Zanzebrican Boogaloo

by MagnetBolt

Mistakes Were Made

Timber hadn’t been in the office when I got back and I didn’t feel like looking through every bar in town, so I spent a day filling out paperwork and left him a note. It was quiet and pleasant, though I was sad Black Cherry was out on business, and I got a lot done before I collapsed into my hotel room among my still-packed suitcases.

Compared to Guava’s bunk, the bed at the hotel was much softer, but less comfortable than the cot in the jungle since it lacked any company.

At least, it briefly lacked company.

I woke up at an hour that even Celestia would consider to be pretty early to somepony pounding on the door. Because I was always ready for anything it only took me like two minutes to realize something was wrong, and I tried to roll out of bed and grab the crossbow I kept on the side table.

I got tangled in the hotel sheets, my hoof hit the crossbow and knocked it to the floor, and the bolt went wild and smashed the window at the same time I did a tactical roll and took cover face-down on the carpet in the middle of the room.

The door opened, and I readied myself for an ambush by General a’L’onione’s enforcers. He’d probably sent a dozen or more henchponies at me, and I’d have to use every trick at my disposal to fight for my life.

“Looks like you had one heck of a party in here, Matty,” Timber said, putting a set of lockpicks back into his pocket. They looked much nicer than my set.

“What are you doing here?” I mumbled. I tried to stand, and the sheets around my back hooves tripped me up again. Timber caught me this time, helping me untangle myself.

“We kept missing each other,” he said, steadying me on my hooves. “I’ve got bad news and worse news. Which do you want first?”

“What about good news?”

He rubbed his chin, thinking. “Fresh out. I didn’t even have a chance to grab coffee before I came here, and you look like you need three cups just to wake up enough to appreciate my witty banter.”

“What?”

“So, bad news, turns out that Black Cherry has been working on a treaty with a’L’onione. I mean, from the perspective of international cooperation and peace it’s good news! But for us specifically, it’s pretty bad.”

“She mentioned something about that,” I said, starting to wake up enough to contribute to the conversation. “I didn’t think it was getting anywhere.”

“Well, not only was it apparently signed in secret while we weren’t looking, it’s front page news and everypony in the world found out at the same time we did.”

He held up a copy of the Nightingale, with a picture of the General signing one of the huge scrolls they liked to use as props for big events.

“Oh buck,” I muttered.

“So now he’s officially a friend of Equestria,” Timber said. “Not that we’re out of a job, since the Princess likes keeping tabs on friends even more than she likes spying on enemies, but we’ve got bigger problems, because now our job is making sure that General a’L’onione, friend and trade partner of Equestria, stays in power.”

“What about the Collectivists?”

“Princess Celestia would probably tell us we need to find some way to have them resolve their differences peacefully and leverage the treaty to get the General to the negotiation table.” Timber shrugged. “I might have already unofficially asked Canterlot, and they might have unofficially told me that I needed to clean up this mess and make sure it’s all settled quietly.”

“That could be a problem,” I said.

“How could it be a problem? We just need to go tell Guava that things have changed. I know she didn’t have any kind of real plan of attack, so they’ve just been spinning their wheels in the jungle.”

“I sort of helped them work out a plan of attack.”

“That’s good,” Timber said. “That’s just wonderful. You’re an overachiever, Matty.”

“Hey, we agreed we were going to beg forgiveness instead of asking permission! I just thought their idea of marching down the middle of main street was stupid and gave them a few small tips.”

“What kind of small tips?”

“You remember how the Serpent’s Grip attacked Kludgetown twenty years ago?”

“Yeah, they infiltrated over a long time, then all attacked at once. It only took a few dozen of them to bring the whole city to its knees and everypony in the EIS thought there were hundreds of them until it was all over and we had a chance to really investigate.”

“I sort of gave them the blueprints for that plan.”

“At least we might have time. Until they get everypony in place, they won’t do anything.” Timber started pacing. “If we know what they’re using as a signal, we can make sure they never actually attack, and take our time digging up the cells and convincing them the fight’s over.”

Outside, fireworks burst in the sky.

“Is that a celebration for the treaty?” I asked.

“I didn’t hear about any parade,” he said, slowly. “Let’s go take a look.”

---

“Oh buck,” I whispered. “Timber, tell me I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

“That depends, Matty,” he said. He pulled me behind a large cement planter before continuing. Steel bolts from a repeating crossbow made a distinctive scraping, rattling sound as they impacted the road where we’d been standing.

