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Prologue: Embark, Trixie1,324 words
Prologue: Naked as a Jailbird2,806 words
A Nice Way to Start Things Off...2,735 words
Sanitize and Disinfect 2,988 words
Affirmative Hire3,257 words
Just to Lay Some Ground Rules...2,756 words
Fire burns the body, cleanses the soul1,836 words
"It's Over!"- My Apologies for this Cancellation, and the rest of the storyline2,450 words
Epilogue1,503 words

Just to Lay Some Ground Rules...

For the first time in his life, Leif felt uneasy, which said much considering his recent stay in prison, a place which could make problems of the mundane seem like foal's play. No, it wasn't a normal feeling of fickle nervousness, but exacerbated to be much, much more in Leif's mind. It was a type of "uneasy" that can't be shaken off, much like the pressure of failing everypony important to you, which incidentally is the origin of Leif's mental discomfort, cannot be shaken from one's thoughts either.

It was when the pair was nearing the familiar alleyways near Laxmisagar Square did Leif contemplate of what he was going to do, and breathe slowly and apprehensively in fear of Grid's reaction.

At their stop, Leif carefully navigated down from the bus's wet dirt-matted steps, and waited for Grid to follow behind him.

For a few minutes, an awkward silence built between the two Gryphons as their talons pounded the rain-streaked sidewalks. Leif was careful to not directly lead Grid to the apartment complex. Paranoia was a strange, unneeded habit of his, but he could feel something change in the air he was breathing.

It wasn't the everyday air-pollution from the factories that everypony and their grandmothers had grown to the sight and scent of, no, but Leif could feel his windpipe slowly constrict more and more in anxiety ever since he heard Grid's news.

Trottingham wasn't safe anymore. Leif had dearly tried to save the city a year ago. His city, and everypony inhabiting it. But he had severely underestimated the luring exhilaration of crime; the city's rotting, corrupting essence of its past has spread into its own future.

Leif no longer had the same optimism for Trottingham's survival as he did a year's time before. Betrayal, the bitterness of reality, and the isolation of his sentence grated his nerves, his patience, his outlook and compassion.

He didn't care for Trottingham much now. Its cold streets and blades laid inroads into his heart, chilling all passionate efforts and thoughts with an imperative, hard-earned yet hard-learned moral: Some objects in life, like peace and love, are just a foal's dream.

Leif decided to break the silence, shattering the near-unapproachable wall that encumbered his present goal of self-survival, and a better life for him and his friends, with or without Trottingham. He stopped silently, and as Grid noticed with surprise, she turned after having taken a few unaware steps ahead of Leif.

Leif hoarsely said, "Grid, do you ever think you're making a difference here?"

Grid's face twisted in incomprehension, "Leif, you decide to turn melodramatically philosophical now?"

A sigh. Another puff in the humid smog. Wait, did she just say I was being melodramatic?

"Just... bear with me here. Prison gives you time to think the same things over and over again."

Grid decided to amuse Leif, and said, "Well, we've gone this far, and no matter how much you would want to end everything with 'honorable retreats' or 'unconditional victories', we're in this deep. And there's no stopping with what's to come. You feel me?"

Leif softly breathed out his nostrils. "So I'm guessing you're all for staying?"

Grid answered, "Of course! My friends are here, my fam—"

She stopped and looked to the ground. "Well... never mind that. All I'm saying is that we have an obligation to stop every bloody thing that's happened in Trottingham. We've partaken in it during our disillusionment. "

"The royalty of the ponies can control all this. They took this place from the Gryphons and Dragons that once existed here. It's not our responsibility anymore."

Grid hissed, "We are responsible, and we have the so-called 'scars' to remind us of it everyday!" She motioned to her right forearm, though her feathers were wet and stuck to eachother, the ink underneath her skin stained the feathers that would forever link her to every tragedy that Trottingham had endured.

Her tattoo. Same as Leif's. The same as every Gryphon that felt distant of another species ruling their land. And the same as every brainwashed Gryphon that wished for the delicious lust of power.

Power doesn't corrupt, but the required greed and journey to reach for it absolutely does...

The moon was high in the air, shining its white gloom against both of the Gryphons' coats. The water was going to be a complete bitch to dry off, especially before attempting flight. But that was in the past, when Gryphons were free to fly towards the heavens and whose wings were unrestricted by law and taboo alike. Back when a fellow Gryphon could stretch one's wings without seeming like a violent pariah, attempting to signal an imminent slaughter or sudden suicidal explosion.

