Coups d'etat

by Desavlos

Revolutionary Counter-Coups

Willow had never liked the dark; the Revolution's constant cellar meetings had been hard to endure. That said, she knew that the water trickling around her hooves and the nameless noises from the shadows would've been enough to drive anypony to frightened glances and timidity.

Canterlot's sewers were not a welcoming place; why should they be? They were cold, dark, and filled with an air of squishiness that would be impossibly hard for even the best of Equestria's poets to describe to anypony who hadn't spent at least one night sleeping underground in a peat-bog. Willow walked through the underground world slowly, because the noise her hooves made on the cobbled floor scared her.

She imagined Grey Streak sitting at home with a blanket. Sore back or not, when she got out of this there would be words.

A scratching in the darkness made her jump. She amended that last thought to "if I get out of this", then wished that she hadn't.

Willow raised Grey's instruction map and squinted at it, but the firefly jar on her back provided only enough light to make the sewer's shadows visible. She was probably going the right way. It had yet to cross Willow's mind that she had no idea what she was meant to do once she got into the Palace. She'd always understood the general principles of the Revolution: overthrow the Princesses, establish a free and fair government (or, as Grey would've said, a Free and Fair government) and usher in a new age of peace and prosperity for all of Equestria, but she'd never been sure, from one day to the next, quite how this was meant to happen; the Royal Sisters were, for all intents and purposes, goddesses. Willow pushed her doubts aside and her chest swelled determinedly: she couldn't let Grey down now; he was counting on her to do the work that he, in his infirmity, couldn't.

She strode a few steps further down the passage confidently, then returned too her cautious gait as the echoes of her hoof-falls made her jump.

Nevertheless, she mused. Words will be had.

----<<<<>>>>----

Grey Streak's traditional methods were carved deeply into the weathered stone tablet of his soul; robes, sewers, capital letters, the whole boiling. It was a method that had always worked, at least when it didn't fail, and neither he nor any of his hypothetical comrades would consider any other plan; this was a gentleman's game, after all: if they hit you with a stick of rhubarb, you stayed hit.

Otherwise everypony'll start using swords or something; somepony could get hurt. No. Far safer to play by the rules.

Fancy Pants was more than twice Grey Streak's age, and in his time he'd learnt many things. First and foremost was that most rules, however obvious, only applied if he wanted them to. This unreasonable line of thought meant that while Willow Leaves was dragging her way cautiously through Canterlot's sewers, Cut Glass and a dozen other unicorns were walking through the Palace's gates with all the self-assurance of born con-artists.

Cut Glass waved the warding document at a guard on the doors as the squad approached. The stallion on gate duty knew thugs when he saw them, but also knew Celestia's signature. Reluctantly, he opened the doors.

Far warmer, drier, and cleaner than Willow, Glass and his team stepped inside the Palace.

----<<<<>>>>----

Willow Leaves had spent the last half-hour desperately attempting to deny the obvious fact that she was lost. It wasn't hard to become lost in a network of homogeneous tunnels that stretched the length and breadth of Canterlot, and when a sewer grate far above her had allowed a brief view of the sun, Willow had noticed that Grey's, "map" bore some remarkable similarities to a "McDashie's" colt's and filly's puzzlemat, logo and all. The need for words was becoming clearer and clearer.

The need for fresh air was not inconsiderable too.

Willow had stuffed her saddlebags with all manner of potentially useful tools; and given that she'd planned for a stone tunnel a hammer and chisel had found their way into the mix. Pulling both out, she held the chisel against the tunnel roof in her mouth and struck it.

Once she'd stopped seeing stars, she dropped the chisel into her other hoof and tried again.

It took less than a minute for the stone to give way; it was well made, but not designed to withstand assault from anypony, let alone one so desperate to leave as Willow Leaves. Willow gave a small shriek and jumped backwards as a pile of cobbles fell into the sewer with a crash. Opening one eye slowly, she peered into the space she had opened up.

It is well known that dumb luck can sometimes accomplish feats that would otherwise take a considerable amount of skill and preparation to achieve. Perhaps this was one such time, or perhaps Grey Streak's map was more useful than it appeared.

Or perhaps the whole thing was some sort of plot-hole in a poorly planned comedy fanfiction.

Whatever the reason, when Willow found herself staring into a cellar, her firefly illuminated the crest of the royal pony sisters on the wall. Curious, she pulled herself from the sewer and stood up. Deep in the back of her mind Willow knew that there would be rats, or something equally unpleasant, but her urge to run and hide was suppressed. It wasn't like she had anywhere to go anyway. By the light of her firefly, she explored the room; it was made of the same dark masonry as the sewer, and must've been about as old. Clusters of cobwebs filled every corner and crevice of the cellar, and stacks of ancient crates and chests were strewn haphazardly across the floor. The room had clearly been empty for some time; a single door, at the top of a broken staircase, had been boarded up.

Right. Willow mused. What would Daring Do do?

She wouldn't be trying to overthrow the Princesses.

Willow bit her lip; she hadn't planned for a rebellious subconscious. Well, just suppose that she was.

