"Did you bring it, mon ange?" asked the mare as she sidled up next to him. She had just finished a painting, a beautiful work of art if she did say so herself. Most of her work went to the market for sale to raise funds for the Fellowship, but this one was a private commission for a wealthy patron. The Daughter had said it was fine, as long as she tithed on it. Still, it had been a hard piece, and the artist needed to mellow out.

"Yup." He held up a bag and rustled its contents. "Just cut these leaves myself." The earth pony grinned. "Sure you don't want to save it for the big event tonight?"

"It's going to be bigger than you know," she whispered as they trotted along together. "I heard The Daughter has something special up her sleeve, we might even fulfill The Ritual!"

The stallion raised an eyebrow. "Woah, if that's true we won't need these at all. We'll be too busy spreading the good vibes and puffin' the ashes of the oppressors." A coy grin crossed his muzzle. "In that case, it'd be a shame to waste them..."

"May as well put the fruits of your labor to good use, no?" she giggled. They stepped out of the stairwell and onto the ground floor. "Come, it's just this way." The two of them had met because of needs. She needed to relax after painting, and he needed a mare that could understand him. They had started as smoking companions, but drifted closer together over the months. He was a grower, raising the best herbs and making them into the good stuff they sold to street-pushers. She used her magic to make things of beauty, and the Daughter trusted her with some minor mystical secrets. Both were united by the ties of the Fellowship, laboring as equals under the Daughter's wise gaze. The mare urged him to move a little faster, her body craving the release he carried.

"Easy girl, I'm a soldier for peace, not a track star!"

"Oh, mon chéri, a soldier? You ran and hid when those strung out gang members attacked two months ago," she laughed. "I had to do all the fighting for you."

He blushed. "Didn't have a heater then." The stallion grinned at her. "Any of them gangers get stupid ideas again, I'll turn 'em into fertilizer." They were all soldiers of the Great Glow here, well almost all. Everypony had to have their inner sparks ready to fight for the Daughter, for a day was coming when they would dethrone all those who had pushed them down. Those who had lived in squalor for so long would strike down the greedy, and peace would flood the land forevermore!

"Quiet you," she shushed him. "You're always bragging about your endurance." The mare tugged him down a service corridor nopony ever used.

"Hey, doesn't this lead to a door to the outside?" he asked uncertainly. The stallion rarely set hoof outside the Fellowship's sanctuary. Others sold his products and brought him what he needed, and that was the way he liked it.

"This entrance is all blocked off," she reassured him with a pat. "I checked on it just yesterday to make sure there was no rust or... anything..." Her voice trailed off as they turned a corner.

The door to the outside lay on the floor, its edges warped from the incredible heat that had sliced it open. She swallowed hard. By unspoken consent, they turned around with intent to run back toward the stairwell, but found that a black-armored pony stood between them and safety.

"Rust works pretty fast," rumbled from the voxunit in his helmet. "It gets into your mind, rots out everything good, and turns something useful into a ruin."

"H-hey, if you're a cop, I know my rights!" the stallion stuttered in response. "You can't come in here without a warrant, and you can't just knock down my door, and you can't just-"

"I am not," chuckled the black-armored pony, "the law. You call yourself a soldier, do you not?"

The earth pony's eyes widened, and his knees began to shake. "Yuh... how did you hear-"

"We're citizens of Equestria," the mare interjected, a bit quicker on the uptake than her friend. She took a half-step forward, putting herself between the stammering earth pony and the unicorn in black armor. "We have every right to say what we want in the privacy of our own domain."

"Yes, you do." The black-armored pony stepped closer. They were only a few meters apart now. "A citizen of Equestria has that right. However, a traitor to the Crown is still a traitor to the Crown, regardless of where he or she might stand."

