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The Rails out of Ponyville3,514 words
The Streets of Manehattan5,606 words
Rumble in the Broncs6,263 words
The Six-Hundred-Sixty Length High Club (Part One)4,813 words
The Six-Hundred-Sixty Length High Club (Part Two)4,005 words
The Last Lesson of Carriage Callow4,689 words
Flight of the Pinkie-esque4,101 words

Rumble in the Broncs

“Princess Luna!” Flim stammered. “We…we can explain!”

“Most excellent!” And with that, the Princess of the Night sat down on the ground. “Begin.”

“…here? Now?” Flam gulped.

“We may leave, we suppose…but Our zealous Guardians of the night may be less keen to hear thine explanations, and the traditional penalty for thy seeming crimes is death.” Despite her ‘offer’, the Princess made no show of standing up from her place just inside the sole entrance to their impromptu igloo of debris.

“Well, Your Royal Highness, here’s how it happened….”

“I didn’t get my flank beaten by the baked goods cartel so a bunch of thieves could make off with important national treasures!” Flim shouted, looking remarkably good while doing so.

“Yes, brother, for Equestria!” Flam replied, the misty moonlight shimmering off his honed flank.

“To glory!” Trixie cried, horn gleaming heroically.

Luna gave them a long, skeptical look.

Flim coughed. “…this is probably not the time to, um, enhance the truth, Trixie.”

Trixie blushed. “Would you believe that is how Trixie remembers it?”

Luna arched one brow. “We would not.”

“Oh. Well then….”

With no particular statement being made as to why they were choosing to do this, the three unicorns leapt into the darkness.

“Thuuuuuuunderhooves!” nopony would later admit to shouting.

“Ooof!” they all grunted, though not quite synchronously, as they landed, sprawled, after tumbling down a steeply angled tunnel for some dozens of yards.

“Is this a…” Flim gagged, and forced himself to his hooves. “This is a sewer.”

“This way,” Trixie said, gesturing with her horn.

“How do you know?” Flam asked.

“Hobo code,” she replied, lighting up the side of the sewer tunnel with her magic.

Flam peered at the scratchings on the masonry of the tunnel wall. “I…don’t recognize the freshest of these symbols, I’m afraid, old girl.”

“‘Cult, thieving and abducting, possibly murderous.’ Trixie had also failed to recognize it, once.” She turned back and looked Flam hard in the eye. “Once.”

Three unicorns trudged forward through the sewers, hooves squishing in the semi-solid sorts of muck which were imperfectly carried by the liquid sorts of muck, following the clues and signs as to the next turns to take, where they could spot them.

“So, Trixie…” Flim gulped. “When you say ‘possibly murderous’, do you mean….”

“Does Trixie mean that a cult taking up residence in the sewers with a network of added tunnels, which has already robbed a warehouse full of ancient and possibly magical artifacts belonging to a cartel boss, might be prepared to kill ponies who stumbled upon their secrets?”

“Yes,” Flim said, nodding, “that.”

“Trixie would consider that a best-case scenario. They may also conduct abduct ponies to perform living equine sacrifices to their dark masters. The hobo code does not cover that particular nuance.”

“Was it so much to ask that ~~ripping off~~ tangling with the cartel would be the easy part of this endeavor?” Flam complained to nopony in particular.

“Shh!” was Trixie’s retort, as they neared another intersection. Her ears tilted. The Flimflams frowned and listened as well.

Barking, rhythmic. The click of canine claws on masonry. If they were to transcribe the barking, it would have gone a bit like: “Woof-woof-woof. Oooooh-woooooooooof-woof. Woof-woof-woof. Oooh-wooooooof-woof.” Such merely goes to show how silly an exercise transcribing an ominous onomatopoeic chant would be.

They crept forward ~~after taking five minutes to argue about whether this was really a good idea~~ heedless of the danger, at last beholding the source of the noise – a great vast central chamber, obviously considerably expanded from the original city plans for the sewers: some original masonry, some repurposed, and some walls and pillars carved from living rock. Where their tunnel emerged into the room, a catwalk extended forward, suspended a dozen yards over the lowest floor – and there a company of Diamond Dogs, squat and armored, marched in place. At the opposite end of the catwalk, the chamber’s central pillar, ensconced in a balcony, and upon that balcony, a trio of equine forms in hoods and cloaks.

