C1 Prologue – Meet the Team

By N00813

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  Lightning Dust slammed her tankard of beer onto the surface of the bar table.

  She sat in a little niche, off to the side of the main floor of the inn where ponies bustled in and out, bumping into things as they went.  A tiny chandelier, some half-hearted attempt at style, tried to illuminate the entire floor.  It struggled valiantly against the darkness – alas, it was no use.  The shadows of table legs and stools danced as they tried to hide from the weak light.

  The alcohol, as dilute as it was, burned as it rolled down her throat.  The bitter taste travelled upwards as she burped, indistinguishable from the smell of stomach acid.

  She grimaced.  It wasn’t fit to be labelled as beer.  Hell, it didn’t seem that different from piss.  Still, it cost her five whole bits.  Five!  As if she had money to burn.

  Didn’t they know that anyone who ended up here was a loser?  Ponies here were all at the end of their respective lines.  A couple of builders, old and scarred like their hard-hats, sat around their own table, mumbling in between gulps of hard liquor.  One pegasus was slumped against the bar counter, sloshed and incoherent, earning him dirty glances from the bartender.  That was what she saw here – that was why she was here.

  They said misery loved company.

  She’d once thought that only the people without the drive, the ambition, the will to better themselves, were miserable since they were too lazy or stupid to actually go around and do it, instead of moping on what could have been.

  The lamp above her, set into a little alcove too small for it and hastily glued into place, flickered as its flame fell from grace, plummeting into the wick, before flaring bright again.  Orange light, the same shade as her mane, wavered and danced with the shadows on the table top.

  As the light flashed, so did the memories.

  How could she have known?  It wasn’t her fault, damn it!

  She raised the tankard up, pursing her lips and waiting for the liquid to trickle in between her grit teeth.

  It wasn’t her fault that five damned national heroes had the insane idea of wandering onto a bloody racetrack during operation!

  The beer, like always, was too slow to arrive – almost hesitant in its flow out of the wooden tankard.

  She shut her eyes, forcing the cheap liquor down, relishing in the burning against her throat and oesophagus.  Anything was better than the memo–

  Five fucking years.  She slammed the tankard down, the thump reverberating around the little niche she was in, the shock of the impact jarring her foreleg.

  So she got a black mark after the Academy incident, a charge for reckless endangerment.  She’d learnt.  She’d spent five years showing that she’d learnt, always following orders from her weather team supervisor, always doing her job to the letter.

  Five years of solid, grade-A work and – her cheeks flushed red and a growl formed in her throat as she reached for the tankard again – ass-kissing had gotten her nowhere.  She was still weather-team worker 1032, whilst the cute colt with the dapper grey coat, dark blue mane and a recommendation from his Wonderbolt brother had gone on to be promoted twice.

  Twice.

  She was sure that she’d worked just as hard as he did, if not more.  She had more experience with her work, more experience with her team.  She deserved it more than him.

  Fucking Wonderbolts.

  And with the talks of layoffs coming – ‘saving public money’, they said – she might as well have been a temp worker all along.

  Maybe this was how that mailmare, that weird grey pegasus with the blond mane, felt.  She’d been working the same position doing the same job in the same place for… shit, how long had she lived in Ponyville?  Ten years, they said?

  Loser.  Maybe if she wasn’t so dumb, she would have seen how fucked up everything was.  But no, off she went with a smile on her face, letters in her bag – still kissing ass ten years later.

  Or maybe that mailmare was just like her.  Messed up one time, once-upon-a-time, and now fucked for eternity.

  Lightning Dust lifted the tankard up, draining what remained of the alcohol inside.  A little bit of beer dribbled out of the corners of her mouth, tickling her skin.  The slight, imperceptible buzzing in her ears was far more deserving of attention, however.

  She slammed the tankard back down, and her eyes refocused on the two intruders.

  An azure unicorn mare with a pale cornflower blue mane and tail, cut short but not unfashionably so, sat across from her.  She was dressed – unusually – with a creased cloak embroidered with stars and spangles that conveniently hid her cutie mark.  Underneath, however, Lightning could see the coloured glint of gems and the flash of a piece of steel poking out of pockets on the odd piece of clothing she wore.  Her legs were lean and muscled at the top – clearly, she’d done a lot of manual labour.

