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A Princess and Her Queen

by kildeez

Chapter 42: Chapter XLII: Prisoner Interrogation Reversed

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By some incredible feat of iron will, Bait and Switch strode into the interrogation room with the confidence of trained military stallions. Backs straight, hooves in marching sync, and most importantly, cheeks dry.

A pair of Praetorians awaited them, facing the one-way glass. Bait could still hardly be made to care, not even noticing the pristine artisanal glass formed by some pony’s hooves a millennia ago…

Oh, look at that. A distraction.

He chuckled to himself as he crossed the room, selling the whole ‘hardened military stallion’ thing quite well, if he did say so himself. “The prisoner has been prepped and readied?” He asked.

“Of course, sir,” one of the Praetorians motioned to the glass. On the other side, a lone stallion sat, shackled to one end of a long table. With original, foundry-made shackles, most likely. Shoot, to even be using those was almost a crime…

“Good work,” he said quickly, hoping he was selling this as well as he thought he was. “And…thank you.”

“Of course sir,” the Praetorian on the right nodded firmly. “And may I offer my apologies on behalf of all of us. I promise, none of us had a clue something like this could happen in our own ranks.”

Bait nodded, offering a rare smile. He got a nod back, though without the smile. Letting out a breath, he trotted over to the door standing between him and the prisoner. He inhaled. Exhaled. Finally, something real, something not born from the fever dreams of “The Irate!”

Shouldn’t he have been happier? Or at least, somewhat looking forward to it?

He grunted, gave himself a quick smack across the face to psych himself up, and walked into the cell. The prisoner looked up. “Ahh, pipsqueak,” he said with a grin, hooves folded amidst the chains before him. “How’s the shoulder?”

Bait paused, grimaced. “Healing,” he replied as he took his seat across from the other changeling. “Can I getcha anything before we start? Water? A maggot-snack?”

“Start?” The prisoner chuckled. “Start what?”

Bait deadpanned. “You know damn well what.”

The prisoner kept up that shit-eating smile, the kind that begged for a hammer and a chisel to wipe it away. “Enlighten me.”

Bait inhaled. “I wanna know who you work for, where you’re from, and what you had planned for those ponies. If you have partners or know anyone else that’s a part of this, I want to know about them too. Hideouts, contacts: if the kindly old mare who lets you use her basement to plot out more kidnappings has a dog, I wanna know its breed. I want everything you’ve got, and then some, and only when I know I have it will I even consider walking away.”

“Just what makes you think I have even half of what you want?”

Bait sat there, glaring levelly at the other changeling.

“And even if I did,” the prisoner paused to casually study his hoof. “Why would I just give it all to you?”

“Oh, I didn’t figure you’d just give it to me,” Bait said, arching a bit of chitin where an eyebrow would be. “You’re acting like this is my first rodeo.”

“The way you carried yourself in here, I guessed it was.”

“Oh, pardon me,” Bait chuckled as he rose from his chair, circling around the table. The prisoner’s little smile wavered as he approached, stopping right at the side of his chair. Bait paused there, held up a hoof, studied it. Then, with little warning, he jammed a hooftip deep into the prisoner’s thigh, flexing the chitin right above a pressure point. It was a testament to Praetorian training that this only elicited a minor grimace. Many others, pony and changeling alike, that Bait tried this exact move against had immediately fallen, screaming in pain. Even Switch had pissed himself just the tiniest bit when Bait had first learned it and decided the larger stallion would make for perfect practice.

The Praetorian just hissed, straightened up, and glared down at him. “For that,” he growled. “I kill your mother. Painfully and slowly.”

“It’ll be entertaining to watch ya try,” Bait mused, massaging a hoof over the spot. “You and I know you’re not goin’ anywhere.”

“Don’t count on that.”

Bait huffed and took a step back, letting the prisoner get a little breathing room. “Let’s start with something simple,” he hissed. “Where are you keeping ‘em?”

“Up yours!”

Another jab, this time to a point on the shoulder. That hit earned Bait a wince. “Yeah, shoulder shots hurt like a bastard, don’t they?” He asked sarcastically before turning away. “I can do this all day, I just want to know: where are you keeping them!?”

