The Lair
Wise Beyond Her Years
Preread, Edited, and Reviewed By
Batty Gloom, Illustrious Q, Obselescence, El Oso
Fangwarden, Kohta Izumi, Applejack-fan, Kirk Heller
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Chapter 5
The Lair
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Tap... Tap... Tap... Tap...
Grandma Kalahari glanced up from her book, looking to her window where she had just heard the rhythmic tapping. She was sure she had even seen something, but her old eyes made it hard to be sure. After staring at the window for a while, and, not seeing any movement, she went back to rocking in her squeaky old chair as she turned the page of her book.
Yet the tapping came again, this time with more persistence. She looked up at the window once more, and this time was sure she saw something zip away. With an annoyed huff, she set down her book, unwrapped herself from her blanket, stood from her seat, set the blanket on the chair, and then made her way to the window. Yet she saw nothing there, even when she pressed her face to the glass.
The tapping then came from another window, the kitchen window. Grandma Kalahari started wondering if she was just hearing something, but, the longer it persisted, the more she was sure it was real. She went to the kitchen, went to the window, and pulled it open before looking outside, at the street below.
And then the tapping came from the living room again.
Pulling the kitchen window shut, Grandma Kalahari raced as fast as her old bones would allow to the living room. She pulled open the window there, stuck her head outside, and looked at the street below for the pony that had to be throwing rocks or something. But still she saw no one, and as before the tapping had moved back to the kitchen.
“For Celestia’s Sake!” Grandma Kalahari shouted, racing to the kitchen to finally catch whoever was doing this. Yet, as she sprinted away as fast as her old legs would carry her, her mind skipped a step it had been performing up to that point. She forgot to close the living room window. And it was then, with a triumphant smile, Rainbow Dash flew in. She kept an eye on the kitchen just long enough to be sure Grandma Kalahari wasn’t going to see her and then she bolted for the apartment’s front door.
Rainbow wouldn’t deny, her whole plan for sneaking in relied on the fact that the doors between the museum and Grandma Kalahari’s apartment weren’t locked. If they were, she’d have to abort, sneak out, and try to poke around the museum the next day. But, luck was with her. It was easy enough to undo the deadbolt on the apartment’s front door, and the door at the bottom of the staircase had been left unlocked. She was in.
“Okay, where would they hide it?” Rainbow asked herself, removing a firefly lantern from her saddlebags and holding it aloft with a wing.
Rainbow sifted through the shelves of the storage room, which were crowded with artifacts unfit to be put on display in the museum’s front. Most were too junky or just a piece to an incomplete collection. Others were in simply too good of condition and were too valuable to be put on display without the museum getting more security. The Kalaharis’ even had a cloak of The Phantom, the same cloak that had been left in a dumpster when The Phantom supposedly announced her retirement.
Everything was at varying levels of cool in Rainbow’s eyes, from boring to outright awesome. But the evidence Rainbow was searching for came from the work desk that sat admist the back room’s shelves. A single, large, rolled up scroll that had been placed in a small drawer all of its own. Rainbow took the scroll and spread it out across the desk, the paper greeting her eyes with a map of Manehatten dated around the time of The Phantom. It was marked with meticulous detail. Red lines dotted buildings and rooftops, each noted with dates and names of some valuable item.
“Her escape routes,” Rainbow Dash said, her words a breathless whisper on her lips. “These are all of The Phantom’s escape routes!” She lifted her hoof, following a trail of red ink that had been marked with the word “Alicorn Amulet.” The line zigged, zagged, double-backed, but, like all the others lines, eventually ended with a red X.
“Is that where she got away?” Rainbow asked, leaning in to look at the map more closely.
“Hello? Is somepony down here?”
Every muscle in Rainbow’s body tensed, and her head snapped to one side as she heard a set of hooves come down the steps. How had she been discovered? She hadn’t made a sound. She hadn’t been seen. She hadn’t left a single trace. She had slipped in the open window, flew across the room, opened Grandma Kalahari’s front door, went down the steps, and... wait.
Did she forget to close the front door after going through it?
“Hello? If somepony is there, you should come out now!”
Rainbow just barely had time to dive for a dark corner of the storage room before Grandma Kalahari reached the bottom of the steps. She looked around briefly for somepony, and yet soon her eyes were drawn to the source of a warm glow in the room.
Rainbow’s firefly lantern.
