“Know that you won’t be getting out of here. Those walls are laminated in eighteen millimeters of steel. You can’t break through that with your bare hooves. And I know you don’t have any of your little gadgets anymore. My stallions checked.”
The scarf wrapped around the mare’s face moved as she sighed, “I understand. Thank you for letting me keep my dignity at least,” her face turned away from her captor, who trotted away with a reverberating clicking on the old linoleum floor of the converted hospital.
As soon as the clicking stopped, she pulled off the scarf and reached her hoof into her mouth, rooting around. Her hoof came back out with a piece of metal and plastic that had been clipped to her teeth, which she dropped to the floor. She stomped on it, shattering the plastic and exposing a hoof-full of small metal picks. The scarf went back around her muzzle as she worked the picks into the air with her wings and set to work picking the lock from behind. It fell open with barely a sound, and she slipped out, tucking her tools into her scarf.
It only took a few moments for her to make her way to the end of the hallway, where the guards were standing, waiting, not really watching. She listened quietly as they discussed the game. What sport she couldn’t tell. It was never her forte. Slipping one of their crossbows up from the ground and aiming it at the nearest one’s back was easy, silent. The twang of the string as it fired, not so much.
The second reacted to his companion dying horribly by spinning around, horn lighting up. A pair of feathers jabbed him in the eyes, and he clutched at his face, only to get cracked in the jaw by a rising hoof, then body-slammed into the concrete. His skull clacked down on shattered teeth, and the Pegasus slipped the guard’s quivers off them, strapping one to either flank, and slinging the crossbow between her wings. The stairs went down, she was on the third floor. The stairs had a rail preventing Pegasi from flying all the way up or down. Security measure from the days of this building being a hospital that never got removed. It slowed her descent to as fast as she could trot down the stairs, trusting her thick leather boots to absorb the impact force and mute the sound.
She heard a clicking approaching as she reached the opening for the second floor, and stopped, wings opening in preparation. A broad-winged stallion stepped through the door, and she launched straight up, spreading her hooves to lock herself against the concrete supports of the next level. He didn’t look up, even for an instant as he trotted towards the stairs and started climbing. She swallowed, realizing that her escape was going to be found quickly. A bolt made its way from the quiver on her left flank, onto the crossbow grasped in her hooves. The bolt whipped out of the slot, and sank into the concrete.
The stallion bounced off the railing hoof first, and spun, his own crossbow coming out. It very nearly sank into her thigh as she dropped to the floor and scrambled for the stair-well. The stallion pursued, looping around as he reloaded the weapon. She didn’t have time for that luxury, and instead threw her acquired weapon onto her back. She kicked off the wall at the bottom and launched through the doorway just half a pace ahead of her pursuer.
Her hooves slammed into another pony as she launched herself in an arc over her pursuer, and took off in the other direction. Alarms were wailing, and she regretted for a moment failing her marksmareship class. That was until she reached the laundry room. She twisted and shot up the chute, hooves scrabbling to shove her back up to the third floor, or higher. If she could get into a ventilation duct, she could get up to the roof. It was bound to be easier than trying to get out through the ground floor.
A searing pain made her slip, and she started sliding back down as her rear left hoof stopped responding. A clicking noise made her glance down, and she saw the bolt sticking through her hoof, just above the pastern. She tried not to scream as her forehooves found a hatch and she ripped it open, using her wings to shove through. The bolt in her hoof caught, and she whimpered as she rolled onto her back and reached for the piece of metal.
She grabbed the bolt and jerked it the rest of the way through with a scream that probably woke the entire facility, falling to the ground. She rolled back to her hooves, keeping the injured one higher as she looked around. The room was a laundry storage room, with bins that presumably held dirty laundry at some point, and a stack of old dust covered towels. She yanked the bottom one out and tore it into strips, wrapping her bleeding hoof securely. With a grunt of pain, she pressed the hoof to the floor. There was no way it would support her weight, she knew. And these hallways were too narrow to fly in. She looked at the ventilation ducts. Wouldn’t work. Too narrow. Shit.
The door opened, and two stallions wearing armor burst in, crossbows up. Their heads clanged together, metal on metal as she swept down and shot into the hall, sliding on a towel on her back. With a scream, she launched herself at the window, forehooves crossed and wrapped in towels. The glass, fortunately, gave out, and she went through, only to crash into the metal grating keeping ponies from doing exactly what she was trying to do. She shook the glass filled towels off and wrapped her scarf around the four middle bars, tying it in a tight loop. With a grunt of effort, she twisted the knot tighter, the steel rings in the scarf binding together and crushing the bars until they snapped. She dove out, looping the scarf back over her neck as she took to the air.
