Training - Prologue
Prologue
The bell over the front of the shop made a gentle ring as the door pushed open, admitting yet another guest. Knick waited for the sound of the second ring, the clincher. Only then would she look up, tearing her eyes from her book and seeing who it was that had entered her store. Her ears perked with anticipation as she stared down, waiting while rereading the same line over and over. It may have only been minutes from the shop's usual closing time of eight in the evening, but she always got a slight thrill when dealing with a customer.
“Never look at a customer the moment they walk in,” her father had always told her. “Always give them a moment to familiarize themselves with their surroundings, and they’ll be a lot more relaxed.” There were many lessons he’d given her over the years as he’d trained her to take over The Hodgepodge when he was gone, just as he had from his mother after she had died. And then, one winter, he’d just been gone one morning. Snuffed out in the night like a candle in the wind, a faint smile on his bearded muzzle the last gift he’d had for her.
There was a faint click as the shop's door shut, and Knick’s eyebrows rose in surprise as she looked up. Why hadn’t the bell gone off? Her eyes locked on her newest customer, only to elicit a mental sigh as she took in its unusual garb. It was either a refugee from a sandstorm, or another visit from one of those customers.
The pony was standing just inside the doorway, its gender indistinguishable beneath layer upon layer of heavy robes. Knick couldn’t even make out its eyes or muzzle, as the robe's cowl was pulled low, with unnatural shadows pooling around the edges. Knick felt a familiar itch at the base of her horn as she ran her eyes over the heavily robed figure. Their robe was enchanted. For a moment she stared at the new pony, waiting for some sort of reaction. Then her training took over, and she defaulted to the well-oiled phrase her father had taught her.
“Welcome to The Hodgepodge,” she said, the words slipping out of her mouth with as much familiarity as breathing. “Baltimare’s one-mare stop for a medley of miscellaneous paraphernalia. Are you looking for anything specific today?”
There was a rustle of cloth as the robed pony stepped up to Knick’s counter and—presumably—looked directly at her. There was no doubt in her mind now, this was definitely one of those customers, and one that was a little melodramatic at it as well. The itching in her horn, combined with the darkened shadow where the pony's muzzle should have been was a clear sign of an active enchantment. Something to hide the pony's face so that Knick wouldn’t be able to identify it. The robes it was wearing were tight in some areas, loose in others, giving no hint to what kind of pony was wrapped beneath the robes, and even went so far as to cover its hooves.
“I’ve been told that you deal in artifacts of various natures,” the robed figure said. It’s voice was grainy, magically distorted, and Knick fought the urge to roll her eyes, keeping a friendly smile on her face.
Talk about taking things too far, she thought even as she opened her mouth to speak. “That’s true, I do,” Knick said. “As you can see, I carry all sorts of items here.” She waved a hoof in the direction of the small shop's heavily clustered shelves. “I’ve got everything from candlesticks to griffon helmets.” Maybe this one’s just really strange. After all, I haven’t had one of those customers in—
“I’m not buying,” the strange robed pony said. “I’m selling.” There was a ripple as a layer of fabric was thrown back, revealing two heavy saddlebags on the pony’s sides. “I heard that you buy items with an interesting origin.”
“Oh,” Knick said, her ears going flat against her skull. It was one of those customers. “I see.” This was the one last gift her father had left her. The one she’d never wanted much to do with. Her horn lit up with a soft magenta glow, flipping the small wooden sign on the shop’s door from “open” to “closed.” Blinds began to fall one by one over the shop's few windows, and Knick flipped a few more lights on to even out the loss of the late summer sun.
“You know,” she said as she turned her focus back to her mysterious guest. “Usually your type comes later in the night or early in the morning. They don’t usually walk up in broad daylight where anypony can see them.” She gave her customer a piercing glare. “Or better yet, they act like any normal seller so nopony gets suspicious.” She gave a derisive snort at the pony's robes. “The last thing I want is a Night Guard division checking my shop.”
“Nopony saw me enter,” the strange voice said. “Nopony.”
