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by ToixStory

Chapter 9: Chapter 8: Any Colour You Like

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“Right,” said Red. “Those are definitely wings.”

He leaned forward on a cream-colored couch in the middle of Sunrise’s living room. Tall bay windows near behind him cast the glow of a full room into the room, and mixed with the dull amber glow of a table lamp.

Sunrise sat on a stool in front of the couch, staring at the three ponies in front of him. His pale red eyes traveled over Starlight and Red, next to each other, and Staten who kept his distance from them all. The professor stared at the thick front door with a furrowed brow.

“I think I’m dreaming,” Starlight murmured.

“You have no idea,” Sunrise muttered. “I’ve been wishing that these things have been pipe dreams, but no matter how sober I am they won’t go away. It’s like being strapped to a curse.”

Red fell silent, and rubbed his chin with one hoof. His gaze slid over Sunrise and to Starlight, then back again. His mane looked stringier than it had when they’d reached Skyhall, and lines showed around his mouth.

“When did you get the wings, exactly?” Staten asked suddenly from his perch on the end of the couch.

Sunrise blinked, like he hadn’t been expecting the half-fossilized stallion to speak up. “Oh, uh, it wasn’t very long ago,” he said. “In fact, it was just around the time of that earthquake over in Sunrise. I remember it was all over the news.”

“And you’re sure about that?”

“Sure I’m sure. I can feel the memory of it returning.”

Staten slid off the couch and walked up behind Sunrise. He ran one hoof over the feathery appendages and hummed to himself. “Then tell me, what do you remember?”

“Well, I remember the news being on,” Sunriset said. “They were going on and on about getting emergency help out there and re-ran this stupid story about a foal who survived in a tree. Wouldn’t stop talking about the little brat.

“Anyway, I start to feel a little woozy, right? I felt like I was on a ship in the ocean, even though I was just in my living room. So, I stumbled over to the kitchen to get something to drink, then, suddenly, I’m waking up on the kitchen floor with a bruise on my head and two wings on my back.”

“Can you fly?” Starlight asked. “Like, you know, like a bird?”

Sunrise shook his head. “I tried, you know. I’ve been holed up in here since I got these things, so of course I got bored and did my best to fly. I can flap them and everything well enough, but it’s way too hard to take off.”

“Interesting . . .” Staten muttered. “Vestigial wings, but for what purpose? Or perhaps not vestigial, but you are too weak to use them.”

“Hey, I ain’t weak!” Sunrise puffed out his chest and threw his hooves up.

Staten rolled his eyes. “I meant that if you haven’t had them since birth, then your muscles and skeletal structure are unlikely to be right to use them. If a pony was born with these, however, the effects could be quite . . . exhilarating.”

Red hopped off the couch and paced around behind it. “You know, I get that it’s cool and all you have wings,” he said, “but all this means is that we’re an even bigger target for the IS than before.”

“You’re the ones who brought them here,” Sunrise mumbled.

“They would have come eventually,” Staten told him. “By all accounts, the IS is gathering everything strange due to the quake, including us. It’s only now that you have a fighting chance.”

Red seemed to light up at the mention of a fight, and looked around the room. With a huff, he trotted off down a hallway to the right of the living room that ran between the main area and the kitchen. Starlight looked around, then followed him down the corridor.

The narrow hallway with white plaster walls ended in a simple bedroom. An end table with a lamp on top edged against a single bed with blue sheets and an alarmingly-large pile of pillows on top. Other than that, the room was bare, without even the thinnest of carpeting.

“Uh, is there a reason you came back here?” Starlight asked.

Red ignored her, and instead walked over to one corner bare of anything but a wooden floor. He hunched over and began using his hooves to pry off one of the floor boards. He grunted and was able to yank one of them off, then another. They were both tossed aside.

Starlight ran over to him. “Hey, what are you doing?” she cried. “You can’t just pry up his floor!”

