• Published 16th Nov 2014
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Chrysalis Visits The Hague - Dan The Man



In a universe where Equestria recently arrived on Planet Earth, Queen Chrysalis sits in chains. Now she must answer herself in front of this world's highest court - the International Criminal Court in the Hague, the Netherlands.

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XXVI. Functional Immunity

XXVI.

Functional Immunity

Castle Of The Two Sisters
Everfree County, Equestria
23. November, 2015
1:40 pm ICT

“Oh, by Celestia’s shimmering nose hair!!”
The spluttered echo of Sergeant Sergeant Cabasset’s curses flung its way deep down into the carbon-black passage. “I haven’t smelled anything so bad since that exercise where those Night Guards set the field kitchen on fire!”

Captain Fighting Fit would have liked to agree, but his cloak, the corner of which he held pressed over his muzzle, wouldn’t let him. The sickeningly intense stink of burned paper, fabric and varnished wood wafted by his face stronger with every step.

“You still okay, sir?”

He tried to wink, but his eyes stung and watered too much.

“Yah, you’ll be okay.” Cabasset grinned at them and drew in a spirited breath of the pungent, burned air through his bare, unprotected nostrils. It became clear that this unicorn was used to worse.

Using the opportunity, Fighting tossed a glance behind himself and spotted the human lieutenant Gavaskar slogging along him on his lanky pair of trousered legs, his eyes an irritated pink, and the rest of his hairless face covered by his blue uniform scarf.

Their small group of officers crept and trudged into the bowels of the castle complex with guarded slowness. Ignoring the foul, spent air, they had to pay attention to avoid the last few remaining burning embers that had in turn avoided the guardsponies’ fire extinguishing efforts.
After an frantic skim of the sky, they had spotted a nice, juicy raincloud, which the pegasus leader had immediately ordered broken into portable pieces and flown down to the inferno in the ruinous castle’s cellars. As they chucked the packed puffs of cold, evaporated water into the smoke-filled corridors and steps of the citadel, their effect was swift and effective. The cellars found themselves literally flooded by a cooling wave of mist that extinguished the insatiable blaze in a matter of minutes.

What the group now had to deal with was the whole affair had left behind. The ground was caked with sickly greyish-brown mush, a flowing foot-high layer of thaw water, ground ash and the mossy Everfree sludge, courtesy of the Everfree militia’s prior bungled efforts.
The smell of wet ash hung in everyone’s nose.

The impromptu fire-chief, the spindly pegasus Morion, led the way through the increasingly grotto-like rock passageway from above, with the others wading after him and trying to keep up.

“Second time in a moon we’re stumbling around in a dark hole. They could be rebranding us into the ‘Cave Foraging Division’ by now!’”

In the dim light of Cabasset’s horn, they hit a staircase - now turned into a rather ominously shimmering sludge cascade - leading a couple of paces down to what looked like a partially submerged door and portal.

Avidly, Morion pointed a hoof down there.
“There! That’s where I found them! Down there!”

Fighting was the first to scurry down the steps to get a closer look at the scene of the crime.
“Right here? Was the door already open, or was it still locked when you found your way down?”

“Uh...” Morion loudly pondered, “It was open just a smidge.”

As Lieutenant Gavaskar summoned the bravery to join the Captain down the steps, Fighting waded over to inspect the door in question. It was richly mounted with iron, and accordingly heavy. Giving it a testing shove, he found that he had the hardest time moving it around by himself.
Leaning in, he scrutinised the lock and bolt. As bent out of shape and covered in notches as both of them were, they had very evidently been worked over with some kind of blunt tool.
Glancing over to the brittle, wooden doorframe on the left side, he realised that a not inconsiderable portion had been reduced to splinters as the door was pried open.
“Well, that’s one mystery solved.” he concluded and turned to the others. “They broke their way in.”

“Who did?” Gavaskar immediately inquired moving closer to the open portal.

“Your friends did, Lieutenant.”

"Friends..." he harrumphed.

The was a sound of metallic scraping, and only a moment later, Morion came fluttering down to the two, clutching a charred, dripping shovel-like tool in his forehooves.
“The colts found this lying right next to the door.”

Gavaskar timidly accepted the grimy instrument and twisted it around in his hands a couple of times.
“This… this is some kind of entrenching tool, or a spade. Very similar to what the Indian Army issues to us. Don't take my word for it, but this could easily be UN peacekeeping surplus.”

“Darn...” Fighting grunted, before wiping his mouth in a vain attempt to escape the smoke, “I don’t get it. If they broke the door open… Why did they all pass out on the other side? Wouldn’t they have found their way up the stairs by the time the fire engulfed them?”

Gavaskar shuddered.

“And more importantly… what the hay were they trying to do here? Why were they trying to bust their into an ancient ruin to begin with?”
Fighting’s head raced as he and Gavaskar tried to cross into the pitch-black room on the other side of the portal. “This is like some crummy Daring Do book...”

“Uh, sir...” came Morion’s wincing.

And, as if on cue, both Fighting and Gavaskar were stopped in their tracks by a blunt, invisible force.
“What the-”

Both found themselves caught in some strange, enormous, yet invisible web that froze their heads, necks, breast and anything else unlucky enough to pass through the door, completely stiff.

Are baap re...” Gavaskar yelped in his own tongue, realising that he was now hanging in the grip of an insanely strong physical force, and panicked as any non-magical creature would.

The two officers, unable to turn their heads back to their comrades, momentarily heard the frantic clip-clops of the other guardsponies rushing down to them to rescue them from their predicament.

“Aw gee!” Sergeant Cabasset exclaimed and engulfed his horn in magic.

In a matter of seconds, the strange force melted into nothingness and the two frantic soldiers’ bodies plopped free of its grip, like iron marbles off of magnets.

“Sorry about that. Should have mentioned...” Cabasset grinned and put a hoof on the back of his younger comrade Morion, “Firefly-grade magical barrier hidden behind that door! A pretty old one, too. We needed almost half an hour to force it open with energy bursts.”

