• Published 17th May 2013
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Finding Serenity - M1ghtypen



Lyra doesn’t try to be a hero anymore. These days she just aims to misbehave.

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Getting Pinched

Thunderlane landed outside of the infirmary, cursing both Gilda and the bright lights in equal measure. Gorram griffon’s gonna kill me one of these days, he thought venomously. Is it too much to ask for a little peace and quiet after a night of drinkin'?.

He was about to throw the infirmary doors open and march inside, but a pair of quiet voices made him pause. He pressed one ear to the door, anxiously looking around first to be sure that nopony was watching. He only heard the last part of Tick Tock’s sentence, but picked out the word “finished”.

“Wasn’t that supposed to take a really long time?” Derpy asked.

“I compiled it from what we already have,” Tick Tock sighed. It was obvious that he’d been crying. “I just wanted to see what I could put together from the results so far. Not much point in running any more tests, is there?”

A short silence passed. “I don’t know how to read any of this,” Derpy finally admitted. “What’s that attached to her forehead? It looks sort of like a horn.”

“It is, I think. See the spiral pattern?”

Thunderlane waited to hear more, but the ponies on the other side of the door were frustratingly silent. Just as he was getting bored, Derpy spoke again. “It’s growing the wrong way, isn’t it?”

Tick Tock coughed, and Thunderlane could picture him trying to subtly dry his eyes. Neither of them seemed to know what to say. “Yes, it is,” the doctor answered. Every word sounded weak, as though it had barely survived the trip out of his mouth and was on its last legs. “It’s… it’s growing into her brain”

Derpy gasped. “Poor Vision.”

“This isn’t something that I can fix,” Tick Tock sad. “My sister had a shard of bone growing into her brain, and I can’t remove it. I promised that I would help her, and I’ve failed.”

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Derpy said. “She’s much better now than she was before, right? Sometimes she even seems happy. Maybe helping her isn’t just about surgery and stuff. Vision likes it here, and we like her. My momma used to say that sometimes knowing you’re cared for is more important than the care itself.”

Tick Tock answered, but he was so quiet that Thunderlane couldn’t pick out any intelligible words. “I know,” Derpy soothed. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. She’ll be alright, Ticky. She’s got a good big brother looking out for her.”

Thunderlane pulled away, an angry scowl on his face. He shook his head to clear it, grimacing as his headache flared up again. Once he had reminded himself of why he had come to the infirmary in the first place he shoved the doors open and began looking for something to sooth his raging hangover.

*****

Octavia waited patiently for Thunderlane to return, though her nerves were beginning to fray. Gilda was bored and apparently unfamiliar with the concept of patience, so naturally she found it impossible to remain silent. She had already made several attempts at conversation, each one more desperate than the last. “So, what’s it like working for Lyra?” she asked. “Do you see much action, or do you mostly just run away when things get violent?”

I will not let her damage my calm, Octavia thought. She will not be here for long. Take a deep breath. There, see? That was not so difficult. “We tend to avoid fighting,” she said. “You may have noticed that this is a cargo ship. It is not armed.”

“Uh-huh,” Gilda grunted. “Lyra said you were in some kind of organized crime family before you met her. I used to do some of that, too. It just wasn’t, y’know, a family gig. It paid pretty well, and it was even fun most of the time. Shame I had to give it up.”

Octavia wanted to ignore the griffon entirely, but this new topic had piqued her interest. “Why?” she asked.

Gilda held up one of her paws. “Problems with authority,” she said with a grin, and wiggled her shortened toe. “That’s a story for another time. What about you, Octy? You’ve probably got some pretty great stories from the bad old days. Which family did you work for?”

Octavia’s eye twitched. “Gilda, dear?” she asked sweetly. “I know that we do not know each other very well, so I will make this as clear as I possibly can; we are not friends. You are an annoyance that I am forced to tolerate.” She leaned against the griffon to whisper into her ear. “My dear wife is allowed to call me whatever she wishes, but you most certainly are not. The next time you shorten my name, I will slip aconitine into your next meal. I will then finish my tea and work on my composition while you vomit uncontrollably and descend into cardiac arrest. It will be a painful, humiliating death. Do we have an understanding?”

For a moment it was impossible to speak. Gilda swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the sudden dryness in her throat. “Y-yeah, I get it,” she stammered. She spent the rest of her time waiting for Thunderlane in silence, Octavia’s lavender eyes drilling into her.