Bullets of sweat poured down Rainbow’s head as she watched the zebra approach the lantern. She hadn’t thought to grab the lantern, the second mistake of her plan that was bringing Grandma Kalahari closer and closer. The old equine regarded the lantern with a lot of caution, as if trying to decide whether or not it was a sign of danger or a sign she had forgotten it was in the store room. Seconds passed painfully, Rainbow watching from her dark hiding place as the old equine nudged the lantern with a hoof.
Grandma Kalahari then reached over beside the desk, picking up a large baseball bat in her teeth.
The hunt had begun.
With ginger steps, the zebra began to circle the room, looking across the shelves as she kept the bat held tightly. She moved away from Rainbow Dash at first, heading towards the far corner of the room.
It was a moment of temptation. Rainbow’s eyes flicked back and forth between the elder zebra and the staircase that would lead to her escape. She could make it. It would be just a jump, a few flaps of her wings, and she’d be out without even being seen. Even if she was seen, she could outrun an old mare, right?
She lifted a hoof to begin her daring escape, but, even in that moment, Grandma Kalahari seemed to freeze, as if she had heard something. Rainbow retreated back, remembering all too well what happened earlier that day.
The young Kalahari had thrown her like a bag of hay that afternoon for just saying boo. If Grandma Kalahari was the master who taught her granddaughter, what did that say about the old mare’s skills? They were from a family of thieves, after all. A lineage that started with the famed Phantom of Manehatten.
For all Rainbow knew, the old equine already knew exactly where she was and was simply waiting for Rainbow to make a move.
Second after second passed, rolling into minutes as Grandma Kalahari continued to search the backroom. She was systematic and efficient, checking the shelves for missing artifacts as well as checking dark corners around the room for anypony that was hiding. And the longer she searched, the more apparent it became to Rainbow Dash that she was going to be discovered.
Rainbow’s heart began to race and her eyes darted around the room. She looked for any means of escape, any opportunity to slip away. The stairs still held the greatest promise, but now the zebra could see the stairs and would recognize Rainbow’s mane and tail. They’d then probably hunt her down, and she’d have to be on the run for the rest of her life from The Phantom’s family if not Twilight’s conspiracy organization as well.
The front door maybe? No, it would be locked. There were no windows opened on the ground floor either. The place was locked up tight. The only way out were the stairs. She had to go for it. Just leap out and fly away. Dye her mane and start a new life in a new kingdom. But whatever she did, she had to start flying right! Now!
CRASH
Rainbow had called to every muscle in her body to make her escape as quickly as she could. She called to her legs to make her jump. She called to her wings to make her fly. But, doing all at once had doomed her. Her wings caught on some of the artifacts near her hiding place, sending them tumbling to the floor. Those in glass cases smashed open, and Rainbow fumbled in the air from the counterforce that had been applied against her wings.
“THIEF!”
Screaming like a banshee, Grandma Kalahari started swinging her head as she galloped at Rainbow Dash. Her glasses fell from her nose, but that didn’t stop her stampede. She swung the bat again and again, each time getting closer to smashing the ball park slugger against Rainbow’s skull.
A daring dive saved Rainbow’s head from the experience of being a home run ball, but the old equine was on the warpath. Up, down, and around the storeroom Rainbow was chased by the spry old zebra. Time and again she tried to reach the stairs, knowing the open window in Grandma Kalahari’s apartment was her ticket out. But each time she was cut off by a swing of the bat.
“HELP! POLICE! HELP! THIEF! BURGLAR! HELP!”
The chase spilled out into the museum front, Grandma Kalahari’s swings growing wilder. The display case near the register was smashed, sending sprinkling shards of glass against the ground. For each passing second, Rainbow feared the bat would finally connect with some part of her body, would bring her down, and leave her at the mercy of the two Kalahari’s as Daring Do often found herself at the mercy of her enemies.
Still, with thoughts of facing an enemy as nasty as one from Daring Do’s rogues gallery, Rainbow’s mind began to search for a way to make an escape Daring Do would be proud of. That meant doing whatever she could to get away so she could beat the bad guys to the punch, even if it meant some collateral damage.
Rainbow stopped dodging and braced herself.
Grandma Kalahari’s bat swung true, hitting Rainbow in the side and causing her to yelp as the bludgeoning blow smashed into her wing. She was on the ground fast, but her hooves reached up for the bat even faster. She grabbed and held on tight, the strain on the zebra’s teeth forcing Grandma Kalahari to release the bat.
With her attacker disarmed, Rainbow quickly clamored off the floor. Her wing ached from the blow. It would be fine in time, but, for the moment, it hurt too much to fly. So Rainbow relied on her hooves, running and jumping onto one of the display cases near the front of the museum. She held the bat in her teeth, jaw tightening as she looked at the museum’s front display window. The thin pane of glass was all that separated her from sweet escape.