The two gaped at the unicorn with incomprehension.
“Excuse me, what?” Gavaskar ultimately asked.

“I’m no historian or anything,” Cabasset mumbled on, “but I’d say it’s easy to guess that, back in the day, the princesses booby-trapped all the gates and doors with magical barriers like this one, to take out any picklocks lucky enough to make it past those massive things.”

“...I see. Makes sense. I guess.” Fighting agreed. If one’s an eternally powerful alicorn and has got this kind of magic, why not put it to use?

“Would that explain why they couldn’t get back out?” Gavaskar breathed, uneasily stepping further away from the doors. “They trapped themselves inside that room?”

“Of course...” Morion added, “You’ve got to ask yourself how the humans got inside that room in the first place.”

“Right...” Fighting muttered.
Before long, he remembered who else was there. “...Golden Dirk! He helped them get in.”

The other looked at him, befuddled.
“Who, sir?”

“Uh… just a unicorn sergeant from my other command at Canterlot barracks.” he explained. “He’s in the Archives detachment.”

“Why would some unicorn from the Archives detachment know how to unlock a thousand year-old magical force field?” Cabasset harrumphed. “They don’t even get ‘Skeleton Key’ spell training. Why gave you the idea he was even here?”

“Pierre Abel told me,” Fighting explained with an enraged note, “Right before we loaded him and his friends up and brought them to Ponyville General.”

“And… how could he have gotten involved in this… incident?” Gavaskar asked carefully.

“Don’t ask,” He sighed. “I busted Golden Dirk for going AWOL a couple of days back, and then sent him shovelling. Perhaps… perhaps that’s how Edith found him.”

Morion and Cabasset exchanged surprised looks.
Edith?! The human from the cave?” they asked in near-unison.

“Yeah, our one and only.” he answered. “According to Abel, she was in this group too.”

“Wow. Small world...” Morion mused.

“Wait, wait, wait! Hold your horses!” Cabasset interrupted them all. “I saw Edith yesterday!”

Fighting looked up.

Cabasset’s eyes flared up.
“Yah! Sorry for not connecting them dots earlier. She passed by my checkpoint in Ponyville with those other guys around three in the afternoon." He pointed out the way they had come in. "She was sitting in one of them… them… motorised carts that are standing out on the path now!”

“Did she say anything?” Fighting whispered.

“Not much.” he shrugged, “She told me that she and those United Nations types needed to pass through to inspect the old royal highway. Some kind of evidence they wanted to scrape up. They told me they’d be out of there within the hour.”

“And then...” Fighting continued on his own, “They creep into this old castle, and they break down a door to one of the cellar chambers. Why?

He gazed into the insurmountable, fume-filled darkness of the hall.
The place grew on him more every minute. Whatever was hidden here, any whatever they were after, he wanted to find.

And he was going to do that right now.
Drawing a courageous breath of halfway fresh air, he stepped inside, like a diver into a night-filled ocean.

“Sir… I wouldn’t do that.” Morion cautioned. “There’s not a lot left of the place, mostly debris. All the aisles are blocked and it’s still full of smoke. If you don’t choke, a beam will get you on the head.”

Stopping in his tracks, Fighting reluctantly drew in the tainted air.
“What aisles, Morion? What ‘place‘ are we standing in right now?”

“Beats me, sir...” Cabasset shrugged. “Whatever it was, it was stuffed to the hilt with paper and wood. It burned up like a Pegasopolian candle.”

“Well, I don’t know if it helps...” Morion added, “but when there were still some flames down here, I thought I saw all kinds of very tall wooden shelves, stacking books or scrolls something. Of course, they were all burning up before my eyes. Now they’ve totally buried the corridors beneath them.”

“A library, then?” Fighting guessed. “That would explain the ash rain and the magic runes, but… what else?”

“I think I also saw some flags, and… some really old suits of armour.”
Morion smirked, “Hopefully with nopony still inside them.”

Fighting’s face contorted in hopeless confusion.
“This still doesn’t make any sense! Books, folders… flags? All these things… they shouldn’t even be here. This place is a literal ruin! Who keeps books in a ruin?!”

“Tell me about it.” Cabasset smiled.

“This place was abandoned one thousand years ago. How this cellar was neither cleared out nor… well… somehow looted in the meantime is beyond me.”

“S-sorry for chiming in.” Gavaskar interrupted the Captain, assuming as official a pose as he could muster. “I think I’m obliged to ask: Were any activities committed here yesterday, on the part of the UN personnel we found, that could be seen as… criminal in nature?”

The ponies all stared at the human as though he was pulling a cruel joke.

“I’m… I’m asking because... it just looks like I might have to give testimony about this at a later point.”

“Well… how about arson, for one thing?” Fighting asked back.

“And breaking and entering?” Morion added sheepishly.

“But...” Gavaskar dissented, haggling for the severity of the situation, “Who does this place even belong to? This looks like it’s… maybe… a victimless crime to me.”

“This place might have been deserted a whole millennium ago, but you shouldn’t forget it used to belong to the Crown.” Fighting harrumphed. “Which means that all this stuff in here - whatever it was - must have been the property of the princesses. And maybe it still is.”
He shook his head. He evidently took no joy in saying that. “We better hope it’s not anymore, or else… this could become a very serious affair.”

Gavaskar smacked his lips and crossed his arms.
“But… is it really arson too? It could just have been an accident. It might just have been negligence...”

“Well... that’s possible too.” Fighting breathed. The whole concept of Edith, of all pon… people, wanting to set fire to an old ruin of the princesses confused him to no end. It had to be some kind of blunder.

“I think not.” he suddenly heard Cabasset mutter.
The pudgy unicorn swaggered a few steps into the hall and brightened some of the walls with a beam of light from his horn. “Gentlecolts, I arrived down here in time to see some of the last flames being put out. And I spotted something pretty goshdarn interesting.”

