XXI. For What It's Worth
XXI.
For What It’s Worth
The Embassy
City of Canterlot
22. November, 2015
12:17 pm ICT
“Hello?”
Ibrahim cleared his throat and nervously combed his curly hair with a finger.
“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”
The rather rustic landline phone he had clamped between his restless fingers mumbled something.
“Oh… hi there! Hi...”
Even though he sat perfectly still at the desk in the United Nations Field Operations Directorate, Ibrahim sounded quite out of breath.
“My name is… uh… Ibrahim Shalgham... Yes… Oh, good. How are you?”
From behind him, the bony fingers of his colleague Edith roughly seized his shoulder.
“Ahem! No, no… I am calling in the name of the UNEVEG administration, with a… query concerning the gathering of information for a very important… No… I’m calling in the name of Pierre Abel, who is the... UN... Deputy Programme Officer for Southern Equestria. No, actually, I’m not with the UN myself, sadly. I am working for the International Commission of Missing Persons, that’s I. C. M. P. in Latin letters… aha...”
“Gettothepoint!” an irate voice hissed, barely failing to stay discreet and silent.
Ibrahim nervously turned to Edith, the director Pierre, and six or seven other people eagerly prying behind them, and pressed the handset shut with his palm.
“I’m getting to it, Mister Abel!” he hissed back. “I can’t understand why you won’t do it!”
He gave Edith a glance. “Or you, for that matter.”
“Just do it, before I introduce your face to my desk!”
Ibrahim sighed, and got back on the phone.
“Hello? Are you still there? ...Good, good. ...You see, I am calling because, as you might know, the UNEVEG headquarters recently received a list from the secretary general of your department, ‘Raven’, containing - a handful of - addresses to governmental military archives… That’s right, this is an inquiry pertaining to the investigation of the ICC against Her Royal Highness, Chrysalis. Now, however, we have hit a… snag, of sorts. We were touted information concerning the existence of an Equestrian archive that’s not listed in the documents that we received, even though it might very likely contain information that may be crucial to the judicial enquiry…”
There was a pause.
“Yes, exactly. And we… we were assuming that this might be owing to a… simple misunderstanding of sorts. Perhaps the archive in question is not called an archive, or perhaps it’s not strictly a military archive, or maybe it’s not government-owned; maybe it’s a private collection. But we will need timely access regardless. The name is ‘Old Everfree Chancery’. ...Yes. ‘Old Everfree’.”
Another, white-knuckled, pause.
A frown covered Ibrahim’s face.
“Excuse me? ...Really? ...Are… are you sure?”
Edith couldn’t wait. Again, she tapped his shoulder, and began gesticulating something about hitting a button.
“Makhe it louder! Speakherphone!” she whispered
“Ehm...”
Nodding confusedly, he turned to the side and jabbed a finger on the telephone’s loudspeaker button. “Sorry, could you repeat that?”
The speakers sprang to life.
“Well, like I said: We have no entries of such a place existing, sir. We are very sorry.”
Helplessly, he turned back to Pierre and shrugged at him.
Pierre was, as usual, rather peeved. His usual frown found itself replaced by an even bigger frown. Ibrahim had never seen him without one of those frowns, and he could imagine that Pierre already slipped out of his mother’s womb bearing one.
Now, he was fiercely thrusting his finger at the phone, demanding that he turn around and try again.
“Okay… But we do know that this place did exist at some point, Madam. Was the archive maybe dissolved some time ago? Or was it relocated? Maybe it was renamed?”
“I’m really sorry, sir.”
He huffed, still feeling the UN official’s increasingly maddened glare on his back, scalding him as only a savage Saharan sun could.
“Our source stated that this archive might be found somewhere in the vicinity of an old… castle complex, apparently… called… the...”
He had to glance down on a hastily scribbled note that Edith shoved towards him. “...Castle of the Two Sisters.”
“That’s right, sir. The ‘Old Everfree’ is the ancient capital city of Equestria. But it’s been abandoned for many hundred years. It’s a ruin.”
“...All of it?”
”Sir, if there were any records left, you would of course be at liberty to to peruse them. But the place is in the middle of the Everfree Forest, so… naturally, it’s not a place to store any written records.”
“So… when were any documents actually stored there? And when were they moved?”
There was the sound of pages being turned over the speaker. The last sound was that of a paper being crumpled.
“I’m sorry, we have no further information on that.”
Again, Ibrahim peered over to the others, only to find Pierre aggressively waving a middle finger at the telephone.When he was done, he looked at Ibrahim, pointed at the phone and mimed a noose tightening around his head.
Ibrahim understood and immediately asked. “M’am… you know what repercussions withholding these documents can provoke. It can be seen as an obstruction of the court’s work. And that would be a violation of the recent UN resolution that your country has signed. Are you aware of that?”
Yet another pause.
“Well, good sir...” she finally countered, sounding more than a little more angered. “Just out of curiosity… where exactly did you obtain the name and the address of that supposed archive?”
“Uh...”
Uncertainly, he peered over to Edith, who began to wildly shake her head at him. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to name any of our sources.”
“Mister Ibrahim, just between the two of us: It cannot be a very reputable source. If I were you, I would check exactly where I get such important information from.”
“I understand.”
Pierre’s fingers frantically performed a walking motion.
“Oh, uhm… I take it that we can still proceed and inspect this ‘castle’ ourselves at some point. As a matter of protocol?”
The mare at the other end of the connection, rather unexpectedly, let out a derisive laugh.
“Heh, I don’t think I’ve made myself too clear, sir: The Castle of the Two Sisters is in the Everfree Forest. It is hideously dangerous to set hoof there. Besides...”
She harrumphed, “The entire Everfree region is currently under martial law. As you surely know, there is a major police action taking place there. It is a no-go area for civilians, foreigners and humans alike.”
“...I see.”
“Say, where exactly is Mister Pierre right now? Maybe it would be helpful if I could speak him directly.”
Pierre desperately - albeit quietly - fought off the receiver with both hands.
“Y-no, he cannot be reached at the moment.”
”Where is he?”
