Episode 2-1 :: Poached
"O- oh dear," she clamoured, turning her hat into a wrung-out towel. She clutched things a bit hard. Sometimes too hard. But that came naturally when one was a gryphon. You tended to squeeze things a bit more than the regular pony might, and poke holes in things with your claws. This was especially so of things made out of the famously soft and gentle cloud. It wasn't any surprise that most everything found in the gryphon-lands were made out of either metal or rock. Even so, they never lasted very long.
She'd been very careful with her one prized possession up until now, but it seemed that in the face of what was occurring, squeezing a silly little hat wasn't really a priority in the 'things I should be concerned about' category.
Her bakery was on fire.
The possibility of a burning building was something that most gryphons and pegasi weren't concerned with. It just never happened. Rocks don't burn. Metal doesn't burn. And clouds were pretty much the antithesis of burning.
But yet, as the timber cracked and splintered, and the walls and pillars ran into a thick, marshmallow-style goop, what was happening to her home and workplace could only be described as being slightly alight.
Perhaps melting would have been a better word.
The blazing heat glowed sickly on the walls, which bubbled and boiled like a viscous, creamy chowder, sending pieces sloughing off onto the ground. All the expensive, hard-to-manufacture building-grade cloud, all the imported earth-borne materials, all the hand-crafted decorations she had comissioned to reflect the shop as something 'elegant but playful', all of it was turning into something black, sticky, runny and altogether un-shop-like.
The gryphon sat there, unsure of what to do next, unsure of how to even go about handling such a situation. Any concept of a fire brigade was lost to the pegasi, and in the absolute fear that gripped the lady, the idea of getting a cloud herself to put the fire out never even passed her mind.
But not that it would have mattered – from start to end, it took less than three minutes for the entire building to turn into a pearly white slag. It was just plain luck that she was out of the shop at that very time.
Everyone else too, all the other ponies who were in the area, had bolted at the sight. They were just minding their own business. They didn't need their world views challenged! It was Saturday! That was no way to spend the weekend.
There was a large fracturing sound, like an anvil colliding into another anvil, as a large mass of metallic items suddenly broke through the weakened ground and fell, plummeting to earth like a rather sorry meteor.
The gryphon seriously hoped nopony was underneath.
A moment later, she paid respects to her equipment, which by now was nothing more than broken pieces of scrap on the earth below.
Small sparks of red-hot shrapnel were sent flying in her way as another wooden beam exploded from the heat, a small, smouldering splinter landing on her hat, which promptly decided to catch fire as well.
It burned in her clutch.
She looked at her home, watching as her entire life and livelihood faded away in the reds and whites, a stark impossibility.
She looked at her hat in her claws, a small ring of fire spreading out over its papery surface.
Between the two, there was only one thing she could accomplish that would make any sense whatsoever.
She put out the hat.
She dropped the bag – the one with the sandwich and the small bottled drink in it. The sandwich was cactus on rye, a challenging but tasty flavour. The drink was orange juice; she bought it because it was the first thing she came across in the mart.
She swore, she swore she left it right there.
She locked it up and everything.
The bottle cracked as it hit the hard Fillydelphia pavement, juice spilling out into the streets and draining into the cracks between the cobblestones.
She scratched her head.
No, this was certainly the right place. She had only left the shop for fifteen minutes to pop 'round to the deli to get some lunch. She hadn't been working there for long, but…
The pony with the azure coat and jade mane nodded to herself. No, there was no reason to panic. She'd worked in plenty of jewellery stores before. Theft was rather common, really. Happened more often than one might think. This wasn't something she hadn't encountered a number of times already, and all she had to do was follow proper protocol.
The narrow alley which she stood in was out of the way of public traffic for good reason. Gems and jewels were a specialist item to the ponies of Fillydelphia; it didn't help business significantly to advertise oneself in a main thoroughfare. Everyone who needed such items already knew where to get them, and you'd save a bit not having to buy prime location.
Of course, that also meant that this sort of thing was more likely to happen.
Oh, but why did it have to happen on her shift?
The earth pony rolled her amethyst eyes like gems in a polisher. She huffed, scratching the moist, orangey ground, and tried to recall what her boss had told her.
In the event of a burglary…
She knew something like this was going to happen. Something like this. They'd just brought back a huge rock slab the day before. It was a chunk of bedrock the size of a small wall, a huge vein of pure iridescent rainbow bismuth running through. It was her job to work on getting the stuff out so that they could sell it and make a bit of money.
Inform the local authorities…
Yeah, she wasn't seeing it, really. Not really appropriate. How could you just go up to the Filly Rangers and tell them, oh yes, something like that got stolen? They'd just look at you and think you're barmy. Absolutely mad. They wouldn't even come down to take a report. They'd just laugh, and say, certainly not. Something of that size couldn't possibly have been taken. Someone'd stop them. It'd be too obvious.
And stay put in the shop until I return…
Stay put in the shop? No. No. That was impossible. That was just silly advice, Mister boss. In cases like this, you had to sort of think a bit more parallel. Besides, when she said 'impossible', she meant 'impossible'. She didn't use words lightly.
She wished it was just the large rock that they'd nipped off with, but as she stood over the edge of the cracked concrete that opened up onto a huge gaping mess of soil and stone, she sort of had the feeling that maybe a more active approach would be frugal.
She swept a hoof through the empty space where the shop had once been.
The walls of the houses beside it were beyond scratched and scuffed, and the footprint of the building left a large, dirty hole.
