Canadian Pacific 5-5

“Fancy dining tonight?” I asked John through the window.

“Oh yeah,” he replied.

“I’ll get the suits,” I said, “Just remember to park down the street.”

“I know,” John sighed, “They don’t take too kindly to dingy trucks in their parking lot.”

“Hey! I keep this thing spotless,” I said with mock indignation.

We both burst out laughing a moment later.

“Oooh, ha ha,” I chuckled as I wiped tears from my eyes, “OK, yours will be in your locker. See you inside.”

With that John pulled over and I ushered everyone off. I hopped off myself and reached under the truck bed. I pulled out our suits from a hidden container strapped to the underside of the deck. All five suits were quite similar save for a few common differences. The tie for each was a different colour; crimson, sapphire, light green, sepia, and ash grey. The other difference was that the buttons on the suits were styled like the images we saw printed on the pillars we got our powers from.

I asked the Mane 6 if they could get a table for all of us since we were going to go change. They agreed and I tossed everyone their suit bag before putting John’s where I said I would. We put them on just around the corner of the building so we wouldn’t be seen. I then took everyone’s street clothes and headed over to where John was just getting out of the truck. As I packed away the clothes I slapped my forehead.

“I knew I forgot something,” I muttered.

I quickly finished and grabbed our monogrammed gloves out of the glove box. Dashing back to the restaurant I handed them over just before we went inside. We soon found the table they had put the ambassadors at and sat down with them. We ordered and while we waited I began the next chapter in our tale.

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Chapter 10: The Convoluted

Tuesday after school we met just outside Nova Bakery. I handed each of them a walkie-talkie and we split up to take our positions. I had watched Andrew for the past week and had a pretty good idea of where he was going to be. I hoped that Andrew’s spying on us wouldn’t prompt him to do something totally different that day. I quickly climbed up the side of the school’s smokestack and sat down on the upper rim. I looked at the paper on the back of the walkie-talkie and reminded myself of everyone’s codenames and ‘Hero’ names.

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“I’ve got a copy here,” I said fishing it out of my pocket, “Identical to the ones on the back of our walkie-talkies.”

I flattened the paper out and slid it across the table.

Name Codename ‘Hero’ Name

Brent Ice Tray Hydra

Brody Sparx Firefly

Conner Wrought Iron Earth Magnet

John Spartan Airborn

Andrew Origin Karma

After they all got a good look at it I stuffed it back into my pocket and continued the story.

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I set the walkie-talkie down next to me and pulled out a pair of binoculars. I focused on the corner right in front of our school. I didn’t have to wait long before Andrew walked out the front door. I grabbed the walkie-talkie and pressed talk, “Origin has left the building. Give me an E.T.A. on your target location.” I let go of the button and waited for the response. “Ice Tray, in position.” “Sparx, in position.” “Spartan, two minutes to target.” “Origin is on course,” I said, “E.T.A. for Sparx, one minute. Be ready.” With that I slid down the outside of the smokestack and snuck along the side of the building, trying to stay in the half-shadows.

As I followed him I realized that he passed his usual bus stop. “Origin is walking. Got to 20. Spartan, set intercept course,” I whispered into the walkie-talkie. “En-route,” John replied, “E.T.I., three minutes.” Until john intercepted Andrew I had to keep a close eye on him. I grabbed a tin can off the street and turned it into a crude transmitter. I was glad that the electronics classes I had taken were proving their worth. I carefully floated it into his backpack. I grabbed a discarded computer monitor and converted it into a handheld receiver with a screen. I am still thankful that sand is a major ingredient in glass. I tuned the receiver slightly and got a lock on the transmitter. I kept one eye on Andrew and the other on the receiver as I followed him.

Suddenly I lost him in a crowd of people. Glancing at the receiver I saw that he was right where he should be. As John radioed, “One minute to intercept,” Andrew disappeared from the receiver’s screen only to reappear well away from where he should have been. I checked the distance and direction on my iPod and realized that he had shadow jumped. He was now only a block from his house. “We have a problem,” I called into my walkie-talkie, “We need to Go To 17.” “What?!” came the reply from Brody. “No time to argue. FLY!” I yelled. With that I leapt into the air and used my steel-shank boots to basically throw myself toward Andrew’s house.

I landed 100 metres from Andrew’s house and turned to see Andrew rounding the corner at the end of the street. He and I drew our swords as the others landed around us. “We don’t need to fight you know,” I called to Andrew. “But it’s so much fun to kick your butts!” he replied. “Fine,” John responded, “But not here and not now. Panorama Field: Saturday at noon.” “I’ll give you the rest of the details Thursday night in an e-mail,” I continued, “Until then, Truce?” “Very well,” Andrew said a little reluctantly. In the e-mail I told Andrew where everyone would need to stand in order to make it a relatively fair fight.

Panorama Field is an odd patch of natural landscape. The field itself is roughly square and 400 metres across in both directions. Bordering the north side of the field is a large pond, to the south a stout cliff face, and to the east a kilometre wide canyon. On the west side lays a road that we would use to get there. I told Andrew that he would stand in the centre of the field while the rest of us would stand on each of the different sides. We would stand where our element would be the best boosted. The week passed quickly and Saturday came a little too soon.

We arrived at Panorama Field at two minutes to twelve to find Andrew waiting for us. We all then walked to our pre-designated locations. I stood with my back to the cliff, Brent with his back to the lake, John with his back to the canyon, and Brody stood on the roadway’s shoulder. We all took off out trench coats at the same time and unsheathed our swords. As we moved into an attack stance Andrew conjured a wall of shadows around Panorama Field. Before we could do anything else Andrew conjured lightning and struck the shadow-wall with the bolt effectively creating an electric fence. Laughing maniacally he forced the wall inward like a hydraulic press threatening to crush and electrocute us.

In the space of a second the shadows stopped and dissipated along with everything else in our world. “Perfect timing,” I commented. We stood in the Void with Conner calmly standing to one side. Andrew became enraged at Conner for disrupting his plan and attempted to conjure lightning and hurl it at Conner. We stood waiting for several moments before Conner spoke, “The ‘Void’ is a completely neutral field. None of your elemental powers will work here.” This got Andrew even angrier and he lunged at Conner with his sword.

As Andrew’s blade raced toward its mark time seemed to slow. Conner deftly sidestepped Andrew’s attack. Andrew turned and swung his blade in a horizontal arc at Conner’s stomach but he merely leapt backwards. This exchange of swings and dodges continued for almost two minutes before Conner slipped in under Andrew’s guard and shoved him backwards a good twenty feet. After skidding to a stop Andrew leapt up and threw his sword at Conner’s head. The blades pierced Conner’s forehead but his figure curled away like strands of smoke as the sword continued through. “I will watch from afar. Problem?” Conner’s disembodied voice proclaimed with an overtone of smugness, “If you can sway Andrew to the side of good I can then delete the Evil-Andrew reference document.”

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“Awww,” the ponies said collectively, “Don’t stop there!”

“Give us time to get you all back to the Bureau,” I said, “Cliff can hold on just a little longer.”

I got confused looks from all but Pinkie Pie so I said, “Never mind. At least the readers will get it.”