“Oh? Is that it, you tell me what I can and can’t do in my friend’s house?” Red said. He reached down into the hole he had made, and searched around inside. He grinned and began pulling something up. “Besides, girl, I’ve been at this much longer than you have.”

The object he pulled out left Starlight speechless. In Red’s hooves was a midnight-black rifle with a stunted barrel and large banana clip underneath it.

Red slid the slide open and checked inside, then smiled. “Glad to see he still kept the heavy weaponry around here,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to go up against the IS with empty hooves, would we?”

He reached back inside and pulled out a similar weapon, along with a couple pistols. The last thing he pulled out was a burlap sack spilling over with rolls of bank notes. He took one and tossed it at Starlight. “Have a thousand rounders,” he said.

She caught it and stared at the little roll of money. “Is this . . . is this for real?”

“Of course it is. What do you take me for?” Red chuckled. “Though I wouldn’t be so quick to spend it. It’s money marked by the police back in me and Sunrise’s old days. They’re good in a pinch, but use too much in one place and you’ll draw the IS to you like ants to honey.”

Starlight stared at the fat stack of bills in her hoof. She had never seen so much money in one place before, let alone having it belong to her. She watched Red stuff the rest of them back in the bag and sling the guns over his back.

“So you think we’ll really need these?” she asked.

“Do I think? Yeah,” he said. “Do I hope? I really don’t. It’d be nice if the IS didn’t show up here with spinners and trucks full of gun-toting stallions, but I think the chance for that flew out the window a long time ago.”

Starlight rubbed one hoof over the other and looked at the floor. “Do you think we’ll make it out of here? Like . . . alive?”

“Hey, don’t sweat it.” Red placed a hoof on her shoulder. “We’ll make it out of here just fine, I promise you. I’ve never gotten into a fight that I couldn’t walk away from, and I don’t plan to start now.”

Starlight gave him a smile, and followed him back to the living room with the clump of bills held in her teeth. Sunrise looked up when they arrived, though neither he nor Staten seemed overly surprised at the heavy weaponry Red carried.

“Expecting a party, are we?” Staten asked.

Red set the assault rifles down on the living room’s coffee table and nodded. “A party of the worst sort. We need to pack up all we can and get on the road. If we don’t, then I doubt there will be any getting out of this city except in an IS spinner.”

Sunrise shot out of his chair. “What about me?” he cried. “Are you all just going to leave me here for the IS to get?”

“Calm down,” Red said. “You’re coming with us, you big drama queen. Those wings are relevant to what we’re after anyway, and we think Staten here has a friend who can tell you more about them. So just calm down and start loading all the supplies you’ve got into the RV.”

“Right, right, of course.” Sunrise licked his lips and nodded. “Thanks for this, Red. You don’t know what this means . . . yeah.” He scooped up the rifles and headed out his front door. Red let him go, then shook his head.

“He’s going to be trouble for us, I just know it,” Staten said.

“He’s a good pony,” Red replied.

“Yes, but for how long? He’s scared and in the presence of strangers and somepony he hasn’t seen in years. What’s to keep him from turning us in to the IS?”

“I know my friends, alright?”

“But for how long?”

Starlight sighed as the two continued to argue, and did her best to tune them out. She dropped her billfold into the sack with the rest, and grabbed the burlap in her teeth. It was heavy, but she managed to drag it out of the house and toward the RV that was still sitting in the driveway.

The night air felt cool and crisp on Starlight’s fur. The quiet suburbs on the backside of the mountain cast little light into the sky, so the young mare was able to glance up at the stars that whirled above her. She smiled like she always did when she looked at them, and trotted over to the Odyssey.

Sunrise was standing in the doorway, looking off toward the road that led to the rest of Skyhall. He looked up in surprise when Starlight approached.

“Got your money,” she said. “How’d you and Red get all of this, anyway?”

“You probably don’t want to know,” he said.

Starlight snorted. “I’m not some little girl.”

“You ever shoot anypony?”

“No . . .”