“Whatever,” Knick said. “You’d better have something good to show me, or I’ll be tossing your flank out on the street. And don’t think I can’t do it,” she said as she carefully levitated her father's old crossbow up from behind the counter. “You’re not the first unscrupulous type I’ve had in here.” The crossbow was in excellent condition, although she’d never actually fired it. The threat alone was more than likely all she would ever need. She wasn’t even sure she could fire it.
“I came for business,” the robed figure said, tossing its head. “Nothing else.” The figure swung its head around and gripped the saddlebag straps with its teeth ... Or at least that was what Knick assumed it was doing under the shadowy cowl. With a distorted grunt of exertion, the pony brought the saddlebags up and dropped them onto the counter with a dull thump.
“Alright then, let’s see what we’ve got here,” Knick said, flipping the saddlebags open with her magic and pulling the topmost item out for examination.
It was a golden necklace, so large it could almost be called an amulet. Massive gems were set into each of its segmented pieces, brilliant emeralds that glittered under the lights as the necklace spun. She could feel its heft through her horn, a solid weight that told her that the necklace was likely pure gold, and probably worth at least almost a thousand bits in materials alone before taking into account the intricately etched designs crisscrossing its surface. She flipped the necklace over and saw a small but familiar horseshoe icon etched into the back of the clasp. The piece was a genuine Coltine from Saddle Arabia, hoof-made without magic. Mentally Knick let out a whistle. A genuine Coltine had to be worth at least fifteen hundred bits, maybe more.
She set the piece aside and carefully pulled the next piece from the bag. This one was far less impressive than the first, a pair of gem earrings connected by a single copper wire, easily worth a hundred bits except for the fact that one of the earrings was missing its ruby. It went to its own spot on the counter.
Item after item came out of the saddlebags. Most of was jewelry, ranging from the cheap and tacky to the impressively rare. Some of it was even more curious. An ancient urn with fresh depressions where decorative gems had once been. A small statue of a Wonderbolt with the base missing. A rolled tapestry. There were even loose gems in the second saddlebag; rubies, diamonds, jaspers, all types and colors rolling around in the bottom. Eventually, the saddlebags lay empty on the counter, their contents spread out on the counter in neat, shining rows.
“I’ll give you two-thousand bits,” Knick said, her voice deadpan.
“What?” Not even the distortion could hide the shock in her customer’s voice. “Unacceptable. These items are worth five at the least.”
“Maybe,” Knick said, shaking her head as she looked down at the impressive spread of items before her. The variety was truly puzzling. “But they’re also traceable.” She tapped the elaborate necklace with one hoof. “This item in particular I’ve already seen alerts for from the local police station. I can’t resell it anywhere in Equestria, which means it’ll have to be juggled for a while before it’s sold, and that isn’t cheap.” She poked at one of the other jewelry pieces, a large hooflet with another missing gem. “And some of these pieces I’ll have to repair myself if I want to sell them, or pass them along to someone who can repair them, and that costs bits as well.”
“Five thousand,” the figure said again, although the voice sounded a little less sure.
Knick shook her head. “You’re new at this, I can tell. Look,” she said, lifting the necklace again. “This is a genuine Coltine necklace. Hoof-made, no magic at all involved in its construction. At a high class establishment this would sell for about two-and-a-half, maybe three thousand bits. Maybe more. But me? I can’t be seen selling something like this. So I have to sell it to someone else, and they have to sell it to someone else, until it reaches a point where it isn’t a wanted item from a recent train robbery. So this,” she said, carefully setting the necklace down on the table, “is only worth a few hundred bits to me because I won’t be able to get much out of it. Same goes for a lot of this jewelry. I’ll cut you a break since you’re new to this. Two thousand bits.”
“Three,” the robed pony said with another toss of its head. “Three thousand.”
Knick thought about it for a moment. She could make a few bits with the assorted jewels and oddball items with a little polish, and the jewelry she could fence, although it would take time, and possibly a trip to see one of her father's old friends in the north. But it could be done, and she’d still stand to make a nice tidy profit at the end if her mental calculations were correct.
