The Quills and Sofas Exquisite Corpse

by The Red Parade

Chapter Eight (Shaslan)

The week passed swiftly, and the night of the Gala arrived all too soon. In a seedy hotel on the very outskirts of Canterlot, a young pegasus paced nervously back and forth. Vapour Trail completed her seventh anxious lap of the room in as many minutes and darted once more to the window to peer out from behind the curtain. There was still no sign of anypony approaching the hotel’s front door.

Vapour Trail sighed in exasperation and threw herself backwards onto the bed. What was taking so long?

Hoofsteps in the corridor outside made her jerk upright, and she dashed across to the door and wrenched it open.

“Angel Wings!” she scolded. “What on Equus took you so long? I was back here over an hour ago!”

Angel Wings rolled her eyes and dumped two garment bags onto the bed. “Well excuse me if securing two designer gowns sleek enough to fit in with elite ponies and literal princesses was harder than finding some smoke bombs.”

Vapour Trail was already halfway into her dress, the bag it came in trampled on the floor. “Shut up and get dressed, Angel. We haven’t got much time. We need to be there early if we’re going to scope out the location and figure out how to corner Grubber.”

Angel muttered something dark and shrugged her own dress on over her head.

Vapour Trail secured her smoke bombs under the voluminous skirt of her purple gown and tossed some to Angel Wings, who followed suit.

“I hope that lowlife Midnight is there too,” Vapour said darkly, as they left the little hotel behind them. “I can’t wait to give that traitor the hoof sandwich he’s been waiting for.”

——————————

Rainbow Dash sat on her bed in her loaned rooms in the guest wing of Canterlot Castle, wringing her hooves and watching Pinkie Pie paint her fur stark white.

“They’ll be here, right?” Rainbow asked, running her hooves nervously through her mane. “Grubber has to come. It’s in the plan. He said he’d stick to the plan.”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “Yeah, but he also said he’d do what we told him and that we were in charge. But then he didn’t do what we told him, and stole all that money! So I guess I wouldn’t be too too shocked if he didn’t come to the Gala.”

Rainbow Dash moaned aloud. “No, no, Pinkie, he has to come! He still has Sky Stinger! And Vapour Trail and Angel Wings are still missing. How am I meant to tell Spitfire I lost over twenty thousand bits of Wonderbolts’ money and three of our best cadets?”

“Don’t forget Midnight Strike!” Pinkie chirped brightly. “So technically you lost twenty thousand bits, three cadets, and one cadet that you forced to turn to,” she lowered her voice, widened her eyes and waved her hooves in the air in imitation of a ghost, “The dark side!”

“Gah!” Rainbow turned away from her in disgust. “Not helping, Pinkie!”

Pinkie chortled as she dabbed the last bit of white powder onto her muzzle and secured a white mask over the top. The mask showed a pony’s face twisted into a hideous imitation of mirth, its grin like that of a skull. Pinkie vanished, to be replaced by the notorious villain that had graced the front page of every Equestrian newspaper for months.

“Well,” that horrifying visage said brightly, “If Grubber does come, I promise you that Smiling Mask will have a few things to say to him!"

——————————

Vapour Trail and Angel Wings arrived just in time to blend with the throngs of well-dressed ponies descending on the castle, and tried to appear as though they were mingling. Mostly this consisted of wandering through various rooms, forcing a fake laugh here and there at remarks that had not been addressed to them, and furiously scanning the crowds for any sign of Grubber or Midnight Strike.

They had spent nearly an hour at this unrewarding pastime when Angel Wings suddenly elbowed Vapour hard enough in the ribs to bruise her.

“Ow!” hissed Vapour Trail. “What was that for?”

“Shut up and look!” whispered Angel.

Vapour Trail followed Angel’s pointing hoof towards the doorway, where a squat grey form could just be seen, flanked by a dark-furred pegasus.

Vapour’s eyes narrowed. “It’s Midnight.”

Angel flipped a wing towards the hulking shape on Grubber’s other side. “And Crumpet, apparently.”

Sure enough, the vast bulk of the enormous hedgehog was there, squeezed improbably into a very small suit. Crumpet looked deeply uncomfortable, and kept tugging at the collar of his suit. But Grubber and Midnight appeared totally in their element, strolling casually through the crowds of ponies and nodding confidently at everyone they passed.

“This way,” Angel murmured to Vapour, trying to slip behind a group of stallions loudly discussing the best brands of cider, but when she glanced back to make sure her friend was following, Vapour was gone.

Angel Wings sighed. It was going to be one of those missions.

“You traitorous snake!” Vapour Trail yelled, hurtling through the air towards Midnight Strike, drawing the eyes of every creature in the room.

Grubber yelped and vanished, and Angel Wings was forced to gallop after Vapour Trail, who was now fighting noisily on the floor with Midnight.

“You no-good sellout!” she cried, battering at his head with her hooves. “One sniff of a bit of cash and you abandon us all!”

“Ow—!” yelped Midnight. “Get off, Vapour! It’s not like that—”

Vapour Trail scoffed and slapped him again. “Oh yeah? Then what is it like?”

Midnight finally managed to get his hooves underneath Vapour’s barrel and kicked her bodily away from him. “I’m not just a cog in the machine anymore! Not just a soldier in their army.” He scrambled to his hooves and advanced towards her. “I’m a freedom fighter now. Grubber’s showing me how to make a real difference!”