*****

Vision decided that she was having one of her good days. Some days she couldn’t tell the difference, but this wasn’t one of those times. She looked around at her mother’s garden, at the cherry trees and magnolias, and decided that she liked it here. Spring had sprung, and most of the trees were in bloom. Pretty white and pink petals coated the ground and floated gaily in the warm breeze.

“I like it here,” she said, just to fill the silence. The wind in the branches wasn’t quite loud enough for her liking. She was alone, and she didn’t like being both solitary and silent. “Can I stay here, please?”

The earth pony strolled through the trees, enjoying the perfect weather. The garden’s fountain burbled merrily like a childhood friend saying hello. Several tiers of stone seashells formed a chain of basins, each filling the next until the final shell flowed into the pool at the fountain’s base. A few bits gleamed at the bottom, relics of the numerous wishes she and her brother had made when they were children.

Something else sat on the bottom of the fountain, and Vision leaned over for a better look. She reached into the water and pulled out a broken piece of stone. The lip of the lowest seashell had cracked, and a chunk of it had fallen into the water. “What does this mean?” she asked.

Nopony answered. Vision looked around at the garden’s trees, holding the stone out in front of her like a lucky charm. “Can I fix it? Can somepony tell me, please? I’m trying to be my best. Really, I am.”

“Sweetie, put it down.” Vision squealed in surprise and spun around. Her mother held out her hooves as though asking for a hug. “You don’t need that.”

“No!” Vision cried. “No, no. This has meaning. You understand, but you don’t comprehend. It’s more than what it just is.”

Derpy was slowly edging away from her, both eyes focused on the stone. They were slightly red around the edges, as though she had been crying but tried to hide it. “Just calm down, sweetie,” she soothed. “Nopony wants to hurt you.” Her other friends surrounded her, reaching out with hooves like worshipers at a pagan altar. What are they doing in Mother’s garden? Vision wondered.

“I’d say she’s powerful eager to make us!”

“Thunderlane, stop it!” Octavia snapped. “Vision, darling, please put the gun down.”

Vision shook her head and clutched the pistol to her chest. “But it’s important!” she insisted. “It means more! It isn’t just a disconnected thing that we can forget about. It needs attention.”

“I’m sure it does,” Lyra said. She was the closest of the group, and had nearly crept close enough to grab her. “Why don’t you just give it to me and we’ll talk about it?”

A tense moment passed, but finally Vision’s shoulder slumped as she allowed Lyra to take the gun from her. The unicorn backed up and ejected the gun’s clip. “Fully loaded, safety off,” she announced. “This here’s a recipe for disaster. Doc, your sister could have killed somepony just now.”

Vision’s ears drooped as her brother tried to lead her away. “But she needed to see,” she whispered forlornly.

*****

It was three days before Sereneighty landed on Deadwood. Vision was kept under close supervision, and Lyra confined her to the rear of the ship. She wasn’t allowed near the crew’s quarters or the bridge, just in case she had another one of her episodes.

Lyra had nearly chewed out Thunderlane for leaving his weapons lying around, but he had quickly pointed out that the pistol wasn’t his; it was one of the nine millimeter handguns that she had confiscated from Gilda. That was a problem, because Lyra had hidden both of them in her cabin behind a securely locked door.

Vision must have worked out the right access code, either through trial and error or by spying on her. And she didn’t even know what she was doing, Lyra thought. She was running on autopilot the whole time!

Locked doors wouldn’t be enough to stop Vision if she decided to hurt somepony. It was a sobering thought.

On the day before they landed, Lyra decided to have a talk with Tick Tock. She knew it wouldn’t be pleasant, but she was a firm believer in pulling the band-aid off quickly. She found the doctor in the passenger dorm, pouring over notes and formulas with an obsession that almost unnerved her. A pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, giving him a much more mature look than she was accustomed to. “You busy?” she asked.

“Extremely,” Tick Tock said. “I’ve been researching behavioral modification. So much of the technology is dependent on magic that I’m having trouble understanding it, but I think I’m making progress.”

“Good to hear,” the Captain said as she sat down. “We need to talk about your sister, Doc. She’s getting worse.”

Tick Tock paused in his work. “I know.”

“We had a deal, Doc. Part of that deal was that you’d keep your sister under control. If you can’t do that, we might have a problem.”