It really appeared to her that someone had plucked it right out of the ground and taken it to…
The sky.
There it was. Floating away. There was a white fluffy base underneath it, but it was clearly her shop. It was a mere spot in the sky, having travelled quite some distance already, but that was certainly no bird nor pegasus nor hot-air balloon. That was a little square-shaped brick, making its merry way across the heavens and toward another far-off blur.
She could barely take her eyes off it as she galloped into the main streets, pushing past a bunch of other native Fillydelphians and sticking out her leg.
Instantly, a taxi-cart skidded to a halt, the pegasus driver nodding at her.
"Where to?" he asked, gruffly.
"Follow that store," she said, pointing upward.
Emberkite scratched his forehead. Bandages weren't the most comfortable of things, and since neither of them was qualified in the dressing of injuries, it had been sloppily applied and was giving Ember the most annoying itch.
Both Egg and Emberkite reckoned that perhaps a bandage wasn't the best thing for a bruise, but it made Ember look so absolutely rugged, and the looks and whispers given by the passersby made it absolutely worth it.
He danced around Egg like a puppy around the legs of his master, brimming with energy and full of excitement. It was just after second sunrise, and the huge bright ball of fire was peeling its way up over the horizon and blinding those casting their eyes eastward.
"Calm down," Egg told Ember, as he crossed his path for the eighth time. "We're just going for a bagel."
"I know, I know, old stallion, but…" He pulled in close, slinging an arm around Egg's neck, much to his discomfort. Egg, too, had suffered a number of injuries himself in that tussle they had yesterday, and not to mention the day before, and all through the five days since he had met Emberkite for the first time.
"… what d'ya think we're going to end up doing today? Huh? More chases? More fighting? Colt, that's fun."
"I worry, sometimes," Egg muttered, dragging Ember down the streets of midtown, Coliseum Cluster. Contrary to popular belief, pegasi didn't necessarily fly everywhere. They could, but over the recent years they found that there was quite a lot more to see at cloud level, especially with new advancements in decoration and architecture.
Nowadays, flying was used as a tool to help facilitate activities which required elevation, and besides, flying was a lot more strenuous than one might assume. It was always an assumption of the unicorns and earth ponies that it was effortless, since the gifts gone unburdened are the gifts least understood.
This led to Egg and Emberkite taking a jaunt down the streets on this lovely day, joining hundreds of their brethren as they milled around and took in the grand city.
"Naw, old stallion. It's all good. We got out of everything alright, didn't we?"
"I worry about you," Egg elaborated.
"C'mon, Egg! Quit playin'!" Ember laughed. Rushing ahead and back again, restless on his hooves. "So what's the deal? Why're ya so… serious business and all today?"
"I've been thinking," Egg replied, halting his gait for a moment. "I think we have to… adjust."
"Adjust what? Everything's goin' okay, right? We've got like, what, twelve, fourteen perps now? More than the Wonderbolts have ever done in a month!"
"It's not about the numbers," Egg explained, looking off into the distance, as a multitude of other pegasi walked past. They stopped in the shadow of a tall department store, the windows like individual rooms of a larger complex. "What happens with all these ponies once we've… done what we do?"
"After the hospital picks 'em up? I dunno. Let 'em go?"
"Exactly. Back to the streets. Angry, annoyed. And then what? What's keeping them from continuing on with exactly what they've been doing before we knock them around?"
"Well… they get knocked around, right? Isn't that the point?"
"No, Ember." Egg looked at his parner's dulling face. The conversation wasn't going where he wanted, and it showed. "We need to stop using violence against violence. It isn't the right way to do things. It just… makes ponies angrier. And they do more stupid things, and we have to use more violence, and when does it end?"
"Well… what do you want then?" Ember shrugged, impatience falling onto his tone. "What else can you do?"
"I've never asked you before," Egg said, resuming his walk, "but you do have a family, right?"
"Y- yeah. Of course."
"Just like me, I'm sure in your youth you were punished for things you did wrong, correct?"
Ember was slightly relieved that Egg had actually gone on a whole different line of questioning. For some reason, the older stallion had never pried into Ember's past, almost as if he were just waiting for it to come out by itself.
"Well, yeah, old stallion. What's your point?"
"Some ponies think that spanking or physical punishment is a good incentive to not do wrong. But I don't agree with that. And I don't think we can really spank adults. Other times if the kid's doing something wrong with some sort of object or something, we take it away. But we can't just take things away from criminals. They'll just steal it again. That's the point of thievery. But there was always one other punishment that we give to children, because it takes away the most important thing to any pony ever."
"What, like… juice boxes?"
"Time."
"What? It's like ten-thirty or something."
"No, Ember!" Egg breathed in a bit heavier than normal. "Time! You take away time. It's the one thing you can't ever replace, you can't ever get back. Grounding. You know? You put a kid in a room, tell them they can't come out for a couple hours, and they remember it, they feel it."
"What, you wanna put criminals in a room and tell them they can't come out?" Ember fell into step beside Egg, his energy now going towards processing this odd idea.
"Yes. I was just thinking. What if there was a facility where-"
Egg stopped. Once again, in the middle of the busy street. He stopped because Ember had placed a leg rather firmly across his chest, the young pony staring intently into the crowd.
A pony glanced off his flank, but continued on, wordless. It was the way of the city where ponies just walked around the place and didn't care much about others, because it was the only way to get from point A to point B without getting annoyed.