"Hey dude, be cool," said the earth pony. A blush of shame colored his cheeks as he realized that the artist felt she had to protect him. She's always standing up for me, but not this time. I got this. He reached out and pulled her back with a hoof that quivered only a little. The grower forced himself to look into the intruder's black faceplate, then swallowed hard. "All right, all-right, you're not a cop. I never heard of this Crown gang, but I know what you guys all want, yeah? You want a fix?" he smiled wide, and held out the bag of leaves.

The other stallion leaned his head forward a centimeter. His black armor seemed to soak up the light in the hallway. Perhaps it was just the mare's imagination, but she could have sworn that the luminator panel overhead flickered slightly when he heaved a sigh. Her heart pounded in her barrel, and she wanted to grab her companion and rush through the hole in the door. This... thing was dangerous, she knew it just as she knew that blue was the complement of orange. Some of the other members of the Fellowship told stories of horrible monsters that craved the blood of mortal ponies, and one even claimed that she had seen monsters that even those monsters feared.

She was an artist, she had earned that title with paintbrush and pencil. Hundreds of finished pieces, thousands of practice sketches, and uncountable hours of work had made her what she was today. Many of those had been spent drawing the pony body, for as one teacher had told her, "once you can paint the essence of a mare on a piece of canvas, you will find that you can paint anything you set your mind to." She saw the way this unicorn in black armor stood. Strong, resolute, but weary. He hid it well, but she had drawn many who hid far worse secrets than fatigue.

The grower was used to talking to his shrubberies, who usually told him what he wanted to hear. He smiled wide at the unicorn in black armor. "I got good stuff, right here. See?" The sack of herbs he had just cut dropped onto the ground with a thump, and the pony reached back into to his saddlebags. "I got another here. You can have it all, just take it easy-"

"Don't," growled the operative, but too late. The grower's fetlock had already wrapped around a cheap pistol in his saddlebag. He felt a rush of adrenaline as he drew it out, excited by the chance to prove himself to his girl, but the cultist never had a chance. A pony who had never fired a gun at anything other than glass bottles would never be quicker on the draw than a stallion trained at Pendulum Isle. The mare knew this in her heart, for the one in black carried himself like a warrior, while her companion was at his heart a coward. That did not matter to her on a personal level, he was still a trustworthy friend, but she knew before either pony had touched his weapon who would win.

She tried to scream, to move, to say something, but while her mind raced her body seemed frozen. All she could do was stare as her stallion was slowly raising his gun, only to find that the black monster's was already leveled at his head. Her mouth finally opened, and she began to shriek a warning that was far too late. There was no pity in the black monster's stance, only something she had seen far too many times in her life. Desperation.

The artist watched her companion's expression turn from a smirk of pride to slack-jawed terror. She saw the pony in black squeeze the trigger rune on his lasgun. Her eyes darted back to the earth pony, for they were the only part of her body that still seemed to obey her will. A small part of her knew he was dead, knew she was dead as well, and for her final thoughts she pondered what had been between them. It was almost poetic, in a sad way, that they would die together after sharing so much time with one another.

Neither had ever truly thought about death, but now it had come she found she could only think of him. Had it been love? Had all those little touches and sweet nothings been his way of saying what he could not find the courage to simply confess? It must have been, but she had been too blind with her paintings and her commissions to see. Now he was dead, he would never know how much she loved him, or at the very least how much she loved him in this adrenaline-filled moment that seemed to stretch on forever. She and he were just like Juliet and Romeo, two star-crossed lovers, beaten down by Them. They had each taken their last breaths, and now were no more alive than one of her sketches.

That was all the cultist saw before a merciful crack sparked from Ivory-one's lasgun, a horrible noise came from above, and all she knew faded into darkness.

"Eh... got any twos?" asked the pegasus.

"Go fish."

"Ah..." he frowned at his cards. "My luck, it is poor today, and I am that much poorer thanks to it." The stallion yawned, and threw a cursory glance at the doorway. "Isn't it about time for us to make the rounds?"