The doctor removed his glasses and tossed them onto the table. “I’m sorry,” he sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. “I’m trying, Captain, but the problem is a lot worse than I thought. She has a–”

“It doesn’t matter what she has,” Lyra interrupted. “She’s dangerous.”

Tick Tock grabbed one of the pages on the table and held it up for her to examine. “See this?” he asked. “Vision wrote this when I asked her to draw me something. I was expecting a house or an animal, something that I could use to psychologically evaluate her. Instead she wrote an extremely complicated probability current accounting for the existence of hyperspace. It follows the movement of a particle through the quantum barrier. This is a mathematical explanation for why we can’t travel faster than light with our current technology.”

He squinted at some of the numbers. “I think she even accounted for the passage of time being distorted. It gets a little wibbly-wobbly in the middle there. My point is that my sister wrote this in eight minutes with a crayon because she didn’t want to talk about her feelings. She’s more intelligent than all of us put together, and with the exception of Thunderlane I’d say that’s very impressive.”

“You aren’t listening!” Lyra insisted. “Doc, I don’t care. I don’t care how sick she is right now, and I sure as hell don’t want to hear a bunch of fancy mathematics when you should be trying to figure out why she was pointing a gun at me. She could have killed somepony the other day! Her being crazy wouldn’t make one of us any less dead if she’d pulled that trigger. If you can’t control her, I’m going to have to.”

“I’m trying!” Tick Tock insisted. “I’ve been looking into benzodiazepines, but I don’t know what kind of dosage she needs. Her brain doesn’t work the same as ours anymore.”

Lyra closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She really didn’t want to get angry at a pony that was honestly trying to help. “That’s great, and I hope it works. What happens if it doesn’t? What if she gets violent?”

“I don’t know,” Tick Tock admitted. “We’ve already got somepony watching her at all times, and the only other option would be locking her up.” He noticed the slight slump in Lyra’s shoulders and the tired resignation in her eyes. “You wouldn’t, would you?” he asked dubiously. “She’s already unstable! Restraining her is only going to make things worse.”

“Then you’d best make sure it doesn’t come to that. I like your sister just fine, but her happiness isn’t more important than our lives. I’m sorry, Doc, but that’s the way it is.” Lyra stood up and looked over his notes as though she had any hope at all of understanding them. “I hope you can figure something out.”

Lyra left Tick Tock to his work. She decided to check on the cargo, and hoped that Thunderlane wasn’t so enamored with his old flame that he had forgotten to package everything properly. She wasn’t in the mood to chew anypony else out.

*****

As an experienced smuggler and all around brigand, Lyra never negotiated without somepony to back her up. Today, that somepony was Octavia. They spent nearly an hour haggling over price, when that price should have been fixed from the start. Having her time wasted was both aggravating and embarrassing. Lyra preferred to think of herself as a professional, not somepony that had to awkwardly demand the amount of contraband goods she was promised.

It was lucky that Octavia’s air of callous disdain made the shady black market ponies nervous. Lyra’s job was to exchange the coffee for some very expensive tea, and she would have been held personally accountable had the shipment been smaller than expected.

Her bad day suddenly got much worse when they returned to Sereneighty. Smoke was billowing from the right atmo engine, and Derpy was frantically trying to figure out what was causing the problem. “She won’t talk to me!” the pegasus shouted. “I can’t see inside, but the computer says that nothing’s wrong. We’ve already cut power to the engine, but the smoke won’t stop!”

“Is there anything lodged in the rotors?” Lyra asked. “It might not be a problem with the ship itself.”

Derpy carefully fished around in the turbine, coughing from the thick smoke as she tried to find anything out of place. “Aha!” she shouted. “I found a… uh, what is this?”

Lyra looked at the small cylinder her mechanic was holding and sighed. “That’s a homemade smoke bomb. Somepony wanted us to think the engine was broken.”

“Why would they want that?” Derpy asked.

The Captain and her mechanic were interrupted as Thunderlane touched down next to the cargo. “I made it!” he called breathlessly. “The Doc and Vision are out of the way, just like you wanted.”

Lyra felt a sudden, overpowering desire to swear at the top of her lungs. “There’s your answer,” she said. “A while back I told Thunderlane that he should get Vision and her brother out of the way if it ever looked like somepony was sabotaging Sereneighty. Octavia?” The grey mare straightened at the mention of her name. “Put everypony on high alert and load the cargo as quick as you can. See if you can get Vinyl to help. Thunderlane and I have some fugitives to find.”