“It looks a lot like war has broken out,” I said.

“Okay, yeah, I see that,” Timber agreed.

“And it looks like the EUP soldiers at the embassy are siding with General a’L’onione’s forces against the Collectivists,” I said, watching a pegasus in gold trimmed armor fly over the building with the zebras firing into the street. I could just barely hear him call for their surrender from here.

“Hold on,” Timber said, looking around the corner of the concrete planter. I peeked over the top to look.

A squad of pegasi converged on the cell of Collectivist rebels across the street, smashing through the windows and dragging them outside. Within a few moments, they had them knocked out and hogtied.

“Yeah, you know what?” Timber said. “I think you’re right, Matty. But you know when you really look at this from another angle, we’re golden!”

“Golden. How is this golden?”

“We’re on both sides! No matter who wins, we’re going to come out on top!”

“Timber, if the Collectivists win, we’ll have helped overthrow an Equestrian ally! They’ll never be able to officially support them after our army tried to stop the rebellion! And if the Collectivists lose, they’ll be captured and the General is going to find out that we provoked the rebellion, and the treaty will be revoked, and either way we’ll be blamed personally!”

“That doesn’t seem likely--”

“It doesn’t seem likely except the rebels know our bucking names, Timber!”

“You know now that you point it out it would have been a good idea to use some kind of classy nom de guerre, huh? Hey, you live and learn. Bet we could make some kinda pithy friendship lesson out of that.”

“Do you ever offer useful advice?”

“Hm. You’re asking for a lot here, Matty. Useful advice… how about we ask somepony where Guava is?”

“Who are we gonna ask? You think we can just stop in a corner store and they’ll have a bucking map?”

“Actually, I was thinking we had some zebras over there who might want to talk.” He pointed to the zebras the EUP soldiers had tied up.

I raised my eyebrows.

Timber stood up and walked over to the soldiers. “Hey, great work guys. Really, smooth operation. Think we can borrow one of them for a few minutes?” Timber flashed his EIS badge and smiled.

---

“So,” I said, sitting on the zebra’s chest. “I didn’t think it was a great idea, but it was better than going house-to-house. All of you seem to look to her as a leader, so I figure you’d want to keep track of Guava, am I right?”

He mumbled something through the burlap sack over his head.

“I know. You’re a collective group with no leader, just ideals that you all work individually towards as equals with no hierarchy. I know what the rhetoric is like.” I shrugged. “I’m not saying she’s officially a leader, okay?”

The zebra struggled, but the ropes didn't loosen even a little.

“Timber, I gotta admit, you’re good at tying knots.”

“It’s easier with telekinesis,” he said. “I can barely manage a square knot with my hooves.”

“Can you pass me the bucket?” I asked.

Timber gave me a sloshing bucket full of water. The zebra’s struggles got stronger.

---

“It wasn’t that bad,” I said, as we approached the hotel we’d be pointed towards.

“It’s not pleasant,” Timber countered. “I mean sure, waterboarding sounds like something fun you do at the beach, but it’s definitely not my idea of a good time.”

“I agree it’s not how I’d spend a weekend, but there’s no real harm done. You ever seen what the griffons do?”

“I try and forget what I know about what the griffons do, Matty. Don’t remind me.”

Two zebras stood at something somewhat like attention at the front door, though any EUP officer would have chewed them out for how sloppy their stance was.

“Hey gents,” Timber said. “We’re just here to see Guava. She’s upstairs, right?”

They nodded silently but didn’t move to allow him access to the door.

“Come on, guys. This is important. We’re unarmed, we just wanna talk, okay?”

The silence became uncomfortable, then one pushed the door open and nodded for us to get inside.

“Thank you,” Timber sighed.

If my hotel was like a Las Pegasus resort set on the beach, this one was a dump a few miles outside of Reino. The walls were cracked and it looked like somepony had tried to repaint and given up halfway and tried again with another color.

“Old crumbling hotel, a little pony came here, seeking the zebra?”

Guava stood at the top of a flight of stairs, looking down at us. The mare could look down at people like an expert. It probably came with the whole revolutionary ideal thing.

“Hey, hot stuff,” Timber said. “We need to talk.”

She narrowed her eye, then tossed her head, motioning for us to follow.

Upstairs was a hallway lined with windows on one side, looking out over the street, and doors leading to rooms on the other wall. From here I could see a lot of smoke. A worrying amount of the city seemed to be on fire.