“Why, think you can mount a rescue mission for another pretty little thing to suck you off?” The prisoner spat through a pained grimace. “Got it bad for the ponies now, huh!?”

Bait’s eye twitched. If the prisoner knew how much of a mistake that particular insult had been, he didn’t show it.

With a roar, Bait’s hoof smashed into the prisoner’s muzzle, tossing him back. Gripping him by the back of the neck, Bait glared right into his face. “You look here, asshole! We got nothing but time on our hooves out here, so if you wanna see how many ways I know to hurt you, just keep it the hell up!”

The prisoner spat again, this time drawing green ichor. “So tell me,” he chuckled. “You gonna save yourself a pegasus? Or will it be a nice little unicorn this time? Think she’ll do the job? Swoon into your hooves when it’s all said and done?”

“I’m saving everyone you’ve…” Bait paused, trailed off. His grip loosened on the prisoner. He took a step back. Unicorn.

His mind flashed with a dozen faces and a dozen names, ponies that had walked off into the night to never be seen again. One thing stood out to him: the total lack of unicorns.

No…

No, that wasn’t right…

The prisoner glared. “What the hell’re you…”

Maintaining the façade, Bait snorted, righted the prisoner in his chair, and circled back around to the other side of the table, even as his mind whirled. “Do you have any idea of right from wrong?” He hissed, keeping his head low to keep his furrowed brow hidden. Internally, he winced at himself, pissed for coming up with such an awkward statement, but his thoughts were going too fast to come up with anything better.

The prisoner sneered. “What’s right? Being soft to the ponies that deny us what we need to live!?”

He continued ranting as the threads in Bait’s mind came together. No, no unicorns at all, which made sense considering the fight they could put up. You’d need more than just a few stallions to take a pony like that down without anypony noticing, so of course no unicorns were taken.

Unless you factored in ponies that disappeared during the invasion. Ponies he’d dismissed out of hoof at the time as being simple battle casualties. His head spun with names: Heartmend, Ultraviolet, Midnight Sprinkle, all ponies that had vanished in the chaos of the invasion, all should have popped up eventually.

But had any of them?

“I meant…like, about holding love from the swarm,” he hissed. “The swarm you took an oath to protect.”

“That’s right, and what do I get for it?” The prisoner snorted, looked away dismissively, but he wasn’t being dismissive.

He was lying. He was playing a part.

Something else was going on here. The unicorns…the ponies all over the city that had vanished in the wake of the invasion…how many? Dozens. All vanished in a very short amount of time from distances impossible to cross without teleporting. There was also a good reason to dismiss them out of hoof: a small group of criminals couldn’t hope to pull something that broad off.

He sneered, masking his frustration as he leaned over the table. “What’re you hiding?”

The prisoner narrowed his eyes. Bait was barely in the room anymore. He was mostly back in the kitchen, studying the map that had grown dusty with days of neglect. He was pushing pins back in, the ones he’d pulled out for being too far from other spots, too close to the invasion date where he could simply say they were normal casualties of the battle. But if he stuck the pins back in…what picture did it make?

It made a larger, more terrifying picture than he’d ever imagined. It didn’t give him the image of a few rogues, and instead he was looking down the barrel of a large, militaristic organization, one coordinated enough to carry out multiple kidnappings amidst the chaos of an invasion, and disciplined enough to keep them smuggled away in hiding. An organized force of highly-trained individuals, working towards a single goal, exactly like…like…

His eyes widened. “Like the Praetorians.”

The prisoner’s smile faded into a low scowl.

Bait gazed at the one-way glass and, too late, realized his mistake. “Welp!” He enthused with a too-large grin, “I just remembered I should really get to blowing up that big evil robot thing the ponies used in their escape attempt!” He strode towards the door. “I think I’ll just be…”

A couple of too-loud clicks sounded. Bait paused with his hoof on the doorknob, turned, swallowed.

The prisoner was standing on the table now, shackles gone, advancing with his head low and wings fanned out behind him. “That’s your problem, runt,” he hissed. “Too damn smart for your own good.”

Bait sighed, turned back to the door. “Always been my problem, actually.”

With a roar, the former prisoner leapt off the table, mouth gaped wide, fangs aimed at Bait’s jugular. He clenched just as he thought he would be dropping on Bait’s neck…and felt nothing but thin air in his fangs.

