Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego

by MagicS

A Mammoth of a Problem XXXI

Under the cover of night, two mammoths and one pegasus quietly sneaked through the slums towards Karkona’s warehouses. They made sure to always look around where they were going and make sure the coast was clear before moving on. Even disguised and with it so dark none would be able to see them well they didn’t want anybody to catch so much as a glimpse of them while they were on their mission. Bad enough if Larkon or Rainbow Dash was seen, if Abalun was connected to anyone trying to break into the warehouses or seen in there himself they’d lose their spy in the slums. They all had to be extra careful this night.

Of course Rainbow Dash was still stuck riding on Larkon’s back. They just didn’t have an extra robe for her. It was really annoying but at least she’d be able to fly out soon when they reached the warehouses. She might need to find some kind of tarp or something to drape over herself too, she was so small that she couldn’t possibly be anyone else even if she stayed on the ground but at least it would stop her very vibrant and noticeable mane and coat from being seen so easily.

That’d have to come after she carefully got inside the warehouse and scoped it out before letting her two buddies in.

I really hope I can actually open up those windows. Rainbow thought to herself. Worst comes to worst she’d maybe have to break one. Quietly.

Abalun still led the way to the warehouses even though Rainbow too remembered where they were. The snow on the ground was thankfully still soft and powdery enough that it didn’t crunch beneath their big feet, they didn’t need that extra noise right now. The one benefit Rainbow had to riding on Larkon’s back was that it was warm. Otherwise being out at night with snow falling around them would’ve made things pretty chilly for her.

They managed to get to the warehouses fairly quickly, it wasn’t a long walk but they had been slow going to them thanks to all the sneakiness. Now Abalun and Larkon stuck their heads around one of the last shacks and looked into the large area where the warehouses stood. As expected there were a number of guards around the front with lit torches standing around them to give them light. Luckily the light didn’t penetrate all the way across the grounds, the outer edges by the buildings were still almost completely shrouded in darkness.

“Should’ve found a black cloak instead of a brown one,” Larkon muttered.

“Indeed. But I think we’re still okay,” Abalun said.

“The guards are mostly standing around the doors and staring ahead, I don’t think they expect anyone to try and sneak in through the back,” Larkon said.

Abalun nodded. “They must have a lot of faith in that lock.”

“Or just in no mammoth being dumb enough to try and break into Karkona’s warehouses,” Rainbow said.

“Well then let’s be dumb,” Larkon said as he gazed with determination at the warehouses.

“Uh, Larkon? I know you’re new to this kind of thing but that wasn’t as cool of a line as you think it was,” Rainbow told him.

Larkon snorted. “Oh forget it, let’s just get in there then.”

Rainbow Dash crawled out from the top of his robe as the two of them ducked back behind the building. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’m gonna fly up for a bit to make sure no one can see me coming towards the warehouses, then I’m gonna go to the windows and check em until I find one that opens. Once I do that I’ll go to the backdoor and open it from the inside and you guys can come in. So in the meantime you need to sneak around to the back without being seen. Got it?”

“What if the windows don’t open?” Abalun asked.

“What if there are more of Karkona’s followers inside?” Larkon asked.

“I’ll make a window open if I have to. And don’t worry if there are any mammoths in there. I can be stealthy,” Rainbow shrugged.

Larkon raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m aware you’ve done more adventuring and things than I can even begin to imagine but this doesn’t come across to me as the best thought out plan.”

“It’s not, planning is for my friend Twilight, I’m a doer. Just don’t worry about, I’ll handle everything,” Rainbow confidently (maybe undeservedly confidently) stated. “Trust me on it.”

Larkon and Abalun shared a look but at last the historian shrugged. “Well okay, it’s not like I have a better idea of how to handle this anyways.”

“I just hope you don’t have to break a window or anything. Even if there aren’t any other mammoths in the warehouse that’s still something the guards are likely to hear.” Abalun said.

“Like I said, don’t worry, I’ll do something about it,” Rainbow Dash reassured him.