“Alright,” she said at last. “Three thousand bits. Wait here.” She ducked through the small curtain that separated the front of her shop from her home and headed up a small set of rickety, creaky stairs. Once she reached the top, she turned left, pulling open a narrow door with her magic that led to another, smaller set of well-kept, carpeted stairs that muffled her hoofsteps as she made her way down them. As a child she’d never understood why her home had the two sets of stairs, it was only when her father’s final note to her explained the safe underneath the kitchen floor that she had realized why he had always insisted on going up one set and then coming down the other. Apparently it hadn’t taken long for someone who had bought from thieves to start thinking like one.
The tumblers for the small safe spun easily under the grasp of her magic, the safe door opening with a faint click. She pulled the door aside, revealing carefully stacked piles of bits, assorted magical items that she hadn’t found a buyer for quite yet, and in the back of the safe the items she had been looking for. She pulled three of the bags out, checking the label on each one as she did so. A thousand bits per bag in hundred bit coins, each in Equestrian currency. She closed the safe, taking one last look at the sole remaining bag in the back, and made her way back to the front of the shop via the stairs.
“Three thousand bits,” she said, dropping the bags on the counter. “Now take it and clear out of here.”
“What about my privacy?” the figured asked as its saddlebags were once again draped over its back. “I want assurances that none will know of our transaction.”
“You get the same deal everyone else gets,” Knick said as the figure lifted the cash bags from the counter one by one in its teeth, dropping them into the saddlebags. “I’m just a buyer, I know nothing about you.”
“Acceptable.” The figure said. “I may have more to sell you soon.”
That’ll be the day, Knick thought as the pony made its way out the door, the golden chime once again ringing out its familiar double chime in her ears. She looked down at the mess of jewelry, gems and random items in front of her and let out a sigh. A klepto like that isn’t going to be around for long, not if they keep stealing at the rate they are. She poked at a random ruby with an idle hoof. What was the point of it? Still, it wouldn’t take more than a few months to pawn most of it off, although some of it would definitely need to go north, through some of her father's old contacts. She let out another sigh.
Sometimes she really wished her father hadn’t left her the seedier side of his business.
* * *
Hours later and hundreds of miles from Baltimare, Professor Paleo Diggs was getting annoyed. No, not just annoyed, he realized as he opened yet another crate only to find that it too had been mislabeled. He was getting furious.
“Oh for the love of Celestia,” he muttered to the empty room as he carefully pried the lid from another wooden crate, only to find that the contents not what was promised on the label—assorted Zebracan masks—but instead a carefully packed and preserved stuffed beaver. “Doesn’t anyone train these interns anymore?” he asked as he carefully placed the lid back on the box. “It’s bad enough that these are all mislabeled, but this is the paleontological wing! We don’t need Zebracan masks!”
He sat back on his haunches for a moment, rubbing a hoof through his greying mane with a frustrated sigh. All I want to do is look at the latest fossils from the Turuncu Desert dig, he thought. He’d seen the crates delivered that morning, told the interns to bring them down to the basement storage of the paleontological wing, and simply trusted that the naive young interns had gotten the job done. Now, as he stood and opened yet another crate, this one labeled “Pre-classical clothing models,” a label which turned out to be for once exactly what it declared, he was cursing his shortsighted trust.
He replaced the lid on the crate and took a step back. There were still another dozen crates to look through, but a quick glance at a few of the labels showed them to be just as ill-placed—and likely just as ill-assigned—as the first dozen or so crates he’d dug through. He frowned as he considered his options. It was growing late and he wanted to be home as soon as possible, but he also very much wanted to finish his report on the latest set of bones the dig team had found for the board. A finished report meant yet another chance at additional funding, or even another grant. He quivered at the thought. Another grant, even a small one, would give his department enough funding to let him go out in the field along with the rest of his team. Out in the Turuncu Desert, carefully digging up bones that had lain there for centuries, maybe longer. Who knew what secrets the past held?
Then again, he thought as he looked over the mislabeled crates before him. If I leave the museum, that could put any shipments that come back in the hooves of these interns. He snorted. They could be just as lost here. Making a mental note to reprimand the interns the next morning, he flicked the lights out and headed for his office.
