Concessions

by Neon Czolgosz

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Comedy, Trixie, Gilda, Slice of Life
Length: 5255

Gilda and Trixie brave a warzone to sell looting concessions.

The armies of the the free world — from the Myrmidons of Minos to the Border Guard of Equestria — unite to free the deer nation Nainuoc from a tyrant and destroy his secret doomsday devices.

Critics see a quagmire, cooked up on flimsy pretenses. Supporters see a just war of liberation, for the safety of the world.

Gilda and Trixie see comically large sums of money, drifting softly into their clutches.

Published 2014-04-20 16:30:02 UTC
Last updated 2014-04-20 16:30:02 UTC

The Start of Something Wonderful

In a private room of one of Las Pegasus’s more respectable spas — that is, one where you had to ask for a happy ending — lounged a griffon and a powder-blue unicorn. The griffon, called Gilda, sat up on the massage table where a masseur had recently pounded several week’s worth of aches out of her back. She felt back to her usual self, her head swimming with malicious ideas, and brimming with energy to carry them out.

She said to the unicorn, “Look Trixie, forget the mosquitos. Think of the money! I can walk us both into a contract job no problem. Do you know what kind of scratch these guys make? My cousin Rickson had to guard a freakin’ water tower for two months in Southern Tarandroland, and he was getting two thousand bits a day.”

The unicorn, who was called Trixie, did not look up at the griffon, as her eyes were covered with cucumber slices and her face was coated in a herb-mint facial masque. She simply sipped at her gin collins and then replied, "Yes, but doing guard work? If I wanted to do a boring job for lots of money, I’d have become a Great and Powerful Accountant. I wouldn’t have to worry about being shot at that way, either.”

“You’re not getting me. That’s what you get paid for the shitty jobs, the shitty legitimate jobs. Have you heard the kinda sums pouring into this hot mess? Minos is throwing it's whole weight into this thing, and they're working with the Kingdoms, Highfrench, and even Equestria. We’re talking eyeball-bleeding sums here. It’s gonna be an all-you-can-eat money buffet, and we’re eating with pitchforks.”

“Lovely choice of metaphors. Speaking of eyeball-bleeding, what happens if we’re caught scamming several governments in the middle of a warzone? Dead mares can’t spend their money.”

“That’s the beauty of it. They won't find out because trying to track all the money pouring into a war is like trying to get the vodka out of the vomit. It'll pass through so many claws, countries, intermediaries, subsidiaries, cream-skimmers, escrows and non-dairy creamers that a legion of psychic accountants couldn't keep track of it.

Gilda continued, “Even if they did find out, which they won't, what are they gonna do? We’ll blame it on our contract-holder and show them the orders, and then the contract-holders will blame the interim government, and the interim government will blame the NGOs, and the NGOs will blame the MLAs and nobird will do anything because it’ll turn into a mess of talon-pointing and screaming aides. And that means nobird is gonna be looking too deeply into finances or where things have gone, because they know it’s gonna be a huge mess, earn them more enemies, and solve nothing.”

“...I’ll admit, I’m a little tempted. I like large gatherings of ponies eager to part with their money. Hmm. What would we be doing, specifically?”

“Dunno. Could be any number of things. But I guarantee you, when we draw up our plans, we’ll be looking at five figures. Per week.”

“And the catch?”

“Everyone is shooting at everyone. But hey! That’s no more dangerous than anything else we’ve done. Plus, you’ve got claws-on experience with taking over places by force.”

“...I was getting tired of Las Pegasus anyway, to be honest. I’m in.”

* * *

Four weeks, eight injections, and twenty-seven illicit brown envelopes later, Gilda and Trixie were in To Dong, the capital city of Nainuoc. The Evil Lord Saiyan had been chased into hiding by teams of Equestrian sorcerers, his dreaded Imperial Guard had been routed by the combined might of the Minoan and Griffon Kingdoms armies, and the army of Nainuoc had either deserted their posts or cheered on the liberators as they marched on the capital.