  Huh, manual labour for a unicorn.  Just another loser in the long list of patrons that visited at this bar.

  She opened her mouth to tell the newcomers to piss off and find their own table as her eyes drifted towards the second intruder.

  Beside the unicorn, a large griffon – Lightning squinted – female glared at her.  The griffon was white-feathered, with a tawny body that looked as worn and abused.  The flickering firelight showed off her scars, long deep furrows in the skin that seemed to worm about as the flame danced.  Her eyes, amber and unmoving, were the oddest thing – cold, uncaring and yet resigned.

  The griffon was wearing what looked like a brown, animal-leather tunic.  This, by itself, wasn’t exactly unusual.  Unlike ponies, the few griffons she’d seen seemed to like wearing clothing.  However, draped on top and across the tunic was a system of sashes, also leather, that held a lot of shiny and very sharp things.

  Telling a griffon, especially one as well-armed as this, to piss off was never a good idea.  The alcohol was bubbling up inside her, carrying her off to far-away worlds where sleep was easy and joys were to be had.  Yet, over the years, she’d learnt to lock those temptations down and focus on the mission.

  “Yeah?”  Lightning mumbled, weaker than she sounded in her head.  Not a good start, she berated herself.

  “You Lightning Dust?” the griffon muttered, raising an eyebrow, her amber eyes never straying.

  Lightning found it quite difficult to meet the griffon’s intense glare, even with the slightly ridiculous pale-purple colouring around the eyes – her self-preservation instinct told her to bow her head and avert her gaze, whilst the alcohol told her to grin at the griffon.  The former was stronger than the latter.

  “Yeah,” she mumbled, lifting up the tankard.  She didn’t raise it above her head, though.  Cutting off her sight to potential thieves and muggers was a bad idea.

  “She doesn’t look like much,” the unicorn muttered, throwing a glance to her griffon friend.

  Lightning’s stomach clenched.  The memory of a group of weather colleagues sitting together, with her at the front as she watched that colt jump from to junior manager in his first six months of work flashed through her mind.  She growled.  “What do you know, bitch?”

  If the unicorn was intimidated, she didn’t show it, but merely shut up and looked at Lightning.  For the pegasus, it was a small victory – good enough.  She had to take her happiness from somewhere, after all.

  “Firey,” the griffon said, cracking a smile.  It was the sort of predatory smile that a crocodile would give to the pony in front of it.  Lightning paused, glancing off to the side.  The tavern’s main floor was still busy, and no one seemed interested enough in her to help her out if that came to that…

  “Yeah?  What do you want?”  She settled for that.  Keep them talking, find an escape route and prepare to jet off.  A bit of an odd end to her usual drinking session, but hey.  Variety was the spice of life.  If you could afford it.

  The unicorn took up the slack for her griffon friend, pulling out a piece of paper with a big title on top and lots of little words.  It fell onto the table top, fold creases bulging out in a cross.

  The whole thing looked like a newspaper article… or a job offer.

  Slowly, Lightning reached out a hoof towards the paper.  A shunt of pink magic slid the sheet to her frozen hoof.

  She scanned it, eyes skipping straight down to look at the estimated pay-rate – and widening at the number.  “Five thousand bits!?”

  “Average rate per op,” the griffon said, leaning back.  The firelight caught the blade of her machete – it was a nasty piece, with a curving blade on one edge and serration on the other.  Suddenly, the words in the job description started to sound more sinister.

  “What kind of ‘problems’ do you ‘solve’?”  Lightning raised an eyebrow, layering heavy emphasis on the obvious euphemisms.

  “Ones worth our time,” the griffon said, raising an eyebrow to mirror Lightning’s own expression, albeit with a smug grin instead of the hard line on the pegasus’ face.

  “Uh huh.”  Lightning needed money, but this… this was too far out of her league.  The array of sharp crossbow bolts strapped to the griffon’s chest meant that these players were serious business – not the sort of neighbourhood watch that thought they were hot stuff.

  “What kind of things do you do?”  Lightning examined the two of them over the top of the paper, her eyes shifting from one ‘problem solver’ to another.

  “Everything necessary to get the job done,” the unicorn said, failing to keep the boredom out of her voice.  “Fuck.  The way Rolk had said, I thought she’d jump at the opportunity. You sure she isn’t wired?”