Vapour Trail leapt back to her feet. “A difference to your own pockets, you mean!”

Midnight Strike deflected her incoming blow with his wing. “Well, so what if I make a little more money than I would have done with the bolts? I’m still fighting for a real cause!”

“Ugh! You’re lying to yourself!” Vapour Trail leapt for his throat.

Midnight stumbled backwards, and Angel Wings dealt him a stinging blow to the back of his head. He spun to face her, and his ears went back on seeing that he was outnumbered.

“Where is Sky Stinger?” Angel demanded. “What have you done with him?”

Midnight Strike snarled, an ugly expression on his handsome face, and then there was a flash of steel and he had a knife in his hoof.

Angel reeled backwards, unable to reconcile this knife-wielding stranger with the Midnight she had trained beside for months. “What are you doing, Midnight?”

Midnight Strike spat on the ground at her feet, earning another shocked gasp from one of the Canterlot gentle colts behind him. “I reckon trimming a few of your pretty white feathers would convince Grubber and Smiling Mask of my loyalty — don’t you think, Angel?”

He lunged for her with the knife, and Angel let out a shrill squeal of panic and hurled all of her smoke bombs directly at his face.

They detonated with a dull boom, and the room was instantly flooded with thick, cloying black smoke. Ponies cried out in fear and began to flee. In no time at all there was a full fledged stampede, and Angel lost track of Midnight and Vapour in the chaos as she was borne away.

When at last the smoke cleared, she was in the palace gardens. Princess Celestia was before her, trying to calm the shaking party-goers.

“Please, everypony! Calm down! The renegades are gone now, I am sure of it.”

Then one of the high society ponies spotted the empty hollows in the Princess’ peytral and crown, and began to scream anew.

Whispers spread like wildfire through the crowd. “The crown jewels! They’ve been stolen!”

——————————

Rainbow Dash blinked and sat up, rubbing with one hoof at her aching head where an elderly gentlemare had panicked and trampled her. She squinted up at the dispersing smoke, and her eyes narrowed as she saw Midnight Strike flying away, Grubber on board, and two shining pink gems in his grip.

Her eyes narrowed. “No way I’m letting you get away with more of Equestria’s gold, you no-good little hedgehog. You shoulda just stuck to the plan.” Then in a blur of rainbow contrail, she was gone.

Pinkie, hiding behind a bush so that her mask wouldn’t scare the assembled ponies even more out of their wits, spotted Crumpet, his suit ripped and torn from the melee. “Hey, Crumpet!” she yelled, her voice cutting through the air. “You never replied to my party invitation!” She paused a moment to think of his other, less heinous crimes. “And you took all of Rainbow Dash’s students! Get back here!”

——————————

Vapour Trail finally located the shaken Angel Wings, just in time to see Smiling Mask gallop out from a nearby bush. They stared at each other, eyes wide and tore after her.

Working together just like they had in practice, they took her from behind and tripped her, sending her crashing face-first into the ground.

“Ugh…” Smiling Mask groaned and looked up at them, her mask cracked and splintered enough to reveal the face beneath.

Vapour Trail’s breath rushed out of her. She would know that pink fur anywhere. Pinkie Pie. How could one of the Elements be behind the mask of Equestria’s most infamous crime boss?

“Just you wait until I tell Commander Rainbow Dash what a low-down bad guy you are!” Vapour Trail screamed, tears running freely down her face. “And she’ll tell Princess Twilight — and they’ll blast you to stone!”

“Hold on—” Pinkie Pie’s hooves were up in the air, but Vapour Trail was in no mood to listen.

“You’re evil, and you tricked every pony into thinking you were good! You’re a monster! I — I grew up listening to stories about you, about the Elements! But you lied to everypony in Equestria! You monster!”

“Vapour Trail, wait—” Angel Wings tried to hold her back, but Vapour Trail shoved her friend away as though she weighed nothing at all.

Angel Wing went sprawling backwards, and then Midnight Strike’s knife was in Vapour’s hoof, and she was advancing on the false Element of Laughter, the fallen angel, this Lucifer who had bought all of Vapour’s ideals and the trust she had placed in Equestria’s heroes crashing to the ground.

Pinkie Pie’s pupils contracted to pinpricks of terror when she saw the light glinting off the blade in Vapour’s grip, and her ears flattened. “Uh, I — I — I—” she whispered, but for once, she finally seemed at a loss for words.

Vapour Trail leaned over her, one forehoof holding the villain to the ground, one gripping the knife tight in her frog, and stared into the eyes of the pony who had once been a symbol of everything she rejected.

“How could you do this?” she whispered.

A single tear slipped down Pinkie Pie’s frozen cheek.

Vapour Trail didn’t wait to hear the answer. She didn’t need to. She bought the knife slashing down towards those big blue eyes —

— But it never connected.

She stopped. Vapour Trail wanted nothing more than to put an end to Smiling Mask, the killer who had been responsible for so much terror and loss, but here, at the moment when she had a chance to do so — she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t end the life of another pony. No matter how evil they were. Not even Smiling Mask.

Comments

[PresentPerfect]

And his species switched back! Amazing chameleon work.

[SigmasonicX]

Damn, what has Pinkie been doing?