Back when freedom, before the now-edifice towering skies and strict regulations of Ponies had come to exist, was as flighty of a mistress as the Holy Wind.

Leif decried, "We're young. We have life and spirit in us still. Let those who have sinned, the patriarchs and matriarchs before us, take over and solve their own problems. They don't concern us anymore."

"You can't run from your problems, Leif."

"I can if they can't chase us. Trottingham is secluded by an entire ocean; The rot won't spread easily, but once something has been soiled, you can't help it. Not when a once beautiful, shining apple has already rotted. Once corruption begins, you can't root it out. The nature of a tree is to produce many fruits, so it can bring prosperity even in the face of destruction. We won't have to worry about it. We can, and have to, leave this place."

It appeared that Leif's sudden, and ill-placed metaphor was completely lost on Grid. This conversation was getting awfully abstract.

Grid coughed, "Wait... what did the tree represent, again?"

Leif pinched the bridge of his beak. He had to try a different approach to this.

"Look, when I first got out, I thought I could start over. Turn over a new leaf, so to say. Why? Because I thought everything that Koi, his regime of the Schism, and everything he stood for, was dead. As dead as everything below this Square. Laxmisagar Square."

The thought of maggots inching through decay and bone floated through his mind. What was imagined to be in of whose body they were in disappeared.

"And then I got home, my actual home, with a family that cared about me. There I found... I don't know... hope? Actual hope that some of the damage done here in Trottingham could actually, you know, be repaired."

Leif snorted, "But then again, optimism's very fickle. You turned up and... news of Koi did, too..."

Grid growled, "So you blame me? For everything that happened while you were gone? You basta—"

Leif shook his head, "—No. It couldn't be helped. You did the best that you could, it's what any of us could ever hope for."

"So that's why," Leif said, placing a talon lightly on Grid's shoulder, "I'm relieving you of command. I've left you with too many responsibilities, too little time, and no foundation to base anything on a year ago. Every loose end was tied rapidly and without care. And before I knew it, the cooperation of our defiant splinter group with the Royal Guard quickly ended, leading to my arrest."

Leif's talons grew firmer. Not too much force, but enough to exert some sort of meaning in the physical pressure. Something akin to camaraderie, he supposed, but he hoped that the message got through.

Leif contemplated that word. Hope. I'm too hard-pressed to make actual results for pessimism to ever cross my mind. Maybe that's what I need right now: A reality check. Because whatever I'm gonna do after gonna be completely balls out, off the top of my head, yet intentional. Very intentional.

"So that's why I'm asking you all this. That's why I asked if saving Trottingham was all worth the trouble. I have no faith in this city", Leif prodded, loftily directing a talon to buildings of Trottingham's captains of industry, the heart of the city. "And neither should you. And that is entirely why I'm going to ask you right now..."

Leif wanted to make it clear. He knew Grid, therefore he knew she was about to barrage his ears with furious, actually logical arguments once he said what he had to say.

But he was prepared for it. He had a plan... sort of.

Because plans a few minutes in the making, thought up of while in a bus ride secluded from any recent and reliable sources of information, turn out to work really well.

Right.

Leif continued, "... to leave."

As if a shockwave was sent through Leif's last word, Grid's stony facial expression shattered as her face became downcast and her brows lowered. Her beak opened slightly, as if she was to utter something, but closed immediately, almost as if Grid was ashamed of her potential response.

"Don't you think it's time we stopped operations here?"

Grid whispered fiercely, "I'm never leaving!"

"I'm dead serious about this," Leif glared. "Memory isn't as good as it used to be, but—"

"No one who went through initiation in Fenris ever had anything less of a brain, less of a single doubt, after we joined. So, go ahead. Test it out. 'Wade in dangerous waters and see what you find next'," Grid quoted from a text that she once religiously worshiped. "Leave this alone, Leif. I've made my mind."

Leif said, "It was your idea in the first place, Grid! A year ago, you wanted to leave this place."

Grid started to walk away and returned to him, "And I recall that you were the one who wanted to stay. That was your main flaw, you always were too stubborn to believe that any plan of yours could ever go wrong. And if you want to leave, so be it. Go. Leave us behind, and I doubt your sister or Hops will either."

Leif gritted his beak at her nerve. "How long do you think this is gonna take this time? A year? Two? Five?! All of it invested to stop that psychopath?"

"Let me try at least—"

"—I already did, and you already did, too. And what are you playing at, mentioning Glimmer Rain? Do you know how broken you left her when you left to fight your own little war in these streets?"

