behind a statue of Star Swirl.
"STOP THAT FILLY!" Somepony shouted. I didn't look back, but from the sound of things they were getting closer.
Luckily the guards weren't the brightest and I mean all of them. When the crowd was a little thinner, I passed two guards on patrol duty and none of them even showed a sign of acknowledging my presence. Their colleagues needed to talk directly to them in order for them to start chasing me.
"Hey, watch it!" A random stallion shouted, when I passed him. Frantically I looked for something that could give me an edge, something I could throw over, like a trash can or something. The thing I looked for came in form of a unicorn, who carried a huge wooden box with her magic.
Grinding my teeth, I increased my speed and threw myself at her neck.
"Ow."
"AHH!"
The both of us landed on the unforgiving ground. It ended up with the unicorn's leg on my leg and my hind left hoof in her mouth. Yeah, don't ask how we managed to accomplish this. The point of this was to get the huge box down and down it went. What I didn't see coming, but was very welcoming none the less, was that the thing broke and all of its contents got spilled onto the street. The contents being a lot of glass bottles filled with lots and lots of wine.
It caused quite a lot of trouble, ponies slipping up, crashing into one another. There was even a cart sliding across the road, crashing into a shop specialized in selling fruits and juices. The result being about a dozen or so watermelons rolling out, one of them getting stuck on a pony's head.
I managed to squirm myself out of the unwanted grip and got my now slightly sticky hoof out of the pony's mouth. I wanted to catch my breath, thinking it would take the guards some time to recover from that and restore order around the population. I completely forgot the airborne guards and almost got caught. I was lucky though. The unicorn I crashed into earlier stood up and immediately got "abducted" by the pegasus. The unicorn screamed at the top of her lungs. Her horn lit up, teleporting an umbrella next to her and finally, she proceeded to continuously hit the guard on the head of that thing. As funny, as it was, I needed to get away.
Sadly there was more than one pegasus in the air and then there were the ground reinforcements. I was now running through the "Market Street" according to the sign. I didn't expect market stalls to find in Canterlot. From what I have seen, I assumed there weren't any old market stalls in a big city like this. Well I was seemingly mistaken. Of course, I took this to my advantage to create even more chaos. You won't belief how easy that was.
One pony from Saddle Arabia (I assumed) sold potteries and the like. At the same time two calls were playing foot- I mean, hoofball in the middle of the street. The street in itself wasn't as wide as one of the main streets and with all the stalls standing around the road was even narrower. So when I kicked the ball in the general direction of the stall, I expected shards of pottery to land on the street. However, somehow I managed to kick the ball so perfectly, it hit the wall, knocked out a young Ms. Harshwhinny, hit the wooden beam of a stall, the ground, another wall and then finally hit my back, causing me to fall flat on my stomach. Karma was a bitch once again!
"Nghuu~" I let out a groan.
"She's down!"
"Get her, before she gets up again!"
My mind registered the words and the fact that the folk was giving the law enforcement some space. I thought they got me for sure, but then the ground around me began to crack.
"Her eyes!" One of the civilians shouted pointing at me.
Oh, it's happening again. I thought a moment before my plunder vines came out and started attacking the guards. There was a lot of friendly fire. No one got hurt, mind you, but there was a lot of property damage. Plus everypony was in full panic mode right now, giving the guards a hard time once again. Even the pegai or I were spared from the stampede. For the first, other pegasi tried to get away, using the air and as for me, I got kicked around a lot.
Somehow this pony body was a lot more resistant to pain and beatings in general, but it did make some sort of sense, considering the Cutie Mark Crusaders and Rainbow Dash. Still, it hurt and I was on the verge of tears, when I finally got some breathing room. Looking around, I saw ponies panicking and guards fighting my plants. At the same time, I could feel myself gradually getting weaker by the minute. Biting my lip, I walked into a nearby alleyway, ignoring my hurting sides.
The constant energy drain stopped, as soon as I had made a certain distance between myself and the guards. At the same time, the sounds of battle stopped in the distance.
