Micha barged through a grove of willow trees at full running speed. The heavy fronds hanging from the branches whipped at her face and snagged on her beak and jacket but she didn’t lose track of the kid running away from her by the banks of the ponds. It took all of her concentration not to trip on the roots that coiled around the trees at her feet, but she was gaining on the kid.

With the rhythmic thumping of her paws and claws against the grass, the distance that separated the older griffon from the chick steadily decreased from a hundred meters, to sixty, then thirty. Micha could feel the burning pain of strained muscles in her thighs as she pushed harder on her legs to catch up…

And then the kid just had to outwit her.

She thought she had managed to corner the little griffon when she started to run towards a small windmill built on an artificial hillock. Obviously she was wrong because the kid clambered up a flight of stairs on the exterior of the structure and used them as a launching ramp to catch some air under her wings and increase the distance that separated her from the Pole. That had Micha release a frustrated squawk because of how her heavy flak jacket prevented her from opening her wings. In a matter of seconds, the distance she had managed to gain on her quarry evaporated into nothing.

But she didn’t give up. She saw the other griffon veer south towards the opposite side of the park and she followed suit. She hoped the kid wasn’t clever enough to lead her away from her hideout, maybe if she kept it up long enough she could manage to corner her and then…

Well, bring her back to Amandine probably. You can’t just leave a kid unattended like that. Not with monsters around.

The chase led them to the edge of the park where the smaller griffon quickly snuck under the fence and ran for a block of buildings on the other side of the road. Frederik and Danny in the Defender tried to intercept her, but the 4x4 certainly wasn’t meant to race around the streets. Micha kept running after her across the street, her orange clad form passing her beleaguered colleagues in a blur.

The group of buildings the kid had ran off to formed a courtyard of sorts in the center, with lawns, benches, and a playground occupying the space next to a modern looking pavilion. Behind the kid, Micha saw her dive inside of a broken window next to the playground. In all her hurry, she jumped after the chick.

Not a bright idea. She just had enough time to grab the broken edge of the window to catch her fall. The window opened up to a three-story fall inside of what appeared to be the lobby of an underground mall. Bits of broken glass harmlessly dug in her Kevlar reinforced gloves as she held on and looked around for a way down.

Micha managed to grab onto a pipe next to the window and slide down to the ground with a low growl escaping her beak. The hall that greeted her opened in four different directions with shops all around. There was a circular staircase in the center of the hall, wrapping around a now dry fountain with plastic ferns. It connected to the pavilion she had seen way up above her, and there were some picnic tables and a lobby counter at its bottom.

The place was pretty dark, with the only light coming in from the windows and the staircase. The dusty, abandoned hallways quickly turned to pitch black the deeper she peered in. This struck her as odd, because despite the abandoned status of the building she was pretty sure there was still some current in the city’s power grid, what with the usual Northern European use of green energy.

Actually no, she doubted a kid would know how to flip the fuses, let alone locate the electrical cabinet.

Now to figure out where said kid had run off to… The bald eagle griffon’s head swiveled around to look for any possible hint of activity or even the telltale clicking sound of talons on the tiled floor. Everything inside was covered in a layer of dust… except… She could see an area where the layer was thinner, and the rays of sunlight streaming in highlighted dust particles in the air around the eastern wing of the mall. Quietly so as not to alert the younger griffon, Micha crept in that direction with her body as close to the ground as possible.

There were more hints of activity. Some of the fences protecting the storefronts had been broken open at a low height and some discarded bags of snacks and junk food marked out a path for her deeper inside the mall. Micha followed the path ahead of her, her sharp eyes scanning the murky darkness that surrounded her, mindful not to step on any of the trash littering the area lest she reveal her position.

Skylights pierced the roof at regular intervals, allowing some much needed light inside the mall and forming bright circles amidst all the darkness. She carefully circled around them so as not to make herself easier to notice while she kept following the trail left behind by the kid griffon. Bizarrely, the technique on how to stalk without making naturally came to her. Instincts? Most likely, but it was rather odd to notice now considering she was tracking down a member of her own species.

Eventually, Micha reached a cul-de-sac in the mall that was occupied by a toy store. She wasn’t even surprised the kid would use that as her lair.

There was a hole in the storefront’s fence, just slightly shorter than Micha was. She could see some fluorescent stickers marking its barely visible edges. A half-loaded garden wagon waited next to the entrance, its bed currently occupied by boxes of junk food, plush toys, and a toy lantern.

Disregarding the wagon, she crept through the hole on her belly, mindful not to have her gear snag on the jagged edges of the hole. What did the kid even use to make that? Her talons?

The inside of the toy store was lit dimly by a number of hand cranked lamps set up here and there on top of counters and aisles. It looked like a big store, but she would readily bet much of that was owed to the darkness inside. Micha stood up in front of the entrance hole and started looking around for the kid, now pretty sure she would find her here. There were hints of her presence all over the place ranging from opened toy boxes to piles of snacks on top of some shelves. She didn’t distance herself from the entrance just yet in case the younger griffon was waiting for that to sneak away.

