Mind the Gap
The quickest route to Innsbeak was by way of the big rail hub at Bathhorse, New Brunswicker, with an overnight stop at Trottingham in the Griffish Isles. The first leg of that trip would take about fifteen hours on a nonstop express- one departed Ponyville at two in the morning, which in fact suited Twilight Sparkle just fine.
This time, she shared her first-class compartment with Rarity and Rainbow Dash. At the moment, she wasn’t sure if arranging an interview with the mysterious Gordon would require the light touch of an experienced salesmare, or a more… ‘direct’ approach- this was Griffonia, after all. In fact, she would've preferred to bring along all of her friends, but Dash and Rarity were the only ones both willing and able to leave Ponyville on such short notice. Fluttershy preferred to avoid long-distance travel if at all possible; Pinkie Pie had her hooves full preparing for some sort of local harvest festival Twilight had never heard of before; and Applejack was both enmeshed in the festival, and reluctant to go off adventuring to leave the rest of her family in uncertain circumstances. If she was being entirely honest, Twilight felt a little more at ease relying on the sleek, deadly pegasus than Applejack’s blunt practicality, for reasons she couldn’t quite put her hoof on.
It was commonly said that thanks to the sophistication of the international rail system, all a well-to-do gentlemare needed to traverse most of the Known World was a train ticket. It was also commonly said that a true proverbial gentlemare would have no desire to traverse most of the Known World. Just about everything that civilized tastes could desire would in fact be found within the borders of Equestria, after all, and the international rail system was mostly pony-built.
Twilight, for her part, didn’t feel particularly inclined to comment, considering herself rather poorly traveled. She had only ever attended two scientific conferences outside of Equestrian borders: one in Siam, and another in Ornithia. Generally, foreign scholars with discoveries worth presenting came to the Royal Academy, as was only proper. In contrast, her mother had visited nearly every city in Saddle Arabia, where her Under the Abyssinian Sun series had for some unknown reason become wildly popular. Her father frequently attended medical conferences and missions in the disease-ridden eastern tropics. Shiny had, like most ambitious young officers, spent a good portion of his life shuttled between more trouble spots and garrisons than Twilight could count, doing his part to uphold the worldwide Pax Equestria.
Then she’d arrived in Ponyville, and met ponies who had never left Equestria at all.
Rainbow Dash confined herself almost entirely to a narrow line connecting Ponyville and Cloudsdale, with a few childhood detours to visit relatives in nearby Drayton. Rarity had never been further than Manehattan. Some of her new neighbors had never left their home Governorate.
She parceled out her theories about radion, Lunar artifacts, the Canterlot Fire, and Gordon of Innsbeak to her friends in little fragments, amid other inconsequential conversation and several extended naps. With such a long trip ahead of them, there was no need for a crash course, and Rarity’s daunting pile of Midnight Crew novels could only count for so much. Twilight hadn’t initially thought much of those, but she was starting to appreciate their complexity- especially the convoluted temporal-mechanics puzzles that developed whenever Shadow Spade took on the cabal of extra-dimensional gangsters calling themselves The Felt.
Finally, the fields and forest outside their compartment window dropped away, and the train began its long journey over the Channel Point Bridge- a massive, multi-tracked, multi-leveled series of ornate steel arches stretching across the Griffish Channel to the Isles and Trottingham. It had been built in the 750’s at the cost of over eight hundred million bits, and was the longest such structure in the Known World by a substantial margin.
It was easy to forget that over her long life, Princess Celestia had accomplished more than just a political career and copious patronage of mortal luminaries in the arts and sciences- she’d also found time to personally become an accomplished architect and civil engineer.
Not long after, Rainbow Dash folded up the issue of Sapphire: Equestrian Commando that had occupied her attention for a good portion of the trip. The cover depicted the titular Sapphire knocking several teeth from the jaw of an Abyssinian gangster wearing bloodstained formal wear, and above that the title: “HARMONY’S TERROR!! In THIS issue, Sapphire must CLAW her way out of SEEDIEST, grimiest underbelly OF the seediest, GRIMIEST city in the KNOWN World: KLUDGETOWN!!!!”
“So, who is this guy, Gordon?” the pegasus asked, slipping her comic back into her saddlebags, “and how do we know he’s even still alive?”
“Well, the most up-to-date bulletins from the University of Innsbeak still mention him as a member of the faculty, and he published a paper about three months ago,” Twilight explained, “I mean, I guess it’s possible he died recently enough that no information made it out to Equestria, he’s over a century old after all, but I doubt it. If that is the case, though, the University should be going through his records. Getting hold of those is my backup plan.”
“I… actually didn’t know there even was a university in Innsbeak, of all places,” Rarity interjected. “Is it at all like the ones in Equestria?”
“Well, it’s no Oxenford,” Twilight continued, “but it’s a well-respected technical university.” She paused. “Or, well, I wouldn’t say respected, but… actually, I guess I would, in the same way that a thunderhead or a blasting-crystal requires respect when you’re handling it.”
Rarity’s eyes went a little wider at that statement.
“Whaddaya mean by that?” Rainbow Dash demanded, comic book now completely forgotten.