His partner snickered. "You're just looking for an excuse because you've lost everything except your armor." The guard tossed his cards into the pile and stacked the deck neatly. "But I'll let you off easy... if you set me up with that cute lil' groupie of yours."

The unlucky pegasus yawned, and flexed his wings. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about, comrade." He resisted the urge to smirk. "I assure you, I am just as unlucky in love as I am in cards."

"Bullsnot," retorted his partner, but he decided to press the issue later. He would just wait until his friend wanted some of his losings back. The earth pony yawned as well. It had been a long night. Fortunately, guarding the ground floor was easy. Nopony would get through the barricades. The worst thing that could happen was that wuss of a cook getting beat up by somepony who wanted his cooking sherry. He slung his spear on his back and waited for his partner to hide the deck of cards, then they trotted out into the hallway.

"I know not why I still play cards with you."

The other guard smirked, "because you're hoping one day I'll have a run of bad luck, and you'll be able to get back all the money you've lost and then some?"

A goofy smile appeared on the pegasus' face, and he fluttered a few centimeters off the floor. "Oh. Yes, that is a good enough reason!"

"Moron," the other guard muttered under his breath. Something sparked overhead, and the stallion glanced upward. "Don't fly too high, the lighting panels are acting up again. You'll get a nasty jolt." Then again, would we even notice if he did?

They continued on for a moment, and stopped to look in on the kitchen. It was empty, so the chef had either gone off somewhere or gotten himself trapped beneath a big stew pot again. The guards made a cursory inspection, shrugged, and trotted away.

"You feel that?" asked the pegasus. His right eye twitched, and his wings were raised even though he was on the floor. "That charge in the air?"

"No," replied the other guard. "Did you take a puff of something? We're not supposed to while we're on shift, remember?" As if that ever stopped anypony.

"No, no, you know I do not..." He raised an ear. "Hmmm." They continued walking. "Just something in the air, like the charge between stormclouds. Have you never felt that?"

The earth pony pressed a hoof to his face. "No, flyboy, I can't imagine why I don't know what you're talking about." He glanced into a side room that was filled with old sofas scavenged from the hotel's common areas. That's weird, normally there's a pony or two passed out in there this time of day. The guard shrugged. Everyone was probably just sleeping in their own rooms for once.

"Probably because you're not a pegasus!" his partner suggested helpfully, and got a whack upside the head for his trouble. The enchanted leather armor took the sting out, but it still caused his eyes to roll about for a moment. That distracted him so well that he paid no mind to the curious lack of mares in the art room as they strolled past. If he had, he might have wondered why the door was closed and the lights off. Had he wondered about that, he might have pushed open the door and switched on the lights, to find several broken easels that seemed to have been destroyed in a fight of some kind, and a curious trail of red leaking from under one of the closet doors. However, he did not wonder, and so they continued on their patrol.

The silence was what finally got to the earth pony. Things were never this quiet. That's why they needed guards, to settle disputes and sort out drunkards. "Hey... there wasn't a party scheduled, was there?" He scratched his chin. "Kinda feels like we're the only ones on this level."

"Don't worry, you aren't."

The two guards looked at each other, neither recognizing the voice, then turned around. An instant before the lights cut out, they saw a mare in black armor standing next to the junction box they had just passed. When the luminator panels flickered back on, the hallway was completely empty. Only a feather remained.

Ivory-one breathed slowly, listening to the overlapping voices of his team through the voxnet. He had been trained to take that muddle of information and turn it into a relevant tactical synopsis. That required a tremendous amount of focus, so he had stepped into a side room of the hotel and locked the door. The picture his operatives painted was very bleak, for the enemy. That was all these cultists were now, the enemy. So spoke an officer of the Organization, and so it was.

The sergeant kept his back against the wall while he listened. His horn glowed softly, its glow hidden by a black shroud that jutted from his helmet, as he made minute adjustments to his voxlink. He spoke to each operative as an individual, requesting clarification, issuing orders, confirming kills. They were making good time. He switched to the command channel and requested an update from the gryphon, then adjusted his tactics accordingly.