Deer lined up around the block, dragging carts and wheelbarrows and as many sacks as they could carry with them. Fawns huddled close to their parents, whispering to each other excitedly. Some carried purses full of coin, but many brought jewelry, family heirlooms, sheathed weapons, anything valuable enough to be used as collateral.

Mosquito catchers had buzzed with an eerie light on every street corner in the city of To Dong, but since the liberation the city’s entire electro-thaumic grid was down. Though the citizens had long had to bear the privations and sadism of the Evil Lord Saiyan, mosquitos were a new pest. A few enterprising fawns trotted up and down the queue, offering crude wire-mesh flyswatters to any takers.

They didn’t have much luck. The entire crowd was hanging on to their money tightly.

At the front of the queue was a gigantic sandstone building, walled off from the rest of the street. It was the Palace of Image, the heart of the country’s state-run media.

Two steam-trucks blocked off the front gate, only wide enough for two deer to slip between them. Six more steam-trucks sat in the courtyard. A dozen police officers, bucks and does, were milling around the entrance. Or at least, bucks and does with some To Dong City Police uniforms and enchanted slings. These days, that could mean anyone.

Currently, they were letting deer out. The deer walked out of the building, their carts, backs and bags laden with paper, electronics, crystals, stationery, furniture, entire filing cabinets, hip flasks, jewelry, anything even remotely valuable they could find. As they reached the trucks, a griffon and a unicorn pored over their findings, taking anything they pleased and handing it off to the police officers at the side. They left the looters with two thirds of their booty, and then handed them back whatever deposit they had taken on the way in.

It wasn’t common for looters to pay a concession fee, but then it wasn’t common for the military to protect them rather than shoot them, either.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit and shit. None of these freakin’ deer know how to loot a place. All the good looters are looting the unguarded stuff, and we’ve just got the lazy cowards who’ll pay for protection,” said Gilda dismissively as she pawed over one buck’s bounty. A police officer was pinning the buck to the ground while Gilda did her inspection, as he’d tried to tuck a shiny pewter brooch under his tail. Gilda thought it looked as worthless as the rest of his haul, but she was considering keeping it out of spite.

“Just as well, Gilda,” said Trixie. She was sitting in a deck chair under the shade of a truck. Her silver mane was wrapped inside a floral pink shawl, and she sipped from a split-open young coconut. A matrix of crystals and candlewax was on the floor next to her, shimmering and flashing. She glanced at it periodically, but otherwise kept her attention on the loot being sorted. “A better class of looters would almost certainly be better at smuggling out their haul.”

Gilda called over one of the police officers, and drew her claw over a third of the table. “Keep that stuff, let him keep the rest.” The doe nodded, and cleared away the confiscated goods.

Gilda then picked the looter off the ground. She took the brooch, held it in front of the deer, and looked down her sunglasses at him. “I see you again and I’m gonna pin this thing right through your balls, you get me?”

He appeared to get the gist. He quickly swept away everything they allowed him to keep, and nearly tripped over his hooves leaving the gates.

Gilda turned to Trixie, shaking her head. “The freakin’ nerve, right? He didn’t even shove the thing all the way in. It was like a haddock stuck in a prairie-dog hole.”

Trixie said, “Relax, Gilda. We have all day, and eventually one of these blind squirrels will turn up a nut. I think the heat is getting to you, honestly. Have a coconut.” She proffered a large young coconut from the pile beside her, but Gilda waved her off.

“Nah, those things run straight through me. The freakin’ heat, though. It’s been cloudy all week and this is still the hottest I’ve ever been. I can feel my ovaries sweating.”

The day dragged on slowly. It went past noon, and if anything the queue had grown. Gilda was half-surprised that so many deer would risk standing in the open for so long while the fighting was still going on, but she guessed they were emboldened by the large military presence around the Palace of Image. There were rhino-driven minotaur tanks parked in the courtyard, artillery pieces on the roof, and crossbow-toting skirmishers could be seen peeking out of sandbagged windows of the building’s upper floors.