Guava was waiting for us in the last room, a suite where she had a map of the city laid out on a table.

“Oh,” I said, once I got a look at what was behind her. “You brought all the weapons from the cache. The illegal ones. The ones we told you not to use.”

“Calm down, Matty, if they’re here, they’re not being used,” Timber said. “She probably just wanted to turn them over to us in person. Right, Guava?”

The zebra shrugged.

“See?” Timber smiled like she’d actually confirmed what he said. “You shouldn’t be so suspicious of ponies, Matty. It’s rude to assume the worst.”

“The pony came here, on this revolution day, to talk to this one?”

This was going to be an awkward discussion. I looked at Timber.

“Since I’m bad with ponies, why don’t you explain?” I suggested.

“Guava you know I’ve been looking out for you, and I gotta say I really like you and your Collectivist buddies. I think you’ve got the right idea - one supreme leader has just not worked out the last couple of times here and maybe it’s time to give something else a go, right?” He smiled. “Now the problem is, I’m not the only pony involved. It turns out that there might be a little issue.”

“Meddling as ever, the pony makes excuses, always a problem,” Guava muttered.

“Okay, I mean a big issue.” He pulled the message we received out of his shirt pocket and put it on the table. “Foreign Affairs has been working on a treaty and it looks like it’s all coming to a head. So long story short, hon, we gotta call this little operation off,” Timber said. “We just picked the worst time, you know?”

“We didn’t know about the treaty,” I said. “It was all negotiated in secret.”

“So we are betrayed, ponies show their true colors like a snake sheds scales,” Guava said, slowly, through clenched teeth.

“Here’s what we can do,” Timber said. “You have to have some kind of recall or stop signal ready. We’ll put out the word to get away, go back to camp, and I’ll keep the army off your back until we can broker some kinda peace between you and the General. We can probably get some of your demands pushed through. We’re in a pretty good position with this treaty.”

“Like a rockslide we fall, upon oppressive evil, we cannot be stopped!”

“You can’t stop them?!” I looked at Timber.

“Guava, honey, things are gonna go bad. We know this means a lot to you-”

The zebra swung a crossbow up to point at us.

“Okay, maybe it means more than I thought.”

“Back to a corner, even the most timid prey, becomes a fighter!”

“Let’s calm down,” Timber said, backing up. “We’re not going to--”

I grabbed the crossbow from Guava’s hooves while she was distracted by Timber. It was one of those really cool moves where you slap somepony’s fetlock and they lose their grip and you spin it around- look, you’d know it if you saw it. I’d practiced it in front of a mirror at least a hundred times.

“We’re going to talk like reasonable people,” I said.

Guava looked at the crossbow in my hoof, unimpressed

“Hesitation kills, dare you strike me down swiftly, you are no killer.”

Guava picked up the Griffonian flechette cannon. Timber and I bolted for the door at the same moment, fighting to be the first pony out of danger. We collided in the bottleneck and bounced out into the hallway, fleeing from the door as the cannon roared behind us. I’d dropped the crossbow in my panic like an idiot.

The wall erupted with steel spikes, flechettes tearing through the material like it wasn’t even there. I grabbed Timber and shoved him to the ground, the wave of destruction passing over us, the windows in the hallway exploding into a storm of glass shards. I held him down and waited, doing a rough count in my head. The roar of the cannon tapered off, and I pulled Timber to his hooves.

“Those things take ages to reload!” I yelled, my ears still ringing.

Ages, in this case, meant like, fifteen seconds for a trained crew. That might not sound like much but if you were in a situation where something you fired at wasn’t harmless after one volley, those fifteen seconds were going to feel like fifteen years.

The guards that had been waiting at the door downstairs decided this was an excellent time to investigate. I assume they were smart enough to keep their heads down and wait for the explosions to stop. You never wanted to walk right into the middle of a fight. I saw them trot out of the stairwell, weapons at the ready.

I was unarmed, and while I could probably have taken them out - the EIS doesn’t offer any kind of organized martial arts training for its agents but I took Krav Pega classes in my spare time - the first thing you learned about self-defense was that the best way to defend yourself was to not be in danger in the first place.

I jumped out of the window, getting a few scrapes in the process. I got control of my descent before hitting the ground, and looked up just in time to see Timber follow my lead, leaping out and landing on the awning below, the fabric holding him until the zebras got to the windows and fired out, missing him with their crossbows but tearing holes in the straining fabric that weakened it enough to rip completely free and deposit Timber on the ground in a heap.

