//------------------------------//
// Chapter VII: Erebus 
// Story: The Sons of Discord 
// by Gapeagle 
//------------------------------//

It was a cool and rough morning. Due to my awful night of sleeping, I was the last one up. And as usual, that meant that Vinyl simply threw me out of my bed and dragged me to the van. I went through her slight abuse with silence. My head still wandered in some lucid daydream. To put it plainly, I was out of it and I did not want to tell a soul about my peculiar dreams.

Baltimare was not long down the road. As I played with a knife in the back of the van, I could only think about my dreams. There was no doubt in my mind that the bar scene had really happened. Those two women were definitely the same Celestia and Luna from both history and Octavia's writings. It also went right along the timeline. Ahuizotl Industries did not start as "Ahuizotl Industries" but as "Hopkins Incorporated." The whole business was founded nigh on 100 years ago. So if it did happen, which I was certain, I could pinpoint it to the months and maybe even weeks of the year. I was an expert on ancient history, but my general history was pretty good too.

Still, it was hard to picture Vinyl going through all these generations. I saw her in my dream, sounding no different than she was now. I never saw her face and only that iconic mask she kept wearing. Talking about the mask, I only saw her wear it a couple of times, including the time when we first met in the Canterlot street those months ago. Yeah, that moment still creeped me out.

However, what haunted me the most was Luna. She was the Bearer of Fear, so this didn't surprise me. The dream made it seem that the Two Sisters were hunting agents of Chaos. I was an agent of Chaos, so they would go for me too, right? Even though I had been augmented by the Elements of Harmony, I doubted that I could stand against them for more than two seconds. They were powerful beings, Discord and the other Bearers, and I was just a pawn in their eternal games. I didn't like being a pawn.

The dream also made me think, how much hurt did this secret war cause? How much destruction is from the hands of Templar or Sons? If the Sons were the head of the gangsters of that era, that was a lot of bloodshed right there. Those shootings like the one I witnessed were a nightly occurrence in both Canterlot and Manehatten. If they created Chaos on lower levels like that, how many Chaotic events had they triggered. Every disaster, natural and unnatural, swarmed to my head. I was trying to find ways that either faction could have caused such devastation. With the shards and Elements involved, everything seemed possible.

I slapped myself to clear my head, much to the bewilderment of Scootaloo. Her dark hood made a sound as she turned to me, watching me with her red eyes. What was going through her head? I did not know. The longer I looked at her paler complexion, her glowing eyes, and her lust of violence, I saw less and less of a human. Best way to describe it was that she became more savage the more I realized how much death she was responsible for. Was she insane? Was she simply lost? Was this my future? I did not want to find the answer to any of the questions.

"What's wrong?" she asked with sincerity.

"Nothing. Nothing at all," I answered absently.

"Um...alright then?"





Baltimare was just like how I last visited it. Warm, humid, and windy. We did not go deep into the massive city, so I was not treated to seeing the skyscrapers that graced downtown. The suburb we stopped at was innocent enough; full of people, shops, and peddlers on the street corners. With lots of junk cars lining the streets, our trashy van was not out-of-place in the slightest. 

With the afternoon sun above us, we stepped out of the parked van and into what was some sort of tiny park. It had a crumbling fountain, bushes and trees that were mostly dying, concrete trails with holes in them, and a small lake with dozens of birds around it, making all sorts of shouts and honks. Hardly any people were present in this park, but those that were were smoking joints and lounging around on the surprisingly decent looking benches. Some of them were parents and they watched their children play on a little playground that brought the public area some needed color. 

We placed ourselves under a low tree with a hundred branches. Vinyl was texting on her phone and so was Neon. I was a bit confused by how we weren't speaking with each other, but they seemed to be doing something important, so I said nothing. I leaned on the old tree and checked some things on my phone before returning it to my pocket.

"They're here," Vinyl told us. 

As she said this, two young men walked up to us. One was wearing a white hoodie that seemed a little small for him. His jeans were loose and muddied. He wore high top shoes of an expensive sport brand. Bleached long white hair flowed out from the back of his long neck. He was pale all around except his burning blue eyes that seemed to be the only spot of real color on him. To finish him off, he had a snowflake tattoo on the right side of his neck. 

The other guy was much more colorful. He had a thick curly blue beard and thick glasses. His plaid shirt was sagging on one side. The shirt's sleeves were rolled up in a lazy fashion with one side being rolled up much higher than the other. His skinny jeans were lined with black belts at the waist. He walked with much more confidence in his converse shoes and appeared all around happier than his companion.

"Hey guys," Vinyl greeted them. "How's preparation been?"

"Good!" the blue one smiled. "And it's great to see you guys once more!"

"Nice to see ya, Vinyl," the white one nodded his head slowly. "Who's that?"

He pointed right at me. I took a step forward and was not going to let Vinyl introduce me again. I walked up to the two guys and shook their hands. The white one had much stronger hands than the blue one, but I made no comment on this and simply smiled.

"I'm A. K. Yearling, these guys just call me 'Akay.'" 

"I'm Party Favor, but most just call me 'Favor.' Nice to meet you!" the blue one beamed.

"I'm Double Diamond," the white one said, showing a tongue ring. "Welcome to the world of hackers."

"Thanks," I was uncertain of how to take that. "I'm guessing you two are Erebus?"

"Yes," Favor nodded. "And with the Sons of Discord, we should get Starlight out of prison easily."

"Starlight? Is that the cracker?" I asked.

"Yup, she's been a real friend to us," Double Diamond said. "We haven't seen her in a long time. I hope she doesn't think we've abandoned her."

