Live and Let Fly
Convoluted Plan smiled to himself as he watched the unconscious mare strapped to a seat at his dining table. He was still amazed that his henchponies had been able to capture La Mariposa alive, especially in light of the death and destruction she had wrought at the spa. Still, Convoluted Plan hadn’t gotten to his position by passing up opportunities when they presented themselves, and the chance to recruit La Mariposa was a rare opportunity indeed. If nothing else, Convoluted Plan had several new vacancies in his organization that needed to be filled.
“Uh…what happened?” La Mariposa groaned as she started to regain consciousness. “I was in the carriage, but then it started to fill up with some sort of green gas, and I…I think I fell asleep.”
“Ah, Miss Mariposa, I’m so glad you’re finally awake. I apologize for not extending a more conventional invitation, but I couldn’t be sure you’d accept,” Convoluted Plan chuckled at his own joke as he watched La Mariposa’s reaction carefully. It became quickly apparent to Convoluted Plan that La Mariposa was not only a lethal adversary, but also an excellent actress. From the reports he had received, Convoluted Plan knew for a fact that the mare in front of him was one of the most ruthless killers Equestria had ever seen. Yet, just looking at her, Convoluted Plan could have sworn she was a totally harmless innocent. “If you don’t mind, you can dispense with the façade. I’m fully aware of who you are and what you’ve been up to.” When this failed to elicit anything more than a confused, blank stare, Convoluted Plan let out a resigned sigh. “She must be one of those method actors I’ve read about,” Convoluted Plan thought to himself. “Still, even if she wants to be difficult about it, I’m not about to pass up a chance to explain my brilliance to somepony capable of actually appreciating it.” Dramatically clearing his throat, Convoluted Plan stood up from the table and began pacing about the room. “Why don’t I start from the beginning? I’m certain you must be wondering what all of this is about?”
La Mariposa glanced around the room before nodding her head in affirmation.
“Allow me to enlighten you, then. As you are no doubt already aware, baked goods form the foundation of Equestrian cuisine. Even in the furthest flung corners of the nation, baked goods make up a key portion of everyponies’ diet, from the lowliest farmpony to Princess Celestia herself. And what, I ask you, goes into nearly every baked good imaginable?”
“Umm…”
“Flour and sugar!” Convoluted Plan said. “Now, I’ve spent the last several years expanding my farming conglomerate, and I already control a significant portion of Equestria’s wheat and sugarcane production. But, what if I controlled all of it? What if Convoluted Combine was the only source of flour and sugar in Equestria? I would effectively be in control of Equestria’s primary source of food, a kind of power that not even Princess Celestia has ever wielded before!” Convoluted Plot paused as La Mariposa cleared her throat, and he could guess what she was thinking behind her mask of utter non-comprehension. “Of course, achieving a monopoly like that through traditional means simply isn’t feasible. That’s where our dear friend Double Helix came in. You see, I had Double Helix develop a rather singular compound which acts as an incredibly powerful lure to a little creature known as locusta migratoria.”
“The migratory locust,” La Mariposa said, almost reflexively.
“Very good, I see you know your insects. When a locust smells this compound, and they can sense it from quite a few miles away, they’re not only drawn to it but they also have their swarming instinct triggered. So, if somepony were to aerosolize a dose of this compound and spread it over, say, one of my competitor’s wheat fields, then very soon there wouldn’t be a competing wheat field. Production of the compound is already set, my agents are in place to distribute it, the only thing that could stop me now is if somepony were to provide the EID with evidence of my plans. Evidence, for example, like a sample of the compound Double Helix made for me. Now, above all else, Miss Mariposa, I am a businesspony, and I much prefer to handle these sorts of situations in a civilized manner if possible. So, I’m willing to overlook our issues up until this point and offer you half-again whatever Double Helix was paying you for a return of the sample, plus a very comfortable position within my organization. What do you have to say to that?”
Before La Mariposa could respond, a loud crash rang out as a brown earth pony tumbled down from a ceiling vent onto the floor. “Sorry to drop in uninvited. I hope I’m not interrupting anything too important.”