The unicorns pulled back into the tunnel, burying themselves in shadows, as the leader of the cloaked trio opposite them shouted down at the marchers below.

“Canine brethren! Rejoice and be glad, for the hour of glory is upon us! With your tireless efforts, the rituals are nearly complete!”

The dogs let out a throaty cheer, a chorus of jubilant howls.

“Now, disperse and take one last respite to freshen yourselves for new duties, for our lord is soon to return to this world, and we must all be prepared to heed his whims!”

One dog at the head of the pack, in marginally shinier armor than the rest, turned to his fellows, and in a great whining voice, translated that: “Company – dismissed!”

A cacophonic chorus of grunts and barks acknowledged the order, and the formation dispersed, the dogs filtering into a number of different side passages off of the chamber floor. The cloaked trio opposite observed this, and then turned, heading away from the unicorns down another catwalk.

“Trixie?” Flim asked, a bit of shake to his voice. “You’ve been in this sort of mess before, right?”

“…something like this, yes.”

“On a scale of ‘1’ to ‘pray for the sweet mercy of the embrace of death’, how bucked are we?”

Trixie considered this. “Seven.”

“Seven, huh? Seven’s the sweet spot.” Flam nodded in satisfaction, while peering out over the catwalk onto the chamber floor for any stragglers. “Good enough that something can be done, bad enough that something must be done. Looks like the coast is clear if we hurry.”

“Hold on – in case a patrol wanders back in….” Trixie did not finish her thought verbally, instead opening her saddle bags and presenting black hooded cloaks for the twins’ and her use.

~~“A bit coarse, aren’t they, old girl? And they hardly go with the vests, much less the hats.” Flim asked.~~

~~“For just once, could you two~~ try ~~to be a bit less girly than Trixie?” she snarled.~~

While their horns distinctly distorted the shapes of their hoods compared to the figures they were now trailing, at the moment there was no test of their disguise – the chamber was growing steadily quieter as the echoes of departing hoof beats and footsteps grew further away.

“Wait a moment!” Flim whispered excitedly as they passed the central pillar of the chamber. “Over there!” A half-dozen opened crates, still mostly full of various scrolls, tablets, and trinkets made of metal and stones, lay just at the edge of the central balcony. “These are most of the missing artifacts – they must have just needed some specific things for their ritual.”

~~“Bit of a need to hurry, brother!”~~

~~“Then stop arguing and just stuff some of these things in your saddlebags! We might not get a chance later! These things usually end with us running in panic!”~~

A careful but determined trot down several more catwalks later, the trio took cover behind a large sewer pipe – seemingly pried from its proper place in the municipal construction months or years ago – and peered over it.

The figures, whom they now felt comfortable identifying as donkeys from the shape and coloration of the muzzles protruding from the hoods, stood at three points of an equilateral triangle inscribed in the large stone balcony protruding over a long drop and a raging storm sewer channel. The triangle did not concern them quite so much as the glowing and slowly spinning circles of red and blue light hovering just above it, and not nearly so much as the tiny black sun growing still farther up.

Over and over, the donkeys chanted: “We light the candle, we open the book, we unring the bell.”

Trixie whispered in horror: “We just went from seven to nine and a half.”

~~“If only~~ somepony ~~hadn’t insisted we stop to loot the place first….”~~

“Now what, Trixie?” Flim asked in a hush, ~~ignoring his brother’s completely accurate criticism.~~

“We, we, stop it somehow…” Trixie stammered, leaning forward against the sewer pipe to peer closer. The massive pipe rolled slightly with her weight, and suddenly a wicked grin replaced her worried expression.

The Flimflams, to their credit, caught on immediately, as their horns glowed and their hooves rose into place in preparation for a mighty shove.

“…we unring the – ” The two donkeys near the unicorns, with their backs to the pipe, had only the nudge of the rolling steel against their hind legs as a signal that not all was as it should be, before getting caught in the roll and tumbled on the ground and up around the pipe and back onto the ground and up again – the farthest donkey, who at least was looking in the right direction, turned and tried to outrun the sewer pipe, failing only because he ran quite out of balcony.

