Wanted
That night, Spike and Thorax discussed their options now that they were faced with the prospect of the crystal guard searching for them in Vanhoover now.
“We knew this was going to happen,” Thorax reminded as he sat in the middle of their room, watching Spike pace in a circle around him. “We know they’re here checking for us because it’s one of the possible places we could be, but we agreed it was likely they couldn’t actually know for certain we’re here. So long as we continue to keep a low profile…”
“I know, I know,” Spike murmured, rubbing his chin as he paced. Unlike Thorax, who had dropped his disguise now that they were in the privacy of their room, Spike still wore all elements of his, absentmindedly adjusting the false glasses he wore as part of it. “But while that seemed so easy back then, now that they’re actually here…I’m riddled with worry.” He glanced at the changeling. “And now that I think about it, have we actually been keeping a low profile? I mean, we’ve been working with more customers than we could ever keep track of for the past week and a half, all of whom have likely seen us and could potentially identify us…”
“Well, more likely for you than for me at least,” Thorax pointed out, his way of reminding his dragon friend of just how complete and utterly a changeling can disguise itself.
“Not helping,” Spike grumbled, looking at his feet as he kept pacing.
“Sorry.” Thorax fiddled with his hooves for a second. “Are you thinking we should perhaps flee the area anyway, just to be safe?”
“The added precaution probably wouldn’t hurt, but would we actually get far?” Spike reasoned. “You heard Mrs. White. The crystal ponies are very clearly keeping the train station under close guard. They may not know where we stopped at, but they certainly know by now that we took a train to leave the Crystal Empire, and they’re going to be watching for us to make sure we can’t do it again.”
“They were doing that in the Crystal Empire, and we still managed to slip past them,” Thorax pointed out.
“The crystal ponies are certainly going to wise up eventually, and we’ve pushed our luck enough sneaking under their noses as it is,” Spike pointed back. “And anyway, the train wouldn’t be practical because my season pass is certainly invalidated by now and they’re going to be stricter about enforcing that now.”
Thorax shrugged. “Then we get a new ticket. We have the money for it now.”
“But not a lot, which brings up another problem. We haven’t been able to get as many supplies to leave like I’d hoped we would by now. Unless we did take the train, and used it for the whole journey, we wouldn’t be able to travel far with what supplies we’ve got right now.”
Thorax shuffled his holed hooves for a moment again. “I…don’t really want to leave at all if we can help it,” he stated timidly.
Spike stopped pacing at last and looked at him for a moment. He gave the changeling a small, comforting grin. “Agreed,” he said. “Besides, I’m beginning to think staying put and sitting tight, hoping for the best, is the better option available to us. A risk, yes, but…”
“We just need to make sure nopony notices us for who we are more than usual in the meantime,” Thorax reasoned.
They also decided that, seeing Thorax, as a changeling, could physically alter his whole appearance to disguise himself but Spike couldn’t, Spike especially needed to keep a low profile. Thus, at Thorax’s suggestion, it was decided that Spike would avoid leaving the shop for any reason if at all possible, and as the two didn’t frequently leave the store anyway, that wasn’t so hard to do. The only time Spike really ventured far from the shop was when he went out to spend some of their profits on supplies, which he had been doing on the grounds that he was more familiar with the Equestrian public than Thorax. Nonetheless, Thorax voiced confidence that so long as Spike provided him with a list and directions on where to go, he could take over that task while disguised himself in the dragon’s stead.
Spike was really more worried about the patrons that came and went from the shop they were working in anyway. Spike wore his disguise continuously while working in the shop, and no customer ever saw him without it. Even Fly Leaf hadn’t seen him without it yet, even though Spike suspected that had she had, the earth pony mare probably wouldn’t think much of it. Nonetheless, Spike worried it might not be enough, as it couldn’t ever hide the fact that he was still a dragon, likely the only one in Vanhoover, and that could draw attention to himself considering that’s precisely one of whom the crystal guards were looking for. He felt it would be better if he could minimize contact with the customers for a while, and fortunately soon had an idea on how to do that.