That’s what they saw, at least. In reality, it was a mixture of cardboard, plywood, superglue, marker pen, and Trixie’s magic. She wasn’t even powering the illusion herself any more. She’d set up a diesel generator attached to a crystal matrix. All she had to do was check on it occasionally to make sure none of the ‘soldiers’ glitched through a wall.

The police officers were real and needed paying, but they came cheap. They wanted half the confiscated loot, which Trixie and Gilda were happy to part with, and some magical armor. That had been trickier, but nothing a ream of forged requisition forms couldn’t get.

“Pardon my brashness, but are you Minoan?”

Gilda and Trixie looked up at the questioner. She was a doe with soft features and oversized spectacles. She had a camera slung around her neck, and a notepad strapped to a leg.

Gilda looked down her sunglasses at her. “Who the hay are you?”

“I am a writer for the To Dong Underground Press. I had heard that the Minoan military were offering ‘looting concessions’ and I could not quite believe it. Why would you do this?” Her voice was subdued, but there was a clear edge to her tone.

“Ma’am, that is a misconstrual of what we’re trying to do here,” said Gilda. “We’re here to bring freedom to Nainuoc. For years, Lord Saiyan was terrorizing his people and confiscating their wealth. We’re only allowing deer to get back what was taken from them, ma’am.”

“You’re letting deer take anything! That doe is walking out of there with a filing cabinet!”

“Freedom is messy.”

The reporter put a hoof on the bridge of her nose and looked back up at Gilda with pleading eyes. “It is not just furniture and telephones in there. The Palace of Image would raid the homes of writers and artists, steal their work, copy what they wanted and punish deer for creating anything that offended them. Even without the Dark One ruling over us, there are still a great many deer in this country who would destroy these works, or track down the creators and persecute them! I implore you to at least section off this work until our new government can decide what to do with it.”

“With respect, ma’am, we are the new government. But, I think we can come to a compromise. Hand us your camera and notepad as collateral, and we’ll let you go in there, find all this artsy stuff and keep hold of it. We’ve even got a spare pallet for you to take it all away with. How does that sound.”

The reporter practically growled. “I will not loot my own city.”

“Well somebird else will!” snapped Gilda, “Either take that stuff or let someone else take it and burn the artists or whatever else they wanna do. Put up or shut up.”

The pair glared hard at each other for a moment. Gilda was about to ignore her and turn back to the table of confiscated items, but then the reporter unslung her camera and handed over her notepad.

“Pallet’s behind the third truck,” said Gilda, pointing a talon. “Tell the doe Gilda sent you. Now get outta my freakin’ sight.”

As soon as the reporter was in the building, Trixie took the camera, removed the reel, and exposed the whole thing. Then she hastily stuffed it back in place.

Ten minutes later, a fawn traipsed in next to a family. Instead of paying the toll to Gilda, she bounced along up to Trixie.

“Miss you want chiclet?” she chirped.

Trixie looked over her drink at the child, who was beaming at her with wide eyes and holding up a packet of chewing gum. She looked over at Gilda.

“Gilda, your breath stinks, buy some chiclets!”

“Fuck off!”

Trixie looked back at the fawn. “No, thank you. What else do you have?”

The fawn looked at her, confused. Trixie mimed looking in her saddlebags. She nodded with understanding, and pulled out a tattered, year-old fashion magazine.

“Miss you want Cosmare?”

“Gilda, you look like a mess, buy a Cosmare!”

“Fuck off!”

“No, thank you.”

The fawn went through the bags and brought out a different magazine. On the front were two does and a buck in a compromising position.

“Miss you want porno?”

“Gilda, you’re a pervert, buy some smut!”

“Fuck off!”

“No, thank you.”

The fawn looked mildly frustrated, and went back through her bags. She pulled out a pair of large, ripe fruits.