“I think they’re unhappy with the plan,” he said. “Also I think my hip is never gonna be the same. I’m too old for this.”

I helped him up. “You’re not that much older than I am.”

“You wouldn’t believe what drinking does to your body.”

Something sharp and deadly bounced off the cobblestones next to his hooves.

“I think their aim is getting better,” he said. I grabbed his ear and yanked him into an alleyway, getting us off the street.

“We’ll go back to the Embassy, tell them we tried to stop things, and let the EUP soldiers take care of things,” I said.

“That’s a great plan, Matty,” he said.

Then we got to the other side of the alley, looked down the street, and I saw my plan fall apart like a cloud sculpture in a hurricane.

“That’s a huge mob.”

“I guess the Collectivists had a lot more support than I thought,” I said, quietly.

“And that giant plume of smoke looks like it’s coming from our Embassy.”

I nodded wordlessly.

“I changed my mind, Matty. It’s a terrible plan.”

“Do you know any way we could get to the port?” I asked. “Maybe we could get a ship.”

“Sure. We just have to go through the angry mob. The problem is, I’m pretty sure most of the ponies who would be on the boats are in said mob, and I’m not big on nautical expertise. I barely know my port from my starboard.”

And then I remembered a fast little ship kept somewhere very safe.

“I have a plan,” I said, turning to where the palace loomed in the distance.

“Look, Matty, no offense, but your plans keep going a little poorly. How about you let me come up with the next one?”

“I know where we can get a ship,” I said, suddenly getting inspired.

“You’d have to work hard to convince me.”

“What if I told you we’re gonna go to that bar you like?”

“I’m convinced. You’re very persuasive.”

---

He seemed a lot less happy while we were trotting through a dank tunnel that smelled like it had once been part of the sewer system. If it wasn’t for Timber’s magic, I would have had to find a torch - if there were lights built into the dank space, I couldn’t find them.

“When you said we were going to the bar, this isn’t what I had in mind,” he said.

“I let you take a bottle of rum,” I reminded him.

“The bartender let me take a bottle of rum in return for letting him go after he told us where the secret passage was,” he corrected. “I’ll be honest, would have let him go anyway. He makes a great Old Fashioned. How’d you even know this place existed? I never found it and I’ve been here for years.”

“At the palace, General a’L’onione mentioned that the last ruler had a drinking problem and they had secret passages to the bars near the palace,” I explained. “And I realized that they’d want to have ponies stationed there at all times, like how in Canterlot they always keep a couple EIS agents on duty in the donut shop Princess Celestia likes.”

“And the bar we met at was full of secret police and spies,” Timber said.

“Right, because even if the new guy isn’t drinking in secret, you’re gonna want to have an excuse to drink on the job, and a bar that’s been heavily vetted over and over again by the previous administration is the safe place to do it.”

“Still, you’d think they’d have something more classy than something right out of a dungeon.”

“Not much of a secret if you have to do a ton of construction,” I pointed out. “Renovating a bar is one thing, but the tunnel? It’s a lot easier to just send some ponies down and wall off a section of the sewers, wash everything down so your great ruler isn’t walking in fertilizer, and call it a day.”

“Have you given any thought to how we’re going to explain this when we get back?” Timber nudged my shoulder and pointed his hornlight to where spiral stairs, obviously not original to the sewer passage, occupied one corner.

I took point up the tight stairwell, and on the landing above I could see a door set into the wall, the stairs passing through a rough hole in the floor.

“No guards yet,” I whispered.

“Good work,” Timber whispered back. “Very good observing, Matty!”

“Be ready for anything,” I hissed, pushing the door open.

The moment I stuck my head through the gap to check for traps, there was a crashing sound like very expensive pottery hitting somepony’s skull and I was abruptly on the ground. It took me a few seconds to realize that the shards of uncomfortable ceramic I was lying in had been a vase, and the throbbing pain in my head was a concussion from being hit with it. I would have figured it out sooner but, like I said, I had a concussion.

“Oh stars! Agent Matrix?! What are you doing here? I was worried you got caught in the fire at the Embassy!”

I looked up at the elite enemy agent who had managed to down me.

“Black Cherry?” I asked. “Are you a master of martial arts?”

“No?” She sounded confused and looked worried.