And so, gathering all the strength she could muster, Rainbow swung the bat.
~~~
“Surround the building! Pegasi patrol the perimeter. Fuzz, Code Blue, get some officers ready to sweep the building, bottom to top. We aren’t going to let her get away.”
The clatter of glass should have been the announcement of her escape, but it was only the start of something worse. A pair of Manehatten police officers had been passing by when she smashed the front window. Rainbow had hoped that they might understand, might listen to her when she told them of The Phantom’s living legacy... that was, until, she saw they were zebra as well.
And so she had to keep running. Through the streets of Manehatten she wound as the number of police chasing her grew with each passing minute. If she could fly, she could outpace even the fastest of their pegasi without breaking a sweat. But her wing was still sore from taking the hit from Grandma Kalahari.
That old mare could really swing a bat.
“Attention! We have the building surrounded! There is no escape!”
Rainbow crept up to the broken window of the abandoned building, sneaking a peek outside to the herd of police ponies standing in the street. Lights were trained on the building, pegasi were circling the roof, and she could hear the stomp of hooves.
Running into the abandoned building seemed like such a good idea a few minutes ago.
“You have one minute to surrender yourself peacefully! If you do not comply, we will come in after you!”
Rainbow slipped back from the window, trying to calm her panicked breathing as she rubbed her hooves in her mane violently. “Okay, got to think. What would... what would the girls do in this situation. Fluttershy, she’d turn herself in. I’m not doing that. Twilight and Rarity, they’d use magic. I can’t do that. Applejack, she’d go down fighting. I could do that, but that’s not going to really help anything. Oh... come on! Think! Think! Think! Think!”
“Grahahah!” Rainbow shouted. “I got nothing!” Her frustration shifted to anger, and she reached into her saddlebags and took out the map. “This is all your fault, you stupid thing! You didn’t even show me where the lair was! You just showed me The Phantom’s stupid... escape... routes.”
A thought clicked in Rainbow’s mind. She spread out the map on the dirty, dusty floor of the building and aligned it with what she thought was north. Then, she quickly peaked out the window. The police still hadn’t come in, but that wasn’t what she was checking. She was looking down to the nearby street corner, eyes straining to make out the words on the sign.
“23rd and... Hoof Stride Avenue,” Rainbow said to herself before quickly going back to the map. Her hoof ran across the page, searching first for one street and then the other. Finally, she placed herself on the old map, and a smile spread onto her face. A red line came from the street, into the very building she was in, and then crossed over the rooftops. She was on one of The Phantom’s escape routes.
And The Phantom was never caught.
“Okay, probably not the best idea following a really old map, but I am in a really old part of town.” Rainbow traced the line with her hoof, doing her best to memorize the route. She then reached the end, tapping on the big red X. “Phantom, I hope you were as good as they say, because you're my only ticket out of this mess.”
“Your one minute has expired! We are coming in! If you resist, the officers are instructed to use necessary force!”
The sound of a splintering door, followed by the stomping of hooves, reached Rainbow’s ears. She ran quickly to a hallway of the old building and looked down the staircase to see the dozen police officers charging up the staircase. For Rainbow Dash, the sight was the equivalent to the pop of a starting gun. The race had started. First place was escape, anything else would result in the lovely consolation prize of spending time in jail.
Turning and galloping back into the room, Rainbow scooped up the map and stuffed it back in her saddlebags. She then pushed open the window, an evening wind blowing through her mane as she looked over to the nearby rooftop. She traced the escape route with her eyes. There were places where some things had changed, but the older corner of Manehatten seemed largely the same as it had been back when The Phantom was galloping across the rooftops.
“Freeze! You're under arrest!”
The police came in the door of the room just as Rainbow leapt from the window to the nearby rooftop, gliding to a graceful landing. She could at least manage that much with her bat-bludgeoned wing, and it gave her the head start she needed. She could hear shouts behind her. The police were calling to their pegasi to follow her as others on the street began trying to cut her off. But she just kept running, thinking of the map.
“It’s just like a flight camp obstacle course,” she told herself as she leapt over some pipes. She saw shadows race past her, and, looking skyward, she saw the police pegasi closing in. “And nopony beats me at a flight camp obstacle course, even when I’m grounded.”
“This is the Manehatten Police Department Sky Brigade. Lay down on the ground and put your hooves and wings where we can see them. This will be your only warning!”