“Heh… don’t ask me. In the field, probably. I’m very sorry, Ma'am.”
He uttered the last part with quite a bit more satisfaction than the others would have otherwise been appropriate.
”Yes, but-”
Then he aptly hung up.
Pierre, who was all the while virtually boiling in his own, self-imposed silence, slowly let his anger back out. “Dumb bitch. Unbelievable.”
“You thinkh she lied?” Edith made sure of what had just happened.
“In our fucking faces!”
He stomped away from the desk and slung a backpack around his shoulder.
“I, for one, have heard enough. Afua, Ruman, Fabritzky, Chikere, Shalgham! You’re all coming with me.”
As the others all obediently - and not without a level of darting, fidgeting terror - jumped up and scrambled to collect their own stuff, Edith just managed to look confused.
“What? Go where?”
“Where do you think, Šarić?” he grunted. “You heard her. Not long, and the forest will be overflowing with Equestrian government troops. I want to get a good look at the records there before someone uses the hassle to throw a torch through the window or something.”
“Does… the facht that she said there’s nothingh there mean anythingh to you?”
“You believe that shit?” he spat, his eyes wide with ridicule. “Nobody who knows nothing talks like that! She has been instructed to deny the existence of that archive. I mean… you’ve seen that footnote, have you not?”
She shrugged.
“Of chourse I have. Though for all we know, there might not even be anything of interest in there.”
“That’s irrelevant! I’d rather waste a handful of working hours to trace a possible case of, y’know, wrongfully omitted information than ten years regretting that I didn’t. A whole court investigation is on the line here!”
The others began herding out the narrow door.
“So… what about me then, Pierre?”
“What about you?”
She coughed and paused.
“Maybe I want to come with.”
He scoffed and zipped up his pearly white jacket. Then he spun, around, reaching out with two fingers and flicking them against her breastbone.
A dull metallic thud rang out.
“Maybe you can go fuck yourself. Get rid of your dog tag first.”
“Will you stop with your constant bullshit already?” she shot back, stumbling after him, her face flaming up in ever-so rare rage.
“What bullshit?” He growled. “You’ve sold this organisation out once already. Like I will let you anywhere our equipment again!”
Then he slapped his fur cap on his head and stepped out of the office.
But Edith went right after him.
“I thought I was the one who just provided you proof about falsified dochuments.”
“And well done you!” he spat. “Now skip along. Haven’t you heard the bell? Master’s going to feed you soon.”
“Pierre!”
The others stopped in their tracks.
Never had that woman raised her voice to this level.
“What, Edith?”
“Let me askh you...” she breathed. “How many times were you stopped and searched the last time you drove out into Everfree? Two times? Three times? Four?”
He only shot her a hate-filled glare.
“I chould run backh to ‘my master’ right know and turn that into a solid ten. It'll be Easter by the the time you reach that chastle!”
Pierre gritted his teeth. He evidently wanted to laugh out loud, to suck the seriousness out of her blatant threat, but any semblance of humour got stuck in his throat as he looked over her deadpan face once more.
“You would do that? Really?”
“Sometimes you seem to thinkh I am doingh all this for shits and ghigghles.”
“What the hell do you want, Šarić?”
She didn’t answer. She just stuffed a hand down her pullover and yanked her gorget out.
“If you let me chome with you… I will makhe sure that no one touches us.”
He just looked at Šarić, his gaze went from her head to her toes. And she just looked back at him impassively.
Even tired bitches can bite, he thought to himself. And hopefully, her teeth would end up nowhere near his behind.
The bells tolled noon in the Equestrian capital.
Another layer of light fluffy snow descended on the cobblestone of the parade streets in the vast medieval courtyard of the royal residence, and many dignitaries, nobles, servants, guards, but also plenty of frolicking subjects and their children wandered about, marvelling at yet another nigh-perfect winter day the weather pegasi had scheduled.
Pierre’s humans marched out of the Embassy in a pack, rushing down the grand staircase to the broad avenue that served as an ad-hoc car park for a good dozen white jeeps and trucks that the UN headquarters had imported to travel the country.
Pierre looked over his team while they stood gawking at the assorted goings on. He cursed under his breath before shouting orders to get things going,
“Chikere! Shalgham! Ruman! You take the equipment car. Don’t forget the scanner and a portable crime lab. Fabritzky and Afua! You take the box wagon with the cover and the loading ramp. There may be a lot of documents to sift through today. Šarić and I will take my jeep.”
Climbing into his car, he poked his head out once more. “We drive out as a convoy, so nobody fall behind! Also, do not raise any unnecessary attention! We’re not begging to get roadblocked.”
Ibrahim was still nervous, however.
“Mister Abel, but… what about what the secretary said? She warned us that the Everfree is a no-go zone. What if they’ll hold it against us later on?”
“Us?” Pierre asked back. “I didn’t get to speak with that secretary, remember? I know nothing! Remember that. Nothing.”
Ibrahim nodded, gulped, and then climbed into the back of the equipment truck.
Pierre and Edith strapped on their seatbelts, but both seemed a little bashful about, as if the two of them were forced to share a changing cubicle. At least Pierre hoped that this is how both felt; Edith looked, as always, rather stonefaced.
They led the convoy roaring through the castle grounds and out the lowered drawbridge over the river moat.
As they made their way down the hill and through the different consecutive tiers of the Equestrian capital - first the academic district with the colleges and museums, then the mercantile district with the malls and market squares, then the cultural district with the theatres and galleries, and finally the residential districts, with the ivory towers and lofty palaces - Pierre beeped and sirened the hapless ponies off the street, and after ten minutes of mostly silent traveling, the convoy exited the walled city and found itself on the highway leading down the mountainside and into the Everfree Valley.
As soon as there were no more obstacles, other than the odd coach or haycart passing either side of them, Edith and Pierre - almost simultaneously - let out exasperated sighs.
“Why did you do it?” he began with a weary voice
“...Do what?”
“Suck up to the Equestrian crown.”
She said nothing, instead looking out of the window.
“Was this… part of your plan all along?” he sighed. “Just… flip-flopping and riding coat-tails as the wind blows? Today UN, tomorrow Equestria...”