Her eyes landed on a large pile of plush toys. Were it not for the telltale gleam of raptor eyes she would have mistaken the small chick staring back at her for one of the toys. Micha quirked her head to the side in curiosity. The kid didn’t appear angry or scared now… just a bit confused it seemed. She could see her cute little eyes study her intently, the gears in the mind of the younger griffon probably turning frenetically at the moment.

Micha didn’t move from her spot. She just sat down on her haunches and casually shrugged off her backpack.

“You run fast you know kid? Hard to keep up with you loaded like I am. This bag is kinda heavy you know?” She commented offhandedly in English as she gave her backpack a slap with the palm of her claw, carefully studying the kid’s reaction out of the corner of her eyes.

Not unexpectedly, the child didn’t appear to understand what she was saying. She forced herself to remember some basic sentences in Swedish she had learned last time she had been on vacation in the area. Now was not the time to dig around her bag for a dictionary, although…

With one free claw, Micha started feeling for a specific bag inside her backpack while she kept her eyes on the kid hiding among the plush toys. She could see her nervously clutching a lime green soft blanket in her talons, young eyes meeting hers in apprehension.

“Hej.” Micha tried. “Vad heter du?”

The small griffon just tilted her head and blinked at her.

Great, either she was too young to talk or she wasn’t even Swedish... not really much of a surprise in Malmo actually. What other nationalities were there in this town already? Arabs didn’t turn into griffons, but that’s about the only ethnicity she would expect there. A tourist maybe? No, not in May. Too early in the season to visit with kids.

Plan B then.

The claw she had in her backpack grasped at a sealed plastic bag she kept with her. Her snack stash. The sealed bag was there for a reason, herbivores around the crew tended to react badly to that particular smell.

It being smell of dried meat. Micha knew her own palate had changed after her transformation to favor a more protein-rich diet (though she could still process veggies and starch, she just didn’t need them quite as much) and as such her already present fondness of cured meat had only increased. It was such a shame that they had to spice up their meat all the time, but she was pretty sure the herbivores would get used to the smell at some point.

Another thing she was pretty damn sure of was that the kid griffon that had survived on junk food for... however long she had been in Malmo, would just love some kielbasa from the Second Officer’s personal stash. Before the Event Micha had always made a point of resupplying her stash from her favorite butcher whenever she went back to Gdansk. She was nearing the end of it now, but maybe this kid deserved a share.

The chick visibly perked up the moment she pulled out the bag and opened it, a hungry look appearing on her features and a soft purr escaping her throat.

“Want some?” Micha asked, holding out a sausage for the kid to see.

The small griffon stood up hesitantly. A couple of the plush toys she had been hiding under slid off of her tiny back, allowing Micha to look at her in more detail despite the darkness surrounding them. She was wearing a tattered white t-shirt with ‘Andy’ printed on its front and back. From the looks of it, the garment hadn’t been cleaned in a while.

She could also see how emaciated the kid actually was. Her ribs were clearly visible beneath the fur and feathers around her midsection, and the very hungry look in her eyes told her the junk food clearly didn’t satisfy the needs of a growing griffon. Her plumage was unkempt, with bent feathers sticking out at odd angles.

And she smelled. Badly.

Micha ignored the pungent smell of a griffon with poor hygiene and instead gave the kid an encouraging nod as she slowly crept out of her hiding spot, still keeping her blanket and one dolphin plushy close to her tucked under one of her wings. She tensely approached the older bald eagle griffon, belly held close to the ground and muscles taut, ready to scamper off at a moment’s notice.

Micha still occupied the only escape route.

With an encouraging smile from the Polish Officer, she snatched the offered sausage and retreated back to a safe distance before sniffing at it hesitantly.

“It’s good. Will taste better than a pigeon I think.” Micha told her in Polish. For all it was worth she might as well speak her own native language.

The sausage was devoured in seconds, much to Micha’s amusement when the kid let out a cute hiccup but came back for more. With a small chirp and a pointed talon towards Micha’s backpack, she managed to get a few more sausages out of her stash, her own need for food overcoming her fear of the unknown, much bigger griffon. She laid down on her belly to enjoy the meat and drink greedily from Micha’s canteen for a moment before she rubbed herself against the Officer like a housecat and, with a low purr escaping her throat, fell asleep from the food-induced drowsiness.

“Cute kid.” Micha’s beak parted in a wide smile.

“You kidnapped a kid.”

“Did not! She was abandoned!”

After careful maneuvering with a sleeping griffon on her back and the kid’s small stash of belongings with her (just a couple toys, the dolphin plushy and the blanket really), Micha had managed to get her in the Defender and back to Amandine without too much trouble save for a bit of uncertainty when she met the rest of Micha’s team. Thankfully, having some good food after however long she had had to survive on snacks made her drowsy enough that she didn’t throw too much of a fuss.

“You don’t even know her name.” Vadim pointed out.

