A Method to his Madness

by Luna-tic Scientist

18 -- The dark knight

Time passed in the slow and unknowable way that it did when you had no access to a clock. The light level was a constant, comfortable twilight: bright enough to see clearly by, yet dim enough to sleep in should he ever feel tired. Neighmann had a feeling that he'd been in here for days or months; that this was all he'd ever known. Ears attuned to the faintest whisper and eyes hungry for any movement, it was Luna he noticed first.

The Night Princess was standing up, staring at the just visible main door with ears pricked forward. Any sign of distress was gone, instead she was... you couldn't call it a smile, exactly, more the toothy grin you'd see on a big cat; all business and no pleasure. Then she did something odd, jamming the tip of her horn into the corner between the door and wall nearest the detention block exit. Tentatively, Neighmann did the same, and was startled to hear voices, faint and almost intelligible. His eyes widened and he almost laughed. Direct bone conduction; at least we can talk now.

He opened his mouth to speak, hesitating when Luna shook her head slightly. The Princess started to breathe deeply, in through her nose and out through her mouth, each breath deeper than the last. One final inhalation that made her ribs starkly visible through blue fur, then she opened her mouth and screamed. Neighmann flinched, but there was almost nothing, just a thin, high-pitched whine at the limit of his hearing.

Staring at the obvious effort on Luna's face, the muscles of her neck standing out like cords, he suddenly realised what she was doing. The vast majority of the sound was being made in the high ultrasonic, and all he could hear was some faint subharmonic down in the audible range. Something left over from the Nightmare? Neighman's ears flicked back for a moment, then relaxed. And who is she calling to?

Luna, panting slightly, stepped back and looked at the door expectantly. A few seconds later it opened, a battered but cheerful looking Chirr backing down the corridor, dragging an unconscious unicorn with his teeth. Parts of the chiropt's fur looked singed, but the Day Guard was in worse shape. His eyes were rolled back in his head and a little trickle of blood was running out of each ear. Neighmann looked at Luna, suddenly glad of the sound proofing between the cells. She rolled an eye in his direction and winked.

Chirr did something to a control panel and all the cell doors popped open. Luna was the first out, two long-legged strides and she was standing in front of the Night Guard, staring down at him and frowning. "I ordered you to stay at the Institute and await my arrival; were my instructions not clear?" Glittering lights were filling the Princess' mane and tail, changing them into something more than mere hair, while light flowed down her horn to cover her body in a fine web-work of violet radiance. The first lattice of light sank into her body, then was joined by another and another.

Neighmann could feel a little tickle in the centre of his head, the signature of a building arcane charge. The exact spells were not familiar, but the fundamental design matched that from the shielding around the Monster Room. Magic to absorb physical force, magic to shunt aside electromagnetic or particle radiation, magic to blunt the effects of hostile spellstuff. The difference was in the scale and density of the magic: Luna was putting on the arcane equivalent of an aircarrier battle group.

"No, mistress. Your orders were perfectly clear." Chirr jumped to attention, hooves slamming down on the stone floor, and looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Your Highness was gone too long for a simple recovery operation, so I took the initiative."

"And what would you have done if, instead of a single unicorn, you had encountered my sister?"

"Considering the circumstances, you would have had somepony to talk to while on the moon." Chirr said this with a perfectly straight face, gaze fixed on a point over Luna's withers. "Mistress."

The Princess' ears twitched and for an instant her expression softened. "I expect my orders to be obeyed, Sergeant Chirr."

"Yes, ma'm, but it's Corp--"

"I am not in the habit of making mistakes, Sergeant!"

Despite Luna's harsh tone, Chirr's muzzle twitched with the effort of suppressing a smile. "Yes, ma’am, understood." He twitched again, and Neighmann could see the battle going on behind his eyes, a war that the chiropt was clearly losing. "How was your inspection of the detention block, Princess?"

"Satisfactory," she said haughtily, then lowered her head to brush muzzles with Chirr. "Thank you, Sergeant. I will not forget this."