Convoluted Plan bristled as he sucked in a deep breath through tightly clenched teeth. “Not at all, Mister…Norther Spy, if I’m not mistaken. In fact, I’d say your arrival is quite timely. Miss Mariposa? You may consider my offer rescinded.” As Convoluted Plan spoke, he moved his hoof under the table and pressed a hidden switch, which sent the chair La Mariposa was strapped to, and her along with it, plummeting down a chute. “I thought it was strange we were able to capture La Mariposa so easily, but now it makes perfect sense. The plan all along was for her to bait me into explaining my plans while you listened. Clever, but now that she’s being taken care of by Charon I believe you and I are going to have a long chat about barging in to ponies’ homes unannounced.”
“Seems like it would be a bit of a boring conversation, to be honest,” Northern Spy said.
“Oh, quite to the contrary,” Convoluted Plan said. “I can assure you, you’re going to find the subject excruciatingly stimulating.”
*********
Fluttershy fell for what felt like quite a distance, until she came to a rather painful landing in a particularly large, dimly lit underground chamber. The only positive was that her chair took the brunt of the impact, breaking apart and freeing her as it did so.
“I really wish somepony would explain to me what’s going on,” Fluttershy said as she pulled herself to her hooves. “It sounded as though that stallion had me confused for this ‘La Mariposa’ pony, and whatever this is all about doesn’t seem like anything I’d want to be involved in. It’s a pity Applejack isn’t here, it sounded as though he was talking about farm business, so she could have explained what it all meant. Oh well, for now I just hope I can find somepony who’ll listen to me and I can get all this straightened…out…” Fluttershy let out a high-pitched squeak of alarm as a loud rumbling growl echoed throughout the chamber. As Fluttershy’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw a massive form shift and uncurl, revealing itself to be a gigantic, six-legged lizard-like creature that fixed her with a baleful gaze. “A basilisk!” Fluttershy gasped, though not in fear but rather excitement. It was a rare treat for Fluttershy to encounter a creature she had never seen before, and basilisks tended to dwell far south of the Everfree Forrest. “Hello there, what’s your name? I’m Fluttershy,” Fluttershy said as she flitted up to introduce herself, taking care to avoid meeting the creature’s gaze.
The basilisk, not at all used to this sort of reaction, issued a guttural hiss as it tried to decide if it was addressing a guest or a meal.
“Charon? That’s a nice name. What are you doing down here in the dark? I thought basilisks lived much further to the south.” A Charon proceeded to reply with a series of snarls that caused Fluttershy to recoil in horror. “So, they just leave you down here all the time? That’s awful, this isn’t a remotely appropriate enclosure for a basilisk. They’re clearly not taking proper care of you at all here. And, I wasn’t going to say anything, but it doesn’t look like they’re feeding you properly, either. Why, I’m going to march right back up there and demand that you be given a proper habitat right away! Um, I don’t suppose you know where the exit is?” Fluttershy added, her righteous indignation giving way to practical concerns.
In response to Fluttershy’s question, a bemused Charon flicked its tail towards a massive set of double doors in the far wall.
“Thank you! I promise I’ll be right back as soon as I can!” Fluttershy said. Approaching the doors, however, it quickly became apparent that they weren’t going to be a viable option to escape. The doors were sized for a basilisk, far too large for a single pony to open, and moreover were sealed shut. Fortunately, there did appear to be a pony-sized exit as well, though even that presented an issue. “I can seem to get this door open, I think it must be locked. Pardon me, Mister Charon? I hate to be a bother, but—” Before Fluttershy could even finish her sentence, Charon slammed its meaty tail into the door with enough force to send it clattering down the hallway on the other side. “Thank you! And, like I promised, I’m going to get you out of here as soon as I can. In fact,” Fluttershy added as she poked her head out into the hallway. “I think I see a way to get those bigger doors open from here.”
*********
“Well, today certainly could have gone better,” Convoluted Plan grumbled as he left Northern Spy with his interrogator. There was no real need for him to remain to watch the proceedings, Femme Fatale was one of Convoluted Plan’s best agents, so Northern Spy had no hope of escape. Plus, violence had always made Convoluted Plan queasy, hence his preferred method of disposing of his enemies. “I suppose by now Charon’s ensured there isn’t anything left of La Mariposa to question. If we’re lucky, she had the sample in the saddlebags she had on her when we caught her. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck scouring the city to find it. Where did we stash her bags, anyway?”