With a final thud, the sewer pipe and all three hooded donkeys sailed over the edge of the balcony. The unicorns peered after to admire their hoofdiwork – at least one of the donkeys looked to still be conscious after impact with the water, but all three were being carried swiftly away by the surging sewers.

“See?” Flim asked, laughing desperately with relief. “Nothing at all to worry abou – what?” He turned, acknowledging Trixie and his brother’s taps on his shoulders. “But – we vanquished the summoners!” he protested, in response to seeing that the tiny black sun and had not vanished and in fact was a bit larger and more substantial.

“Apparently the important bits were already finished, brother; whatever they called is still coming. Any ideas, old girl?”

“The first few moments after arrival are critical.”

“You mean we could beat it then?” Flim asked, hopefully.

“Probably not even on our best day, and this isn’t it. But if we’re going to convince it to at least not kill us….”

Flam nodded, getting the drift, as he pulled his hood back over his head and trotted to one of the three spots on the triangle. Flim and Trixie took their places a moment later

And so, snarling and spewing, arrived the demon: blue in coat, cloven of hoof, pure crimson eyes, with great twisting horns on its head.

“Hail to our lord…!” Flim, Flam, and Trixie said in unison.

“Grogar lives again!” the demon cried, as a great shimmering red band materialized around his neck, carrying golden seals inscribed in forgotten tongues and a silver-white bell. As the band finally solidified completely, he stepped his hooves down upon the stone floor, leaving behind the now-insubstantial and rapidly-fading dark star.

“…Grogar!” the unicorns concluded.

“Forever may his night reign!” Trixie added, apparently out of habit.

The demon looked around. His eyes appeared to lack any subparts such as irises or pupils, so they could not tell exactly what he was looking at. After twenty seconds that felt like three hours at the gallows to the unicorns, he finally spoke again: “This place is different. It is not my kingdom.”

“It is not your old kingdom, my lord!” Flim said, brightly. “Over the centuries, it has fallen apart – we have just taken the important relics for use in our new base!” he further guessed, with remarkable accuracy.

The demon nodded, accepting this. “Then, from our new base, we shall go forth and conquer – ”

“No need, my lord!” Flam interrupted. “In your name, your loyal minions have already conquered the world.”

The demon blinked. “What.”

“The entire thing. All of it,” Trixie agreed, “is already in our – your – hooves.”

“How? Without my power, how did Ponyland and Dream Valley fall?”

“Just two unknown places in a whole series of conquests!” Grogar did not seem to have a wide array of facial expressions, but was working on skepticism right now, and Flam looked desperately to Trixie for assistance.

Trixie grinned. “Your minions were so filled with fervor for your reign, O Mighty Grogar, that they could not restrain themselves to wait until the stars were right!”

“Then…the ponies are all gone?” He definitely sounded confused.

But at this, his ersatz acolytes were equally so. “Oh…um….”

“Ah.” The demon’s confidence returned. “Of course not! You may have conquered this world, but only I possess the power to banish them from it! Show me, then, to the dungeons, so that I may purge their kind from my world!” Grogar started to trot towards the only proper exit from the balcony.

“Oh!” Flim said, keeping pace with the demon. “Well, they’re not in the dungeons, either. The ponies are your slaves. They get to keep living, and we exact enormous tribute from them in your honor.”

Grogar halted. “…my minions have never done it this way before.”

“And…” Flam started, and then paused, looking for his next thought.

Trixie supplied it. “And did your previous minions ever build you the eternal empire worthy of your glory?”

The question, of course, answered itself, and the demon resumed trotting forward. “Of course not. But what you say is – ”

“Don’t you doubt us, my lord!” Flim begged.

“You so clearly deified – ” Trixie added.

“You’re in our world now, not that world,” Flam pointed out.-

“…and we’re your friends on the other side!” they sang together.

“Wait,” asked Princess Luna, “thou sang?”

“We panicked. It’s sort of one of our default modes.”

“Who’s whose friends on the other side?” were the echoes of a canine voice that rumbled up from the chamber below them.