“Eat old hay!” Rainbow shouted back at the pegasi before skidding around a corner and racing westward. She glanced back, seeing a pair of the so named Sky Brigade swooping in on her. They were so slow. If she could fly, she’d left them all in the dust, but The Phantom didn’t need wings to escape the police and she didn’t either. She could escape too, just like The Phantom did, just like Daring Do would. All she had to do was follow the escape route and, as she looked forward and remembered the map, a smile spread onto Rainbow’s face.
The edge of the rooftop drew near. The building ahead was three stories taller, too great of height difference for Rainbow to jump up. The pegasi police called up from behind her. “Surrender, you’ve got nowhere to go!”
“I’m glad you think that,” Rainbow called back to them. “Because that will make what I'm about to do even cooler.” Rainbow jumped, body arching towards the blunt wall of the coming building as if she intended to fly straight through it, like a ghost. But even Rainbow Dash wasn’t that brash. No, mid jump she shifted her body, bringing herself so she landed on all four hooves against the building. The muscles in her legs cushioned her impact, and then she just let herself fall. She dropped, extending her wings just enough so she glided down the narrow alley between the two buildings as the police pegasi above crashed headlong into the wall.
“Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Better luck next time!” Rainbow called as she landed on the alleyway and continued her escape, dodging dumpsters and fire escapes until The Phantom’s escape route led her once more to the rooftops.
~~~
The chase had been going on for fifteen minutes and it had been some of the most awesome minutes in Rainbow’s life. Every time the police were getting closer, the escape route gave her an opportunity to dodge them and keep running. She ducked under pipes that police pegasi crashed into. She jumped and jived between rooftop vents to avoid unicorn magic blasts. And the earth ponies, they were still just trying to get ahead of her on the ground.
Now, only a couple of police unicorns remained. They were unleashing blast after blast of magic at her, spells she had seen would slap magical cuffs on her hooves and wings. One good hit, and her race was over. And, earlier, Rainbow wouldn’t have worried about it. The escape route had let her dodge and escape the unicorn officers before. The escape route had kept her safe. There was just one looming problem.
She was reaching the end of the escape route.
Rainbow had followed every twist and turn, finding the flow of the route natural, like swimming down a river. But it was all coming to an end. A few rooftops ahead was where the big red X was on the map. That was where the police had lost track of The Phantom. That was where she had made her big escape, and that was where Rainbow Dash didn’t have a clue what to do.
Still, there was no time to stop and think. No time to consult the map. She just had to keep running, juking, dodging, and jumping. Two rooftops separated her and the end of the route, then one. Then she was on the final rooftop, a single long straight away that lead up to the building’s edge. There was no way to simply jump the gap to the next building. A huge road, one of the widest in Manehatten, separated her from the next building.
The magical blasts came from behind her. She felt one graze her mane and she slipped to the left just in time to dodge another. She started running faster, even as the end of the building drew closer and closer. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to jump to. She could only run faster down the long, straight part of the route. She had to race towards the sheer drop, like when she and the other recruits were doing cliff dive takeoffs at the Wonderbolt Academy.
The academy...
Rainbow’s eyes widened with a realization before the smile returned to her face. She hunkered down and sprinted, building up all the speed she could. Her legs pounded the ground. Well-tuned muscles flexed, and her heart and lungs worked feverishly to keep up the pace.
“Stop! It’s a dead end! You can’t make that jump.”
Rainbow jumped all the same. She leapt off the edge of the building, keeping her back legs and wings tucked before arching her body and diving towards the ground. She felt the rush of the air and saw the ground looming. It was just a few seconds of freefall, not like the minutes it would take to reach the ground when you did a cliff dive at the Wonderbolt Academy.
But all she needed was a few seconds.
Moments before she would have gotten a very abrupt introduction to the ground, Rainbow spread her wings. The strain hurt. If she had tried to flap them at the same time, she’d probably have crashed, but that wasn’t the point of a cliff dive. A cliff dive was all about gliding, about maintaining as much momentum as you could from a straight dive to glide as far as possible. It was a lesson taught at the academy to make sure every recruit was flying as efficiently as possible. After all, sometimes the Wonderbolts had to fly halfway across the globe with little chance for rest.
And so Rainbow spread her wings out straight and pulled up, her hooves scraping the ground as she shot across the street like an arrow. She only had to bank a little to line up with an alley on the far side of the avenue, and, before the unicorn police ponies had even reached the edge of the building, she skidded to a stop in the alley.