The small griffon was merrily snoozing away inside one of Amandine’s cabins after Vadim had given her a brief medical inspection. Except for her being in need of a damn good scrubbing and a steady diet, she appeared to have gotten off her predicament fairly lightly. The two Officers were just outside her cabin discussing what would become of her.

“Andy, probably. I mean, it’s written on her t-shirt.” She told with a shrug of her wings.

“That nasty rag she was wearing? Yes, I read that before I tossed it in the biohazard bin. Doesn’t mean that’s her actual name.”

“Well, we just need to check if she responds to Andy then.”

“Do you even know what language she speaks?” Vadim asked.

“Nope.” Micha shook her head. “Not Polish for sure, and not English or Swedish either. Then again… it’s Malmo we’re talking about.”

Vadim rolled his eyes as he tucked his medical satchel under one wing.

“Look… A merchant vessel isn’t the place to raise a kid.”

“Neither is an abandoned city.” She waved a claw towards the cabin’s door. “I mean, you’ve seen her awake just as I have. She’s almost feral for Christ’s sake!”

The Third Officer let out a tired sigh.

“Mich’… I will back you up when you decide to bring it up to the Captain that you want us to keep her. I believe you when you tell me there weren’t any parents around but… the rest of the crew…” He hesitated.

“The rest of the crew what?”

“Come on now, don’t be daft.” He pointed a talon at her. “Half bald eagle…” Then at himself. “…half cougar…” Before pointing it at the closed door next to them. “Half bald eagle, half cougar. You catch my drift?”

“They wouldn’t…”

“Totally would, Boris at least I can guarantee.” He assured her. “And this will probably raise some eyebrows on the Rhine too.”

Micha deflated slightly, a resigned growl escaping her beak. Vadim padded over to her wrapped a wing around her side.

“I’m not saying you did the wrong thing. Just saying this ain’t gonna be easy.”

Micha instinctively pressed herself closer to what her brain kept calling her ‘mate’. She nipped at his neck feathers but didn’t say anything.

“I just need to ask you one thing…” Vadim added in a whisper. “Is this about the kid you had coming before the Event?”

“What if it is?” She asked defensively.

Vadim threw her a sympathetic look.

“Nothing wrong at all. It hurts doesn’t it?”

Micha allowed herself to bury her head in his neck.

“She was near full term… I was going to be a parent Vad’. And now… I just can’t bring myself to abandon a kid like that you know? I have to live with the fact that my own flesh and blood will grow up without a father, but maybe I can at least help the one kid?”

“I understand.” Vadim nodded. “Kid’s gonna be out for a while, want to go out for some flight training, blow off some steam? Captain’s busy anyway; we don’t have to tell him just yet and I’ve been cooped up all day studying medicine.”

“You’re on.” Micha replied with a small smile.

It still surprised Vadim how easily he could fall into a relationship like that with what used to be his best friend. Not that he’d ever complain, it somehow felt more natural and fulfilling than any of his former relationships.

That and the female griffon did have a nice rear end to look at.

Whatever the buck was going on on this planet, they definitely hadn’t been prepared for it.

Doctor Sidereal found herself panting from magical exertion in front of the body of a particularly vicious tatzlwurm that had crossed their path, its carcass bearing scorch marks from her spells as well as broken bolts courtesy of Gust’s hunting crossbow.

They had been traversing the Swedish countryside just fine minutes ago, following a road next to Lake Vattern that crossed through numerous abandoned fields when the creature had burst out of the ground and immediately started attacking them. The non-combatants in their group of five had immediately scattered and galloped towards the barn of a deserted farmstead, leaving the trained mage and the crossbowcolt to deal with the threat.

Sidereal knew she was lucky. Rogue tatzlwurms usually required a full hunting party to take down. That one…

Her thoughts were interrupted by Gust landing by her side, the pegasus’ usually eccentric demeanor replaced by cold professionalism.

“The others should be here in a minute ma’am, no casualty. Are you injured?” He asked her as he checked the status of his crossbow.

“Just a bit tired, thank you.” Sidereal said. “Say, you’re an Everfree Ranger right?”

Gust nodded.

“What can you tell me about that one?” She asked, motioning towards the carcass with her horn.

The gambeson wearing Pegasus frowned.

“A juvenile for sure. The darker crest on its head says it’s from deep in the Everfree, probably the southern grove though the wavy scale pattern around its eyes could also mean it’s from Whitetail Woods. We’re lucky it’s a young one, older specimens have much more resistant scales. What’s odd is… at that age it should be with its broodmates, not alone in the countryside…” He explained.

“Or on an alien planet. I don’t think this planet is supposed to have Everfree monsters inhabiting it.”

“I don’t know about this planet but that…” The stallion waved his hoof towards the carcass. “… That’s definitely an Equestrian breed. Weirder even is that tatzlwurms need a lot of soil to live in, they don’t like rocky areas, they can’t dig properly and it hurts their teeth. If you look down the hole it came from you can clearly see the dirt layer is too thin for it to thrive.”

“So what is it doing here?” Radiant Course asked as he landed behind them. The team’s second Pegasus served as their navigator and technical expert.

