Two blue-eyes are chatting to each other on a random curbside. My super hearing picks up some tidbits of their conversation, but it’s mostly smalltalk. Ponies wearing medical masks are walking around them, ignoring them as if them being there isn’t strange at all. Sure, there is nothing alarming about Blackwatch goons policing the streets, nothing alarming at all.

Those blue-eyes should look up more. They might see the monster-griffon flying at them and avoid a deadly aerial attack.

I land hard on the sidewalk, smashing a crater in the concrete. The blue-eyes jump in surprise, and all the medical-mask ponies look in my direction. Some of them look afraid, and some of them are muttering between themselves. Who is this mysterious griffon that just cratered in front of us?

My wings shift to balance Eureka on my back a bit better. He seems to be fine after that landing. There weren’t any sounds of bones breaking, so there’s not much to worry about. Even if something did break inside of him, Doctor Heart can fix a broken ribcage, right?

The blue-eyes are frozen in shock. They have the power to inform the right people of my location and call in reinforcements. I smile at them, and give them a friendly normal-griffon-claw wave. “If anyone asks, you never saw me,” I say. By some miracle, they break their paralysis and give me a frantic nod. Good, they get to live another day.

The crowd breaks apart as I walk down the street. The ponies keep looking at me, and it’s making my back itch. Huh, I never felt that itch before. Then again, I’ve never had an entire crowd look at me like this. I don’t feel anxious, these ponies aren’t creeping me out like they should be, so maybe the itch is just a random itch.

After a bit of walking, the staring strangers fade out, and the throngs of Yellowzone ponies go on doing their own things. A griffon with a pony on her back, this isn’t a strange sight. The Equestrians are used to seeing weird things all over the place. Dragons, magic, mystic hobos, and that’s just for breakfast. Ponies only get spooked when the weird things make loud noises and threaten their lives.

Eureka is with me now, but he’s unconscious and can’t talk at the moment. The best thing I can do right now is drop him off at the daycare and let Pinkie and the gang babysit him. Where else am I going to put him, in my closet at home? A fight tore up my apartment, and I don’t think the landlords are going to want me back.

Huh, that fight happened just this morning. It feels like that happened months ago. What time is it now? It’s getting dark. The sun is about to set. Wow, I’ve been up and fighting all day.

The street lamps flicker on in response to the darkening sky. Ponies are rushing by to get inside before the witching hour falls upon them. I wonder if Blackwatch has a curfew set up. It wouldn’t surprise me. The Ghost Nation in the Mission Critical comics has curfews in places they occupy. Getting to the daycare before the curfew happens may be a good idea.

Gilda sense points me to the direction of Pinkie Pie, who should still be in the daycare. With the group of kids she has, I don’t see her stepping away from them for anything other than a natural disaster.

The flapping of wings comes at me fast from behind. I glance back and see a green blur flying above the crowd. Iffy Sniff flares out his wings and skids to a stop next to me. “I found you,” he says with a big smile.

I look ahead to pay attention to walking through the crowd. “You got out of there in one piece.”

Iffy Sniff flies in front of me and hovers backwards. “Yeah, the Blackwatch bitches were busy figuring out how to deal with you, so I zipped on out of there and they didn’t notice a thing.”

Something doesn’t sit right with me about the way this kid is swearing casually. He’s a kid, he shouldn’t be doing it until he gets to middle school. “And somehow you managed to follow an airship across the city and find me.”

Iffy shrugs. “It didn’t go that far. The music hall is right over there. See?”

My eyes follow Iffy’s hoof, which is pointing behind us. About six or seven blocks in the opposite direction of where I’m walking, I can see the concrete barrier Blackwatch set up to serve as a fort. Red lights are flashing all over the place, and blue-eye goons are scrambling to and fro. Looks like I made quite a ruckus.

“Huh, I thought the airship went a lot further,” I say.

“You went up really high,” Iffy says, “But the ship didn’t move around much. It just hovered there for a bit and moved away once you jumped off.”

So it didn’t move much. That means there’s a puddle of goop nearby that used to be the body of the metalhead I fought. I guess that makes Blackwatch’s job easier to find where he landed.

The sirens are still going. Don’t they know I’m long gone by now? My superhearing picks up a few screams far away, and a pink blob jumps on top of the concrete wall. Oh yeah, the monster is still alive. Eh, not my problem. Blackwatch has enough goons to take the thing down.

“Damn,” I say, looking away from the mess I left behind, “and I thought I traveled halfway across the city in that thing.”