After taking a few moments to catch her breath and shake out her nerves, Rainbow crept back to the edge of the alley. She poked her head out, just enough to see the two unicorn guards looking down at the street, like they were expecting to see a rainbow colored smear on the pavement.
“Sorry, boys, but looks like I win,” Rainbow said, slipping back into the alley with a confident smile. She basked in the glory of her escape for a few moments, imagining the tales that would be told of how she, a grounded pegasus, outwitted Manehatten’s finest. Maybe she’d become a legend of the city in her own right? What would her nickname be? Would she have—
“Spread out and find her! She can’t have gone far!”
Rainbow looked back, noticing several more police ponies racing up onto the scene. “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t stop running just yet,” she told herself, but then the question became where did she run too? Her hotel was in the direction of the police, and, even if she got back there, she had been seen. How long would it be before she was arrested because of her rainbow mane?
“Okay,” Rainbow said, starting to walk down the alley to keep herself away from the police. “The only way to prove that what I did was all right is to prove that Kalahari and her grandmother are related to The Phantom and know where her lair is. The police would have to let me go if I helped them solve one of their biggest mysteries.” Rainbow groaned. “But I still don’t know where the lair is!”
She rounded a corner, found a few garbage cans that at least had decently clean lids, and spread out the map on top of them. “Okay, let’s think. Maybe... maybe The Phantom was able to do a cliff dive like I did. I mean, zebras can’t really fly, buf if she could, then she would have made the jump the same place I did.” Rainbow put her hoof on the red X that marked the end of the escape route she had just followed. “She would have crossed the street, come into this alley, and then she’d...”
Rainbow paused, arching her eyebrow as she realized her hoof was now resting on top of another one of The Phantom’s escape routes. “Wait a minute. Could she have?” Rainbow began to trace the new escape route with her hoof, following it to the big red X at the end. Like the other, this X looked to be on the edge of a large avenue, something no normal pony or zebra could jump. And across the street from that X on the map was another one of The Phantom’s escape routes.
“She connected her escape routes,” Rainbow muttered to herself, continuing to drag her hoof along the lines as a smile spread on her lips. “She connected her escape routes! That’s... that’s awesome! If she couldn’t lose the police on one route, she could just start running down another one! And if I’m right, then she would have done her last cliff dive... right about... here!” Rainbow tapped her hoof on the final X, the one that was removed from all the others and, across a large street from that X, was a single large building in the very center of Manehatten.
A building the map labeled as “Grand Central Station”.
~~~
The city around Grand Central Station had changed in the centuries since The Phantom had stalked the streets, but the station itself stood resolute. A hub for Equestria’s train network, Manehatten’s Grand Central Station was considered a national landmark in more ways than one. It was a place of travel, a place of history, and a place for random ponies to form flash mobs on a near weekly basis.
But as Rainbow stood on top of a newer high rise which neighbored the aged station, she saw it under a different light. She saw it as a place with a secret, a place that kept something hidden nopony else knew of. The lair of The Phantom had to be somewhere in the station, Rainbow just knew it. It was only a matter of figuring out where.
She had made her own way to the final cliff dive marked on the map, dodging the police who were spreading their search further and further across the city for her. Perhaps they wouldn’t have taken a normal theft so seriously, but Rainbow had made fools out of them and now it was a matter of pride for the officers.
Still, at the moment, there were no police in sight. No officers on the ground or pegasi patrols in the sky. Rainbow had a clear sky and so, for one final time that evening, she leapt from the side of a building, tucked her wings, and dove.
She had to do a little more guess work with this cliff dive. The neighboring building was too new to have been around when The Phantom was alive. So she had to guess how far The Phantom would have fallen and how much speed she would have had when she banked up. In truth, part of the mystery Rainbow hadn’t figured out was how a zebra could fly at all. Instinct, however, told her that The Phantom had some way of cliff diving, of gliding, maybe even of truly flying.
It was a grand kind of escape nopony would expect from a zebra.
When things felt right, Rainbow spread her wings. Her injured wing was now rested from bludgeoning it took from Grandma Kalahari’s bat, and was able to hold strong. She banked up and zipped across the street. She flew towards Grand Central Station, moving like a blue blur against the night sky. She approached the station from the front, the great glass doors and windows shining with the lights that were still on inside. All of the building seemed to be designed to draw ponies into its main entrance.
But Rainbow knew The Phantom just wouldn’t use the front door. Somepony would have figured out her lair was in the station if, for all of her heists, she just walked into the station with valuable artifacts sticking out of her saddlebags.
