Chapter 16
“No, you idiot! Don’t!”
Silver Spoon’s words fell on deaf ears. The instant Scootaloo had cried out Apple Bloom was gone out the door to help her friend and the plan had gone straight to pot. They had been at it for a minute at best and somehow these two had already messed things up.
You one-eyed clown. Don’t screw up when you’re beating me or anything.
She muttered under her breath and hoped against hope the shabby pegasus had simply slipped on a banana peel or something. She could hear Scootaloo mumbling incoherently out in the alley and prayed she could still count on the two to get her out of this town. Perhaps, if she were really lucky, the airponies would figure the brat was losing her nerve over the raid and pay no attention to her.
BOOOOOOOOM!!!
Silver Spoon’s ears perked up at the sound. It was the blast of a bomb, no doubt, but it sounded off; she could have sworn it came from high in the air. Throwing caution to the wind, she ran out from beneath her cover and looked in the direction of the explosion just in time to spot the smoldering remains of what was left of an airpony plummeting straight to the ground. In the other direction of the trash-strewn alley were her two little ‘helpers’; Scootaloo was balled up on the ground like a newborn and Apple Bloom was right beside her, still aiming her pistol in the direction of her victim.
“What is wrong with you?!” spat Silver Spoon, “Do you realize what you’ve done?!”
Apple Bloom didn’t seem to care. She swiftly holstered her weapon and frantically shook her friend who wasn’t moving. “C’mon, wake up!” she said as panic took hold in her voice, “Spoon! Help me get her to that train!”
“Are you insane?! Every airpony in town would’ve seen that blast! They’re probably headed this way already!”
“Ah’m getting her to that train!” said Apple Bloom with a grunt as she muscled under Scootaloo to drape the limp pony across her back. “C’mon, hurry!”
Silver Spoon saw red and fought the desire to plant a knife in both of their skulls. “You’re useless! Both of you!!!” she yelled at the pair. Without another thought she turned and ran, knowing she’d never get near that train now. Getting caught without a plan wasn’t her style, but she had no choice in the matter. Tweedledee and Tweedledum had forced her to act on the fly and improvise.
Kill them later. Pull your head out of your rear and focus, Spoon.
She turned the corner and reached the end of the alley and after a quick check skyward to see if any airponies were in view she darted out into the street. She quickly dove under a parked wagon and tried to collect her thoughts. There would be sentries watching the edges of town, so simply running was out of the question. There had to be a way out of town, there was always a way out that went overlooked. This town was too small to have a sewer system large enough to crawl through; there would be no underground tunnels, nothing of the sort. Dressing up was out of the question; they’d check each and every pony that tried to leave.
“How did it come to this?” she whispered in a brief moment of self-loathing. “How’d I drop the ball so badly? I’m better than this.”
The silhouettes of two airborne pegasi slithered across the ground in the direction of the blast; no doubt the majority of them were there already and of course she would be blamed for doing their buddy. It wouldn’t be long before they took to the ground and fanned out in a search pattern from the blast site and they’d find her in minutes if she stayed put. She was out of options; her only choice was a mad dash for—
“Over here!!!” screamed a young voice from up the street, “I see here! She’s over here!”
Silver Spoon swore under her breath and threw herself out of her hiding spot into a dead run down the street. There was no time or reason to think anymore; she was on pure adrenaline and instinct now. It all came down to if she could run better than they flew. “Come on, try and catch me!” she taunted quietly, “You’ll never take me alive in a million years!”
She turned down another alley and threw herself at the window of a shop, shielding her face from the glass as it shattered around her, and rolled to her hooves. She leaped over the counter and out the back door, and found herself in another alley. With no time to consider she picked a direction and ran to the end, kicking her way through the back door of somepony’s apartment. Silver Spoon answered the meek gasps of the terrified owners with a hollow apology and threw their front door open. Looking left and right she ran for the open window at the end of the hall. Silver Spoon climbed out the window, taking care to shut it behind her to try and hide her trail, and scaled the downspout of the neighboring building to reach the second floor. Thankfully the window was unlocked; she dove in and slammed it behind her—
—and all was quiet; the eye of the hurricane. Silver Spoon took a moment to collapse, red faced and sweating, and caught her breath knowing she might not get another chance. Her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room and she took in her surroundings. The décor and shape of the building made it look as if it was once somepony’s home but had since been converted into a small business. The room had four small cubicles on either side of a narrow hallway and the door to one office, locked and labeled ‘Manager’, beside her. The entire place was bathed only in the low light that slipped through the drawn blinds; thankfully it seemed to be their day off. Silver Spoon walked slowly and cautiously as not to make a sound, not willing to assume there wasn’t somepony like a janitor in the building somewhere to hear her. These old buildings have terrible acoustics and creaks, and on a day off the sound of somepony fumbling around would definitely draw attention. She pressed her ear against the exit door and took a moment to listen for signs of life. Nothing. It was eerily quiet inside and out; by now the airponies would have split up and were searching alone, giving her a chance of survival. She could take one of them one-on-one with no problem, especially if she snuck up on them.