“They’ll be fine,” Thunderlane assured her. “I left ‘em with Gilda.”

“You what?” Lyra demanded. “We need to find them before she figures out how much they’re worth!”

Thunderlane gulped nervously. “You sure?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we just stick around here for a while to make sure it’s safe?”

Lyra unhooked the cargo sled from the utility vehicle and hopped into the driver’s seat. “Lead the way!” she ordered. “I’ll follow as fast as I can.”

“B-but what if it ain’t safe to bring them back here yet?”

“Stop arguing and fly!” Lyra shouted as she gunned the throttle. Thunderlane reluctantly took to the air and flew back in the direction from which he had come. The Captain kept up as best she could, weaving in and out of crowded streets at speeds that were more than a little irresponsible. Millington was a large town for a planet like Deadwood, so there were plenty of cars and wagons that she could have hit if she wasn’t careful.

Thunderlane landed next to a shabby hotel and waited for Lyra to skid to a stop. “I’m tellin’ you, this is a waste of time,” he grumbled.

“And I’m tellin’ you that I don’t want to hear another word about it,” Lyra snapped. “We’re taking them both back to Sereneighty, and we’re never doing anything like this again. It was a stupid idea to separate them from the rest of us.”

“Seemed like a good idea to me,” Thunderlane grumbled.

Lyra paused outside of the room he indicated. “I wasn’t blaming you,” she admitted. “It was my plan, not yours, and it was a bad one. At least we’ll know better from now on.” She knocked on the door and waited patiently for whoever was inside to answer.

It wasn’t long before the door creaked open and one of Gilda’s yellow eyes peeked out at them. “The hell are you doing here?” she asked as she opened the door all the way. She spared Thunderlane a very serious what-do-you-think-you’re-doing glare when Lyra wasn’t looking.

The hotel room Gilda had rented was nice only by diamond dog standards. The wallpaper was peeling, the carpet needed replacing, and the window was so grimy that it only let in a pale imitation of the sunlight outside. It was on the hotel’s third floor, but it felt like a dungeon.

Vision was curled up at the foot of the room’s only bed like a dog. She perked up as Lyra entered the room, and actually smiled when she saw Thunderlane. “She’s been giving me the evil eye for the last half-hour,” Gilda complained.

Tick Tock was sitting in an armchair by the bed, twiddling his hooves with boredom. “She can’t help it,” he said. “She thinks you’re dangerous.”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “She also thinks she’s a little teapot, short and stout. So what?”

“You won’t need to deal with her anymore,” Lyra said. “We’re going home.”

“Already?” Thunderlane asked. He knew that Gilda could hear the panic in his voice and hoped that Lyra didn’t know him well enough to notice. “We just got here. Shouldn’t you make sure it’s safe before you move them again?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Lyra asked suspiciously. She stood up to her full height, which still only put her on eye level with his chin. He suddenly noticed that her eyes were almost exactly the same color as Gilda’s. How had he never made that connection before? “Are you stupid, or just blind? Whoever planted that smoke bomb did it to get Vision away from the ship. This is exactly what they want!”

Gilda pressed the barrel of her pistol to the back of Lyra’s head. “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” she said as her free hand grabbed the unicorn’s weapon. “My friends are going to be here any minute, so you’d better clear out.”

Lyra looked between her and Thunderlane. “Did you know about this?” she asked.

While the Captain wasn’t looking, Gilda winked. It was a flirty wink, the kind she had given him hundreds of times before, but for the first time he found that he couldn’t enjoy it. He saw the way that Vision was staring at him, and a lump formed in his throat. “I didn’t know,” he lied, exactly as they had rehearsed. “I think we should do what she says.”

“Wait!” Tick Tock pleaded. “You can’t do this. You’ve got no idea what they’ll do to her if they find us!”

Gilda shrugged and backed against the wall to keep anypony from sneaking up on her. “Don’t care,” she said. “They’ll do something just as bad to me if I fail. You two had better get going before I decide ventilate your chest cavities.” She turned her head to the side and listened intently. “Do you hear something?”

“I don’t like you,” Vision whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Gilda staggered and reached up to wipe her nose. Her claws came away slick with blood, and moments later her eyes rolled back into her head. Thunderlane rushed to catch her as she swooned and gently laid her down onto the floor.

“What in the hay was that?” Lyra asked. Vision hid her face behind her brother and moaned pathetically.