To say he was out of his league with human tech would have been the understatement of the year. Luckily, the grey coated Pegasus with a black mane seemed to take it in stride.

“No idea.” Gust shrugged. “Nopony ever told me during the pre-expedition briefings there were honest-to-Celestia monsters on Earth. Critters? Sure, but no monster.”

“At least we’re lucky we had an Everfree Ranger along.” Cheese Cake said as she trotted around the dead tatzlwurm to take a look.

“We are. But the other teams…” Sidereal whispered. She could swear one of the returning teams on the first wave had come back babbling about a troll. Nopony really believed them at the time, and the report had probably been lost in bureaucratic limbo…

“Hey! I found something!” Cheese cried out from the other side of the carcass.

The lanky unicorn was pointing her hoof at… some sort of sigil burned into the flesh of the dead monster. The runic symbols were of a type she didn’t recognize, but it definitely didn’t come from anywhere in Equestria, or any allied country for that matter. The symbol formed the general shape of a circle with thirteen different runes at irregular intervals on its border. A bigger one occupied the center of the sigil, with lines connecting it to the smaller ones that were themselves connected to each other by several lines as well.

She immediately pulled a notepad out of her saddlebag and set to copying it. It had been clearly stated to her that her role on this expedition was as magical support to the Doctor and as their scribe.

“Anything you recognize Doc?” Pulp, the group’s only Earth Pony asked.

“No. Runic magic isn’t used in Equestria, and anywhere else in the world its use is clearly –and obviously may I say- forbidden on living creatures.”

“A rogue mage then?”

“For all this tells us, yes.” She nodded. “I… have no idea what the purpose of this sigil is. You’d have to ask foreign mages for that, and even then I suspect they’d have difficulties with it.”

“What makes you think that?” Pulp asked

“For what little I know about runes, they usually stay similar to their nation’s local alphabet.” The Doctor explained. “That doesn’t match any civilization I know of.” She waved a hoof at the symbol.

“What if the locals did it?” Radiant said.

“Disregarding the fact that they’re not supposed to have access to magic because it kills them?” Pulp reminded him.

“Fair point. So what do we do?” Cheese asked, stowing her notepad back inside her saddlebags with her telekinesis.

“We keep going.” Sidereal stated firmly. “Tonight I’ll send a report of the engagement, but going back and forth from here to Equestria costs too much energy. If we go back now, the entire expedition is as good as scrapped.”

“What if we find more monsters?” Cheese gulped.

“Then we have our dear Ranger to protect us.” The red unicorn said glancing towards Gust. “I believe if he can somehow traverse the Everfree without getting chased by each and every monster there, then he can help us here?”

Gust nodded grimly.

“How far is it to the returnees you detected Doc?”

“We’re halfway there. A big group too, too big to call off the expedition.” Her eyes flashed white for an instant when she called up a spell of mage sight for a second to ensure they were still galloping along the right track.

“What’s the size of the group?” Pulp asked.

“More than five dozens.” Sidereal’s eyes returned to their original color.

“Wasn’t the biggest group ever found less than thirteen?” He asked.

“Eleven to be precise, Uzbeks they called themselves.” She nodded before clenching her eyes. The magic field enveloping this planet was completely different from Equestria’s. Its energies were still swirling wildly, much more chaotically than she had ever seen back home. “Cheese, did you draw the sigil? I’ll need it tonight for my report.” She asked, one hoof pressed against her throbbing temple.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good. Good. Radiant, you still got our path planned?”

He did. The grey coated Pegasus steered them south towards the cluster of minds Sidereal had detected so far away. They kept following the edge of Lake Vattern for a while, its dark blue waters shimmering on their right and rolling hillocks on their left as they trotted on. Small red painted farmsteads dotted the rural landscape on either side of the road they were following.

The rough black asphalt of the road they were following still amazed the ponies. It forced them to keep to the side of the road to avoid chipping their hooves, but the sole feat of laying down such hard road on the entire network just for their self-propelled carts was a feat of engineering already considered excessive by Equestrian standards.

That humans could seemingly lay down work of that quality on almost every single road they had seen was not only impressive, but it also casually made a mockery of modern Equestrian infrastructure. Only a few large cities could afford roads like that, and even then it was just the likes of Manehattan, Canterlot and Fillydelphia.

And that wasn’t even addressing the extent of the wire poles they could see crossing the landscape and following the roads.

Just how good were human engineers exactly?

Later in the evening,

Dilip leaned back in his chair and looked directly at the griffon couple sitting in front of his desk. And there was also the kid griffon (cub? Chick? You’re never too sure with chimeras) sitting between them, currently distractedly nibbling on a piece of beef jerky and looking around his office with eyes filled with curiosity. The two Officers had actually managed to make her presentable to Amandine’s Captain, though the oversized clothes she was wearing clearly came from one of their wardrobes.

“This isn’t really a choice you’re bringing me you know?” The pariah dog told them before letting out a long sigh. “I always hated that kind of fake choice that forces your hand anyway.” He muttered.