As he collected his coat and bag from his office, a thought struck him. If the Paleontological department had items from what looked like Equestrian History, then perhaps the Equestrian History archives had the fossils his team had sent in sitting in their basement. He took a left turn as he trotted out of his office, heading for the Equestrian History wing.
He waved a friendly hello to one of the museum watchponies as he crossed over the museum courtyard, his hooves ringing out with each step against the smooth paved stones. The massive fountain that dominated the center of the courtyard had already been turned off for the night, the flowing streams of water nothing more than a faint trickle. The fountain itself was a recent addition to the museum and a masterful work of art, a stunning sculpture of gold and platinum depicting the two royal sisters holding Equestria aloft underneath a dazzling sun and moon. It was exquisite in its detail and design, and—Paleo knew—dozens of centuries old. Apparently it had been donated by Princess Celestia herself, or so the rumor went, in celebration of the return of her sister.
The History wing was closed for the night, dark save for a few lights left on for the watchponies. He didn’t bother turning on any additional lights, the layout of the building was familiar enough that he knew he could make his way through it without much difficulty. He only had to make use of his keys twice, once to get inside the building, and a second time to access the basement storage staircase.
When he finally reached the basement storage and flipped on the lights, revealing rows and rows of shelving stacked high with crates, he let out a sigh of relief. There, sitting in the delivery area next to the elevator was a large stack of crates, several of which were bearing the import-export stamps of the Griffon Empire that he had become well acquainted with over the last ten years. Letting out a small laugh of joy, he vaulted down the last few steps and galloped over to the first of the crates.
“It's the right label, no exterior damage, lid looks solid,” Paleo said, tapping the first of the crates with his hoof. “And we’ve got one, two, three, four … where’s five?” He walked around the pile of crates, checking each one as he passed. “More Pre-classical clothing, Canterlot miniatures, more clothing and—hello, what’s this?”
He paused by the last crate in surprise, staring at it’s blank sides in puzzlement. It was square, almost perfectly so, about as tall as his chin and—he tapped it—definitely had something in it. But what it didn’t have was a label, or even any sort of markings. He pried at the lid for a moment with his hooves, but it didn’t give. It wasn’t the right size for one of his crates, or at least the shipping documents that he’d seen that morning hadn’t mentioned a crate of this shape being in his shipment. He gave it a slight push with his chest, eyebrows rising in surprise at it’s weight.
“Well, that could be crate number five I suppose,” he said, taking another walk around the pile of boxes but not spying any alternatives to the unlabeled crate. “Although how it made it through the border without a stamp ...” He shook his head. Maybe it was just a mystery box.
He gave a small chuckle as an old joke came to mind. “You took the box?” he said, drawing out his voice in a reasonable facsimile of a Neighpon accent. “Let's see what’s in the box!”
As he trotted around the stack again, he turned his head and his eye caught on something down one of the rows of shelving. Several crates were sitting on the floor between the shelves, some of them open, some still closed, one with a crowbar sitting on its lid. One of the crates bore the distinct markings of Griffon import-export stamps.
Paleo trotted down the aisle between the shelving to get a closer look at the crate. Sure enough, it was the missing fifth, a long oblong crate that was almost twice as long as the other crates were wide. It was all Paleo could do to keep himself from grabbing the nearby crowbar and taking the top off to see what ancient wonders his crew had sent. He took a quick look at the other crates. The shelves in this section of the storage room were mostly bare, from the look of things somepony had been checking each crate before lifting them up to the shelves for storage.
He climbed up a nearby ladder, taking a quick look at each shelf to make sure that he wasn’t missing any other packages. The shelves were fairly bare in this section of the basement, so the check took only a few moments. Three crates on the floor level, none on the middle shelf, and one positively ancient crate on the top shelf that was encrusted with spiderwebs. He stared at it for a few seconds, looking at the strange text on the sides. It almost looked like pre-classical Equestrian. He stared at the strange text for a moment longer before shaking his head and climbing back down the ladder.
“Old fool,” he muttered under his breath. “Ancient languages aren’t really your department now are they? Ancient bones on the other hoof ...” He rubbed his hooves together before opening his bag. “I’ll just leave a note on each crate for the—oh blast.” He rummaged around inside his bag again. “No parchment. Brilliant, Professor. No parchment, no quill.” He rolled his eyes at his own forgetfulness and headed for the stairs to the room.
