Natural Light: A SolarPunk Story

by The Hat Man

1. The Joker

“Come on, come on, will you shut that thing off?”

“Oi, just hold onto ya knickers another minute and it’ll be full charge.”

Two stallions sat in the middle of a darkened room in an abandoned apartment building. They were both hunched over, watching the device’s indicator dial slowly climb. A tangled mesh of wires snaked across the floor and up the wall, leading to a solar collector disguised as a window on the top floor.

In the dark, musty room, a collection of cylinders, each the size of a test tube, glowed with a warm yellow light that illuminated the pair's features.

“It’s close enough!” snapped Hobnail, a brown earth pony in a bowler hat. “The Imps have been snaking around here like crazy, and if they’re on to us—”

“They ain’t,” Jackanapes, a gray earth pony in a long coat, goggles, and an unkempt blue mane looked at him sternly. “They’s clueless, slab. Wouldn’t know their tail from an ickle bitty garter snake.”

His partner looked at him, saw the confidence in his eyes, and gave a sigh of relief. “Well… I guess if you—”

The banging at the door came like cannon blasts.

“Open up, earthers! We know what you’re up to, so come quietly!”

“Well, look who’s wrong after all!” Hobnail hissed.

“Shut ya gob!” Jackanapes hissed back, scrambling to shut down the charging station as Hobnail gathered up the glowing cylinders. Outside they heard the telltale shattering of glass as the Imperial Guards smashed the solar panel they’d discreetly hidden on the roof. Most likely they already had the building surrounded, each window guarded by a pegasus legionnaire.

“If they see all this stuff,” Hobnail whimpered, his eyes wide and frantic, “you know what they’ll do to us?”

“Nah, slab,” Jackanapes replied. “But I know what they done to us clods already. What they’ll keep doing if we let em.”

Hobnail swallowed. “How do we get out?”

Jack took one of the cylinders from Hob, tossing it casually before catching it and flashing a grin. “We don’t. I’ll make a run for it. You take the dumbwaiter to the sub-basement and stay hidden in the hidey-hole we glam’d until the Imps take off.”

“And if they already know about it?”

“Well, if’n they knows about that, they most likely know where we’d run to. Might as well risk it, I say.”

“And if you’re wrong again?”

Jackanapes pulled Hobnail in and gave him a fierce kiss that took his breath away.

“Then it’s been a right pleasure, Hob. Now get yer arse to the hidey hole while I do me best.”

Hob only hesitated a moment before running to the dumbwaiter, leaving Jack behind.

Jackanapes ran to one of the boarded-up windows. He heard the sound of the door being smashed in and knew he only had a moment to do what he’d planned.

From his jacket, he drew a small device with some gears and a tiny glowing cylinder on it and smacked it against the boards before pulling out a pin. The gears rapidly began to tick down and he ran to the opposite side of the building, crossing the hall just as a unicorn tore through the wrecked door and fired a blast of magic at him down the hallway, missing him by inches.

The device behind him detonated, sending splinters, rubble, and assorted debris in a hailstorm that maimed the nearest pegasus legionnaire floating by. The others hovering nearby flew over to see what the commotion was. Knowing they’d be distracted and not watching the other side of the building, Jackanapes leaped at the window and gave it a kick, bursting through the boards and sailing out into the empty air.

“North side, north side, north side!” shouted the unicorn guards into their magically-linked ear pearls, alerting their comrades to the crazy earther who’d just leaped out the window in a suicidal escape plan.

He wished he could have seen their faces when they saw what he was really up to.

He reached into his jacket again and jammed the cylinder into a slot into the device harnessed around his barrel. That cylinder held the bounty they’d risked it all for. But better to burn this small amount than risk losing all they’d gathered.

He took hold of a handle on the device and pulled the ripcord.

A pair of metallic wings lined with bladelike feathers sprang forth from the long slits in the back of his coat. The feathers lit up from the energy of the solaether cylinder, and Jackanapes’s plummet became a swoop as he shot back up into the air and over the rim of the building next door.

“Son of a nag, he’s a Shiner!” shouted one of the unicorn guards as he took aim at the earth pony rapidly flying overhead on his artificial wings. “Bring him down! Pegasi, pursue!”

Jackanapes glanced over his shoulder, flashing the guards a grin and giving them a mock salute as they tried to blast him with one magic bolt after another, their gold-plated royal armor making them look all the gaudier amid the dingy surroundings of the earth pony ghetto.

He knew this would infuriate them, and that would make them even stupider. Guards flooding the nearby streets all look up and took aim as he sailed over buildings, nimbly maneuvering into the trenchlike alleys that he knew like the back of his fetlock.

A few pegasi managed to fly ahead of him and one nearly nabbed him out of the air, but he took a turn that led the winged legionnaire right into old Mrs. Paisley’s clothesline that always spanned the alleyway. It caught the legionnaire around the neck, quite appropriately clotheslining him as he gagged and then fell to the ground as Jack sped away.

He dipped and dove through the streets and alleys, circling around chimneys and losing the legionnaires in the smoke billowing from the nearby factory.

And just when he thought he’d lost them all, he heard a whizzing sound, and a magic bolt from a unicorn guard below clipped one of his wings.

He dipped and bobbed, holding on, trying to keep his balance in the air, but he was losing speed and altitude and finally had to make a landing atop a nearby warehouse.

He struggled to fold the wings back up, then gave up and swiftly undid his harness, tossing it aside as he ran for the fire escape…

…only to have a pegasus legionnaire swoop up from the ground to block his way. A unicorn guard reached the top of the fire escape a moment later, his horn still glowing.

Jackanapes sank to his haunches and raised his hooves.

“Nice race you ran, sun thief,” the unicorn said, still panting to catch his breath. “But you should have known better. You cannot outrun Her Majesty’s guard.”

“Wasn't runnin', sir," Jackanapes said. “I was flyin'.”

“You might want to shut your mouth and listen to him, earther,” the pegasus said, glowering down at him as he hovered in mid-air, a spear held tight in his hooves. “Give up and cooperate, maybe tell us where your Shiner friends are running off to, and you might get a lighter sentence. Maybe get to see your family again someday.”

Jackanapes gave a mirthless smile. “If you gents only knew me story, you’d know why ya shouldn’t have said that.”

“Well, care to tell your story now, sun thief?” the unicorn asked. “At least to pass the time until backup arrives, I mean.”

“If you insist… but listen well, gents. Look me in the eye, an’ I’ll tell all…”

They both looked him in the eye, peering at the fierce expression hidden behind the tinted goggles.

And Jack swiftly tapped a button on the left side of his goggles, sending a blast of energy from the left lens that blew a hole in the unicorn guard’s throat.

The pegasus pulled back in momentary surprise. He readied his spear, but a second blast, this time from Jack’s right lens, caught him in the chest and shot him out of the sky like a clay pigeon. He made no sound as he fell back, save for the dull metallic clang of his limbs smacking against the fire escape and the thud he made when he hit the ground below.

Jackanapes straightened his goggles and walked past the gasping, convulsing guard.

“Don’t rightly care who raises the sun or not, gents,” he said as he made his way to the fire escape. “The sun belongs to us all. An’ one way or another, you Imps will all see the light.”

And with that, he slipped down the stairs, into the alleys, and out of sight.