“Sir?” Micha cocked her head.

“Not your fault Przemo.” Dilip shook his head. “You did the right thing by bringing her. I just felt like complaining because really, what can I do beside approve your choice? I’d be a pretty bad person were I to order you to abandon this child. Does she have a name?”

“Andy apparently, though I have no idea what it’s a short for.” Micha told the Captain. “Vadim did run a quick medical checkup on her, she appears to be healthy, if a bit underweight.”

“And how old is she exactly?” He asked, staring directly at the child.

The little griffon stared directly back at the dog in wonder, the red feathers surrounding her eyes disturbingly similar to Micha’s green ones.

“We don’t know for sure.” Vadim said. “She doesn’t talk, but she moves around alright. Three years old maybe?” He shrugged.

“So you really haven’t found much about her. Regardless, she may stay on board, but this ship isn’t meant to ferry kids around. Any moment she slips out of the accommodation could be one where she gets hurt because of heavy machinery. You two shall be her caretakers. Now, I don’t ask you to be the ones to keep an eye on her all the time, but make sure someone does, understood?”

“Aye Captain.” Both griffons said at once.

“And make sure she gets dressed properly too.” He said, eyeing the ill-fitting clothes the child was wearing. “Now, that’s one thing out of the way. Do you two remember what I said about flying when we reappeared?”

Micha and Vadim threw each other a sideways glance.

“So you do remember.” He continued calmly. “Good, I was worried about the state of your memory for an instant. I must say, I’m disappointed by your actions. Yours in particular surprise me Przemo. I thought you were more conscious of safety procedures than that.”

“Sir!” She tried.

“I’m not done yet.” Dilip raised a paw to stop her. “We are not in a position where we can afford to have casualties, in particular if such a casualty happens to be my Medical Officer considering the current status of Doctor Delacroix.” He said giving Vadim a pointed look. “But I’m not a stubborn person. So why didn’t you two try to change my mind with proper form? Neither of you is alien to the concept of risk assessment nor of preventive measures as far as I know.”

The two griffons in front of him had the presence of mind to lower their heads in shame.

“I can understand you two wanting to try out your wings, and if the cameras showed me correctly so did Boris. What I don’t understand is… whatever the fuck you two were thinking when you started this.” He said with a wave of his paw.

“We did take measures. Kept a radio on claw, fashioned a landing pad…” Micha began.

“Then why didn’t you just come to me with the proper paperwork instead of sneaking around behind my back?” Dilip cut her off. The pariah dog pinched his muzzle in frustration. “Whatever… You do understand I can’t let this slide? The dragons came to me with ideas to safely exercise their fire breath, so have the hippogriffs for their aquatic shape and the sphinxes for both their telekinesis and the paralyzing breath…” The dog stopped talking for a second to serve himself a glass of water which he immediately gulped down. “Punitive actions are in order.”

“I understand.” Vadim nodded softly.

Dilip twirled a pencil in his paw as he looked at the two in front of him, and at the smaller griffon that was now wondering why the mood had gone down so suddenly. Not that he could be too heavy handed considering the amount of work that needed to be done around the docks.

That being said, flying…

He put down the pencil and brought his two paws together.

“I won’t be too harsh, but this better not happen again in the future alright? You’re both on laundry and kitchen duty for the next three weeks, ask Farkas to get your tasks from her. You tell Boris he’s included as well.” He paused. “In addition, I want you both to prepare a refresher briefing for the rest of the crew on our safety procedures and the means that can be used to set up non-routine tasks. Once you’re done with that… how good have you gotten at flying?”

“I beg your pardon sir?” Micha asked quizzically.

“Flying.” He said, making a flapping motion with his paws. “How good are you?”

“At the moment we’re just starting to learn how to retain our altitude and maneuver properly around containers. Gliding and landing are fine on the other err… claw.”

“That will be good enough for now. I want a flight training program for all winged species on my desk no later than tomorrow evening, copy?” He ordered.

“Captain?” Vadim quirked his head.

“Might as well get a benefit out of your initiative. If we can profit from the sphinxes’ telekinesis or the hippogriffs’ aquatic shape, then we can find some use for flyers as well. You both will be the instructors. Any objections?”

“No Captain.”

“Good.” The pariah dog waved one paw in a dismissing gesture. “Now get out of my sight.”

The two griffons nodded and left without a word, ushering the child he had just put under their care towards the door.

Alejandro was right though. They did make a cute couple. As long as their relationship didn’t hinder the workings of the vessel he wouldn’t step in. Still, a shame he had lost that bet. The Spaniard had really taken quite a chunk out of his liquor stash.

In the center of Copenhagen was a large park with carefully grown gardens that housed several of the city’s largest museums. Most of the gardeners’ work was now undone by time as roots crept through the pavement of the numerous small paths that allowed visitors to have a stroll through the area. The gardens weren’t completely overgrown yet, but the sight that greeted the incoming convoy of sailors would have had the former gardeners tear their hair out in horror.