“You could of. Those airships are faster than pegasi.”

“I bet.” Equestrian technology, the best in the world, going far beyond what Griffonstone is even capable of imagining.

“So what are you going to do about that nut on your back?” Iffy asks, nodding to Eureka. “Are you going to kill him?”

Oh great, this line of thinking is back. I should’ve known he would bring this up. “No, Iffy, I’m not going to kill him.”

“Why not?”

“Because he needs to tell me where my friend is, and he can’t do that when he’s dead.”

“And then are you going to kill him.”

For Grover’s sake, Iffy, everything you say involves killing Blackwatch. “What’s with your obsession with killing Blackwatch?”

“Because they’re evil, and evil ponies need to die.”

“Okay, I get that Blackwatch is harsh on you guys, but I don’t think they’re absolute evil. They just do highly questionable things and shoot me on sight due to valid reasons.”

One of his eyebrows goes up. “What reason is a good reason to shoot you?”

I shrug. “I don’t know, fear? I’m no stranger to ponies fighting me because they’re afraid. Bullies fought me all the time while I was going to school here in Equestria. I’m familiar with it.”

“They’re not just shooting you,” he says as he flies around to avoid crashing into a mare. “They’re shooting ponies too! Have you heard of Red Night?”

Red Night? Doesn’t sound good. “No…”

Iffy’s eyes narrow into slits. “They killed my brother during Red Night, along with who knows how many other ponies.”

“That’s, uh…” Red Night sounds like a massacre. That’s the sort of thing that has too much emotional baggage for me to deal with. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Is Blackwatch afraid of normal ponies?” he asks. “Is that why they killed my brother, because they were afraid of him? Blackwatch doesn’t kill because they’re afraid. They kill because they’re evil.”

Okay, Blackwatch is a touchier subject for this kid than I thought. I don’t know how to go about talking about that. Better change the subject. “Well, what about your brother. Was he a good guy?”

“Yeah, his name was Fish Eye, and he was amazing. He knew Blackwatch was up to no good the moment they stepped foot in Manehattan. And Blackwatch knew he was trouble for them, so they shot him up during Red Night and covered it up as an ‘accident’,” he says while making airquotes with his hooves.

That sounds like something an evil organization would do. Of course I already knew Blackwatch is an evil organization, so this is just icing on the evil cake. “Well, they wouldn’t just shoot him up for no reason. Was he doing something to get their attention?”

Iffy nods. “Fishy was following their every move, watching them and taking pictures of all the evil things Blackwatch does. I was helping him too, and we both got some juicy info on them. Rounding up ponies, oppressing the masses, experimenting on infected, that sort of thing.”

“And Doctor Heart took your photos when she found them.”

Iffy’s eyes roll. “Only the ones I took that day. There’s a lab my brother set up here in the Yellow Zone. It’s got piles of photos of Blackwatch doing dirty deeds, and a bunch of spare cameras he used for his job.”

Cameras for a job? “Your brother was a photographer?”

“Yep, he was gunning to be the best in Manehatten,” Iffy says with a smile. “He taught me everything I know, like how to get the best shots with my camera, how to develop film, how to sneak around and find good spots to hide, everything.”

“Did he do journalism?”

“For the most part. He got into some tight situations while working for the newspaper. He almost busted a crime ring before they threatened to cut his head off. He should done it anyways, but no. He said he needed to look out for me, but that’s bull. I can look out for myself.”

Fish Eye had the right idea, stay out of trouble and stay alive. An even better idea would be to keep his little brother on a leash. Iffy won’t stop diving head first into trouble. “What about you? You sound like you’re good with cameras too.”

“I am, in fact I’m even better than Fishy when he was my age. And I’m not afraid to back down. I’ll find the craziest ways to get the best shot of the most secret things ponies have ever known. I’m thinking about becoming a private eye when I grow up.”

I glance at his flank, which has the cutiemark of a camera taking a picture of footprints. Huh, I didn’t see that on his flank before. “You have the cutiemark for it. Looks like you know what you’re going to do with your life.”

“You bet. I think I’ll start small, like exposing ponies cheating on their spouses, then I’ll build up a word for myself, get the more risky cases, like drug deals and mob bosses, and get rich off the investigation money. I’ll probably charge hourly.”

This kid definitely has his life planned out, right to the grave. No doubt his line of work is going to get him killed. Mob bosses don’t take too kindly to people intruding on their business.