“Alright,” Larkon nodded. “I suppose we should get on with it then. We don’t want to waste anymore time just standing around.”

“Now that’s my way of doing things,” Rainbow grinned. “I’ll see you two in a minute, just be careful!”

She zoomed up into the dark sky and even disappeared from Abalun and Larkon’s view despite her bright colors. The two of them now had to sneak around the outskirts of the warehouse space and wait for her at the backdoor. Neither of them were particularly confident in their ability to do this but it’s not like they had a choice. The hardest part would be the beginning, where the guards had an unobstructed view of them, they had to hope the darkness over here was thick enough that they couldn’t be noticed from the front of the warehouse. Once they made it down just a few buildings’ lengths they should be in the clear.

Larkon was the first to step out from the building they were hiding behind and slink around it. “I hope the both of us can walk quietly.”

---

Rainbow Dash hovered high above the warehouse, she had done a sharp button hook after getting high enough to come back down directly over it and now looked over the roof to see if she could see anything else important about the buildings. The roof looked totally blocked off and inaccessible from the inside though, no door up there or any sort of skylight or other hatch she could get inside the warehouse from. So the original plan of going in through one of the windows is what she would do.

There were definitely no mammoths that would be looking up and see her from the ground as she lowered herself to the top edge of the first warehouse. No reason for them to and there would barely be any awake to begin with. Rainbow Dash had a smirk on her face as she went to about the halfway point down the length of the warehouse and hovered in front of one of the large windows.

The single pane was larger than she was, as expected from typical mammoth sized things in this city. Now she only needed to find out if it opened or not. She tapped it once to see if it had any give or was designed to pop in but it didn’t seem like it. With a frown she looked around the outer edges for any kind of clasp or lock that could pull it open since it didn’t seem like it opened inward at the least.

“Stupid windows, who even makes these things?” Rainbow Dash said as she pushed, prodded, and eyeballed every inch of it.

Unfortunately it seemed to be the kind of window that wasn’t designed to be opened at all. There wasn’t a frame that it could cleanly pop out of.

Rainbow Dash was about to give up and move onto the next window to see if it was any different when she caught a fleeting glimpse of something right inside the window at the very bottom of it. There was a little lever attached on the inside at the window’s base, she could barely see it thanks to the darkness but there it was. The stupid lever just sat there, practically taunting her.

“Oh great, so the window does open up but you can only open it from the inside. Ugh...” Rainbow groaned as she stared at the lever. All that would be needed is a simple flip and the window would be popped open, but there was no way for her to do that. “Really wish I could teleport or had magic right now.”

She was thinking she really might have to just break in now and hope for the best, but she should probably at least check out the other windows first.

Rainbow Dash went down them in a line to see if they were all like the first one she stopped at. She had to squint hard to see the lever on the interior but every single one of them still had it. And of course no way for them to be opened from the outside. Every other building is this place was made so shoddily and haphazardly, why couldn’t it be the same way for these warehouses? They just had to be the one trio of buildings made competently?

“Can’t there be some mistake or some loose panel somewhere on this warehouse?” Rainbow complained. It was petty but she couldn’t help it.

Larkon and Abalun by this point might already be at the backdoor waiting for her too, she couldn’t just keep coming up with nothing right now. She passed another window with the lever taunting her from inside and then went by another that-

“Wait,” Rainbow Dash halted and looked down at the window in front of her. The lever for this one was on the outside.

And the frame of it was a little off. The window was installed backwards. It seemed even the best made building in the slums couldn’t escape the fact that it was still just a rickety mess of whatever they had on trunk and put together by a bunch of inexperienced mammoths.

A grin lit up Rainbow Dash’s face. “Thank Celestia for carelessness! Good thing they didn’t have someone like Applejack make this.”