Well in that case, there'd probably be a handy rope that she could turn into a grappling hook. Or something.

Ten minutes inspection revealed that, against all narrative reason, the multitude of containers in the cellar were completely empty.

She frowned. Fine then, forget Daring Do.

It didn't take Willow a great deal of thought to calculate a route to the door; it wasn't as flashy as A. K. Yearling's, but it did have the benefit of being possible. It only took half an hour for Willow to stack the cellar's crates into a makeshift pyramid bellow the boarded-up doorway, and she was soon sitting atop the highest crate with a smug expression on her face. The effect was spoiled slightly when she realised that nopony else would ever see the fruits of her genius. Frustratedly, Willow bucked at the sealed door; it exploded outwards in a splintery cascade and scattered into the newly b'cellared space beyond.

Once the dust had settled, Willow opened her eyes. Her kick had opened up a long, opulent corridor to the thrills of Canterlot's Sewer Smell. (In this case, insanity would not be a necessary precursor to capitalisation. That said, extended exposure to the Smell would cause at least some level of mental issues with the smeller anyway.) The corridor was lavishly decorated with portraits of nobles long past, and Grey's words on the vanity of the noble classes came back to Willow with the same fervour, if not the same spittle, with which they had been delivered. She winced at the awkward memory. A large, ornamental fountain occupied one edge of the corridor, and it made Willow realise just how caked with mud her coat had become, she briefly considered washing herself off quickly, but froze when she noticed the ponies.

There were two in the corridor, but despite her swamp-monster-esque appearance only one, some sort of clerk, had turned to look at her. The other was a guard; he was lying, out cold, under the pile of splintered wooden planks that were all that remained of the cellar's obstructive door. The clerk was shaking visibly; Willow got the impression that shock was all that was keeping her in place.

"Um. Hi?" Willow ventured.

With a scream, the terrified pony vanished down a passageway in a trail of paper.

Willow Leaves secretly suspected that her "Lord Chancellor" hadn't really expected her to get this far. Either way, she was operating on intuition. She prodded the recumbent guard with a hoof and, satisfied that he was truly unconscious, dragged him back through the broken door and into the cellar. Five minutes, a wash, and a muttered apology later, a guard clambered awkwardly from the darkness and into the brightness of the corridor.

Helmets are so damn heavy these days. Willow mused.

----<<<<>>>>----

Cut Glass didn't much care for helmets either, but unlike Willow he had no need to wear one. His team had split silently into pairs as they'd entered the palace and insinuated themselves throughout the labyrinth of rooms; Glass himself had made his way to the throne room doors where, under the uneasy eyes of a pair of guards, he and his subordinate were slowly re-fabricating the warding spells into something infinitely more malicious. Glass knew that all across the palace similar traps would be being cast. He stepped cautiously around the ward circle; the spells were unfinished and he didn't dare to touch them: anything could happen.

As now, in fact.

It started as a distant scream, but got louder gradually and soon both the guards and conspirators had stopped their work to listen. After several minutes, and many more pauses for breath, the noise resolved itself into a pony, clearly exhausted, who ran up the length of the corridor towards the throne room doors. The badge on the terrified clerk's neck was enough authorisation for the guardsponies, who had chalked her madness up to some sort of mathematical error, or at least something not relevant to themselves, but Glass knew that, in their present state, the trap spells would make no such deductions.

Unfortunately, both for himself and the clerk, Glass wasn't the swiftest pony ever born.

Just as Glass's forehoof closed on the clerk's leg, there was a flash and a surge of white light as the already panicked pony stepped into the circle of spells. In their unfinished state, they drew what raw magic they needed straight from Glass and his subordinate who grunted in unison at the sudden drain of power.

When the guards opened their eyes, what they saw was a diorama painted in various intensities of guilt and anger; the warding unicorns' horns glowed faintly with the residue from the explosion and the stunned clerk was lying concussedly, still mumbling faint screams, at the warders' hooves. Following years of training, and an ingrained dislike of private buisnessponies, the guards leapt.

----<<<<>>>>----

Shining Armor slotted the last plank into place over his office's shutterless window; he'd grown tired of picking up his paperwork from the floorboards. A keen observer, if not sufficiently unnerved by the captain's presence, might've noticed the chessboard on his desk; if they had, then they'd probably have noticed that, owing to Shining's lack of chess knowledge, every piece was a knight. A really keen observer might even have seen that one of the grey pieces, of which there were only two, and one of the many white pieces wore tiny crowns. Both crowned knights sat at opposite corners of the board, apparently watching the carnage of the game.

Shining Armor might not care for chess, but he knew how the world worked. There was always somepony in charge.

And when their apples went pear-shaped, they'd never be sitting on the same branch.

Comments

[Aotrs Commander]

I must admit, having Fancy Pants as on the antagonists is a novel idea - I don't think I've ever really seen anyuone use him like that. So bonus points for that.

[Desavlos]

4708302 Thanks! I've already written one where he was the good guy so I guess it's only fair to swap things around.