“I got the job! I got the job! I got the job!” I kept thinking, as I walked out of the building and headed away from the train station. The early afternoon sun glinted off the windows of the old buildings up ahead and I checked my watch. Discord had asked me to be ready to leave in eight hours, plenty of time to deal with things. The day’s heat began to build, so I opened up a button on my shirt to help vent some of the warmth and I realized something very scary.

I was in the proverbial “bad part of town,” while carrying a literal sack of gold on me. The damn thing may as well have had “SWAG” emblazoned on its side and I found myself studying the people walking on the sidewalk around me and wondering if any of them were about to jump me. Realizing the situation I was in, I rapidly considered my good options. The bus stop was less than two blocks away, but it involved about a twenty minute wait for the next bus home. About four blocks away though was a pawn shop that I frequented and a block past that was a branch of my bank.

That settled it, because there was no way I was going to stand at a bus stop in this section of town with a sign that said, “Please rob me.” After all of the really, really weird stuff I had gone through to earn that gold, there was no way I was going to do anything that might put it at risk. So, I turned toward the pawn shop and every step of the way I was looking around for threats.

Rundown storefronts flowed past me as I strode along through one of the poorest areas of town, if not the state. I didn’t run along the cracked pavement because that would have attracted attention, which was the last thing I wanted right now. I didn’t walk either, because if I did every panhandler I went past would try to corner me for a handout, and I’d feel like an ass for having to say, “No.” Especially as I had a ton of, if not money, then potential money on me. But what was I going to do, give someone a solid gold coin? As awesome as that would feel to make someone’s day like that, I just couldn’t afford to do it.

I’d been in the city long enough to know that once you gave one panhandler something, the rest would be all over you like flies on horse crap. If I actually forked over one of the gold coins I’d be swarmed under like a lame sheep near a wolf pack. Not to mention that whatever poor bastard I gave the coin to would likely get robbed as well. No, thank you. So, I kept up the striding pace, my eyes sweeping around for threats and never making eye contact with anyone. After ten nervous minutes, I arrived at the metal and glass front door marking the entrance to East Side Pawn.

East Side Pawn strode the transition area of downtown from old and run down, to shiny new chrome. As I was learning, one of the most important things about a business is location, location, location, and the pawn shop had that in spades. It was close enough to the poor areas of town to get a steady supply of people selling and pawning things, and close enough to the better off sections of town for a steady supply of folks coming in to buy stuff.

I’d always hated coming into the place because even though it was unusually clean for the area, the shop just seemed to give off an air of desperation and fear. Despite that, I’d managed to form a good relationship with Matt, the balding Canadian ex-pat who ran the place. At least he said he was Canadian. I had my doubts because he didn’t have a Canadian accent.

“Hey Matt,” I said, as the closing door behind me tinkled its small bell.

“Jimmy,” he said, looking up from the transaction he was having with a young man who thought spikes were the ultimate fashion accessory. “Be with you in a minute.” I nodded and killed a few minutes by looking around. There was the usual array of items. Used tools from workers who couldn’t or wouldn’t work in their fields anymore, stacks of game and video discs in every imaginable format, musical instruments and of course, gleaming racks of high end items locked in secure display cabinets.

“So, what can I do for you today, Jimmy?” Matt asked, as the other customer headed out of the small store. I hesitated for a moment, killing a flicker of annoyance at how Matt always called me “Jimmy.” Not “James” or even “Jim,” but “Jimmy.” I suppressed a sigh and leaned a bit on the glass counter.

“You, um, still buy gold, right?” I asked, trying to keep my voice down without sounding like I was being conspiratorial.

“Of course, I do,” he said proudly, at full volume, as he gestured toward the sign behind the counter saying “We Buy Gold.”

“Okay, ya,” I said, trying to keep the nervousness out of my voice. “Um, I’ve...inherited some, and I’d like to sell it.”

“Well, sure thing,” he said happily, then pointing me over to a side area where I could see a scale and some tools. “Let’s just go over here and get that taken care of. I give the highest price in town and you’ve always been a good customer so I’ll give you the best deal I can. So, what do you have, a necklace, gold watch, maybe some rings?”

“Coins,” I said, finally able to pull the velvet sack out of my backpack and put it on the counter with a satisfyingly clanking thud. Matt’s thin eyebrows rose halfway to his receding hairline.

