The Siren

by McPoodle

Chapter 42

A next day, Saturday, Ragamuffin, having failed to get a coded telegram from his wife as they had arranged, came down to Hollow Shades himself, having obtained emergency sick leave.

But not as himself. Or at least, not as his customary pony disguise. Instead, he was a stockier tan earth pony with a short black mane and tail. His cutie mark was a rearing lion and red dragon, their forepaws entangled. He was wearing a white shirt, burgundy tie with a diamond stickpin, navy waistcoat with metal buttons, check jacket (gray with tan and green in the check) and a black bowler hat. He was carrying a closed umbrella across his back with a curved cane handle and in this way completed the look of a Trottingham gentlestallion of a half-century ago.

Upon leaving the station he strolled casually down the street, waving at the occasional ponies who peered fearfully at him behind curtains from the shadows of their homes. Seeing a sign for the “Hollow Magic Testing Grounds Memorial”, he went inside. Nopony was running the museum, so he took his time to look over the exhibits, stopping at a labeled portrait of the chief researchers from a hundred years ago.

A few minutes later Gertrude ran over from the pub. “Hi!” she exclaimed. “I’m Gertrude Ganache, bartender of the pub over there. I take care of the museum when need be. Do you have any questions?”

“No, no questions, Gertrude. Just wanted to know more about the town I’m about to move into.”

“Move in…to?” Gertrude asked incredulously. “Two in a row?” she muttered to herself.

“Yes. Just for a few months. I’m a real estate developer, you see, and I’d like to scout out the area.” He hoofed over his card, which read “REARING STEED. JUNIOR PARTNER, JAFC, INC.”

Gertrude’s eyes boggled at the name on the card. “Seriously?” she asked.

“Seriously,” Mr. Steed replied. “I’d be happy to speak to whoever’s in charge around here.”

“Well, it’s Saturday, so she’s running her shop over in…that is to say, we’re a town, Mr. Steed. Nopony’s really in charge here.”

“Not even the mayor?”

“Largely ceremonial.”

“Well, can I speak to you?”

Gertrude was taken aback. “To me?” She looked around her, then put a claw to her chest. “Gertrude Ganache?”

“Yes you, Gertrude Ganache. You look trustworthy,” Rearing said. And for the most part, he believed it. Even when she lied, it was clear that her heart was in the right place. “Let’s go over to your pub and talk about land.”

“About land…” Gertrude repeated, wondering desperately about what to do, and if she could do it without hurting her visitor.

~ ~ ~

Gertrude led Rearing Steed into the pub, flew up onto the counter, and opened a high cabinet to start removing some topographical maps of the region. As the room was not very well illuminated, she lit a candle to work with. “It’s mostly swamp around here, I’m afraid,” she told the stallion. “Not sure where you could really build anything. What sort of use are you looking for?”

“Oh, residential,” Rearing tossed off. “Someplace to house hundreds of ponies.” He noticed a gray pair of saddlebags thrown in a corner of the pub. He walked around the bar to a section where the wall descended from the ceiling to only a dozen hooves above the countertop.

“…Hundreds?” asked Gertrude with trepidation.

“Maybe even thousands.”

“Th…oh, dear. She won’t like that at all.”

“Who won’t?”

“Beg pardon?”

Rearing sighed and decided to cut to the chase. “I heard that my friend…” He took a moment to remember the alias. “…Miss Garden was staying here. Do you happen to know where? She knows a thing or two about cartography and could be a great help looking over those maps.”

“Miss Garden,” Gertrude said flatly. She walked across the tabletop to where Steed was, placing the tall candle on the tabletop beside her talons.

“Yes. Do you know where she is?”

“She left.”

“I thought she arrived yesterday.”

“Well, she had a really bad reaction, and left. Packed her bags and departed on the train right before yours. You just missed her. She developed an allergic reaction to the marshy air.”