So it was rather noticeable, if only to Ember, when someone was giving you undue attention. When someone in a crowd was looking at you, following you, and trying to blend in, it stands out a lot more than a regular pony. All of the days Ember spent on the streets made him aware of this.
"Wait, old stallion," he said, under hushed tones. "You see that?"
"No," Egg replied, looking left and right out of the corners of his eyes. His face, as usual, never betrayed the heightened anxiety of the situation, and he took to this as calmly as he did everything else.
"I think somepony's following us," Ember said, swivelling around.
"Aren't you going to give yourself away like that?" Egg asked, standing perfectly still.
"Naw, old stallion. See, this is what I mean by action is better than prep. If he don't know we know, we can't control the sitch'. So now it's a show, right? I'm acting this way so he'll know that we know, and all I'm doin' is trying to look for the pony who's actin' suspicious."
"Curious," Egg said.
"Also, he'll be less likely to pull something funny, 'cause he's thinkin' we're on to him, right? So if we do anything weird, like go down a narrow, empty alley, he'll be thinking that we're trying to trick him. So it's all just a game, man. It's all just a game."
"That's certainly a… rather 'street' way to look at things." Egg joined in, actively turning around to stare into the crowd.
It was just a buffet of wings and legs and bodies, running around and ducking in and out of shops that lined the streets. There was no way in Equestria he could have spotted someone attempting to not engage with him, so he just did as suggested an made a show out of it.
"Nevermind," Ember said finally. "Maybe I was wrong. I just had a feelin', y'know?"
"Hm. That's fine," Egg replied, continuing the search regardless. "Maybe you did see somepony."
"Excuse me."
"I mean, he might have just ducked into one of these stores, you know?"
"I say, just a moment, sir, if you would?"
"Yeah, I guess, old stallion, but I can't shake this. You know how like, sometimes, you just feel things, like, you know?"
"Just a moment of your time, if I may…"
"What?" Ember yelled, turning his head toward the voice.
"Yes?" Egg said, at the exact same time, also turning to the pony behind him.
The pegasus in front of them deftly plucked two cards from the band of a thin, black necktie and blew them towards Egg and Ember. They span, tiny little flying saucers, landing exactly in their hooves, which instinctively reached out to grab them.
"Thaaank you," Gale said, in a punctuated drawl. The first thing Ember and Egg noticed, looking up from the cards that identified her as Ms. Aubergine Mezzo, reporter for the Cloudsdale Gazette, was her particular way of stretching out her words in rather strange locations. She also had this odd way of speaking as if every word was its own sentence, something that seemed to be a trait of professional reporters and spokesponies.
"Gale A. Mezzo. And I believe you are Mister Eggbeater, are you… not?"
It was Egg's turn to put a leg across Ember's chest. His gaze tightened, and his mind started rumbling. Suddenly, everything seemed to drop in colour, and the situation become one shade more terse than usual.
Her mane was straight as straight could be, not one single strand of her jet black hair out of place. It was dark enough to rival the light whites in Egg's own quiff, and even as it poured around her face in that old-style bowl cut, it was still far more fashionable than the one whom she was talking to.
She had sharp features; and her yellow eyes poured out from behind the deep wine-like reds of her face like a cat; the kind of eyes that hid a far more delirious cunning.
Egg blinked his own, softer yellow eyes right back.
"Eggbeater?" Ember mouthed, brow furrowing intensely.
"Why have you been following us?" Egg asked, directly, ignoring Gale's question.
"Following… you? I don't think I know what you're talking… about." Gale smiled, every tooth shining like the daggers they were.
"I'm not the pony you're looking for," Egg said, turning to sweep away, head ducking down.
A leg blocked his path, stuck out on the pavement in front of him.
"Mister Eggbeater, I've spent… five days tracking you down. All for just a few… questions. I believe you're intimately… familiar with the incident at the Boardwalk last week?"
"I don't know a thing." Egg smiled weakly. "Now if you don't mind, my colleague and I were on our way to get an early lunch. We would appreciate not being held up."
Two wings shot out in a flurry of deep crimsons; one held a notepad tightly within dexterous primaries, and the other pointed out toward it. A single feather stuck out, rather oddly shaven down, clipped, and pointy.
Toward a small attachment to the notebook it flew – a small, covered capsule – that the narrow feather flicked open and plunged itself into.
It then removed itself, covered with ink, flowing instantly to the pages of the notebook to scribble something furiously.
All the while, those burning yellow eyes never left Egg's.
"So, you consider… Mister Emberkite here a colleague?" Gale asked.
"Uh…" Ember droned, suddenly put on the spot, his eyes open and looking around for a prompt that never came. "I uh… I'm not that guy, or nothin'. Y'all got the wrong ponies, and stuff."
"Are you certain? That looks… rather nasty." Gale nodded at Emberkite's wrapped head. "Your colleague is… injured, is he not?"
Egg swiftly pulled the bandage off Ember's head and stuffed it away into his bag.
"Not anymore," Egg said.
"So, who are you then?" Gale asked, eyes narrowing, but still smiling.
"I don't believe that is any of your business, Miss Gale," Egg replied.
"Uh… yeah! Coltdamnit!" Ember shouted suddenly.
"Yes," agreed Egg.
The notebook, clearly there just to make a statement, retreated slowly.
"Well then, it's a shame that you two aren't them," Gale slithered breezily. "I had some information for them that they might find rather interesting. Should they… show up, I might be inclined to share."