The front half of the first floor of Fly Leaf’s building consisted of the shop’s front room, but the back half consisted of the kitchen and other common living amenities for the staff that lived here. Among them, directly across the adjoining corridor from the kitchen, was a room that doubled as a living room and a private office for Fly Leaf. Dividing the two rooms right down the middle though was a long, double-width, hallway, normally wide enough that two ponies should’ve been able to stroll down side by side with room left over. However the walls of the corridor were lined with shipping boxes full of the store's goods, lying in wait for their turn to go on display out front, and narrowed the corridor’s free walking space greatly to the point that they had to go single file to navigate it. And even then, the boxes of goods spilled out of the corridor, as at the far end of the corridor where it terminated abruptly with a back door directly ahead, a mud room/cloakroom to the left, and a narrower corridor that branched off the main one to the right, which was again filled with boxes of store goods yet to go on display, except for where the door leading to the first floor bathroom stood. In short, Fly Leaf had every free space in this section of the building filled with stored stock as much as possible, making it into a sort of cluttered storage area, really.
Fly had her own system for organizing all of this, and it got the job done well enough. But for once, all those years Spike had spent having to put up with Twilight’s obsessive needs to organize efficiently became useful, and Spike had already been thinking about approaching Fly about a better way to store stock. So that next morning while they were all breakfasting and getting ready for the new workday, Spike pitched the idea to Fly and volunteered to take it upon himself to carry it out. Fly was initially hesitant about it; she knew it would be a time consuming project that would keep Spike mostly in the back and not helping run the store up front like she preferred. But fate happened to be looking in Spike’s favor because only about an hour later it was discovered, entirely by chance, that none of them could find a box of an item they needed to restock up front due to a shortcoming in Fly’s organization system. So Fly relented, and almost immediately started to see benefits as Spike began reorganizing the back, spurring her to give further support in the project.
Because this meant Spike spent most of the workday busy in the back then, this left Thorax working up front. As Fly was the one to fill in for Spike’s usual tasks, Thorax spent most of his time manning the cash register as usual, which he was happy to do, but as an added precaution decided to also try and minimize his contact with customers where possible, limiting conversation with them. Some of the shop’s regular customers, who had caught on fairly quickly that Thorax was a friendly fellow that was happy to lend an ear to chat, took notice, but not enough to really stress the matter. Meanwhile, Thorax kept an ear out for chatter about the crystal guards and their ongoing search in the city. There seemed to be some griping about it as it seemed the search was causing disruptions in the normal flow in the city’s operations, but otherwise there seemed to be no indications at all that any pony was connecting the dragon and supposed unicorn they knew as Spark and Thornton, the two new employees at Fly Leaf’s Books and Stationery, as the very two the crystal guards were searching for. At the very least, it suggested that the ponies of Vanhoover were a trusting bunch that didn’t question ponies they saw as friends.
So by the end of that second week in Vanhoover, Thorax began to feel confident that they would be able to successfully avoid discovery altogether. He was still in good spirits that Friday afternoon, relatively late into the work day and the store momentarily empty of any customers for the moment, and had taken to playing with a rubber band while continuing to man the register. Spike was, of course, in back working at reorganizing their boxes of stock, and was reportedly making good progress. Fly herself was momentarily out of the store; as she still hadn’t been successful in fixing the faulty knob on the second story bathroom sink herself, she had finally relented and decided to make use of the lull in business to go consult a new plumber she had recently found out about.
She had only been gone for about ten minutes and Thorax wasn’t expecting her back too soon, nor for many customers to come in, so he was surprised when his hidden changeling ears heard the store’s front door open.
He turned his head to look at the door as he continued to play with his rubber band, stretched it between his hooves. “Hello, and welcome to—” the rubber band abruptly shot out of his hooves and across the room as he suddenly jerked them apart, cutting himself short as he watched two formal-looking crystal pony guards, complete with the usual armor, file into the shop.
“Hello!” one of the two greeted, strolling right up to Thorax standing paralyzed in shock behind the front desk. “Are you the shop’s owner?”