“I didn’t have a plan,” she explained, her face as blank as it was unmoved by his accusations. “I was thinkhing on my feet.”
“Ah, so that’s what you call it...” Pierre nodded. “You’ve got balls, Šarić. Lady-balls...”
“I just don’t likhe beingh ordered around. That is all.”
“So that’s why,” he groaned sarcastically. “Obviously, that’s a good reason. I mean, hey, I don’t like taking orders either. So what kept me from quitting the UN in the last twenty fucking years?”
He shook his head.
“All the shit you’re pulling here is... a whole lot of hassle for one cadaver. Don’t you think?”
“What?”
“I mean that pony you’ve been getting your nipples in a twist searching for. Whatshername… Junebug? This is what is was all about, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. But she hesitated.
“Whatever happened to that hair sample I bestowed back to you last week?”
“In my drawer. Under lockh and khey.”
“You mean, you haven’t had it analysed yet?”
Hesitantly, she shook her head.
He gave her an inquisitive glare.
“You’re... you are still looking for her, right?”
“Sure I am.”
“You better fucking be! You just threw out your entire damn career over a dead horse. Good luck ever finding work with an IGO again after this adventure.”
“We don’t know whether she’s dead, Pierre.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of optimism from a coroner.”
“...Chall it intuition.”
Again, Pierre bemoaned the entire situation.
“I still don’t get why you did it. Why? You had zero field experience. You had one job. What on earth induced you to try and break out of the morgues in the first place?”
“I don’t know.” she croaked. “Maybe I wanted to chonfirm to myself I’m still alive.”
Pierre scrutinised her numb expression. “Right. Easy mistake to make.”
He sniffed and groomed the fiery red hair above his lips. “So… how does it feel being alive now? Under the collar of… you know… the Queen of fucking Sheba?”
Another shrug.
“I… I sleep in a thirty sqhuare-metre bedroom now.”
Pierre’s eyes widened considerably.
“What? My UN apartment plan was chancelled days agho. Where was I supposed to gho? A youth hostel?”
Suddenly, out of the blue, they were interrupted by soft guitar plucks and rhythmic tapping filling the jeep.
Confused, Edith glanced around, trying to locate the source.
“Did… do they have radio in Eqhuestria?”
“Ah, shit...” Pierre moaned. “That’s my phone. It’s in my backpack. Behind your seat.”
Edith huffed as she twisted and contorted to try and reach the music-spewing machine.
“Leave it! It’s probably the ponies, trying to see what the hell I’m up to. Let them ring ‘till they drop.”
Hesitantly, she obeyed, and directed her attention back onto the road.
Behind her, a voice began to sing.
“Something’s happening here...”
It sounded familiar.
”But what is is, ain’t exactly clear...”
From her left, she heard the tapping of Pierre’s gloved fingers reverberating against the steering wheel, followed by a gravelly voice chanting,
“There’s a man with a gun over there… telling me I’ve got to be beware...”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” he confirmed absent-mindedly.
She looked forward. In the not-too-far distance, she could a solitary Royal Guard sentry, a unicorn standing at a crossroad, toting his spear like a traffic baton.
Slow waves signalled the convoy to slow down. And Pierre did slow down, though reluctantly.
After the soldier had gotten a good look at the three cars and their passengers, he nodded and waved them through with his weapon - the speed of his wavings signalling that they shouldn’t slow down any more, at least until they had reached the next sentry.
“Told you.”
All the while, the phone dispensed more and more sung words.
“I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down!”
A flying squadron of golden-shimmering pegasi passed the highway from above, locked in a V-formation not unlike a flock of geese, before pulling left in the direction of a grove of trees in the distance.
“There's battle lines being drawn… Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong...”
Soon, they were passing the first provincial granges and homesteads lining up by the sides of the road.
They were far less populated than they had been just the week prior.
No longer did Edith see any young foals and itchy-hooved wanderers skip by, playing and dancing in the winter wonderland without a care in the world.
The hamlet and its outskirts were deserted and completely forsaken. Shutters had been closed and blinds had been lowered. Shop windows were grated – one had even been nailed shut in a hurry.
Public information posters plastered the walls facing out towards the road.
The investigators soon found themselves rolling through a sleepy rural townlet. In the centre of a large public square was a large pavilion-like building, probably a city hall or courthouse, one of the few truly sizeable structures of this hick town.
The main road lead straight through the town from end to end, cutting the town in half like an anthill with a spade.
Edith noticed how the road, while obviously unspoiled by typically thick trails of car tyres, was completely blotched with thousands of hoofprints that all headed out of town, as though a Mongol horde had just stampeded through.
More than that, though, Edith was too preoccupied with the still singing phone.
“They’re lettingh it ringh a rather longh time. Are you sure we shouldn’t answer it?”
“What, don’t you like the music?” he answered, perhaps a little angrily.
So it sang on. Something about people in the streets, something about paranoia, and ending every time with the ever-persistent, ever-ominous, “Stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going round...”.
Again, she concentrated hard on the trampled road that seemed to curve and wind around market stalls, promenade trees and half-timbered manors for eternities.
The moment the investigators drove past the town centre, the relative quiet was suddenly gone though.
They found it crowded with all sorts of ponies, gearing up in armour and marching up and down between the banks of a small stream and a boutique, in what seemed to be some sort of mangled drill formation.
Commanding voices echoed in-between the reed cottages, rallying the mobilising townsfolk with bullhorns and separating them into smaller groups.
Some were busy packing their most-needed belongings onto handcarts and their own backs. Some were already pushing them towards the train station as fast as they could, as to get a seat on the last few trains running out of the town. Others made ready to depart on their journey the only way that was left to them - by hoof. Fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, grandfathers, grandmothers, sons and daughters alike were busy with their own arduous loads.
And yet others weren’t as much busy with escaping as they were busy equipping themselves with dented surplus helmets and rusty back-plates, picking them out of big reed baskets that were loaded off a transport wagon at the train station on the edge of town by a couple of stern-looking pegasus officers. Another one sat on a desk in the square, a pencil in his mouth and a list in front of him, serving a growing queue of ponies.