Grogar stared. The unicorns stared, smiling, for a moment. Flim caught up first. “Just your loyal acolytes down there, preparing the celebrations for your return, nothing to fuss about, don’t worry!”

“Come, Lord Grogar – ” Flam said, trotting forward faster down a new catwalk, having smelled a familiar and pleasing odor from its far end. “ – let us show you to your kingdom!”

At the far end of the next catwalk was another tunnel, this one probably part of the actual urban plan; directly inside was a steam carriage. Grogar eyed it unwarily as Flam leapt into the driver’s seat; a moment later, Trixie and Flim shoved him into the back.

“Sit down in our carriage; put yourself at ease!” Flam sang, as his magic engaged the engine and the turbines came quickly up to speed.

“Know that we live to do – well, anything you please!” Trixie added, rubbing the shoulders of the confused demon with her hooves as she piled into the seat next to him.

Flim threw himself to the front passenger seat, and Flam kicked the carriage into drive, propelling it forward up the sewer tunnel. The barefaced Flimflam twisted around in his seat to face Grogar, and continued.

“You’ll soon see your kingdom – taste it’s sweet fruits too!
You’ll own the worship of every filly and foal – ”

He glanced aside and muttered “That is what he wants, isn’t it, Trixie?”

Trixie shrugged.

“ – every mare and stallion too!”

Grogar frowned. “And what of the other races? The donkeys? The troggles? The humans?”

Flim and Trixie looked to each other, while Flam concentrated on driving – and then the carriage emerged from the sewer tunnel, out into the open air of the southern Broncs. The odor was noticeably, but not greatly, improved. The demon swiveled his head, looking at the great brick buildings – some as high as eight and nine stories! – rising up around him.

“We count the asses
Among our masses
And even the odd parasprite!” Flim added quickly, while the demon seemed to be distracted, and then the three unicorns focused on what they felt was the most important point:

“And we’re your friends on the other side!”

“But no humans?” Grogar asked unevenly, as the steam carriage tore through the dark streets. “To have many slaves is good, but if none of them have hands….”

Flim whispered to his brother. “Hurry, Flam – I don’t like his tone and I don’t know what he’s talking about….”

“Our first stop, my lord!” Flam shouted immediately, slamming the carriage’s brakes far too fast. Only the demon’s enormous curved horns shielded him from pain on his impact with the seat in front of him – nopony had bothered to explain safety belts. Flam nodded to Flim, and Flim darted inside the establishment.

“This entire place is my kingdom? This city of ponies?”

“This city is just one of many in your kingdom, Lord Grogar – and many besides ponies live here!” Trixie said, hopefully, glancing back at the door to the establishment.

Flim emerged a minute later, hopping back into the seat, and magically producing several bottles from a brown paper sack. “The drinks, the drinks, the drinks will tell –
How our system is working oh-so-well!”

Trixie used her own magic to pop the caps on bottles, and then hovered them in the air before Grogar. “The drinks, the drinks, just take three….”

Grogar’s eyes widened with delight as the first taste hit his tongue, and Trixie assisted him in enjoying still more of it.

Flam accelerated, pulling onto a major avenue. “Take a little trip to The Hub with me!”

“The Hub, brother?” Flim whispered again. “Not the Great White Way?”

“The Hub is closer from here. And I think The Broncs is more ready for us than Manehattan.”

After finishing the last bottle, with Trixie’s unrequested assistance in obtaining every last drop, the demon hiccupped, and then frowned. “Tell me of the Resistance. There must be one, or else you maggots would already have built my palace!”

The unicorns returned to a false grin, while they thought fast.

“While most worship Lord Grogar happily…” Flam began.

“…a few ponies call themselves Royalty!” Flam added. “Just three of them, right?” he asked his companions. They shrugged. It was easy enough to forget about Cadence, who could remember if there were still others? “Their grandeur’s high…”

“But their power’s low!” Trixie insisted. “To you they’ll be a most unworthy foe.”

“Not that anything could threaten you, right, Lord Grogar?” Flim asked, wheedling his voice.

“Of course not!” Despite his assertion, the unicorns only looked convinced of this.

Flam brought the carriage to a spinning halt, completing three full revolutions before it came to a rest in front of a noisy bar in The Hub – a five-way intersection in the heart of The Broncs.