“No,” Thorax managed to squeak out, nervously glancing between the two guards, worried about why they might be here.
They seemed to be nothing but cordial though, and didn’t seem to suspect Thorax of being anything more than the young unicorn stallion he was presently disguised as. “Can we speak with the shop owner for a moment?” the guard continued.
“She’s not in at the moment,” Thorax explained quickly, “Went out to run an errand real quick. I couldn’t tell you when exactly she’ll be back.”
“Well, we’re here representing the Crystal Empire royal guard, visiting Vanhoover investigating a case.” the second guard explained, taking over. “Have you heard anything from any of the other locals about us yet?”
Thorax nervously faked an uncertain shrug. “Bits and pieces,” he lied. He was glad the two guards before him weren’t changelings too, otherwise they’d have certainly detected the waves of emotive terror that he was no doubt giving off at the moment by now.
Instead, the guards seemed to chalk up Thorax’s apparent nervousness to just a general intimidation by the presence. “We’re not here to cause any trouble for you,” the second guard assured, pulling out a sheet of parchment from a pack contained in his saddlebag. “We’re just trying to spread public awareness of why we’re here and who we’re searching for, and we were hoping that you could maybe help.”
“Help? Help how?” Thorax asked, perhaps a bit too quickly. He could feel sweat prickling his brow and wondered how he wasn’t trembling at the moment.
“A little more than a couple of weeks ago now, we had a changeling convict and a misled accomplice escape from the area of the Crystal Empire. We have reason to believe that they may have chosen to hide in Vanhoover after escaping.”
“A changeling?” Thorax repeated and forced a laugh. “Why, that means it could be anyone, couldn’t it? I mean, that changeling could be standing right in front of you and you’d never be able to tell, right?” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t phrased it like that.
The guards chuckled though. “You’re absolutely right actually,” the first guard admitted. “Hay, you could be the changeling for all we know.” Thorax felt his face pale at the very suggestion and found his brain absolutely blank for any sort of response he could give to that comment that wouldn’t also give himself away, but the guards only laughed harder at Thorax’s obvious discomfort, playfully misinterpreting it as something innocent. “Don’t worry son, I’m just teasing you,” the guard assured him playfully. “We’re not accusing you of anything.”
“We’re actually more hoping we can find the changeling by finding the accomplice we believe to be still with him,” the second guard said, and held out the sheet of parchment in his hoof for Thorax to see. “He’s a young dragon. Maybe you’ve seen him?”
Thorax took the sheet and saw immediately it was a wanted poster of sorts for Spike, and in addition to printing his name in big letters, featured a large photograph of the purple dragon. The photo showed Spike sitting on a stool and appearing to be writing in a scroll with a quill, but had looked up from it with a grin long enough for the photo to be taken, whatever the original occasion for the photo might have been. The photo seemed entirely too cheery considering what it was being used for though. But realizing the guards were waiting for an answer from Thorax, the disguised changeling made a show of looking like he was unfamiliar with the photo before finally looking up from it.
“No, sorry, can’t say that I have,” Thorax lied, trying not to think about the fact that the very dragon they were looking for happened to be in the back room right that moment, probably completely unaware the guards were here or so close.
“That’s okay,” the first guard assured Thorax, and tapped the parchment with his crystalline hoof. “So what we’d like you to do with that is hang it up somewhere where anypony who might have seen the dragon can easily see it and read it as they come through, like in your front window.”
“I’m not allowed to hang anything in the front window,” Thorax quickly objected. It wasn’t a lie too; the front window, bearing the store’s name in golden serifed letters painted on it, was Fly Leaf’s favorite feature of her shop, and she spent a lot of time carefully setting up elaborate displays to promote her wares in it, putting a lot of work into it. As such, one of the very first rules she told Spike and Thorax when she took them into her employ was that nothing was ever allowed to be put in the front window that would in some way obstruct it.
“Hang it somewhere else where it can be easily seen then, like a notice board or something,” the guard recommended. “We just ask for any and all assistance you can provide in aiding us in our attempts to find these two runaways.”