Of the many museums in the vicinity, two were the center of the sailors’ attention: the SMK, and Rosenborg castle. Incidentally, both just happened to be very close to each other in the near center of the park. They first stopped the convoy of four vehicles –two lorries with reefer containers on their trailers and two armed unimogs- in front of the national art museum.

The structure was rather imposing from up close: a large staircase marked its entrance in the middle with its door nestled behind a line of white stone pillars which rose high above visitors. Its sturdy base supported walls made out of yellowish bricks interrupted at regular intervals by bas-reliefs inserted in the stonework. Its windows rose high and tall before trading place with a line of sculptures that connected the façade to the roof.

Just above the main door, the pillars supported an arch which had the text ‘Statens Museum for Kunst’ displayed proudly in golden letters.

Geert was pretty sure the style was neoclassical.

The scarlet macaw stepped off her struck with a barely concealed wince. Her hip may have been getting better, but that didn’t mean it was painless yet. She had traded her crutches for a walking cane (and a healthy dose of painkillers every morning too), now able to put some weight on her bad leg. The moment her feet were on the ground, she reached for a pocket in her coveralls with her free claw and stuck a cigarette in her beak.

With the amount of work they had been stuck with during the last few days, she damn well needed the nicotine.

Geert walked over to the lead truck of the convoy, the white UN unimog in which she knew the Captain was riding with Artyom and Sandra. The Captain lowered his window when he saw the parrot approach.

“Need a repeat on the plan?” Dilip asked her.

“Negative sir. My half of the convoy stays here, priority towards paintings and ancient art, non-paintings come second, last order of priority for modern art. Correct?” She asked.

“You got that right De Vries. Report via radio on your progress; warn me every time you bring back a full truck to the terminal. Copy?”

“Aye Captain.” She nodded before walking back to her truck.

Seconds later, the lead unimog and one of the lorries moved off towards the castle to scour it for important art pieces. The Captain should have an easy time figuring out what to pick with Sandra on his team working as his own personal guide.

Geert only had a guidebook to assist her. Not that finding important paintings in the country’s national art gallery should prove particularly difficult. Hell, there was even a worn out banner on the façade of the building displaying names like Picasso and Rembrandt.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ivan approach behind her, the osprey griffon having been assigned to her team as second-in-command.

“Large museum.” She told Geert.

“Yeah we won’t be doing this in one trip for sure.” The parrot nodded. “You got someone to watch the trucks yet?”

“Engine cadet from the Rhine on overwatch in the ‘mog.” The female griffon said, pointing her talon towards a teal furred unicorn stallion on top of the truck’s cabin. “Where did you get a walking cane anyway?”

“Shat it out this morning. Hella painful.”

To say the interior of the castle surprised Dilip would have been an understatement. The Indian had allowed himself to be fooled by the seemingly simple exterior of the building that had a red brick structure supported by grey stonework all the way up to the green copper sheets of the turrets that towered above the decorative moat.

The castle was really more of a palace.

Every single square meter of its interior was richly decorated; from artfully molded ceilings that bore paintings mimicking the Sistine Chapel to tapestries hanging off the walls that must have dated back to before the rise of the Old Masters.

Honestly it was even a bit overwhelming.

With the rest of his team guarding the vehicles, the Captain had Sandra lead him and Artyom through the twisting halls of the palace. It wasn’t the batpony’s first visit of the building, and she happily chattered about the history of the palace as they walked on towards the treasury where the crown’s jewels were safely stored. They certainly wouldn’t be the only thing they brought back from the palace considering the wealth of treasures the dog could see all around him. Hell, he doubted they would be able to load everything: most of the ancient furniture and moldings would have to be left behind, maybe even the throne.

Eventually, the three of them stopped in front of a thick silvery vault door at the bottom of a staircase. Pale white LED lights illuminated the space, which, from its modern appearance, was a recent addition to the palace’s structure.

“…so they put the most valuable pieces below in this vault.” Sandra explained. “We just need to find where the panels are to open it, most likely in the upper levels above the throne room and the galleries. They’re used as storage for archives and the less impressive pieces; they weren’t open to the public. The controls ought to be around there-ish.”

“Understood. Captain, shall I go get the others to try and locate them?” Artyom asked.

Dilip idly noted how… hungrily his bosun appeared to be eyeing some of the golden decorations around the halls. He must have read the Russian’s expression wrong.

“Please do. Also start looking for anything they may have on stowage precautions, I don’t want all this to be damaged during transport.”

“Aye Captain.” The blue dragon nodded firmly before walking back towards the entrance.

Dilip turned his attention back towards the dark purple batpony that barely reached his waist in height.

“I trust someone took the time to explain you the… finer details behind our so-called art preservation initiative.”

“Sri did.” Sandra said.

“And? You know our actual intentions now. It’s not exactly something we do out of charity.”

“The motive hardly matters.” She shook her head. “Whether you’re doing it out of the kindness of your heart or for the sake of preserving your own ship, the art is still going to wind up in a secure place to survive the test of time. That is what matters.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t throw much of a fuss upon being told that.”

