(Shining Armour)

Luxury is a privilege, luxury is a privilege, luxury is a privilege.

I repeated the mantra to myself as I waited at the old door, the white marble it was built into almost glowing with the afternoon sun.

Most nobles I had met before I joined the guard were fine, upstanding citizens who embodied the hard work and intelligence that allowed ponies to make it for themselves in the world; they had always had a kind word or a tasty treat for the colt who proclaimed ‘One day imma be the Captain of the Gauwd”.

Then I became the ‘Captain of the Gauwd’ and all those nice, kind, ever-so-pleasant noble ponies had a personal reason to get on my good side and suddenly bribes would flood in, not obvious bribes, just tickets to go see the opera, offers of marvellous cruises, personal discounts at fancy restaurants, just little creature comforts that would make the life of a single Unicorn living on a guard salary that much more comfortable.

Turning down these comforts had been easy to do, I was the Captain of the Guard, the guardian of Celestia herself, in my hooves lay the safety of the citizens of Equestria, I was the Knight in Shining Armour as Cadance would joke with me in the long lazy evenings before our wedding.

Dealing with the aftermath of turning down those invitations was a much harsher mistress.

The nobles couldn’t do anything obvious, obviously; but the number of complaints against me for the first few months had been phenomenal to the point that Celestia had to personally intervene to hold back the number of petitioners who wanted to see me removed from my newly held position. A process she seemed to be familiar with.

It only got worse when I was appointed as the Prince of the Crystal Empire, apparently some backwards prince of a podunk little town in the frozen plothole of nowhere would know which way the money was flowing when it all came down; although their faces when we met again were a memory that had kept me chuckling in some dark places.

I stood back to attention as the door swung open and an Unicorn butler stood there, glaring at me.

“I am Royal Guard Captain Shining Armour, would mister Jet Set be at home?” I asked, politely while the Butler wrinkled his muzzle at me.

“I am afraid the master is not at home this moment, I must ask you to return some other time” The butler started to swing the door shut, his magic pushing the heavy wood before I could put my own magic against it.

“That’s no problem, I have a warrant of investigation” I said as I pushed the door open against the butler’s now sputtering magic as he stepped backwards trying to stop me.

“Now you see here, that doesn’t give you the right to just come barging into the master’s house like this”

“I would rather think it does, considering that you are now blocking a criminal investigation” I leaned inwards towards the stuffy butler “I would hate to go back to Princess Celestia and tell her that I needed the full force of the guard because somepony wasn't playing nice” I stepped backwards, a smile suddenly on my face, “Now I know Jet Set and his wife are currently at home for the sole reason that their carriage is still in the driveway, and I would like to speak to them, so could you please take me to them.”

I kept my outward smile as the butler turned around even as I cringed inwardly, I never enjoyed doing that sort of thing; these were ponies who just had a job to do, and they didn’t need me to make it worse, especially considering who they worked for; and the fractured temperaments that inevitably followed my visits could only make things worse.

Following the butler through the mansion I held my head high and kept my mouth shut even as a group of pinched and tired looking maids turned to face away from us, the mansion might not have had the pure opulence of my current home, but that didn’t stop it from trying at the cost of millions of bits and the souls of its caretakers.

Eventually, I was led to a small, if not understated, door the Butler knocking on it softly his expression twisted tight from the previous shock that had the last thing I saw.

“Sir, you have a guest” his voice was polite, but strained.

“Hooves, I thought I told you I was not to be interrupted for the remainder of the afternoon” A clipped, precise tone, with the faintest hint of Canterlot snob floated through the door as “Hooves” flinched, his serene expression reverting to panic before he could respond.

“They were most insistent they see you sir”, still polite, still strained, newly apologetic.

A soft sigh and then “Very well, send them in”.

The lightly coloured wood swung open quietly as the butler’s magic pushed it to reveal an upper-class study.

That’s what it was, it was the very image of an upper-class study.