“You should really go to my dojo. You’ve got a lot of talent.”

She helped me to my hooves.

“Oh hey, you’re not dead!” Timber stepped out of the doorway. “Great to see you, Cherry. We’re thinking of taking a few days off, catching a cruise, see the world. You know. Flee from the danger.”

Cherry narrowed her eyes, and even through my concussed haze, I could tell she was suspicious.

“What did you two do?” Black Cherry demanded. She looked a lot less friendly now, despite the oddly formal dress she was wearing. “I leave you alone for a little while so I can get this treaty signed, and there’s a revolution in the streets!”

I looked at Timber.

“Would you believe me if I said we had nothing to do with it?” I asked.

“No!”

“It was worth a shot. Look, we tried to stop it, and Guava didn’t want to listen.”

“So you’re on a first name basis with the rebel leader,” Black Cherry said, flatly.

“I’m not sure she has a last name,” I admitted.

“Wonderful. Why am I not surprised the EIS has bucked up something we’ve been planning for months?” She sighed.

“That’s a very nice dress,” I said.

“Flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere,” Black Cherry said. “But thank you. I was having brunch with Equestria’s newest ally before everything went to Tartarus. I’m told our guards got everpony in the embassy evacuated to a cruise liner, but I was already cut off and you two were missing.”

“A cruise liner?” Timber groaned. “Matty if we’d tried for the port we could have sailed home in comfort!”

“You know your way around the palace, right?” I asked. “Like to that private airship I saw the other night?”

“You’re going to steal it,” Black Cherry sighed.

“That was the plan, yes,” I admitted. “Do you have a better one?”

“General a’L’onione was preparing it for launch to take me and a few of the more important guests here at the palace to somewhere safe. We don’t need to steal it, we just have to ask nicely.”

---

“What do you mean, no?” I demanded, shocked.

“I am afraid that my fast little ship is, as I have suggested, a little ship. I cannot carry everypony who wishes to escape.” General a’L’onione sighed. “I am sorry, but if I make an exception for you, then how could I answer to my own people who would also wish passage? They have infinitely more right to my protection and I must even refuse them.”

“You mean you’re going to save your own skin and buck everyone else!” I accused.

“Of course not,” he said. “I am saving my three wives and culturally important artifacts.”

I flapped my wings a few times to hover up and get a look over his shoulder where several burly guards were loading crates of bits and gems onto the ship.

“You’re looting your own palace,” I corrected.

“It will be expensive running a government in exile,” he said. “I will of course be happy to tell your Princess that there are still some of her citizens here in need of rescue. Perhaps she will be more motivated to lend aid to the rightful ruler, hm? If not, I will still be able to live in comfort for some time until the fires have burned out and I can hire an army large enough to retake what I have lost.”

“I’m getting on that ship,” I snarled, giving him my most fearsome Tiger Face, a technique used to demoralize and frighten ponies into submission.

“I think not,” he said, turning away. Obviously, he was terrified. “You two.” He motioned to some of the guards standing by. “Take these three outside and make sure they don’t come back. The rebels are already coming over the walls, so be quick about it.”

“Wait, what about me?” Black Cherry gasped.

“I am concerned that if you were to come along, you may give a less than positive report to your superiors,” the General said. “If circumstances were different, I would have been pleased to share your company on this voyage.”

I launched myself at him, and promptly got knocked out of the air by one of his guards, tackled right in midair. If I wasn’t so focused I would have been able to dodge it.

“Get off!” I yelled, kicking at him.

“Matty, stop,” Timber said, carefully.

“Why the buck would I--”

“Because if you don’t stop, you’re going to get shot,” he hissed. I looked up to see the second guard training their crossbow right between my eyes.

---

“So when they’re not looking, you sweep the legs of the one on the left, and I’ll take the one on the right,” I whispered. “Then Cherry can grab a crossbow and--”

“You know they speak Equestrian, right?” Timber asked. “They can hear you making this plan even while they’re deciding which shed they want to shoot us behind.”

“They might not speak Equestrian.”

“The General was giving them orders in Equestrian. Probably for our benefit so we’d know we were going to be executed.”

I frowned and looked back at the guards who were forcing us through the palace. “Do you really speak Equestrian?”

They nodded.

“So you heard me planning all that?”

They nodded again.

“...and when I called you incompetent?”

They nodded slowly and a little angrily.