Pendulum had given him this strength. Once upon a time, he had been a burned out magitek enchanter who had let the companies work him too hard on too many projects. The stallion had programmed, empowered, and cast all manner of spells, but the unchanging grind of the work took its toll on a unicorn's sanity. His burnout had come at the worst time, while he was working for a megakorp called Electromagic Arts. Rather than firing him, they had chained him to his desk with an IV drip full of stimulants. Then they had kicked him out the door when the project was complete, and burned the evidence. He had been too messed up to even think about legal action until any chance of it was ash.

The sergeant switched channels again and advised one of his operatives that four cultists were headed her way. This building's occupants were beginning to get restless, noticing that many of their number were suddenly missing. He smiled. His team was leaving just enough alone to foster the illusion of coincidence. On the lower floors, anyway. Heavens have mercy on anypony that Asset got her hooves on upstairs.

He had been homeless for a while. What hurt worse than the sting of losing his job had been the ringing void of losing his mind. The work he had loved for his entire life, that he had studied for in university and idolized as a child, had suddenly become alien to him. He became ill when trying to cast even the most basic of enchantment spells, and his mind suddenly reviled the higher calculations needed for technomagical constructs. When his money ran out, there was nowhere but the streets, since he would not lower himself to sponging off family or friends. The stallion had contemplated suicide, but did not have the courage to do it quickly. So, he had tried drinking himself to death.

That was how they had found him. Face down in a gutter. The two candymakers had not been able to look the other way, so he had found himself cleaned up, fed well for the first time in weeks, and put to work. They had given him a purpose again, wrapping freshly baked treats and working the register. The first week he had felt dull and lifeless, like one of the machines he used to animate, but those years of math meant he could make change without even thinking about it. The candymakers had kept him off the bottle, pushed him to be productive instead of just looking for an escape. He adjusted his communicator again and confirmed that one of his operatives had dispatched the two cultists in her sector.

It had been the smiles on the faces of the children that had brought him back to life. He had never been able to interact with anypony who actually used the things he made before. There had always been another project, another set of company directives, and another starched shirt to put on. So, he would reluctantly hand his documentation off to the legions of technical support staff and let them interact with the end users.

Working the register, seeing the children bite into those freshly-baked treats, had somehow melted that block in his mind. He felt as though life was once more worth the struggle, and slowly he had reclaimed his old skills. The unicorn could have gone back to work at his old job, and indeed was about to file a few applications... until that night when he had learned what Bon Hadescream employees did after hours. It had been an accident, but when the dust had settled he took the red pill and dropped his job applications in the trash. This was where he needed to be.

Pendulum had come later, once he had earned it. A year of intensive training had been the cost of his sergeant's stripes, and he wore them with pride. It took all kinds of warriors to protect Equestria, because there were all kinds of horrors that sought to destroy it. The sergeant toggled his communicator and drew his lasgun. There were three cultists wandering close to his position. He yawned, and considered taking a stimulant pill. A wry smile crossed the unicorn's muzzle as he noted the irony of the moment. He might be working like a slave, but this time it was his choice. He had put his life on the line when he signed up, and known exactly what he was getting into. The Organization had promised to work him to death when he left Pendulum, and he had agreed. All this was just overtime to him.

"Blue streak, speeds by... da-na-na na-na..." hummed the unicorn as he pushed a trolley onto the service elevator. They always made him use the service elevator, but that was fine. It was like the secret entrance in the comic books. Growing up, he never thought he would be able to join a mystical society that was trying to save the world, but here he was! Hot Trot the cook, helping to overthrow the Big Bads one meal at a time.