“Innsbeak is a Griffish free port, so the university’s where a lot of scholars go to conduct research into things that’d be… frowned on, at other institutions. It’s a world leader in necromancy, psychomancy, ‘medicine’,” here Twilight waved her forehooves in a loose approximation of quotation marks, “and certain areas of high-powered liminology, dynamancy, and evocation; but very little of their research is ever made public, and it’s all either self-funded or funded by equally shady interests. Basically, the University of Innsbeak is the world’s biggest hangout for mad wizards.”
“And the guy we’re after works there,” Rainbow Dash muttered, “Great.”
Rarity looked at her and nodded. “I’ll be honest with you, darling, everything you’ve told me about this place sounds positively dreadful. I do hope we won’t have to stay there long?”
“Actually, we won’t be staying at the University at all,” Twilight paused and took a sip of her complementary Equestrian Rail Service tea, “I’ve made arrangements for us with one of the local nobles, Lord Goldstone. He’s actually the cockerel who sold me the Luna Bay Fragment, which started me on my way to Ponyville.” She set the tea aside and planted her forehooves on the compartment’s little fold-out table. “Now, Innsbeak still technically uses the old Imperial Guilder as its official currency, but pretty much everygriff should be willing to accept Equestrian bits- proportionally, they’re worth a lot more. You should all be fine with just pocket money, and I’ve already paid ahead for our stay with Goldstone. It’s a griffon custom, you see, to charge guests rent.” Twilight leaned back against her leather-cushioned bench again. “Actually, it’s kind of interesting- old guilder coins are worth more on the foreign collector’s market than they are as currency in Griffonia, so there’s a sizable black market counterfeiting and alchemically weathering them. That’s done even more damage to the real currency’s value, of course, and also made it much harder for the antiquities trade to bring legitimate bits back into Griffonia, which in turn is a serious problem because…” she paused again, noticing Rainbow Dash’s glazed-over stare and Rarity’s suspiciously-perfect attention. “Sorry, sorry, I just read the most fascinating economic paper, and… look, just, you now what they say, keep your bits about you.”
“Mmm. Right,” the tailor sniffed. “I do think it’d be worth mentioning something I read in a society magazine just after you told me we’d be traveling to Griffonia. ‘Hen’ and ‘cockerel’ only refer to griffon commoners; a cockerel noblegriff is called a ‘tiercel’ and the equivalent to noblemare is a ‘formel’.”
Twilight nodded. “Yes! You’re right. I completely forgot.”
Across the compartment, Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Crap, I’m starting to feel a little bit left out, here. Twilight being all over that weird Old Griffish stuff I can understand, but… you, Rarity?”
The tailor simply smiled, demurely.
“Actually, my Griffish is extremely limited, pretty much strictly confined to technical topics,” Twilight clarified. “I even had to look up what the Middle High Griffish term for ‘alicorn’ was.”
“Oh. How dreadfully embarrassing for you!” Rarity chided, “I mean, who doesn’t know that?”
Dash shook her head. “Still. The only Griffish I know is about a dozen curse words.”
“Good, so, together, if we ever need to instruct somegriff on exactlywhere to insert their crystal waveguide, we can make it work,” Rarity cut in, as casually as though she were discussing next week’s weather schedule.
Both Rainbow Dash and Twilight stared at the tailor for a moment, silently agape. All they received in turn was another society-mare smile.
“So… umm… anyway,” the pegasus continued, shifting awkwardly in her seat, “I still think it woulda’ been a good idea to bring a couple of the Guards along. You know, as backup.”
“I… really actually don’t particularly want Royal Guard troops who could be compelled to answer questions by a commanding officer along while we’re doing this,” explained Twilight, “I really hope we can keep a low profile?”
“So, no smashing beaks in?” Rainbow’s ears turned downward in disappointment.
“Not if we can possibly avoid it.”
After a few seconds, Rarity spoke up once again. “I must admit I am a mite concerned about leaving Spike behind again so soon. Are you sure you want to throw him back into running the Station just after… well, everything that happened with you, and that cockatrice, and all?”
Twilight nodded. “This time I made sure to sit down with Forward and Marigold and make it clear that while I’m gone, he’s my designated replacement and has full executive authority. I’ve also had myself keyed into the firelink spell, so he can contact me for advice if he needs to, and I’ll be sending him nightly reports. More to the point, whoever’s been stealing from us has been pretty quiet recently, so I don’t think he’ll have a lot to worry about.”
That seemed to satisfy the tailor, at least temporarily. She tutted softly, and then said “Well I do hope Spike’s not rubbing Marigold’s face in it too hard. It’s not really her fault she’s… well, a bit of a blockhead sometimes.”
Twilight laughed out loud at that. “Okay, yeah, but she’s an efficient blockhead, and that’s what we need in Ponyville right now. We’ve already fallen way behind on excavating the Castle of the Two Sisters and other important sites in Everfree proper, and all this coverup nonsense isn’t helping.”
“Hmph.” Rarity shook her head. “If Applejack or Pinkie’d had time to come along, I’d frankly be a lot less worried about our chances. No offense meant to this Goldstone fellow, but where we’re going doesn’t sound particularly reputable.” She jumped slightly in her seat at the sound of movement in the corridor outside, and slid open the compartment door a crack. Spotting a meal cart on the other side, she reached out with her telekinesis and deftly switched a one-bit coin for a hot buttered scone. Then she continued, “What if whoever hired that dreadful cameramare sends somepony else after us?”