“But that was before Blackwatch,” Iffy Sniff continues on. “Now that they’re here, I’m going to expose them to the world, show everyone what they’re really doing, and it’s going to be the story of the century. ‘Blackwatch, the most evil organization ever, exposed by a young colt named Iffy Sniff.’ That’s what I’ll do. I’ll take down Blackwatch for my brother, for everyone they’ve hurt. Those bitches won’t be breathing after I’m done with them.”

Again with the swearing. Apparently Fish Eye never taught him how to control his mouth. “And you’re going to do this all on your own?”

“Not any more. I got you,” he says, pointing at me, “You can tear up the Blackwatch Bitches with your claws, and I can get in deep and take pictures of what’s really going on. We’ll be the dream team, the brains and brawn, the Dixie Duo!”

I did not expect him to make a Dixie Danger reference. That comic series ended when I was in highschool. I don’t think he was even born yet. But as impressive as that reference was, it’s not going to sway me to his cause. “No.”

Iffy’s wings lock up and he drifts through the air next to me. “No? What do you mean no?”

“No, I’m not interested in taking down Blackwatch. All I want to do is find my friend, get out of this city, and wait for everything to blow over so I can reopen my scone shop.”

“But Blackwatch wants to kill you!” he says, throwing his hooves in the air. “They’re killing ponies every day. We have to stop them!”

“And I want to live my life without everything trying to kill me all the time. That’s not going to happen if I keep mingling with Blackwatch. They want to kill me, and I want nothing to do with them. All I have to do is hide out in Las Pegasus and let them forget about me.”

“They’re not going to go away. They’re going to stick around and keep the city under control. They’ll even try to take control of Equestria if they can, and then the entire world! They’ll never stop unless we do something.”

“Well, once the plague is gone, they’ll have no reason to be around, and they’ll go away.”

Iffy crosses his forelegs. “And if the plague never goes away?”

I shrug. “Then I’ll hide out until they forget about me. It’s a simple plan.”

“They’re not going to forget about you.”

“Sure they will, if I don’t bug them for a while.”

“Well, they’re not going to forget about you anytime soon. Look at the sky.”

I look up and behind me where Iffy is pointing. The clouds above are turning into their evening colors. There’s not much sunlight left for today. A few pegasi are flying around, but a couple grab my attention. They have bright blue eyes, and they’re looking right at me. Crap.

“Those Blackwatch pegasi are following you,” Iffy says. “And they’re going to keep following you and report everything you’re doing. They’re not going to stop until either you or they are dead.”

This is concerning. The blue-eye pegasi aren’t bothering to stay hidden, and they’re far enough away that they can avoid me if I try to get up close and attack them. Crap, if Iffy didn’t point them out, I would’ve led them right to the daycare.

“Blackwatch isn’t going to stop,” Iffy says, “not until we stop them ourselves.”

“Forget stopping Blackwatch,” I say, “I need to get rid of those pegasi.”

“I was wondering if you noticed them. They’ve been following you since you fell out of the airship.”

“Oh, now you tell me. Why didn’t you bring it up before?”

“Because I thought you knew already and had something planned. You’re a griffon walking in a crowd of ponies. A blind fruit-bat could pick you out from a mile away. You either have to have a genius plan ready to go or have to be plain stupid to not see how much of a bad idea that is.”

I let out a sigh. He’s just a colt, Gilda. It would be wrong to smack him upside the head. “Okay, here’s my plan. You get the heck out of here, and I’ll outrun the blue-eyes.”

“Not going to work,” Iffy says, shaking his head. “Even if you outrun those two, they got more patrolling the city. The others will radio back your location and keep an eye on you, no matter where you go.”

“Oh come on, I didn’t have this problem earlier today!”

“You weren’t carrying around a V.I.P. earlier today.”

This is scary. No, the blue-eyes aren’t scary. It’s the fact that a colt who is nowhere near the age to get out of flight school is smarter than me and knows why anything I do is a bad idea. That’s scary. What else did I miss today that Iffy could sniff out in a heartbeat.

“Okay, so running away isn’t going to work. Do you have a better idea?”

Iffy tilts his head. “Depends, are you going to help me take down Blackwatch?”

I run a claw down my face. “Sure, whatever. If you have a good idea to get out of this, then shoot.”

“I’ll help you,” Iffy says, sticking out a hoof, “but you got to shake on it.”

A hoofshake? Is he joking? “Shake on what?”