“We were somewhat concerned that the bags might have been trapped, so we placed them in the secure storage room near the entrance to Charon’s enclosure,” Red Shirt, Convoluted Plan’s assistant, replied. “I’ll have a team go in and check it for dangers and assess the contents.”
“Excellent. With any luck, we’ll be able to get our operation back on track by the end of the—” Convoluted Plan was abruptly interrupted by the screaming of klaxon alarms while the lights in the hallway began flashing red. “What in Celestia’s name is going on now?” As if on cue, a pair of guards came rushing down the hallway in an apparent panic.
“Sir, we have an emergency situation,” one of the guards said. “Charon has broken out of his enclosure and is going on a rampage throughout the lower levels of the facility.”
“What? Impossible!” Convoluted Plan yelled. “There’s no way Charon could have gotten loose, the main doors in that enclosure should be strong enough to keep a grown dragon contained. The only way he could have gotten loose if if…no. She couldn’t have…”
“Sir, who are you talking about?” Red Shirt asked.
“La Mariposa! Who else? She must have escaped the enclosure somehow and set Charon loose! Dear Celestia, I knew that harmless innocent routine was just an act, but just how ruthless is that mare? There’s no telling how much damage Charon is going to do now that he’s out. What I don’t understand is why, though? If she could escape the enclosure, then why alert us to it by letting Charon loose…the saddlebags! You said the area you placed them in was near Charon’s enclosure, right? She must have opened Charon’s enclosure to provide a distraction for the guards so she could retrieve the bags!”
“But why would—” one of the guards started to ask before Convoluted Plan quickly cut him off.
“The sample, obviously! La Mariposa must have kept the sample in the bags, she probably wanted to keep it close in case she needed a bargaining chip!” Convoluted Plan grabbed the closer of the two guards. “Send everypony we have down to the storage vault immediately! Whatever you do, do not let that mare get her hooves on those saddlebags!” Convoluted Plan was left breathing heavily as he struggled to maintain his composure. “The only positive here is that basement level of this compound is practically a maze. I doubt La Mariposa will even be able to find the storage room on her own, let alone find the saddlebags.”
*********
“There my saddlebags are. Thank you for helping me find them.” Fluttershy said sweetly to the visibly shaking guard. It was somewhat frustrating that Fluttershy hadn’t been able to find anypony that she could lodge a complaint with about Charon’s poor treatment, but finding a guard who was able to show her where her saddlebags had been taken did mollify her somewhat. “And you’re sure you’ll be ablet o pass on my message about establishing a proper habitat for Charon? Basilisks aren’t nearly as dangerous as many ponies think as long as they’re properly fed, but it’s very important that they be provided with the right living space. They need plenty of light and heat, controlled humidity, and you definitely need to provide them with stimulation, otherwise—” The building shook slightly as Charon let out a roar. “Otherwise, they can get a bit rambunctious.”
“I’ll be sure to let my supervisors know, you have my word,” the guard said as he shrank back into the corner of the storage vault.
“That’s wonderful to hear,” Fluttershy said with a warm smile. “And I am sorry if Charon scared you earlier, he really is a sweetheart once you get to know him, but being kept in that room wasn’t good for his temperament. Now that that’s settled, I just need to find my way out of here. I hate to keep being a bother, but could you tell me where the exit is?”
“Sure, just take a left out of the room, that should take you to the main hallway. From there you’d want to hang a right and keep going until you reach the central stairwell and from there—"
“Oh my, could you hold on for just one moment? I think I might want to write this down,” Fluttershy said as she fished a small notepad from her saddlebags, along with the fountain pen she had found on the train. As Fluttershy uncapped the pen, however, another Charon-instigated tremor caused it to slip from her feathers. Before either pony had time to react, the pen rolled across the floor and under a shelf, where it disappeared into a hole in the floor. “Oh no! Twilight’s pen!” Fluttershy cried out. “Oh, I really hope that pen wasn’t special or anything.”
*********
The hole that the fountain pen had rolled into was, in fact, a waste disposal chute, a singular feature of Convoluted Plan’s base intended to assist his janitorial staff with keeping the complex tidy. Garbage swept into the chute was delivered to an industrial shredding system before being taken to an incinerator that disposed of mundane and incriminating materials with equal ease. The pen began its trip through the system rolling down an angled chute until it reached a conveyer belt, which swiftly carried it to the shredding room, where the shredder quickly reduced it to tiny fragments of glass and metal. In the process of pulverizing the pen, the sample of the locust lure it contained was unleashed, thoroughly coating the inside of the shredder.