Silence. Grid hadn't expected that.

She lowly whispered, "Y-you don't know that." Guilt spread across her face, as if it's always been rooted there.

"I still spent enough time with her before my time in a dungeon to see how sad she was."

Leif, getting a glance at her face, quickly added, "Grid, the meaning was there, but sometimes it's better to use words than actions. So that's why I'm asking you to leave. Get as many of our people out as possible. And leave the past behind us."

He thought that he finally ended the argument. They were getting out of Trottingham. Anypony else could go to Tartarus.

He was, of course, wrong. The argument was about to reach the "unreasonable retorts" stage.

Grid said, "No. I'm not."

"Grid, think reasonably," Leif warned.

"I've already thrown away too much of my time on this. A year or two won't make a difference."

Leif wearily groaned, "Grid, you're gonna kill yourself doing this!"

Grid snorted, "Hypocrite. I'm trying to finish what you started. I know a lost cause when I see one, and this one isn't it... as much as I first doubted it."

"And now, if you excuse me," Grid harrumphed, "I have a couple of arseholes to find... with or without your help."

Her talons plodded through the shallow puddles along the sidewalk, rhythmically piercing Leif's ear canals. Panicky adrenaline began to shock the nerves down Leif's spine. His main opportunity to set things right was literally walking away...

"Grid," Leif choked. His arrogance finally found itself to be subjective. "If I get into this game again... make me a promise."

Grid turned, a hidden smile across her beak, and teased, "Why... of course."

"Let me take over again... and if anything happens to me, you're pulling out, whether you want to or not. Along with the rest of us, and Hops and Glimmer."

Grid didn't say anything, but after several seconds of considering the offer, she slowly skipped her way back to Leif and said, "Well, I guess I can't let anything to happen to you."

Leif mentioned quickly, "And you have to meet up with Glimmer Rain."

"That," Grid sluggishly responded with her gaze down and shoulders sagging, "is not a good idea."

Leif chuckled, "I can still read faces pretty well. You're guilty you ended it, because getting too close to somepony usually ends in heartbreak and tragedy around here."

No response. Leif continued, "But, you still like her, and get her drunk enough, she'll begin to like you, too."

Grid lifted her head back up, "You think so? I mean, obviously not the intoxication part, bu—"

"Yes," Leif simply left it. Maybe he was exaggerating a little. Glimmer always did like to hold grudges...

Grid's body language suddenly exploded into excitement, and her smile returning. She began a quick jog towards a street, and Leif automatically followed, leaving the Square and the past behind.

Grid happily said, "Then let's get to it! Got an informant about where Koi's leading his operations. Took about a weeks to get a sighting of even one of the informants themselves..."

Leif lifted an eyebrow, attempting to keep the pace, though with some physical difficulty, "I take it (huff) that these informants (huff) aren't going to consentingly reveal the location?"

"Not when one of them's a lieutenant, Aryet, a bodyguard to Koi himself. He's getting too arrogant, letting his staff loiter around in the districts."

"Wait... one of them? I thought you said informants? You know, in a plural tense?"

Grid had a grim smirk on her beak, "The other two might have ended up somewhere at the bottom of Trottingham Harbor, because they decided to slip that they had participated in the massacre incident I mentioned earlier at the bus stop. But they were clueless, obviously, only hinting that the lieutenant might know. Idiots."

Grid immediately stopped and turned, Leif of course tailing her. After a few more, they headed into the food districts, the aroma and neon lights dazzling their senses, and exited soon into the entertainment district. Artificial black lights blurred Leif's vision as he passed the nearby... establishments. He tried to not look at the dancing mares.

Taking over where she left off, Grid panted slightly, "Aryet's visiting a local exotic-dancing 'exhibit', and if we're lucky, we can sneak him out into an empty room, bathroom, or alley."

Leif asked, "Then?" His lungs couldn't manage to exert enough air to carry out more than one word.

Grid hastily yanked a garrote and taser out from under her wings, the universal "saddle" of Gryphons.

She gave a blood thirsty smile, "Then we make him talk... and make him atone for every soul in Trottingham he tainted."

Author's Note:

Oh, and this isn't cancelled anymore xD

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That One Guy

That One Guy #1 · Jul 5th, 2013 · · ·

Oh, and this isn't cancelled anymore xD

You horrible, lying, evil person. My tears of sorrow had almost stopped, too...
Granted, they are now those of joy, but I'm running out of hankies O_o

armoredbrony