Not Quite the Tip of the Spear
Stepping out through the restaurant's front door, Flash Magnus took a big lungful of Canterlot air. The first week of spring touched the alabaster towers above him and stroked across his armor with a warmth that seemed to make the sky even bluer. And yes, he didn't much care for the stomp-stomp-stomp of hooves when he led troops through the capital these days: back in Cloudsdale, even while marching, the ideal was to make no sound at all, to barely touch the surface, to skim along quick and silent as the shadow of a passing breeze.
But he couldn't deny—especially after making arrangements for this evening with that cute little unicorn waitress—that such clompings and clatterings definitely impressed the groundpounders.
Not that he used the word 'groundpounder' anymore. Though the couple dozen times he'd let it slip since his return, nopony had reacted to it as far as he could tell. Of course, they could've just been humoring the old-timer.
Not that he thought of himself as an old-timer. He still had three or four useful decades in harness, he figured, before he'd have to consider mustering out. And since he'd technically been on duty when he'd gone into Limbo all those centuries ago, Princess Celestia had laughingly told him that his biweekly pension even if he retired now would be a measurable percentage of Equestria's gross domestic product.
Not that he'd been tempted to put in his papers. After all, because of him, smiling ponies could move safely in and out of these shops and cafes, the lunchtime crowds thinning as the afternoon settled in. Why would he want any life other than this? Not quite the tip of the spear anymore, sure, but turning to clomp and clatter his way back to the training grounds outside the city, he knew that the glitter of armor often proved irresistible to—
"Why, it is Flash Magnus!" a thoroughly female voice called behind him, and Magnus let his ears perk. Putting on the rakish grin that had proven to be just as effective with the ladies inhabiting this modern age, he turned to bathe himself in the awe-struck gaze of some sweet, delectable flower.
But the snow-white unicorn and cider-orange earth pony trotting up the street toward him weren't just any sweet, delectable flowers. "At your service, friends!" he called; with a leap, he glided the half block to meet them, landed with his best courtly bow to Rarity, then straightened to hold a hoof up for Applejack to bump. Beautiful mares who were comrades-in-arms, after all, fell into a different category from those who were civilians, and that meant a different sort of excitement began tingling the tips of his primary feathers. "Any chance something dangerous brings you to Canterlot?"
Rarity rolled her eyes. "I suppose there's always the danger I might be smothered beneath collapsing bolts of material while finalizing the quarterly inventory at Canterlot Carousel." She touched a hoof to her chest. "Ah, an artiste's work is never done."
Beside her, Applejack chuckled. "Not a lotta danger ahead for me, neither." She nodded toward the center of the city and the spires surrounding Canterlot Tower. "Some professor at the agricultural college asked me if I could blather at his students 'bout the joys of cultivating zap apples. Since Rares was already coming to town, we figured we'd take the train together and make ourselves a day of it."
"And you?" Rarity's face seemed to light up. "I assume that life in the Royal Guard continues to careen from adventure to adventure?"
"You mean training recruits?" It took some effort for Magnus not to blow a breath noisily through his lips. "My only real challenge lately has been keeping my temper."
Applejack tapped the sidewalk. "I hear you. I never knew what riled meant till I started teaching."
The smile that stretched over Rarity's snout seemed to have more teeth than it should've. "The little dears," she said.
That got all three of them laughing, but a whistle in the standard 'attention below' pattern made Magnus look up. A pegasus in a courier's uniform dropped to the cobblestones, snapped a quick salute, and said, "Sergeant Magnus! Princess Celestia requests your immediate presence in the throne room!"
Magnus blinked, returned the salute, and grinned back at Rarity and Applejack. "If this turns out to be something interesting, I'll send word."
The two mares laughed again, and Magnus sprang into the air, several flaps taking him above the rooflines. Normally, he loved soaring high over the city, the towers and walls gleaming in the sun by day and glimmering in the firefly light by night, but a royal summons meant no time for aesthetics. Straight as a longbow shot, he darted to the castle's main gate, landed just long enough to give and receive salutes from the guards, then he zipped inside, took the twists and turns of the inner corridors at a slightly excessive speed, and thumped onto all fours in the carpet just outside the throne room doors, a lovely little buzz tingling through him.