You assume that I’d want to, Thorax thought to himself, but said instead, accepting the parchment, “I’ll see what I can do.”
The guards nodded in satisfaction. “That’s all we ask,” the second guard said. “Let us know if you see or hear any leads. Contact information is on the sheet too.”
“I noticed,” Thorax said, nodding his head while nervously waving as the two guards exited the shop, inwardly thanking the almighty Informis Una herself that they were finally leaving. “Bye!”
He waited until they were well out of sight before promptly taking the wanted poster and discreetly incinerating it with his magic under the front desk, leaving nothing but ash behind which he then promptly swept into a wastebasket. Hanging that accusing poster somewhere in the store was the very last thing he wanted to do. All it would take was one observant pony noticing the poster, and then observing Spike working in the store in passing and seeing through his disguise. Indeed, the only thing that was probably keeping Spike from getting noticed right away at this point was the glasses, shirt, and sweater vest he wore as part of his disguise. If anypony ever thought to draw glasses on Spike’s photo on the poster, for whatever reason…
But Thorax had an even greater fear, and that was the leading reason why he destroyed the poster so quickly. He didn’t dare give Fly Leaf any chance to see it. They had been lucky enough thus far for her to not really question Spike or Thorax about what brought them here to Vanhoover, despite the mare clearly having questions about it, but Thorax feared that would all end the moment she saw the photo on that poster, as he really couldn’t see how she wouldn’t be able to put two with two upon seeing it.
Which also left the greater problem that Thorax knew he couldn’t do much about. He had destroyed one poster. But inevitably there were going to be dozens, if not hundreds more floating out there in Vanhoover that neither Thorax nor Spike could have any control over which their friendly proprietor could possibly see any time she stepped out the door.
Getting this posted a little later in the evening than has been my habit due to me, almost ironically, being preoccupied writing a later chapter for this story that won't be popping up for some chapters more still. It's proving to be a bit of a challenge writing it as it happens--but more on that when we get to it. I guess consider that as something as a vague teaser, then? 
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Ouch...looks like Spike and Thorax are in some deep trouble now. I honestly doubt they can keep this up...though it would be interesting if they're able to and something entirely different ruins their cover than just basic soldiers.
Well, this situation is going to be problematic. Hopefully, the two can find a way to bunker down and outwait the Guards.
Yeah... they need to skip town ASAP. The moment a fugitive makes a home for themselves they're just asking for their pursuers to catch up. Complacency, publicity and ties are how they get you, therefor you can't ever have any.
Seriously, why are they even after them? What are they planning on doing? Killing them? Imprisoning Thorax for being a Changeling and Spike for helping him?
Personally, I think Fly Leaf already knows who Spike is, she just wants to find out for herself if he is truly guilty.
I want to say that Fly Leaf, even if and when (lets face it shes gonna find out) she finds out, is going to be nice and kind to them, she might lose trust in them a bit but she'll still shelter them and what not. She seems that kind of mare.
7892265 for escaping the area they where banished from apparently.
7892265
Reading what 'Exactly' the guards are saying.
I think they ONLY want Spike to 'Save' him from the Changeling, and are saying that Thorax is bad to get Spike away from him.
Woo! Finally! Onward to to the dragon lands!
Dead or alive...
Like I said before, Thorax and Spike better abandon ship before it's to late. Great chapter also. I would actually like to see what the others think of this. The rest of the mane six. I'm curious to see how will they react to the situation.
Good chaper. I want to know why the guards are after Thorax and Spike, if they been banished? If you banished some one you don't go looking for they, unless you want to apologize.
Maybe I'm missing something?
