Chapter 16
Twilight glanced over the chalkboard.
Night found another Legger warehouse, this one moving a few hundred pounds of uncertified spell crystals, a material that was typically used to make cheap, enchanted items that had a very high chance of exploding if pushed too far.
The process of turning a gem into a spell crystal was expensive and time-consuming. This meant that ponies trying to cut corners typically couldn’t sell their crystals to legitimate enchanters, who, by law, were required to work with certified and approved crystals that met the Princess’ Enchantment Safety Standard.
Twilight found the idea of selling possibly faulty crystals annoyingly dangerous and agreed that these would probably be better off being destroyed. After being used as evidence, of course.
Night nodded and then pointed out that moving a few hundred pounds of crystals wasn’t going to be easy for the two of them.
“I’ll have you know,” she said. “That I once picked over nine hundred apples from an orchard in a matter of seconds, and that was before I became an alicorn. Lifting that many crystals will be easy.”
“Yes,” Night agreed. “Because uncertified crystals are known for their stability near massive amounts of magic.”
Twilight glanced at him. “Noted.”
“More importantly, we have to scout the warehouse.” Night said. “Luckily, we have a few neighboring buildings that we can watch it from, unlike last time.”
The picture of the warehouse Night took was taken from a nearby building. It stood a dozen stories tall and gave them a near-perfect view of the warehouse yard. Both ponies could already see that the warehouse had a large door facing the street and a side door on the building’s south face.
“The side door is preferable again, obviously, but the problem is this pony,” Night said, pointing at the picture of a unicorn stallion Night had taken. “That is one of Boot’s lieutenants, Flawless Spark.”
Twilight blinked. “Th-that name sounds familiar,” she said.
“It should,” Night replied. “He’s a rogue mage and one of Equestria’s most wanted from something like seven years ago.”
“And he’s been working with Boot Legger this whole time?” Twilight asked. “And you haven’t told the guard?”
Night frowned. “I knew he was working with Boot but didn’t know where he was. Telling the guard that I’m aware that a pony works with Boot would just get him called in, and then he’d lie, at best be followed, and distract the guard from all the work Boot hires ponies to do. No, this, this is the chance we’re waiting for,” Night said.
“What are you thinking?”
“If we can get the guard here, Spark will get arrested regardless,” Night said. “It doesn’t matter what’s in the warehouse, he’ll be taken into custody. The problem is that we can’t use the usual illusion tricks. He’ll see them and dispel them with a few quick Destroy Energy Spells.”
Twilight nodded.
“At the same time, if we want to hurt Boot bad, this is the way to do it. Losing a lieutenant means he loses the whole cell attached to him.”
“So, what is your plan?”
“Well, how do we bring the guard in without scaring them away?” Night asked. “If Spark just thinks it’s me, he’ll stick around to try and deal with me. If he finds out the guard’s here, he’ll run.”
Twilight brought a hoof to her chin. “So we want to distract him, but if he thinks we’re using illusions, he’ll counterspell them.”
Night nodded. “So what’s your plan, because you have more tools than I do.”
“That’s fair,” she said. She rubbed her chin again. “How do we get the guard to come while distracting a pony who can dispel illusions?” She thought about it for a long moment. “I mean, we can use a beacon.”
“What do you mean?” Night asked.
“An emergency beacon,” Twilight explained.
“I...don’t follow.”
Twilight glanced over at Night. “An emergency beacon? The way you get in contact with the guard. The way you let them know there’s an emergency?”
“Those exist?”
Twilight stared at him like he grew a second head. “What do you mean, ‘those exist?’ They’re how you mobilize the guard for nearly everything. Didn’t they teach you how to use them in Kindergarten?”
Night stared back at her.
“Y-you did go to Kindergarten, didn’t you?”
“So these beacons…” Night began.
“You never went to Kindergarten?”
“I never went to school, Princess,” Night said. “I didn’t have the opportunity.”
“What do you mean you didn’t have the opportunity?”
“I didn’t have the opportunity.”
“Your parents didn’t put you in school?”
“Didn’t have parents,” Night said.
The safehouse immediately went quiet, and Twilight blinked. “I... Not even your foster parents?"
Night snorted. "He wouldn't bother."