“Actually, I’ve already taken steps to deal with any problems,” she waved a hoof across the compartment, “Rainbow?”
“Oh! Yeah! As soon as Twilight started putting this trip together, I wrote ahead to an old flight-camp buddy, a griffon who’s spent some time in Innsbeak. She’s gonna be our guide, interpreter, and some extra muscle if things get bad.” The predatory grin on Rainbow Dash’s muzzle suggested she would not, in fact, consider such a situation bad at all. “Her name's Gilda, she's good company. I've known her for years. Trust me, we're all gonna get along just fine!”
Not long after, the stark white cliffs of the Griffish Isles slid into view outside the compartment window, followed by rolling fields and grasslands so brilliantly green that they seemed almost luminous in the late afternoon sun. Every so often the fields were dotted with quaint little timber-beam-and-stucco buildings, which gradually grew closer together and more elaborate until there could be no doubt that their train was speeding through Trottingham itself. The style was extremely similar to Ponyville’s -indeed, here was where the term “Trotter-style architecture” had originated- but these winding streets felt older, classier, and more established in a way that Ponyville would frankly probably never be able to achieve.
Purchased from some now-forgotten griffon warlord less than a year after the First Hearth’s Warming, the Griffish Isles had been subject to continuous pony habitation for a little under thirteen centuries. Aside from Canterine, Canterlot, and -arguably- Vanhoover, no currently extant Equestrian city could claim as long a period of simple uninterrupted existence as Trottingham.
They disembarked on a broad open-air platform a little after five in the evening. In the square in front of them stood a broad marble pillar easily three stories high, topped by a statue of Princess Celestia in repose, wearing a helmet, with the shield and trident representing the Isles at her hooves. The Princess’s sixth husband had built it, in honor of their Diamond Jubilee some five centuries ago, along with the sprawling Trotter Court Palace some ways further to the northwest. Celestia had never deigned to inhabit the palace herself, and instead spent the next half-millennium quietly renovating and re-purposing it: first into apartments for ponies deemed of sufficient accomplishment to secure a lifetime pension from the Imperial Republic, and later as a museum. The traditional hedge maze in front was supposed to be particularly impressive- symbolizing the unity of the three pony tribes, it was constructed of equal parts greenery, solidified clouds, and paths of luminous concentrated starlight. Further beyond still sprawled the massive racecourse at Sandown Park, while overhead passed a steady stream of airships bound to and from the massive Hoofrow Aerodrome complex to the northeast.
Some of Twilight’s academy colleagues had once floated a theory that the close proximity of Trottingham to foreign territory subconsciously compelled its inhabitants to great feats of industriousness in order to show off. Twilight herself had never put much stock in it before, but now she was beginning to see its logic.
She slipped a map out of her saddlebags. “Alright. I got us all rooms at one of the local bed-and-breakfast places, somewhere reasonably discreet. The Ember Place Inn, on 1-A Canterton Close, just off of Ember Lane.”
“Gilda said she’d meet us there,” Rainbow Dash added.
Twilight picked up her solitary leather suitcase in her telekinesis, and they all set out on hoof.
The winding streets of Trottingham were already packed with locals wrapping up their workday, and more than a few of them proved to be griffons. The big Reinsbury’s Grocery they passed even boasted rooftop access, and fresh cuts of beef were illustrated on a street display.
Twilight, for her part, fought to control her nervousness as she checked the winding alleys and ample green space for lurking pegasi with cameras. At one point, she spotted a beige-coated mare with a pink-and-blue mane who seemed very much to be following her, but after a block or two the mare turned a corner and did not reappear.
Before long, they arrived at yet another embarrassingly picturesque little Trotter-style red brick cottage- the Ember Place Inn.
The door swung open in Twilight’s telekinesis, and the interior proved to be exactly as charming as the outside; complete with a roaring fireplace beneath a coat of arms depicting an armored earth-pony knight against a brilliant blue background. In the tiled sitting space in front of it, several tables already contained the remains of early dinners. Slouched at one of them was an imposing, somewhat blocky tan griffon hen with a leonine tail. Her eyes were yellow and her head and neck bright white, with a purple-tipped crest swept to one side at such a gravity-defyingly rakish angle that had to be due to some variety of product.
She looked at Rainbow Dash at almost exactly the same time as Rainbow Dash looked at her.
“Gil!”
“R-D!” The griffon surged up from her table with enough careless speed to send silverware clattering and overturn an empty water glass. “We’re doing this, Dash…”
“We’re making this hapen!” Rainbow Dash and the presumable Gilda both sprang forward from opposite ends of the lobby, and slammed bodily into each other with a resounding thud. Rainbow’s hoof drove repeatedly into the griffon’s shoulder, and she swung right back with a clenched right talon an equal number of times, laughing all the while.
Both Twilight and Rarity turned away from the spectacle, to share a bewildered look with the stallion running the reception desk- a stocky cobalt-coated earth pony with a thick full beard and thicker glasses. “Welp. I’m… guessing you’re wif’ ‘er?” he asked, in what Twilight guessed was an… Estuary accent?
Twilight nodded, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “… yeah.”
By this point, both fliers had separated, and were staggering back to Gilda’s original table. “Holy shit, how long’s it been, Dash, a fuckin’ decade?” It took Twilight a few seconds to realize the strange throat-clearing noise the griffon had made was supposed to be profanity, but aside from that she spoke Ponish with little detectable accent- only a few odd clicks and inflections.