“Disappointed maybe.” She snorted, one ear flicking slightly. “But I’m not naïve Captain, that’s how the world goes. People donate to charities knowing they will get tax deductions, and in this case the ‘deductions’ happen to be manufactured parts. A good deed done for profit doesn’t make it a bad deed, but it does incentivize people to be good.”

Dilip raised a furry brow at her remark, but didn’t add to it.

The two of them walked back up the stairs to the gallery and milled around while the rest of the team sought how to get the vault open and started loading the first batch of tapestries in their truck. It really was a shame they couldn’t save the moldings and carved marble that decorated the halls, but such were their limitations. They could only make sure the interior of the building would last a bit longer by closing everything once they left to temporarily protect it from the weather, but that was about it. Even most of the antique furniture would have to stay behind.

“Captain, if I may ask. All the humanitarian supplies we loaded the other day, and the containers… Is there an ulterior motive behind it as well?” Sandra asked.

Dilip stopped in front of the throne, paws crossed behind his back, staring thoughtfully at the piece of furniture.

“That is correct Miss Jensen. The idea mostly came from Captain Gerig, but we want to keep the industry alive. If we can kickstart colonies with the supplies, then we can connect them to trade routes and benefit from the production surplus to keep our ships going. It really is as simple as that… as Amandine’s Captain it is my prime concern that she and her complement be kept operational. Speaking of which, I may have a job for you.”

“Do tell.” She stated calmly, trotting up to his side.

“As you and everyone in the fleet should know by now, we have gained knowledge of some colonies around the Americas. Nevertheless, I need a tech-savvy person, or mare in your case, to make use of the satellite services to locate more.”

“What kind of services are we talking about?”

“Satcom tracking, satellite pictures, and of course listening in on the radio waves. Anything that may help to locate more survivors. I trust this falls in the realm of your own faculties? Last I heard you could even overhear radio chatter with your own ears.”

“I can, indeed. Might need a proper workstation for that.”

“Just ask Schmitt for one once we get back, ok? You may even make it a fully fledged radio station as long as you don’t use the bridge’s antennas.”

“Will do Captain.” The mare nodded with a smile.

She did take the job at the radio station in Lyngby with hopes of later progressing to entertainment radio. She just might have a couple ideas for that… once they located an audience.

They eventually found how to open the vault somewhere in the upper floors. Artyom came back to them twirling a set of keys in his claws whilst the sealed vault door let out a hissing noise as the airtight room was finally opened. With a heave, the blue dragon pushed the heavy vault door inward, finally revealing the reason behind them coming to Rosenborg castle in the first place.

The room that greeted them was fairly dark, with the only light coming from LED lamps inside the reinforced display cases holding the crown’s jewels. The rest of the vault had its wall painted dark blue so that all attention would be focused on the jewels and gemstones on display. A few of the sailors that had come down to witness the opening of the vault let out impressed whistles at the sight of the gleaming stones and precious metal laid out before them.

As for Artyom and Dilip…

The moment they laid eyes on the gemstones, both felt a deep yearning well up in their head. An instinct that screamed at them to seize the stones for themselves, for their hoard. The compulsion quickly washed away their conscious mind, to be replaced by raw instinct.

Dilip’s pupils shrank down to pinpricks, muzzle parted slightly and ears raised high. Inside his head, a great battle started between the Indian’s willpower and the feral might of the instincts the transformation had imparted unto him. The beast within his mind reeled against its bonds as the Captain fell down on his knees mutely, eyes drilling holes in the crown in the center of the room. Or rather, the enormous rectangular sapphire in its headband.

Now, Dilip would never dare call himself the most pious of Hindu (curse beef for tasting so damn good), but he did keep to several practices to make up for his own downfalls. Meditating everyday in front of the altar in his quarters was one such action he had sworn himself to do. Mustering all of his mental might, the pariah dog forced himself to tear his eyes away from the sapphire and closed them. With his tail lashing wildly behind him, he started repeating a mantra under his breath.

His mind was a bulwark against which the feral force inside him crashed relentlessly in an attempt at seizing control of his body. He would not allow that, not this day, nor ever. At every utterance of the mantra, he felt the force abate slightly as the mental wall he was erecting in the confines of his being grew stronger. He shut out everything that was going on beyond his own body, vaguely hearing one sharp screeching sound before his world reduced itself to his mind and the feral dog that apparently resided deeper inside of his head.

My mind is mine, and mine alone. None shall take it away from me.

He could vaguely see it, one twisted version of his own new body circling menacingly inside of the mental prison he had just conjured, walking on all four like a savage. From time to time, the creature lashed out at its prison, testing its restraints, however unsuccessful that was. Dilip kept repeating his mantra for a few more minutes before he deemed the mental prison strong enough to withstand its assaults and allowed himself to drift back to the conscious world.

This is my head, poodle, what made you think you could barge in and take over?

His tail had gone still now, but not after brushing quite a bit of dust off the ground he noticed distastefully.

