Author's Notes:

Added 25 Oct 2015

Gilda Gabriela Grizelda, Equestria’s most powerful crime lord, is sitting in her top floor office behind her large oak desk. Her freshly sharpened and polished talons rest in front of her face as a pyramid, and her golden eyes are narrowed on her fellow griffin, Winny.

With the glass door to her patio all the way open, a cool breeze wafts into the office, but it is not enough to cool the fire inside Gilda. All that is keeping her from ripping out Winny's throat is her discipline and lack of manpower. Though, anyone can plainly see the thirty year old griffin's muscles twitching underneath her fur. It does not matter that Gilda got her money. It does not matter that a problem has been solved. All that matters is that a simple solution to a simple problem had an outcome that should not have happened and has left her with a deficit rather than a surplus. And the story behind it all is absolutely ridiculous.

“Do you take me as an idiot?” says Gilda.

“No,” says Winny.

Gilda keeps her focus on Winny, but she does grind her talons together, like a butcher rubbing his knives. To Winny's credit, she does not flinch. Much. But Gilda can still see her tense and she spots a single drop of sweat sliding down her worker's head.

“I think you think I'm an idiot,” says Gilda.

“I don't think that,” says Winny.

“And yet you expect me to believe that a mare dressed in bed sheets beat up five griffins by herself and left you alone.”

Winny shakes her head. “She did not leave me alone. She went after me, and I kicked her ass and tore apart the store doing it.”

“So we all heard. Was it Lyra?”

“Probably. She's the only mare I can think of that would risk her neck trying to save Bon Bon.”

“Let's pretend that I believe you, but now there is another question. How come you let the guards take away Grim and the others?”

“I couldn't wake them up, and if I stayed I would have been caught and you would be out four thousand bits.”

“My guys on the inside said someone called in the fiasco. A female. Very anxious. And when the guards got there the bodies were one short. There was no pony and when you got back here you were shedding.”

“No shit! I almost got my beak busted off in a brawl by some nut in bedsheets! It is possible that the mare left and died in an alley somewhere. Celestia knows I fucked her up enough.”

“That is a very stupid story and you know it. Now, Sparkle sending a rat in here to fuck up everything and you making up fairy tales to cover your tracks? That is a believable story.”

“Are you accusing me of beating up my own crew?”

“Damn right I am. I know you were kicked out of the Stalliongrad Guard Academy and I know you come from a family of guards and crooks alike. I also know that Sparkle sent in undercovers and my business was doing just fine until your ugly beak popped in here.”

Winny's jaw drops. “Gilda, I have been loyal to you. I changed lives for you and had to clean others blood off of myself countless times and now you're accusing me of being a rat? What the fuck, Gilda?”

Gilda reaches under her desk and pulls out a double barrel shotgun with a gold grip and a strap attached to it. The wood is polished and decorated with vines, thorns and skulls, and the barrel has tally marks etched into it. Currently there are fifteen tally marks.

Winny remains steady when Gilda places the weapon on the desk and aims it at her chest, keeping her talon just on the outside of the trigger. Gilda knows Winny is afraid, though. She can smell it, see it in her eyes, see it in her tense muscles and ruffled feathers, and the most damning of all, the growing number of sweaty beads rolling down her head.

“I've killed before, and I got no problem doing it again,” says Gilda, her eyes narrowing and her talon brushing the trigger. “Before you showed up, I took fragments of the Lulamoon Mob and the Toolbox Mob had and made something of it. But ever since you showed up, my whole Detrot branch was wiped out by a poison, I lost Ponyville County, the guards took back Stalliongrad and now I'm losing ground in Canterlot. And the twist? You have been to all of those places at least once.”

Winny points at herself, shaking and sweating more than before but still keeping her brave face. “Gilda, look at me. I know I'm new, but I promise you, I am not the rat.”

“That's what every rat says before they die.”

Suddenly the phone rings and Gilda mostly ignores it, choosing to keep her aim on Winny, but it keeps ringing, and ringing, and ringing. Finally, after the fifth ring, Gilda slips on the headset with one hand while keeping the weapon held in the other and with a simple flick of a switch on her desk, her end connects.

“Who's this?” Gilda says, being sure to make her annoyance known to the whole world, and now using both hands to hold her weapon and adjusting her aim when Winny steps back.

“It’s Monte. Did you miss me?” says Monte, his tone so bright it makes the sun seem dim.

Gilda frowns without breaking eye contact with Winny. “What do you want, Monte? I'm in the middle of something.”

“Well, I just had a nice conversation with a pretty little mare, and she wants to place an order of some of your top notch services. Double order actually.”

Gilda lowers her weapon and points at the door behind Winny. “We'll talk later.”

“We will?”

“Not you. A troublemaker in my office who needs to get out right now before I blow her brains out. And if she even thinks about skipping town Hell will be comfortable compared to what I will do to her.”