Slowly the gray mare opened the door which thankfully moved silently on well-oiled hinged and she crept out into the deserted hallway. To her left was another door with the white outline of a mare and stallion on a small sign, a bathroom, and to the right was a staircase that led to the building’s lobby. Silver Spoon took the stairs carefully and slowly risked a glance around the wall to survey the room. It was a rather fancy lobby for its size, compared to the non-descript office space she had found above. Two long planters were placed in the center of the room with comfortable leather seats around them, and an empty receptionist’s desk stood guard between the wall she peeked around and the front doors. Silver Spoon ran for the door but stopped herself just short of bursting out into the streets. “Bad idea,” she said quietly to herself. “Better see if there is a back door for—”
“Hold it right there!” said an uneasy voice behind her.
“Huh?!”
There was a backdoor, just to the left of the receptionist’s desk, and it was covered by one of the airponies that had been chasing her. He was a young pale yellow pegasus with a deep blue mane, all alone and out of bombs, and the way he stood and spoke just dripped of rookie. “Y-you’re under arrest!” he said with a nervous stutter.
Vintage rookie. The way he quivered and breathed were tell-tale signs that Silver Spoon instantly recognized. This was his very first time in a fight, and she couldn’t help but grin at his sheer stupid bravery. She threw her head back and let out a cruel, hearty laughter at the kid’s expense. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Just as she expected he took a nervous step back as she approached. “I said freeze!”
“Oh, give me a break.” She rested a hoof on his shoulder and savored the feeling of his muscles tensing with terror under her touch. She didn’t have the heart to kill him and instead shoved him aside. “Out of the way, gelding. I’m in a hurry.”
As she made for the door a hoof wrapped around her ankle to stop her and he punched her in the stomach hard enough to expel the air from her lungs. She spun around and swept her hind hoof across his face, knocking him to the ground a few feet away.
“Little punk!” she said angrily as she sucked air, “I don’t have time for this!” The kid slowly stood clutching a hoof to his jaw and, to Silver Spoon’s surprise, assumed an offensive stance and readied himself to fight. “Alright, fine. I don’t like killing youngsters, but I’m not above it.” A sinister smirk spread across her face. “Besides, I do need to blow off some steam after taking a beating from a cripple.” She slowly drew one of her knives and let him focus on it, gently waving it left to right for him to imagine what she intended to do with it so she could revel in the fear that came over his features.
Amazingly, he stood his ground. “My unit’ll be here any second,” he said in a tone so frightened he sounded ready to cry.
“Think you’ll stay alive until then?” she taunted. She reared onto her hind legs, tucked the knife into her belt right over her crotch, and fell back onto all fours. “Well, come on then. I’ll even give you a fighting chance, kiddo. No weapons.”
He took a step back, as if to reconsider whether he wanted to fight, and flew directly for her with a pitiably frightened battle cry. Silver Spoon reared up just as he made contact and grasped him in a hug, rolled with his own momentum, and kicked with her hind legs to send him careening uncontrollably with enough force to bury his head in the drywall behind her with a cry of pain.
“Typical rookie pegasus,” she said as she stood up and brushed herself off. “You all think you’re so hot because you can fly. It doesn’t give you the advantage you think, especially when you fly in head-first like that.” She watched as he shakily pulled his head from the wall, shook the powder from his mane, and readied himself to attack again. Her patience was wearing thin. “Alright, I’ve got time for one more,” she said as the playful tune in her voice turned vicious, “This is your last one, make it count.”
He swallowed nervously and clenched his teeth, and this time ran straight for her with his head down. Silver Spoon had time to roll her eyes at his terribly telegraphed attack and simply stepped out of the way at the last second. As he lunged past she caught his hoof under her own and sent him stumbling face-down into the floor. The rookie started to stand again but Silver Spoon didn’t have time to mess with him anymore; she pulled the knife from her belt and threw it at him, grazing his shoulder with an agonized cry from the kid.