“Buck,” I muttered, turning back around to get on with the march to our deaths. “I really shouldn’t have been calling them names.”

“We’ll add that to the official operations manual when we get back,” Timber assured me. “If we get back.”

He pulled the bottle of rum out of his pocket. It couldn’t possibly have fit inside.

“Hey, maybe we could share a friendly drink?” He offered, looking back at the guards.

The guards shouted something that didn’t need to be translated, and we stopped.

“Maybe at least let me have a drink as a last request?” Timber was still smiling, somehow.

We were in a courtyard between one side of the palace and the outside wall, and I could have waxed poetically about the way the sun shone down from above into that narrow space, the heat radiating off the bricks as we were made to line up against the wall, the looks the two guards had when they raised their weapons.

The roar when the Giffonian Flechette Cannon opened up on them.

“Feathering buck--” I jumped at the noise and the sight. The guards weren’t an issue anymore, but we were left with a bigger problem as a certain very attractive zebra stomped into the sunlight, flanked by rebels that were, if nothing else, using appropriate trigger discipline and stances like I’d taught them.

“I’m so happy to see you!” Timber said. “You wouldn’t believe what the last few hours have been like--”

“Death comes on swift wings for all the enemies of the revolution!” Guava said. The barrel of the flechette cannon swept across us, but there was no roar of death. Not yet.

“Guava, I know things haven’t gone like we wanted,” I said. “You know this wasn’t ever the plan. You don’t really want to hurt us.”

“You two betrayed us! To my foe behind my back, but never again.”

“That’s not true,” I protested. “I’ve always been on your side. We had something special. We had no idea that there was a treaty in the works! And even if we did, General a’L’onione just tried to have us killed. We’re obviously not on his side.”

Guava gave me an appraising look. “Love is a sharp knife. You drive it into my back and we both are hurt.”

Timber snorted. “Matty, I’m impressed. We’re not supposed to get attached to intelligence assets in that way but I can’t blame you.”

“This isn’t the time to pat me on the back,” I hissed.

“I might not be able to congratulate you later.” He leaned in closer. “Distract her for a second. I’ve got an idea.”

“How am I supposed to distract her?”

“You two have a very special connection and I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

I stepped forwards, freezing when the rebels raised their crossbows.

“Guava, things don’t have to be complicated. We can work together, stop General a’L’onione from leaving, call the whole treaty off because he tried to have Equestrians killed, and we can paint you as a big hero. We can show off the weapon cache, make up some kind of story about finding it, and before you know it, we’ll be laughing about all these misunderstandings and how it all almost went bad.”

I leaned in and kissed her. I figured that’d be much more distracting than just a speech, and if nothing else I’d get a kiss out of it before I got blown apart by a cannon that weighed more than I did.

Our lips parted, and she slapped me.

“Ow,” I muttered.

“Thanks for the distraction, Matty,” Timber said. “It gave me time to grab these.”

He held up a few small metal pins.

“What are those?” Cherry asked.

“These are the arming pins for the Tanglehoof grenades they’re wearing,” Timber said, pointing.

Guava’s eyes went wide and she turned to the other rebels with her, yelling something that got cut off by a wet splat as a half-dozen of the crowd-control grenades went off at once. They’d been banned after they found out what quick-hardening foamed glue did if it got in your nose and mouth.

I had to fly up to avoid the rush of adhesive. Timber shoved Black Cherry away.

He wasn’t so lucky himself. The paste anchored his hooves to the ground, foaming up and crawling halfway up his legs.

“Tartarus,” he swore. “I thought we’d be out of the blast radius...”

“We’ll get you out of there--” I said, grabbing for him. He shoved me away with his magic.

“Don’t,” he warned. “You’ll just get stuck too. Get out of here. I’m stuck until this sets and starts breaking apart, and that’s gonna be hours. You have a ship to catch.”

“Timber...”

“Get Black Cherry out of here,” he whispered. “She doesn’t deserve to be caught up in this mess.”

I nodded. “I will. I promise.”

“Good!” He smiled and held up his bottle of rum. ”Safe travels, Matty.”

I grabbed Black Cherry and carried her over the mess, trying to avoid Guava’s glare, a look hot enough to set my feathers on fire if it lingered too long. I managed to meet it just long enough to mouth the word ‘sorry’ before I had to turn away.

---

The gangplank was already up when Cherry and I got back to the ship, the slim vessel rising into the sky.