Twilight went silent for a moment, before speaking again. "I-I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
Night shrugged. “It happened, can’t change that. In fact, I think I did pretty well, considering that I can read and write.”
Twilight nodded. “I agree. You’ve done very well.”
“Thanks, but can we focus on the job, please?” he asked.
“Right!” Twilight said. “Well, we can use the beacons to get the guard nearby. From there, we’ll have to figure out how to draw them to the warehouse. The beacon will just get the guard into the local area, but if they don’t see anypony there, they’re going to think it was a prank call.”
“So, what do we do?” Night asked. “What will get their attention from there?”
Twilight frowned. “I have an idea.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “But you’re going to have to stay behind to activate the beacon.”
Night raised an eyebrow. “Explain, please?”
“Well, it has to do with the crystals.”
---$---
Twilight worked carefully, digging through the soil. She used a quick combination of “Stone to Mud” and “Mud to Stone” with a careful application of telekinesis between the two spells.
She transformed a foot or so of stone and concrete in front of her to mud. Another spell later, and she used her telekinesis to shape the mud into a reinforced lining inside her tunnel before changing it back into stone.
The going was slow, she’d admit. It took some time and energy to cover a few yards, perhaps more effort than she needed to spend, but if things went well, she might not have to worry about it.
She moved again, covering another foot of ground beneath the warehouse. So far, she’d been covering ground well, and a quick “Perceive Matter” spell revealed the warehouse above her. She was nearly under her target now.
It was almost time.
She continued her progress forward, thinking to herself as she moved. This certainly wasn’t a job that Night could have performed on his own. He needed more spells and more hooves to get this kind of thing done. Without Transform or Energy, there was no way that Night could accomplish this plan. More proof of Celestia’s statement, she supposed.
She moved a few feet more and then stopped. She was right under her target, a crate of gems, with a few ponies walking around the warehouse above her. She sat down, taking a minute to catch her breath, before using the small pocket watch she brought to check the time. She still had twenty minutes or so, but she needed to start moving.
She gathered herself again before she cast “Morning Glory’s Mage’s Eye,” that took form just above the warehouse floor. She used the eye to carefully glance around the room. Eight ponies walked across the floor, glancing between each other as they moved. She could even see a catwalk connected to a mezzanine floor in the back of the warehouse, where Flawless Spark sat at a desk, just barely visible from her “eye’s” position.
With a little concentration, she moved the eye across the floor, floating from corner to corner to try and find the best places to begin her work. That’s when she found what she was looking for—a small collection of trash stuffed in the corner of the warehouse.
When Twilight suggested this as a distraction, Night raised an eyebrow and reminded her of what she said about property destruction. She replied that this was merely a distraction, which wasn’t meant to damage all of the evidence.
With a quick application of Create Energy, she lit the pile with a spark, letting it burn on its own after giving it the push it needed. That would be the start of the distraction, but she needed to keep the show going.
The fire began to grow in the corner, but Twilight needed to get their attention.
She cast another Create Energy spell, causing an explosion that burst across the middle of the floor. The light burned like magnesium, and the resulting roar deafened the ponies around the crates.
The trick to a long, protracted spell battle was to cast Create spells with long-lasting effects with the smallest cast time needed. Sudden explosions and quick burns made the best attacks, while defense like shields consumed far more energy, though not nearly the same kind of drain as matter. More importantly, if you stopped the spell before the one trying to dispel it could, he wasted the energy.
The ponies were trying to recover, but Flawless was already moving, his horn glowing with a counterspell ready. He cast, but it found no purchase, sending the energy into the ether.
“Search the corners!” Spark said. “There has to be someone here!”
Twilight shot her next spell, Creating a beam of Energy that shot from the corner of the room to the next. She just managed using most of the energy in her attack to change the origin point instead of increased damage.
“There!” Spark yelled. He cast another Destroy Energy, only for the spell to grab onto nothing.
He cursed, getting ready for the next attack before Twilight broke her Perceive Spell. She felt the drain of casting so many spells at once and was beginning to get a headache. She checked the pocket watch, which ticked slowly by. Night would hit the beacon in ten seconds, she would have to send the signal in a minute from then.
She sighed before popping her vision back up into the warehouse with the mage’s eye.