“Now they just gotta get smote,” Flim continued, “But smiting takes time.
You’ve just gotta reign, look out over this whole place…
…but a kingdom needs its King.”

Trixie leapt from her back seat up to the trunk of the carriage, standing and singing out into the night.
“It’s the King,
It’s the King,
It’s the King you see…” she offered, looking straight at a pair of Night Guards while pointing at Grogar.
“And if we may be so bold,
It’s the King that you need.”

The Night Guards kept their eyes on the unicorns and their strange charge, while continuing to eat their breaktime meal of sugary pastries.

Clearly feeling, to the unicorn’s relief, the effects of three bottles of fortified nectar, Grogar tumbled out of the carriage onto the street, and stumbled to his hooves. “Fine work you have done, making the best of this city of ponies.” He hiccupped. “You are quite certain, though, that no humans number among my servants?”

“Again with the ‘humans’? What’s up with this?” Flam muttered to his brother and Trixie.

Trixie shrugged. “Apparently they have hands. Hands are a poor-pony’s substitute for minor unicorn magic, and he had planned on banishing all ponies. So presumably he expected these ‘humans’ to take their place.”

“I don’t know,” Flim muttered. “With him, I’m getting the feeling that it might be more of a sex thing.”

“You usually think it’s a sex thing, Flim. But Trixie does not discount the plausibility of that, this time.”

“We’d better hurry.” Flam cleared his throat. “The humans were gone before our time,
They were hunted all their lives….”

“They were hunted by the griffons and the changelings and the dragons…
And if any survived….?" Trixie trailed off.

“They were slaughtered with knives!” Flim added, with a lot of energy.

Flam and Trixie stared at him for a second, aghast, while the Night Guards suddenly decided to wrap up their break.

Flim continued, mournfully. “So look to the future, because afraid we be….”

The three unicorns embraced, and harmonized. “Equestria is very most probably human-free.”

The two pegasus Night Guards trotted towards them. “Excuse me!” one called. “Are you alright? Do you need help?”

Grogar eyed them, and then turned to look to his acolytes for an explanation. “Scouts for the Resistance,” Flim whispered.

Grogar looked to the pegasus ponies again, as Trixie leaned over and whispered in his ear:

“Take this land,
Come on, Lord,
Won’t you take this poor, wretched land?”

The demon steadied himself on his hooves – or strived to – and snorted furiously at the approaching pegasus ponies.

“Yes…..” Trixie whispered low. Pulling her hood down to obscure her face as much as she could, she spun to face the Night Guards. “Are you – ready?”

“Are you ready?” the Flimflams echoed.

The Night Guards halted, as Grogar began to stomp his hooves.

“Are you ready?” she asked again. “Hail Lord Grogar!”

“Hail to Lord Grogar!”

The unicorns didn’t miss a beat as the demon’s horns charged with magical energy.

“All hail Lord Grogar!” Trixie called.

“All hail to Lord Grogar!” the Flimflams responded.

The demon discharged his horn in a torrent of magical blasts, shredding the pavement near and around the Night Guards with dozens of energy bolts.

“Three cheers for Lord Grogar!
Can you feel it?” she asked, as Grogar glowed anew. New power surged in his horns, and the Night Guards darted on wing in opposite directions, just being missed by a sphere of energy nearly as large as the carriage Grogar had arrived in.

“You’re reigning, you’re reigning, you’re reigning alright;
We’re seeing you deified…”

With the impact of the energy sphere into the street, the whole block rumbled, and the patrons inside the bar cried out while large chunks of masonry began to fall from the front façade onto the street next to the carriage.

“But if something breaks, don’t blame us….”

The shout came from one of the Night Guards, ducked behind a corner of building, doubtless speaking for the benefit of a magical communicator. “This is Patrol 54! Shots have been fired at The Hub, we need backup, now!”

The unicorns smiled behind Grogar’s back.

“Because we’re your friends on the other side!”

And then they dived for cover, as Grogar charged for another attack.

“We got what we wanted!” Flim said jubilantly behind the cover of a pile of bricks.

“And now he’s been had!” Flam replied excitedly.