Mr. Steed looked back at the discarded saddlebags. The clasps were perfect reproductions of Lemon Peel’s cutie mark. He walked over to stand below Gertrude. “Where is she really, Gertrude Ganache?” he asked in a serious tone. “That is your name, right? Gertrude Ganache? The same as the lead griffon researcher from a hundred years ago?” Using the handle of the umbrella, he grabbed hold of the griffon around the neck and pulled her head through the narrow gap in the bar, flattening her body down and trapping her wings against her sides so she couldn’t fight back.

“Wh…what?”

“Are you perhaps named after her?” He used a hoof to dig out her vial. “Say, a month or two ago when you got this pretty toy? Where is she, Gertrude?” He allowed a bit of his former voice to return as he asked, “Where is my wife?”

Gertrude tried in vain to escape Rearing Steed’s hold, but she had no skill in fighting. Her eyes darted over to the lit candle—was she being pulled towards it? Did Mr. Steed intend to light her head feathers on fire?! “The smithy!” she exclaimed. “Please don’t hurt me, she’s being kept at the smithy!”

Mr. Steed released her. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Gertrude collapsed off of the bar like a sack of potatoes and began sobbing.

“I’m sorry,” Rearing said as he walked around the bar. “That was going a bit far, wasn’t it?”

“I’m a coward!” Gertrude wailed. “I gave it away without even trying to resist! What kind of follower am I?”

“Well, it takes all types,” Steed said, kneeling down to comfort the griffon. “Not every…griffon needs to be brave.”

“Every real griffon does,” Gertrude replied. “I gave up my memories and what did that get me? I’m not even as good as a pony! This thing did nothing for me!” She ripped her vial off of her neck and held it aloft, staring into it. “I don’t know what she was running away from, but this isn’t the answer.” And with that she threw the vial to the ground, shattering it.

Rearing quickly backed away, uncertain what the magic contained within might do to bystanders. The magical smoke it generated seemed to be sucked into Gertrude’s head through her nostrils, like a sneeze seen in reverse. She shook her head a couple times, then gave a weary look around her. Her shoulders slumped. “What am I doing back?” she asked, in a tone of despair.

“Hello? Gertrude?”

“Who? The name’s Gilda, dweeb.” She stopped herself with a sigh. She looked up at him as he rose to his hooves to leave, desperation in her eyes. “No, wait. I don’t want to be like that.”

“Are you going to be alright?” Rearing asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, I have to go and rescue my wife. I think you…the other you…imprisoned her in the village smithy.”

“Okay,” Gilda said quietly. “Could…could you come back after?”

Steed paused for a moment, mentally separating this griffon from the one he had interacted with just a minute earlier. “Yeah. We’ll be back.” He pointed out the door. “Do you happen to know if there’s anypony guarding… No, you wouldn’t remember anymore.”

Gilda shook her head. “There are guards, I know that much.”

---

The door of the smithy opened, and Rearing Steed walked in, past a table covered with tools. He had left the umbrella behind, but he still had his horribly-out-of-fashion bowler on, which he made sure to adjust to a cocky angle.

There were no lights on inside, but there was still illumination from the glowing forge, being used to heat up a horseshoe held in a gripper. [A gripper is a long hollow stick with a rubber mouth attachment on one end, used to open and close a pair of metal pincers at the other end. It is an essential tool for earth ponies.] Rearing walked over to the forge and looked around. In doing so, he accidentally touched his cheek to the hood over the forge and stepped back suddenly to keep it from getting singed.

He walked around the forge, spotting a locked closet of the right size to hold a pony in a corner. He walked over and examined the lock.

Hearing a chain rattle, he turned around. Approaching him was the large blacksmith pony, gripper in his teeth, with the glowing horseshoe on the end. He was grinning wickedly around the gripper. His face and body were asymmetrical, with the right side larger than the left. There were reptilian scales poking through the uneven fur of his left side, and the teeth of the left side were pointed, like the teeth of a crocodile. The smith said nothing as he approached, horseshoe first.

Rearing slowly moved around the side of the closet, until he was next to a saddle hanging on the wall.

The blacksmith kept approaching, with that same creepy grin, until he extended his neck and pressed the white-hot horseshoe into the saddle, setting it on fire. He slowly pulled the horseshoe back…and then suddenly lunged forward.