  “These eyes have never failed me, dude,” the griffon replied, still looking as relaxed as ever as she pointed to her amber irises with her yellow talons.  “Trust me, she isn’t.  If she is, I’ll gut her myself.”

  That brought a shiver down Lightning’s spine.  The way she’d just… so casually talk about murdering somepony…

  “We know how ponies don’t like killing,” the unicorn continued, glancing at Lightning before shifting her gaze to the rest of the bar.

  Her griffon friend grinned, and opened her mouth to mumble something.  Lightning’s sensitive ears perked up, trying to decipher words from noise.

  “Shit.  You were just like her,” the griffon said, looking at the unicorn.

  If she had heard, the unicorn gave no indication.  “So we’ll probably ease you in with an easy job.  What’s it going to be?”

  Lightning blinked, before looking down at the paper.  She frowned, kneading her temples with her hooves.  This could be it!  Her big break, her chance out!  Seize the day and never give up.  She had a way out, at last!

  Lightning’s frown deepened as she continued to scrutinize the wording.  All in all, this job didn’t seem particularly… legal.  Was it a sting?  She looked up, meeting the raised eyebrow of the griffon and the even gaze of the unicorn.  Didn’t look like it, but it never hurt to check.

  “This doesn’t seem like a legal job,” she said, simply.

  “Yeah, it isn’t.  So?”  The griffon’s expression didn’t change at all.

  Lightning sighed, feeling her wings flutter.  Such a decision was better made when she was sober, not light-headed from the drink and put under pressure.  She could handle the spotlight, but she suspected that the griffon’s array of impressively sharp things was designed to break her down.

  “Can I think about this?” she asked, a lot meeker than she sounded in her head.

  “Weren’t you doing that just now?”  The griffon grinned, pre-empting Lightning’s huff, before popping up from the table, her chair scraping against the floor harshly.  “Chill, dude.  Yeah, go and think.  But… erm, Tricks?”

  Tricks, the unicorn, rolled her eyes.  “You have until tomorrow morning, when we hand in our room key.  Room 201.  Ask for Gilda” – she pointed at the griffon, who was at the bar – “or Tricks.”

  Tricks looked up for a brief moment, before her gaze fell back down to look Lightning in the eye.  “But if you tell anyone about this, Lightning… there isn’t any place you can run.”

  Lightning shivered.  The warmth in her gut was forgotten as her spine was replaced by ice.

  Tricks flashed an oddly pleasant smile.  If she wasn’t wearing her little knife, the unicorn might have looked friendly, even.

  Lightning Dust merely nodded as Tricks left to join her friend.

-&-

  There it was.  Room 201 was one of the larger rental rooms, an ensuite that stretched out to occupy the space behind that entire wall.  Lightning raised a hoof, intent on bringing it down on the solid wooden door.

  The moment of truth hung before her.  It was like the moment before a complex stunt – time hung still as all possible things that could go wrong slammed through her head, before she locked down her focus and became the wind.  The leaf floating on the wind, with nothing but the strain of her muscle and the natural gyroscope in her inner ear to listen to…

  To hell with it, she thought.

  She looked outside.  The sun was rising, a semi-circle on the horizon, spraying pink and orange light into the sky.  Celestia’s sun.  Apparently, one of the heroes she’d almost killed was a student of the Princess, and her brother was somewhere really high up in the Guards, with a noble wife or something.

  She spat, gagging.  No wonder her life was so shitty right now.  A Princess’ word against her five years of work.  She should have known which would win out.  Hell, she never even had a chance.

  Lightning brought her hoof down on the door, twice.

  The thump of steps increased in volume.  Lightning sucked in a breath, even as her heart thudded inside her ribcage.

  “Hello?  Ah, Miss Dust!” a relatively small black griffon said, his eyes shining as the corners of his beak lifted up into a little smile.  From what Lightning could see from the little gap in the door, he was black from crown feathers to the tuft of his tail.  Only his clear, brilliant blue eyes were any shade of not-black.

  “Uh…”  Lightning silently berated herself.  “I’m looking for Tricks?”

  The griffon nodded, before turning his head.  Oddly, he never kept an eye off her, even as he shouted Tricks’ name.

  “She’ll be with you in a moment,” he said, never moving from his place.  Perhaps that was intentional.  He was doing a very good job of blocking out what was going on inside.