"It occurs to me that it is them who has the information for you, Miss Gale, otherwise you wouldn't be so hard-pressed to find them, yes?"
Gale paused. Her tactics were struggling against the stallion. It was the way he stood there, calmly, not missing any beats whatsoever, that unsettled her. For the first time in a long time, she was the one who had to think about what to say next.
"I am… not lying about the information, sir, if one would be inclined to think that I were," she finally offered a plea.
"I'm sure this Eggbeater would be very happy to know that, Miss Gale, but I'm not sure how we can help you."
"What would it take?" Gale asked, her smile finally gone.
"What does Gale want with Eggbeater?"
"Just an interview. I cover all the crime in Cloudsdale. Perhaps you've read my column."
"Perhaps Eggbeater has as well."
"I am… very interested, sir, with these two characters. Let's say I have a personal… stake in their exploits, and I just believe that it would make for a rather good story."
Egg tilted his head, looking down and inhaling slowly.
"Promotion on the line?" He flicked his head back up towards Gale.
Gale didn't answer.
"So. The hot topic of the week, or perhaps the month, is this whole crime fighting nonsense. Your boss offers you a deal. Get the exclusive, and get a nice big bonus. Am I right so far?"
Again, Egg was met with no response but the tightening of her mouth.
"So now you're trying to track this… Eggbeater pony down, get that exclusive, and ah… move up in the world. Rather selfless thing to do. I'm guessing you have the exclusivity contract with you right now in that bag, yes?"
Gale didn't twitch save to blink, covering her eyes with a shield for just that one crucial second.
"I am afraid we cannot help you, Miss Gale," Eggbeater said, with finality, inflating his chest and leaning towards her.
"What the crapping crap…" whispered Ember, to himself. So, this was how these upper-class fogeys fought? He'd been in some tiffs in his time, but this was… something else entirely. This had an intensity to it that couldn't be found by throwing a punch. This was waiting for one of them to say the wrong word, or make the wrong move, to think faster than the other and to understand what the other was saying when they weren't even saying it. This was…
This was…
This was weirding him the buck out.
"I'm sorry to have wasted your time," Gale said, that Cheshire grin coming back as intense as ever. But the steam rising from her haunches made it clear that one of them had won this little argument. "But Mister Eggbeater should… know. I don't give up easily. The story… must be told, sir, whoever you are, and… you might find I will go to great lengths to get it."
"Then, I wish you the best of luck." Egg smiled, as she withdrew her leg to let him pass. "Best look elsewhere for this Eggbeater character."
With the two most amicable nods you could find, the duo left the shaking reporter as they blended back into the crowd and moved on, leaving Gale to be swallowed up by the ponies left behind, just another pebble in a stream.
"What in the hail, what in the freakin' hail, Egg?" Ember wanted to scream, but settled for an infuriated complaint.
"What?" Egg asked.
"What was that? What just happened?"
"Disagreement," Egg said, stepping quickly.
"Disa- what th- but… there was… what did you do?"
"Remember how you mentioned about bringing it all out to have a show of force to warn ponies away through action?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, that was the business version of it," Egg said, sweeping around a corner.
The two of them turned into a side street, a shortcut, something that led them away from the flow of traffic towards another flow of traffic. It was shady here, the tall buildings that bordered them blotting out the sun.
"But… what did she want, anyway?"
"I said as much. She was looking for a promotion and a raise. She wants money. And she's willing to use others to do it."
"How did you know that, anyway?"
"You've read her articles. She isn't above a little exploitation to get what she wants. She's rather smart, though. I think she might be some trouble in the future."
"Well… why doesn't she just lie, then? Just make up a story?"
Egg flashed the business card she left, returning it to his leathery soft sling bag.
"Because now we know where she works. Don't think it'd bode well if the real Egg would show up one day telling her boss that everything she printed was a lie."
Emberkite snorted, smirking at the fact. "She… she made a mistake! She totally made a mistake!"
"Something like that." Egg dismissed the claim. He would have told Ember it would have been just as easy to go up to the publisher's and find out from there, since her name wasn't really hidden by any means, but he decided to let Ember have this little victory. He felt good when he figured things out, and Egg encouraged the exercise of the mind.
"Man, what a busy day!" Ember laughed, his pet-like dance regained. "Although, I gotta say, man. Don't wanna harsh up this mornin', but uh… that feeling I'm gettin'? Still around, old stallion."
"Still?"
"Yeah, I still can't shake it. Like, when we came into this street, there was this character standing at the edge, staring in after us. He disappeared like, instantly after."
"Are you absolutely certain?" Egg quickened his pace.
"I think so, man. I mean, I definitely saw something."
"Was it Gale?"
"Naw. He was like… I dunno. A lighter shade or something. I didn't really get a close look. Just like a flash. Shapes and shadows, man, shapes and shadows."
"Disconcerting," Egg said, as they reached the end of the path and rejoined the rest of the crowd.
"I ain't bothered, though. If he was gonna try anything, he'd have done it by now. Trust me on this one!" Ember trilled happily, not the least bit concerned about something that was actually rather creepy, if one thought about it.
"Well, anyway, we're here," Egg said, turning the corner onto another main street, but one that held a row of boutique-like stores and shops, individual house-sized buildings all lined up in a row. It looked the perfect gallery, a row that lead on to the sunrise dotted with magnificently built structures in very personable décor. Each shop reflected its owner and contents, and all in all, it felt like a road from wonderland.
"I love this street," Egg said. "It's always such a pleasure."