Rearing stumbled out of the way, pursued by the blacksmith, but the larger pony’s bulk made it impossible for Rearing to get out of the corner he was in. He fell down to the ground, next to a bucket of water. The blacksmith lunged with the horseshoe…and Rearing picked up the bucket, causing the shoe to press into it. The water boiled, and the shoe cooled. The surprised smith opened his mouth, causing grabber and shoe to fall out of his control.

Rearing then tossed the bucket of hot water into the blacksmith’s face.

The blacksmith fell back against the tool table, making a reptilian hiss. He turned his head and picked up a large hammer.

Rearing ran out of the corner, but the smith blocked the way out of the shop. Not that he was going to leave without Lemon. The smith raised the hammer high to swing it into Rearing’s head, but he was so big that it bumped against a rafter. This gave Rearing enough time to pick up a wooden box to intercept the hammer when it finally came down. The box was crushed to splinters. Rearing tipped his head, causing his bowler hat to fall to the ground.

The smith raised up his hammer and swung it down again.

Rearing picked up his hat with all four hooves and caught the blow with the hat. The smith was stunned as the hat only somewhat dented. Rearing then grabbed the hat by its edge and brought its crown down on the smith’s head, knocking him out.

Rearing smiled, pushing the dent out of the hat with a couple of punches and then lightly tapping its edge against the edge of the forge, revealing it to be made of solid steel. The inside of the bowler was engraved with the words “JOKE HAT. PRODUCT OF KNIGHT INDUSTRIES OF TROTTINGHAM.” He put it back on and back in its cocky position.

“Will the winner please come to the unsaddling enclosure?” A voice from the next room said.

“Lemon!” Rearing exclaimed.

“Mrs. Peel when I’m working, please.”

Walking past the ponyless closet, he entered the saddling and shoeing room, which since it was meant for customers was in much better shape than the forge room. The windows were all blacked out. A large wooden ponykin was in the center of the room. A saddle was atop the ponykin, and strapped on top of the saddle in a demeaning position was Mrs. Peel, wearing a black stretch cotton catsuit with vinyl facings front and back. On her hooves were four white boots with black central stripes. Those hooves were trapped in place by very tight stirrups.

Steed took a moment to take her in. “I don’t get to see you in the ‘dangerous mission outfit’ that often.”

Peel groaned. “Did you really have to come rescue me looking like my mentor?”

“Well, he’s a lot better at this spy stuff than I am. You have to admit that.” With a flash, he was back to being Ragamuffin. The suit now sagged around him.

Peel laughed. “Well regardless, you sounded like you did very well back there a moment ago.”

“And you look…” He gave her a lascivious look.

“Don’t you finish that sentence!” Peel warned.

“I believe the saddle is supposed to go over the back,” Ragamuffin snarked. “Not under the belly.”

“Har, har.”

“And this is not the regulation number of stirrups.”

“Noted,” Peel said dryly.

“Must be very uncomfortable.”

Peel sighed. “It is.”

“Never mind,” Ragamuffin said, beginning to loosen the belts with his teeth. “We’ll soon have you…unsaddled.”

Peel groaned. “Your puns are worse than Steed’s,” she complained.

“And the fashions?”

“As hopelessly out of date as ever.”

Ragamuffin worked Peel’s hooves free from the stirrups. “Better?”

Peel worked her hooves over each other, restoring the circulation. “Much.”

“So, I have to know,” Ragamuffin said, watching his wife remove the rest of her bonds. “Who put such a tight rein on you? Was it Gertrude?”

“No,” said Peel. “She hadn’t the guts. Ran away after the blacksmith started getting rough.”

“Oh,” Ragamuffin said, looking back through the open door to the forge room. “Then I knocked out the right pony.” He started walking towards it. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder. “We have to have a talk with the former Gertrude.” With a flash he resumed his disguise of Rearing Steed.

“‘Former’?” Peel said with a raised brow.

---

When they entered the pub, they followed the sounds of rummaging through an open door into the basement.