Winny takes the words to heart and leaves the room quickly, and once the door shuts Gilda turns around to stare at the Canterlot skyline, her mood too soured to take in the beautiful sunset.

“Anyway, this girl you mentioned, is she looking for a cleanup crew?” asks Gilda.

“Actually a delivery,” says Monte after a slight pause.

“A double delivery?”

“Yeah, she wants to take care of the packages herself, though.”

Gilda sighs heavily and runs her talons through her freshly groomed feathers, and her annoyance gets worse her door opens and she turns around to see Winny coming back in with a unicorn stallion trailing her. Gilda mouths some profanity directed at Winny, and all Winny does is shrug apologetically and point at the guest. Gilda rolls her eyes, points at the stallion and then her guest chair, and she points at Winny and shoos her away. The two obey without a word and Gilda looks at the scenery again.

“You there, sweet cheeks?” says Monte.

“Call me sweet cheeks again and I'll shove a pole straight up your ass,” says Gilda. “And whoever this girl is, you tell them I want to meet them so we can lay down some ground rules. Before we meet make sure she knows how we do things in my town because from the sounds of it we’re dealing with a dweeb whose got something to prove.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as calling her a dweeb, but she definitely has something to prove.”

“Okay, whatever. We’ll meet on Tuesday at ten after noon at the train yard. Tell her there’s no deal if she's late. I don’t care if she’s a minute late. And if she brings anyone other than you I will kill her and whoever else she brings and then it’ll be your hide. Got it?”

“Don’t get your pretty plumage gunked up. I got this.”

“You better.” Gilda then hangs up and turns to the stallion that entered her office. “What do you want this time, Lock?”

Lock summons a list consisting of names, pictures, and addresses and places it on her desk. “I am in need of some assistance, Gilda.”

Gilda begrudgingly pulls out a pair of reading glasses from her desk and puts them on. After she puts them on she glares at Lock to make sure he isn't showing any signs of being amused from her visual handicap. With his stoic expression remaining steadfast, she drags her talon down the list, looking at each name carefully and when she’s done she looks at Lock.

“If this is a hit list, you better have won the lottery,” says Gilda.

“No, it’s not a hit list. The ones on this lust have become problematic or will become problematic with the EIB and our operations, and they need to be told to stay quiet. The EIB will pay you in the usual manner,” says Lock.

Gilda pushes the list away. “Not my problem.”

“It is since you’re connected with us.”

“Not by choice.”

“Still connected.”

Gilda ruffles her feathers and stands up, and her talons dig into the table, leaving gashes in them, but Lock shows no signs of being intimidated. “Listen, asshole, I’m already pulling more than my fair share helping you and your agency clean up your messes. And I don’t have your funding and I already lost a lot of good griffins.”

“You have my condolences, but that doesn’t excuse you from your task.”

Gilda sits down and starts counting her money again, but rather than doing that to see how much she has, she’s doing it to keep herself from pouncing on the agent and ripping his throat out. Lock can see her anger plain as day too, given that her predatory eyes are honed in on him and her muscles and talons are flexing and twitching eagerly under her fur and feathers. However, Lock can’t help but smile on the inside at the idea of a griffin with reading glasses is threatening him with her gaze.

“Do you at least know who poisoned my griffins in Detrot?” asks Gilda in a low growl. “I would like to turn them into a big dinner.”

“All we know is that they were poisoned with a fungus of some kind,” says Lock.

Gilda slams her fists down, causing the table to shake. “Well that’s just fucking great! What’s the point of this cooperation if I’m doing all the work and losing my guys and your doing whatever the hell you guys do?”

“Take it up with Brisk Wind. As for this list, don’t kill anypony on it, just scare them into not talking.”

Lock turns around to leave, but Gilda calls after him and when he turns around she walks up to him, eyes narrowed and feathers still ruffled. When she’s directly in front of him, she takes off her reading glasses and jabs him in the chest.

“I won’t be doing anything without a tradeoff,” snarls Gilda.

“Amnesty for your services, that’s the tradeoff,” says Lock coolly.

“I won’t be doing anything for you until you get Winny’s group out of the dungeons.”

Lock sighs and looks squarely in her eyes. “You work for us, and you being an asset means we have to take care of you. But we have to keep our connection a secret, so that means we will not be releasing any of your griffins to our streets. The most we can do for their freedom is deport them back to Altai. However, what we can do is figure out who this masked pony is and get them out of the way so they won’t interfere with your business any further.”

Lock turns around and walks towards the exit.

“Don’t worry, Gilda, we have everything under control, we just need you to play your part.”

When Lock is out of the room and her office shut off from the rest of the world, Gilda slams her fists on her desk, swearing. A few seconds of fuming later, she grabs the list Lock left behind and gives it a look over. She counts at least two dozen names, and one of them is Trixie Lulamoon.