“Miss you want—”

“Yes, I would like a mango,” said Gilda.

“Two mangoes, please.” Trixie passed a handful of bits to the child, who beamed at her. Before she left, Trixie sliced her fruit open and gave a thick slice, dripping with juice to the fawn. The fawn thanked her, gobbled it immediately, and pranced away.

Trixie felt doubly good. Not only had she fed a poor child, she’d also checked that the mangoes weren’t poisoned.

More looters came and went. They left the building with government-issue projectors, new furniture, art supplies, scrap metal, desk lamps, radios and whatever else they could lay their hooves on. Gilda saw the reporter walking out in a hurry, her cart laden with paper and canvas, glaring at anyone who looked her way. Gilda didn’t pay her much attention. She was too busy looking through the loot for what they needed.

She jumped up when she saw one doe walking out with a switchboard. She pulled her straight to the table, and spread all her takings out with a wide grin on her face.

“That’s right, we need that, those cables there...” Gilda pored over the various parts. Hours of nothing and this one deer had found three quarters of everything they needed for the next part of the job. This was perfect. She looked up at the increasingly nervous doe. “We’re taking all of this.”

The doe protested. “But you said we could keep — aahh!”

Gilda grabbed her ear and pulled her close. “Mission critical resources will be distributed between your fellow citizens. And don’t fuckin’ answer me back!” She dropped her and the deer fell to the ground, shaking with fear.

Gilda sighed. “Right. Because we took this batch, you can go back in and bring some stuff out. In fact...”

She walked over to Trixie, sorted through a bag by her side, and pulled out a pair of tattered manuals and a large purse. She took a pencil and circled a few parts of a few drawings. Then she turned back to the doe. “See these things I’ve just circled? These are more parts we want, and they should all be in there. Fifty bits for every piece you bring back, and an extra two-fifty for all of them. Understand?”

The doe’s eyes went wide. She nodded quickly, and almost sprinted back into the building.

“And bring back those manuals or I’ll tear your freakin’ heart out!” Gilda called after her. She turned back to Trixie. “I don’t know why we didn’t try more diplomacy,” she said, “It’s basically just carrot and stick.”

The day drew on. Insects chittered in the rhododendrons and under the palm trees in the middle of the courtyard. By sunset, Gilda and Trixie had all the parts they needed, and the building had been looted bare. The only deer trickling in now were the hardcore looters who brought in crowbars and sledgehammers, ready to strip the copper wiring and crystal switches from the walls. Trixie was vaguely fascinated by the proceedings. It felt like watching insects strip a dead rabbit to the bone, on a much grander scale.

By the time the sun set, Trixie and Gilda had long stopped paying attention to the looting. They were too busy setting up their machine: A set of crystal resonance amplifiers crudely jury rigged to a radio, a concave dish, a spell matrix, and a switchboard. They had tried to acquire a proper one from their contract-holder, but had no luck before leaving and knew ‘You’ll get it in the theatre,’ was the cruellest lie of all. So, jury rigging it was.

It took themselves and the help of three police officers to load it into the back of a truck. The heat didn’t help, though the deer were much more used to it. Gilda gave in and took a coconut when they were done, lopping the top off with her hunting knife before guzzling down the whole thing.

A few bold looters scouted out the building, seeing if they dared attack the guards to scrounge at whatever remained. They scattered when Trixie’s illusion shone floodlights at them from every window in the building.

Soon, it was night proper. Nobody dared to brave the streets without a weapon. Whatever pockets of resistance remained, they were being quickly mopped up.

A voice yelled out from down the street.

“Sol!”

From down the street, behind cover, noted Gilda. She snapped for everyone to get down, and they all dropped to the floor. Trixie was nowhere to be seen, probably by choice.

“I said Sol!” came the voice again.

“What?” yelled Gilda.

“Sol, I said Sol!”

“I don’t — Invictus! Invictus, okay, we’re friendlies!”