No, there was something else there, but, as Rainbow Dash glided to the station, she couldn’t figure out what. The station just had its big front entrance and its roof. There weren’t any other doors she could see, nothing that looked like an entrance to a lair. Admittedly, she didn’t know what the secret entrance would like, but she had been sure she’d be able to spot it.
Banking, Rainbow circled the station once, checking around the perimeter. There was a lot of architecture to the station. Lots of statues, a big clock, some columns, but nothing that stood out. In frustration, Rainbow landed, her hooves clattering against the metal roof. She pulled out the Kalaharis’ map, and double checked everything she could think of. She had come at the station from the right side. Maybe she had gotten the dive wrong?
Closing the map, Rainbow lined herself up on the roof with the building she had cliff dove from. She put up her hooves and framed the highrise, trying to picture it lower. “If it was that tall, The Phantom would have dove, then banked, and eventually landed... right...” Rainbow took a few steps to the right, one step back, and then another tiny step to the right, putting herself in the center of one of the large metal plates that made up the roof. “Yeah, right here!” She looked around, expecting something to suddenly spring out to her eyes. A design in the stonework, a secret lever, anything.
But there was nothing.
She was standing right where she thought the Phantom would have landed on the roof. If there was a Daring Do book, the next clue would be right in front of her nose. There’d be an insignia or a puzzle or... something. But there was nothing, simply nothing. Just the old train station with its old metal roof.
Fuming, Rainbow Dash reared back, waving her forehooves in the air before bringing them down in a stomp. “This is such a Ji— Whoa!”
With a snap of metal and a crash, the metal plate Rainbow Dash had been standing on fell down, collapsing and taking Rainbow Dash with it. The landing was hard, Rainbow bouncing off the metal plate and crashing to a wooden floor, the gust of wind from her body and wings throwing a cloud of dust into the air. Rainbow Dash coughed and groaned, feeling the soreness of her rough landing in her chest as she began climbing to her hooves.
“Ow,” she complained before coughing again. The air was stale and smelt like an old bird cage that needed to be changed. A few birds even flew past her, fleeing through the hole she had created in a flurry of feathers. Her eyes burned from the smell and the dust, but she beat her wings to clear the air. Another cough, a sneeze, and Rainbow recovered enough from her rough entrance to look back over her shoulder.
Around the hole she had made, Rainbow saw a pair of metal hinges hanging from the top while, at the bottom, there was a pair of bent latches. Looking closer, Rainbow could see the metal rods the latches were attached to went through the roof and connected with a pair of bolts. Bolts that, on the exterior, stood alone in the sea of big rivets that had been used to secure the rest of the roof’s metal plating.
She hadn’t fallen through some random part of the roof. She had fallen through a door, a hidden door... a secret entrance.
Breath catching in her lungs, Rainbow almost didn’t want to look back. With the way her luck had been today, she had just found some maintenance hatch. But she couldn’t stop herself. Her head and body turned, slowly moving away from the door to look at the rest of the room.
The crawl space formed by rafters of the station was a place forgotten in time. Rainbow saw no way to enter the small space from the train station below. There were no trap doors, no ladders, it was a place that had been sealed off from the rest of the world once the station had been completed.
But what was there made Rainbow’s jaw drop.
She saw a bed, a table, and some chairs. There was a wooden crate with unopened cans of food, on top of which rested a can opener. It was not a place where a pony could live, but it was a place where a pony, or zebra, could hide out for a few days until the heat died down. It was the lair! She had found the lair!
She was standing in The Phantom’s Lair!
And next to the bed and the table, standing adjacent to some of the roof’s supporting timbers, were shelves. Shelves filled to the brim with things that seemed to share no commonality. But there was a single thread that related all the times. They were items Rainbow Dash had seen pictures of only just that morning. They were things both precious and magical in nature.
They were the things stolen by The Phantom.
Rainbow approached the shelves, jaw still hanging open as her eyes filled with wonder. “The Sun’s Eye,” she muttered, picking up the red, near spherical ruby that was the size of her hoof. It felt warm to her touch, and the interior seemed to flow with an energy all its own.
“The Scrolls of Harmony,” she said, placing the Sun’s Eye back on its small pillow before picking up the scrolls. Six scrolls, each emblazoned with a crest. She saw a red one, like her own Element of Harmony, and was tempted to unroll it right there, but then her eyes fixated on something else, something kept in a glass jar. There was a label painted across the rim of the metal lid, words Rainbow Dash didn’t dare believe as she read.