The cone of light travelled around the room and slid up and down some of the pillars probingly. The others watched the beacon in captivated silence.
The various surfaces of the room that hadn’t yet burned to a crisp had indeed been turned black as coal. Gradually, the light came to stop at a particularly dark mark near the floor on the far end, half obscured by a pile of bricks.
“There! Black spot.”
The light traveled on, to another corner of the room, stopping just short of a shelf’s carcass. “Another black spot. Just behind the pile of rubble back there.”
Finally, the light slid over the ashen floor and back into the vicinity of the exit doors. “Aaand... black spot. Right next to that pillar.”

Fighting shook his head in annoyance.
“What are you getting at? What are those?”

“They’re the fire sources, Captain.” Cabasset explained with a swanky grin. “These are the places where the fire broke out originally. The experts call it the ‘areas of origin’.”

Morion scratched his mane under the ill-fitting helmet.
“How the hay do you know all that, sarge?”

“Well…” he grinned, “As luck would have it, I used to be a junior bucket-bearer for the Fort Hoofington Fire Watch in my younger years, so… I picked up one or two useful tricks of the trade.”

“So... what does this ‘area of origin’ mean?” Fighting impatiently asked.

“Areas, sir.” Cabasset corrected him. “That’s just the thing. There are several of them, at least three. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re even more hidden in that room. You see, in structural fires, this doesn’t simply happen by accident. If you have one fire source, it just means somepony left the stove on, or broke a lantern, or dropped a silver salute.”
He shook his head, “But to have so many, at the same time, all at different ends of the room? That’s mighty convenient, if you ask me.”

Fighting gulped. He could hear Gavaskar gulping too.
“So it could only have been… a coordinated move?” the human lieutenant made sure.

Cabasset nodded. “I’d bet my bucket bearer’s honour on that. This room was intended to go up in flames. Whatever the hay this room even was. And your friends from monkeytown made it happen, no doubt about it.”

Fighting stepped back out, and slowly made his way to the staircase with an ominously intense twinkle in his eye.
“And Edith? And Golden Dirk? Where were they during all this?”

“Well, I didn’t see them.” Morion reported. “They weren’t under our rescuees, anyhow. The cowards wouldn’t even stay to save their own comrades!” Morion added.

“Sounds about right to me. I haven’t seen Edith since the checkpoint.” Cabasset agreed. “I could ask my colts outside if they picked up anyone in the woods since yesterday, but it’s not likely.”

'What an interesting anomaly', Fighting pondered.
She was gone, and so was that traitorous little coward of a unicorn.

“Oh! Actually, I know where she might have gone!”
With those words, Morion whizzed back into the air and headed up the flooded staircase.
Wordlessly, Fighting, Gavaskar, Cabasset and the others waded after him.
The chase led them to a seemingly innocuous bare stone wall in the antechamber.

Morion’s hoof instinctively dove to a nearby torch holder, which he pulled toward himself with all his might. But instead of ripping the tin frame out of its bolts, it lowered with a mechanical clank. Somewhere, a clockwork mechanism could be heard clicking and a lock sliding. Morion let go of the holder and gave the bare wall a stout kick.
To everypony’s surprise, a rectangular, door-sized portion of the wall simple fell away and bent inward on a pair of hidden hinges.

“What the... A hidden passage?”

“Yes sir.” Morion huffed proudly, “This place is like a block of cheese. I only found it when I bumped into the torch yesterday.”

As the camouflaged door gaped further open, it revealed to the soldiers a long corridor that led deeper into the castle’s ground level, with doorless portals and alcoves embellishing the mossy walls and leaves and foliage covering a reasonable ornate mosaic floor.
At the other end of the hallway, there shone some daylight through a number of surprisingly well-preserved, if grimy, windows.

“When we stormed the building, somepony made his escape through here. We didn’t know our way around the place, so we didn’t realise there was a passageway until that somepony was long gone.”

The investigators meekly stepped into the corridor and closed in on the row of windows. A noticeable chilly breeze blew by their faces as they paced down, checking each and every featureless door leading aft and astern.
Only on closer inspection did they realise that one of the windows was actually missing a few of the rustic thick glass panes in its lead frames, opening up a narrow hole to the wintry Everfree outside.

“I guess they got spooked by us barging in…” Morion mumbled, “ran all the way down here... smashed this window, and...”

Fighting took off his helmet and stuck it through the hole. The crisp, cooling forest air was a relief, but the bright white sunlight reflecting off the icy snow below him blinded him almost completely.

“...then jumped down into the snowbank. And probably scurried off into the wilderness.”

Looking down, Fighting could see a slight, yet suspiciously human-sized dent in the snow bank by the castle wall, with some glass shards reflecting up at him.

“Again, how did they figure out the secret passage mechanism?”

“Maybe the door was already open.” Cabasset suggested, “Maybe they just closed up after themselves.”

"What if somepony else broke in through that window?" Fighting asked himself, somewhat hopeful, before deflating again, "Ugh, wait. No shards on the inside. Right."
Careful not to cut his chin or throat, he twisted his head around to get a look at his surroundings.
“But why? Just why?” he asked himself, for what might have been a millionth time on that day.
Why would Edith and Golden run from the Royal Guard? Did they suddenly go completely nuts?

Peering down the castle perimeter, he hoped to make out some hoof- or footsteps leading away from the ‘crash site’ right under the window, but he quickly realised that, even if there were any, they would have already been covered by a layer of fresh snow that must have come down the night prior.

“Right… I think I’ve seen enough,” he declared, and pulled his head back inside.
Donning his helmet, he wordlessly spun around cantered back to the antechamber.

Gavaskar nervously scratched his turban as he and the others looked after the retreating pegasus.
“Sir? Can I ask where you’re going?”

“I’m going to ask your friends from the United Nations a few questions.” he answered curtly. “Cabasset?”

The sergeant clicked his hooves. “Sir?”

“I’m putting you in charge of the castle. Nopony but us gets in, nopony gets out. Also, try to pump out some of that mud, clear?”

Cabasset saluted smartly. “Crystal!”