“Then you’re a little girl around here.”

Starlight glared at him, but the winged stallion refused to meet her gaze. She sighed and gave up after a minute, and left the sack of money with him.

She turned to go back inside, but Red and Staten barreled out of the front door before she could. Both still argued with each other, but they made it to the RV in one piece, at least. Red gave Staten the keys to the RV, and nodded to Starlight.

“Alright, that’s just about everything,” he said. “Me and Starlight are going to go check inside the house one more time, alright? You two keep watch and we’ll clean up and cover our tracks. By the time the IS gets here, this place will be clean.”

Staten nodded. “Alright, we’ll honk if we see anything. If we get overwhelmed, though, we might have to leave you two.”

Red smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”

He galloped back inside, with Starlight trying to keep up behind him. Red sprinted past the kitchen and toward the back bedroom where he’d found the rifles. Starlight found him digging around in the cubby hole beneath the floorboards.

“What now?” she asked.

“Just checking for more loot,” he said. “We hid most of these so long ago that there could be anything in here.”

He dug around, and smiled when he brought out a small pistol. It was pitch black and, unlike the rifles, made to be held and fired in a pony’s teeth. Red gave it to Starlight, and she slipped it into a holster that he had found with it.

“Come on . . .” he grunted, digging deeper into the hole. “Just something else we can use.”

There was a short crack when he was digging, and Starlight heard him let out a sharp hiss. “Damn,” he grunted. “That one wasn’t so pleasant.”

“What’s wrong?” Starlight asked.

“I got my hoof stuck,” Red mumbled.

Starlight held back a laugh when she looked over the hoof that was dug into the floorboards. “You really did,” she said. “You’re in their pretty tight.”

“Oh just shut up and help me.”

“Alright, alright, no need to get hostile.”

Starlight moved around to Red’s front and wrapped her hooves around Red’s leg. She pulled, but to no avail. The hoof remained stuck, and the stallion it was attached to was biting his lip until it bled.

Then, to add to it, Starlight heard the honk of the RV’s horn from outside.Starlight tried to pull harder, but only succeeded in digging him in further.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered as she worked. The honking continued as she worked to free Red. At last, she was able to pull a board out of the way and Red came up with one last pull. By the time she had gotten him out, though, she heard the squeal of tires and the rumble of the Odyssey's engine.

“No!” Starlight ran to a nearby window, but only in time to see four IS cars rumble to a stop in front of the house. Agents in black scrambled out of the cars and headed for the front door.

Red pulled Starlight away from the window, and dragged her down the hall toward the bathroom. She struggled a little, but he didn’t let up until they were both inside the narrow room, and he had softly shut the door. He stared at it like it was made of bees, and stayed as far away from it as he could.

“You could have just let me follow you,” Starlight hissed.

“Hey, it’s not everyday I get to drag a mare to the bathroom,” Red whispered, and winced when Starlight glared at him.

They both stopped their foaling around when they heard the creaking of wooden floorboards down the hall. The IS were checking Sunrise’s room, and the pair could hear the low rumble of conversation coming from it. There was a clatter as the sound of an agent jumping into the cubbyhole echoed down the hall. The sounds of more agents came, like they were pouring in.

“How are we going to get out of here now?” Starlight grumbled.

Red looked around, then patted her on the shoulder and pointed upward. There was a narrow window above the toilet. Moonlight shone through it, giving them light to see by.

Red hopped up on the toilet, and creaked open the window. He watched the door to see if anypony had heard him, but the door remained shut. He took a deep breath and slipped outside.

Starlight jumped up on the toilet after him, but one of her hooves slipped and knocked hard against the porcelain. The sound was loud, and she winced. She could hear everypony outside the room go silent, then start chattering and moving toward the bathroom.

Feeling like her heart was in her throat, Starlight struggled back up on the toilet, and onto the back. The window was just barely in her reach, and she had to haul herself up to it. Her forehooves weren’t as strong as Red’s, and her muscles ached to hold her whole body up. Her back hooves dragged against the wall.