More Pegasi charged into the air, pursuing her as Unicorns fired blasts of magic at her retreating form and Earth ponies fired crossbows. Another bolt struck her already injured hoof, sinking into the frog, right through her shoe, and embedding itself in the bone. She screamed as she fell from the sky and hit the dirt, sliding through dry shrubs and cacti.
“Welcome to Queensmare Tailors. How can I help you today?” The dirt-brown Unicorn stallion pushed a sheet of numbers back into one of the many folders beneath the desk as he looked up at the pony entering the small shop. It was a green Earth pony stallion, one who had never bought a proper suit in his life, judging by the expressions he was giving the two displays and the bolts of fabric spread around the shop.
“Um…I…I’m getting married in a few weeks, and my buddies told me this was the best place to get a jacket for it.”
The stallion behind the counter sighed, “Of course,” his eyes rolled as he made his way out from behind the counter, “But if you’re getting married, then don’t you want a full suit, so you can look your best?”
The customer stopped flipping through the catalog of designs on one of the tables scattered throughout the building, “No, not really. I don’t really want to marry this mare. It’s really just to keep her parents happy, so they don’t stop me from boning her.”
He stopped, hoof barely touching the pages of the catalog, to point out a specific design that would be flattering on the stallion, and gripped his shoulders, guiding the stallion to the door, “Sir, I think your friends misunderstood what sort of clientele this store services. You are no longer welcome here. Best of luck to you.” He gave the Earth pony a slight push that held immense, very un-unicorn-like strength behind it.
“I do hate when that happens,” he straightened his glasses on the bridge of his muzzle and blinked at the red light glowing in the corner of his vision. With a sigh, he pressed the button on the top of the frame, switching on the display, “Yes…”
The name that appeared in the corner had a familiar ring to it, and he immediately started looking at the camera view from the other end. The inside of a cell, then the view shifted around until it revealed the face of a mare. A deep orange with mustard colored freckles on the cheeks and deep brown eyes, all wreathed in purple bruises and oozing cuts. Red-brown mane fragments fell in front of her face, “They got me. I can’t get out.” The camera view moved to show the scarf he knew the mare wore everywhere, wrapped loosely around her neck, past which he could see more bruising in the orange fur. More bruising came into view as the camera passed her barrel. Hoofprints. She’d clearly been stepped on several times, but it was the blood-soaked towel wrapped around her left cannon and hoof that clarified her words. With her hoof in bad enough condition to soak through the towels, she wasn’t going to be walking anywhere. There was no way she could fly either, judging by how he couldn’t see her wings.
“Show me your wings.”
The camera rose, and he saw the torn and missing feathers. More bruises peeked out of the fur on the edges of the wings, but nothing appeared to be broken. Good.
“We’re coming Gawain. Stay put.”
She blinked, “Mordred, do not come alone.” The camera went black, and his vision cleared, revealing the tailor shop again.
Immediately, he flipped the sign on the door to Closed and trotted into the back room, already pressing in a code on the buttons along the side of the glasses frame, “Uther, Gawain has been captured. Who is in the area?” His mouth rattled off the coordinates he had gotten from Gawain’s communicator as he stepped into a closet and pulled on the third hook from the left. The floor of the room began descending into a shaft as his commander’s voice responded.
“Confirmed Mordred. Percival and Lancelot are en route. They can handle this.”
“No,” Mordred stepped off the closet floor as it reached the bottom, and stepped into the garage buried beneath the building, “With due respect, Sir, Gawain is my sister. I cannot just leave her there, knowing…”
“Mordred, you are to stay in position. Lancelot and Percival have proven themselves more than capable.”
“…Knowing,” he continued, “that she is hurt and I am doing nothing about it. I have to go.”
“Mordred, if you leave that building, I will personally fly over there and strip you of your rank and title. You will become nothing more than you once were. A street punk. A thief, if you will.”
The Unicorn sighed, and removed his glasses, setting them down on a dresser so his commander could see him clearly as his hooves rose over the camera to a rack of firearms, “So be it. I will see you upon my return then? Tea and a court martial?”
As the speakers were in the ear-pieces of the glasses, he did not hear the response, but he caught the tail end of the sputtered swears as he slid the glasses back onto his face, “I will make certain to stop by the shop and purchase some of that lovely tea you always make, and bring it home for the big event. Would you like me to shine my badge as well, before you confiscate it? Or my umbrella?”
“I was right about you, my son. Morgan warned me you would be trouble from the start. She was right, but I let you in anyway.”
Mordred nodded as he slid into his motor-balloon and started the engine up, “Yes sir. That is what the T in my name stands for, Trouble.”
“Do NOT backtalk me, boy!”
Mordred smiled and revved the engine, drowning out his commander as the craft sped out the end of a tunnel and soared into the sky, screaming for the coordinates he had burned into his brain, “I’m coming for you Gawain. Don’t you dare die before I get there.”
Clouds whooshed by, and he gritted his teeth against the blast of wind on his face.