“How’s that feel?” she said scornfully as he held his hoof over his open wound. She walked closer and rolled up her sleeve, showing off a scar of her own. “Like a really bad sunburn, right?” She pulled her shirt up to reveal the scar on her belly. “Know what it’s like to be stabbed? You feel a slash right away but a stab wound is a whole different level of pain.” She gave him a moment to study the jagged mark before she dropped to his side and threw one foreleg around his neck with the other pressing a knife to his barrel. “You don’t feel it at first, might not even realize you’ve been stabbed until you see blood, but right away you just feel so very wrong. Then comes the pain, dull and throbbing at first but like nothing you’ve ever felt before and it gets worse and worse until you’re shaking uncontrollably. At that point it gets so unbearable that you’ll probably pass out.” Silver Spoon leaned her cheek against his trembling forehead. “Sorry, kiddo. I would’ve let you go if you had backed down. Look on the bright side: You’ll get a medal for this, won’t you?”
“Let him go. Now,” said a gruff, deep voice.
Silver Spoon wrenched the kid to his hooves and held him in front of her with her knife to his neck. An older gray stallion with a bright orange mane, one of his comrades, was standing in the same doorway the rookie had entered through. This one had a captain’s emblem on his leg. “Congratulations, kiddo,” she whispered in a chipper tone to the rookie, “You’ve just upgraded from K.I.A. to hostage.” She looked into the captain’s goggles. “Now I’m going to walk out of here, and if you don’t try any funny stuff, just maybe this kid gets to go home to his mom.”
He pulled the last bomb from his belt and held it at leg’s length above the ground. “What’s going to happen is you’re going to let the kid go.”
“Don’t even,” said Silver Spoon with a smirk, “You set that off at this range and all three of us are airborne.”
The old stallion smirked ever so slightly and took a step forward. “Which is exactly what I’ll do if you off the kid.”
Silver Spoon called his bluff. “You care that much about one punk rookie? You his father or something?”
“Commanding officer.”
“How sweet,” said Silver Spoon, sounding confident to hide the fact she had been beaten. The stallion wasn’t impressed at all by her threat, and she could just tell he had every intention of setting that thing off if she took out her hostage, making the kid useless. She reluctantly shoved the kid to the ground and gestured at the captain.
He calmly clipped the bomb back to his load-webbing and walked to stand beside the wounded pegasus. “Cover the door. I’ll take care of her,” he said, “and keep pressure on that wound.”
Silver Spoon watched as the world’s luckiest rookie did as he was told, and the gray stallion turned to face her. “How nice. Keeping the little punk from getting hurt, hm? I suppose you showed the same courtesy to all those innocent townsponies you’ve been gleefully bombing for the last hour?”
His grim, unreadable expression didn’t flinch. “Give up. Every flier in the city is converging as we speak. You still have a chance to get out of this alive, if you surrender.”
The gray mare let out a low growl and readied her knife. “Don’t condescend me you jackass. I’m not like those pansies out there. I don’t scare. And just so you know, when I cut you down I’m going to use your own bomb to blow that little rookie to Tartarus.”
“I don’t intend to scare you. Just lay the beating of your life on you.”
Once again Silver Spoon couldn’t help but grin. “I’m going to enjoy this,” she said in a low tone.
The old stallion took his red goggles off and tossed them to the rookie, revealing his cold blue eyes, and slowly lowered to the ground. The instant he readied to pounce something shot past him and whisked close enough to Silver Spoon’s head to billow her hood. She was barely aware of it until the rookie erupted with an agonized cry. The kid had fallen to his back screaming, gripping his leg beneath an arrow that had buried into his flesh. The captain’s cold eyes widened and without hesitation he shot past Silver Spoon to grab the rookie and hurl both of them behind the receptionist’s desk. No sooner had he and his rookie made it behind cover, another arrow flew through the window and struck the varnished desk with an echoing thud.
“This way! Hurry!”
The voice came from the back door the rookie had been guarding and Silver Spoon didn’t know or care who it belonged to. Somepony had just yanked her flank out of the fire for whatever reason and she was going for it. As she ran past she slowed just long enough to make eye contact with the captain and blow a mocking kiss to him and his rookie. The anger in his eyes as he helplessly watched her bounce out the door was so powerful she could feel it in the back of her throat, and Silver Spoon would have given one of her own hooves to stick around and enjoy it a bit longer.
Business before pleasure, Spoon.
As she passed through the threshold to freedom a hoof wrapped around hers. “Hold your breath,” said the voice, and before she could answer she was engulfed in a yellow glow so intense it felt like it was crushing the air out of her lungs. For a moment it killed her senses leaving her stranded in a vacuum of painful light, and the next thing she knew she had fallen to the floor. After lying for a moment of gasping and swallowing air she rolled to her stomach and vomited on the floor.
