Foal Pass

Chapter 3

“Please remember to go to your monthly Crime Coefficient checkups!” a light blue Unicorn mare smiled and waved at the family that left. “Thank you for participating in the anti-stress therapy!” She glanced at the clock. It was late, and about time for closing. She trotted to each door, checking the locks, accessing the Crystal Database, entering in some necessary times and data, before logging off. As she did so, she heard a noise coming from one of the storage areas. Frowning a bit, she turned the lights back on, moving over to the wooden door. However, just as she got to it, the door banged open, and a flurry of movement knocked her over.

“Listen very carefully.” She heard a male’s voice speaking, her sight obscured by the pony’s body. “Unless you want your little secret to get out, you’re going to do exactly as I say.”

The Unicorn gave a faint gasp. Who was this stallion? Did he really know something, or was he bluffing? He had to be bluffing, right?

As if he read her mind, he spoke again. “I know what you’ve been doing to the patients.”

“Okay, okay…” she shook her head. “What did you want me to do?”

He got off her, letting her get to her hooves. However, he was wearing a cloak and mask, obscuring his features. “You’re going to access the database, and switch around some data. You can do that, right?”
“Y-yes, but who and why?” she asked cautiously, as another pony entered behind him, also with a cloak and mask.

“For the better of others.” He passed her a stack of papers, with photos and names. “I want you to change their Crime Coefficients to high values. But not too high. Any value from one hundred to two ninety-nine is fine. Please try and make it fast, we do not wish to spend too much time here.” His voice remained calm, smooth, and with little emotion. “Fear not, I will not harm you as long as you continue to work with us.”

“All right…” she reluctantly pulled up the Crime Coefficent database, glancing down at the first paper. She began working through them, one by one.

“I don’t see why this is such an issue for you.” The mysterious stallion’s partner spoke up, her voice that of a mare. “You’ve been going against protocol as it is, using your own methods, testing various ones on the patients. None of them are regulation.”

“I- it’s because I don’t think the regulation methods work!” the Unicorn looked up at the smaller masked pony. “It’s in the best interest!”

“But even if your methods are better, they would never be implemented, would they? The system doesn’t work like that.” The stallion spoke again.

“No… they wouldn’t…” she looked down.

“What if I told you… I could make your ideas into a reality?” he watched her through the mask.

“That’s- that’s insane! You’d have to destroy the entire system!” she shook her head.

“A solid system can only be changed by destroying and rebuilding it.” He held out his hoof. “Join us… and we can make this unjust system history.”

--

One week later…

“No! My Crime Coefficent was under 100! I swear!” a yellow stallion begged as he was hauled to an Order Patrol carriage. “Please! You’ve got the wrong guy! I WORK for you guys! There has to be some mistake here!”

The crowd murmured as they watched. Recently, it seemed that incidents like this were rising up all over the city. It was causing more than just problems with Council workers, it was causing the citizens to start to distrust the Council. If Council workers were latent criminals, then how could they possibly protect the general public?

The atmosphere of the city was completely different. It was tense, and overly quiet, most ponies keeping their eyes down and hurrying to their destinations.

“It’s going quite well, isn’t it?” the cloaked stallion from before watched from an alley.

“Yes, Master.” A group of ponies answered in agreement.

“I never expected it to work this well, Master Snowfall.” Lily smiled. “The Area Stress rates have been going steadily up… at this rate, we can move onto the next stage.”

“Please remember not to use my full name.” he removed his hood, glancing down at her.

“Ah- forgive me Master, I forgot.” She bowed her head in apology.

“It’s quite all right. I know it was not intentional.” He turned back to watch the ponies passing by for a while. “Come on, my friends. We shall prepare for our next movement. Everything is proceeding perfectly as planned.”

--

Council of Order HQ

“I can’t believe this…” Orchid sighed. “There’s been another Council worker detained…”

“We can’t even go out in public anymore without ponies glaring at us.” Dusk was reading the news on his screen. “They don’t trust us anymore… some of them even ignore or resist anything we say. At this rate…. We won’t be able to keep order.”

“Or we’ll have to Pacify everyone.” Grey rubbed his eyes, tired. The entire department hadn’t gotten much sleep in a while. “I don’t like the idea of that either… it’s not how the system should work…. It was meant to protect others… not this… not whatever this is…”

“It doesn’t help that all this is increasing our own Crime Coefficents.” Chip lowered his head. “It’s stressing everyone out… If it keeps going like this, we’re going to have to change the standards of Crime Coefficients.”

“The system’s never changed ever since implementation… you should be careful, if others heard you talking like that…” Orchid warned gently. “It wouldn’t end well.” She took a breath to calm herself. “The most we can do now is continue with our jobs. If we focus on the negatives, it’s only going to cause trouble for us.”

“She’s right.” Grey nodded. “It’s the most we can do right now. We just have to try all that harder to keep order, and bring things back under control. If we can do that, then we don’t have to worry about this anymore.”

“I suppose you’re right but… I just have a really, really bad feeling about all of this…” Dusk spoke in a quiet tone. “Something… big is coming. I can sense it.”

It would only be a day until his intuition proved correct.