After another exchange of salutes, the guards pushed the doors open. Magnus high-stepped in, bowed to the princess seated flowing and glowing on her throne, and barked, "Flash Magnus reporting as ordered, Your Highness!"
"At ease, Sergeant." Her voice always danced like a breeze, but the ever-present laughter there seemed somewhat distant. Focusing, Magnus almost thought he could smell a mustiness in the air, too, like dust or ash. "I fear I have something of an odd request to make of you," the princess went on.
Hearing that word again made him cock his head. "Request, ma'am?"
She nodded. "I can't order you to do this by the very nature of the statute, but, well..." She swallowed. "As near as I can ascertain, Flash, you are the last living licensed Facilities Court adjudicator in all of Equestria."
He couldn't keep his jaw from dropping. "Begging your pardon, ma'am, but I understood from my reorientation that the Facilities Courts got folded into the Royal Courts not long after your sister went into exile."
"Yes." The princess swallowed again. "A situation has arisen, however, and I—" Something close to her regular smile graced her lips. "I'm hoping you have the afternoon free?"
Magnus didn't even have to think. "Of course, ma'am!"
"Thank you." The pastel rainbow of her mane seemed to perk, her horn glowed, and with a gust of the dust he'd smelled earlier, a well-worn book floated up from behind the throne. Her Highness flipped it open to somewhere near the middle and said, "Now, we'll need a pair of non-governmental ponies of high standing in the community to serve alongside you, preferably an earth pony and a unicorn to keep the tribal balance."
And Magnus couldn't've stopped his grin if he'd wanted to. "Ma'am, I know just the two."
"The what now?" Applejack asked. She perched on one of the ornate antechamber's red velvet cushions as if she half expected it to burst under her as messily as a giant tomato. But then Magnus was sure he didn't look any more comfortable himself...
"Yes." Rarity, for her part, had settled into the amber and turquoise room as if she'd been born there. "'Facilities' and 'court' put together might make a more vulgar pony think of royal plumbing."
Magnus had to laugh at that. "You're not far wrong there. Y'see, pre-Unification, the three tribes each had their own legal systems, and the Facilities Court's what they called the tangled mess that came out when they rammed 'em all together after Equestria's founding. It's how justice got dispensed till the princesses came along, and even then, it took a while for the Royal Courts to take over completely. The grizzled old judges who mentored me used to call it the lowest court in the land, and we pretty much only handled matters too petty or peculiar for the Royal Courts."
Applejack gave one of her low chuckles. "Petty and peculiar." She gave Rarity a nudge, nearly tipping her over sideways. "He's sure got our number, don't he?"
Rarity resettled herself on the cushion and sniffed. "I'm always happy to help out, of course, but I fear I haven't studied the law to any great extent." She fluttered her eyelashes. "I've found policeponies and judges and other such magisterial types are often very kind to poor mares who innocently and inadvertently cross the statutory lines here and there, now and then."
When Applejack rolled her eyes, Magnus could've sworn he heard a clattering noise, but Rarity's sniff dominated every other sound in the room. "Just for that," she said, "I shall insist we wear powdered wigs."
Leaping in before any words could burst from Applejack's opening mouth, Magnus said, "No law books, no wigs, nothing at all like that for you two to worry about. I'm the adjudicator, so I'll be making sure we stay inside the lines, but really, common sense was always the hallmark of the Facilities Court."
That got Applejack's mouth closing at least, and she started looking thoughtful instead of peeved. "Reckon I can do common sense," she said after a moment.
"And I," Rarity added, brushing the curl of her mane away from her forehead, "shall supply the uncommon sense."
Applejack's ears fell. "This is gonna be a long afternoon, ain't it?"
Which made them about as ready as they were ever likely to be. Jumping up, Magnus flapped toward the room's big, gold-paneled doors. "At least the final revision of the statutes after I went into Limbo allowed for the Facilities Court to hold sessions in Royal Court chambers. Last time I did any adjudicating in Canterlot, they'd lost the lease on the old courthouse, and we had to convene upstairs in the Sweetwater Tavern off Mayflower Square."