A patrol came out of the night, a mixture of ponies and griffons all wearing League of Nations Peacekeeper helmets. There were eight in total. The ponies carried spears that crackled with a dull energy, and the three griffons carried either crossbows or blackpowder rifles. A rangy pinto stallion with twitchy eyes led the squad.

Gilda peeked her head over the hood of the steam truck, showing her empty paws to the soldiers as she approached. “You scared the crap outta me! Didn’t you see all the minotaur tanks?”

The pinto stallion said, “We saw them all right. What are they doing here? This place is a red zone, it’s supposed to be empty apart from civvies and Elite Guard!”

“Then what are you guys doing here?”

“We’re the bloody scouting team! Joint Command didn’t say anything about the Minoan Army here!”

“We’re not — we’re contractors, we’re with PSD Securty. The Minotaurs wanted us to secure and maintain some non-military critical locations. They didn’t tell us anything about this place being in a red zone! Fuckers said there was no opposition and sent us out two days ago.”

The stallion shook his head. “Bloody hay... Are — why are those deer armed? Are they police? They were all warned to stand down or be treated as soldiers until the fighting is over.”

Gilda held her claws up, her eyes wide. “No, no, no. These — These guys are contractors. Local guides, technicians, translators. The police uniforms are just to keep the civvies and looters away. All the weapons are PSD issue, I’ve got all the paperwork.”

The stallion was still looking at her askance. Most of his squad was still behind cover. For all Gilda knew, he had another four griffons out of sight, all drawing a bead on her.

To her credit, she only sweated a little bit.

“Look,” she said, “My name is Gilda Greybeak. That unicorn over there, our technical officer, that’s Bellatrice Moonsparkle. And these deer, uh, they’re pretty much all called Ngyuen. I don’t know how that works, I only met them yesterday. Guys, come out. Slowly!”

Very carefully, the deer came into sight, along with Trixie. The stallion visibly relaxed a little, though his troops stayed in place.

“I’m Sergeant Spud.”

“Nice to meet you, Sergeant Spud.”

“Right. You said there was no Elite Guard presence in this area?”

“We haven’t met any.” Gilda shrugged. “I mean, there’s nothing that important to guard here. No escape routes from the city. I heard they’re all holed up in the east. The looters are pretty bold, though, and they’ll take pot-shots at you if they think you’ll take cover long enough to steal what they want.”

“Right,” said the sergeant flatly. “We’ll be on our way.”

“Good luck, sergeant. Sorry for the trouble.”

“No worries.” He was about to turn back to his squad, and then he looked at Gilda. “A word of advice: lose that webbing you’ve got on. Hawk lined you up in his magically-enhanced scope and you’re lit up like a jizzing unicorn.”

Gilda looked down at her webbing, containing most of her kit. She pulled at it with a talon. “Huh. Cheap piece of shit. Wasn’t even cheap!” She paused. “Hey, deer don’t even have magic-assisted targeting.”

The sergeant smiled grimly. “Yeah, but those griffon gas-bombers up there do, and they’re so cranked up on stimulants I wouldn’t trust them to tell their own mum from a pronk. Just a heads up.”

“Ahh. Shit, thanks. Uh, wait.”

“Yes?”

“Four blocks down, to the left, there’s a twisty diagonal alley and a meeting house with a balcony. Don’t go there, not without backup.”

This caught the sergeants attention. “You’ve heard summat’ about the meeting house?”

Gilda grinned. “Nah. We’ve been talking to these deer for a week non-stop and we’ve heard something about everything but the meeting house. Whatever it is, they don’t like it.”

“Well. Thank you for the heads up. Squad, move out!”

They faded into the dark so deftly they might as well have turned invisible.

Nobody moved until enough time had passed that the squad was well and truly gone. Gilda and Trixie both took a pair of company-issue Spectracles and scanned the buildings, streets and rubble nearby in case the soldiers had decided to stay behind and watch, but there wasn’t much point. They had skirmishers with them, and if they didn’t want to be seen, they would not be seen.