Chirr's face finally lost the battle and broke into a huge grin that showed enough sharp dentition to make Neighmann shiver. "The honour is all mine."

Luna nodded in return, and trotted towards the door. "Come, we should leave. Director, I need to examine your mate."

"Do you think you can do anything?" Neighmann said, a wild hope building in his chest. Libi, oh please come back to me, Libi.

"I caught a glimpse of this plague in Celestia's head, and it is hauntingly familiar... but I need to carry out a detailed examination to be sure." She bared her teeth in a rictus grin. "This is not something I can do with my sister. Changing a pony's personality requires constant influence, especially at the start. Eventually the changes become permanent, requiring the most drastic of measures to reverse." Luna fell silent, her ears lowered at a painful memory.

Neighmann had a sudden premonition as to what Luna was talking about. "You... you are talking about the Nightmare?"

"Yesssss..." The word was a long, drawn out hiss. "We thought we were on top of the world, back then. Discord had been imprisoned, our people were finally free of his tyranny. How little we knew of how the universe worked." Luna laughed, a bitter, quiet sound. "Discord left me a little present. It was slow, taking millennia to fully manifest -- much slower than he had in mind, I'm sure, but the Elements worked well, back then -- but when my sister finally realised the truth... The change was complete, so tightly linked with my mind that separation was impossible for our limited knowledge of the Elements. So she made a choice and banished me to the moon for a thousand years. She needed all that time to breed stronger unicorns."

Celestia had a eugenics program?! Luna's last words were said with a shocking casualness. Later, ancient history can wait. "This seems a lot faster, and it spreads," Neighmann said, casting a sidelong glance at the long-legged Princess. She was in a steady, ground-eating trot that forced him into a canter to keep up.

"Discord has refined his methods. He knows we can beat him head on, so he returned to his old tactics of sitting in the background and pulling at the threads of the world. Quite how, I don't know -- this was the reason I wanted to talk to you."

Neighmann nodded, beginning to get a little out of breath. On the other side of Luna, Chirr was loping along like it was a gentle stroll. "I can show you the data, but the only possible conclusion is that Discord is out. Our instruments have been lying to us for weeks."

===

They reached Neighmann's aircar without incident; the few Day Guards still within the lower levels of the Palace scattered at the group's approach.

Neighmann popped the doors, moving to the passenger side when Chirr made a bee-line for the driver's stall. "Princess, do you...?" He gestured to the front stall, resigning himself to the cramped afterthought of the rear stall.

Luna peered down at the sleek vehicle. "I'd have to amputate your legs to get you in that foal's compartment. Very chivalrous, but don't be a fool. Chirr, fly this thing as fast as it will go. Do not slow for anything or anypony."

"Yes, Princess," the chiropt called, already running a hoof over the touch panel. Somewhere inside the aircar a turbine started to whine and Neighmann hastily got in, the vehicle bobbing slightly as its levitator powered up. The doors slammed shut with a pulse of violet magic, catching a few of Neighmann's tail hairs, then he sank into the padded stall floor as Chirr gunned the engine.

They had barely cleared the walls when the smoky darkness of the night sky abruptly turned a pale pink, the low resonating drone of a vast, crystalline bell sending vibrations through his entire body.

"Ha! Looks like somepony was paying attention, after all." Chirr did something to the controls and the aircar curved forward in its transition to forward flight.

Neighmann went cold inside. He'd seen this before, but only during the once every five years 'army day', where various parts of the Equestrian military did a combination air show and firepower demonstration. "The Palace's force field, we're trapped -- Chirr, what are you doing? You have to stop!"

"You heard the Princess, I'm not stopping for anything. Hold onto your tail!" Chirr hunched up in his stall, hooves still trying to eke another few metres per second out of the labouring turbine.