Without being prompted, Rainbow Dash sat down beside the griffon. “Yeah. Decade and a half, actually, I think!”
Gilda laughed, nervously at first and then loud and heartily. “You… you still look good! You look ready to kick ass!”
“You too! How fast are you pushing off these days?”
“In ten seconds from a standing start? About one-thirteen K-P-H.” Gilda looked away from her friend, briefly. Apparently, whatever that meant, it wasn’t especially good. “But you know it’s never been just about speed- I’ve got more stopping power in that one-thirteen than a wimp like you’d ever squeeze out.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure…” the pegasus’s eyes narrowed and her ears folded downward, and then she seemed to realize Twilight, Rarity, and the innkeeper were all staring at her. She waved one wing back at the reception desk. “Oh, and Gilda, these are those ponies I told you about, Rarity and Twilight Sparkle. Rarity helps me out with some of my gear, sometimes, and Twilight’s that crazy mage who blew up Nightmare Moon and fought off a full-grown hydra!”
“He-heeeey!” Gilda removed herself from her chair once again and padded back over, extending her clenched right talon and holding it in place expectantly. After some consideration, Twilight cautiously jabbed her right forehoof against it frog-first. Rarity carefully followed suit. That seemed to satisfy the griffon, and she continued. “Oh, wait a minute, you’re that Twilight! I read about you in the fuckin’ newspaper!”
Twilight shifted awkwardly from one hoof to the other. “Well, then probably everything you know about me is wrong…” She was relieved to see Gilda chuckle slightly, and continued all at once “Nightmare Moon didn’t really blow up, I ran away from the hydra, and Rainbow left out the part where I got myself turned to stone for a week mostly just by being stupid, but… other than that, yes, I guess I’m ‘that’ Twilight?”
Rarity looked from her to Gilda, and then side-stepped a little bit closer. “We can all introduce ourselves properly on the train to Innsbeak tomorrow morning,” she suggested gently, “but for the time being Twilight and I can leave you in peace to catch up with Rainbow Dash.”
Gilda and the pegasus both nodded. Twilight turned back to the desk clerk and asked “Hey, do you know if the palace stays open this late?”
He nodded. “Til ten, so you’ve go' a while yet. I’ll 'ave your bags sent up to your rooms if you want.”
“Excellent,” said Twilight, “Oooh, we’ve got to check out the favour residence Princess Celestia awarded to Doctor Fair-A-Day.”
“And the historical textile collection!” added Rarity, “I hear the Golden Fleece is truly a sight to behold. Did you know that King Trotter tracked it down as a wedding proposal?”
Twilight removed one of the brochures sitting on the desk and rapidly unfolded it in her telekinesis. “They also have an early astronomical clock… and an early psychomancer named Sandy Ford took inspiration from the Court Maze to create tests for laboratory rats to study learning…” She scanned over the small map insert in the bottom left corner. “It’s just a shame we don’t have time to detour to the University of Manechester and visit the mathematics department…”
Behind her, without turning around, she was fairly certain she heard either Gilda or Rainbow Dash contemptuously mutter “Nerds…”
“I do wish Applejack had come along,” Rarity continued, either oblivious or doing a typically good job of faking it, “Garson’s Farm sounds positively lovely…”
Twilight turned and shot the tailor a skeptical look. “Why would Applejack come this far to see a farm? She lives in a farmhouse, made out of a barn. Her back yard’s a farm.”
“So, now that I actually gotcha here we gotta get in a couple rounds at the racecourse,” Gilda continued behind them, “and then grab a pint at the White Horse Pub.” Twilight considered opining on the outdated units of measurement such places made use of, and then decided discretion was the better part of valor. “Oh, and the Plough has the best tuna sandwiches, but their bangers-and-mash looks like a pile of shit. It tastes fine, it just looks like shit.”
Beside her, Rarity whickered quietly. “And I thought Rainbow Dash and Applejack were a deadly combination…”
“Yeah,” Twilight nodded and passed a few additional bits to the clerk. “Let’s get out of here before they start smashing beer cans on each other’s foreheads or something…”
Rainbow Dash knocked back another pint of ale, finishing most of it in a single swig. She slammed the glass back down on the bar counter with a satisfying thud, and turned to her erstwhile companion. “Aww, damn, you’re right, this stuff is better warm.”
“It’s supposed to be warm!” Gilda chuckled. “All that weird alchemical preservative shit Equestria uses in your food's taken away the… umm… the joy of drinking a fine mug of warm ale, or whatever. So what if it goes stale faster? It tastes better!”
“Yeah…” Dash gave her another brief slug on the shoulder. “Especially when I’m drinking it with a buddy.”
“And now we don’t gotta convince anypony that, yeah, we’re both totally sixteen… honest!”
Rainbow Dash took another bite of her tuna sandwich. It was, true to Gilda’s word, extraordinarily good. “Kinda’ takes some of the fun out of it, though, really…”
“Yeah, but now none of the drill instructors can come after us, so it all works out, right?” The griffon swept out a theatrical wing over the empty stool to her right, “Do you wanna wake up hung-over to that fuckin’ roc screechin’ at us?” She twisted her beak into a rough approximation of an Appleloosan accent, “‘RISE AND SHINE, FILLIES! MY NAME IS SENIOR FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR BARNSTORMER! THE FIRST AND LAST WORDS I WANNA HEAR OUTTA YER STINKIN' HOLES IS 'SIR!' DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!’”