“Terribly sorry,” said the calm pleasant voice of her rescuer, “Everypony’s first time is that bad.”
Silver Spoon tried to spit the foul taste from her mouth and weakly looked around to locate the source of the voice. She was still disoriented from whatever had happened to her in that office and, to her utter confusion as her senses came back to her, she found she wasn’t in that building any longer. The structure she was in appeared to be a greenhouse; either side was lined with tables overflowing with potted tropical plants of every shape and color and the air was rich with the scent of soil and fishmeal.
“Not to worry,” said the voice again, “I can’t travel far with a passenger, but I managed to get a ways from town. Still, I wouldn’t recommend staying long, lest those airponies figure out our little ruse.” Silver Spoon finally located her rescuer; a lanky yellow unicorn wearing red sunglasses, a business suit and turtleneck, and the absolute cheesiest moustache she had ever seen was reclining lazily in the corner. He made eye contact and smiled widely.
“Thanks,” said Silver Spoon at a loss to say anything else. “So what about your friend?”
The unicorn chuckled. “She’s quicker than those arrows of hers. She’ll be gone before they even figure out what happened.”
Silver Spoon laughed uneasily as her relief turned to suspicion. “Alright. You look pretty professional, so you won’t mind me being so blunt,” she said in an accusing tone, “That was a pretty bold rescue. Quite frankly, you don’t look the type to do anything for free.”
He grinned as if she had told a particularly hilarious joke. “Precise, to the point, and exactly correct dear friend,” he said, “The rescue was a down payment. You see, I’m very interested in that little trinket you lifted from Canterlot the other night.”
The gray mare felt as if a bolt of lightning had shot through her. The fact he knew it had been taken was unbelievable enough, but that he knew she had it? She stood motionless for a beat while he innocently awaited her response and then reluctantly pulled the Princess’ crown from her cloak.
His eyes lit up with greedy anticipation and he actually licked his lips. “It’s beautiful… You are absolutely amazing. The best thief I’ve ever seen,” he gushed, “and I want it.”
“Alright, down boy,” said Silver Spoon as she raised a hoof. “As much as I’m loving the flattery, you’d better have some serious cash right here and now. You’re the type who knows these things, right? You can imagine what I went through to get this.”
“Knowing these things is my job,” said the yellow unicorn with a hint of pride in his relaxed tone. He reared onto his hind legs and pulled a gaudy purple cape from his sleeve, one that was decorated with blue and yellow stars of various sizes, and held it out wide to his left. “Abra… cadabra,” he said dryly as he whipped it away to reveal a rather large bag of bits that had appeared behind it. As he levitated the cape and folded it neatly in mid-air, he winked to Silver Spoon and said “Sorry. I had a rather um, theatrical magic teacher.”
Silver Spoon wolf whistled. “That’s the kind of magic I like.” She casually tossed the crown to him like it was garbage and walked over to inspect her pay. From just a glance she could tell it easily contained about half what she was promised by the masked pony, but if it meant washing her hooves of this ordeal once and for all she was willing to take the loss. Besides, it was still a lot of money.
The yellow unicorn playfully placed the crown on his head and made a quick, feminine curtsey. “You’ve made me a very happy pony. Perhaps I can count on your services in the future?”
“Perhaps you can,” said Silver Spoon as she nosed through the bag of bits. “Pleasure doing business with you or whatever, Mister…?”
“Snails,” he said calmly as he reared his legs and vanished with a burst of pale smoke.
Silver Spoon watched the smoke clear. “Drama queen,” she said to herself, “but as long as you pay like this I… would…” She trailed off as the realization hit; as the name he gave stirred up an old memory from a time gone by.
No way.
“No. Not in a million years could that one have grown up into that.” Silver Spoon quickly put the thought out of her head; she could hardly care even if it was the same pony. She reached into the bag and threw a hoofful of the wonderful golden coins into the air and cried out in glee as they rained down.
Stats
Page generated in 0.034 seconds
Total duration
1,049 users online
1,583,704 hits today, 2,004,447 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.®
>announcing when the next chapter will be released
You didn't just do that. Fanfics that have announced a schedule are currently 0-4 at keeping that schedule. It's a curse. And you've just doomed yourself to falling for it.
4022410
Where's the fun in life if you can't take a risk every now and again?
BUCKLE UP WE'RE LIVING ON THE EDGE!
Hah. Those bits are probably fake anyway.