Episode 6
Griffonstone Part Two! - Falling For You
"I'm glad no one was hurt in the attack," Gerta said.
"Except the attackers," Shining Armor noted. "Who both died."
"Unfortunately without leaving any identifying information," Gerta said, looking at a file on her desk and flipping through some papers. "Once things have quieted down we'll begin a full investigation, of course."
"When things have quieted down?" Shining Armor frowned. "There are two dead griffons in the morgue and you want to wait a few days before you even start looking for answers?"
"I don't want to worry any of the tourists," Gerta said, smoothly. "The Wonderbowl is key to economic stability for Griffonstone. I'd do anything to make sure it wasn't disturbed." She leaned forward slightly, fixing Shining Armor with a gaze. "Anything."
"Even have a few ponies killed?" Shining Armor asked.
"Removing problems that way would be rather extreme." Gerta opened a slim manilla folder. "I would hope that it was never needed."
"As would I," Shining Armor said. "So it's my duty to inform you that, as an Equestrian citizen is reportedly involved in the attack, I'm going to have to exercise my authority under the Equestrian Accord to begin an independent investigation of these events."
"Ah yes, the Equestrian Accord..." Gerta trailed off. "Do you know the history of the accord? It's quite interesting." She stood up and started pacing. "It was forced onto Griffonstone after the third Griffon War, after the Empire broke apart into city-states. At the time it seemed to just be Equestria flexing its muscles and making us accept their laws."
"Do you still feel that way?" Shining Armor asked.
"Me? No," Gerta smiled. "I take the long view. The Accord also provided for trade agreements and protection from the Equestrian armed forces in case of attack. In the early days of Griffonstone it kept us from being re-absorbed by one of the larger city-states."
"That's good," Shining Armor said.
"Once griffons have something to be proud of again, things will get better," Gerta said. She walked over to the window of her office and gestured outside. "You see that out there? The stadium is like a little city. Hotels for visitors, restaurants, shops. Once the games are over, it won't all go away."
"Yeah, but I don't see a lot of locals shopping out there," Shining Armor said.
"They will, Captain." Gerta smiled. "They will."
Episode 6
Griffonstone Part Two! - Falling For You
"I can't believe you let them arrest us," Twilight hissed at Gilda. The cell was filthy. "Do you know what they do to ponies in a place like this? It involves a bun and ketchup!"
"We can leave any time we want," Maud noted. "Even if the lock wasn't so awful that you could pick it with a spoon, the cell door is barely on its hinges and the wall is rotting."
"If we leave, they'll chase us," Gilda said. "Self-defense isn't a crime here, but escaping from jail is."
"I don't like being locked up," Twilight grumbled.
"Well, darling, lucky for you, I posted bail." Twilight's ears twitched and she smiled as a familiar face came around the corner. Rarity looked at the three and shook her head. "I'm not sure quite why, though. If I had any sense I'd have left you in there."
A griffon walked past her and unlocked the cell door, glaring at Gilda as the three left the small cell.
"What are you doing here?" Gilda asked.
"I got a complimentary ticket - I designed the Navy uniforms, darling," Rarity smiled. "Unfortunately the Wonderbolts already have a contract, but that's due to expire soon. After they see how dashing the other team is, they'll be sure to accept my bid for next year's design."
"Thanks, Rarara," Twilight said, stretching her legs. "You wouldn't believe how hard it is to not escape prison."
"I suppose I wouldn't know, since I'm smart enough to avoid it." Rarity turned and walked out, the others following her. "I believe this is when you tell me that you're going to let me in on your little scheme and give me a double share for my trouble."
"There's no scheme," Twilight shrugged.
"What do you mean, there's no scheme?" Rarity looked back, disappointed. "You always have a scheme. You don't get a hit put out on your for not having a scheme!"
"I called off the whole thing," Twilight admitted. "The profits are going to charity. I never steal from people that can't afford it."
"Really?" Rarity stopped, appraising her. "Well, that's surprising. The rumor going around is that you're going to take every bit from the stadium before halftime. The insurance company is already getting forms ready."
"I guess somebird really doesn't want me getting my hooves on the dough," Twilight sighed.
"The funds are insured against theft, though," Rarity frowned. "Even if you took it all, the charity would still get its money. I do understand your reluctance, though, darling. I wouldn't steal from a beggar either."
"I bet if we go and talk to the people at the top, we can clear this up," Twilight said. "I mean, I'm sure they'll be reasonable about it."
Gerta looked up at a knock at her door. Normally, her secretary would alert her to any visitors with a bell. Either she'd forgotten - which was unlikely - or they'd slipped past her. Gerta put a piece of blotting paper in the ledger she'd been working on to serve as a bookmark and catch any still-wet ink before it could bleed onto the other page, then closed it and put it aside.