  Mumbles and grumbles grew louder as the blue unicorn stumbled into what sounded like a wall.  The griffon withdrew, letting Tricks take his place – and in the tiniest moment Lightning spotted the brown of brass –

  “Yes?”  Tricks’ question shook her out of her little self-induced stupor, and Lightning blinked twice at the unicorn.  Tricks was obviously hung over.  Her mane was dishevelled and her eyes were creased, with bags beneath them even after the night of sleep.  For a moment, Lightning wondered how the griffon Gilda was getting on.

  “Uh,”  Lightning muttered, before shaking her head, closing her eyes and staring straight ahead at the door.  Like a well-trained Wonderbolt, she thought.  “I’d like to accept your offer.”

  Tricks merely nodded, her horn glowing.

  Lightning’s eyes widened.  She took an involuntary step back as a tingle spread from her hooves upwards.  “What are you doing to me?”

  “Making sure,” Tricks mumbled, before nodding.  “You’re clean and clear.  Smart girl.”

  Lightning merely raised an eyebrow as Tricks lifted a little brace up with her magic.  It was an odd thing: a curl of black material that bulged out at one end, with an inset crystal, tapering off into a long stick of plastic.

  Tricks sighed.  “Come here.  I haven’t got all day.”

  It’s the crack of dawn, Lightning thought, but said nothing as she stepped forwards, a bit slower than she would have liked.

  “Hold still.”

  Lightning waited as Tricks floated the thing up to her face, and then past it.  Her eyes tracked the bulb as it stopped next to her left ear.

  Tricks frowned, and Lightning narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, before a cold coil made contact with the back of her ear.

  Lightning yelped, her ears flicking back and forth like leaves in a hurricane.  Tricks groaned.

  “There!  I’ll get back to it when I’m better.”  She stumbled away from the door and into the room, revealing her cutie mark of a wand over a field of stars, before glancing over her shoulder as if she had just realised that Lightning was there.  “Come in!”

  Lightning hesitated, just a tad, before the first rays of sunlight from the rising sun fell across her face.  She hissed, before striding into the room, and then hesitated again.

  It wasn’t the room that gave her pause.  The place was a utilitarian affair, with nothing but the barest of furnishings.  It was the people inside that froze her blood.

  Tricks stumbled away to the bathroom, where the sound of running water suddenly started.

  Gilda was sitting, leaning back against a wall with her machete in her fingers.  She didn’t look too badly hungover.  The griffon turned to the groaning inside the bathroom, smirking.  “Lightweight.”

  A massive earth pony mare, of light khaki skin and rust-red hair, sat in the centre of the room with her legs folded under her.  Lightning could see scarring dotted around her side, little rings with tendrils of tissue that crept outwards like stars.

  The mare turned her head around.  Upon spotting Lightning, she flashed the sweetest, most innocent grin Lightning had ever seen.

  That was supposed to placate her fear, Lightning supposed.  The effect was ruined by the black griffon leaning against the earth mare’s side, whose claws were working on the long rifle in front of him.

  The weapon was a mean piece of jet-black steel, with a scuffed wooden stock attached to one end that tapered to nothing as it travelled further up the barrel.  The griffon was snapping something back together before he looked up at her.

  “Ah!”  He stood up, sliding the rifle over to the side as he walked over to her.  Lightning’s eyes tracked the weapon as it came to a stop against the wall.

  The griffon gestured to the thing hanging from her ear.  “May I?”

  Lightning simply nodded, too dumb to do anything else.

  The griffon squinted, his blue eyes glinting, and Lightning suddenly felt intensely weak.  There was a mercenary with his claws around her head and she had just let him get this far without protest –

  Instead of the pain she expected, though, she felt the cold fibre of that thing wrap around her ear – both the front and back of it – and a second later, the griffon stepped back.

  “Done!” he said, smiling.  “That earpiece will keep you safe.  I’m Rolk”– he gestured to himself, before pointing to the earth mare behind him –“and this is Spring.”

  He went back to his rifle and scooped it up before chambering a cartridge.  “Welcome to our merry band of killers!”

  What have I gotten myself into? Lightning wondered, her eyes wide. Next Chapter: %i% - Travel 1 Estimated time remaining: 60 Minutes