"Man, this place is so… what's the word? Prouffy?"
"I don't think that's a real word, Ember, but I sort of understand what you mean. Don't worry; nothing here is expensive or elite, as they say. It's just rather artistic. Now, there was this new bakery that opened recently – The Aquileos – and I've always been meaning to try it. They say the owner is a gryphon."
"A… gryphon baker? What?"
"Exactly. Quite curious indeed. I thought we might swing by and have a look and a taste. I believe gryphon cuisine is quite…"
The two of them slowed to a bit of a crawl, looking left and right as busy ponies, heads ducked down out of attention, passed them by in a hurry. They all seemed to be fleeing from a certain spot down the road, one which was thick with a foreboding atmosphere.
There were a handful of ponies running away from it, but there was also a crowd gathering around a column of smoke that punctuated the clear, blue skies.
"Busy this morning ain't it?" Ember worded, trying to peer past the crowd. There were two really opposing reactions to the same event. Something terrifying enough to run away from, but also something captivating enough to make ponies stand and watch. What could it possibly have been? Mimes?
But the sea of stunned, scared ponies split for just a moment, and through the parting crowd did Ember get a glance of what was causing the smoke, and the pale light that shone forth from within the wall of ponies matched the paleness that came to his face.
"Egg," Ember said, his voice cracking. "The clouds…"
"I see it," Egg said, taking off without a moment's hesitation. He barrelled down, followed closely by a rather nervous Ember, until the both of them decided to glide along on a small sheet of wind.
They untucked their legs and cantered to a stop, right in front of the building, pushing their way past muttering voices and held breaths.
It was fire.
This was what happened when you let it go. This was what happened when you let it loose. It rose off the ground, hot and demonic, dancing with the whims of the wind, or perhaps, forcing the wind to dance with it.
A pearly white slag.
That's what the building was reduced to.
The fires clung to the walls, eating away at the remaining bits of wood. Holes in the foundation cloud suggested things had fallen through the liquid blobs that the fire turned the floor into, and ultimately, it was a sight that not one single pony there that day had ever seen before.
"The clouds… the clouds are on fire!" Ember yelled. "What the hail is this crap?"
Ember paced in front of the wreckage, refusing to acknowledge or look at it directly. He threw his hooves up to his head, shaking it back and forth. He squeezed his eyes shut, and opened it again, and looked for the one he hoped would have some kind of answer for this madness.
Through the murmuring crowd he saw Egg, standing over a large figure. It was an impressive hulk of a character, covered in fur, feathers, and sporting an impressive beak. Even more so were her talons, which were currently wringing a white piece of whatever to all hell.
He rushed over to join them, still dancing on glass.
"…I see," Egg was heard saying, just as Ember caught up to him. "Please, let us try to understand what's going on here, alright? Do not worry, we'll take care of things."
"T- take care of what?" Ember stuttered, looking down at the gryphon. Her eyes were turned away, her face buried low. Tears had matted the feathers on her face, and her leg was shaking uncontrollably.
"What is even going on here?" Ember asked.
"Emberkite, this is Eternia," Egg said, stepping aside. "Eternia, my colleague, Emberkite."
"Pleasure to meet you," the gryphon said, speaking to the floor. She had a remarkably soft voice for a gryphon. Not that Ember had met many before, but she didn't sound anything like he would have thought.
"Ember, there's been some sort of accident, as it seems. Her shop and her home, that's this building here… has burnt down."
"Clouds don't burn!" Ember shouted, again.
"… yes. We all know that. But this one has."
It was true that a laypony observing Ember might be inclined to call him a bit of an over-reactor. But this was simply a case of perspective. One might mention to an earth pony that a cloud caught fire, and besides a tilt of the head and a look of perplexity, perhaps not much more consideration would be given. But tell the same information to a pegasus, and you might watch a series of chills sweep through the body gradually until feathers stuck up on edge all over like some sort of malformed pincushion, if he were even inclined to believe you in the first place.
This was the reaction given by the majority of the crowd at this very moment.
"I just…" muttered Ember, staring at the shop. The fire, for some reason, wasn't spreading, and when it had done its job of melting expensive carvings and industrial cloud to a squishy mass, it faded and disappeared.
"Miss Eternia?" Egg asked, standing beside Ember.
"Yes?" breathed the gryphon.
"We represent a group who… would like to offer our help to you. We… sort of… do this kind of thing."
"A- are you from the Wonderbolts?" she asked.
"No. We're… a private institution," Egg said, looking at Ember. "We're quite newly formed, but our purpose is to help those who require it. Surely you seem to be a victim of some kind of…"
Egg paused on the word.
"… well… perhaps that's something we'll have to figure out."
"Egg. Egg!" Ember hissed, stamping around. "Can I ask you somethin' real quick?"
"Of course."
"Over there?" Ember shot a hoof out to the distance.
Egg took a quick glance at the gryphon, who was still looking dazed and traumatized. Her entire life. Gone. In a few moments. Poor girl. She certainly wasn't in a good enough frame of mind to be paying attention to the discussions going on around her, and thusly did not react to Ember's rather off-putting comment.
"Fine," Egg sighed, stepping away with Ember.
They pushed through the crowd again – they didn't even mind, being too swept up in the madness of what was happening – until they reached a point where bodies and whispers prevented them from being overheard by the gryphon.