The door had been locked, thankfully, but the agents were banging on it. “Just come out peacefully and you will not be harmed!” somepony yelled.

Starlight strained and grabbed for the outside edge of the window, but couldn’t quite get it. Instead, she started to fall backward, and couldn’t hold herself up with just one hoof. She felt her hooves flail as she started to fall back, and she cried out.

Then, just as suddenly, she stopped. A hoof hung on to her own, and at the end of it was a smiling Red. “I’ve got you,” he said. He pulled her up to the window and was squeezing her out when the door finally burst open.

Starlight’s rear end hung inside the bathroom while Red pulled her out. She began to kick just as a couple overexcited agents fired their pistols at her. She felt a sharp pain in her inner thigh, but by then she was pulled free and on the outside of the house.

“Were you hit?” Red was yelling.

“I-I think so,” Starlight mumbled.

“Can you run?”

Starlight stood up, and tested her hind legs. It stung like Adana himself had hit her, but she could withstand it. She nodded and took off with Red toward the back fence of Sunrise’s house. She could hear the agents running to get out of the house to chase after them.

“Come on, follow me!” Red cried as he burst through the back gate and into an alley behind the house.

Starlight tumbled out the gate in time to see Red take a hard left down the alley of back fences and driveways. They ran, hooves pumping and vision going dark at the edges from the adrenaline flowing through them both.

Lights switched on and dogs began to bark as the neighborhood woke up to the interference of the IS. Ponies watched them from backyards where they stepped out in pajamas and nightgowns to see two ponies sprinting behind their house.

Finally, Starlight saw the end of the alley, and the road beyond. From there it was open ground toward the rest of Skyhall, and hopefully to the Odyssey. She could feel the blood pumping in her ears and her breath came in short gasps.

Then, just as they had reached the alley, Red and Starlight were blinded by headlights. They both skidded to a stop in the face of the vehicle, out of disbelief. The IS had caught them, and there was nothing they could do.

“What are you two standing around for?” Sunrise screamed from the door of the RV. “Move it or lose it, you two!”

Red looked up in question, but Starlight didn’t need anymore prodding. She scrambled over to the open door of the Odyssey and barreled inside. She threw herself into the recliner inside the RV and had never felt so happy to be in it.

Red got in a few seconds after it, and Staten roared off. The IS had filled the alleyway, but if they saw the RV they didn’t shoot. The Odyssey weaved like mad through suburbs quickly filling with ponies, on a general course further up the mountain to downtown Skyhall. Spindly towers and stone forts converted into cafes and penthouses.

Starlight’s chest heaved as she sucked air back into her lungs. They felt like they were on fire, and her eyes were squeezed shut. When she opened them, she saw spots in her vision, and her mouth felt dry. “Did we make it?” she asked. “Are we alright?”

“We’ll be fine,” Red said, turning around to face her. When he did, though, his brow furrowed and his eyes traveled to her flank. “Though, are you going to be?”

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

He pointed to her rear. “You’ve got blood all over you.”

“I don’t know how I—” Starlight began, but then took a good look at herself. Crimson blood was smeared over her pale flank, and it was erupting from a . . . a hole just above her thigh. Like a cork out of a wine bottle, seeing the hole brought a rush of pain through her body.

Starlight hissed and held a hoof over the bullet wound. Blood flowed from around it, but it at least stopped the worst of the bleeding. Now that the shock started to wear off, it felt like a giant needle was digging inside her, tearing through her and leaving her whimpering on the recliner like a school filly.

“What’s wrong?” Staten called from the driver’s seat. “Who’s hurt?”

“Starlight’s been shot,” Red said. He looked back at her again, and bit his lip. “She needs to go to a hospital, or we’re going to have a problem on our hooves. There should be one downtown.”

Sunrise got out of his seat and shook his head. “We can’t!” he said. “If we go to a hospital, any hospital, we’re going to get impounded by the IS and this whole thing will have been for nothing. We might as well just turn around and tell them the whole thing.”