This is not good
7892265 7892412 7892683 7893221
To clarify: Thorax is technically banished from all of Equestria (Spike is "banished" with him only informally for choosing to go with Thorax when the changeling was banished), yet the last evidence officials had of his location, he was still very much within Equestria's boundaries, heading deeper within said boundaries, leaving the possibility that he intended to remain illegally within the country when he was supposed to be evicted from it. So basically, the guards are simply insuring the banishment is enforced if they find evidence the changeling is indeed still within Equestria when he should not be. Further, Thorax, being a changeling, is still recognized (incorrectly) as an enemy to the state and a threat to ponies so the guards are also looking to ensure the safety of the public by insuring the changeling is not where he could possibly threaten them. And of course there is the hope that Spike, seen as the misled victim (again incorrectly) in all of this, can be safely recovered from the supposed threat of the changeling, so in some ways it is also a belated rescue mission for Spike.
Which I'm sure only brings up the question of: "if they really want to "rescue" Spike, then why did they permit him to leave with Thorax in the first place?" A question to be answered another day.
7893184
But it IS coming, so just sit tight. Hopefully your patience will be well rewarded in the end. 
You are not alone, so much so, I feel bad every time this desire comes up in the comments, because I know that it WILL come up...just not for some more chapters still, I'm afraid.
7893222
It sounds like you're implying I omitted Thorax's episode-canonical initial "reveal" as a changeling, when the love Flurry Heart is putting off overwhelms him to the point his disguise drops, to the rest of the ponies. This is not the case. The moment of divergence from the canonical episode is actually later, after Spike and Thorax return to the throne room, where Spike attempts to plead for Thorax's case. You could say immediately after Spike's solo-song in that same episode, but instead of swaying ponies over to his cause, it instead fails, and continues to fail from there until it leads up to them being cast out.
To be fair though, I realize now that I probably have not made this very clear in the course of the story, but as usual, I will endeavor to find an appropriate spot to clarify this in the story at the first opportune time.
7893786 Don't worry about it. I can wait. And I'm loving your story so I know I'll enjoy it.
This story makes me anxious from the tension. Well done.
Good chapter!
Can't wait to see what happens next!
7893786 that's still a case of jurisdiction, only equestrias guards can enforce the banishment where they are, outside of the empire crystal guard making an arrest is an obstruction of justice and therefore could cause major political ramifications if it where to get into the hands of equestrias enemies.
7894256
That's assuming the Crystal Empire doesn't already have Equestria's permission to carry out the search, or that the Crystal Empire truly operates as a separate entity from Equestria, and not a part of it, which I might add the show has yet to clearly establish either way. The argument could also be made that this assumes jurisdiction would even be an issue in the Equestrian world and it's particular way of managing things (seems to me forces from other cities are allowed to carry out matters in each other's affairs without protest fairly regularly), but I'm not standing by that particular thought myself. The next chapter (I believe...it might also be the one after) will also reveal the Crystal Guard is working with the cooperation of Vanhoover's own police force too, so that should soothe things over a little there too. Besides, as I see it, the Crystal Empire was the one that made the ruling, it makes sense to me that they'd be permitted to be the ones to manage it, aftermath and all.
If it helps though, there is more happening in the background of all of this that hasn't yet been clearly revealed. Hopefully that should help clear up the jurisdiction issues a bit more when it comes up a few more chapters down the road.
7894291 fair enough, i'm looking forward to if they make the dragon lands as then celestia well have a huge political mess to deal with as depending on your views/origins for spike, it could easily be considered crossing the line enough to let the dragon lord make life hell.
7893786
Well, I'm a little surprised, yes. If you hadn't told me, I wouldn't have made the connection. In large parts because those two arguments I mentioned seem to me to be a pretty big deal for why they would or wouldn't trust Thorax and even Spike.
7894620
I apologize then. I admit I had been operating on the assumption up until your comment to the contrary that it was obvious, but now that I'm aware that's not the case, I can see how it wouldn't be. I'm thinking I'll go back a tweak a thing or two in those first few chapters (again) so to convey that better, then probably be sure to repeat it again later in the story so to cover all bases for the benefit of readers.
7892683 Eh, if they cared enough to save Spike, they'd never have let him leave in the first place.
Ok bit silly to say but if you find the need or just wanna throw a monkey wrench to catch off guard I know of a idea that would make them safe for quite a while
Angry scream*!!!!
store's
No, THAT merits a dun dun dun. ;)
And when she does...
.