Thunderlane cleared his throat for attention. “Hey, not that watchin’ Gilda bleed from the nose ain’t a barrel of laughs, but ain’t it about time that we got out of here before we get pinched by the feds?”

“He’s right,” Lyra said quickly. “Let’s get a move on. If Gilda was telling the truth, they aren’t far behind us.”

Thunderlane moved to pick up his friend, but Lyra pushed him away. “Are you nuts?” she asked. “Gilda just threatened to kill us!”

Thunderlane glared at her defiantly and hefted the griffon over his shoulders. “I’ll carry her for a few blocks. She can take it from there once she wakes up.”

*****

Octavia wasn’t pleased to be doing manual labor, but she carried out her duties without complaint. The Captain would be in a hurry to leave when she returned, and it would be best to have the cargo stacked properly so that it wouldn’t be damaged during flight.

Vinyl had been helping with her magic, but she quickly exhausted herself by showing off. Now she was resting on the ledge formed by the aft catwalks and sipping from a cup of water while her wife finished the job alone.

Octavia couldn’t bring herself to be annoyed with Vinyl. At least she managed to unload most of the sled, she thought. Besides, the unicorn had been rather adorable with her nose scrunched up in concentration.

The final crate of tea slid into place next to the others, and Octavia looked around for a harness to secure them. There were thirteen boxes in all, each weighing nearly as much as Octavia herself. It was enough to net them all a pretty penny if they completed the next leg of the run without incident.

Oh dear, Octavia thought as she noticed a pair of mares watching her work from the other side of the dock. Speaking of incidents, I believe I see a pair of them coming this way. “Vinyl, darling? Be a dear and put the ship on lockdown.”

Vinyl sat up and looked around, obviously half asleep. She adjusted her goggled and followed Octavia’s line of sight to the pair of beautiful mares that were now striding toward them. “Now, Vinyl!” Octavia insisted.

It only took a few seconds for Vinyl to rush up the catwalks and onto the bridge. In that short amount of time, the twins had already crossed half of the dock and were about to board the ship. Octavia grabbed her rifle and, not bothering to extend the barrel, fired at the pink twin. Aloe veered away the moment she pulled the trigger, causing the bullet to graze her side.

Before Octavia could fire again, the ship began to rumble as the cargo ramp lifted into the air. The twins shouted something to each other, and one of them made a throwing motion while she ran. What are they doing? Octavia wondered. The ramp rose slowly, and obscured both of them from view.

For a moment, Octavia allowed herself to relax. There was no possible way that either of them would board the ship now.

A pair of blue hooves grabbed hold of the ramp’s edge. Lotus hauled herself into the quickly closing opening and shimmied between the ramp and the roof, but couldn’t quite make it in time. She put her hooves on either side of the opening and pushed, lithe muscles straining beneath her coat as the thick metal plates closed around her midsection.

That was quite foalish, Octavia thought, bracing herself for the inevitable spray of blood and gore as the unfortunate mare was crushed to death. There was obviously not enough room.

The ramp’s climb upward slowed as Lotus struggled against it. Machinery whined in the walls as hydraulic joints struggled to shut the ship’s heavy door. Octavia watched in horror as the gap between the door and the roof widened slightly. Impossible, she thought. Those hydraulic motors operate with nearly two tons of pressure! Lotus cried out under the immense strain, but her hooves didn’t give an inch as she forced her way into the ship’s interior. After a moment of stunned observation, Octavia worked the lever of her rifle and fired again.

Author's Note:

Oh, a Dr. Who reference! Imagine that. Dollhouse, too. Grab you’re umbrella, because it’s raining allusions all up in here.

Who do you guys think would win in a fight between Thunderlane and Octavia? The show never addressed that question, as far as I can remember. I always wanted to see if Zoey’s cunning tactics (but ridiculously impractical taste in weaponry) could hold up against Jayne’s brute force.

I’ve got a question for anyone that read some of my other stories. I’m thinking of doing a sequel to Chrysalis Catches Cold. It would be a much darker horror story following Blueblood, Duster, and Blueblood’s bodyguard as they make the trip to his home country and discover something terrible waiting for them. Does that sound interesting, or would it just be too drastic of a change? The first one was a comedy, but I intend to make the sequel a lot more twisted and hopefully creepy. That, or I could goof it up and it would turn out pathetic. I give it 50/50.