Several other patrons stopped to stare at her. A few laughed.
Rainbow Dash shook her head, the warmth of the ale in her stomach suddenly replaced by a familiar twisting. “I… I guess.”
“Hey, hey, hey…” Gilda shook her head, “I didn’t mean it like that…” Then she paused, and looked up past Rainbow’s seat. “Boreas, check out that longbow on the wall up there!”
The pegasus followed her gaze, and found herself staring at what was essentially a two-by-eight with string, mounted on a richly-decorated wooden plaque. “Wait, that’s a longbow? I thought it was a quarterstaff or something when I sat down!”
“Uhh, no!” Gilda squinted at the tiny bronze label below it, golden eyes narrowing. “This says it was made for one of Celestia’s kids, Trotter something-or-other, the son of the guy who built that nerd palace. He was an earth pony, and the gormless twat used to rock back on his hind legs, then aim and fire that fucking log before he lost his balance.”
Rainbow Dash shook her head, and downed another pint immediately after the bartender had refilled it. “Bullshit.”
Gilda’s eyes took on a predatory glint. “I betcha’ it’s true.”
“Bull. Shit.”
“It’s totally true, and I’m gonna show you!”
“Oh, you are on, little miss ‘stopping power’…”
“Fuck you, Dash.”
“Fuck you too, Gilda!”
“Where in Tartarus does that mare get off on kickin’ patrons out, anyway?” Rainbow Dash demanded as she and Gilda staggered down High Street.
“Yeah, she got somethin’ against griffons, or somethin’?”
The pegasus bobbed her head in agreement. “I mean, why’d they have a target on the wall, and a bow and arrows, if they didn’t want anypony to use ‘em?”
“It’s not like we broke it or anything…” Gilda added.
Rainbow shrugged. “Yeah, what kind of dart board can you not shoot at?”
“Well, there’s always another pub. Come on, you gotta try the Hen ‘n Hounds down the street…”
“You gotta introduce me to that Pinkie Pie mare, she sounds like an absolute fuckin’ riot to hang out with,” Gilda declared around a beak full of salted peanuts.
“Yeah, she’s pretty clever,” replied Rainbow Dash, “Sort of like Surprise, but, you know, actually funny, and smart enough to know when it’s time to quit. Sorta looks like Surprise, too, just an earth pony. And a little skinnier, actually.”
“Yeah,” despite the fire blazing in the fireplace opposite the bar, Gilda shivered a little. “I still think it was creepy how she used to follow us around everywhere even when I told her to her face to fuck off.”
“I meant when to stop with the pranks thing, but… yeah. That too. Remember when she swapped out all the ink in the alchemy lab for that disappearing shit?”
“Yeah, that was a dick move. Like half the upperclassmares lost their notes. I think the instructors rode her pretty hard for that. Didn’t she bum around down in Ponyville for a while?”
Now it was Dash’s turn to shudder. “A while, yeah. She was still up to that same shit when she was twenty-five years old! Around… I dunno, three years ago they threw her in jail for a week for unpaid fines and generally just being a nuisance to everypony, and she skipped town a little after that.”
“You know, Dash, I’d like to say I’m surprised, but… I’m really not.”
“Eheheh. Surprised.” Rainbow chuckled, then ducked to avoid a clenched talon swung at her head.
The griffon also laughed after that, then her expression grew more somber. She downed another swig of ale. “And… uhh… do you know whatever happened to that wimpy yellow filly you were always tryin’ to get us to hang out with? Butterscotch, or something? After, well… you know, they only ever told us she was alive and in the hospital.”
“Oh. Uh…” Rainbow took another drink of her own to counter the tightness that had formed in her chest. “Her name’s Fluttershy, and she’s actually… she’s doing fine. Really good, even. She stuck around in Ponyville with me, too, and we’re good buddies. She taught herself all that fancy druid shit, just like she was always going on about, and got a job as the town ranger. Helped us fight Nightmare Moon.”
Gilda’s expression relaxed a little, and she crossed her talons on the bar in front of her. “That’s… uhh… that’s good to hear. She was kind of a weirdo, but I didn’t want her to… you know, die, or be paralyzed, or anything. It’s kinda’ impressive, actually, going from some wimp who almost got literally bullied to death, to kickin’ some crazy moon-monster’s ass… that's… a long way to come.”
The tightness in Rainbow’s chest redoubled, and she anxiously cast around for another topic of conversation. “Yeah, don’t worry about it, she’s fine. I wanna know what you’ve been doin’.”
“Well, you know, a griffon in the Equestrian Army’s gonna be lucky if she ever gets above Sergeant, Junior Fliers’ ace or not, so I didn’t even bother talking to the recruiters at graduation…”
“Hey, hey, you know, Twilight says the new round of brass are really trying to put a stop to that shit, right?” Rainbow cut in, “The Royal Guard in particular, and I guess the Army and Navy too. That was one of her brother’s big plans when he took over- oh yeah, and did I mention Twilight’s brother’s Commander of the Royal Guard?” She downed another few gulps of ale. “My point is, you might wanna give it another go.”