“Look everywhere!” Spark yelled. “Nopony’s getting away with this!”
“Well, I’ve heard the Princess happens to disagree with you,” Twilight thought before she cast another spell, throwing up another blinding, deafening flash right in front of Spark’s eyes.
Spark just barely managed to cast his new counterspell, but the explosion had already done its job, and the rogue mage stumbled.
Forty seconds to go.
She cast another spell, a beam of power that shot straight up through the roof of the warehouse, tearing the roof to pieces. Ponies were running all over the place, the entire warehouse was thrown up in pandemonium.
“Discord would be proud,” Twilight through, before pushing the thought away as fast and as far as she could manage.
She checked her watch.
Ten seconds.
The guard should be approaching the beacon now, waiting for whoever called it to direct them to the more significant problem.
She glanced directly up from her position at the crate of unstable stones above her.
It was time.
She dropped all of her spells and focused pure magic into the gems. They fed on the unfiltered, unshaped magic precisely as they were designed to, and spell matrices began to form on the inner facets of the gemstone. The magic, caught in the jewels like light, began to build, as too much filled them before they could finish writing the matrices. Like pressure valves made of glass, the building patterns held back the magic as long as they could and then inevitably failed.
The crystals in the crate above her exploded. Thunder erupted into a ball of multi-colored fire that roared like an adult dragon.
Twilight watched her tunnel shake and decided that she needed to get out of it now. She built walls behind her, not filling it entirely, but making enough walls and supports that kept the tunnel strong behind her without slowing her down as much.
She followed the tunnel all the way back to the entrance, a hole that she barely disguised as a pony-hole cover, surrounded as it was by dirt. She shoved as much soil as she could behind her, and then she transformed back into her true form and flew to the top of the building.
Night was waiting for her, staring down at the warehouse as she sat down, gasping for breath. “Well, Twilight,” he said, not even turning to her yet. “You were right, this would certainly get everyone caught.”
Twilight crawled forward and glanced over the ledge, just in time to see a swarm of guard ponies descend upon the blown-out hideout.
“Of course, I don’t want to hear anything about property damage again.”
Twilight smiled, despite herself, and then passed out.
---$---
“Alright, Twilight,” Night said, tucking the still-unconscious Princess into bed on another newly-purchased air mattress. “Go ahead and get some sleep. You have a sun to raise in the morning.”
Twilight mumbled something, still obviously asleep as Night carefully set her down.
He nodded, a job well done before he turned to his board. “You did a good job today,” he said, glancing up at Twilight’s seemingly crazy attempt to dig under the warehouse diagramed out on the board. “An excellent job, really.”
He glanced back at the unconscious form of the Princess.
“You did so well, you might be able to put me out of a job just by taking over,” he joked, before sighing.
He glanced back at the Princess, who rolled onto her side to reveal a few ruffled feathers sticking out at odd angles from her wings.
Night winced. He’d seen what happened when a pegasus slept on their feathers wrong and moved toward her.
He sat next to the Princess, and his hooves moved to begin preening her wings before he paused.
She was a Princess and a full-grown mare at that; she could do this herself. Besides, he had no right and no business messing with her wings. He could wake her up, and she could deal with it.
But his hooves began working anyway, carefully straightening and clearing her feathers, focusing on the worse ones for now. His old habits may die hard, but he didn’t need to make sure her wings were perfect. All he needed to do was make sure her wings weren’t going to be sore in the morning.
He worked quickly, his preening skills apparently hadn’t diminished with time, despite the years since he last took care of one of the younger mares from the orphanage. Though he did take a moment to realize, perhaps unconsciously, that her feathers were incredibly soft. Much softer than any other feathers he ever worked with.
“It’s probably all that royal shampoo and conditioner,” he thought with a smile.
He quickly got the mare’s wings in some order before he left her alone and walked to his cot, where he promptly fell asleep.
---$---
The buzz of Twilight’s alarm clock woke her first, and the stiffness in her wings second. She groaned as she got out of the bed the alicorn didn’t remember climbing into, and stretched, her wings slowly extending as she tried to regain some blood flow in them.
She checked her feathers, and sure enough, a few of her feathers stuck out at odd angles. None of the big ones, surprisingly, but that didn’t stop the quills that were askew from pulling at her skin and muscles in weird ways.