“That you’re going to help me take down Blackwatch.” He doesn’t look like he’s joking. He’s got a serious face on, a face I haven’t seen on him before. “Not just for me, for my brother too, and everyone else they’ve killed.”

I look at his hoof, and grab it with a claw and shake. “Sure,” I say, “I’ll help.” And then I’m going straight to Las Pegasus, but he doesn’t need to know that. “So what’s your idea? How do we get away from the eyes in the sky?”

“It’s easy. I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it.” I’m surprised I haven’t chained your muzzle to a pipe yet. “Can you still shapeshift into a pony?”

“Well, yeah, but they’ll see me do it out in the open.”

“Then don’t do it in the open. Do it while you’re hidden.”

“Where? There are only open streets around us. If we go into an alley, they’ll know I’ve changed just by looking at the only unicorn in the alley.”

“Really, you can’t think of anywhere to hide?” I shake my head, and he rolls his eyes. “We’re in Manehattan, for Luna’s sake. There are places all over to hide in. Just follow me and I’ll show you a good one.”

Iffy leads the way, and I follow. The sun’s gone now, and the only lights we have are the street lamps above us. Ponies are running around to try to get back to wherever they need to be. Curfew is upon them, I suppose.

I keep checking behind to see if those pegasi are still following us. Sure enough, I can see the a couple pairs of blue glowing dots looking down at us. Usually there are just two pairs, sometimes three. Once I saw four, but the forth flew away. How many pegasi does Blackwatch have up in the sky?

The itch on my back is still there. It’s too far for me to reach, especially with a full grown stallion on my back. Maybe a copper pipe will help me get that spot. There’s got to be a few pipes lying around.

I don’t know where Iffy is leading me. We’re going down a block, then we take a right, then two blocks more, than we cross the street and go right. After another block of leading me through the dark, Iffy stops in front of a large, ornate building.

“Here we are,” he says, “the local Spirit Temple.”

I cock an eyebrow. “A temple? Isn’t that a bit obvious.”

“It’s brilliant once you take a look inside.”

We enter through a large, open, wooden door. The inside is just as ornate as the outside, but it doesn’t have the same air of luxury the music hall does. Instead, it’s a more classical, and sorrow, feel. Candles are lit all over the walls, illuminating the stained-glass windows with various depictions of spirits and ponies moving to the afterlife. At the far end and center, there’s a tall, white pillar with markings and runes carved into it.

The temple floor is filled with benches, and there are a lot of ponies sitting on those benches. Some are hunched over and looking at the floor. Some are looking up at the roof with a dazed look on their faces. I can hear a lot of them crying softly, muttering quiet words that no one else should hear.

A Spirit Temple, a place for ponies to gather and mourn the ones they’ve lost. Griffons don’t have these. We set our dead on fire and drink booze in their memories, so this is a foreign concept for me. Ponies, however, feel the need to gather in one place to speak their thoughts to lost loved ones. The pillar is supposed to be a gateway or something for messages to travel across. Don’t ask me how it works. It just looks like a big rock to me.

“See, I told you this is perfect,” Iffy says in a quiet voice. “The Spirit Temples have been crowded lately, for obvious reasons. Curfew is coming up, so all these ponies will be leaving soon. You just have to shapeshift into a pony and we can hide in the crowd as everyone leaves.”

“Huh, I guess this is a good hiding spot.” I take a look around. No one is looking our direction. The pegasi didn’t follow us in, so they can’t see what we’re doing. This is a perfect time to shapeshift. “Okay Mister Gray Matter, is now a good time to change?”

“With no one looking at us and Blackwatch outside, yeah. Do it, Miss Pectoral.”

Huh, he got the Dixie Danger reference and played along with it. Maybe his brother had the comics and Iffy read those. With no one looking, my worms go to work and I shapeshift into Fruit Punch in a matter of seconds. With my reduced size, I lose the surface of my back and wings and Eureka flops over onto the floor. Is he dead? He’s been out for a while. His glasses are cracked, but he won’t need those.

Iffy Sniff stares at me with his mouth dropped. “Wow, I know you can do that, but it’s still amazing to watch.”

I grab Eureka with a foreleg and fling him over my shoulder. “Eh, it’s not that impressive,” I say in Fruit Punch’s voice. “I’m sure some unicorns can do the same thing. So now what, we wait the crowd out?”

Iffy nods. “Yeah, let’s go take a seat. They should be leaving soon.”