It only took a moment for him to “borrow” some parchment from one of the History Department’s desks and leave a note for the Director to send a crew down looking for the marked crates. Then, just to make certain that there were no mistakes, he headed back down to the basement with a smaller scrap of parchment for the crates. It wasn’t until the basement door shut behind him and darkness swept over him that he stopped thinking about his plans for the department presentation.
“Hang on,” he said. His voice sounded slightly shaky in his ears. “I thought I left the lights on down here.” He put one hoof behind the other, carefully backing up until he felt his tail bump the door. “I must be getting old when I forget ...” His voice trailed off as he felt the switch click down under his hoof. “Now wait a minute,” he said, clicking the switch back up, then down, then up again. The room stayed dark.
“Well blast,” Paleo said, listening as the echoes of his voice mixed with a few more rapid clicks of the light switch. “I guess that means I’ll—” His voice cut off as a large thud echoed through the darkness around him, followed by several wooden scraping noises. The noises echoed for a moment, slowly fading. All he could hear now was his rapidly beating heart. He opened his mouth, licking his dry lips, and called out. “Azure?” His voice sounded like a rasp in his ears as he named another one of the night watchponies. “Dusk? Is that you?”
There was a short, sharp pop and the lights flickered to life with a brightness that made his eyes water. Paleo threw his hoof up, shading his eyes against the intense glare. It took a few seconds, but his eyes gradually adjusted, and he dropped his hoof and took a look around the room, blinking rapidly. Although things were still slightly blurry, he could still make out the pile of crates over by the elevator and the last set of stairs that led down to them. He took a few hesitant steps forward.
“Hello?” he called out, the last bits of blurriness fading from his eyes. “Is anypony there?” His hooves rang out against the metal grating of the steps as he made his way down to the boxes. “Anypony?” Silence.
“Right,” he said, drawing the word out as he stepped up the first of his crates. “Must have been a power problem.” Although I’ve never heard of the magilectric system having any problems. He shrugged, trying to drive the event from his mind as he dropped his note on the first of his crates … which now that he looked at them, seemed off. He took a few steps back and took a longer look. It wasn’t the crate that was off, it was the whole pile. Something inside of him kept insisting that something was out of place.
Out of place. He took a few steps forward, and then around the stack. One of the back crates had moved. No, not moved, he realized. It had been shoved. He could see the large splintered sections of wood where something had collided with the crate and spun it around. He leaned in closer. The splintered section of wood almost looked like—like—
Like a footprint. He could see it now, three oblique scrapes across the wood. Images of prehistoric creatures leaped unbidden to his mind, massive beasts with clawed feet capable of eviscerating a pony in one swift swipe. He shook his head to drive the images away. It was ridiculous to think of, such creatures were long since gone, reduced to bones.
Bones that were in boxes right next to him.
He could feel his heart pounding again and he stepped back, giving his head another little shake. “Oh for the love of—You’re sixty-three years old,” he chided himself. “Stop acting like a newborn colt.” But the images wouldn’t leave his mind, although now the creatures had changed, they were no longer creatures of flesh, but ancient dry bone, enchanted to move about as they wanted, to hunt and avenge the pony that had disturbed their rest. Come to think of it, weren’t timber wolves just bits of wood animated by some sort of magic energy being? Couldn’t bones do the same thing?
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” he said, tapping the side of his head with one hoof. “Think of something reasonable.” But what about that noise? His mind seemed to shoot back. Shouldn’t you worry about that? Paleo took a few deep breaths, calming his nerves and bringing his heart rate back down to a less noticeable pound. There’s nothing to be worried about, he thought as he turned and began to walk back towards the doorway. There’s nothing wrong, everything is fine. He just hadn’t noticed the torn wood on the box the first time, he’d been looking for labels after all. It was just an oversight—
He stopped again as something caught inside his head. Slowly, carefully, he eased his view over to his right, looking down the aisle towards the last of his crates. At first glance everything looked normal, just as the crate pile had. There were the open crates, his sealed crate, a few other closed crates, the crowbar on the ground ... He backed up. The crowbar hadn’t been on the ground. Nor had the crates on the bottom shelf been open.
