44. Manehatten Heist! - Part 2
Midnight stood outside the Manehatten Police Department, unable to believe he was doing this.
He’d screwed up, and Sombra told him why. Apparently, Rough `Em Up was a thug working for an old crime boss named Big Pokey who was quite the big cheese in Manehatten of this time. When the museum announced its exhibit of the Garnet of Grani the Gallant, Rough had taken one of the posters to show Pokey, and the boss decided to add the garnet to his personal collection and staged a heist.
They succeeded in stealing the garnet but just a few days later, Rough appeared to have a change of heart and ratted his boss out. Pokey was sent to prison while Rough was taken into protective custody, and the Garnet was recovered.
Midnight really had to think about this. So far, he’d played key roles in history and had long been convinced his very journey through history itself was a temporal paradox, taking where he needed to be to insure history ran its course.
This however was different. Had he really changed history or had he taken the first step to securing it in this time? He had no idea, but after a long correspondence with his master, Midngiht promised to do his best to make sure everything was put back on course.
Sombra sent him detailed instructions on new shadow powers and Midnight had spent last night practicing some. He now had the ability to become a shadow and slip along floors and walls, through cracks and tight spaces, along with a couple other powers.
He was about to break Rough `Em Up out of a police station!
Yeah there are so many ways that can’t possibly go wrong… Midnight sighed before looking around, seeing an alleyway on one side of the police department. He hurried in and looked up, glad to see an open window.
“OK… here goes!” Midnight concentrated and felt himself become enveloped in shadow, sinking into the darkness of the alleyway.
Rough `Em Up sat in lock-up, waiting for his lawyer to arrive. After getting his Mareanda Rights, he'd undergone a few hours of interrogation. Rough refused to blab anything about his boss or his boss’s plans but as he sat in this cell, he was having second thoughts.
He had no illusions about Big Pokey. The guy would happily leave him to rot in jail, provided Rough said nothing against him. Rough hadn’t wanted to become a criminal, he’d only been trying to get easy money but Big Pokey had turned on him with evidence that could easily land Rough in jail for a long time, allowing the mobster to own Rough’s ass.
He was tempted to stick it to Pokey but he’d seen the guy crush a kitten’s skull under his hoof, just to make a point!
Dear Goddess, o Holy Mother, Rough held his hooves together in prayer. If you’ll only gimme a chance and get me outta dis mess, I swear on my future foals I will go straight as an arrow!!
As if his prayers were answered, Rough heard a low ‘whoosh’ and gawked at a moving shadow slip into the cell through the barred window to the alleyway. He watched in trepid awe as the shadow moved along the wall to the floor like spilling ink before everything went black!
*SPLASH*
Rough was sputtered and awoke, startled, finding himself sopping wet, his hoof flying out and clanging. The sound jolted his awareness and he realized he wasn’t in his cell any more.
“Wake up!”
He gawked up at the source of the voice and snapped, “You!”
It was the same punk blue unicorn that humiliated him and got him arrested. He was looking down at Rough with narrowed eyes and said, “We need to talk.”
“Glady! Here’s my openin’ statement!” Rough threw his hoof towards Midnight, only for a black tendril to lash out of nowhere and enwrap his hoof, stopping it inches before it made contact with Midnight’s face. He didn’t even flinch, and willed the tendril to twirl Rough for a loop and fall on his ass.
“What the-?!”
“Unless you want me to put you back in jail, shut up and listen!” Midnight finally had Rough’s attention, his tone sounding like he meant business, making Rough gulp.
“You work for Big Pokey, yes? So then that means you’re my ticket in to his operations.”
“Whutta you, nuts?!” Rough gaped at Midnight as though he’d grown a second head. “Big Pokey don’t just let anypony in, and besides! I’m backin’ out!”
“…What?” Midnight’s tone was razor sharp but Rough put his hoof down.
“I’m takin’ this as a goddess-send an’ getting’ th’ hay outta Manehatten!” Rough stood up and flared his wings for the intimidation effect (not that it actually worked).