“Fuck it,” muttered Gilda, “No point in waiting any longer. Trixie, do your thing. The rest of you dweebs, get ready to move out!”

Trixie cast her horn over the spell matrix next to her chair. A faint green glow appeared over the crystals and lines. A second later, the illusions all changed. The minotaur tanks in the courtyard disappeared, leaving their cardboard frames in their place. On the rooftops, the simulacra of minotaur artillery turned into a single piece of Elite Guard artillery.

She double-checked her illusions, and when she was satisfied she hopped into a steam truck, sitting between Gilda and the deer driver.

The steam trucks left the Palace of Image in a convoy, and drove several hundred meters down the road until the iron bars of the gates looked like toothpicks in the distance. Four of the trucks drove off, their part completed, back to wherever the police officers were hiding their illicit gains.

Trixie, Gilda, and the remaining deer unloaded the jury-rigged comms equipment from their truck. They kept the truck running, and used a thick set of cables to power their communication dish with the truck engine.

Both the unicorn and the griffon were more jittery than they wanted to admit. This was the most delicate part of the operation. Simple bad luck could send them home with nothing more than two trucks of looted trinkets. A serious mistake could get a stun-bomb dropped on their head.

Trixie put a bulky headset over her shawl, and Gilda sat by the switchboard. They looked up at the sky and strained their ears, listening for the telltale hum of an Equestrian war chariot above them.

“Gilda! Ten o’clock, over the temple spire!” hissed Trixie.

Gilda’s head snapped up, and she quickly saw the dull disturbance in the clouds above. Even to her griffonic eyes, it was little more than a dot in the distance. She took her Spectracles, and attached a long scope to the end.

After muttering silently to herself, she said, “I got it... Echo, tango — uh — fower, niner, delta.”

“Echo-tango-fower-niner-delta,” repeated Trixie. “Are you ready?”

“Born ready.”

Trixie nodded. “Three. Two. One.”

Gilda flicked a switch. The crystals layered on the back of the communications dish came to life with a yellow glow. The entire device radiated power with an audible hum that vibrated through the air and rattled their teeth together, before settling down into a dull, repetitive thrumming.

Trixie checked the spell matrix beneath the dish. “I see three transmitters on the ground in a three-mile radius. One will be Sergeant Spud and company. The others won’t be.”

Gilda’s talon hovered over the next switch. “You want I should cut them now?”

“If you would.”

The switch clicked, and a visible crackle of electricity arced out from the dish. It made the hairs on everyone’s coat stand up, and a painful tingle ran behind Gilda’s eyeballs. She shook her head and suppressed her nausea.

“This is it, Gilda, patch me in now!”

The griffon plugged a jack into the switchboard, and Trixie cleared her throat.

“This is Sergeant Spud of Lima-November Pathfinders in sector whisky-whisky-whisky-niner, requesting immediate air support from any crew in the area! We are pinned down by artillery fire from the Palace of Image building, please respond, over!” Her impression of Sergeant Spud was not note perfect, but certainly passable. She urgently signalled to Gilda, who flicked a third switch.

The rooftop of the Palace of Image building lit up as Trixie’s illusionary artillery roared to life. Even with Trixie’s expertise with fireworks and illusion, they hadn’t been able to create anything that would fool a war chariot’s gunner from scratch. Instead, they’d stolen several-dozen shells from an abandoned Royal Cervidean Army base, removed the charges, and rigged them all on the roof. They were now exploding, one by one.

A voice crackled over the headset. “This is War Chariot Echo-tango-fower-niner-delta, we see your position. Enemy artillery on the Palace of Image building, please confirm, over.”

“Affirmative, War Chariot. They have bloody nullification shields up, we can’t get a shot. Can you assist, over?”

A chuckle. “That won’t be a problem, sergeant. Sit pretty, out.”