“Buh…” he had time to mutter before an uppercut rocketed into his throat. Thrown off, he slammed headfirst into the door, rolling over on his back, coughing and trying desperately to hold back vomit.

“Chrysalis above, buddy,” Bait said, smiling as his magical doppelganger faded away with a little spark of his horn. “You’re really gonna fall for the same shit twice?”

The changeling on the ground could only wheeze, sounding like a broken scuba tank.

Bait frowned down at the guy, then his eyes widened. “Switch!” He gasped. He pounded at the door, scrabbling with the knob. “Switch! The Praetorians are—“

That’s all he managed to get out before the one-way glass shattered, two black shapes flying through and upending the table. The prisoner craned his head, and could only make another gagging noise as his brothers-in-arms fell in an unconscious pile on the floor.

A moment later, Switch stepped through the glass, breath heaving in and out of his massive frame, ichor dribbling down along his cheek from a deep gash across his forehead. “I’m getting really sick and goddamned tired of people trying to kill me!” He shouted.

“Aww, dude,” Bait groaned. “Didja hafta smash the glass, too!? That stuff was almost an antique!”

Switch glared at him. “Yes, I’m fine, thanks for asking!” He bellowed.

“Yeah...shit, sorry man, I--” Bait paused, watched Switch’s eyes widen.

“Bait, get d--”

That’s all Bait needed to hear before he ducked. A couple of whistles sounded right over his head. A tiny breeze went over his ear. Cringing, he hit the ground, rolled. More whistles sounded. Tiny clatters of metal. Switch leapt over him. Pivoted. Slammed into the fallen table and bucked a leg hard enough to send it flying. He landed at Bait’s side behind their newfound cover as another series of whistles sounded.

Switch grimaced as he laid next to Bait, their breaths heaving. “Shit, man...” he grumbled.

Bait finally turned to look over the small, metal darts their assailants were using. “Yeah...Praetorian long-range stuff. Figures.”

“Got any idea where that’s coming from?”

Switch looked up at the shattered remnants of the mirror and squinted. In one particularly-large shard in the corner, he could just make out a black line: a slat in the wall he knew for a fact hadn’t been there before. “Ten degrees, north-northwest, oriented to...” he trailed off, searched the wall, found a reference point. “...that blemish in front of us, right in the crystal? The one shaped like a mare’s flank?”

“I see it,” Switch snickered. “And it’s shaped like a heart, you li’l pervert.”

Bait chuckled, but his face grew stoic. “Next move?”

“There’s only one of ‘em that can fit in that slat. Probably his buddies were meant to finish us off and he’s just a failsafe.” Switch grimaced. “He’s gotta pause to grab more darts sooner or later.”

As if on cue, there was a pause in the dart-throwing, and the slat narrowed slightly. “Now!” He screamed, and threw his shoulder as hard as he could against the table. Bait followed suit, winced, scolded himself for throwing his bad shoulder against the solid wood, but pressed on, the shoulder screaming in pain all the while.

The table practically flew across the room, pivoting along one wall. Screaming battle cries, they charged the last couple open feet between them and the slat. There was another whistle. Bait felt a line being torn across his cheek, and then they slammed against the slat as hard as they could, gambling that it was an opening to a door, and that the door opened inward.

The gamble paid off. The secret passage burst open beneath their combined weight. “Shit!” The changeling on the other side swore, another dart already in his hoof. In one deft move, Bait grabbed the assassin’s fetlock and twisted as hard as he could. The other changeling screamed in pain as the familiar, dry sound of bones snapping filled the air, accompanied with the crack of chitin bending away. Then Switch was upon him, a tidal wave of muscle that smashed the other changeling’s face into the far wall.

Gasping for breath, Bait straightened up. Switch gasped alongside him, looming over the unconscious changeling. He gave the guy another kick in the head for good measure.

“That’ll keep him down,” Bait said, smiling. “The Irate my ass...how about we go back there and make sure the rest of ‘em sleep for a good, long time?”

“I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem, dude.” Switch replied, his head craned back to the entrance to the cave.