Despite, or perhaps because of the racket, it was apparent even to a human that most of the assembled equines weren’t fighters. Many were gangly or pudgy, young or old, mares or foals. Those who already wore their armour found it to be ill-fitting, giving off a pathetic image.
Pierre slitted his eyes in contempt. He immediately knew what was going on.
“Militias. The countryside’s gearing up.”
Troubled, Edith looked at the tumult with growing concern.
“Where… where are we, anyway?”
“I don’t know, but I have a map in my glovebox.”
Automatically, Edith went for the small compartment just above her knees, but Pierre stopped her.
“Actually, don’t bother. If my sense of direction isn’t screwed, we’re passing through ‘Ponyville’ right now. The administrative centre of Everfree County. Which we must be pretty close to the castle.”
Passing on their left, a small family was being held up and interrogated by a platoon of soldiers they had bumped into on their way south. One of the unicorns was performing some sort of magic as the others looked on, intrigued by the display of some blueish magical shimmering. But before either of the humans could take a closer look at what was happening, they had already rolled past.
“Wow.” Pierre grunted. “It’s at moments like these that I think back to your… source. Who exactly was it that handed you the paper back then? A Royal Guard?”
Golden Dirk?
“You’re startingh to qhuestion this way too late...” she just sniffed.
“He… he was trustworthy, yeah?”
“Well, he is an archives ghuard in Chanterlot. Mentioned somethingh about large movements of archive material and he… bechame suspicious.”
“Well, what I’m trying to find out is whether he’s safe.”
That, Edith hadn’t considered too much until now.
“I mean, technically, this guy might have betrayed state secrets here. That’s worth at least a lengthy prison sentence where I come from.”
“He was fine when I last saw him...” she lied. She honestly couldn’t see him slipping into any more trouble, though.
It didn’t take long until the number of idle soldiers by the roadside thickened.
Before they could exit Ponyville by way of a little wood bridge traversing the slickly frozen-over and snow-covered stream, a sentry suddenly hobbled onto the road in front of them, clumsily balancing a spear in one hoof.
“Dammit!” Pierre uttered under his breath. “We’ve almost made it through, too!”
Yanking the jeep’s radio out of its holder, he transmitted news of the hindrance to the two tailing cars.
“Watch out, guys. Road block ahead. Slow down, but leave your windows rolled up and doors shut. I’ll take it from here.”
Edith instinctively clutched the gorget under her turtleneck jumper.
“Time to do your magic, Šarić.” he told her. “Let’s see what your dog tag’s actually worth.”
The lone pony sentry began to yell.
“Halt! Halt! In the name of the Princesses Celestia and Luna, halt!”
Nervously gritting his teeth, he carefully put the brakes on.
“Real shame we can’t just plough right through them, eh?”
“Let's… try not to.”
The three cars came to a gradual stop. Within an a short moment, they were surrounded by a posse of half a dozen guardsponies, and the hassle was crowned by spear-point tapping against Pierre’s driver window, indicating that they wanted him to scroll it down.
With an uncomfortable groan, Pierre complied.
As the coldness and sounds of turmoil penetrated the cab, a small mare climbed up to the window and attached herself to the frame.
“Halt!” she said, toning her high-pitched voice as low as possible. “Who goes there? State your fricking business!”
“UNEVEG.” he indicated, quite irked.
“Say what now?” the pony puckered dumbly, scrutinising him from under her salad-bowl of a helmet. “Una-what?”
“United Nations!” Pierre clarified and banged against the white outer door, where the abbreviation was stamped on in plain black block letters. “Can’t you read?”
“I don’t know what it says.”
“That's a U, and that's an N.! Let us through.”
“State your business and everything first, 'kay?” She repeated ignorantly. “It’s the law and stuff!”
“You state yours.” Pierre shot back, clearly unimpressed. “What is this circus here?”
“You seriously didn't hear what they found in the woods last week? The Royal Guard’s, like, deputising all willing Ponyvillians now.”
“Really? When were you deputised?”
“Yesterday morning!” she answered with her chestplate swelling out of sheer pride. “And today, we’re gonna search the Everfree and smoke them changelings out. They won’t have no Queens to save them now!”
Edith almost jumped up at the mention. She clambered over to the drivers’ side and asked, “Have you found any Changelings?”
“Nah, not yet.” The mare explained, “But we’re darn sure they’re somewhere in the forest. Maybe even here in Ponyville. They could be anypony, you know.”
“Do tell.” Pierre snarked.
She gave him a suspicious glance. “Even you. Can you prove you are who you are?”
He just shrugged.
“Don’t know. Can you? You look suspicious as hell.”
The mare ballooned her lips, almost inflating with rage over that statement.
“Like… what… I’m, a loyal subject of the Princesses! And I don’t need to be questioned on that by two... balding monkeys curving around in the middle of nowhere!”
Pierre gritted his teeth at the slanderous language, but before he could surrender to the rage, he switched to a sneer. He looked over to his partner.
“See, Edith? Some things really do stay the same wherever you go. You give someone a helmet and a pointy stick, and they turn into an aspiring Nazi within a day.”
The pony gasped. “I… I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, but that sure sounded really suspicious for monkey talk.”
Threateningly, she leaned in. “I think I should be booking you two guys. How about that?”
“We’re here on official business. You lay a finger on us and I’ll have a remotion shoved up your ass. Got it?”
Edith speedily interrupted her rude colleague.
“We are part of the official investigation on the victims of the Changeling terror. We have the authorisation of the Crown.”
“Well... I know nothing of that.”
“And how could you?” Pierre mocked her, “You’ve been the Sheriff of Daisy Town for the last ten minutes. One call to Canterlot, and it’s going to be twenty.”
“You want to take this attitude with me, human? You wanna threaten me?” Still hanging onto the doorframe, she presented her spear.
“As a defender of Equestria and harmony and all the good things in life, I order you to get out of your cart!”
“Oh fuck off, kid.” Pierre hissed defiantly.
“What’s all this'n!” a fourth voice suddenly bellowed out.
The militia sentry squawked as she suddenly found herself getting pulled down from the window by somepony's powerful magical force.