“That’s a pretty odd way to pack gold coins around,” he said, pulling the bag over to himself. He took out a dark purple, velvet pad and placed it on the countertop before gently opening the bag and pouring the wealth of golden coins onto it. He paused to look at the fifty or so coins laying before him.

“I don’t recognize any of these,” he said, flipping a couple over to look at their front and back sides. “Where did you say you got them from?”

“My uncle’s estate,” I said, lying through my teeth and praying Matt didn’t notice. “He played around with goldsmithing and made these as a kind of joke.”

“Fair enough,” Matt said, beginning to lay out the coins in a flat order. “But I’ve gotta be straight with you, I can only give you the metal value for these. You still wanna sell them?”

“Ya, that’s no problem,” I said, wanting the transaction to be over, so I could get to actually spending some of my loot. “How much do you think they are worth?”

“I’ll have to assay each one individually,” he said, and pulling out a tool I had seen him use once or twice before, began to do just that. The device checked how well current flowed through the metal, and gave him a purity based on that. It was quick and reasonably accurate, so I was surprised when he stopped and frowned at the fourth coin.

“Something wrong?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. I felt my blood pressure rise as Matt put on one of those magnifying lens visor things, and began to carefully examine the edge of the coin he held.

“Just give me a second here,” Matt said, grabbing what looked like a dental pick. “This uncle of yours, was he a bit of a prankster?”

“I don’t know about that,” I said, thinking about what I knew about Mr. Discord, “but he was an odd individual and definitely one of a kind.”

“I would say so,” Matt said, as he peeled away the outer surface of the coin he held to reveal a dark, chocolate center.

“What the hell?” I asked, bending close to look for myself. “Is that actually chocolate?” Matt snapped a small piece off, smelled it, popped it into his mouth and smiled..

“It sure is,” he said, laughing as he swallowed the piece. “That uncle of yours must have been quite the kidder, and as a fake it’s pretty good. Even the weight is pretty close to what it should be.”

“But...but...chocolate,” I said, babbling slightly, and then I shook myself. “Is it at least good chocolate?”

“It’s your chocolate,” Matt said, pushing the half eaten piece back to me. “Go ahead and try some, while I see how many of these are actually gold.” He began to start picking up coins and holding the tester to them to pick out the gold coins from the chocolate ones. I picked up the open one and gave it a sniff. It certainly smelled like good chocolate, felt like it too. I took a nibble and it was all I could do not to scarf down the rest like a pig.

“Good stuff?” Matt asked, sorting through the coins, he seemed to have two stacks going of about equal size which bode well for my imminent solvency.

“You had some,” I said, taking another small nibble and trying not to moan in pleasure. “This stuff is incredible, can’t you tell?”

“Nah,” he said, “I was a pack a day smoker when I was with the Canadian Rangers, burnt out my taste buds. Can’t taste anything unless it’s drenched in hot sauce or salt.” I’d never heard of the Canadian Rangers. The New York Rangers, sure, but not the Canadian Rangers. Matt finished checking the coins and put one stack on a scale.

“So, how much are we at looking at here?” I asked him, trying not to rub my hands together like Scrooge McDuck.

“Well,” he said, pushing the stack of coins not on the scale toward me. “These are all yours, but I’ll buy the rest of these. They’re all right around 99.5% pure gold, which is pretty good.”

“So, how much?” I asked again, and Matt gave me an odd look, but he punched the numbers into a calculator anyway.

“Six thousand, four hundred and seventy-two dollars,” Matt said, looking up at me. “Now did you want that in cash or—”

“Yes, please,” I said, interrupting him. “I’ll take it now, thank you.”

“Are you sure?” Matt asked, that odd expression on his face again. “I can—”

“No, no,” I said, cutting him off again, anxious to be on my way. “Cash will be fine.” I had the distinct feeling I was being watched and the sensation had my feet twitching to be away to my bank as soon as possible.

“Okay, okay,” Matt said, shaking his head a bit as he took the gold coins away and opened up his cash register. Gathering up a wad of cash he counted out an impressive stack to me. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have—”

“Awesome, thanks,” I said, interrupting him as I scooped up the cash and shoved it into my pocket. “Thanks, gotta go, bye.” I still could not shake the feeling of there being a target on my back, and it was making me apprehensive, anxious and rude. Maybe it had something to do with having more cash on me than at any other time in my life, but either way I was out the door and turning for my bank before you could say, “Paycheck,” only to be brought up short by what I saw, up at the end of the block.