“I’ve worked for that freak long enough an’ I’m sick of getting’ th’ short end o’ the stick! You wanna go an’ wind up wit’ yer head in somepony’s bed, that’s your problem.”
“Well at least tell me where to find him!” Midnight groaned.
“What’s innit f’me?” Rough demanded with a threatening tone only for Midnight to glare back with eyes burning with dark magic!
“I allow you to live to see the light of day…!”
“In the Haylem district!” Rough whined, suddenly fearful for his life. “He owns a Prench restaurant on 42nd Street!”
“While we’re feeling chatty…” Midnight levitated up the museum flyer, “Why did you have this with you?”
Rough’s eyes got nervously shifty so Midnight flared his tainted eyes again for good measure.
“Big Pokey’s plannin’ a heist! He wants that garnet they’ve got displayed at that museum, I was supposed to bring news t’ him that it’s here! That’s all I know, please don’t hurt me!”
“Oh I’m not going to hurt you, because like I said…” Midnight smirked deviously as he concentrated.
He willed the shadows around them to swallow him up and Rough gasped as the shadowy form of Midnight sunk to the asphalt as a flat mass of shadow that connected to his own.
Rough gasped as he felt his mind go hazy, his mint green eyes struggling to stay open before they closed and he slumped to his plot. Then Rough stood up, rolled his shoulders, and opened his eyes to reveal they’d turned turquoise as a voice that wasn’t his own spoke, “You’re my ticket into Big Pokey’s operations!”
Getting to the Haylem District wasn’t as easy as Midnight though. He was inside Rough’s body, having performed the shadow art of Overshadowing – Sombra’s instructions had been very detailed. By becoming a shadow and merging with a subject’s shadow, his own mind overtakes the subject’s mind and will, enabling him to possess the subject.
However Sombra had warned Overshadowing had a weakness – The subject’s shadow would not be their own but it would be Midnight’s shadow.
He’d looked for himself and saw for certain. The unicorn shadow did not match the husky pegasus body he inhabited. Sombra had also warned the longer Midnight possessed his subject, the harder it would be to remain in control before he was forced out of his subject.
Not wanting to waste time, Midnight flapped Rough’s wings and flew. He wanted to ask somepony for directions but considering Rough was a known gangster it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. So, he was stuck with looking at street signs.
As he flew however he panted and complained to himself, “Ugh, this guy’s gotta loose a few pounds and work on his wings more!”
Rough’s body wasn’t exactly fat. His chest and front legs were actually quite brawny but his belly felt a little tight to the strap of his saddlebags. Another disadvantage was, in this pegasus body, Midnight could not use his unicorn magic until he vacated Rough’s body. He was just glad the guy had manipulation shoes.
It took some doing but Midnight found the restaurant, right on 42nd Street as Rough had said. The establishment looked a little out of place in the seedy neighborhood as Midnight entered. He found it to be quite lavish, with tables and booths, a unicorn stewardess speaking, “Welcome to ze Siroter du Ciel, Monsieur Rough. Ze directeur is expecting you.”
Midnight huffed, deciding the tough act was in order as he passed a few tables when a short earth pony stallion with a wine red coat and wheat gold mane, wearing a fedora and coat, got up in his face, “About time ya got here, Rough! The boss don’t like t’ be kept waitin’.”
“Shut up an’ take me to `im, shorty!” Midnight sniped, the shorter pony suddenly seething.
“Wha’d you say t’ me?!”
“Enough!”
The both of them looked to a private table and saw a large earth pony stallion, wearing an expensive suit, as he ate a delectable meal. His coat was green like money while his mane was black and gray and slicked back with a greasy sheen. Midnight noticed, with his host’s pegasus eyes, the stallion’s cutie-mark looked oddly like a bag of dirt, and he wore diamond cufflinks, and his eyes were narrow and gold like the glare of the sun. The stallion was noticeably plump but there was something about him that made Midnight wary.
“Rough? I expected you here almost an hour ago…”
Suddenly, Midnight felt someone wrap their arms around his barrel and slam his head onto the stallion’s table, making the silverware shudder. Wait, arms?!
