She dropped the phone.

Oh no.

She quietly rose from her chair, and began pacing around in panic. She knew exactly what that meant. It no longer meant she had to address the people outside, something that would have been a welcome thought if not for that fact it was accompanied by her having to travel all the way to Canterlot to help retrieve the package.

How did members of the Royal Guard lose a package so quickly? How did the Royal Guard lose a package in CANTERLOT, of all places?!

She exited the office, and came into the lobby, where what looked like a sea of people were at. The entire room was lit well, mostly by artificial lighting, as it allowed whomever was building the place still to hide the unfinished areas of the ceiling, if only a little. Most of the room was decorated only by tiles of all shapes and sizes, but consisted only of a grey color scheme. The unfinished areas were merely un-tiled, and revealed a heavy, metal material. Her destination, the exit, was on the far side of the room, where people were entering and exiting in a seemingly clockwork fashion. Pushing annoyed customers out of her way, she stopped at the front desk, raised a hoof, and tapped on the desk three times, her signal to the four colts that worked there that she needed to leave. She pushed her way through the rest of crowd and out the exit. She stopped a moment, completely stunned by the sunlight.

She had forgotten exactly how bright it was outside, being inside all day certainly caused some problems. Standing there for a few seconds to regain her sight, she also remembered how utterly freezing it was in Stalliongrad. Her coat was still inside, all the way back in her office, but she quickly decided against pushing her way back in to get it, preferring to grit the cold temperatures instead. She made a right and began a quick walk down the street, her mind shifting back to the pressing issue she was faced with.

This is not happening.

There was an incident like this one before in Canterlot, not as severe, but a package was still lost before it even got close to Stalliongrad's protective outer walls.

This can't be happening.

She wasn't worried about Celestia and the way she would react, oh no. She knew that Celestia could maintain composure very well.

Oh Celestia, this is happening.

She was worried about how Princess Luna would react.

She knew of the first incident, read the report thoroughly and everything. It wasn't something to get upset over, it was actually just an order of maintenance tools. The 'STALLIONGRAD-1' team had ordered them as a precaution in case their existing ones broke, but Princess Luna had treated the missing goods like they were a magical bomb that had been stolen.

It was most likely because Luna was still, well, behind on the times. As far as Isabella knew, back a thousand or so years ago, losing something valuable on your property was a serious offense, or something.

She hailed a cab, she needed to get to the railway. After waiting several minutes and trying to make one stop for her, she gave up. 'Dumbass drivers.' she thought. She sighed, and looked around for another means of transportation, walking all the way across the city was definitely NOT going to fly with her, not today.

Ohh, speaking of fly...

She spotted a group of Wingless Griffons, a common sight around Stalliongrad, as they used the city as a slingshot to get to a valley beyond Canterlot, where a large-scale mining operation between Ponies and Griffons was being conducted. The slingshot in question being, well, 'SLINGSHOT-ONE', the railway. It was originally called the Equestrian Railway, but with technological advancements in recent years, it wasn't a powerful enough name apparently. Not that she was complaining.

Wingless Griffons were originally a rarity among the Griffon race, at first thought to be a serious deformity. Wingless ones had a hard time living at first, since most of the Griffon cities were either perched high up on mountains (or built into them), or at the bottoms of giant hand-carved pits.

Over time, Griffons and Ponies, in a joint-research agreement, had discovered that the Wingless weren't actually deformities, but a different evolutionary chain of the Griffon race. This prompted the creation of new technology to aid the Wingless, one of the first being the elevator.

The sudden jump in advancement had caused a large shock-wave effect, causing other nations to begin making the same technological advancements, leading us to where we are today.

Some of the Wingless ones resided right there in Stalliongrad, working on the sky-way since no pony wanted to due to how dangerous it ended up being, and that no Griffon wanted to bother with it. The sky-way is a collecting of sky bridges between all of the buildings in Stalliongrad, to ease the overall congestion of the streets.

And it just so happened that this group was in the necessary construction gear.

Isabella strolled up beside the group of three. "Hey! Can I piggyback on you's three sky-way clearance? I need to be getting to the railway to get to Canterlot, and I missed all the cabs, can you believe it?!"

Normally, she would have been a little more smooth with this, but due to the fact she had no coat and making poor time already, she didn't care. The three stared at Isabella, then back at each other. The one in front looked back to Isabella.

"Why exactly should we let you up there? It's dangerous and we don't want an accident, especially considering that'll cut into our pay and--" The Griffon stopped as he realized the look on the cold-looking pony's face. Her eyes cut into him, meaning she wasn't going to take no for an answer. The Griffon didn't mean to come off so strong, especially considering he wanted no trouble. His pace slowed down for a few seconds, and then he nodded. "Alright, but uh, don't think you can do it again, y'alright?"

He started moving a little faster than he was before, obviously wanting to get this mare far away as fast as possible.

Never fails.