“Shhh!” Trixie concluded.

Another blast hit the pavement, and the building behind them rumbled anew. From the receding screams, the patrons of the bar appeared to be escaping out the back fire exit – a moment of good news they appreciated before the front half of the building fell forward, and down.

“And then what?” Luna asked.

Flim grinned sheepishly. “And well, then, we were trapped under all this debris!”

Luna pointed to behind the three unicorns. “Yonder opening maketh a fine window. Thou sawest more.”

“Ah. Well.”

“They’re coming in from the left, Grogar!” Flim shouted through the air passage. He grinned as a pegasus managed to body-check the demon into a gaslight pole. “Sorry! I meant my left!”

Grogar growled in rage, and displayed a talent the unicorns had not previously seen – straight iron rods suddenly emerged from the pavement, crossing at angles that both caged the offending pegasus pony and ensnared his wings and legs.

“Muledoon!” the pegasus cried, towards his partner, as he struggled against his new prison.

Patrol 54 reports officer incapacitated by magical attack. Elevating two-star alarm to three stars. Get somepony to get some lights and a strobe on this guy, figure out what we’re dealing with.

Seeing this issue, the other pegasus took wing, getting clear of the ground, and charged at Grogar again – only to have to veer off to dodge another spray of magical fire. Losing more than a few wing feathers to glancing shots, he cried out as he lost his trajectory and clipped the side of a building.

“Grogar does not fear this resistance! Grogar will crush you all! Grogar will - ” The demon stopped, peering into a blinding, strobing spotlight coming down at him from the sky. Disoriented by some combination of flickering lights and fortified nectar, Grogar took a good ten seconds to get around to launching a blast of magic at the source of the light. Somepony in the skies above yelped, and vanished into the darkness, even as they dropped their spotlight, which landed a few yards from Grogar and directly atop somepony’s brand new steam carriage, penetrating all the way through the floorboards.

Civil Pegasus Patrol reports magic-using quadruped, likely sheep, maybe goat, blue in color, definitely has horns. CPP came under fire. All nearby patrols, engage and pin. The Anti-Unicorn Squad has been alerted. The Hub incident is now at a four star alarm.

“Hey!” a large red earth pony shouted, rounding the corner from the back of the ruined bar. “Baah baah Blue Sheep!” He waited for Grogar to turn to face him, and for his mates – seven of them, earth ponies of various colors, all of them angry at not being as drunk as they’d like – to catch up. “You bucked with the wrong party!”

Be advised, patrols, we have vigilante civilians engaging the suspect. Alarm remains at four stars.

The unicorns, from within their igloo of debris, winced at the new fight, and watched carefully as the fracas began. Seeing one earth pony too drunk to dodge an incoming bolt from Grogar, they all nudged him in unison, knocking him sprawling to the pavement but under the path of the blast. The red stallion that head-butted Grogar, fast and strong as he was, was beyond their help – ram horns beat pony skull, and he was knocked back flank over teakettle, prone and stunned.

On the roof of the tallest building of the Hub, two pegasus ponies in matte black uniforms landed, setting down their cargo – a unicorn in a similar uniform, and the weapon he was carrying.

The Aussies are in place, patrols. Keep the suspect engaged and distracted.

This they had no difficulty doing. Several patrolling pegasus ponies who had begun closer to the action now joined the earth pony civilians in the fray, dodging, weaving, and bucking, trying to land blows on the demon ram before it could blast back at them. With a new surge and blast, sending a group of ponies crashing like tenpins, they all, to the last of them, failed.

The unicorn on the roof, who had been marked at birth with the appellation “Ice Cold” and had no real need for a badge because his cutie mark had taken the shape of the symbol of Manehattan’s Finest, peered down the scope of his weapon. With infinitesimally precise control thanks to his well-practiced magic, he lined the crosshairs carefully over the ram’s head, and then, checking the windage, he whispered to his escorts and spotters: “Do I have a trigger order?”

Aussies, you have your trigger order.

Ice Cold, elite markspony of the Anti-Unicorn Squad, never smiled except at these moments. “Night-night.”