"Look, do we really want to do this?" Ember blurted. "I mean, this isn't what I signed up for, man! Robbers; thieves – that's crime, right? What is this? Is this anything? What are we even gonna do, man? I mean, we really should let the proper ponies work this one out, right?"
"Listen, Ember," Egg said back, impatience on his timbre, "what do you do all of this for? Just answer the question."
"To… to help ponies?"
"So that's what we're doing, right? You hate that ponies get victimized. She's been victimized. By what, we don't know yet. But clearly you can see this isn't natural. So it's our responsibility, as part of what we've both agreed to do, to handle things like this. To find out what's happened, and solve it."
"What are we, detectives or something?"
"If we have to be, yes! It's not all about just ramming into the crimes happening in front of you! Sometimes it's about figuring out where the bigger picture lies! You stop it at the source, and the source is always hidden! You can clip the leaves off a potato for eternity, and they'll always grow back until you dig the potato out!"
"W…"
"What?" Egg asked, annoyed.
"What's a potato?"
"J… just some earth-borne thing, okay? Look, nevermind. Listen, it's just part and parcel of the deal. You get to fly around and stop criminals actively, but we have to do all the other things, too, alright?"
Emberkite sighed, resigned. This was going to be a lot of work and a lot of effort. He knew it. But what else could he do? Alright. Sacrifices had to be made. Nothing is ever easy. Just remember that, Emberkite, and stop being so damn selfi-
"Fine, fine," Ember grumbled. "Whatever, old stallion."
Egg straightened back up, turned and pushed back to Eternia. A quick glance showed that the fire had almost completely extinguished, and nothing more could be done there.
"Alright. Can you fly?" Egg asked of her.
She nodded. Perhaps a bit unsteadily. But they'd be there to guide her.
"Then let's get you sorted out. Come with us back to our base. It's not far."
They landed, roughly, in front of the base. Nothing much had been done in terms of visual improvements since Egg bought it five days ago, and if the gryphon hadn't been a shell of her former self, she might have very well felt there was something quite odd about the whole affair.
But dazed and confused as she was, she followed the duo past the broken door and inside, where they sat her down in the office to rest a spell.
"Hey, Egg," Ember said, standing at the doorway to the room. "You take care of things here, alright? I have something I gotta do."
"What is it?" Egg asked, as Ember quickly departed.
"I'm sick and tired of something!" he yelled back, the front door slamming behind him.
Outside, the warm afternoon air filled his lungs with a brisk energy, and he stood, relieving himself of his brash, youthful annoyance for a while. This morning had been incredibly hectic. Things happened, stuff was going on, it was almost as if the whole thing was planned by some omniscient being to make his life hard. But, whatever.
Out of the three mysteries that happened today, he could solve one of them. Screw the fire. Who cares about this stupid reporter? No. He needed to get that sense of accomplishment back once again. He needed to do something worthy of himself.
And he'd noticed. Oh, he had noticed.
It started as a feeling, then evolved into a glance, but now, he knew. He had been paying attention. He was good for that.
He trotted, fiercely, to the dumpsters across from their base, across the empty street.
The lid flew open.
He dove in with his forelegs, struggling, grasping, a strange mix of limbs and actions flying every which way as he yanked out a small figure, wings beating hard against the restraint.
But he didn't let go. Using his own wings to counter, he slowly forced the pony to the ground, slamming the flailing character up against the dumpster itself, pinning shoulders to aluminium.
The figure stopped struggling after a while.
Fear dripped from eyes, lips trembled.
Ember's lip was quivering too, but for entirely different reasons.
"Why," he growled, flecks of spit hitting the other pony in the face, "have you been following us?"
She had spent three days tracking them down. It wasn't easy, but with the right resources, it wasn't that hard either. And she had resources.
All her life she'd been waiting for this, or at least, that's what she convinced herself, and it all boiled down to what had to be her final test.
What had the book said? Before approaching, understand the situation. Get to know the players, and be comfortable with them before initiating action. To be honest, the Canterlotian book was on negotiation tactics for standoff situations, but she figured the advice was tried and true, and could really apply in a more general sense.
Finding them was the trickiest part. All she knew was what was printed in the newspapers, and you could never trust a newspaper. That was advice passed down from Father, and Father knew everything. She learnt how to pick out the facts from the obscured, and knew which bits were definite and which weren't. So in the end, using simple triangulation based on newspaper reports and a large map of the cluster, she predicted the approximate area where the duo operated.
Criminals tended to operate inside comfort zones. Patterns emerge. When serial crimes of similar nature happen, they spread out from a single point, further and further away each time. She'd placed pins in the map at the Boardwalk, the Grand Coliseum Mall, the Windy Way Foodcourt, the exotic pet shop down Froth Avenue and The Silver Scroll, a rare tomes and collections shop.
She meticulously placed threads between them, taking all the convergence points and using them to plot a circle, within which was the likely operating area of the two.
She had nodded, packing away all her graphs and charts into her Happy Miss Playthings Wonder Chest, a gift from Father, for her birthday ten years ago, that she treasured dearly. It was where she kept all of her secret and precious things.
It was now full of books on crime, criminals, and the behavioural sciences.
There was also a small plush Teddy Ursa with a missing eye. That was a gift from mom.
She'd gone to the area marked on the map – those weird storage-type, warehouse-deal buildings near the Cirrus Shores, and had perched on the very top of a street lamp until they had come out.
She remembered shuddering, her breath flowing over up-turned lips, as she first caught sight of the two of them – unassuming, casual… simply amazing. Well, one of them more so than the other, but, still.