"Come in," Gerta said, after the ledger was safely in one of her desk drawers.
Her office door opened, and her eyebrow twitched as Twilight Sparkle, Maud, and Gilda walked in.
"Hey, there," Twilight said, smiling a little. "We were in the neighborhood-"
"A mile up and inside an office building?" Gerta asked.
"Just so," Twilight nodded. "And since we were so close by, I thought we'd come over and tell you that we're not actually here to steal anything. I'm a crook, but I wouldn't steal from charity, you know? You'd have to be a real scumbag to do that."
"Gerta," Gilda said, her eyes narrowing. "I didn't know it was you."
"It's been a while, Gilda," Gerta said. "You've got all sorts of friends these days. Thieves, assassins, Wonderbolts..." She smiled at Gilda's expression at the last item. "Rainbow Dash is hardly difficult to keep track of, considering she literally leaves a trail showing where she's gone."
"Twilight, this is a bad idea," Gilda whispered.
"Come on, Gilda, she's running a charity." Twilight shot back.
"Yes, a charity with a lot of money involved," Gerta snapped, shoving a pile of papers off her desk as she puffed up, looming over the invaders. "Do you know that ever since the rumors started that you'd show up, the insurers have been sharpening their little pencils and noting every talon that moves from one account to another?"
"That's what they do," Twilight shrugged.
"They're talking about doing an audit!" Gerta yelled. "A full audit, just because you might be around! They want to make sure you haven't made off with the money, you see."
"Well, uh..." Twilight hesitated. She felt things slipping away from her. She was clearly missing something. Gerta's expression wasn't one of a simple outraged clerk. "I haven't stolen anything? Really, I'm a victim. Some of the prices around here are pretty crazy. I mean, ten bits for a small popcorn?"
"The problem," Gerta growled, "Is that the money isn't there! And when the damned Royal Revenue Service clerks get out here with their little abacuses and notebooks, they're going to ask where that money went!"
"...And it's in your pockets," Gilda muttered.
"Only some!" Gerta defended. "Half! The rest will still be going to charity! I deserve it after all the trouble I went to to get this going!"
"You embezzled from a charity?" Maud asked. Her expression was flat, but something about her eyes made her look disgusted.
"...So I just sort of called you a scumbag," Twilight said.
"You did," Gerta said. "If you'd stayed put in that cell I would have arranged an accident there to deal with you. The dangers of a life of crime. Your brother could identify your body, and the auditors would be satisfied that the situation was resolved."
"That didn't work out for you, did it?" Twilight asked.
"No. But this won't work out for you," Gerta said. She pressed a button on her desk, and a half-dozen griffons with crossbows entered the room. Twilight reacted first and ran for the window, only to find herself almost running right into a loaded bow. Even more were outside, covering every possible escape route.
"Can't we talk this over?" Twilight asked, staring down the deadly mechanism at the griffon holding it, perched like a gargoyle just outside of the window.
"Take them somewhere dangerous," Gerta said. "I don't want this done in my office. There are too many people around. I want them found after some harm comes to them, understood?"
The griffons nodded, gesturing for the captured group to walk out.
In the hallway, Shining Armor watched from a shadowed corner as his sister and her friends were taken away at gunpoint. He'd picked up a lot of tricks over the last few years of chasing after a master criminal, including how to hide. The key was staying very still, not making a lot of noise, and moving all of the potted plants into one spot to use them as a hunting blind.
"I should have known she'd get into trouble," he whispered.
"The good thing is, they won't kill us here," Twilight whispered. "They won't want a murder scene up here on the Disc."
"Great," Gilda said. "So they'll throw you two off the edge, then shoot me and throw me off the edge."
"Nah," Twilight assured her. "They want to be able to identify my body, so they'll have to get us down to the ground, then shoot us. Dropping from this height, we'd splash like rotten tomatoes. They'd be finding bits of us for weeks!"
"Thank you for that pleasant image," Maud sighed.
The three were led through back corridors of the stadium offices down into the cloud structure of the Disc itself.
"Oh wow, secret underground parking!" Twilight said, as they entered a cavern with a few chariots parked around a hole in the floor. With the grey cloud ceiling and no decent lighting, it would be almost invisible from below.
"It's not underground," Maud said. "It's actually really high up."
"Yeah, but, you know. It's under a lot of stuff." Twilight sighed. "So, uh, Gilda, I take it you know the bird upstairs?"
"She's my ex."
"I thought Rainbow Dash was your ex."