Rich, dark cherry panelling lined the walls behind an oaken desk topped with green felt, a heavy looking bookcase loomed in the shadows cast by the open door, silk and velvet cushions were scattered on the floor with a deliberately casual pattern, while a magically shielded fireplace kept both the heat and the embers contained. However the usual family picture were missing from the mantelpiece and the room felt oddly sterile; it wasn’t a study where Jet-Set went to relax, or feel accomplished in his hard work, it was a room where he said ‘yes I am important, and rich, and successful; don’t you wish you were too?’ it was a room dedicated to subtle vanity.

Needless to say I was having some very aggravating memories drawn from the depths of my mind.

“Ah, Captain Shining Armour, this is a pleasant surprise” the ash grey unicorn looked at me from behind his desk, his cold blue eyes betraying neither surprise, nor pleasantries.

“Jet Set, it has been too long” or not long enough, on one hoof I loathed him, on the other he wasn’t malicious per-se, just, as Caddy would put it, more in love with images than reality.

“Indeed it has, but I am an important Stallion, and my time is money, make this quick” the Unicorn stated as a book floated away in his magic, slotting neatly into a gap in the bookcase, disturbing a thin layer of dust on the tops of the other books.

I heard the door click shut behind me as I waited for Jet Set to hover a cushion for my seating purposes. He raised his eyebrow at my continued silence as I stared at him.

So this was how it was going to be.

I kicked one of the cushions over to a suitable spot and sat down slowly not once breaking eye contact with my suspect. My armour rattled lightly with each motion, the only noise to break the silence.

We both continued to stare.

The fire crackled behind me.

We both continued to stare.

I could feel his resolve wavering; he was a business pony who had inherited his fortune, I was a Royal Guard. I would have put the future of Equestria down on him breaking before I did.

His eyes flickered away towards the fire behind me.

Equestria would be safe for a long while.

“What can I do for you Captain?” The unicorn’s eyes returned to mine, his tone neutral.

“I only have a couple of questions regarding current events, I won’t take much of your time” I smiled politely.

“Very well, ask away”

“What are your feelings on the Changelings we have living outside our borders?” I watched as Jet Set’s expression turned from neutral to questioning to furious.

“You cannot possibly be insinuating I have had anything to do the recent tragedy!”

“I am insinuating nothing,” I replied calmly “I am simply asking questions based on the evidence I have.” the unicorn’s expression tightened at the mention of evidence, “Now please, what are your opinions on the Changeling Hive in the Badlands”

“I have no opinions so long as they stay there” his eyes darted away from mine for a split-second.

“So your name on these lists of guest to very public balls, garden parties, and other such gatherings where a number of anti-Changeling petitions have been spawned”

“I highly doubt that I am the only name on those petitions Captain”

“That is true, yours is not the only name on those petitions, however I believe we are getting off of the topic” I shifted slightly on the cushion before continuing “What are your feelings on the Changeling Resort in the badlands?” a brief flicker of annoyance, and a tightening of his jaw, before his clipped response.

“They are parasites that feed off of ponies and I would rather see them exterminated than allow that travesty of a resort continue on”

“And your feelings on their Queen?” I continued patiently before he could go on a full rant.

“She is a monster, though I doubt that you would think any less of her”

“But we are not here to discuss my feelings, we are here to discuss your feelings on the matter” I paused, just for a moment, gathering my words. “So you wouldn’t describe yourself as a supporter of Changeling integration?”

“I most certainly would not”

“And yet I have here the paperwork clearing a number of donations, rather sizeable donations if this paperwork is to be believed, from your personal account to “Change of Heart”, a changeling integration charity” I looked up at the shocked Unicorn, his eyes were wide, and his mouth started to fall open as I levitated a set of paperwork copies to the desk in front of him, “What am I to make of this?”

Jet Set looked at me, looked at the spread of paper on his desk, looked back at me, and hung his head in defeat, not the reaction I had expected.

The new, now uncomfortable, silence hung over the both of us as I saw Jet Set’s mouth work silently, before he looked up again, refusing to meet my eyes.