Peel looked up at the shackles on the walls. “A veritable torture chamber,” she remarked.

Gilda was examining the mortared stones in one of the walls. “Heya,” she said over her shoulder.

“Mrs. Peel, this is Gilda,” Steed said. “She used to be Gertrude before…” He held aloft the glass stopper of her vial.

“Ah,” said Peel. She gave Steed a glare for forgetting her alias, causing him to wince.

“Sorry for whatever my alter ego did to you before,” Gilda said over her shoulder. “I want to make things right. You see, I just used the Basilisk to get out of my own troubles, and didn’t even think about the trouble she was causing with her nutty cause.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” said Steed. “But where is the rest of the village?”

“‘Gertrude’ would know better than me, but I figure there’s only a half-dozen ponies at most in this village,” Gilda replied. “Their cottages are all connected underground, and they run back and forth between them so they can watch everything through their windows. I talked Miss Mason into giving me a tour before my ‘indoctrination’. Wanted some insurance in case things went south. Anyway, outside of the boss mare herself, there’s probably only one really tough customer among the Hollow Shades ponies, this monster of a stallion named Staid. Typical cowardly ponies, am I right?” She looked around to see the poor reception of her joke. “Oops. Sorry.” She resumed her search.

“I ran into this Staid,” Mr. Steed said.

“And you came out on top? You’re tougher than you look.”

“So, what are you looking for?” Peel asked.

“…This!” Gilda exclaimed. She used her claw to pry loose a rock and removed a rolled-up slip of paper from behind it. “The Basilisk has a routine for her recruits. Thinks she’s very clever. She puts their memories in a vial, then she interviews them, and then she wipes their memory so they can start over as loyal minions. Well since I did such a good job of delaying things while she processed another pony, I knew the routine. So, I told myself if I found anything important during that interview step, to trick her into leaving the room long enough for me to plant this little baby!” She unrolled the slip and read it. “Huh,” she said, “never heard of her. I was hoping she would turn out to be Princess Cadance or something equally mind-blowing.” She handed the slip over to Peel.

Peel looked at the name. “Starlight Glimmer,” she read aloud. “Sorry, I don’t know her either.”

“I do,” Steed said with a grin. “One of my friends in the Guard goes there on Saturdays when her Canterlot shop is open. According to that clock, it’s still operating hours. And what a convenient coincidence, I happen to have a set of magic matches keyed to that very city!” From his saddlebags he produced a sheet of Canterlot Royal Guards stationary and a book of specially treated matches. He wrote a note, including both the name and the right code phrases, and then set the sheet on fire. The smoke drifted out the door, and straight to Canterlot.

---

The House of Enchanted Comics, Canterlot.

One by one, the unarmored guards walked into the shop, until they had blocked off all exits and entrances except the one into the back room.

“Guards!” Shining Armor ordered, “burn the comics!”

Starlight Glimmer should have run out the back door. She certainly would have escaped if she did. But instead, instincts took over. She ran into the shop, screaming “No!” at the top of her lungs. Then she looked around, saw the guards waiting and pointedly not burning anything, and popped out of existence.

But that was long enough for Shining Armor to summon a forcefield around her, leaving her nowhere to escape to. “Starlight Glimmer, also known as the Basilisk, you are under arrest, for multiple charges of armed robbery and six charges of blanking a pony’s memory against their will, ending with Pierce Boil.”

Starlight she returned back to visibility. “Oh, that’s nice,” she commented. “You’re only counting the six I was hired to do. I can tell you who hired me…” She said the last sentence in a sing-song voice, as if she expected something in return.

“You’re still under arrest.”

“Drat.” Starlight looked around her, seeing no possible escape. Then, with an impish look in her eye, she beckoned Shining Armor towards her. “Hey,” she said in a low voice. “Wanna see something really scary?”

Author's Note:

Here are the notes for Chapters 40, 41 & 42.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

“Hey,” she said in a low voice. “Wanna see something really scary?”

"No," said Shining, who made the shield opaque.

(Hey, if he's smart enough to lure her in with the threat of burning her collection... )