“Nah,” Gilda continued as though the pegasus hadn’t spoken, “I couldn’t deal with all that spit-and-polish shit every day anyway. Ponies tellin’ me all the things I couldn’t do, where I couldn’t go, and who I couldn’t fuck… and the pay’s shit, on top of that.” She leaned sideways on her stool and lowered her voice slightly. “So, I’ve been workin’ on a lotta different… operations, special projects, you know, way up north near Rainbow Falls, and sometimes they send me over here to the Isles. That’s how I was able to get out here to take this gig with you and your pals. Like, you know the new heavy rail line that’s gonna run coal up to Canterine? I was there when they were building it.”
“So, private security, huh?” Rainbow Dash leaned forward to match her friend’s posture. She was genuinely interested, but also hoped she was putting up an appropriately hard-boiled impression. “Lotta monsters up there in the north… and things that aren’t legally monsters but’re gonna try and kill you anyway…”
Surprisingly, Gilda shifted uncomfortably on her stool. “Something like that, yeah. Sometimes, though, they just need somegriff to pick things up and put ‘em down again.” She paused, then amended “Whatever’s around, whatever the weather.”
“Yeah, that sounds pretty hardcore,” the pegasus replied, although she wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince Gilda or herself.
“Pays good enough, I guess,” the griffon muttered, something bitter creeping into her voice. Then she paused, took another drink, and puffed out her chest feathers. “And let me tell you, the shittiest job in Equestria’s still a lot better than any gig you could try to get in a shithole like Griffonstone.”
Dash just nodded. “Yeah, I know.” This had, in fact, been a frequent topic of discussion back at Flight Camp.
Gilda seemed to recover from whatever was bothering her, and continued. “So, enough about me… what’ve you been doing?”
“… Weather. I’m captain -well, co-captain- of Ponyville’s weather team,” Rainbow muttered, muzzle tilted down, the familiar tightness in her chest reaching its peak.
“That’s it, just… weather?” Gilda was clearly trying to sound sympathetic, and doing a pretty good job of it, too, but underneath Rainbow thought she almost seemed… relieved.
The now somewhat ale-soaked recesses of Rainbow’s brain finally managed to put together an acceptable justification. “Well, weather, and clobbering ancient alicorns and everything…”
Gilda, too, now looked much more relaxed. She leaned back on her stool and looked Rainbow in the eye. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. So, you know how when Nightmare Moon showed up, she had all those zombie rebel soldiers with her and they took over the whole town?”
“Oh damn, you saw some of that action?”
“SAW it?” the pegasus scoffed. “I did a lot more than see it.” She drained the rest of her ale. “So, Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Pinkie, Rarity the tailor, who you just met, and another buddy of mine named Applejack, we all got together and decided we had to do something about it. First thing’s first, we needed somepony to take out one of the squads patrolling the road so we could all exfil and move into the Everfree. That’s a story by itself, but it’d be a tough fight even just to get there. So, I grabbed my gear, and headed out for the north road, and right away I spotted six of those zombie guys all kitted out, and a couple of ‘shadowbolts’ in the rear to watch over them. Those are the kind who could turn invisible and teleport, real tough sons-a-bitches. I pull out my saber, check my wingblades, and charge right down the middle…”
Rarity woke around eight o’clock as usual, which gave her a few hours to lounge in the inn’s dining room and add some new designs to her sketchbook before Twilight joined her for tea around ten.
It wasn’t until half past twelve that Rainbow Dash stumbled her way downstairs, bleary-eyed and unwashed. Gilda followed a full fifteen minutes later, in similar condition. The big griffon hen squinted at the clock in the lobby, and then lurched backward as if hit. “Aww, fuck, we’re gonna miss our train, aren’t we?”
Twilight looked up from her copy of Who Lies Sleeping. She’d picked up the text when they’d passed an open-late bookstore last night, claiming it might’ve had something to do with the events of the Great Canterlot Fire. She’d shown a few supposedly crucially significant passages to Rarity over their coffee; the tailor had for her part had found the ramblings about reptile ponies and subterranean cults largely incoherent.
“Actually,” the scholar said, “Rarity thought this might happen, so even though I told you the train to Innsbeak leaves at one, it really leaves at three.”
From her spot by the window, Rarity made sure to produce an appropriately disapproving huff. She would very much have preferred if Twilight had claimed credit for the tiny plot; a lady such as herself did not lightly indulge in such deviousness. Instead, she settled for addressing the pegasus and griffon directly. “Go ahead and get some lunch, and a coffee… or three. And, now that Rainbow’s had a chance to fill Gilda in on exactly what we’re trying to accomplish…” her eyes narrowed and her ears pivoted forward, “You… did tell Gilda what we’re trying to accomplish, right, Dash?”
The pegasus waved a wing at her friend.
“Ponies up in Canterlot are covering up something that happened during the big fire in the twenties,” Gilda said matter-of-factly, “Which Twilight figures has got something to do with the weird Lunar shit going on around Ponyville. The only survivor who’s not in on it is a wizard named Gordon who lives in Innsbeak, and we’re gonna try to find him and talk to him. If he’s alive, of course.”
Rarity nodded, briefly impressed. Then she continued, “It might also be a good idea to make use of this time to pick up any additional supplies you think we might need. We’ll meet back up with you here at the Inn at two-thirty.”