There had been a car accident while I been busy with Matt and the intersection was crowded with lookie lou’s and emergency vehicles. I had been so caught up in my own little world I hadn’t notice what was going on outside. That was a bad trait to have if I was going to be a courier, and I made a mental note that I needed to be more aware of my surroundings.

“”What happened?” I asked a guy beside me. I recognized him as the spike loving fellow from earlier.

“Fuck off,” he said to me casually, then he looked at me again, appraisingly. “Hey, weren’t you that asshole in the shop earlier?”

“Nope,” I said, turning on my heel and striding away. I headed back along the way I’d come for a good twenty or thirty seconds, passing the pawn shop again and heading toward the bus stop that had brought me into town. I paused for a moment at the store front of a broken down cigarette shop and shot a glance back over my shoulder. Shit. Spike McGee was about fifty feet back and he’d acquired a couple of buddies. I needed to put some distance between me and them, fast.

I turned again and sprinted for the end of the block, people looking up in my wake as I threw caution to the winds. I charged along until I got to the corner of the block and did a rapid right turn around the building there. Huffing a bit, I swung into another right after about thirty or so feet along and headed up the back alley behind the buildings I'd just passed going in the other direction.

The alley was nearly covered in bits of garbage and crap, with mostly full dumpsters popping out at intervals along its path. If I could make it to the far end of the alley I’d be back into the “good” area of town and I could rely on the crowds, if not the cops, to keep Spike and his buddies away from me. I could tell I wasn’t going to make it though. I’d already run quite a bit and was breathing pretty hard, plus there was no way I was going to make it to the far end of the alley before Spike and company spotted me.

So, I ducked into a small loading area for a business and hid. I would have tried the door into the building, but it was the kind that only opened from the inside. Hell, there wasn’t even any hardware on my side, just a flat door. So, I got behind a dumpster in the loading area and hid, and while my breathing slowed I realized I had made some critical errors.

First, I should have just kept going toward the accident. Even busy, the emergency services people would have helped me out. Second, I could also have just walked right back into the pawn shop and asked to use the phone. Sure, Matt would have probably charged me for it, but I could afford it. Thinking about Matt brought up my biggest mistake. The grand whopper that got me into this in the first place, was that Matt had probably been trying to offer me a loadable debit card with the money on it, and I had cut him off every time. It would have been far safer to carry that instead of cash. Now I was going to have to hope, and pray that my mistakes weren’t about to cost me everything I’d earned.

“C’mon out, asshole,” Spike said from somewhere nearby, but I didn’t move, he might have been bluffing after all. “Get out from behind the dumpster, you dweeb.” So much for the power of prayer.

“Who the hell says ‘dweeb’ anymore,” I said, stepping out from behind the dumpster. “And how did you know I was there?” Spike McGee had two buddies with him. One was a tall lean fellow with oily black hair that matched his worn out black leather biker outfit, and the other was a paunchy idiot with dirty blond hair. All three of them had bad teeth that I was getting to see because they were all grinning like sharks.

“We looked in the mirror, asshole,” Spike said, pointing up to a concave mirror mounted up on the corner of the loading area. It had been set there so that delivery drivers could see out into the alley, and it obviously allowed people to see into the loading area.

“In return for that information, we want all the money that Dusty here,” he indicated the dirty blond to his left, “saw you getting from old Matt in his shop.” I looked around for a weapon, any weapon, because it was a sure bet that no one was going to come if I yelled for help.

“Ya, sorry guys,” I said, trying to draw things out in case I caught a lucky break, because i was seeing nothing useful as a weapon. “But I kinda need that money.”

“You want the money, or you want your life?” Spike asked, beginning to step forward. “Don’t matter which to me.” I started backing up as they kept moving toward me and just as I was about to make a last-ditch attack, my prayers were answered by a grey and yellow blur.