A growling in his ear alerted him his assaulter was not a pony.
“I hope, for your sake…” the stallion who had to be Big Pokey spoke in a calm but low tone, “that you weren’t gettin’ any… ideas.”
“No, no, not at all, boss!” Midnight threw in a frightened whimper to sound authentic. “I don’t get ideas, that’s your job!”
“And it better stay that way, see?” Big Pokey wiped his mouth clean with a napkin and clapped his hooves together, the assaulter releasing Midnight, and he saw it was a diamond dog!
It was a tall and ugly mongrel, with a muscle shirt and faux-leather jacket over his stone-gray pelt, the diamond studded collar looked out of lace on the lug. The diamond dog started collecting Big Pokey’s dishes as the mobster moved towards the bar, saying, “So, Rough, am I wrong to assume the Garnet o’ Grani th’ Gallant has arrived at th’ museum?”
“It’s there, boss, this here flyer says so,” Midnight pulled the flyer out of his saddlebag and forked it over to Big Poky, who read it over with a seeming look of disinterest.
“Hmm, then I say it’s time t’ make a new addition t’ my collection, see?” Big Pokey looked to the diamond dog, saying, “Bruiser, get my coat.”
“Huh?” the Diamond Dog growled in confusion.
“My coat! Get my coat!” Big Pokey snapped as he pointed at his coat, hanging onto his table’s seat.
Seeing it, Bruiser quickly snapped it up, growling as he began to tear it up, Big Pokey yelling, “Bruiser! Knock it off! Down boy, down! Heel! Sit!”
Bruiser noticed, Pokey yelling, “Sit! Stay!”
Bruiser sat, whimpering as Big Pokey growled, “Why I oughta…! Ergh!”
He looked to “Rough”, the mobster grumbling, “Two- I mean, fourteen years o’ dog obedience school an’ dumb as a brick…”
“So uh, boss, what’cha have to say?” Midnight asked.
“Alright, gather `round an' listen up all ya glue factory rejects!” Big Pokey called, the gangsters encircling their boss as he announced, “T’night, after closin’ time, wer’ gonna pinch the Garnet o’ Grani th’ Gallant! Here’s what wer’ gonna do…”
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5716329 Technically, shadow magic isn't dark magic, it's not harmonic magi either. i'd put it there somewhere between... It's neutral. Middle-ground.
I mean, sure, overshadowing is a questionable power but it isn't perfect!
Anyway, i intend for some close-calls
I see this going horribly.
Is the museum going to burn down?
Is this going to spark the Great Manehattan Fire that'll burn down at least a fifth of the city?
Or is Midnight lucky enough to have missed it by a couple hundred years?
5716394 That's what I'd like to know!
i can't wait to read more XD!!! i just finished reading this. it's awesome!
5716418 Could u PM me?
5716416 Well, there were TWO Great Fires of New York, one in 1776 during the American Revolution, and another in 1835
Scary stuff man, makes me glad I've lived in small places or low-building cities.
Just one question..."waiting for his phone call"? Even 'modern' manehatten doesn't yet have phones, (though considering twilight's time through the mirror, probably just matter of time until she 'invents' magical equivalents to cell phones)
I think i would have been more fun seeing Midnight breaking out Big Poky from prison and try to talk his way into to the Mob to join the the heist. It would have been more interesting in my opinion. I fiend the Idea of possessing some one body morally questionable that I would normally expect from villains expect in the most dyer of circumstances. It is also just to powerful of an ability for Midnight to have and it solves his problem too easily and he would always has to justify not using it in the future.
5716462
Thnx for pointing that out...
I'm loving this setting. Good imagery
5716392
Actually.....it could be considered an entirely different form of magic. You could have different Schools of Magic For example; Harmony Magic, Dark Magic, Shadow Magic, Lunar Magic(not to be confused with Dark Magic), and (maybe) Emotional Magic.
5728090 I like this!
If u like, we should look into this and make something out of it!
5728142
another school could be runic
Great story so far. I love the steady updates.