General a’L’onione waved from the deck.

“That mule,” I hissed.

Cherry groaned. “What are we going to do now? We don’t have anywhere to go, and the rebels are right behind us!”

I cleared my throat and flapped my wings.

“Oh,” she said.

“Just hang on,” I warned her. “I don’t really carry other ponies much. I’m more of a solo act.”

Cherry nodded, and she wrapped her hooves around my neck as I took to the air. And almost lost it entirely a second later. The Foreign Affairs office definitely needed to get their agents to get a little more exercise.

“What was that?” She asked, sharply.

“Did I say that out loud?”

“Yes, you did. I can see why Guava wasn’t swayed by your charms.”

“Well, uh… Just keep hanging on!” I looped, trying to build up speed. I’m not going to try to explain how to fly, because it’s something that just comes to me naturally, but the important thing is that if you want to get moving with any kind of heavy load, you need to start out going fast enough that you won’t stall when you pull up.

Black Cherry was a heavy load. Not an unattractive one, mind you, but after the way my last relationship had ended, I wasn’t looking for anything yet.

“What are you doing?” Cherry asked. “We’re too high!”

“I can’t catch it just climbing,” I said. “He wasn’t kidding about it being a fast ship.”

“So how are you--aaaaaAAAAAA!” She started screaming for some reason when I snapped my wings back and went into a dive. I wasn’t nearly as fast as a Wonderbolt, but there was no way some floating bag of gas was going to outrun me at full crash dive speed.

Don’t let the name scare you. I didn’t actually crash into the deck of the airship. I crashed into the gas envelope. It was much softer. We bounced, and Black Cherry screamed again when she lost her grip on me and started falling.

I grabbed a rope with one hoof, Cherry with the other, and swung down to the deck of the ship, finding another soft landing thanks to the guard that had been standing on the railing.

“That was very impressive,” General a’L’onione said. He even did the slow clap to let me know he was being sarcastic. Several empty bottles of wine sat at his hooves, as he’d apparently already been celebrating his escape.

“Tie the guard up with the rope,” I told Cherry. “I’ll handle this.”

“If you were considering a new career as a pirate, you would no doubt be excellent at it,” the General said. “I haven’t seen such swashbuckling since I attended an Equestrian production of The Sea Hawk. A wonderful play. It’s a pity you’ll never get to see it.”

“I’m more a fan of Daring Do,” I said.

The General drew a curved sword that was unbalanced, covered in jewels, and perhaps most importantly, razor-sharp.

“I’ll make sure to look that up when I get to Canterlot,” he said. “Now, get off my ship.”

He lunged. The General clearly hadn’t actually been in combat for a long time, because he was slow. He knew what he was doing, but his brain was faster than his body, and he had forgotten about the wine bottles. One rolled under his hooves, and he slipped, stumbling.

I dodged the clumsy sword swipe, grabbed his hoof, twisted my whole body, and this time, everything came together, aided by the General’s near-fall.

The sword clattered to the deck as he lost his grip, and he flipped over my back thanks to his own momentum. I knew I just needed a little more practice with that move.

He hit the railing at the side of the deck and fell overboard. I waved, and he vanished into the clouds below us. I probably should have tried to save him. It’s what Princess Celestia would have wanted. If I’d asked permission to throw him overboard I’d never have gotten it.

I’d have to beg forgiveness instead.

“So, anypony know how to fly this thing?” I asked.

The guard Cherry had tied up nodded.

“Great!” I smiled. “You get to stay onboard.”

Comments

[ponygrad]

“I’ll make sure to look that up when I get to Canterlot,” he said. “Now, get off my ship.”

Just a hop skip and a jump

[djthomp]

He held up a copy of the Nightingale , with a picture of the General signing one of the huge scrolls they liked to use as props for big events.

Oops.

Guava picked up the Griffonian flechette cannon. Timber and I bolted for the door at the same moment, fighting to be the first pony out of danger. We collided in the bottleneck and bounced out into the hallway, fleeing from the door as the cannon roared behind us. I’d dropped the crossbow in my panic like an idiot.

Dang, so much for the shipping. It was fun while it very briefly lasted.

Wow, this second coup is going really well, too bad they burned their bridges with it immediately after helping it succeed.

And then I remembered a fast little ship kept somewhere very safe.

Hey, there it is. If we can't have shipping at least we can have airships.

That's an appropriately karmic ending considering the method in which the general was having people exiled.