For a moment she questioned if she had the right ponies, but she remembered a few details written in the papers. One of the duo was quite clearly described, and had in fact been in the papers before, but only in a couple of smaller, side columns. It was the recent spate of vigilante justice that made him more pronounced, and the one detail that stuck was that yellow streak in his mane. The other had managed to be so unassuming as to avoid remembrance altogether. Clearly, these were the ones.
And she had followed them all the way to this point, where she was now, hiding amongst the ponies of the main streets of Cloudsdale, watching them as they went along. Observing. Getting information. She'd gather as much data as possible with her one ultimate goal of emulating what she had always wanted to become. She'd learn how to do things.
She nibbled on a hoof, smiling at the overflowing excitement. They were walking and talking and just acting like nothing was going on. But oh, there was fun to be had, surely. They were about to head off to some magnificent, great adventure; saving the world and cleaning up Cloudsdale one tuft at a time.
Maybe now would be a good time to get a bit cl-
The young mare pulled back, jumping into a shop that sold lemon jellies.
They'd stopped. Oh no, they'd stopped.
One had stopped the other, and they were now looking around. Looking for her. Oh no oh no oh no oh no-
Alright, stop. Stop. Don't panic. Don't worry. Don't attract more attention. There are ponies staring at you as you quiver as much as the jellies themselves. You are not a jelly. You are not a jelly.
"I'm not a jelly," she said, squeaking her mantra, attracting even more weird looks. "I'm not a jelly!"
"Are… you alright, miss…?" came the voice of a concerned shopkeeper, whose face she pushed away as she ran back out the door.
No, no, no! They were getting away! Crowds are such terrible places to lose two ponies! You'd never find them again. She recalled that one time when she lost a marble, a precious shiny thing, in a large vat of gemstones, and it took her three hours to get it back. Father was incredibly upset that she spread out all the gemstones all over the dining room floor, and had given her a terrible verbal lashing for it. But, she was young, and she remembered the lesson of not losing things in other things.
She also learnt never to mess with Daddy's gemstones, but that lesson didn't really apply here.
Oh, where were they now? Had they stopped looking for her? Had they seen her? Had they… were they looking for her? Oh no. That's bad.
Wait, why was that bad? They're the good guys, right? So why… but… they wouldn't really be happy about her tailing them, would they? They were pretty rough, weren't they? After all, they sent so many ponies to the hospital to pay for their crimes. That wasn't really nice, she reckoned, but they weren't afraid to get their hooves dirty and that means if they saw her as somepony trying to sneak up on them they might think she's a crim-
The pony clutched her chest, wheezing, eyes bulging out.
Out flung her hoof, which grabbed onto the nearest thing she could find for support, which just happened to be the shoulder of another fine stallion walking by.
"Ack!" he yelped, pulling back and rushing off.
"Oh, oh no… oh…" the young mare fell, leaning up against the wall of a shop. Perhaps this had been a silly idea after all. She'd never done anything like this. She'd rarely even left her house. All these ponies around her, jostling her and bumping her without a single care; suddenly she felt very conscious about the fact that she was outside. Suddenly she felt even more trapped than she felt back at home.
Her breath started to become ragged and rapid as her brain started to pull herself in two directions.
Yes, she could go back home. But she'd made a choice to run away and find her way in the world. She had written a two-weeks' notarized letter to Father, even, explaining her choices and making sure it was stamped and everything. She did it proper. She couldn't turn back on it now.
Or she could stay, following up on what she had declared one day in the shower to be her dream. And she wasn't going to go back on that either.
She hadn't realised how absolutely out of her depth she was.
She coughed, taking in one final breath, and raising her hoof up to straighten the silk straps of the nightgown that wasn't there.
Oh yes, she'd left it behind, hadn't she? Along with all her other worldly possessions. All she took with her was her mind and soul – her wealth of book-knowledge and a slightly tingling passion.
She looked up, her leg slowly falling from her absent neckline.
They were talking to somepony else now. Some odd mare with a very business mane. She recognized it as a business mane immediately – it was short, sharp, extremely neat, and it had a point to it. The point was to say, 'I'm wearing a business mane'.
She hung back, zipping across the road into another shop where she pretended to look at the latest records while keeping an eye on the action.
Curious.
It was how they moved. How they leaned around; how they acted and said things. It was one of the things that she hadn't read in a book or learnt from a tutor, but somehow, those tiny little tics and expressions made so much sense to her. It might have run in her blood, or she might have picked it up from the ponies around her in her daily life, but it was this strange natural ability that she had, being able to put everything into alignment and see the inside of an oyster just by looking at its shell.
And how this character with the business mane was acting was incredibly hostile indeed. It was the way she stood rigidly. It was the way she only turned with her neck rather than her whole body. She was not only angry about something, but also very defensive. She was lying, wasn't she? Not that the young mare knew what about, but that seemed to be the case.
The older of the duo she'd been following suddenly leaned in himself, making the most subtle of challenges.
To the young mare, it lit up like a beacon, and nothing less than the roaring of a manticore was that one small movement, at which the other mare retreated in an instant. Not that she did it outwardly, mind you, but it was the small things. It was the blinking and the way she fluttered. It was that slight turning outward of her front left hoof. It was the discomfort shown by a hundred involuntary movements.
But what was that all about? The young mare hadn't a clue. But it didn't matter. The two of them were moving onwards once more, and this small distraction had made her forget her initial anxiety enough to pursue without thinking.