Fighting nodded and turned to the pegasus corporal. “Morion, you head to Canterlot and inform the Royal Palace of what happened. Tenderly. And try to get somepony from the Investigation Division down here.”

Morion nodded in obedience.

“Check your watches. The rallying point will be back here at point five this afternoon.”
With that business taken care of, he focused his attention back on the nearing exit in front of him.

“Sir...” Gavaskar just muttered uneasily.

Fit stopped one last time. “Yes, what is it, Lieutenant?”

The human was almost taking a pleading tone with him now.
“I… I just want to remind you that, when you talk to the injured… just that you don’t jump to any conclusions. UN personnel have immunity and… and… whatever did or didn’t occur here yesterday, they couldn’t possibly be prosecuted for it anyway.”

“Duly noted.” Fit nodded, interrupting his climb. “Actually… Tell me more about this… immunity.”


The wind played softly with the white curtains. The gust swept into the sterile, blank chamber and whirled around for a little while, worming around the various medicinal cupboards, then washed over the dozing guardspony that sat in one corner beside the door, prompting a subtle shudder out of him.
At some point, it reached the flimsy cast-iron bedstead, toying with the various papers fluttering on the clipboard that lay on the nightstand, then rising to the top of the bed, it whirred over the motionless form of the human patient, tickling his bandage-covered, fleshy pink nose and his equally pink, equally fleshy chin… and not receiving even a weak sniff in return.

It took Pierre several moments to come to. Opening his crusty, hurting eyelids, he turned his head sideways on an aching, irritated neck. The first thing he realised was how cold and bare the lower half of his face was. The comforting warmth of his fiery red beard was no more. What was left were stubble, bandages and burned skin.

He moaned at the armour-clad pony that sat on the other side of the room, who promptly sniffed his way out of sleep.

Weakly savouring the clinical air around him, Pierre realised where he was. Glancing out the window and weathering the bright, joyless outside light, he spotted the nearby dome of the Ponyville town hall pavillion.

‘Deja-vu…’ was what passed his mind. What a twist of fate this was.
Of course, the first time he had been here - barely a week ago - he was standing. Picking up Edith. Raging about the way he had been treated on his way there. And now?
He could be glad if he even could go anywhere.

His entire skin was burning. His nose, his eyes, his lips, the skin between his fingers, all was scorched and sore.

“Um… you there...” he breathed. His throat and lungs stung like they had been battered black and blue from the inside. “What… what is going on?”

The soldier said nothing and stretched himself with exquisite slowness.

“Where… where are Ruman… and Fabritzky… Shalgham… Edith...”
That last name echoed inside his mind for a long time.

The soldier still kept quiet.

Pierre noticed only now that his right arm had been up in the air the entire time. He tried to lower it, but the only thing that he got back was the intense pain of burned flesh rubbing against cold metal.
Wincing, he glanced up.
His hand has been put in cuffs, with the other one manacle chained to the iron bedpost.

Something inside him snapped.
Slowly, the realisation came as to why he was here. And it took him completely by surprise.
“Hey… hey!”

The guardspony glanced at him strangely.

“Listen… you cannot do that… I have immunity...” he mumbled.

The pony said nothing.

Pierre demonstratively lunged at his chain, which rattled hollowly against the bed.
“You need to release me!”

The pony, gradually realising what the human on the bed was referring to, pulled out some equine sports magazine and spread it open in front of himself.

“Hey… what are you doing?” Pierre wheezed. He was most definitely beginning to panic. “Are you deaf? Open the lock!”

The pony soldier shrugged mutely and turned a page.

“Where are the others? Where is my team?!”
They couldn’t do this. Pierre knew they couldn’t do this.
“Do you know what I am, you dumbass?!”

The pony ignored him.

He was quickly running out of ideas. Whimpering helplessly, he fell back to his mother tongue, “Pour qui me prenez-vous, crétin?!

The guard looked up fleetingly, proving that the questions were not falling on deaf ears.

Savez-vous qui je suis?!

“He doesn’t,” a voice suddenly answered.

Pierre caught himself shrinking back at the mysterious third party. He glanced over to the other side of the room, where he spotted a white-coated, grey-maned pegasus in purple armour, faffing around on a chair and eyeing him.
“He can’t understand you, you know. No translation enchantments. My orders.” the pony curtly explained.

“And who are you?!”

“You don’t know who I am?”

“Never seen you in my life.” Pierre just asked again.
He could only fathom what must have happened to place him cuffed to a hospital bed. “What… what is all this supposed to be?”

“Fraud. Burglary. Vandalism. Arson. Espionage. Hay, if I were you, I‘d want to leave too.”

Pierre gulped. A cold shower ran down his sore back
“There must some kind of… of mistake.”

“Yeah. Greatest mistake of your life,” the pegasus agreed.

A minute of silence passed. Slowly, Pierre came to realise that neither he nor the pegasus soldier were going anywhere.
“What do you want?”

“To talk,” the pegasus responded coolly, getting up and cantering over to one of the windows, a mere yard from Pierre’s face. “You go first.”

“Is this an interrogation?”
Pierre’s long-honed self-preservation instincts kicked in promptly.
“Am I under arrest?”

The pegasus scoffed.
“You’re free to leave at any time.”

The ringing of Pierre’s manacles was almost scornful.
“You... cannot do this. I’ll have you know that I am the UNEVEG Deputy Programme Officer for Southern Equestria. I have immunity!”

“Oh yes, thank you.” the pegasus agreed, before pulling out a frazzled piece of paper he seemed to have been holding at the ready. Then he cleared his throat. “United Nations Officials possess functional immunity: They are exempt from national prosecution concerning official activities, but liable for private acts all the same. The type of the act is determined by its nature, not by its purpose.”
Excited, the pegasus leaned in. “Tell me, since when is burning down a building of the crown an official act?”

“I don’t...”
The words almost got stuck in his throat. Did he just say ‘burning down a building’?
“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The pegasus did not budge. “You will tell me what happened.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The pegasus smacked the frame of the window with a hoof, startling the human with the sharp sound.
“Are you completely stupid or are you just pretending? My comrades carried you out of that inferno. You’ve got no excuse - no excuse at all - to play dumb.”