"Mayflower Square?" Rarity asked behind him. "I don't believe I'm familiar with that part of the city."
"Exactly." Magnus pushed the doors open and nodded to Corporal Glass Glow, waiting in the hallway outside. "While I was away, that whole area got itself torn down and rebuilt four or five times." He turned back with a shrug and waved a wing. "Shall we head in, then?"
The two mares blinked, then stood, Applejack abandoning the cushions much more quickly than Rarity. "So what's this here case about?" Applejack asked, stepping through the doorway. "Or don'tcha know?"
Rarity followed after one last soulful glance at the decor. "Well, of course he knows! We certainly can't be going into this process completely blind and ignorant." Her glance became a good deal sharper when she turned it toward Magnus. "Can we?"
Magnus had to laugh. "That's part of the charm!" The corporal had moved down the hall to a much less elaborately carved door, and Magnus joined him there. "So as not to prejudice the panel, we hear nothing about the case until we enter the chamber." He nodded again to Glass Glow.
Light sprang up around Glass Glow's horn and pushed the door open to reveal a black curtain. "Hear ye, hear ye, and be upstanding!" Glass Glow announced, stomping in. "This session of the Facilities Court will come to order, the Right Honorable Flash Magnus presiding with the Honorable Applejack and the Honorable Rarity duly co-empanelled."
Beside Magnus, Rarity stared at the doorway as if she'd never seen one before and wasn't quite sure how it worked, but Applejack just sighed. "Yep. Gonna be a long afternoon."
Not letting himself laugh now that court was in session, he gestured for the others to precede him. Applejack stepped forward, parted the curtain with her nose—
And stopped with a gasp that Rarity echoed maybe an octave higher. Craning his neck, Magnus looked past them over the oak panel that divided the judges' box from the rest of the courtroom and nearly gasped himself.
Both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna stood at the defense table, making it look a good deal smaller than it should. And the person at the plaintiff's table—covered all over in silky chocolate-brown fur, balanced on two legs like a minotaur but shorter and lankier, a snaky tail waving slowly below the red and gold hem of a long, brocaded coat, eyes large and green in a feline face—
The plaintiff wasn't a pony at all.
It had been literally hundreds of years since Magnus had seen an Abyssinian, but as much as he might've wanted to gape, court was in session. Gently he nudged Rarity and Applejack to either side so he could squeeze out between them and said, "Please be seated." He moved to the center bench behind the wooden wall and almost blew out a sigh of relief when motion at the corners of his eyes told him his fellow judges had finally shaken themselves from their shock and taken their own places, Rarity to his left and Applejack to his right.
Trying to keep his face from showing any of the questions that rattled through his head like popcorn, Magnus nodded to Glass Glow. The corporal's magic pulled a scroll from his armor and unrolled it. "Ambassador Adalbert of Abyssinia seeks to abrogate the agreement first struck between Their Abyssinian Majesties and Princess Platinum of Equestria with regard to the Alkhuyut Amulet. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, as the current rulers of Equestria, appear here defending said agreement." He rolled up the scroll and stepped back to his place against the wall.
Magnus couldn't help swallowing, but nodding to Glass Glow, he made himself smile warmly and speak slowly the way old Coriander always had when she'd presided over a session. "Do we have copies of this agreement for the court to review?"
The tiniest trickle of sweat ran down the side of Glass Glow's face. "Not exactly, Your Honor."
"If it please the court," a smooth and liquid baritone voice said, and the Abyssinian rose on his hind legs again. "After the depredations Abyssinia recently experienced at the claws of the late and unlamented Storm King, we've been doing our utmost to regather all the items taken from our treasury. Digging through our royal archives for the documentation necessary to prove our various claims, an archivist discovered a two-sentence reference to an ancient agreement between your people and mine, copies of which sentences I promptly turned over to your princesses for review."