As soon as her muzzle was gone, it was replaced by a corpulent unicorn senior’s face and a maltreated mane sitting on a plated torso.
“What’s going on here, Flitter…”
The massive stallion’s eyes grew when he saw the passengers. “Oh Celestia, oh jeesh, it's you?!”
The investigators looked around unsurely, trying to decipher his surprise.
“Uhm… who?” Edith asked.
“And ya can talk, too? Yeah, you’re that human… the one, ya know, who led us into the Everfree with Lieutenant Fit. You remember me? I lit the way. Sergeant Cabasset, at your service!”
Now Edith remembered somewhat faintly. He had been part of her escort. The missing tuft of mane hair from his head marked his involvement in the scuffle in the caverns.
“Yah, how’s your mouth?” he asked and pointed at the bandages under her chin.
“It’s… okhay, achtually.”
“So I can hear.” He commented absently. “How’s the Lieutenant doing?”
Iffily, Edith pouted.
“I… uh… heard he got promoted.”
“Great. Ya betcha he earned it.”
As if he remembered doing something important, he assumed a more formal stance. “Would you mind looking over to me while I do a little scan?”
Immediately, Pierre jumped up to deny him that.
“No, I refuse. This vehicles has diplomatic-”
But before either he or Edith could do a thing about it, Cabasset’s horn began to pulse mildly in a subtle yellowish light.
The two humans gave a jerk when a mild but involuntary goosebump sensation spread across them, beginning at the tips of their fingers before travelling upward to their faces.
“What on God’s green earth...” Pierre uttered and inspected his own shivering hand.
A short moment later, the odd sensations were gone.
“There. All done.” the sergeant declared and give an innocent smile. “So, what business are you back here for?”
“We’re... following another lead.” She explained politely, still bewildered by the strange procedure they had just undergone.
“Need an escort?” he proposed. “With so many volunteers, I could spare a whole dozen to take with.”
Before she could kindly refuse his offer, he warned her with a hoof. “Y’see, technically, we’ve put the whole countryside on lockdown. Ya probably heard it; we’re going to comb the Everfree Forest and finally trap’em dirty-”
“Yes, your… cholleaghue just told us.”
“So yah. Technically speaking, I can’t let you go any further than this bridge.”
Pierre was quick to object.
“Put a sock on it, GI Joe! The Princesses allowed it. Edith! Tell him.”
She swiftly unpacked her gorget and held it in his face.
“Oh… wowsers.” the unicorn cut her off with a smile. “But whatever. Anything for ya, hun. If you’re as clever in locating the changelings’ hideouts as the other day, I really should let ya follow your nose.” He followed up quickly, “But, yah, where were ya going, anyway?”
“The old royal-” Edith began, before a forceful nudge from Pierre shut her up.
“The historical highway.” he lied. “You know, the one leading from here to that ancient castle somewhere.”
“Oh...” the unicorn nodded. “Oh yah, sure. But… just saying, it’s pretty overgrown. You won’t get far in this coach of yours.”
“Whatever. We only need to take a few pictures and make a topographical assessment. Along that route, there might have been a changeling encounter there a few dozen years ago that needs further looking into.”
The officer couldn’t hide his confusion. “Mhm...”
Pierre made ready to jump out and strangle the life out of the stallion, but Cabasset just shrugged and went along with his statement.
“Ya gonna be there… long?”
“Fifteen minutes. If all goes smoothly.” he lied, again.
“Ah, what the hay.”
He magically lifted the helmet off his head and demonstratively let it float slightly left of the direction they were due to go.
“The quickest way will probably be two leaps down the lane, then heading left down the Broken Crop Road, straight into the woods. But…” he warned, “It’s gonna be mighty dangerous. Stay on the road, and turn around at the first smell of danger. Me and the Ponyville posse will probably be right behind ya, anyway.”
“I appreciate it.” Edith thanked.
“Great.” Pierre snarked. “Can we move now?”
Cabasset wasn’t so easy to shake off the door, tough. “Darn tootin'! One more thing, hun. I heard reports of a flying stallion passing over Ponyville just a couple of minutes ago. Wasn’t one of my guys, and he was heading in your direction into the woods. So… you be warned. It could always be one of them. If you find any changelings, get word back to us immediately.”
That reminded Pierre...
“Likewise, Sergeant. Remember, we’re looking for changelings as well. Live ones, mind you. If you find any, please give me or my associates a call. Any changeling would be invaluable for the trial.”
“Ah, so ya still bent on catching and caging ‘em?” he chuckled, “Ya betcha, I promise I’ll save one for you… at least after we’re done with 'im.”
The UN official was not amused at all.
“You touch any of them, and I’ll rip out the rest of your hair. One by one. Yah?”
The sergeant’s light-hearted expression deflated.
“Yah, hun. Whatever.”
Nodding at Edith, the fat unicorn climbed back down and ordered the militia ponies to make way for the car.
“Oh, and say ‘hiya’ to the Lieutenant in Canterlot for me!”
Honking, the Land Rover sped off, over the bridge and off into the abandoned southern outskirts of the town. An equipment truck and a lorry roared right after them.
“Top. Notch. Diplomacy.” Pierre coughed and kicked the gas. “We should be happy he knew your ass. Or else we’d still be standing there.”
“You chan thankh me later.”
It became soon clear to everyone that they were moving further away from any semblance of civilisation with every passing kilometre, as houses and paved roads slowly but surely faded utterly out of existence.
Edith recognised the now slightly familiar sight of the sky darkening ominously under the tree tops of the mighty Everfree Forest.
The snow on the road became less and less controllable too. Obviously, no plough had made it this far into that forest this side of the century. The UN’s cars were sturdily built and military-grade, but even they were reaching their limits of maneuverability. The quickly fading daylight didn’t help at all.
But Pierre had plans quite different from slowing down. The car slid and slithered across the road at every small curve, but that didn't seem to curb his enthusiasm.
“Chould you… takhe it down a notch?” Edith carefully asked.
“I spent five years growing up in Twillingate on Notre Dame Bay. I got this.”