Neighmann's ears folded back and he tensed in a futile effort to forestall the impact, but nothing happened. A section of the force shell directly ahead of the aircar abruptly vanished and they were through with only the slightest of jolts. He started to breathe again, only to flinch at the sudden appearance of Princess Luna outside his window.

She looked irritated and mouthed something that looked like 'too slow', then her horn glowed and violet fire blossomed over Neighmann, Chirr and every surface of the aircar. He suddenly felt weightless, then the world seemed to accelerate to a mad pace, even while the airspeed indicator read zero. Luna flew like it was no effort at all, but the slope of Aither-Erebos ran out in seconds and within moments they were dodging the taller towers of Canterlot city.

Neighmann had no idea how fast they were travelling, but it seemed only a few breaths before the violet glow disappeared, allowing Chirr to drop the aircar onto the hospital's priority roof landing pads and tuck it in next to the ambulance hangars. Shakily stepping out of the vehicle, Neighmann got his first proper look at the city.

It was far worse than before. Smoke was curling up from a dozen spots, and there was the distant sound of many voices raised in anger. In one or two spots there were little flickers of light in the pastel colours of unicorn magic. Discord must be rubbing his mismatched paws in glee, Neighmann thought. I only hope that Libi is still here, we'll never find her out in all that chaos. It had only been a day since he'd seen her last, but with all the changes it seemed like he'd been dropped into a distant, dystopian future. The mournful howl of a siren started up somewhere out of sight, and above it all the bulk of the Palace squatted, half hidden behind the glowing shell of its force field.

"We will fix it," Luna said grimly, standing next to him, "and it will be better than ever before. Then I will dedicate myself to putting an end to Discord, once and for all."

Neighmann nodded dumbly, unable to shake the idea that he was looking at a vision of future Equestria. We will fall apart, becoming either frightened loners or paranoid isolationists. Our cities will be wrecked by arson or vandalism, nopony willing to lift a hoof to help another.

"Princess?" Chirr said tentatively, his big ears twitching and searching the building below them. "How sure are you about not being susceptible to the infection that claimed your sister -- would it be better if I went in and pulled her out for you?"

Luna froze, one hoof in the air, then lowered her head to stare at the chiropt. "I will not put others in harm's way to protect myself." She closed her eyes for a few seconds, waving Chirr into silence when he tried to speak. "There are precious few ponies within the building; the risk will be minimal, especially as Celestia apparently took some time to become affected."

"Are you willing to bet the future of Equestria on that, your Highness?" Chirr asked the question quietly and with deference, but Luna jerked as if struck.

"I take your point. Very well, bring Equilibrium to the roof and I will work on her here. I am similarly... convinced of your own immunity to this malady." Chirr's wings fluttered with unconscious nerves, but he nodded. "Do not dally; I will be following your progress. If it looks like you have deviated or been waylaid I will come for you." Glimmers of blue light danced around her earpiece. "Can you hear me?"

Chirr nodded, then turned to Neighmann. "I've met Libi several times -- do you remember where she was?"

===

Chirr listened with half an ear to Neighmann's rushed description of his mate's location, nodding absently as he pulled the tools of his trade from the slim conformal panniers just behind his wing roots. First the overshoes -- thick metal things with rubber bases that gripped his hooves with spring clamps when he stepped into them, then the slim blades that attached to the stubby clawed 'thumb' on each wing. These last were similar to pegasi feather blades, although with a more slender aspect as they didn't act as part of his wings' flight surfaces.

Neighmann trailed to a halt, seemingly mesmerised when Chirr waggled his thumbs to settle the weapons; in the dim light atop the hospital they were practically invisible with their black coatings, only showing their presence by the faint glint of light from razor edges. "Do you think you will need all that?" he asked weakly.

"Hope not," Chirr grunted, then glanced at Luna. "Princess, how much force am I allowed to use?" What am I going to do if cornered in those confined spaces? Can't just fly away... he thought, half wishing that he had kept his mouth shut. Rousting out a few drunken ponies is one thing, but nopony here has any choice in the matter.