“Can I get you anything to drink Captain Armour?” he asked, his voice was much softer, the clipped tone gone.

“No, but thank you for the offer”

“Very well” I saw his horn start to glow, and heard the shifting of wood and the soft tone of crystal, before a bottle of brandy and a small glass landed softly on the desk. A small glass that was swiftly filled.

“The reasons are very simple Captain” the unicorn quickly slugged the brandy back “Business, and business alone”

“Please explain”

“I thought it would have been simple Captain” The bottle returned to it’s hidden compartment in the desk “I am a business pony with major investments in travel and tourism, the Changelings have redefined their way of life with travel and tourism” he smiled ruefully, his tone slightly bitter under the carefully clipped and enunciated words “even with the paltry amount of bits they charge the low-class rabble they call visitors they spend even less, such a lucrative chance shouldn’t go ignored.” the glass hovered in his magical field before any traces of fluid disappeared from it and I saw a brief bloom of light from the fire behind me almost unnoticeable in the light from the window that overlooked Canterlot “alas, I am a Canterlot noblepony, and I am expected to uphold standards that so few of my Canterlot rivals themselves uphold while extolling their virtues, given the poisonous nature of our deals, agreements, polite hoofshakes, and back-scratching, if I was seen to openly accept these Changelings I would lose a great deal of work, both in so-high-it’s-stinking society, and a business that I have worked hard to keep stable in this time of constant upheaval.”

“So…” I waved a hoof gesturing for him to either finish up or keep going.

“I want to have my cake and eat it too, that is the point of a cake Captain Armour” the Unicorn stated the saying like it was pure madness to not eat cake “I want the Changelings here so that I can make use of their skills for my business, and I do not want to sacrifice my social standing so that I can continue selling delightfully fashionable, and expensive, holidays to ponies who so desire to be seen as important and rich and make myself even richer by doing so” the Unicorn straightened his back again as he started to meet my eyes again. “However I must ask; why do you, with all of your experiences, care Captain Shining Armour?”

“A pony is dead, it is my job to see that the murderer comes to justice” I answered.

“That’s your job, not the reason you care, you have asked nothing about Wind Cloak, or how I knew of her, your only concern has been the Changelings” damned smug-looking, backstabbing, politically savvy, Canterlot nobles, this is why I refused so many meetings with them.

“Because honestly, after letting go of my first impression with Chrysalis, and my second at their hive, they seem like ponies who were let down by their leader making a very poor decision, even if the one I have to deal with is unprofessional, unpleasant, and naturally impolite.” I sighed “Something happened there, and it felt like I let go of something bad, and I feel I can see clearer now, I can hate their Queen easily enough, but hating all of them would be like hating all of the Night Guard because of Nightmare Moon, I think” it was the closest I’d come to sorting out my emotions.

“Very well Captain, I’m glad to have helped the Royal Guard with their inquir…”

A sudden knock at the door was followed by the butler’s voice.

“Sir, there is a Royal Guard here, there is an emergency that needs Captain Shining Armour’s attention”

I pushed myself to my hooves, before nodding farewell.

“Thank you for your time Jet Set, I’m sorry to have involved you needlessly in this business.”

The door swung open, and the butler led me away as quickly as he could, towards whatever emergency the Changeling had caused.

<~~***~~>

(Barbed Retort)

I liked the bank archives, they were dark, quiet, and the fornication was amazing; these ponies seemed to have such a sense of architecture, compared to the natural shapes of the hive, and when I expressed my awe all Bulwark did was stare at me like I was insane, before pushing the ladder I was perched on further along the shelves.

“So what are we looking for here Bitsy?” I didn’t know when I had got a nickname, let alone when I had had time to be familiar enough with Bulwark for him to use it; it was better than my other nickname at the very least.

“An address, I pulled open another drawer and started to flick through the labels “After the invasion a lot of buildings lost their owners, whether they were Infiltrators in disguise harvesting love for the hive, or Ponies who couldn’t stay in a city full of shadows” we had been watching carefully, gathering information on the famous public figures, very carefully redirecting searches for our hive with misinformation “Most of those places are still sitting empty, although I can put a guess as to why.” The drawer exhausted I pushed it shut and gestured for another shift over to the next.