Pierre felt in the right mind to yell back. But then his eyes fell onto his hands - both of them red and brown and covered in blisters. His face - or at least those parts that hadn’t been bandaged and lubed up in ointments - was only barely still there.

Then he glanced at the pegasus officer. His purple-and-golden armour was grimy, and his brush-like helmet’s mane was shedding a fine cloud of dust with every tiny movement.
And in all the places on him where his armour didn’t reach, his greyish-white coat was visibly blacker and sootier.

A sense of dread possessed him. He realised, with his mind sluggish and labile, that there really had been a fire, and that he was in it… He, and…

“My colleagues. How are they?”

“Oh, they’re dandy, all things considered. If you all hadn’t been wrapped up in clothing, you’d probably have a much bigger problem. As things stand now, there’s just the smoke inhalation, 2nd degree burns and heatstroke. Just like what you’ve got.” The pegasus huffed.

“They’re all okay, then?”

“All, except two. Who are not accounted for.”

He held his breath. “Who’s that?”

Tellingly, the pegasus held his piece and patiently awaited his reaction.

The revelation was nigh-automatic for Pierre at this point. It was just too easy.
“Edith.”

The pegasus was stone-faced.
“Edith Šarić?” he asked, far too swiftly, too fluently to have come up with the proper pronunciation of her name on the spot.

“You know her?!” Pierre spluttered, to hard that he coughed. “You… too?”

The officer’s features softened and he took a step back.

Pierre shrunk back in realisation.
“You’re… you’re not that son of a bitch who took her into the Everfree Forest the other week, are you?”

Another awkward moment of silence passed.
“It’s Captain to you.”

Pierre chuckled and coughed.
“Jesus Christ… Have you any idea what you set off with your little adventure?”

“Says the guy who burned down one of the Princesses’ castles.”

Pierre quieted down again.

“We’ve got solid evidence of a break-in, of arson, and we’ve got you.”
He smirked bitterly. “Riddle me that, Hum Drum.”

It was all Greek to Pierre. There was something, though. Wasn’t there?
“I… don’t..:”

“The Castle of the Two Sisters. Former capital of Equestria. Ring a bell?!”

It all only started coming back to him with crippling unwillingness.
“That’s where… we were going...”

“...And? Come on.”

Pierre tried to comb through his memory. But before, there loomed blank white canvas.
Nothing. There was nothing.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” the Captain spat again. “Sudden memory loss. How bucking convenient is that?”

With his free hand, Pierre instinctively began to clasp the bridge of his nose, but the sheer pain made him stop.

“You wanted something there. What were you looking for?”

With little better to do, Pierre shook his head.

“What the hay was down there?!”

Pierre squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.
It didn’t make sense. In his mind, he was still on his way there, in the car with his team, and Edith, and that traitorous changeling….
And now he was being told that he already was there. And all that place had left him with was the barren, featureless plain in his mind.

Trembling, Pierre tried to sit up in his bed as much as his restraint allowed him to.
“You… you need to phone the UNEVEG headquarters. They need to know how things stand.”

The Captain dove closer again, menacingly.
“Nopony’s ‘phoning’ anypony until you and I have cleared this mess up.”

“You... can’t fucking do that.”

“Watch me.” The pegasus scowled challengingly.

“You think this won’t have consequences, you asshole?”

The Pegasus shrugged.
“What consequences? Nopony knows you’re here. It’s up to you whether they ever find out or not.”
He sat back down on the chair. “As you can see, we have all the time in the world to discuss this thing. I want to know why this place had to go up in smoke. I want to know who laid the fire. And I want to know what became of Edith Šarić!”

Pierre frowned. But deep inside him, he was already prepared to concede.
After all, didn’t he want to hear the answers too?

“My jacket...” he asked the pony. “Where is it?”

“I said you’re not leaving.”

“Go search my right chest pocket.”

The captain looked over to the guardspony in the corner. The officer neighed something at him, and the guard pointed him to one of the cupboards. Trotting over, the captain opened a cabinet door and a charred, dirty white winter coat dropped out.

The sight of the big black and burned-brown marks that the fire had left on the nylon fabric made Pierre’s blood curdle.
“Go… go see if there’s a camera inside.”

The captain promptly carved around on the piece of gear until he found a buttoned, rather hidden pocket. A small, metallic-green plastic camera slipped out.

Pierre’s eyes widened with excitement.
“I must have taken photos. Something.”

“Not only do you set fire to a castle, but you took pictures of it?” the captain guessed and picked it up, carefully balancing the delicate machine on a hoof. “Show me everything. And don’t you try anything.”

Pierre eagerly, almost hungrily, clutched the device with his free hand and began to press all the buttons to get it to start up as quickly as possible.

It wouldn’t.

Huffing nervously, he twisted it around in his hands and gave the screen a slap.
Nothing.
He forced open the USB lid to try and pry out the card. But what he found in there made his stomach turn. The memory card had quite literally melted apart, and fused with its casing on every side like a smudged slice of purple raclette.

“So?” the pegasus captain asked.

Ostie d’crisse de tabarnak…” he winced as he sulked before his dead, useless machine.
He was practically fighting back tears of frustration.

Bleakly, the Captain looked on.
“Can… can you at least tell me what was down there?”

Putting on a brave face, Pierre shut his eye.
You don’t know? Why the hell do you not know?” he inquired in frustration.

At just that moment, several sharp raps echoed through the room.

Both the Captain and the guard by the door shot up, startled.

Pierre, following their confused stares, ended up peering out one of the windows behind him. There stood a man, clad in a dark-brown coat, a grey tie and a perfectly innocuous smile tapping the glass with a gloved hand.

The Captain looked absolutely dumbfounded. He nodded to his subordinate and asked him something in their strange Equine tongue.

The man outside meanwhile waved and them and - apologetically - motioned them to open the door for him.

For lack of a better plan, the Captain nodded, and the guard trotted over to loosen the handle.