Pegasus pony Derpy landed on the ground between me and the Spike gang. At least I was assuming it was Derpy, as the pony’s fur and mane were the exact colours of the half pony-half human I had seen Derpy as earlier, so it seemed a pretty good guess. She shot me a warm smile as she landed, her mismatched eyes sparkling with happiness at seeing me, and then took a turning half-step to face my attackers.

In the moment she turned, Derpy’s entire demeanor went from cute and cuddly to that of an aroused guardian. Her head and forequarters were held low to the ground, her wings dramatically flared up and high, and from my viewpoint I could just see her lip curl with contempt toward the three would-be muggers.

“Get out of here, now,” Derpy ordered them. “This human is under my protection.” The toughs might have had the advantages of height, weight, and numbers, but the tone of Derpy’s voice said that it was the toughs who should be afraid, not her. Unfortunately, for all concerned, Spike, Dusty and Leathers were all idiots, not even questioning what Derpy was, as Dusty made to grab her as if she was a sack of groceries.

I heard somewhere once that the strike from a goose wing can break an arm bone. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but Derpy’s wings were significantly larger and stronger than that of a goose as Dusty learned as Derpy’s left wing snapped down, around and back up, catching him on the point of the chin and he staggered back from the blow.

“What the fuck!” he said, holding his hand to his chin. “Fucking little horse, gonna kick your ass.” Dusty lumbered forward again, this time fully angered and Derpy was smart enough not to try the same trick twice. She cut his legs out from under him with a sweeping kick that would have found a home in any good kung fu movie and Dusty fell back heavily to the pavement of the alleyway with a woosh of expelled breath.

“Please leave,” Derpy said, eyes levelled at the other two. I could see that Derpy was afraid, but I could also see that her fear was controlled and mastered by determination. Combat was a place Derpy had been before and it held no surprises for her. She was a winged angel, defending me in my hour of need, and at that moment the most glorious creature I had ever seen. To further improve things I finally found a weapon, a length of old two by four and I snatched it up into a position like a baseball player readying a bat.

“I’ll give you one last chance, dweeb,” Spike said, as Leathers hoisted Dusty to his feet. “Hand over the money and I won’t turn your little pet here into a plate of Kentucky Fried Horse.” Derpy’s eyes narrowed at the insult, and I said nothing as I gripped the board a little tighter and held it a little higher. A long moment gripped the alleyway, the two of us staring back at the three of them and I swear a tumbleweed rolled between us as the frozen tableau played out.

Tableau however, are made of people not things, and cannot remain frozen forever and the three toughs rushed us. Derpy rose up about a foot into the air and rolled vertically in a somersault just as Dusty reached her, her front hooves impacting and breaking the momentum of his charge, giving her time to complete the flip and she knocked him back across the alleyway as her rear hooves finished the job.

Spike tackled me, at the same time I connected the two by four with Leathers’ shoulder knocking him aside. Spike however, lifted me up and drove me back into the loading dock behind me and my back lit up like a pinball machine with pain. Stunned, I began to collapse against the dock and Spike let go of me as he tried to dig into my pocket for the money. The idiot should have made sure I was out of the fight.

Despite being stunned and a little out of breath from the impact with the dock, I was able to bring a choked up blow down on Spike’s head. There wasn’t a lot of power in the strike, so it didn’t do much, but it was enough to weaken his already poor hold on me and I spun away from him to stand beside Derpy. I put out a hand blindly and touched Derpy on her flank, to make sure I didn’t back into her.

“You two are gonna fucking regret that shit,” Spike said, as he and Leathers both pulled out knives. Leathers had something that looked like it had come out of a ditch somewhere, but it still had a good eight inches of what looked like sharp, wide steel. Spike was a traditionalist though and flicked open an honest-to-God switchblade.

“Looks like playtime,” Derpy said, her voice full of confidence. “What do you think, James?’

“I think we’re good,” I said, trying to project the same kind of confidence I heard in Derpy’s voice. I must have done a good job of it too, because Spike and Leathers seemed to reassess things for a few seconds, as if realizing what they had actually gotten themselves into. Then the moment passed as their faces went from hesitant to smiling, and a split second later I went down in a heap as a recovered Dusty landed on me from behind, crushing me to the ground under his bulk.