They were heading down a side street. Quickly now, after them!
Oh god, they saw her again. She knew it. She felt it. She could read it in the ears of the blue one. Even though he was dancing around like at the annual Ciderfest, he knew. Did they see her poking her head around the corner to get a better look?
It was time to take to the skies. That's right. That'd be fine. They were looking for somepony on the ground, right? The skies would be a logical, brilliant place to hide.
Wasn't it?
She flittered her wings, small, unsure, and took off, hovering at a low position, using the buildings to hide herself.
And then she saw it.
And that's when she stopped.
She almost didn't want to believe it. She was actively trying to convince herself that it wasn't happening, but it appeared that a building down there was burning down.
The fireplace in her house never had a gate or shield around it. In fact, it didn't even have bricks for a base or a chimney like the ones down earth-side did. Clouds didn't burn. This was an absolute fact.
But there this one was, melting in front of her.
Already, the two stallions she had been following were racing toward the building, struggling through fleeing ponies and the panicked shrieks of the ones silly enough to stick around.
She remained where she was.
She saw them talking; she saw them arguing; she saw tempers rise as much as the flames were. And she was dying to get in closer for a better look, but it was the whole mix of everything that made her stop and stare and do nothing else.
This was perhaps not what she had expected when she figured that they'd head off to some excitement. This was perhaps something a bit more.
Her eyes scanned the crowd, distractedly, haphazardly, something done out of habit. Everything they were doing was everything she'd expect out of somepony in that situation. All the yelling, and the frantic pacing, and the depressed defeated shoulders that slumped down… they made her feel safe. Secure. Happy in the fact that she wasn't the only one feeling extremely uncomfortable about the whole thing.
But… wait. What was that?
Now, that's odd.
But there wasn't any time to think on it. No. Nearly immediately after, they'd begun to fly, with gryphon in tow.
And she'd follow. Try to find out where they worked, maybe. See what they were doing. Try to figure out how to act in cases like this.
Over skies, over clouds, over buildings, she trailed, too weak to think about hiding and mind too numb to consider that the one in blue looked over his shoulder perhaps one too many times.
She landed behind the building opposite, waiting for them to enter before climbing wearily into the dumpster across the street.
And there, in the darkness, she shut her eyes, the stress of it all swallowing her up.
The next thing she felt were two strong hooves scooping her out, to which she suddenly awoke, lost in panic.
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This is gonna be a fun story, yes indeed. It is definitely getting better. Only thing:
i.imgur.com/WEXdQgA.jpg
Jade hair, amethyst eyes!
Hmn, so a cloud store just burned down, and a ground store just floated away on a cloud. Improbable crimes edition?
Not sure that making an enemy in the press is a good idea.
Pegasi are cats, headcanon established.
Poached eggs are delicious. They are like, my favorite way to eat an egg. Especially with a little olive oil butter and Mrs. Dash seasoning...
But I'm getting distracted and ruining your wordplay. No more of that, for now.
Another great beginning, and another batch of characters introduced. The gryphon seems absolutely adorable. And I'm intrigued to find out just how the different crimes fit together. I'm also amused by just how giddy Emberkite gets over smashing skulls. He kinda reminds me of an energetic sidekick who is willing to do just about anything, as long as he can get his jollies.
I also have a question. Do you have more pictures of the cast than the cover that you did? I want to try and do some doodles. Probably nothing besides sketches, for now, but I just feel the impulse to draw. I'd especially appreciate more references of Eggbeater. Because he is best pony. Yes.
Now with that said, I think I'll leave off with this chapter for the night. Tired. But I will be sure to come back for more in the morning.
I'm sorry, I have to.
Well, congrats, your story has fully broken me out of edit mode. This is a good thing, it means I'm reading too quickly to look for edits beyond the most obvious ones, and the faster I'm reading the more I'm enjoying the story. I will pick this back up in a few hours after getting some sleep.
It seems that we have a little bit of verb confusion going on here.
I think you can see the problem.
I wonder why you didn't capitalize "mom"... You definitely had "Father" capitalized before, and he was far more emphasized... Does she just not think of her mom as highly? ... But why would she keep something so childish along with everything else if she didn't...?
In other news, she reminds me superficially of Sherb. Also, her father works with gems, and a gem store was just stolen. Would it not make for an interesting plot element for her father to be involved? Though she would have probably noticed something off about him, given how, ahem, perceptive she is.
Remember when you asked about your character's alignment? Well, I'm going to call Emberkite out as an Honesty right now. It's early yet, so my opinion's subject to change, but that's definitely the vibe I'm getting off him.
Pretty impressive that some organization could get a shop dug up and loaded on a cloud in under fifteen minutes.
Cloudsdale's even more ill-equipped for all this than I thought.
No, it's not that serious.
You are totally a jelly. Brightly colored and partially made of horse collagen. You can't deny it.
And by the way, you generally use American English, don't you? I don't remember noticing British English, at any rate. And "jelly" is the British word for it; in America we call it "jello," and "jelly" is what the British call "jam," and "jam" is a word that everybody has a vague feeling is not quite synonymous with "jelly," but nobody actually knows what the difference might be. Or maybe that's just me.
Yeah, this probably was a bad idea. Egg's pretty smart, after all, and also pretty competent in the field; I don't know if they have an opening for an agoraphobic criminologist with no practical experience.
Fine, I'll see if I can find you an application. You might be useful after all.
Never mind. I see you found the application on your own. Now you just need to turn it in.