“Discord’s missing tooth,” she whispered, seeing the long fang hanging from a piece of string, as if somepony had purposefully fashioned it into some necklace. “I didn’t even know The Phantom stole something like this!” Rainbow whispered. Each relic was there... or, almost each. Rainbow found one blank space on the shelves, a space that had a shadow in its dust that looked like a square something with big wings.
She wanted to just touch every single thing on the shelf, to hold each like Daring Do had once held the Sapphire Statue, but, as Rainbow moved to the far end of the shelf, she began to notice something on the adjacent timber. Something was hanging from it, and, after stepping closer, Rainbow’s jaw fell open once more.
“The cloak of The Phantom,” she whispered, trying to contain her enthusiasm. It was hung unceremoniously on a single nail, and the threading that had once secured the hood was falling out from the strain of time, but Rainbow didn’t have any doubt. This was the cloak of the Phantom, and without even pausing a second, she reached out to take it.
Slipping it on, Rainbow felt the weight of the cloak. It was heavy, heavier than it looked, but she also heard the clinking of metal. There were metal rods throughout the cloak and a few straps, each just big enough for a hoof. Feeling herself on the verge of discovering something awesome, Rainbow tied the straps around her hooves and then raised her legs.
And as she did, wings made of metal and fabric extended from beneath the cloak. “That’s how she did it! That’s how she pulled off those cliff dives,” Rainbow said, moving her forelegs around a little. “She made herself wings!”
The excitement was at the boiling point. Rainbow couldn’t contain it anymore. She shouted, she hooped, she hollered, she bucked, she ran, she flew, she did loops, she zipped around the hidden lair like a bolt of unleashed lightning.
“I found it! I found it!” She shouted, shooting out the hidden entrance. She flew circles above the station. She did corkscrews, loops, dives, and everything short of a Sonic Rainboom as she celebrated. “I found it! I found it! I Found It! I Found It! I FOUND IT!”
She soared up high, cloak still fluttering around her body as she raised her hooves to the sky.
“I FOUND THE LAIR OF THE PHANTOM!”
“That’s the mare from earlier! Take her down!”
Rainbow’s joy ended in a flash. She turned quickly, tried to escape, but it was already too late. She felt the force of three Manehatten Police Pegasi crashing into her. Soon, she was face down in the lawn of Grand Central Station, being read her rights as other police officers, including a few zebras, closed in around her.
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granted Rainbow has a way with ponies, the cops were rather.... awfully eager to stop her, wonder why?
Damn... That was AWESOME!
Leave it to Dash to geek out over that all, though.
Can't wait for the next bit!
~Skeeter The Lurker
Well, that was stupid of her....
Zebra? Or zebras?
Moments later Rainbow Dash found herself outside a hospital short fifty-two bits.
Ouch, so close....
Best chapter so far!
Well crud. Its going to take a heck of a royal favour to get her out of this.
*wing ... then again, this is Rainbow Dash we're talking about here, she might have injured her win, but as long as her awesome isn't damaged, she's good to go.
Poor Rainbow ... I really look forward to her trying to explain this to the Princesses ... especially given the inevitability of at least one of those priceless artifacts vanishing
becausedespite the police custody.Awwww. Well, that's just mean. Rainbow finally finds the secret treasure of one of the greatest thieves ever known to ponykind, and then she gets Zerg Rushed by the cops?
I hope you feel bad about this.
666 likes o.O
Btw this is a awesome chapter I read, keep it up!
...I mean I can understand your excitement, but oh it makes my brain hurt to think you were so close and yet...so far! You had it! Victory was in your hooves!
Also...this is why you make sure you don't have any distinct markings when doing something like RD...oh RD...you're making me cry! You did so well! ...I wonder if she at least gets a phone call.
Oh, and was I the only one to think "The Phantom was Batman!" when the Phantom's cape was described? ...anyone? ...no?
hmmm...you'd think a griffin or two would be part of the police
Swan Dive off a building - the only way to end a police chase. Here's hoping the conspiracy takes prisoners.
Oh boy Rainbow, now you've gone and done it.
Ug. You just know the cops are going to take credit for the find of the lair too. Well, we'll see what happens next!
Dear Princess Celestia,
Send bail money. And a lawyer.
The Element of Loyalty
Rainbow Dash, AKA Prisoner #476
Woo! A great chapter! I knew as soon as she started getting excited about her discovery that she'd blow it instantly.
Looking forward to the next! Keep 'em coming!