She probingly looked out the back hatch, making sure whether the two other cars could even keep up.
“Are we in a hurry?”
“You tell me. If we don't find the damn castle quickly enough, half of Ponyville’s going to descend on us.”
She cleared her throat.
“Once we’re in that chastle... What then?”
“What do you mean, ‘what then?’” he asked back sarcastically. “First, we’ll look for that ‘chancery’, or for any left-over records. Should we find something, we impound as much as we can carry, and deal with the rest in the embassy.”
“And how will we know which bookhs to impound?”
There, he looked clueless.
“Chan you read Equesthrian? Because I sure don't.”
She could virtually see her words braking Pierre’s thoughts in their tracks
“We’ll find someone who can. Eventually.”
“But you didn’t thinkh of bringing one now? And here?”
“Well, I was planning to confiscate the documents, not try figuring them out on location.”
“You want to impound a whole archive?”
“If we need to. We’ve got a box van.”
She huffed tiredly.
“And if we don’t have the time to load all the files?”
“Then we will make time!” he snapped. “And if I have to take it all the way up to New York, then by God, so I will! It’s about time I get to kick the Equines where it hurts. This archive is ours!”
Edith continued scanning him.
“You just chouldn’t find a pony translator to chome along, chould you?”
He only chewed his lips and said nothing at first. Then he shook his head.
“For a full-scale, full-day archives comb-out with just ten hours heads-up? No way. Last time, I needed six weeks for four fucking hours. But not this time.”
Her look was unrelentingly critical.
But he was not about to take her criticism. Especially not from her.
“Look.” he spat. “ Let's discuss this when we’re there, okay? Right now, we need to make sure we don't miss the left-turn.”
“I'm looking.” she sighed. “Just don’t expect an interpreter to fall from the skhy when we need one.”
Awkwardly, he scratched the side of his eyebrow and eyed the panorama of Ponyville in his rear mirror as it slowly faded into a swathe of fog in the distance.
“But, Jesus… I mean… you saw Ponyville just now, didn’t you?”
“Huh? Yeah… sure. What about it?”
“The people there… gathering… standing in line to pick up their cudgels for the slaughter...”
He shrugged and smiled melancholically.
“It’s just what I meant. Exactly what I was talking about.” Pierre continued mournfully. “I have a theory...”
“Which one?”
“The theory… that at a certain point of time… at some stage… all war zones just start looking alike. All over the world... and every world. That they become completely interchangeable.”
Absent-mindedly, she nodded.
“Maybe. Ever been to a war zone?”
“You mean, not counting the one we’re driving through?” he smirked. “Yeah. But only one. Which is enough to contrast and compare.”
He smacked his lips, and his eyes scanned the hands that sat on the wheel.
“Where do you come from again? Slovenia, wasn’t it?”
“Uh, Bosnia.” she corrected him, her voice reserved.
“Ah. Oh jeez...” he breathed, as though he just came to a realisation. “I could have guessed.”
“What?”
“You’re the right age. Thirty-... five or so?” he mused, giving her a sideways glance every few moments. “You’re the lost generation.”
“What are you talkhing about?”
“Your war.” he finally sighed. “I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out for you. Bosnia, April 1992 to December 1995.”
A shudder ran down her spine.
“You must have been… about ten years old when the shooting started. Right?”
“Yeah.” she confirmed, her eyes firmly fixed on the passing landscape. “So?”
“I don’t know… Did you get to see a lot of the fighting?”
She sat still. But ultimately, she shook her head.
“I ghrew up in the North. Near Prijedor. That was… far far away from the battles...”
“Really?”
His voice betrayed that he didn’t quite buy it.
“You haven’t been to Bosnia, have you?”
He shook his head.
“No, just... Rwanda. But quite a few guys I know were in Bosnia under UNPROFOR. Said they had the time of their fucking lives over there.”
“Why are we talkhingh about Bosnia now?” Edith finally inquired. She had a very apparent annoyed tinge in her raspy voice.
Now Pierre shrugged.
“I just wondered. You look like something’s rustled your timber here.” Pierre mumbled weakly, closely watching the depressing scenery.
“Rubbish. It lookhs nothingh likhe Bosnia.”
Suddenly, she spotted the broad main road branching off into another path that led left, plunging straight into the Everfree Forest. It was the long expected turn.
“Oh! That’s where we have to gho." she said, combing her frizzled strand of hair out of her face and pointing him left, "Brokhen Chrop Road, stay on-”
Before she could finish her sentence, something completely different caught her attention - standing on the road just before the junction.
“Stop! Watch out!”
Pierre gasped. With incredible presence of mind, he slammed the brake. The wheels locked. But the car did not slow. Merrily, it slid over the snow, propelled forward by its own momentum.
The pony whizzed into the hood so abruptly, that neither Edith nor Pierre had time to brace, much less navigate out of the creature's way. There was a deafening clank as the equine's golden armour collided with the grille and it was thrust forward, its helmet flying off and bouncing off into the roadside ditch snow.
That broke the car’s advance more than everything else.
Pierre squeezed the brakes so hard that he and his driver would have been slammed into the windscreen, had they not been strapped into their seats. Once again, the jeep slid its way into stoppage, leaving both passengers sitting in shock, trying to gather their wits back up.
Both stared at the grey pony guard they had just ploughed into. Motionless, he lay in the deep snow, still weighted by the golden armour which now bore a massive, vaguely headlight-shaped indent.
Shaking with shock, she mouthed, "I.... told you... to slow fuckhing down. "
"I didn't see him!" he defended himself, equally suspended in the horror of the moment. "He just... he... he was there all of a sudden! I didn't see him coming!"
He regained his breath. "You pointed me to the fucking left, Edith!"
"You just ran over a soldier." she established. "A soldier. Inside the lockhdown zone.”
"I honestly didn't fucking..." he stammered, pulling his fur cap further over his head. "He... like a moose… Where was my ABS?"
Some time later, both of them remembered that they should perhaps come to the military stallion's aid.
Both swung their doors open and plunged into the deep snow.
“What was that?” an anxious young voice shouted behind them, “Everything okay over there?”