I follow the green pegasus over to one of the benches. He takes a seat next to me, and I plop Eureka on my other side. The mad scientist sits still for a moment, then he falls over and leans on my shoulder. A glop of his drool drips on my foreleg, and I wipe it off on his stomach. If anyone were to look, they would see a cute little family of three. It’s the perfect disguise.

“Have you been here much?” I ask, “You know, because of your brother and all.” It’s a touchy subject, but we’ve got time to kill. As long as Iffy’s not swearing or yelling at me to kill Blackwatch, I’m fine.

Iffy shakes his head. “Not really. I don’t actually believe in the whole ‘spirit message’ thing. It’s a load of guff. Even if it is real, I don’t think Fishy would be hanging out around a place like this in the afterlife. It’s not his style. It’s too clean.”

I can see that. The whole clean and serene thing makes this feel depressing. I’d rather go with the griffon style of ‘celebrate life by partying’ type of deal. “You know, you’re acting really mature about all of this, especially for your age. Doesn’t it faze you at all?”

Iffy shrugs. “My dad left last year, my mom’s a drunk bitch, and this whole month has been one disaster after another. Life has been forcing me to grow up for a while now. It’s either fight or die at this point. I choose to fight.”

The mare in front of me is whispering something fast, then she breaks down into tears. If there is anyplace to break down and cry, I guess this is the place to do it.

I cross my forelegs in front of me and rest my chin on the back of the bench. “I heard that a lot growing up, fight or die. Or it’s been more like fight or get the snot beaten out of you. Ponies seem oddly obsessed with that idea.”

One of the ponies up in the front benches gets up and walks out the temple. It’s getting close to that time.

Iffy looks up at me and tilts his head. “But you’re a griffon. Isn’t that what griffons are all about. Aren’t you supposed to be brave warriors who fight to the death?”

“Kind of.” I pause for a moment to think about it. I’ve seen the griffon warrior thing a lot here in Equestria, but it doesn’t sit right with me.

“No, it’s a different kind of fight or die,” I say. “The way ponies say it, they say it like it’s for a cause. They’re fighting for each other and the ideals they live by. The way griffons say it, we’re fighting for ourselves. We don’t care what happens to the other guy, just as long as we get out alive. The whole griffon warrior thing is just us being more violent than ponies.”

“So you fight for yourself even if that means running away?”Iffy asks.

“I suppose.” I say with a shrug. “Why die for something pointless when you can live another day?”

“But that’s stupid! That means you’re all cowards. How do you do the impossible when you won’t fight for it?”

I snort. “There’s a saying in Griffonstone, ‘don’t die for your treasure, have others die for you.’ My uncle loves to say that whenever he talks about money.”

“That won’t work. Ponies will realize you’re just using them and stop listening to you.”

I shrug again. “Isn’t that what happened during the Lunar Rebellion, ponies fought each other because the alicorn sisters weren’t sharing?” Iffy stays silent. “It doesn’t apply only to fighting pointless fights for other people. Say I go to Las Pegasus to wait for the plague to blow over. Equestria makes a cure, the plague and Blackwatch disappear, and I get to come in and open my sconeshop again.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then let the suicidal ponies fight or die to fix everything for you. If there are ponies out there like you who want to do so, then why should I stop them? Let them do their thing, and I’ll do mine.”

Before Iffy says anything, a pony in a white robe gets up at the front of the temple and says something about curfew time. All the ponies look up at him, and start making their way out of the temple. Some of them walk a normal pace, while other shamble along with their heads down and tears flowing down their faces.

We get up in the middle of the crowd. Iffy gets up first and walks with the crowd, keeping low to the ground to avoid attention. I grab Eureka and fling his foreleg over my shoulder and drag him along. I’m carrying him, but it looks like I’m helping my husband walk home on a broken leg. Well, he did lose a chunk of his leg, so he’d have trouble walking whether he’s awake or not.

The crowd pours out of the temple and disperses out into the night. I glance up and see the blue-eyes still flying around, but they don’t seem to be following me. They look like they’re searching through the crowd to pick up someone who looks suspicious. No luck for them. I’m leaving scott free.

We make it a few blocks down before I bother looking back. The pegasi are definitely not following us. We’ve dropped off the grid and can’t be found now. Good, hopefully I can get even luckier and not have to fight any more monsters tonight.

Gilda sense points me in the direction of Pinkie Pie, and Iffy seems to know where to go too. Iffy glances back at me every now and then, but we don’t say anything to each other.

It’s going to be a long, quiet walk back to the daycare.

Author's Notes:

"Smile at the camera!"