"As much as it takes to bring Equilibrium to me. If sacrifices have to be made, so be it."

"Yes, your Highness, I understand." Chirr swallowed, a sudden bout of nervousness making him shiver as the unreality of the situation hit him. A solo mission from the Mistress, just wait until the rest of the unit hears about this! No pressure... he successfully suppressed an unconscious whinny, then stamped a hind hoof in salute. I just wish it was outside, where I can out-fly anything with feathers. A quick nod to Neighmann and he was away, silent on his rubber-coated shoes.

The inside of the hospital was dark; the main power was out and some enterprising soul had taken it upon themselves to smash every emergency light they could find. Two turns down the access ramp and it was too dark to see more than vague and threatening shapes in the gloom. Chirr paused, ears twitching. Somewhere a pony was sobbing, long, drawn-out cries of a despair so deep it was almost unbearable. Something about the noise made the chiropt's fur stand on end; it was more disturbing than the distant screams and curses from the street outside.

Other, more random, noises filtered up from the depths of the building: the breaking of glass and the scraping of something heavy over a stone floor, the rapid drum-beat of hooves at a gallop and once a single scream, suddenly silenced. "Right," he muttered, then closed his eyes and pulled at the special set of muscles in his neck that had no analogue in the throat of any other pony clade.

Chirr sang in the high ultrasonic, his hearing chopped into little packets of sound as his middle ear decoupled in time with each carefully modulated click. The blackness disappeared, replaced with a sense of space. It wasn't quite like sight -- there was too much extra information in the returning echoes that had no real analogue for anything outside pulse Doppler radar -- but the analogy was one that was useful. He'd once tried to explain this extra sense all chiropt had to an earth pony friend; the mare, a pretty little green thing -- who he suspected thought of him as a challenge -- had been so hopelessly confused by his analogy-laden answer to her question that he'd given up.

The string of pulses illuminated the ramp and the open archway leading off it. Below and above him the ramp spiralled away beyond the range of his sonar, the structure bare of any objects, but showing traces of the exits onto other levels out of his direct line of sight. Keeping absolutely still, Chirr cocked his head and swept his muzzle over the nearest exit. Mind drifting, he let it piece together the returning patterns into something he could use.

The walls of the shaft that held the spiral ramp became translucent where they were closest to the open archway, the short pulses bouncing off the corridor walls and returning scattered echoes. Faint and distorted, the view was distracting enough to start a mild headache at the back of his skull, but showed Chirr that the passageway was clear. Eyes still closed, he stepped through, daintily avoiding the detritus that littered the floor.

At the limit of his senses, perhaps fifty metres away, there was a lumpy shape sprawled across the corridor. Standing still, Chirr swept the object with a string of pulses, varying the frequency to try and get more information. It snapped into focus, the arc of one wing clearly visible against the hard floor. Whoever it was wasn't breathing, and the chiropt swept forward, gently touching the pony's neck with his muzzle. Cold, he thought, stone cold.

There was a sudden slam of hoof against wood, then a scream from the same direction. Ears pricking up, Chirr opened his eyes, straining into the darkness while he sang his ultrasound call. There was a hint of light from that direction, the pale green of a self-powered emergency light, and Chirr trotted forward, accelerating to a canter when he realised that the sounds had come from where Equilibrium was supposed to be. Now, after all this time, you are in trouble now!?

Wings flicking out, he took long, gliding leaps down the corridor, flashing into a section containing small wards. The emergency lights, little things high up on the ceiling, were intact here, flooding everything with a ghastly monochrome pallor. Along both sides were doors to the actual wards, shared spaces for five ponies to recuperate in peace. Nonono-- At this end of the corridor, all the doors had been broken down, smashed to fragments by repeated kicks. There was no finesse here; whoever it was had just hit the door more or less at random, their accuracy marked by the number of strikes that had hit the wall instead.