Actually, nopony had ever thought he would amount to anything, but he had certainly shown them. Working as a chef had been a good job, but he liked to experiment too much. Cooking for profit meant making the same thing again and again, day after day, because that was the way the customer liked it, and customers hated change. Happy just to have the job of his dreams, he had endured it... for a little while. Then, one night, he had tried putting a little more cilantro into the salsa than the recipe intended. It tasted fine to him, so he mixed in a few more spices and thickened the base to help the salsa sit on the chip instead of slithering off as soon as you got it to your mouth. Nervously, he had sent it out, and the dip was a smash hit. Nopony else knew why, but that was alright. Cooking was his cutie mark, not glory-hounding. Hound-glorying. No... hounding after glory!

Then he had tried mixing pecans into the pancake batter, followed by using fresh-mashed cranberries for the cranberry sauce instead of the gloppy concentrate. Little things. Oh, he had been quite the rebel. The unicorn ran a hoof through his dyed-blue mane, and pressed the button for the tenth floor. The elevator groaned, shivered, and then reluctantly began to rise. Hot Trot had asked his friend Grip to look at the old elevator, but the earth pony had assured him everything was fine. "You're the only one who ever uses it anyway. No big deal."

Well, if Grip Steel thought it was not a big deal, then surely it was nothing to worry about. He settled down on the floor and leaned against the trolley, careful not to upset its precious cargo, then pulled a comic book off its bottom shelf. It was a shame that those guards had shown up before the new girl got a chance to eat. That batch of spaghetti had not turned out quite the way he wanted, but everypony seemed to like it. They had even thrown a party after dinner last night to celebrate how much they liked his cooking... but forgot to invite him. That was fine too, he had needed to wash up all the pots and pans. Next time he would try using bow-tie pasta instead of string noodles. The new girl would like that, and she would need something to settle her nerves after being drug off by the guards. He knew from personal experience how nerveracking that could be, since the guards were always hauling him off too.

"Oh no! Bogus, dude!" he cried out in horror as he turned the page of his comic book. The dashing hedgehog hero had been poisoned, and had only hours to find an antidote! Oh, he should have known better than to eat those mysterious chilidogs, but everypony knew they were the hero's greatest weakness. Who could blame him, there were few things more delicious than a good crisp carrot on a bun with lentils and beans on top. He would always gather up the trimmings from vegetables and make sausages from them, since fresh carrots could be hard to come by in this city. That was how the street vendors sold them in Manehattan too, a hodgepodge of veg with ketchup and mustard. Mmmmm...

With a shrrreeeeeeeiiik, the elevator ground to a stop. He stood up and pressed the button again, urging the old machinery into action once more. The floor wobbled under his hooves, then resumed its crawl upward. Hot Trot sat back down and produced a candy bar from a pocket, unwrapped it with a glow of his horn, and took a small nibble. They let him have one candy bar a week, and this still had to last two more days. He held the chocolate on his tongue, letting it melt slowly, and turned the page of his comic book. "Phew... the antidote is in the evil doctor's secret lab!"

This was good news indeed, all the hero had to do was infiltrate the secret lab, drink the vial, and be good as new. While the hedgehog battled robots, the elevator continued its climb toward the top floor. Hot Trot reached out to steady the trolley as the floor began to wobble again. It would be horrible if all his hard work spilled, not to mention the flogging that would surely follow for wasting the Fellowship's resources. He adjusted his white chef's uniform, making sure it hid the marks visible through his light yellow fur.

The heroes never flogged each other in the comic books, but the Daughter told him that it was his own fault for not enjoying it. If he was truly in touch with his inner spark, the floggings would not hurt at all. So, he did what they told him, and said what they wanted to hear. "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" He turned the page, saw the hedgehog's faithful fox sidekick toss him a wrench, and smiled wide. His own fur was the same color as the sidekick's. The unicorn leaned to the side, and winced as a lance of pain shot up his back. The floggings still hurt, no matter how he tried to enjoy them.