The sight that greeted him was quite chaotic. There was a broken display case in the middle of the room, bearing claw marks around the torn glass, and shards littering the floor all around it. Artyom was at its bottom, the blue dragon now laying on his back amidst the broken glass and clutching his head in pain.

For some reason, he had a gold chain poking out of the corner of his maw.

“Sitrep.” He said in as collected a manner as he could manage, slowly standing up and casually brushing off the dust on his knees.

A sphinx approached him from behind, Thanasis.

“Artyom just lost his shit the moment he saw the jewels. Rended the display case open and swallowed a necklace before Jensen here knocked him out with… some kind of sonic attack.” He explained.

“Sonic what?”

“She screeched at him so hard he collapsed, sir.”

Dilip turned an inquisitive look towards the batpony.

“Basically yeah, I just did that.” She shrugged sheepishly.

That didn’t explain magical lizards eating gemstones and precious metals, nor bipedal dogs being plagued by instinctual hoarding compulsions. Dilip just let out a tired sigh and ordered his bosun to be carted back to the trucks. Poor guy probably didn’t have the mental discipline the Captain had built over the course of hundreds of hours spent meditating every evening.

Now to correct that…

Later that day after sunset, one lone female griffon was jogging around the docks. The peregrine falcon griffon bore three violet stripes on either side of her head and had a snow leopard feline half.

To her shipmates, she was known as Anton, formerly a male Ukrainian from the Rhine’s engineering department and now a still very much pissed off female griffon. As if changing species wasn’t enough, now she had to deal with a changed gender that apparently came with changed sexuality as well. That had been particularly unpleasant to discover, and she still found herself burning through several packs of cigarettes a day to cope with it.

She had changed from the Rhine’s usual ‘uniform’ white coveralls with the green stripes to a hastily refitted black track suit (more like a regular suit with a tail hole she had torn using her claws, the result accidentally wound up a lot more form-fitting than she’d have liked). Her steel-toed boots had been left by the gangway when she exited the Rhine before she took off running along the quays.

Whether she was running to get acquainted to the still unfamiliar body or to burn off some of the stress she had built up over the course of the last week, she still had to determine. She knew she could have used the treadmill inside the barge carrier’s gym… but fresh air and a bit of solitude away from the rest of the crew couldn’t hurt.

Sharp talons clicked in tandem with the soft thud of her paws against the rough concrete of the quays as she kept running. She soon started to feel the familiar burning of exertion in her muscles as her mind automatically completed the running motion for her. She didn’t block the instinct; she just let it happen and watched her speed instantly increase. God knows how hard it would have been to achieve the simplest of tasks had they not had these when they reappeared. Most of her shipmates blocked them.

She knew better.

Her primal mind going through the motions for her allowed the griffon to slowly work her way through her issues.

Like how she kept noticing the other male griffons ogling her and her hindquarters whenever they thought she wasn’t looking. That alone would have been enough to make her blood boil, but of course she had caught herself sneaking glance at their forms in the gym, the very reason why she chose to go jog outside. The thought of her own libido being her enemy was not particularly pleasant, much less when she realized that the nudes she had of her girlfriend now completely failed to get a rise out of her.

Not that there was anything left to rise.

She could look at the face in the pictures in longing, but love? Not anymore.

With a frustrated growl, she came to a halt on the opposite side of the terminal. Water lapped softly at the quays below her, with just enough wind to ruffle her feathers softly. She plopped down on her belly and stared down at the silvery reflection of the moon against the wavelets.

Every priest she remembered from back home in Ukraine kept saying God was kindness.

She snorted.

Hard to believe. If God was kind, he had a weird way of showing it. First a war to ravage her home, then ripping away most of the world’s population, rob them of their own gender, throw some monsters in the mix and of course make sure they aren’t even human anymore.

Tough love eh.

Her musing was interrupted by two red orbs crossing her gaze. She froze instantly.

Unbeknownst to her, a foreign mind prodded her own and started digging through her own memories. The alien consciousness wrapped itself around her resentment towards both her own government and Russia’s, conjuring images from her memory of mobs going at each other over a split nation.

Anton fell unconscious. She would awaken minutes later with no memory of the event wondering why she fell asleep in the first place.

As for the creature, it sank back down below the waves with a wicked smile on its muzzle. It had just found the tool it needed to sow the seeds of chaos.

After all, sailors always had been her species’ main dish.

Author's Notes:

When you think about it griffons can be kind of confusing with the cat/bird thing. Hell, we can't even agree on how to spell gryphon, griffin, or whatever else, let alone whether a male is a drake or a tom, or a female a hen or a queen.

Personally, I'd like to think Equus would have multiple griffon cultures with different approaches to the issue depending on the region they inhabit. By which I mean, some would veer more towards feline influences, others more towards avian influences in their culture.

The ones in Griffonstone would probably be more on the avian side, which is even more influenced by the cultural impact of pegasi from Cloudsdale.

Put a griffon city-state near Abyssinia however? Or near sphinxes? Bam, feline-influenced culture.

Anyway folks, catch you next week for a big turn of events.