"Well she will if we don't hurry," Vinyl interrupted. "Listen, we'll doing this for Lemon Zest in Canterlot. She needs Starlight's expertise. She's not sure how long Ahuizotl is gonna keep their precious little container in the capital, so we better get moving. Have ya found the prison's generators?"

"Yes!" Favor answered excitedly. "We've got the place all lined out. We've marked patrols by using security footage and have the names of the guards that are stationed there. We know who is a rookie and who is a ten year veteran."

"And the police uniforms?" 

"We couldn't get guard uniforms, but we got two officer ones this morning."

And that was all that was said about the uniforms. I didn't want to know how they acquired the uniforms. The two did not look like murderers in the slightest, but  then again, Scootaloo's cute face would say the same thing and I've seen her gut more than one guy. Talking about their appearances, I could see myself in a police uniform. I'd probably look quite dashing. However, I was Normal Norman compared to Vinyl. 

"Uh, Vinyl?" I asked. "You know you don't look like one that would be in a police force, right?"

"Yeah, I do," Vinyl shrugged. "And your hair is too long to be in one as well. We're gonna head over to the Erebus hideout nearby and get cleaned up."





The Erebus hideout was not any better than our hideout in Manehatten. It seemed the same size, but with all the clutter, it certainly felt much smaller. Just like ours, there were monitors, computers, TVs, and microwaves. They had hardly any lamps and most light came from the monitors themselves. The real difference was that this hideout was not underground at all. It did not even have a basement. Also unlike ours, it was not a garage, but a small house in the urban ghetto. Heh, all the Baltimare vacation advertisements failed to mention all the poor neighborhoods that were farther inland. All the rich parts were by Horseshoe Bay.

Favor acted like we all already knew the place like the back of our hands and did not even give us a short tour. We put our bags on the L couch and then Scoots pushed me and Vinyl into the bathroom. She forced me into a wooden chair right in front of the mirror. Only then did I realize how bad I looked. I still had bags under my eyes and my lack of makeup was certainly showing my recent stress. 

"I look old..." I muttered.

"And I don't look a day over 25!" Vinyl laughed.

"But weren't you in your thirties when ya became a Survivor?"

"Alright, I don't look a day over 30?" she shrugged.

"Time to turn you two social rejects into police officers!" Scoots clapped her hands.

Now, she still had her twin blades on her back. With the amount of craziness that had happened, I was suspected she would use those two swords to cut my hair. My eyes widened as she took all my long hair into her hand.

"You aren't going to use your swords to cut that, right?" I hesitantly asked.

"Of course not," Scoots chuckled.

"Thank goodness..."

"I have a hidden blade!"

She activated her wrist blade and lobbed off a good six inches of my hair.  The thick hair made an audible thump on the floor, even over my restrained squealing. I looked at Scoots in the mirror.

"My hair!"

"Don't ya worry, Akay, Scoots is a good stylist."

"I am," Scoots nodded.

"Oh yeah? Where did ya learn to do that?"

"Actually when I was a teenager. Babs Seed would cut Neon and his crew's hair. When Vinyl and Neon would bang every night on the Ragnarok, I hung out with Babs."

"Babs? Who is she?"

"She gave Tavi and I a tour of the ship when we first joined Rainbow's crew," Vinyl said.

"Oh yeah...that girl. Is she a Survivor too?"

Scoots shrugged. "None of us know what happened to her. My guess would be she had a pretty short life since she starting drinking heavy when she was just like fourteen. Rainbow shouldn't have shown her so much cider."

"Another death story added to the list," I grunted. "You guys must have tons of them."

"Perks of being immortal," Vinyl laughed. "I've seen hundreds come and go. It's kinda odd seeing a guy get born, then how he lived his life, be it good or bad, and then how he dies. Yet nothing really changes with you."

"I'm just another story you guys are watching isn't it?" I gulped.

"Well, if ya keeping refusing to become a Survivor, yeah it is."

I didn't like it when she brought that up. By now it was nothing to me but irritating, annoying, and exhausting to listen to. So I did not reply to her and sat in silence while Scoots chopped my hair and styled it to a hairstyle that was the standard of Equestrian policewomen. This included shorter hair was knotted into a small bun. I had always been one for the ponytail or long hair look, so this style was pretty new to me.

The standard was to also have one's hair black. I never understood this rule, but my only guess it was because of all the natural hair colors colliding. I had mostly black in my hair, but I also had gray highlights that I was born with. So Vinyl and I both had our hair dyed. It was a little messy, but Scoots hummed and sang while she did it, so it was obvious she had done this many times before.

Vinyl was almost unrecognizable with the hair change. I never realized how dominating her spiky blue hair was until I saw her black short hair. If it was not for her red eyes, I would have mistaken her for someone else entirely. Once we were both done, we cleaned up and put on the uniforms Favor had gotten us. Surprisingly, it fit rather well. The dark blue shirt and pants were my length and width. Scoots helped me and Vinyl into our uniforms and we went out to see the guys.

"Lookin' spiffy," Neon remarked upon seeing us. "Never thought me girl Vinyl could clean up like that."

"Don't get used to it," Vinyl chuckled.

"I'll get everything ready," Favor said. "It's time to give them a licking."

I was not expecting him to say that so soon. My only guess was that Vinyl did not want to waste any time at all, so we were already going to start on our daring "rescue" of Starlight Glimmer. To be honest, I was pretty dang nervous about it all. Freeing a prisoner from a top prison like Baltimare Bay? Yeah right.  As we armed ourselves and prepared to leave, I could only pray that this was worth it. We grabbed our guns, our blades, and our hacking tools. All to prepare to kill any poor sod that stepped in our way. 


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