The hammering came again, coupled with the sound of splintering wood. Nearing a corner, his sonar gave him a warning before anything else could. Chirr dropped silently to the ground and approached the edge at a walk, crouching down and cautiously peering around the corner. Three or four ponies were milling around one of the doors, watching another of their number lash out with his hind legs. Not keen on those odds, perhaps... Keeping one eye on the group, he pulled a stubby cylinder from one of the conformal packs along his flanks. Holding it still with a wingthumb claw, it was the work of a moment to set the fuse.

Slam! The figure by the door, a large earth pony still wearing the remains of an orderly's equipment harness, kicked out again, both hind hooves landing a solid blow on the door. Chirr inhaled deeply, nostrils twitching at a bewitching scent; it wasn't quite right, but close enough that he suddenly realised why the group had picked this room.

The door flew open and the group gave a whooping cheer, falling over themselves in their haste to get into the room. Some distant part of Chirr's mind registered the fact that all those in the little herd were earth pony stallions, but the rest of him was just reacting to the sudden wash of cold calculation that overwhelmed petty everyday thoughts. On the other side of the smashed door a pony screamed, high and full of terror. He closed his eyes.

Bite down on the ignition paddle, flick the grenade down the corridor and kick out with his hind legs; the actions were choreographed from long hours training in the mountain fastnesses in which his kind had spent the millennium waiting for Luna's return. His wings flicked out and he glided silently towards the laughing group, the matte black cylinder tumbling ahead of him. The nearest ponies were just starting to turn in his direction when the grenade detonated.

The flash was bright enough to be dazzling even through Chirr's eyelids, and the ear-shattering crack should have been just as disorientating, but the same training taught him to decouple his middle ear in anticipation of the flash. The shockwave felt like slamming into an incandescent metal wall, but it was only a subdued thump to his muted ears. An instant later he screeched out his sonar hunting call, the corridor appearing as a bright monochrome filled with staggering ponies.

Number One went down when Chirr slammed into his flank; the pony was bowled over and sent a dozen metres down the corridor when the Night Guard used him to change the direction of his rush. Blinded by the flash, Two's back legs lashed out, but the angle was bad and he only struck a glancing blow on one cuisse. His armour shed the blow, the spellcraft systems on the underside soaking up most of the momentum and growing warm, but enough leaked through to knock the leg out from under him.

Chirr staggered, wings flicking out for balance, then used the motion to rake one blade across the backside of his attacker. Unable to see the source of this new pain, the pony panicked, galloping off down the corridor and bouncing off the walls in his haste to escape. Three and Four were already inside the room, crowded around another struggling figure. A toss of his head activated the anti-grab function on his barding and he charged in, aiming for the largest of the pair.

The emergency light in this room was still working and its occupants had been protected from the flash-bang, so Chirr opened his eyes. All three were reacting to his presence; the two stallions sprang away from the more lightly-built pegasus mare they were in the process of forcing into one of the immobilisation stalls sometimes used for examinations, Four opening his mouth to spit out her tail. The emergency power obviously didn't extend to air conditioning, and the smell he'd noticed earlier was much stronger. Talk about bad biological timing, he thought fleetingly, then leapt again.

His target, Three, the large ex-orderly who'd broken down the door, had half turned by the time Chirr was upon him; sparks flashed from the zig-zag electrodes plated onto his pauldrons and radio-frequency arcs spidered over the stallion's flanks. The pony gasped, staggering sideways as his nearside legs buckled, but Chirr had already wheeled around, wings beating for balance and forelegs lashing out.

Four, already backing away, caught a weighted overshoe on the side of his jaw. Spitting blood and bits of tooth, his head snapped sideways and into one of the storage cabinets that lined the little ward. Chirr turned slightly, catching a glimpse of Three as the pony staggered in his direction. In a movement unchanged from his distant, fully equine ancestors, the chiropt's hind legs left the ground and lashed out, catching the pony full in the chest and dropping him in an untidy heap.