Not as much as when he had been thrown out of The Machine, though. All it took was one little mistake. He had put cayenne pepper in the spicy mayo, and hurriedly made up fifty sandwiches with it to meet a rush order. Twelve ponies had to go to the hospital. Somehow, it had not been mere cayenne, but full-bore Zebra Ghost Peppers. They were far from the hottest peppers known to ponykind, but they had been more than enough to burn his career to the ground. Nopony believed he had not done it on purpose, since he was always tinkering... and once the customers had learned his name was Hot Trot, their minds were made up.

All of them had been refined businessponies, the elite of the elite, and at least twelve had made it their mission to make sure that he never saw the inside of a kitchen again. He had bid a heartbroken farewell to his dear friends and fellow chefs. They had all been so sad to see him go, he was sure those had been real tears in their eyes, but there was nothing to be done. The blame was all his, somehow he had managed to sneak a type of pepper they did not even stock in the kitchen into the mayo. Stranger things had happened. Maybe he had been sleepwalking.

Finding himself destitute, for he had never been very good with money, he tried to sneak aboard an empty traincar like in the comic books. He would start life anew, in a different city, and work his way up from the bottom! It was the perfect plan until he had been thrown out on his bottom by a vigilant railway attendant, who had run him off with a burst of profanity and hurled bricks. Hot Trot took another nibble of his candybar. He had no illusions that life had been exceptionally hard for him, everypony here had a story just like his.

The only difference the unicorn noticed was that he kept hoping one day, everything would go back to the way it used to be. Grip Steel and the others loved to party, and he would be a liar if he did not confess to partying right alongside them when he was could, but Grip had given up on ever becoming a factory worker again. He wanted payback for everything that had ever happened to him. All the unicorn wanted was to be a chef once more, and the Daughter had assured him he could be. In the New Order, there would be a place for chefs, who could cook whatever they liked without worrying about crazy accidents or being blacklisted by The Machine!

The elevator groaned as it crawled up the last few centimeters, then came to a stop. Hot Trot turned another page and smiled. "He got the cure! Most excellent!" So ended that adventure, with the wicked human shaking his robotic fist and yelling, "I hate that hedgehog!" Closing his comic book, he set it on the trolley and wrapped the doors in his magic's aura. They creeeeeaked aside, and he pushed the trolley out while humming happily. Today was gonna be a good day, he just knew it. The sun was shining, birds were chirping, somepony had even taken those rotting boards off that window to let the fresh air in.

He took a nibble of the chocolate bar held in his aura and turned around to make sure the elevator doors had closed all the way. The mechanisms up here could really do with a little love, but Grip Steel knew his trade far too well for the cook to complain. Satisfied that his secret entrance was secure, he turned back to the trolley and found the muzzle of a very well made gun less than three centimeters from the end of his nose.

It had a fine suppressor built right into the barrel, and the internals of the weapon had been reworked until the only sound one could hear when it fired subsonic rounds was a faint mechanical cycling. That meant the only warning your friends would receive would be a crumpled body and a bloodstain. It was far from the nicest thing a pony could wish to look upon in the instant before he died, however the pretty mare holding the gun certainly was easy on the eyes. Hot Trot had no time to react, no chance to cry for help, and despite his mind suddenly racing as fast as his hedgehog hero's legs, he was helpless to do anything but watch as her fetlock tightened on the trigger-rune. She was only following her orders, just like the operatives below, for the unicorn was guilty of being a party to the cult's activities.

Author's Notes:

"Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate." - Sun Tzu.

L'éléphant is about how the elephant, an ungainly animal, can still dance when given the occasion. This chapter is about how Operatives "dance" with their enemies since they are not strong enough to take them all in an even fight. It seemed to fit well enough!

I enjoyed writing this chapter. I wanted to present the idea that the cultists are individuals as well. They are not faceless minions or uncaring monsters, but ponies. Each of them has a story, just like each one of the Operatives.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I'd really enjoy reading your thoughts on it.