Rainbow Dash peered out over the expansive shopping area of Garson’s Farm, a quaint Trotter market transplanted underneath a vast, steel-and-glass arched vault to protect it from the frequent Isles rainstorms. Garson himself was either a second- or third-generation Equestrian resident -Rainbow hadn’t paid much attention to the information plaque at the front entrance- who’d grown wealthy enough to employ a predominately pony workforce and make a sizable contribution to the food supply of the Isles.
She turned back to Gilda. “So… what’re we doing here, again?”
“Grabbing supplies,” the griffon shrugged, and adjusted the empty set of saddlebags on her back. “I’m guessing your pals thought they could just buy food at the markets in Innsbeak, because they didn’t pack anything. But it’s gonna be hard to find any pony food that’s decent, or, well, edible, even. So we should stock up here.”
Rainbow cocked her head as they both set off among the neat rows of market stalls. “I figured we could just try some of the local stuff? It’s not like I’ve got anything against carnivores or whatever.”
Gilda looked up from inspecting a collection of different varieties of bread, and laughed. “Yeah, well, a lotta’ ponies I worked with up North used to say that too. They all changed their tune after they ended up bent over a toilet all night. And that’s with good meat. You never know what you’re gonna get from a butcher in Innsbeak. I’d suggest not drinking the water, either; I’ll see if this place has any bottled rainclouds sitting around.”
“Good idea.” Gilda struck off in one direction and Rainbow, at her unspoken suggestion, wandered off in the other. Not much later, the pegasus did indeed find a stand selling somewhat overpriced bottled raincloud, which promised “farm-fresh, authentic sea breeze flavour”. A clever bit of magic, each stored approximately two gallons of clean, potable water in a form compact and light enough to be comfortably carried in one hoof.
She grabbed four bottles for sixty bits, and then spotted another stand selling carrot cake at almost exactly the same time as she realized she’d completely skipped lunch.
She waved over to Gilda with one wing, and shouted “Hey, Gil, if it’s okay with you, I’m gonna grab some lunch here, too.”
“Sure, you go on ahead,” the griffon shouted back, “I’ll find something in a little bit. They’ve got a whole stand of different kindsa’ pies over here, though, if you’re interested!”
“No thanks, I was never actually that much of a fan!”
“Sure!” the griffon ambled off towards the dry goods section.
“See, now was that so hard?” Rainbow muttered to herself as she grabbed a slice of cake and tossed a few bits back onto the counter. Some ponies -who would remain nameless but who had been run out of Ponyville after spending a week in jail for unpaid fines- made a national rutting issue out of the most mundane things.
Already tucking into her cake, which was in fact excellent, she sat down at a nearby table and watched Gilda haggle with somepony selling unidentifiable herbs. “This stuff ain’t fresh,” the griffon growled, surprisingly loudly, but as soon as the salespony seemed to finish parsing her decidedly Mainland Equestrian phrasing she turned around again. In the process, she slapped the green earth mare behind her with the end of her leonine tail.
“Hey, watch it!” the mare shouted. As the salespony turned at the sound, Gilda slipped two full packets of beef jerky into her saddlebags from an adjoining stand.
Rainbow Dash guessed that Gilda figured the salespony would be too busy dealing with the irate mare to notice- they’d pulled the same trick dozens of times at flight camp, after all. This time, however, the unicorn stallion behind the counter immediately spun back around and pointed an accusing hoof in Gilda’s direction. “Oi! Where d’ya think yer goin? Give tha’ back, ya fief!”
Gilda flinched in surprise, just for a moment, then rounded on the salespony in turn. “Hey, what’s your problem, you got somethin’ against griffons or somethin’?”
She shoved past the still-irate green mare and strode off at just a bit faster than an ordinary walking pace, even as the salespony continued to shout. “Oi! You ge’ back 'ere, ya daf’ bint! C’mere!”
Feeling vaguely appalled, Rainbow Dash abandoned her lunch and began shouldering her way through the rapidly-forming crowd of onlookers. There were already too many bodies too close together for her to be able to take off, and even if she could get in the air the mess of steel arches overhead would’ve limited her altitude to a few yards.
She managed to make it almost within reach, just as Gilda roughly shoved another mare aside.
At almost the same time a yellow earth stallion wearing the traditional checkerboard-trimmed barding of the Trottingham Watch -or constabulary, or whatever weird thing they were called over here- appeared seemingly from nowhere. “Righ’! Wot’s all this, then?” he asked.
Rainbow finally managed to shove her way to the front of the crowd. “Sorry, listen, I’m sure there isn’t any kind of-”
“Tha’ griffon jus’ swiped 'alf my stock!” the grocer cut her off abruptly. Ponies looked from him, to the constable, to Gilda, and then back again.
“Look, we’ll pay for whatever-” Rainbow tried again.
“The fuck I did,” Gilda shouted, somewhere in between the grocer and the constable, “Racist sonofabitch just-”
“I’m sorry we bothered anypony, we were just-” Rainbow said, louder this time.
“Well, if you could bof just step over here and-” the constable continued, his voice clipped and serious.
Gilda took a step towards him, puffed out her chest feathers, and tensed her hind legs to spring. “Nuh-uh. No way-”
“Listen,” Dash shouted, “We can-”
Gilda stretched her wings halfway-open. As soon as she did, the constable turned his head to reach for the baton strapped at his side.