“Besides being owned by Changelings and being extra-spooky?” Bulwark stuck his tongue out at me, his humour rising like a rush of warm air, even as he effortlessly shifted the ladder, and kicked the brake down.

“Those places were temporary storage for all of the emotion we were gathering from the wedding; anticipation, excitement, nervousness, joy, jealousy, every emotion that goes into a wedding was stored in those places” I pulled another drawer open with a screech of metal, my telekinesis was still being somewhat shaky from the transformation, it was a miracle that I’d been able to horn-write the day before with the way it had been acting up earlier.

“I assume there is something I’m missing”

“Think of how much emotion was running around at a once-in-eternity wedding, neither Moonbutt or Celestia are ever getting married, I’m pretty certain that there’s a law against it somewhere, and all of Equestria, save Ponyville whose newspaper was full of gossip, was running wild over it, all of that emotion was focused at Canterlot where we caught it, stored it, and we were going to take it home after the ceremony” I could feel curiosity rising now “Unfortunately the ‘invasion’ happened, and when the love bomb went off it stripped away all of our magic, including, as we found out when we re-infiltrated to try and salvage some of the things we had left behind, the storage for those emotions” I sighed, just a little bitterly, it had been so much work gone up in smoke “so the places where we had stored them were, and are still for the most part, infused with the remnants of these emotions, and if you know anything about emotions, bad ones tend to stick around longer, so the buildings make Ponies who can’t sense and separate ambient emotions paranoid, and the treaty happened before we could make a concerted clean-up so the emotion will have stuck around causing all kinds of ghost stories, twitchiness, and other mental issues to anypony that stuck in those buildings regardless of their better instincts” A file caught my eye as I continued through the drawer, one of the labels catching my attention as I saw the account I was looking for.

“So Ponies wouldn’t want to stay there thinking the buildings were haunted, and Changelings would know better”

“Yeah, our assassin would be able to ignore the negative effects, while any ponies wouldn’t want to stick around, makes for a really useful safehouse, and it works in reverse” I pulled the file out and started to leaf through the pages, finding what I was looking for, before I closed it again, picked the file up very carefully in my mouth and started to carefully climb down the ladder.

“You got something?” a brief burst of hope, mixed with concern coming from the Earth Pony was met with my muffled affirmations as I made my way down to the floor.

Finally I felt my hooves touch against solid stone again as I spat the folder down at Bulwark’s hooves, “Yeah, this one list one of our old safe…” I felt the hostility a split-second before I saw the flare of green magic out of the corner of my eye, and slammed myself behind the ladder as the bolt of virulent green magic smashed into the side of the Earth Pony's head. Shit, I reacted like he’d been one of my guards, capable of sensing the intent to harm, and he’d taken some form of magic to the skull, I could see his previously blue eyes turn white and any emotions he’d been giving off rapidly died away.

“Oh, you are competent” the feminine voice was dead, lacking any tone other than that words had to be said “I had hoped to get the both of you with that shot, can you make this easy and just come out from your very poor hiding place”

I felt my ears flickering about, trying to home in on the voice, but the stone walls caused it to echo and the sunstones set in the ceiling cast fitful illumination that revealed nothing, even as my horn lit up.

“He is going to die if you do not step out.” Where was the voice coming from? I kept flicking my eyes up and down the corridor of filing cabinets, “Choking to death like that simpering fool, such a waste of a good meal for the hive but our Queen told us that she had to die just like you will”

I felt the haste spell seep through me, and my mind started to race, what were my options, what were my weapons, what were my opponent's weaknesses, what could I do to escape.

“I will give you five more seconds”

What options did I have? I could escape without Bulwark or the folder, it’d be easy, and I knew the address I was looking for.

“Five”

I could fight, against an opponent I couldn’t sense it would be monumentally stupid, but I would go down swinging.