“Hello.” the man greeted them, poking his head into the hospital room and scanning it through thick Coke-glass lenses.
Pierre immediately noticed that he was Chinese, with tellingly pale skin and a balding head of expertly combed hair.
“Am I right here? Room Eight?”

“...Who the hay are you?” the Captain inquired and looked over to Pierre, as though he would know.
Naturally, Pierre was as stumped by the man’s appearance as him. He just felt relief of seeing another human face again.

The man held up a pausing finger and pulled out a small tin box out of his pocket. Out of that box, he pulled a business card.
“Tian’s my name. Tian Shouxin, People’s Republic of China. Can I ask for yours?”

The pegasus gawked at him, incredulous. “No, you can’t. Get out of here! This a Royal Guard investigation.”

The man pulled a pained face.
“Ooh, I wish I could leave you to it in peace, but I’m afraid I must insist. I am with the United Nations Equestrian Verification Group.”

Pierre was surprised that he had been found already, but glad nevertheless. It seemed like the pegasus’ threats were all just hot air.

“Oh yeah? What position?”

“I am the Programme Officer for Southern Equestria.”

The pegasus, on the other hand, seemed even more confused, and pointed a hoof at the bedridden Pierre.
“I… I thought he was the Programme Officer for Southern Equestria.”

“The man in that bed is the Deputy Programme Officer. He is my direct subordinate.” Tian explained with a smile. “I have been instructed to pick him up.”

Angered, the pegasus eyed both Pierre and the man by the window.
“He is not free to leave.”

“Yes, he is.” Tian countered, still cheerful, and passed a piece of paper into the room.

Hesitantly, the pegasus officer accepted it and and clumsily folded it open with his hooves.
As he skimmed over the first couple of lines, he broke into a nervous sneer.
“That… that’s not possible. I only sent word of this fire out a half hour ago! How can she have already known about this?”

“It seems word spreads faster in Equestria than you give it credit.” Tian shrugged.
Before the Pegasus could say another thing, the official lifted a filled garment bag into the room. “Please give this to my colleague. It’s something for him to wear.”

He casually tossed it onto Pierre’s blanketed feet with a dull thud. It hurt badly, but Pierre was too perturbed to react. He couldn’t quite follow. He was lying in a hospital bed with his skin the consistency of a pizza. Where was he going?
“...You mean now?” he breathed weakly at his superior.

Even the pegasus captain seemed suspended in utter disbelief.
“Hold up! You do know your colleague’s been hospitalised for less than a day, right?” he asked, with a flight of worry for his de-facto prisoner.

“Tell my colleague that I am waiting outside.” Tian said, both cheerful and ice-cold at the same time. “He has fifteen minutes.”

Pierre tried to move them from under the garment bag. He could control them effortlessly, but his skin and bones still were beyond sore.
“Is there a problem?” he carefully asked, though he knew that the question was superfluous.


Pierre’s whole body burned. The collar around his throat was tight and slightly drainage-soaked from his wounds. The tie strapped around his shirt was far too long for him, and reached down to the crotch of his pants.The trouser legs, while thankfully a few sizes too big for him, mercilessly rubbed a little more against his naked skin with every passing metre. The blazer was a different affair altogether, with sleeves that barely seemed to extend beyond his elbows, while the rest of the suit drooped down around him and blew up in the freezing November gust like a windsock.

“Come, come.” Tian prodded him on with cruel apathy.

Wherever he had gotten that beige two-piece suit, white shirt and tackily-striped tie from for Pierre, it was was clearly meant for a much shorter, fatter and older man.
It made Pierre look like an anorexic who had his four limbs pulled out on a rack.
But those were the least of Pierre’s problems. His heart hammered more and more violently, like he was treading closer and closer to the brink of a heart attack. His ribcage twisted and turned painfully in sheer protest against him being back on his feet. But the sheer dread of his situation kept him pressing on.

Hurrying down the steps of the hospital and out into the snow-strewn alleys, Tian goaded him toward the centre of the deserted hamlet of Ponyville.

Before long, they heard the echoing of a solitary pony’s frantic gallop behind them.
Turning around, they spotted the pegasus officer catching up to them with a distraught face.
“Hold your horses!” he yelled. “I don’t like it. I don’t like any of this! Both of you stay in my presence until I get a response.”

“Do whatever you want. It’s your country.” Tian huffed. “Be it as it may, we are heading towards your response at this very moment. Now, if you don’t mind, I demand some privacy for my colleague and me...”

“Where are we going?” Pierre panted powerlessly.

“The townhall of this…. charming rustic little hamlet.” Tian slurred, flipping his coat’s collar up.

“Not the car?”
Pierre had so many questions, he didn’t know how to continue. “I... thought we were leaving.”

“Leaving? First of all, you and I have to clear something up.”

Was there an echo in this village?

“Listen, Mister Tian, you can have my full testimony of what happened. There may have been evidence for crimes against humanity and war crimes in the cellars that burned down. Evidence that was hoarded and kept out of the investigation’s grasp! I have testimonies to support it. But for those, I first need to get my colleagues out of here, before… anything happens to them.”

“That should prove difficult. Half of your colleagues are blind and lame.” Tian sniffed, disgusted. “They can consider themselves lucky if they can even get out of bed.”
He shot a bony finger at Pierre. “Well, with the sole exception of that Yugoslav - what’s her name...”

Pierre gulped. “Edith Šarić...”

“Yes. This… individual is another story altogether. She runs off from her assigned sector and gets implicated in a physical fight alongside Equestrian soldiers? And now she has implicated herself in… this?” He turned around and gazed as Pierre through his laughably thick lenses. “Why on earth was I never told of her activities?”

This question irked Pierre. It irked quite a lot.
“...I don’t know. Where were you?”

Tian stiffly wheeled around. An artificial smile covered his face, masking a rather secretive scowl. “In earshot, surely.”

Pierre breathed heavily at his superior’s nonchalance.
“I find that hard to believe. If you had been at our posting, at the Embassy, I could have informed you about the goings-on directly.”

