A Just Cause

by GJT_Productions

The Secret Passage

Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor galloped to keep up with Captain of the Guard Gibraltar as the latter sped with a pegasus escort towards the groundskeeping buildings on the castle grounds. This took the three stallions past the castle's statue gardens, and Shining Armor took a passing glance at the "Statue of Discord" in it. Once again, he wondered why Princess Celestia had obsessed over it after "Operation Whirlwind" had failed, and why the traitorous Agents of Chaos behind that operation had once worshipped in front of the statue. He was sure that it had something to do with "The Chaotic One" the Agents of Chaos had claimed to be working to release upon Equestria, but the exact connection was lost to him. And he doubted even his sister, Twilight Sparkle, would know anything about it if Celestia had never told her anything about it. He shrugged off the questions and pushed on, unaware that he would come to seriously regret his curiousity...

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The three rushing stallions stop in front of the small complex of buildings that housed the groundskeeping operations, in a secluded corner of the Canterlot castle grounds. Immediately, Shining Armor was alarmed to find none of the buildings were locked as protocol required - every single one of them had their entry doors wide open, and in at least one case the door showed signs of being bashed open!

Shining Armor shuffles beside the pegasus escort, who was briefing Captain Gibraltar on the situation: "I will have to verify the situation with the Quartermaster, but I believe from the preliminary inventory that both equipment and chemicals are missing, sir. I would estimate the thefts occurred shortly before the start of the Grand Galloping Gala last night."

"Then why didn't the Luna shift discover the thefts when they did inventory?" Captain Gibraltar asks.

"Luna shift never had chance to complete inventory, sir." the escort answers. "They were working through the night cleaning up after the mess at the Gala and rounding up loose animals from the stampede. By the time they were done, morning shift had already arrived to relieve them."

Gibraltar just returns a low hum to the explanation at first, but then gives another order: "We'll go through each building, one at a time. Lead the way, Guard."

"Yes, sir!" the pegasus escort replies with a salute. He then turns and directs his superiors toward a building labeled "Seed and Chemical Storage" over the front door, which Gibraltar enters. Once his eyes adjust to the lower light level inside the building, the Captain of the Guard sees he is surrounded by bags of grass seed and fertilizer, as well as a few manual spreader machines tucked away in the back.

"Guard, I expected a few seed and fertilizer bags to be missing because of..." the Captain begins saying toward the Upper Class pegasus escort.

"No, sir, check the secure locker, the one all the poisons are kept in!" the escort responds, Shining Armor taking a peek inside the building as well.

Gibraltar shuffles around a bit... and then a forehoof touches something metal. He steps back from it, then notices to his alarm the security locker his hoof has just touched was toppled, probably on purpose, onto the floor of the building! The door is open, its lock broken by the force of impact, and Gibraltar can see that, except for a few internal dividers, the locker is completely empty!

Gibraltar works his way back out of the building. He knew what dangerous chemicals that locker had contained - cyanide, rat poison, insecticide - and the fact that the locker appeared to have been deliberately ransacked was extremely worrying.

"All the chemicals in the security locker have been stolen. And I'm guessing that's not the only thing missing, Guard?" Gibraltar asks.

"That's correct, sir. This time, I'm going to take you to the light equipment building." the pegasus answers, pointing with a forehoof as he does so.

The Guard Upper Class pegasus escorts Captain Gibraltar and Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor over to a different building, this one labeled "Light Equipment" over the front door. Captain Gibraltar repeats the entry procedure from the previous building in this one, and this time is heard muttering various terms as he looks around.

"Sir, what's going on in there?" Shining Armor calls in from the doorway.

"I'm looking, Shining... yes, there's definitely tools missing, there's supposed to be spares but there isn't..." Gibraltar calls back.

"What's missing, sir?" Shining Armor calls again.

"There's supposed to be spares of some equipment, but there's nothing in here. The spare shovels, rakes, pitchforks... all missing. I think there are pruning shears missing, too." Gibraltar answers.

Shining Armor gives a wince toward the Upper Class pegasus upon hearing the Captain's report. The missing tools would certainly be a quick and dirty way of equipping an army without taking any of the specialized weapons from the armory, a much more difficult project to pull off on short notice. He also didn't want to think of what those unicorn rebels would want to "prune" with those missing shears.

Captain Gibraltar exits the equipment building, his worry now partly replaced by irritation at how all this had happened under his snout, particularly as the reforms implemented after Operation Whirlwind was supposed to prevent exactly this from happening.

"We're not done, sir. The heavy equipment building has items missing, too." the Upper Class pegasus states.

"But the machines in there are tuned to only be operated by specific unicorns, Guard. And even if they overrode the lock, how would they get the machines off castle grounds without being detected?" Shining Armor objects.

"I don't think he's talking about the machines, Shining. It might be the spare parts that are missing. Come on!" Gibraltar explains, beginning to trot over to the larger building labeled "Heavy Equipment Garage". Shining Armor and the pegasus Guard quickly follow in his hoofsteps...

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Although the doors to let in and out the large cutting and planting equipment - devices controlled by unicorn magic, with Twilight Sparkle and her fellow Element Bearers later having to deal with a similar contraption in Ponyville - were still shut, a smaller access door had been forced open, and it was through this door the three Guard stallions entered the larger garage building. Gibraltar turned and passed in front of the larger machines toward a small office, while Shining Armor and the pegasus Guard worked their way between the machines toward the rear of the building.

As Shining paced back and forth behind the parked machines, he felt a draft coming from what appeared to be a solid back wall. Curious, he begins rapping on the wall with a forehoof, fully hoping and expecting to find nothing for his efforts.

"Well, as I feared, there's definitely spare blades and some other parts missing... what are you doing, Shining?" Captain Gibraltar asks after squeezing his way over to where the other two stallions were.

"One second, sir..." Shining answers, repeatedly tapping at one section of wall. After a few taps, he nods, then presses his right side against that area and begins shoving. To the surprise of the other two stallions watching, the section of the wall being pushed opens into a secret passage, gently sloping downward and away from the rear of the building!

Captain Gibraltar appears absolutely flabbergasted at what he sees - the rough cut passage is too small for the heavy equipment but the ceiling is just high enough for a single pony to walk through. Shining Armor steps aside to let Gibraltar look down the passage, the section of wall that had covered its entrance having been swung aside like a door when Shining pushed it.

"We spent over a week searching the entire castle grounds for passages like this after the failure of Whirlwind! Why was this not reported?! Who searched this area?" Gibraltar exclaims.

"I believe, sir, the area of the groundskeeping buildings was covered by the party lead by Lieutenant Troilus." the pegasus Upper Class chimes in.

Captain Gibraltar blows out a sigh in response: "Then we know for sure he lied on an official report, because it was documented by him this area was all clear!"

"What do you want us to do about this, sir?" Shining Armor asks.

"I want the Upper Class pegasus to go retrieve two brass lanterns. Shining, you guard the front door and make sure nopony else comes in here until the Upper Class comes back. We don't have a choice but to investigate this new passage here." Gibraltar orders out, the simmering frustration and anger inside him reappearing in his tone of voice.

A Prince was missing, and so was a traitorous Lieutenant and some more junior staff. Also missing were very dangerous chemicals and sharp implements, certainly enough to cobble together a fighting force with. All these missing things were not adding up to anything good or helpful for the future of Equestria, and the Captain of the Guard needed answers on how to stop it as quickly as he could get them...

Comments

[Rockstar_Raccoon]

Um...
You know there is a system for adding more chapters to fics to create ongoing stories, and a system for marking a story as a sequel to another, right?