“Four”

I could run with Bulwark in my telekinesis, it’d be shaky but I was good enough to get him out and fix whatever the assassin had done to him.

“Three”

I could take the folder away, leave Bulwark, it’d be even easier, the folder was tiny, light, and most likely wouldn’t struggle.

“Two”

I could just give up, and hope that my will was strong enough to resist whatever spell the assassin had planned

“One”

Decision time.

I dove out from behind the pitiful cover that the ladder had given me, my horn lighting up as I scooped both Bulwark and the folder into my telekinesis, and kicked away the protective cover of the coat I had been wearing, revealing the ‘cutie mark’ I had given myself.

It was a work of art if I say so myself.

I felt the psychic shriek of terror from my assailant as the building light of their magic blinked out and I barrelled past another changeling whose dull, black chitin had allowed her to blend into the shadows.

I still smashed her rubbery snout into the metal as I ran, it was a matter of principle, couldn’t let that uppity bitch think she had the upper hoof after all.

Sunstones flickered on and off as I sprinted along the maze of corridors, the sound of my hooves pounding against the stone were suddenly drowned out by an echoing screech of anger.

I started running faster.

She sounded really angry.

I felt my hooves skid on the floor as I powered through the sharp corners, heatless green fire spinning through the air behind me, splashing against the metal corridors of filing cabinets.

Let’s put that down as furious, I could feel the billowing clouds of rage chasing me as would the chains of Tartarus, threatening to overtake me and force me to the floor for a chance to excuse her rage upon my prone form.

What does it say about me that I started to laugh, as adrenaline pumped through my veins.

I could see the doors to the bank's main room looming ahead; heavy, dark oak dominating the wall as I rushed towards it, juking left and right as bloom after bloom of venomous green fire sought me out, missing me and my passengers by a margin of error that I felt was too damned close, before blinking out of existence as they crashed against unimportant things.

The doors grew ever closer at an increasing rate until I was seconds away from crashing through them and I drew myself into a tight ball as another spell wove its way through my hide, reinforcing it, covering it in the ages old bark of ironwood the merest moment before I smashed into the wood, praying that my speed and strength would be enough.

It turns out that only reinforcing one side of a door against criminal entry makes the other side that much weaker, also a common cost cutting measure in the city of unicorns; so my surprise when I just busted through the door like it was made of styrofoam, clouds, and prayer was enough to send me crashing to the floor rather than rolling onto my hooves again.

I barely scrambled to my hooves before a pink hoof came crashing down where my head had been.

“I am sorry sir but the bank is closed, you cannot be here” the florid Earth Pony mare’s voice was dead, her words echoed by the other staff who had all turned to look at me, every eye glowing a sickly green.

Well shit.

Author's Note

Jet-Set is being entirely honest, it’s all about business, part of that is giving a positive image to his customers, so the Upper and Middle classes of Canterlot, while also balancing with the demands of “We are the Pony’s that the lesser class should look up to, we must set an example” high-society.

Calling your pony butler Hooves, is like calling your human butler Jeeves, and it’s just not done, the butler’s actual name is Silver Standard, yes he’s related to Silver Spoon.

If I was to try to describe Bitter Pill/Barbed Retort’s “Cutie Mark” start with the sight of something that shouldn’t exist (Ia, Ia, Cthulhu Fhtagn), add in the most shrieking obnoxious sound you’ve ever heard (Rebecca Black’s Friday, nails on a chalkboard, etc, etc), the smell of skunk spray, the taste of durians, and the violent shuddering touch of cold, clammy, corroded flesh. Ya know, a full exposure to all of the most horrific things to attack your senses. Then add in magic to make it as “look at me” as possible. Weaponising Cutie Marks is a nasty thing, and it comes down to an asshole to actually do it. Problem is it’s a one time thing as the mind blocks out the pure revulsion and stops “seeing” it after the first shot, that first shot is a doozy though.

Chapter 8: ... And Into Tartarus" is most likely going to be late, apologies, work has come up and my D'n'D group has reignited so I've got a little less free time.