The two in front of us saw their opportunity, and charged forward to double team Derpy, coming at her spread apart to force her to divide her attention between them as I struggled with Dusty on the ground. Derpy’s mismatched eyes took in her attackers and I could see the corner of her mouth pull up in a slight grin as she took the fight to the duo. Charging Leathers first, Derpy struck the side of one of his knees with crushing force, causing it to cave in and spilling the man to one side. But as he fell, he let go of his knife and reached out, grabbing the pegasus by one of her wings and pulling her close into a grapple.

I was a little busy at that point as Dusty was trying to rain blows down onto my head from his position on top of me. Luckily for me, Derpy had pretty thoroughly rung his bells and he was almost incapable of hitting my head, never mind with any kind of force. He must have only just been able to stagger back on top of me, because after a couple of quick elbow strikes I was able to roll the fat idiot off of me.

As I rolled to the superior position I saw two things almost at the same instant. First, one of my blind elbow shots must have caught Dusty in the head, because his eyes were rolling back indicating that nobody was home in Dustyland anymore. The second thing I saw made my heart stop. Derpy was trying to fight her way clear of Leather’s grip as I saw Spike coming at her from her blind side.

I tried to call out a warning to her but it was already too late, as Spike slashed his blade in a wide arc at the unguarded flank of my airborne rescuer. I don’t know how he didn’t slice her open, but at the very last instant she twisted away just enough. Instead of laying open her side in what would have been a fatal wound, the knife instead merely scored its way along her side and hip, leaving a likely painful but shallow wound.

It was at that moment that Derpy stopped having fun with her opponents and got mean. She continued the movement her flinch had started, head-butting Leathers on the point of his chin and I heard his teeth snap together as she connected. Leathers’ body went slack as he was knocked out cold, releasing the pony to face her last target.

Spike recovered from his slash and drove his blade forward, intending to spit Derpy on the blade as easily as I would skewer a hot dog on a fork. Derpy saw the knife coming straight for her throat and did a flurry of moves that told me that I should never, ever piss off a pegasus. As his knife speared in, she whirled a wing around in a block, driving the blade off of its lethal line. A second wing blow knocked his arm upwards, stopping the forward momentum of the thrust, and then she pivoted her entire body over the wing, driving her weight directly down onto Spike's wrist and I could hear the crackling sound as the delicate bones of his wrist shattered.

At this point Spike was effectively disarmed and out of the fight, but that wasn’t good enough now. As Spike’s knife flew up from his broken wrist, Derpy plucked it out of the air with the innate skill of an avian and drove it down with every ounce of force she could muster straight down onto the top of his foot. The knife easily pierced the old shoe he was wearing and drove down through skin, muscle, sinew and sole to impale Spike’s foot to the pavement. He began to shriek in agony right up until Derpy shoved a hoof in his mouth.

“The next time a pony tells you somepony is under their protection,” Derpy said to Spike, her face and voice completely calm, “you’re going to respect that. Right?” Spike frantically nodded his head in agreement, whimpering in pain.” “Good,” Derpy continued, jerking out the knife in one swift motion. “Now get out of here and don’t bother anypony again.” Spike just nodded some more and began limp away, leaving his fellows to their own devices as Derpy and I walked away from the scene of the short, violent brawl.

“Holy crap, Derpy,” I said, as we moved up the alley. “That was incredible. Where the hell did you come from?”

“Discord asked me to keep an eye on you,” Derpy said, smiling warmly again now that the fight was over. “He said that seeing as we went to all this trouble to find you, we better make sure nothing happens to you.”

“I’d say Discord was pretty smart to do that,” I said, and pulled Derpy into a hug. “Thank you, I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t shown up.”

“Aww,” Derpy said, into my shoulder. “Just glad I could be here.”

“Are you gonna be okay?” I asked, my fingers tracing the long cut she had received. It was still bleeding a bit, but was clotting well.

“Should be,” she said. “I’ll meet you at your place and you can bandage me up, if you like.”

“Sure thing,” I said, then had a thought. “Hey, how do you know where I live?” Derpy giggled a bit at that. It was adorable.

“Silly,” she laughed, breaking the hug to hover beside me. “It was on your job application. I’ll see you there.” She rose up into the sky, climbing high and I mentally added asking her how she went unnoticed in the air over a big city to my list of things to do.

Author's Note

Why am I writing Derpy as some kind of awesome hoof to hoof fighter? Because of this video....
Guardian