Attention back on Four, Chirr raised a hoof to make sure the pony would stay down, relaxing when he realised the stallion was unconscious. Three was still awake, but made no effort to rise, so the chiropt just returned his murderous glare with a snort, then turned off his armour's defences and looked at their erstwhile victim. A pale tan pony with curly chestnut mane, the pegasus mare's eyes darted around the room like she was still trapped.

"It's okay, you’re safe now," Chirr said in the tone he reserved for every victim he'd ever encountered.

Her eyes snapped to his and she cowered within the narrow confines of the immobilisation stall. "D-don't hurt me!" she squeaked, wings flicking out and banging against the padded walls.

"You're safe from me, ma'am, we're not really the same species." The poor attempt at humour didn't seem to help and she just crouched a little lower, tail tucked in as tight as it would go.

"Sergeant, we don't have time for this." In the quiet of the room, the volume of the bone-conduction communicator was loud enough that Chirr thought it would be audible to everypony present.

Chirr twitched at Luna's voice, the slight movement making the pegasus flinch. "Princess, I could hardly stand by--"

"You have played at being the dark knight enough this evening. That mare will never trust you while she is under the influence of the contagion; leave her to find her own way, or I will take matters into my own hooves, no matter what the risk." There was a pause, then Luna's tone softened. "I am not without sentiment; I understand, I really do... but there is no way we can save them all if we do it one at a time."

The chiropt started to back away, then paused as Three kicked out in his direction. The feeble blow was only just noticeable through Chirr's greaves, but that didn't seem to bother the stallion. "That's right, you go. Leave this one to the real stallions, you Nightmare-spawned freak, I'll show her what a real stallion is like." He laughed, low and ugly, looking hungrily at the mare.

I don't want to save them all, just this one, Chirr thought, then sighed. "Yes, Princess," he said, walking out of the room, pausing only to deliver a hearty kick between the hind legs of the orderly that left the stallion writhing on the floor and completely unable to speak. At the door he paused, glancing over his shoulder to the still frozen pegasus. "Get to the roof and fly out of the city, hide yourself somewhere away from anypony. We're going to fix this." She didn't reply, so Chirr broke into a trot, heading for Equilibrium's room.

Comments

[fanreader999999]

*reads the story summary*

*blindly jumps into the latest chapter*

...

*rereads the story summary*

...

[Starlight Nova]

What is the Soot-Covered World canon?

[Q07]

So Chirr really was the Batpony we deserved and needed. This is great, and I love it when either of the Alicorn sisters use their immense power. It was cool in the previous two stories, but now they are really the only two things in the world that can stop each other while most other things can just cower in fear or awe. I love powerful characters.

[Q07]

Oh, and a question if you would be so kind to answer it. Do Celestia and Luna know that Student Korn is what made up the body of Discord as it is now? I still feel bad for that poor dog.

[ascendant]

9919511
Yes, the chapter is "Ground State"

[KMCA]

9919485
That would be the 2 preceding books Days of wasp an spider and Final solution

[Q07]

9919869
Thanks friend! For some reason I remembered him declaring himself Discord, but I didn't remember anyone being there. Thanks again!

[Luna-tic Scientist]

9919485
This one is stand alone; there are a few references you'd miss by not reading the others, but nothing critical to the story.

The series is set post season two (no Discord 'redemption', no Twilight With Wings).

[Luna-tic Scientist]

9919502
Yep, you were spot-on!

[amberhaze]

Oh, so Luna is not out of the game, or wasn't out for long anyway. Talk about jumping to conclusions.

[Cedric Bale]

THANK you for being a voice of reason, Chirr. If Luna had gone into that hospital, alone, I don't know if my face would've survived the palming.

Does this Equestria have movies? Surely it has comic books? Would it have a Batman equivalent? The chiropts' position in society as a discriminated minority might make a Batman equivalent blacksploitation in Equestria. (Batsploitation?) That doesn't really have anything to do with this story, I just think it's an interesting thought.