What few ponies realized, aside from Double Helix himself, was that the compound was so potent and concentrated that the small dose stored within the pen would have been sufficient to cover one hundred acres when properly aerosolized. Now, said dose coated the machines at the heart of Convoluted Plan’s base, and the vapors given off by the compound were soon carried to the surface by the base’s ventilation system. Few ponies would be overly bothered by the sickly-sweet smell, most wouldn’t even be pick it out from the smell of the garbage system’s usual odors.
What would soon be an issue, however, would be the creatures that could smell it.
*********
“Today has just been utterly full of disappointments,” Convoluted Plan growled as he and several of his guards cornered Northern Spy and Femme Fatale, the lithe mare hanging off Northern Spy’s neck. “I don’t ask for much from my employees, I really don’t. And yet, all I have gotten over the last several days is an unending stream of incompetence and betrayal. It’s the latter that really hurts, by the way.”
“Sir, I—” Femme Fatale began, only to be quickly cut off.
“I don’t want to hear it! You’ve made your decision, and now you’ll just have to live with it. If it makes you feel any better, though, you likely won’t have to live with it for very long.” Convoluted Plan let out sigh of exasperation before continuing. “In the end, you’re just one more vacancy I’ll need to have Pony Resources fill. I swear, all this stress is giving me tinnitus, my head feels like I have a hornet’s nest in there.” Even as Convoluted Plan spoke, however, several of his guards and even Femme Fatale and Northern Spy began flicking their ears as an ominous buzz filled the air. “What is that? It almost sounds like…oh, no. No, no this cannot be happening!” To Convoluted Plan’s horror, what appeared to be a massive, dark cloud had formed on the horizon and was rapidly closing in on his compound. As the cloud drew closer, it became apparent that the ‘cloud’ was actually a titanic swarm of thousands of locusts. Cries of panic soon could be heard throughout the compound as the ravenous insects descended and began devouring everything they could. “How? How did – that filthy nag! She’s using the sample to destroy the entire compound, why didn’t I see it earlier? Now it all makes sense, she had this all planned out from the start. But I’ll have the last laugh. Once I’ve dealt with the two of you, I’ll hunt her down and I’ll make her wish she had let Charon eat – what are you all staring at?” While Convoluted Plan had ranted, the expressions on Northern Spy’s and Femme Fatale’s faces had become masks of horror, and it finally dawned on Convoluted Plan that his wrath wasn’t the source of their concern. This realization was furthered as an ominous shadow fell over the group. Looking up, Convoluted Plan found himself staring directly into the vengeful eyes of his ‘pet’ basilisk.
The one positive of the situation was that Convoluted Plan wouldn’t have to dwell on this final misfortune for very long at all.
*********
“I really hope Charon’s going to be alright,” Fluttershy said to herself as she glanced back at the compound, which was now obscured by massive clouds of locusts. “Anypony who’d keep a basilisk in an enclosure like that really has no business trying to keep an exotic pet. Still, they must have had at least some kind of bond, otherwise why would Charon by so insistent on staying behind to say goodbye?” Shrugging, Fluttershy took to the air and decided to put the whole, bizarre encounter behind her.
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Awesome chapter! I wonder if she was always been that mysterious mare but never realized it
Rip villain
And to be honest, you're probably better off without the ones that had previously been filling them, considering they all mostly offed themselves in the end.
...
...did this guy's parents just WANT him dead or something when they named him that?
More importantly though...is Red Shirt indeed wearing an actual, honest-to-gosh...red shirt?
Conveniently also all wearing red shirts themselves.
Yeah, I suspect Charon's sorting that part out now as we speak. Convoluted Plan isn't going to have very many lackeys left by the time this is all over...not that I expect him to even still be in a position to be carrying out any evil plans by then, but beside the point.
Goodness, Charon, you still haven't gotten filled up on baddies yet? Well, all right, suit yourself, but if you get a stomach ache from all this, don't go crying about it later.
WHAT IF MY LITTLE PONY HAD THEY FOUND OUT?