For a civilian unicorn to recreate the weapon Ice Cold was using would require only the technical skills of, say, the Flimflam brothers; it was merely a particularly well-built harpoon gun launched by very powerful springs. To create the ammunition would require no less than three poaching expeditions into the heart of the Everfree Forest: herbal and alchemical coatings shielded the dart’s trajectory from minor magical influences; one array of poisons induced unconsciousness and paralysis; the other array of poisons targeted and (usually temporarily) knocked out the specific neurochemistry found in unicorns that enabled them to control their magic.

Thunk.

Ice Cold stared down his scope in horror. “You have got to be bucking kidding me!”

Grogar had difficulty seeing exactly what had happened, but from his peripheral vision he could piece it together – a large dart had passed through the loops of both of his horns, not more than brushing his coat, and had, with only a glancing strike, gotten stuck in the keratin of his far horn.

The demon turned to face the source of the attack, but saw only a building. It would have to go. Even while his horns fired dozens of bolts at the windows and roof, he continued to build a secondary energy orb, nursing it to larger and larger size.

“Buck!” Flam cursed from his place in the igloo. “I really thought the Aussies could have taken him!”

With a whomp, Grogar launched his orb, and the whole building trembled, its façade giving way immediately, while he continued also spraying the smaller bolts at anything that seemed to conceal a threat.

“And he keeps unleashing stronger and stronger attacks….this isn’t good.” Trixie shook her head.

“But is it because he has no limits, or because he’s too drunk and angry to remember them?”

While they pondered Flim’s question, an airship appeared overhead, sweeping the streets with spotlights.

Aussies, you are ordered to withdraw and provide cover for civilian evacuation. All Manehattan units, be advised we are at five stars, repeat, five stars. Royal Guard Heavies have arrived. All Night Guards, first priority is assistance of civilian evacuation from the fire zone. The Heavies know their business.

Thundering bass beats from the airship’s lower cannons announced the arrival into action of the Royal Guard, as dozens of pegasus ponies flew out from the sides, and their wingless colleagues fast-roped down. Grogar shook on his hooves, but only from the shockwaves of the cannons – and possibly that fortified nectar again – not from any fear of the scores of ponies now surrounding him.

The commander of the Royal Guard unit issued no challenge or warning – she merely waited a few seconds to see if the demon showed any signs of surrender.

Another attack warmed itself on his horns.

That being quite the opposite, ponies surged in from all sides. Unicorn magic threw up barriers and shields around the battlefield that the Hub had become, tightening the circle and restricting Grogar’s movements, while the others made their strikes. The demon, for his part, fought like one, kicking, butting, and hurling whatever magical attacks he could in the few instants he had between getting bucked or slammed. Even the bolts, though, did not strike more than one or two ponies at a time, for past that they would be absorbed by another unicorn barrier.

“He’s slowing down,” Flim whispered. “I think they’ve got him.”

“Oh bu – ” Flam cursed again, as Grogar went flying out of the crowd entirely and tumbled to the pavement thirty yards away – not under his own power, as it happened, but by the assistance of a buck from an enormous green earth pony mare by the name of Corporal Whopper.

As it turned out, she had been a little too successful for everypony’s good.

The Heavies turned around and began charging for Grogar, who now found himself with all of his enemies in a single arc of fire and a good four or five seconds to charge his attack – which was all that he needed this time.

The Royal Guard got a small taste of what their changeling enemies had undergone some months earlier, as the demon’s shockwave sent them hurtling far into the air – a painful inconvenience for the pegasus ponies, a terrifying near-death experience for the others – and with them, the airship they rode in on, which had come quite detached from its gas bag and was now bouncing across the skyline, rooftop to rooftop.

Flim, Flam, and Trixie stared in horror.

…we are now at the six-star threshold. Repeat, the alarm is now at six stars.

The demon ram strutted in the square, bleating in pride. “Grogar has crushed the puny resistance! This world now belongs to Grogar! Grogar the Surpeme!”

“C – congratulations, my lord!” Flim half-heartedly called out from the igloo. “All shall tremble beneath your iron hooves!”

Remembering his acolytes, the demon turned towards the debris pile. “…yes. They shall.” He warmed another sphere on his horns.