"I have a lot of exes."
"You need to work on your relationships with other people," Maud offered. "I think it's important to stay friends even if you find yourself growing apart."
"She stole all my money and left me for dead," Gilda noted.
"And now she's running the Wonderbowl," Twilight said. "I guess she made some good investments."
"Hey!" Yelled a voice from the stairway.
"No way," Twilight said, blinking in surprise. She heard hooves approaching, and between that and the voice...
Shining Armor ran into the room, and almost into a volley of crossbow bolts, only barely getting a shield up in time to stop them.
"I need to learn that spell," Twilight said.
Maud looked at the distracted griffons and punched one hard enough to send him through the hole in the middle of the floor.
"As a duly appointed enforcer of the Equestrian Accord, I order you to cease and desist this illegal activity!" Shining Armor yelled. "Put the crossbows down and-" Another bolt hit his shield. "Right, then. Guess we're doing this the easy way."
Twilight shot one of the griffons with a force bolt and ran for cover behind one of the carriages in the garage, jumping over it and nearly making it unscathed, a crossbow bolt grazing her cutie mark and leaving a shallow, painful, cut.
"Ow!" Twilight hissed. "I really don't like these guys."
Maud knocked another griffon out of the room, and Shining Armor managed to get two with a wide blast of magic, sending them through one of the wooden carts hard enough to shatter the boards.
Gilda grabbed the last one, twisting his crossbow around and overpowering him. The bolt slammed into his chest, and he went limp. Gilda dropped him to the floor.
"Thanks for the assist, bro," Twilight said. "I didn't think you were still hanging around."
"I knew you'd end up causing trouble," Shining Armor said. "I didn't think you'd be the one in that trouble."
"Gerta is trying to cover up how much she's embezzled," Gilda said. She picked up the griffon she'd shot and tossed him over the edge. "Just the rumor that the money would be stolen means that a lot of eyes are going to be on it, and she doesn't want that. And don't give me that look, he was more or less dead already when I tossed him over the edge."
"Stealing from charity..." Shining Armor shook his head. "What a scumbag."
"See, that's what I said," Twilight agreed. "Maud, those griffons you ejected are going to come back sooner or later. We should leave before they do."
Maud stood at the edge of the hole, looking down. "I broke their wings before I threw them. They won't be back."
"Rotten tomato," Gilda snickered.
"She's going to try and get rid of any evidence," Shining Armor said. "We need to stop her."
"We?" Twilight raised an eyebrow.
"There's an active crime in progress," Shining Armor noted. "According to the Accord, even without jurisdiction I can make an arrest. She tried to have my little sister killed and she's going to go down for that. Hard."
"If you weren't my brother I'd think you were flirting," Twilight teased.
"She'll destroy the evidence if we don't stop her," Maud noted. "We should go."
"Good point," Twilight agreed. "Shiny, lead the way. And keep that shield handy in case we run into any more armed birds."
Gerta was a lot of things, but a dunce cap wasn't among the many hats she wore. She'd clawed her way to becoming a so-called 'community leader' by applying violence where she could get away with it, money where nothing else would work, and a great big heaping serving of lies to make it all work.
That was why she was stuffing papers into a bag. Especially the ledger. She couldn't let anyone have that. She'd burn it, but that was the awful thing she'd found about about covering her tracks - you couldn't cover them if you don't know where you left them. It was one thing to steal ten thousand bits, it was another to change invoices to make sure that it looked like the ten thousand had gone somewhere else.
There was a commotion at the door, and Gerta ran for the window, lugging the bag behind her. She opened it at the same time Twilight Sparkle pushed Shining Armor away and let Maud knock. The door flew across the room like it had been shot from a cannon, shattering her desk and turning into a cloud of splinters and sawdust.
Gerta jumped into the air, beating her wings and fleeing for safety. She wasn't stupid enough to fight, either.
"She's gone," Twilight cursed. "I can't hit her from here."
"I'll take care of it," Gilda said, stepping to the window. "It's a griffon problem, so a griffon should take care of it."
"Be careful," Maud advised her. "She might be out in the open, but in her mind she's backed into a corner. Even a rat will fight like a tiger if it has nowhere to run."
Gilda nodded and started after Gerta. Back before Gerta had left her for dead, they'd been evenly matched in the air, though that wasn't much of a complement. Gilda flew with a lot of power and very little grace. Griffons were predators, and evolution had favored straight-line acceleration and being able to dive for prey.
Gerta was going up, higher and higher. The Disc was already a mile above the ground, and that high, there were wisps of clouds, untamed ones that hadn't been cleared yet.