The adrenaline was slowly leaving my body and I could feel the exhaustion washing over me. Also my head got a lot clearer and I realized just how much I fucked up recently.
"Oh Faust, did I really...?! Come on! I normally don't get mad that easily!" I shouted and stomped my tiny hoof at the cobble stone. A couple of seconds later I realized how cute my pout and overall behavior must look like and couldn't help but giggle. Sadly, reality caught up way too soon with myself in form of another shot of pain going through my body.
"Okay...okay...I can sort this out...somehow..." I needed to take some quick breaths in order to calm me down.
Oh, who am I kidding, I'm fucked. I'm pretty sure I scared Twilight for life and Cadance already gave me the benefit of the doubt, she won't do it a second time. Maybe Celestia will forgive me, but she's bound to keep me in the castle, probably supervised for the rest of my life.
*sniff*
Oh man, I better get the fuck out of here. Else the smell is going to get attached to my coat.
Slowly I trotted out of the small allay and arrived in yet another part of the town. Looking left and right, I didn't spot any guards, which was good. For now, I needed some time for myself and figure out why I attacked the guards in the first place. Sure they hurt Twilight and I wanted to kill them in return. But hell, I wanted to do that to a lot of people, my ex-boyfriend, the old woman next door, that douche from Starbucks, sometimes my boss, the list goes on. And that's about it. I want to kill people, when they annoy me, but under normal circumstances I keep my cool and forget about them. Most of them.
Earlier today though...
"Whoa!" I stumbled over my own hooves out of stupidity. The motion caused me to actually take a look at my surroundings. It was like I was in a completely different town. It still had some resemblance to Canterlot, but obviously I walked into the part, where the poor ponies lived. The buildings looked more like they did back at home with their color grayed out and even one or two windows broken. The streets had at least as many holes in them as the road where my parents lived. Which is bad.
The ponies that walked on this street...I dunno, they didn't exactly looked threatening or anything bad. They just didn't look as happy, as lively, as the ones I've seen so far. Curiosity got the better of me and I started slowly trotting down the street.
To my surprise, there were even a few shops lined up on both sides, most of them looking a little run down. I couldn't help, but feel the wish to go in there. They had some kind of charm to them, looking like a nice old dude would sit behind the counter and tell you his boring life story, while you just want to buy this ancient looking clock. I miss James.
Further down the road, some kids painted "Heaven and Hell" with white chalk on the ground, making me question how ponies played heaven and hell in the first place. Storing it away for later, I went on. Some ponies were talking to each other. A couple of mares were gossiping about some neighbor, who's supposed to be drunk every day and take every mare into bed he finds. I could hear two stallions from the open door of a bar. They complained how unfair everything was and that the upper crust is sucking them (figuratively) dry with the increased taxes.
Tell me about it. 2/3 of the money I get...got, went into taxes. I thought dryly.
It slowly dawned to me that maybe, just maybe I should surrender to the guards. But judging by the fact that they shot freaking LAZORS at me, I thought up a new plan.
Okay, lay low until dark, drink water from fountain wells if necessary, jump onto the next train to Ponyville, stay hidden in the restroom, steal some apples from Sweet Apple Acres (pay AJ back on a later date) and then-
*ZAP*
-RUN FOR MY FUCKING LIFE!
Without even looking where that shot came from, I turned 180 decrees around and ran as fast as I could in my exhausted state. But the guys were prepared this time. Right in front of me already stood four guards. Gasping I turned for an alleyway I saw earlier, only to find two more guards blocking the way.
Shit, shit, SHIT! I panicked.
I looked for a way to escape, but those guys had surrounded me with horns glowing. At that moment I was genuinely afraid of getting seriously hurt. A part of me even thought I was going to die. In my panicked state, I started crying. I put my head down and my hooves on top of my head, shaking in fear. I also faintly registered my fur soaking up my tears.
And then deus ex machina happened. Get used to it, this IS Equestria.