Rainbow Dash carefully pulled the lever down and the window gently popped open into the warehouse. She poked her head in and looked around first before just flying inside entirely in case someone was there to see her but she didn’t really see any movement from below. The warehouse wasn’t especially well lit but there were some lights and she could see stacks and stacks of boxes of various sizes all throughout it. The floor too looked odd to her for some reason and then she realized that’s because it was depressed, it went below ground level by quite a bit in the middle, to give them more room to stack boxes in while the outer sides of the ground floor were still level.

She looked over to where the backdoor would be and saw large sliding cargo doors that must’ve been what Abalun was talking about. They led onto the ground floor for a bit before it became a ramp that went down into the lower cargo area. And now that she could really look around she was certain there at least weren’t any mammoths in this warehouse, although there was a doorway into the closed hallway that led to the next warehouse, so she couldn’t be too careful about keeping an eye on that. And the front door too. She doubted it would happen but new mammoths could always come through it.

This really was a huge warehouse though… if they needed to check all these boxes for something there was no way that was happening. They might have to go into the other warehouses, whatever they might of held. Unless these crates contained a bunch of illegal weapons this didn’t exactly look incriminating to Karkona. Just unusual.

Rainbow Dash ducked her way entirely into the warehouse and shut the window behind her so it wouldn’t look weird from the outside. She flew up around the roof for a little bit just to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important before finally lowering down to the ground floor and the big doors at the back.

“Really hope the lock for this doesn’t need a key. Or a combination,” Rainbow scowled as she looked over the big backdoor. Right now she didn’t see a chain or anything closing it, where was the lock?

It didn’t open up at the middle, instead there was a sliding bolt lock at the left side that locked the door handle in place. You couldn’t pull the door open until that was flipped up and slid out. Rainbow Dash grinned and flew over to it, it was really big and heavy, as expected from mammoths, but she could still move it. It took a grunt of exertion and a little more effort than she would’ve liked to admit, but she was able to move the sliding bolt out of the way.

And now the moment of truth, hopefully Abalun and Larkon were right outside waiting for her to open the door up.

Rainbow Dash grabbed the big handle on the side of the door and pulled with all her might. She had to beat her wings hard to keep in the air and have the strength to pull the door open at the same time but slowly it slid down its track with only a slight grinding noise. In the dead of night it might be a little loud but there shouldn’t be anyone close enough to the back to hear it.

“Hrk!” Rainbow groaned as she pulled the door open halfway, more than enough room for a mammoth to step inside, and stopped. She panted and wiped the sweat off her brow and looked outside.

“We were wondering when you would show up,” Larkon said to her, a smirk on his face.

“Yes, we were waiting for a while,” Abalun nearly chuckled.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “You guys planning to tease me for being a little slower than you? Get in here already.”

“Well you’re normally so fast and you love bragging about it so I just couldn’t resist,” Larkon said as he walked inside with Abalun.

“Yeah, yeah, let’s just check out the stuff in here together, maybe the two of you will know what to look for better,” Rainbow said.

Abalun helped her close the backdoor and the three of them gazed over the mountains of crates and boxes stacked in the warehouse. He and Larkon pulled up the hoods of their cloaks to get a better look at everything while Rainbow Dash floated alongside them, keeping an eye on the front door far, but directly, ahead of them. It was going to be a long night. And hopefully a very fruitful one.

Comments

[superfun]

Wow.
This section seems like it'll be as long, or longer, than True Pegasus and Rainbow Rises combined.

[THERDSTORYWHISPERER]

Great chapter!

[MagicS]

10579453
Yes, this is the single longest arc in the story.

[superfun]

10579582
Which is interesting, considering that True Pegasus + Rainbow Rises feels like a more grand arc in terms of what actually happens

[MagicS]

10579621
Hm, that's true for the most part so far, this arc is slower paced and more relaxed with less action. In a lot of ways the situation is the reverse of that one too.

[superfun]

10579646
Was that intentional, or did it just come about during the writing process?

[MagicS]

10579653
It came about in the planning process. I had thought up the idea for the arc and realized the similarities well before I started writing, and then decided to play it up a little more when I actually did.

[superfun]

10579676
Nice 👍