"Give it up!" Gilda yelled. She was gaining on Gerta, mostly because her ex was carrying a heavy-looking bag.
"This is all your fault!" Gerta screamed. "I was so close! I could have skimmed millions and hid it in the overhead!"
"If you hadn't gotten scared and tried to kill me, you might even have gotten away with it," Gilda admitted. "You got unlucky! Speaking as a professional thief, the long con is a game for people with some nerve and an escape plan, and you didn't have either of them! Even if you get away, you'll be hunted for the rest of your life!"
Gerta drew a crossbow from under her wing and took a shot back at Gilda, the awkward angle making the shot go wide. Gilda's didn't, hitting the straps of the bag she was holding and sending it to land on one of the wild clouds. Gerta screeched and turned back to dive for it. Gilda tackled her out of the air, both of them landing next to the bag.
"I'll kill you!" Gerta roared, talons reaching for Gilda's eyes.
Gilda flipped her over, getting on top of her and sitting on her back. "You know, part of me wants to get rid of you, but I think I'm going to take you in and let them arrest you so you can explain to everybird how you were stealing money from a charity."
Gerta kicked against the cloud under them, and they were abruptly falling as it dissipated. Gilda let go, surprised, and Gerta used the moment of shock to tear into her wing with a talon. Gilda screamed as primaries were torn out. She kicked Gerta away and shot at her, the crossbow bolt catching her between the ribs.
"Damn," Gilda swore, as she tried to flap. Her wings had no purchase in the air. She couldn't even slow herself down. The clouds were right below her, but at this speed, it'd be like falling onto concrete. Gilda would hit, break every bone in her body, then the cloud would give way and she'd fall another mile, just in case she wasn't dead already.
A rainbow streak hit her from the side, so close to the cloud layer that she could see the wisps at the edge. There was a jerk of sudden, crushing acceleration as her fall was arrested and turned sideways.
"Kept you waiting, huh?" Dash grinned. "You're lucky the fastest pegasus in the world saw you falling!"
"Gerta!" Gilda gasped. "That feathering- we need to make sure she doesn't get away."
"Uh, I wouldn't worry about that," Dash said. "See, you were both in freefall, and there's only one fastest pegasus in the world. I had to make a judgement call."
"And you chose me?"
"I'm not a great judge of character, but it seemed like the right move," Dash smirked. "Oh, and I grabbed this bag, too!" She held up the bag Gerta had stuffed full of documents.
"You saved the bag before you saved me?"
"Hey, don't criticize your rescuer," Dash said. "I can un-rescue you any time I want. So, uh, what's in the bag?"
"Something for the cops, I think."
Gilda howled in celebration as Dash streaked across the goal line. Twilight and Maud watched, more amused by the crowd than the game. They'd been given a box seat after it had become apparent that the griffon who was running it wasn't going to need it, on account of having embezzled six digits worth of bits and fallen out of the sky.
"It's too bad Shining Armor had to go back to Canterlot," Twilight said. "Apparently he had a big bag of important documentation that he needed to deliver to the Royal Revenue Service in person. He was even too busy to arrest me, as he repeatedly reminded me."
"Gerta isn't too happy either," Gilda said. "She's just lucky that Hayburger Princess was there to break her fall. She went right through the roof, and that was practically made out of balsa wood and hope thanks to her skimming the budget. Once she gets out of traction she'll probably spend the rest of her life in prison."
"It's too bad we didn't get any money," Maud said.
"We did get passes to the afterparty, though," Twilight smiled. "And Gilda got her face in the paper, in something that wasn't a mugshot. I think that all counts for something."
"Twilight! There you are!" Rarity said, her eyeliner running just enough to let ponies know she was upset without running so much it was unattractive. "Can you believe it? When I approached the manager of the Wonderbolts about redesigning their uniforms, she laughed at me!"
"Excuse me, girls. I need to go comfort my dearest Rarara," Twilight said, going to assure her that of course lace and tartan skirts were great cloudball uniform ideas.
"Do you think Rainbow Dash will want to hook up?" Maud asked Gilda, out of the blue. Gilda reeled for a moment with that question.
"Excuse me?"
"She just seems... interesting," Maud noted.
"Hey, she's my ex, so if anyone is hitting on her, it's me!" Gilda yelled.
"Oh. Well, just make your move fast, or someone else will beat you to it," Maud said.
"I'll ask her out when I see her at the after party. I'm practically a local hero now!"
"I'm sure she'd like that," Maud said. "She cares about you."
"Yeah," Gilda admitted. Then she smiled. "She's a terrible judge of character. Said so herself."
"Ah, good," Maud smiled slightly. "Then you do have a chance after all."