“We can’t just let her die!” Red said. “She’s been hit bad and if we don’t do something then, well, I don’t want to think too far after that. You get the idea.”

Starlight started to feel woozy, and the conversation seemed to float around her like in a heavy haze. She bobbed her head down, but fought to stay awake as the Odyssey sped faster and faster toward downtown Skyhall.

“We won’t let her go untreated,” Sunrise said. “But we can’t go to a hospital.”

Red shook his head. “Unless you’ve become a surgeon since we last saw each other, then I don’t think we have much of a choice, Sunrise.”

“No, no, not me.” Sunrise pointed up toward downtown Skyhall. “You remember Parish? The dealer who would quote Adana scripture and all that crap? He’s a priest in training up at the Church of the Heavenly Solstice in Skyhall.”

“So what?”

“So all the priests get medical training because some of the hardcore Solarists don’t like hospitals. We go up there, and there’s a good chance he can fix your friend up.”

Red sighed. “What do you say, professor? Is it worth risking it?”

“We’ll try the church first,” Staten said. “But if they can’t fix Starlight then we get her to a hospital. I’ll keep the engine running.”

Red turned back to Starlight, and saw her smiling at him. Her eyelids fluttered and her hooves started to go weak.

“Starlight?” he asked.

“I feel funny . . .” she mumbled, then her eyes closed and she slumped in the recliner.

“Starlight!”


Noctilucent arrived to the marked house in Skyhall inside of a black, unmarked van. It pulled up to the curb of the the suburban ranch house. Spinners flew through the air, buzzing and spreading their spotlights all across the neighborhood. Agents went from house to house, asking questions and talking with unhelpful citizens who weren’t happy to be awake so early.

Fresco walked out of the house with a disgusted look on his face. He shook his head and ran a hoof through his close-cropped mane before taking a junior agent by the sleeve. “We have been ordered to not shoot at the subjects,” he growled. “We don’t want corpses, understood? Another slip up and every agent here gets demoted.”

He let go of the shaken mare and made his way over to Noctilucent. “Who did they shoot at?” he demanded. “Was it Starlight?”

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” Fresco said. “Probably the slimeball they took with them from this house.”

“Which wouldn’t have even been a concern if your agents had gotten here faster,” Noctilucent said. “Now they’re saying that they’ve lost them again! I can only help you so much if you can’t find an old professor and an inexperienced mare in this city.”

Fresco sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Mr. Noctilucent,” he said, “we’ll find your daughter, don’t worry. They can’t have gotten far.”

Noctilucent leaned against the van. His heartbeat had slowed once he’d been assured that his daughter wasn’t hurt. He took in a deep breath of the cool night air and looked around. “I wonder why they’d take the guy who was here too, why he wouldn’t turn them in.”

Fresco shrugged. “Nearest we can tell, the stallion who lived here was a former criminal, so he may have been the friend of the smuggler. That, or they kidnapped him.”

“No way,” Noctilucent said. “Starlight wouldn’t have let them do that.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know my daughter.”

Fresco shook his head. “Well, that’s not the point. What we need right now is to set up a perimeter in Skyhall. We’re going to have to move the barriers from Amperdam up to here.”

“And what do you expect me to do?” Noctilucent asked.

Fresco pointed toward downtown Skyhall. “Take a spinner down there and get on the wire with that professor in Amperdam. Find out who, if anyone, that professor knows in the city and keep a lookout at local hospitals for whoever got shot.”

“Should I salute you?”

“No, but you should remind yourself that you are a guest so long as you cooperate, Mr. Noctilcuent.”

Over the city, storm clouds gathered. Far away from the house, on the other side of Skyhall, rain began to fall on a lone RV that stopped in front of a grand church that sloped up the side of the mountain.

Next Chapter: Chapter 9: You're Gonna Go Far Kid Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 42 Minutes
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