“Mister Abel. I carry a mobile telephone with me at all times. Perhaps you have heard of this ingenious contraption.”
He sighed and shrugged. “Oh well. As as far as the High Representative is concerned, your silence was the attempt to hide this affair from your superiors. An effort to try and conceal her culpability as well as your own.” He pouted. “Not that I could argue for or against this impression, naturally.”

“I was trying to handle this incident before it could spin out of control.” Pierre explained with an enraged twang, “I was protecting the integrity of this mission, so we could continue the investigation without being second-guessed by people like you.”

“It is funny that you would think that you had any authority to run the Southern Equestrian sector like it was yours, with your humble position.”
He stroked his own balding head, trying to beat back the freezing cold.
“Thank the Gods the Equestrian crown was so kind as to notify me of this incident right away. The High Representative is convinced that you have been withholding your activities. Misappropriating United Nations resources for unsanctioned, illegal measures. That would be misconduct of the highest order.”

“The Crown told you? Well… where have you been?” he hissed back, “When you knocked on the window half an hour ago, I hadn’t even the faintest clue who you even were! You say that you’re my direct superior, but as far as I’m concerned, I have never seen you before in my life! Isn’t the Programme Officer of Southern Equestria meant to be in Southern Equestria?! I haven’t seen or heard from you since Orientation Day! For all I know, you were cruising around half the world on expense of the UN when you should have been doing the job I did for you!”

What followed was a perturbed silence.
“You’re shouting. And rather on edge.” Tian determined. “Of course, who am I to hold it against you? I’m not the one who will be receiving a visit by the OIOS soon.”

Pierre could not believe what he heard.

“Your actions resulted in a former royal residence burning to the ground.” He spoke to him like to a toddler. “Wars have been started over less. This warrants an investigation.”

“I get that. Yes. But whatever happened back in that castle, I had no role in that. None! Unlike you, I was representing the UN in Equestria to the best of my efforts here!” Pierre hoarsely yelled.

Tian let out a caustic laugh and slipped off his glasses to clean them of the fog. “Say, Abel… Do you know what ‘diplomacy’ is?”

Predictably, Pierre held his piece.

“I think it’s a fair thing to ask you, since you’re not a diplomat. Where did you start again with the UN?”

The question seemed cruelly rhetorical.
“Canadian Forces Medical Service...”

“Ah yes, for UNAMIR, right? Rwanda?” Tian slurred. “That was some very tragic business, alright. And you were a foot soldier right in the thick of it.”

“I was a Major.”

“But in the thick of it, nevertheless. Even after you were discharged, you didn’t even have the decency to graze your nation’s diplomatic corps before diving right back into the UN. They could have taught you a useful thing or two about intergovernmental collaboration.”
A snowflake tickled his nose and he waved it away with a gloved hand.
“You see, diplomacy is what the United Nations does. This is what its goal is. And diplomats don’t... kick doors down. They knock on them. It’s not something you seem to have learned in your ten years with us.”

Pierre crumpled his hands.
“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Well… as obvious as it may sound, you’re not in the Canadian Army anymore, Major. Do you know what this organisation was destined to do? Stave off World War Three. Not… set it off on slightly more ethical grounds.”

Pierre’s mouth would have loved to spit his ire back at him.
“Well, the League of Nations was supposed to stave off World War Two. They were diplomats.”

“They failed because they chose to antagonise their member states instead of cooperating with them. They became detached, high-handed and commandeering. This is why everyone stopped listening to that… pathetic old men’s club.”

Pierre was absolutely aghast to hear such words out of a high-ranking official’s mouth. But that was not all.
“That a Chinese of all people would say that sort of thing!” he scoffed. “You don’t know your own history, do you?!”

Tian looked positively insulted.
“Oh, I am a patriot. A servant to my country, in office and in soul. And I pose you the question that any Equestrian may ask: Why would I work in the United Nations’ favour if it wouldn’t work in mine?”

He shook his head.
“We’re not here to... cater to any nation’s interests. We’re not an escort service.”

“That is all we are, Abel. We are a union of nations, and we represent - to each other - our interests. No more and no less. Just the way it should be.”

“I was ordered to investigate into crimes against humanity!”

“Sapiency.”

“That obviously won’t play to everyone’s interests!”

Tian grinned and held up a gloved index finger.
“You were instructed to investigate into Changeling crimes. For which the Equestrian state has readily supplied you with ample resources back in Canterlot.”

“What if there was more? More in that damn cellar before it went up in flames?”

“If they say there wasn’t any more, then there wasn’t.”

What a moronic thing to say, Pierre raged.
“And what if they’re withholding something?”

Tian pouted.
“Say, Abel, have you ever wondered why you have run into so many roadblocks in the past few weeks? Do you think it was just coincidence?”

“No. Of course not. The Equestrian state has been actively trying to the subvert my investigation at every turn!”

“No, Abel.” Tian slowly answered, calm and collected, “It’s because the entire Equestrian state hates your guts. They cannot stand the sight of you. They think you are a foul-mouthed, disrespectful, spiteful little tyrant who hates ponykind with a passion reserved for some kind of... racial supremacist. They think that you only came to this country to give your ego a good polish at the ponies’ expense. And that you intend to hurt them by abusing your office-given power.”

“What a crock of shit.”

Tian sniffed in mock horror, “As a matter of fact, Raven, the royal secretary, had already launched a formal complaint against you an entire month ago. And can I blame her? I don’t know. What I do know is that my country would have had you deported back home a long time ago.”

Pierre almost shivered in anger.
“Fair enough... that something like that comes from someone like you.”

He glared through his two thick lenses.
“Oh, even your own colleagues have no two nice things to rub together about you. They think you’re impatient and impulsive and manically bullheaded. This Šarić deal appears to be just the tip of the iceberg.”