Her alarm buzzed again, and she heard Night groan. “Turn that thing off…” he muttered, groaning into his pillow.
Twilight gave him a slight grin, taking some small amount of vindictive pleasure that somepony else had to wake up at the crack of dawn for a change. Honestly, of all the challenges she faced, being a night owl in charge of raising the sun was her most challenging feat.
She silenced the clock and raised the sun. From their safehouse in Baltimare, she could look out over Horseshoe bay and watched as the sun slowly peeked over the sea. She sighed as she watched her handiwork, before climbing back into her mattress, only for the soreness in her wings to keep her awake.
She lay on her right side and pulled her left wing around to slowly preen the feathers that were laying strange. She worked slowly, fixing her feathers, before rolling over across her stomach to her other side. Another careful preen later, and her wings were finally in order. She gave them a final shake before she lay still.
She wasn’t going back to sleep, but right now, she was just taking her time to relax. Ponies would typically be getting her up and filling her schedule right now, getting her moving to this event or that. Here, though? This just reminded her of lazy mornings in the Golden Oak Library after an adventure with her friends.
Yes, this was nice…
Very nice.
---$---
Twilight Sparkle returned to the Castle with an air of business about her. “Schedule the delegation with Thorax for Thursday, I’ve meant to speak with him, and I’ve been putting it off.”
Spike nodded as he took the note down.
They were both smiling as they walked down the hallway. Twilight’s new energetic demeanor sparked through the two as she walked. It was like she returned from a long vacation and was finally ready to get back to work. “After that, I need to reach out with the Abyssinia ambassador. We’ve gone too long without a proper embassy, but they still haven't brought that black market under control. The only way we’re allowing open borders, much less anything else, is when I can get assurances that ponies won’t be sold the moment they step into Klugetown.”
“Yes, Princess!” Spike said with a smile and nod of approval.
“Anyone else nearby that needs a talking to?” Twilight asked.
“No, ma’am!” Spike said. “I’ll go ahead and get these orders processed before you lose all your steam here.”
Twilight shook her head. “Alright, get going,” she said before she sighed.
Spike nodded before rushing off, leaving the Princess alone in front of her office. Twilight watched him go before she adjusted her crown and opened the door.
Raven was waiting for her.
“Princess, do you have a moment?” she asked. “I need to speak with you.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.043 seconds
Total duration
654 users online
769,548 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
"No good deed ... "
Well, no wonder he's never trying to get the guard in on the action--in a way, he literally hasn't known how to.
Gonna do an intervention, huh, Raven?
Honestly, I can't blame you. While I don't necessarily agree with all of your stances on this whole matter, I agree this charade's gone on long enough, and despite the successes, Twilight can't keep moonlighting like this forever. She's either going to have to trust other ponies, such as Night, to handle these affairs on their own, or find some other way to carry them out that isn't also cutting into her responsibilities as princess.
Great chapter!
- typo for "annoyingly"
- missing "be"
- unclear who "he" refers to, it's probably meant to be Legger but at first glance appears to be the guard.
- missing "the"
- missing "use"
- missing "to" or "and"
- but didn't Twilight then destroy all the crystals and thus the evidence?
- missing "a" or extra comma
- typo for "on"
- tense change, "can" should also be "could".
- typo for "He"
- extra "in"
I love the dynamic between Night and Twilight SO much!
Hope we can get some Night backstory straight from the horse’s mouth.
Also, if Night had a voice actor, who would it be?
10480925
I don't care enough about actors to know which ones would fit which roles. I can see a Colonel Mustang (Travis Willingham) voice him though, but it doesn't really matter.
The image of Twilight preening her wing is just the cutest darn thing~
But didn't she get his records at the very beginning? I'm pretty sure it was stated he was an orphan at age 3 or something like that. Or did she just assume he had at least foster parents somewhere along the way of growing up?
10551133
I believe it did mention he was in foster care, but I'll double-check.
Edit: I have smoothed it out, it should be better now.
We have reached the halfway point of the story!
Adoring this so far. This fic has got be the best Twilight-as-ruler story Iʼve read on this site. Every character is on point, the conflict is engaging, the pace is flowing nicely and your prose is stellar.
One half down, another to go!