Ice was running through his veins now, his heart somehow still managing to pump the frozen substance while his body locked up. Once again images were springing to mind unbidden, skeletal constructs of ancient bone with deep set glowing eyes. Paleo gritted his teeth, taking another few breaths. If Petal could see him now—he knew what’d she’d do. She’d laugh, and then taunt him for getting all worked up over nothing before telling him to stop letting his imagination run away with itself.
He shook his head. Petal would be right too. He’d probably just remembered the crowbar being in the wrong spot. Just like he hadn’t noticed the claw marks—no—not claw marks. Scuff marks on the one box. It was just the late hour and his imagination getting away with him. The ice in his veins began to melt and he took a few shaky steps forward. Then another few, and another, and as he reached the bottom step he could almost feel his heart rate return to a normal speed.
“See now?” he said to himself as he started up the stairs. “It was all in your he—”
The lights flickered again, sparking and dying out and Paleo let out a little gasp of shock before clambering up the stairs in the dark. Near the top step he tripped, his hoof catching the top of the last stair and sending him crashing down on the landing. He laid there for a moment, waiting, hoping for the lights to come back on. That was when he heard it.
A faint rasp as something pressed against one of the crates. In his mind he could see it now, some immortal, unholy creature powered by centuries-old magic, emerging from one of the crates that he had so foolishly signed for that morning, slowly making it’s way across the open space of the pitch-black room. Paleo let out a scream and lunged for the door, pulling it open with one swift pull. He raced up the stairs, ignoring the crash of the door behind him and the burning pain in his side from where he had fallen as every thought became to get out of the museum as quickly as possible.
Minutes later, alerted by the professor's screams, several of the night watchponies made their way down the same stairs, flashlights carefully gripped in magic fields.
“So, what do you think it is?” one of the watchponies asked.
“Ah it’s probably nothing,” the other guard responded. “This place is pretty spooky at night, it probably just got to him.”
“Well, it could be a wild animal,” the last guard said, flipping her flashlight in the air and catching it, a feat that would have been more impressive had she not been a unicorn. “A squirrel could have snuck in.”
“I doubt a squirrel could have made the amount of noise the professor was talking about,” the first unicorn said.
“Oh, well,” the third said as they reached the door. “Maybe it was a raccoon?” The three watchponies pushed the door open and stepped into the basement storage unit. One by one their jaws dropped.
“Well, I don’t know about you,” the second said as they all stared at the massive hole torn in the elevator door. “But that’s one big raccoon.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.027 seconds
Total duration
1,093 users online
1,582,906 hits today, 1,822,946 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Alright a new part begins. Now have a mustache
Somepony's looking to make a lot of money as quickly as equinely possible...! The question is, what for? This looks too involved to be simple greed, especially if this robbery is one in a set or string of others.
So would a giant squirel still be an ROUS?
stairs.
"Nothing! Absorutery nothing! Stupid!"
Thanks for the UHF reference!
And so it begins. Items being fence by a pony, and yet some creature is stealing things. Mad a mistake at the end though. But having anti-magic works in its favor.
more of this. how does it work? just like an electric system but with magic?
this looks like something big. so there is something vaguely pony shaped selling the items stolen from the trains.
something big making holes in elevator doors. and stealing? historical objects? or maybe something else.
i love this!
Onwards to more adventure!
Oooh, those are some clever stairs.
iiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnttttttttttteeeeeeeeeeessssssssstttttttttttiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggg
Still nothing to suggest it isn't a rogue subspecies of Luggage. That thing will destroy anything in its path.
Corrections offered without malice, as usual. I only do this to stories I like.
its
its, its
pony's, pony's
its
its
shop's
pony's
father's (three times)
its, its
its, its
led
pulled it open
it and clear
its, its
its
pitch-black
professor's
So, does Knick have a twin named Knack?
6942129
Or another named Whack? 'Cause he could be a police officer who drives a paddy wagon...
its racoonzilla