Rainbow Dash took another step forward and snapped her own wings out to full extension. “Look!” she shouted, “We’ll pay for it, okay?” Both Gilda and the grocer turned to look for her, although the constable didn’t take his eyes off the griffon or let go of his baton. “We’ll pay for it.”
The pegasus reached into her saddlebags, slowly and carefully, and extracted a wingful of the first bits she could get her feathers on- random denominations, almost certainly far more than the stolen jerky was worth. “We’ll pay for it.” She stepped over to the counter and carefully set them down. “Okay? We’ll pay for it.”
“Mmm-hmm.” The grocer stepped back behind his stand, the crowd began to disperse, and the constable finally replaced his baton in its holster. He remained lurking nearby, however, as Rainbow Dash stuck a wing under the strap of Gilda’s saddlebags and somewhat roughly guided her back towards the market entrance.
“What was that all about?” the pegasus demanded.
Gilda shrugged, her indifference seeming more than a little forced- her head stayed on a swivel, tracking the constable and any other shoppers who happened to get too close. “What was what all about? C’mon, Dash, we used to filch shit from the cafeteria all the time! I don’t know about you, but this griffon needs more than one meal a day. Maybe you’re just out of practice…”
“Yeah, but, I mean…” Rainbow Dash stammered, before redoubling her focus. “We were twelve, and we didn’t have anything better to do! And we just stole from the mess hall, not… other ponies’ lockers or anything…”
Gilda shrugged again. “So what?”
“So, that was for real!” the pegasus snapped, “That cop -constable, whatever- wasn’t just going to make you take a lap! You’re gonna make for a pretty crappy guide if you’re costing us bail money and can’t leave the city!”
This time, Gilda just roughly shrugged herself out of Rainbow’s grip and headed through the exit under her own power. “Aww, come on. If we don’t hurry, we really will miss our train!”
“Hey, I’m not done-!”
“Whatever, mom!”
They strode in awkward silence back to the inn through the gray, cloudy afternoon.
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Thanks very much for getting the next chapter up. Again, really good job on the exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up in all the right places. And, yeah, you do make some excellent points in the author's notes. Anyway, really enjoyed the descriptions of the length of the trip as well as the preparations and the bits of the cultural differences. Also really liked Rainbow and Gilda's catching up before they, Twilight and Rarity got on to the adventure.
Very certainly looking forward to more of this.
I can't wait to see what Gilda's up to. That you're going to have her be more prominent in the EC excites me.
What was the point of Gilda's theft, I wonder? She sounded like she had work, legal or not, and making a huge scene seemed pretty counterproductive to hanging out with Dash. I guess she never outgrew being a thug? But how do you make a habit of that kind of crime and not get good at avoiding consequences, which she did NOT seem to be doing there.
The Homestuck references are pretty funny, and I can't wait to see pony/griffon Innsmouth. That kind of place I imagine translates really weirdly to a magic setting. You can get up to some more heinous and creepy stuff, but the characters would also have a way higher tolerance for weirdness in general. Still, if the reference extends that far the whole knowledge=dangerous/bad/insanity-causing is an interesting problem to present Twilight.
Dash seems to know about Twilight's connections, and Twilight I recall had considered digging into her past to end whatever barrier was on her career before being distracted. I guess that's waiting on a later episode to focus on it (was the best young fliers thing season 1?), but it seems weird Dash hasn't asked or even hinted about being unhappy with her career status to Twilight.
10973097
Glad someone got the refrance. As for the theft, well, we have the entire rest of the story to explore Gilda's headspace.
As for the RD/Twilight thing, we actually have an upcoming AN to lay out the structure of the Equestrian military, but long story short, Twilight asking, say, Shining Armor to help RD out wouldn't go very far, because he's part of the Royal Guard, not the Army or Navy. The Wonderbolts, being based off the Blue Angels, are a subset of the Navy.
10973097
What indeed?
Sorry to disappoint you, but the name was actually derived from Innsbruck, Austria. Pony Innsmouth is mentioned in Friendship is Magic: Extended Cut as Bittsmouth. That's not to say that Innsbeak isn't heinous and creepy, of course; nor that Twilight will not eventually have to confront "the whole knowledge=dangerous/bad/insanity-causing" problem, but that's a ways off.
What Serketry said, although the Wonderbolts are part of the EUP Special Forces, not the Navy.
Okay, now you have me concerned about whether or not Lord English is already here. So concerned that I'm commenting in the middle of the story.
You'd think fliers wouldn't need to warn one another about stairs...
And I do love Special Agent Sweetie Drops less-subtle-than-she-thinks presence through these proceedings thus far.
I am really hoping the EC does not follow the shows model of "Everything is better in Equestria! Why live anywhere else? Everyone would be better if they just lived exactly the way ponies live!"
It's my least favorite part of the series, even more then Starlight "Missed Opportunity" Glimmer. Even though that part of the show is only fantasy racism, it's fantasy racism supported by the show. Like if the Harry Potter book series actually supported the idea Muggle Borns were worthless. (I know Rowling is transaphobic but it was the best example I could come up with).
I have never really seen Pinkie Pie treated in fanfics as less of a physics breaking incomprehensible being then she is in the early show. Even in fanfics where she is taken very seriously. This isn't a criticism just intresting how much EC differs from cannon and fancannon.
You did your research on character inspirations!