Frantically, Pierre pointed a gloved finger at Ibrahim, who was in the process of climbing out of the tool wagon. “Get back in the car, Shalgham! Wait in the fucking car!”
Edith, meanwhile, was already on her way to the felled creature, running around the bonnet and almost dropping into the snow as the icy ground and her own head trauma tried to rob her of her foothold.
She fell on her knees next to the motionless form, which belonged to was a fairly ordinary unicorn stallion with a white mane, without many discernable features. He didn't stand out from any of the rest in any notable ways.
Pierre soon arrived next to her. "That was not supposed to happen." he commented nervously. “His friends will flay us alive... Hang on... he still has his armour. Maybe it wasn't that bad."
He grasped the unicorn’s head and tried to get his attention. "Hey… hey… can you hear me? Hey! Can you see me? If you can hear me, give a sign."
After a few seconds of incessant asking, the pony still refused to budge.
Pierre stuck his hand under the pony’s chin, trying to feel his pulse.
"Jesus Christ, I cannot even find the fucking vein. I'm not a vet!"
Sighing, he turned to his pathologist colleague, scratching his hands in defeat.
"I think... I think... this is your forte."
Fearfully, she positioned his limp body so they could lift him.
"What do you think?" she inquired, "Should we load him up and drive him back to the checkpoint?"
"Well, it'll be better if they bury him instead of us!"
"No!" a hoarse voice wheezed.
Suddenly, to the joy of everyone, the pony began to twitch and spasm unexpectedly.
Flinching with all four legs and nervously twisting his head around, the creature let out a dazed moan.
"Well... that... that punched me... straight outta my horsheshoes..."
"Oh Ghod..." Edith could only breathe as the stallion instantly began showing more signs of life.
"Where am I..."
"In the road." Pierre breathed. "You don't have much traffic around here, now do you?"
"Nope..." the guard grunted, trying to raise his snout out of the snow. "Ow, my legs."
Edith forced him back down immediately.
"Don't move! You've suffered a massive trauma. You don't want to makhe it worse."
The unicorn directed his eyes on her. A single tear moistened his brow.
"Trauma shmauma. Nothing can hold down this colt for long!"
Shaking some mane hair out of his face, he looked up at his 'rescuers'."You... uh... still remember me, do you?"
Edith held her breath.
It couldn’t be.
“We met just yesterday, in… in the barracks courtyard...”
It was the very same Sergeant Golden Dirk laying in front of her.
Flabbergasted, Pierre turned to his colleague.
“Who… is that?”
Edith needed a moment of consideration before she could bring herself to answer.
“My source. This is my source.”
“Sergeant Golden Dirk, two, two, seven, niner, three, eight, one, reporting for duty!”
He tried to salute, but his foreleg snapped back with a very unhealthy-sounding clicking noise. “I take it you're from the United Nations...” he addressed the official.
“What… what the hell was your informant doing running in front of my hood?” Pierre asked Edith.
She shrugged, before turning back to the sergeant.
“I… I thought you would be backh in Chanterlot. You were suspended..”
He nodded, before flinching from a spasm of pain in his spine.
“There was… a change in plans. I ran out of time… I… didn’t know what to do...”
She couldn’t make sense of what he meant, but she could only afford to waste a thought on it later on.
“Right now, he needs urgent medichal treatment. Gho and see if we have a stretcher laying around somewhere.”
Pierre huffed, before getting back on his feet and turning to the other cars.
“The Ponyville hospial is only a few khilometres behind us. If we could run that road block quickly enough we could be back there in ten minutes.”
“No!” came Dirk’s sudden protest. Helplessly, he clambered closer to the humans with a weary hoof. “Don’t take me to Ponyville. Don’t take me back there. That boat has sailed!”
Edith edged closer immediately. “What happened?”
He gasped for air before continuing, “I’ve counted my options. I’ve reached the point of no return. Time to take the bull by the horns.”
“Jesus H. Christ, talk sense!” Pierre adamantly yelled down at him. “Do you want to go to hospital or not? What’s going on?”
The guardspony reached out for the human’s pearly white jacket, though he couldn’t quite manage to reach it.
“You’re from the United Nations... I have read all your brochures. You... guys..." he stammered, "are supposed to be neutral, right? That's what it said on the flyers. ‘Neutral’ like in… 'not passing judgement'?”
Pierre nodded, though very sceptically, and kneeled down to him. Here, the bureaucrat could take to the query like a duck to water.
“Yes. Yes, UNEVEG is an observing force. We are meant to ease Equestria’s integration into the human sphere. We observe and we instruct, but… we are neutral in political matters. Why?”
“Do you protect?”
“Well… yeah. If at all possible.”
"Thank Celestia…" he breathed, and cleared his throat in a very official manner, wincing in pain.
"Because… because now, I seem to have come to the point where... I wish to formally invoke your protection... and file for political asylum within your organisation."
“Excuse me?”
A moment of awkward silence ensued.
“I want protection. I need protection. Now more than ever!”
“Protection from what?” Pierre inquired in momentary dumbfoundedness.
Now came Edith’s turn to cockily throw the question back at him.
“What do you thinkh, Pierre?”
Concedingly, Pierre nodded and stroked his beard in thought.
“So you actually want to invoke political asylum? You know that we can’t really...”
“W-what?”
“Well...” He scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Don’t get me wrong, we can everything we can to aid you with it, but you must apply in front of one of the individual states, not the UN itself.”
“So… I… okay. Okay.” his breaths became even more frantic. “Which state is the best? Which one’s is the closest at the moment?”
Edith shrugged.
“Australia? Indonesia? Or those tiny French islands?”
“Yes! Yes. Okay. I need to go to asylum somewhere there. It just has to be quick.”
“You will need to gho to the embassy to do that, though.”
“Argh.”
He pinched his eyes closed in frustration, and covered them with his hooves.
“Me... idiot! You mean the embassy by the Castle Bridge? I was even there three hours ago!”
“Why didn’t you gho inside?”
“I was scared they wouldn’t let me! Not as a soldier of Equestria. I knew I needed to find you first. You were the one who believed me, but...”