“Well.” Flam said, leaving the curse unsaid this time. ~~“So, ah, now that we’re about to die….”~~

~~“Yes?” Trixie asked, with sudden interest and enthusiasm.~~

Two spheres of light exploded in the sky, but too far up to be Grogar’s work, and still a few hours too early to be the sun or the moon.

Merely the royal sisters in charge of them.

“Grogar of Tambelon! Stand down!”

“And, well, Princess, you saw the rest.”

“But did thou seest the rest?”

The ram spun to the alicorns behind and above him, eyes flickering from one to the other, from the alabaster goddess of the purifying light and the midnight blue goddess of the sacred darkness, and to the energy gathering at each of their respective horns.

His attack orb as grand as he could muster it, large enough to encompass both sisters, he launched it.

Beams of radiant energy came forth from the alicorn horns connected with his orb, stopping it in its tracks.

Growling, Grogar summoned forth all of his will, and forced the orb forward.

With purity of cause, the Princesses strengthened their magic, and pushed.

…

Schplort.

“…‘schplort’?” Trixie asked, who had been too afraid to watch.

“Oh, I’m gonna be sick,” Flam said, directly before following through on his word.

“…so much blood,” Flim mumbled. “How could one sheep hold that much blood?”

“One…sheep?” Trixie asked, and then brightened. “They got him? They got him!”

“They got him, alright. They got him all over…everything. Guess he was just about out of juice.”

“Right,” Flam said, finishing heaving. “Now let’s get out of here. In the confusion, nopony has to know…oh.”

A certain midnight blue goddess has stepped in through the opening to their igloo.

“Princess Luna!” Flim stammered. “We…we can explain!”

“Most excellent!” And with that, the Princess of the Night sat down on the ground. “Begin.”

“And then we started telling you how it happened.”

“To sum up: thy plan went as follows. One, thou wouldst pretend to be the demon’s followers. Two, thou wouldst get the demon drunk. Three, thou wouldst get the demon ‘lost in a bad neighborhood’.”

“Exactly!” Flam said.

“And the result is a block in ruins, hundreds injured and some missing still.”

“You see, we sounded like heroes right up until we had to go and talk about the consequences of our actions.” Flim sighed.

The Princess raised a brow. “If thou hadst left the villain alone, and he in turn had been detected by somepony with Our or Our Sister’s ear, doubtless the Elements of Harmony could have undone this monster with less collateral harm.”

The unicorns did not respond to that charge.

“But, if the villain had gone undetected, the terror he mighteth have unleashed would be far worse, and we might be speaking of ponies dead, not injured.”

The unicorns nodded eagerly.

“Thou hast done…acceptably well.”

They kept nodding eagerly.

“Our Sister will not learneth of thy presence here, nor shall Our Guards. Thou, in turn, will not returnst to the demon’s lair; other evils likely abideth there still, and must be dealt with by others. Others…not thee.” She paused for a moment. “Go.”

The three unicorns scurried out of the igloo, into the morning light. Construction crews were hard at work starting to put their city back together, while Night Guards checked in with and reassured hundreds of worried ponies.

In a moment, they were just three more ponies, only slightly more exhausted than most, trotting through a Manehattan morning. Three orders of hay fries from a pushcart sufficed for breakfast as they found an omnibus heading in the general direction of their hotel. They were quiet for a few minutes. Finally, Flim spoke.

“And you two mocked me for stopping to loot.” He summoned from his saddlebags a small scroll.

Flam sighed. “We don’t even know what all we took, or if any of it will help.”

“Sure we do! While it was your two turns to explain ourselves, I took the chance to sneak some peeks at what we took.”

“Oh?”

“Oh indeed! The bad news is, our next stop is going to require us to cross an ocean. The good news is…after we do that, we’re going to Monte Cowlo!”

Trixie nodded and yawned. “That’s…that’s nice.”

“Nice? Our adventure is going to take us to one of the toniest casino-hotels on the planet – we’re probably going to trip over secret agents just checking into our room!”

Trixie yawned again. “And Trixie will be thrilled…after she’s slept for three days. Good night, you two. Don’t bother waking Trixie when you bring her up to our room.”

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Flim and Flam and the Road to Old Donado - KFDirector

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