Gilda, Trixie and the deer all decided to lay very flat behind a very solid piece of wall rather than watch the ball drop down from the sky.

They still felt indigo and violet flash through every cell in their bodies.

“Target down,” croaked Trixie, barely remembering her voice, “You smoked them! Thanks for the assist, over.”

“Not a problem, sergeant. Good hunting, out.”

“We’re set?” asked Gilda, still woozy from the explosion

“The Great and Powerful Trixie comes through again!”

“Freakin’ sweet! Okay guys, let’s go!”

They piled back into the trucks, but not before tearing out the spell matrix and switchboard on the dish. Anybody who wanted to stop it would have to destroy it, and there were no telltale spell remnants to examine.

The trucks sped back to the Organisation for Image. Half of the building was a smoking crater, still flickering with coruscating energies. All of the cardboard was on fire — even the ones that Trixie hadn’t left active were burning, as the power of the overloader bomb had set anything with magic potential left in it aflame. It didn’t matter. The building was a stripped out skeleton even before the bomb fell.

They scrambled over themselves to open the second truck. They didn’t have long for this part. Soon, either Sergeant Spud or the war chariot or central command would try to establish contact with each other, and find they couldn’t. They’d find out that no artillery attack had taken place, and they’d send more troops over to investigate.

Trixie and Gilda didn’t know how long they had, but every second counted.

A miniature excavator rolled out of the back of the truck. Gilda drove it into the courtyard, and began digging in front of the rhododendrons. Thirty tense minutes and three feet of dirt later, they hit rock. The deer and even Trixie scrambled with shovels to widen out the area, until four square yards of rock were revealed.

It wasn’t quite normal rock. Normal rock didn’t have runes carved within runes twisting in endless interlocking hexagons. But there was no magic in it. These runes were inert, as dead as a gutted fish. The bomb had seen to that.

Gilda took a masonry drill and plugged a hole in the center of the stone, pressing down until the long bit slid straight down into empty air. Luckily, it wasn’t as deep as they’d thought. The runes had provided most of the structure and protection. She slipped a collapsable grapnel through the hole. With a click, it sprung out below the rock, and then she bolted it at the top. She stood back, and Trixie approached.

Trixie carried a thin, straight wire with a strange metal handle. She ran her telekinesis over the wire, and the entire thing lit up in such an intense shade of purple it was painful to look at. Without hesitating, she plunged the wire straight downwards into the rock. If the runes had been active, the tool and everything around it would have exploded. Instead, it slid through the rock like butter. The rock glowed a dull orange and smoked in the darkness as the wire cut through it.

They rigged a chain between the grapnel and a truck, and slowly started driving it away. Just before the chain went taut, Trixie cut through the last bit of rock.

Gilda cringed as the truck wheels screeched, and had a horrible vision of the roof falling down into the room below, crushing their prize, and bringing the truck down with it. But the truck pulled through, dragging the lump of stone straight out of the ground. Dust rose from the pit below.

Gilda was first down the hole, flapping downwards into the cloud of dust, but Trixie and several deer soon followed on ropes. They turned on their flashlights, and waited for the dust to settle. When it did, their eyes all lit up.

They had found what they were looking for.

The large, vault-like room had tables covered in rare and expensive inks, crates labelled with names of papers and chemicals only used in the most sensitive of documents, and workbenches that would make even the best-equipped artificers green with envy. There were shelves, catalogues of printing plates for every currency, visa, and passport that Trixie and Gilda had ever heard of.

And smack in the middle of the room were two industrial-spec portable printing presses.

Gilda and Trixie said nothing. Several of the deer were practically bouncing with glee.

Trixie looked at Gilda, and passed her a clipped cigar. Gilda lit it, took a drag, and passed it back. They shared a look of trepidation and excitement between each other.

They had a license to print money.

And it was only the start.

Author's Note

Many thanks to my darling lover ScarletWeather for all his wonderful assistance.

For theRedBrony.