“But what?”
“I missed you by, like, five seconds! By the time I could make my way out of the castle down to the embassy, I just arrived in time to eat your dust. I knew where you were going, of course! So I raced after you.”
“For three whole hours?” came Pierre’s immediate sceptical enquiry.
“No, I was here sooner. I knew nopony would see us if we met here, so I stayed right here, by the junction, for almost forty-five minutes, waiting for you to drive up.”
Both Edith and Pierre gave their three cars some very quizzical glances.
Pierre had been driving a good portion of the way like a madman.
How on earth could this unicorn manage a hundred kilometres of relatively rough terrain in three hours and then even overtake them?
“Did you… takhe the train?”
He shook his head.
“Too dangerous. They check the compartments now.”
Now Pierre was playing with his jacket’s collar out of sheer unease.
“I’m not going to ask you again. How did you get here?”
Golden Dirk let out a weak, though subtle smile.
"I flew!"
Both of the human investigators were suddenly very eager to ask the wounded unicorn what that was supposed to mean.
But before they could, a pulse ripped through his body and his hoof. Then another.
Edith could swear that, as she was holding onto his limb, that it didn't come from inside. No, she could practically see that the skin itself was pulsing, moulding, transforming.
She was so shocked that she couldn’t let go of him fast enough before his entire form was engulfed in a cold, green flame-like burst of raw energy, which blinded both her and her Canadian partner.
Terrified, Pierre stumbled away from the unicorn, his heart racing with adrenaline, overwrought by the invasive display on his senses
As soon as the two managed to rub the light out of their eyes and mind the stallion once more, they found that the pony himself wasn’t there anymore.
Instead, in its place, there sat a large bug-like creature, still clad in the dented breast armour, still drooping in the snow from the collision, still almost void of all strength. Two tattered wings were poking out from under it.
Weakly, its large, pupil-less blue eyes turned towards the horrified humans.
“Please help me.” a distorted, pulsating voice begged weakly.
You get a changeling! You get a changeling!
Everyone gets a changeling!
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I get the feeling that Chrysalis was retaliating for some kind of mas genocide attempt on changelings and the ponies are trying to cover it up.
8014977
Its also intetesting that aparently the princesses(or some princesses) doesnt seem to be in the know
I still don't know what to think about the conflict but neither side seems to be innocent.
But fear amongst the ponies is understandable if you consider the love processing facility from the Everfree.
Ponies see the changelings as monsters who capture fellow citizens and turn them into food.
How should we react to a species that needs to do something horrible like that to survive?
Wouldn't it be the right thing to eradicate all of them to protect people from this torture?
In my opinion the answer is yes (if there is no alternative to sustain themselves or if they were unwilling to compromise).
But lets see what Lyra and Golden Dirk have to say in the next chapters and perhaps we get to know what this conflict really is about.
Dayum, loving every chapter.
Damn! At first i was like: whyyy?! Go back to the ling and hand!
And then more changelings!! Yay
And now they have a witness.
It is not connected to this chapter, but if you need someone to translate to Dutch I would like to apply.
Having read up until this point, the Dutch scentences were a bit awkward to read. Not grammatically incorrect, but awkward.
Just, so you know.
Well that's just peachy, isn't it? Who called it? 7682717 we did, of course!
Well at least the informant will probably join us a bit more permanently, huh?
Unfortunately, getting him out of this will be tricky, since the Ponyville militia already saw him as a Pegasus entering the forest...
Keep going! ;)
8015226
Genocide is never the answer.
Shame to you for even eluding to that.
8039986
Then tell me how we should react if we would encounter an alien race like the Zerg from Starcraft 1 or the Xenomorphs from the alien movies?
I would never say that genocide is justified against sapient creatures that have done nothing at all and can be reasoned with.
But if you fight to survive and there would be no other way to end this thread every parent would say to rather kill the bugs than endanger their children.
8040646
There is a difference between Changelings and the Zerg.
One takes what it needs to survive and the other consumes all.
Same thing with the Xenomorphs.
If you even began to correlate their behavior you'll see a difference between them.
One does so to act as the natural check and balance predators to their prey whilst the other two simply consume to grow until they are stopped.
8040646
They are aware of what they do but to place our morals on a species that was evolved specifically to keep the horses in check is wrong.
Just as it's wrong for us to judge the way ponies use the court system, they too, are in the wrong for denying what the humans request after the ponies agreed to let the ICC pursue the case of the Queen.
8041505
So in your opinion changelings developed to keep ponies in check and so the ponies have no right to kill them if they are attacked and captured to feed them?
8015226
If humans were to meet changelings? After initial panic... humanity would shrug and profit? I can easily think at the least 10 uses for changeling in various jobs across society and i can equally fast think 10 more ways to get them as much love energy they need to eat to have balanced growth.
Humans and Changelings could VERY easily live in symbiotic relationship, as long as the population was balanced well.
8043598 It wasn't especially about changelings but more about a race that would need to feed on other races(which don't survive the process) to survive.
8043613
Then it all boils down to amounts, i have already made my organs available to anyone who would need them after i die for free. I could very easily be convinced to part with rest of my fleshly remains with correct compensation. Also in such cases i am sure cloning technology would be advanced pretty damn fast.
8043631
Wouldn't that be kind of like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film)?
8043653
Why would it be anything like that? Core message is: Most all 'problems' of this nature could be easily dealt with with calm deliberation and seeking of compound interests. And yes, genocide as an option is hard to do, inefficient and bad for the soul. If people for some reason would go 'duuuuh we no think' and it would end up as the island scenario? Eh that would be better than Genocide you suggested... and odds are if you were not an idiot you could make it tolerable existence too for the people who had the said 'lottery.' All you need for that would be big enough of population so the odds are low.
8043704 Still it could only work with a race that could be resoned with.
My point was what would we do if we encounter a race that wouldn't.
Not a race that trys to find a solution or is open to suggestions from us.
Would we try to hold them out of our space or try to end the threat?
Oooooh. Another one. Admittedly not as surprising of a revelation seeing as it's an OC but still... Don't make a habit of it.
Called it