Pierre grit his teeth as much in pain as in rage.
“I don’t think I have to listen to this, Mister Tian.” Pierre uttered, trying to subdue himself a little more, albeit unsuccessfully. “Your defamation efforts might be very effective at your country’s next Party congress, but I’m not one of your fucking apparatchiks.”
He straightened out his chest, trying hard to ignore the pain. “I think that it would interest the nations of our Security Council very much that the Equestrian crown has been trying to suppress information on what has been happening to the peoples of this continent before we arrived here.”

Tian only sniggered some more.
“The nations of the Security Council? Let me tell you about the nations of the Security Council: The United States is busy equipping the Equestrian army with cutting-edge electronics and inviting officers to train at West Point. Did you know that?”

“What the hell does that-”

“The Russian Federation has been busy buying up land to probe the territory for natural resource deposits and opening up the Equestrian mineral market. Did you know that?”

“What is your point?”

“The point is that they couldn’t care less about who did what to whom in which way whenever. They have nothing to gain from that and nothing to lose. In fact, the only country that has been pushing this entire extravagant courtroom carousel on us to begin with, is the Principality of Equestria; the very people you’ve decided to get on the wrong side of over it.”

Pierre gazed defiantly. But that defiance hollowed out a little.

Annoyed, Tian lifted his glasses and rubbed his blueish nose bridge. “The only thing that the international community would be interested in is a careless, renegade United Nations official from the Canadian hinterland triggering a major international incident that would chisel into this carefully parlayed era of international understanding.”

Pierre decided to follow that train of thought for a couple more stations.
“...And what is China doing in Equestria, by the way?”

He chuckled.
“You’re not listening, are you?”

Instead of answering, Tian pointed down the street, at the end of which sat the town hall. The entrance had been virtually barricaded by several more humans in formal wear, armed with phones and and thick folders, many of whom Pierre could recognise belong to the staff of the Secretary General’s High Representative. It reeked of a far-reaching, high-profile crisis brewing in front of his very eyes.

After having kept distance for several minutes, the pegasus officer decided to catch up to the two humans with a wheeze.
“What’s happening over there? Who are they?”

“Do you know who is waiting inside that building?” Tian asked rhetorically. “The Princess. And she is... miffed by the recent events.”

Pierre’s heart skipped a beat.
Princess Celestia? The Princess Celestia was here already?
He already had the displeasure of running into her little sister once, and even she had managed to reduce him to a stuttering little boy with her mere presence..
How could he handle the bigger half of the royal Equestrian duumvirate?

“I brought eight people of the UNEVEG staff with me to try and abate her. Six legal advisers, two attorneys.” Tian continued, “But she wouldn’t even see them! I offered to give her a direct line to the Secretary General in New York, but she refused that as well. In her… furore, she told me that she’d rather see the entire United Nations 'swept out of the countryside' and back to Canterlot altogether.”
His face turned into even more of a sneer. “Well, Mister Abel. You’re convinced you’re the 'shot-caller' around here. Tell me what to do about it.”

Harrowed, Pierre directed his eyes down toward the ground.
“I have no idea.”

“Well, then you better think of something in the next five minutes. Your and your colleagues’ freedom may depend on it.”

He looked back up.
“Excuse me?”

“Yes, yes.” Tian confirmed, in his typical blasé tone of voice. “Since your little misadventure did not find itself on my desk for authorisation, it technically couldn’t have been an official act. I mean, surely, we might have an attorney out there who could successfully argue that it was, but...”
He shrugged. “Let me just say that the High Commissioner is a little hesitant about letting this matter go to court in the first place. In light of that, I dare say that Her Majesty’s response to you will entirely govern how the United Nations is going to deal with this matter from now on.”
He held up his left hand in a weighing pose, “If she decides to forgive you all your sins and not press charges any further... then you will be let go, silently and discreetly, and we will only conduct a minor investigation into your actions...”
Then he raised his right hand, to mirror his other, “But… if she decides that she simply wants you that badly… well… at that point, we will be left with no choice than to surrender you to the proper Equestrian authorities.”

He was joking. He had to be!

“Tell me,” Tian inquired, “why would the United Nations decide to stick its neck out for a group of individuals who might have single-handedly endangered the entire rapprochement effort? Functional immunity can be fun... but not if it critically endangers world peace, no?”

Vehemently and forlornly, Pierre shook his head.

“Look, Mister Abel, unless you want to want this incident to end up in the history books as the ‘Abel Affair’, I suggest that the two of us walk in there right now and get the Princess on her good side! Convince her that it would be in everyone’s best interests to forget that this whole thing ever happened. Make her... overlook the fact that you put her former home to the torch. Explain to her that it’s something a... blunt nail like yourself would never be capable of doing anyway.
“Not on your own, at least. Not voluntarily.”

Even the pegasus soldier looked deeply uncomfortable about it all.

“Take your time.” Tian sighed. “Life choices and everything.”
Then he began slowly approaching the suits by the entrance, who all greeted him with respectful nods.

Pierre was left behind, standing next to his impromptu pegasus overseer and bleakly eyeing the events as they slowly spiralled around him.

“So...” the Pegasus mumbled, uncomfortably trying to break the silence, “I’m not about to give you any life advice here, but… well...”

Pierre froze.
There were a lot of things he wanted to do, right there, at this very moment.
Ending up dying in an Equestrian dungeon wasn’t really among them.

Author's Note:

Hello there, ladies and gentlemen!

So... yeah.
The bad news: My tablet is now officially beyond repair.
I will see to following up with the regular header images, but unfortnately, it won't be now.

Good news: As luck would have it, I have recently come into contact with a certain talented artist called N4 (Deviantart) who has not only offered to take over this chapter's header image, but actually proposed to adapt Chrysalis Visits The Hague into a full-blown graphic novel.

Oh yeah.
I hope you're as excited (and mildly terrified) by this as I am.
There's no doubt that this is going to be a gargantuan task, so... Let's just say I won't be envying N4 anytime soon.
Even so, I'm hopelessly in awe of the ambition and I genuinely look forward to seeing this story turned into proper art.

Anyway, as always:
Read, enjoy, and stay tuned for more updates!