“What’re you...” Bait turned back, saw that the floor to the interrogation chamber was covered in a heavy layer of ichor, and realized only some of the darts had been meant for him and his partner. “Oh...oh Maker above...” he grimaced, turning away. “Their own stallions...”

“Praetorians are cold bastards, you know that,” Switch grumbled, though his tone dripped with disgust. Turning away from the door, he looked around the tiny cavern, peering into the darkness. “The hell is this place, anyway?”

“My guess? Some shit the Praetorians discovered and repurposed.” Bait grimaced, thinking back to the Canterlot heist he’d pulled off with his partner way back in the day. Before the Empire, before everything, when they had pulled off a heist in Canterlot to wild success: stealing the original plans for the sewers under the Empire. “Damn...and I think I know how they found it.”

“Well, no use crying over it now,” Switch pointed down the tunnel. “Whaddya think’s down there?”

“I have no idea,” Bait said, stomping forward. “But I know we’re gonna find out.”

Grumbling, Switch trudged on, deeper into the darkness, away from the light of the room. The journey through the tunnels was long, dark, and arduous. They couldn’t light their horns for fear of being discovered, but they were able to keep themselves going through sense of touch and a few light drafts that touched their chitin, keeping themselves faced into a breeze in the hopes that it would lead somewhere interesting.

Their hopes paid off.

“Holy. Shit.” Bait muttered, peering out of their cavern with eyes the size of dinner plates. Below them, at least a solid battalion of Praetorians toiled around a massive pool, around which was a series of large containers. Every now and again, one of the containers would leak some green fluid into the pool, which both recognized immediately.

“It’s a love pool,” Bait gasped, gazing over the eerie, green surface. “Just like home.”

“No, bigger,” Switch said, his eyes trailing all around the humongous cavern. “More ponies here than home.”

“That’s what those capsules must be for...” Bait trailed off, looking back the way they came, at the tunnels branching off. “You suppose those go to other parts of the dungeon?”

“Or other parts of the city,” Switch said thoughtfully. “They could move captured ponies around totally undetected...Maker above…”

“We gotta tell the Queen about this,” Bait gasped.

“No duh.”

The pair turned on their hooves, dashing back the way they came. This time, they lit their horns to hurry, knowing time was officially of the essence. Bait ran in the eerie green glow of his horn, eyes only darting around to ensure each rushing shadow wasn’t a Praetorian lying in wait, ears pointed forward to capture any sound coming from ahead. Suddenly, he paused, holding up a hoof to bring his partner to a screeching halt.

“Dude, what...” Switch started.

“Sshhhh...hush.” Bait held up a hoof. “You hear that?”

Switch raised an eyebrow, then an ear. He scanned for a few minutes, then his chitin grew very pale. “Awww, shit.”

Voices. From the interrogation room. They’d been found out, likely when the Praetorians meant to murder them hadn’t returned with their heads on a silver platter. With a little bit of focusing, he was able to just make out what was being said:

“...ter you completely failed in your mission, you then led them right to a portal that revealed everything?”

“Well, I...”

There was a sudden hiss, the distinctive sound of metal gliding through chitin and into meat, and a choked-off gasp. His ears folded down. “The last guy we left back there just bit it.”

“Damn, damn, damn...so...what now!?” Switch hissed. “If we’re found out, then the Praetorians likely are already around the Queen. We’re not gonna get within a mile of her!”

“I know, I know...” Bait mumbled, tapping his chin anxiously.

“So what the hell does that leave us, then!?” Switch hammered a hoof against the crystalline walls in frustration. “Whadda we even do!? Try and get the prisoners to help us!?”

Bait started to say something, to tell Switch to shut up and let him think. Then it hit him. His ears folded back. “I have an idea,” he said finally. “But you’re either really gonna like it, or really gonna hate it.”

Author's Notes:

This time around, I wanted to use this moment where I have your attention to bring attention to a decent cause.

Newyorkx3, an artist some of you may know, has fallen upon some hard times and could really use some help. A blog post with more details is here. If anyone could find it in their hearts to spare a few bucks, I'm sure it'd be appreciated! This community is well known for coming together when really needed, so I'm hoping we'll have more of that here!

Next Chapter: Chapter XLIII: Together Again Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 27 Minutes
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