IMHO I do not think that Grandma Kalahari is part of the conspiracy and when she finds out about the stash she will be in a state of nerdvana level bliss.
her daughter? the one I think was supposed to keep a lid on the old lady? she will flip a table .. maby many of them
3329406
And regardless of whether or not she gets that favor Celestia's gonna demand an explanation from her and Twilight so as the Russians say, bag is out of cat.
Dash, you are the dumbest pony in the world.
3329955 They're going to send her to Pinkie's basement.
I liked it, but Rainbow's capture just felt really contrived to me. I know what you're thinking, "But she just found The Phantom's lair!" Yes, she did. But it all could have sufficed, for example, with her shouts and cries of celebration alerting a nearby patrol (it is a 'Grand Central Station', it would make sense that they would search in that area). Rainbow would hear them say something along the lines of, "I think it came from over there!". Rainbow would've panicked, flying out of there and closing the escape hatch, when the airborne Sky Brigade was alerted to the sound and dogpiled her mid-leap off the building. Or something like that.
The end result is exactly the same (unless you want the hatch to remain open, but that's easily circumvented), but it is also a far more believable outcome than what is currently in place.
It isn't a huge black mark, and it won't stop me from enjoying the rest of the story. But personally I think it could have used some more work.
3330725
No, she is not dumb.
She is not at her best.
Awwww Rainbow, I don't know whether to feel bad or do a facepalm.
... how about both?
Im gonna fav this, not just because the fact that it could be zebras, but to me, it sounds like Twily has discovered the secret of the shows writers.
Was anyone else thinking of Mirrors Edge during that escape scene?
Let's hope Rainbow's right about being able to use the lair as a bargaining chip. And that the all-too-likely scenario that it was cleared out before she can show them doesn't happen.
Rainbow, you are brave. You are strong. You are loyal. But you seem to have the occasional attack of dumb every now and again...
3330725
[youtube=waf46eBajkw]
Not a bad plan for breaking and entering, and very Dash.
Beautiful chapter, that was fun from beginning to end.
Never send in Rainbow Dash to do something "secret-like". It's really just asking for something to go hideously wrong.
Well, whatever advantage Twilight hoped to gain from secrecy is gone now. Rainbow will probably sing like a canary (mostly because she's proud of what she's done). I'm sure that Twilight will bail her out and explain that, under no circumstances, had she authorised her to break and enter.
I think you really caught Rainbow's essential nature very well in this chapter. I also liked how you wrote the action sequences. They weren't too complex and maintained a nice flow without getting bogged down in description.
I really, really want to know what's on those Scrolls of Harmony. I... suppose that they'll have to give Discord his tooth back too.
3330901 She's got the 'Evil Zebra Conspiracy' after her, and she doesn't think maybe flying into the air and shouting at the top of her lungs is maybe a bad idea?
Nope, Dash be dumb.
Worst spy ever.
I swear to god if you now have the lair be emptied before Dash can show it, I will punch this kitten
Oh Rainbow Dash, why you so Rainbow Dash?
3332368 It might not matter if it is. An Element of Harmony getting arrested is sure to draw Celestia's attention, and Dash was wearing the Cloak of the Phantom when she got caught. Even if the lair is emptied, there isn't much that can be done to cover up the Cloak.
3332626
Yes, because lets forget the priceless artefacts that have been missing for I-forgot-how-many years
pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw235_Seriouslynow.jpg
3332282
Exactly the point, but I'll say it again, not at her best.
This chapter almost gave me a heart attack.
Dashie, noooo!
cries
so much
rainbow why
;n;
3332714 I was referring to the conspiracy itself being covered up again. As long as the artifacts exist, they can be found again, and if the conspiracy is exposed there is a good chance Celestia can get them back when she confronts them.
And there was no need to be rude about it.
Oh, wow. Nice chase scene! I loved that, and Discord's missing tooth! I wonder how he'd feel about having that back. Also, really curious about those Scrolls of Harmony. And then...
3330502 Officer, I do not want to press charges, no wait, I want her to do community service as a guest speaker at my museum
So, we get some action. Nice change of pace. Perfect choice of pony for the action, too.
My first thought when I read the last part was. "Oh sh
."
Then I laughed towards the end.
3331293 That may happen, assuming though that because she's wearing the cape that they just don't accuse her as the Phantom and just book her for good.
Me thinks she should be called Rainbow Rash sometimes with the decisions she makes. But she wouldn't be who she is if she didn't sometimes.
Awesome chapter btw, very well though out. I wonder how would react the others about this discovery (including Discord
)
3334399
Oh yeah, forgot about the cape! Glad she grabbed that!