Glass Glow's horn sparked, and Magnus blinked down at a small piece of parchment paper that appeared on the desk in front of him. "The original," Ambassador Adalbert was going on, "as you can see, is in ancient Felid. Our scholars provided the translation into modern Equish that you'll find printed below it."
The swirls and scrawls at the top of the page meant nothing to Magnus, but the lines in Equish were clear enough: This is to record that Princess Platinum agreed to keep the Alkhuyut Amulet for Their Majesties. All matters pertaining to it must be addressed through the Equestrian Facilities Court.
"That's it?" Applejack asked, then her eyes went wide and she touched a hoof to her lips. "I mean, uhh..."
"It's all right," Magnus said quickly, meeting her gaze before turning to Rarity. "Part of the earth pony tradition of jurisprudence gives judges the right to ask questions of the claimants and the defendants whenever and however they see fit." Swiveling to look at Applejack again, he gave her a wink. "As long as you say the word 'question' before you ask it."
"Well, thank you kindly." Applejack pointed her snout at the ambassador. "Question, then. You ain't got the actual document?" She shifted to point at the princesses. "And I'm gonna guess you all ain't got it, either?"
Magnus cleared his throat. "Plaintiff first, please, then the defendants."
The tips of Applejack's ears dipped. "Ask one at a time. Got it."
Ambassador Adalbert bowed his head slightly. "Alas, we indeed do not have the original document, and I've been instructed to inform the court that Their Abyssinian Majesties have no quarrel with whatever stipulations may have been laid out therein. I have merely come on their behalf to ask that the overall agreement, well over a thousand years old at this point, be dissolved and our amulet returned." Another slight bow, and he sat.
Princess Celestia then rose even more gracefully than the Abyssinian. "If it please the court, I fear that the Equestrian archives have likewise been unable to produce a record of any such agreement between the first Equestrian government organized by Princess Platinum and the rulers of Abyssinia."
Rarity gave the single most delicate snort Magnus had ever heard. "Never mind the paperwork! Where's the jewelry?" Her cheeks pinked. "I mean, a question for the plaintiff, if I might?"
The look on Ambassador Adalbert's face made Magnus think of a cat in a creamery. "Their Highnesses have admitted to having the Alkhuyut Amulet within these very walls, Your Honor."
Princess Luna slammed a hoof against the defense table and sprang into a stormy hover. "If it please the court!" she more thundered than said. "This nonsense has gone on long enough! For why would the rulers of Abyssinia have given this amulet into Equestrian care before even my sister or I were born did they not mean for us to keep it? For all we know, its magic might prove fell enough to warrant our continued safekeeping!"
"Order, please." Magnus knew he didn't have the eyebrows to pull off the sort of glare he'd seen from gruff old judges like Corn Pone or Precipitate; those ponies had literally been able to freeze a rowdy courtroom with a single flexed nostril. Still, he was presiding, and if that meant he had to rein in one of the most powerful beings on the planet, he figured he could at least try to do it with humor and grace. "But as long as the defendant's in a talkative mood, let me ask Her Highness about her use of the phrase 'for all we know.' Are the defendants saying that they don't know what this amulet does?"
Her wings folding, Princess Luna settled to the courtroom floor with a toss of her head. "We didn't even know we had the item in our possession until His Excellency, the ambassador, brought the matter to our attention."
"You what?" Applejack sat forward. "Or lemme rephrase the question for the defendants: didn't the ambassador just say you had the thing right here in this building?"
"Indeed." To call Princess Celestia's smile 'sunny' was a cliché, of course, but looking at the smile in question, Magnus couldn't think of a better word. "After being informed of its existence, we looked up the Alkhuyut Amulet in the archive records and found it stored in the back of the oldest vault in the castle. We then offered His Excellency the services of the finest magical minds in Equestria to study the item and determine what effect it might have upon a wearer, but His Excellency declined."
"Really?" Rarity sat forward as well. "A question I feel I must ask, then, Your Excellency: have you some knowledge concerning the amulet that you've not shared with the rest of us?"
"All I know," Ambassador Adalbert said, the tip of his tail flicking from one side of his chair to the other, "is that the amulet belongs to the people of Abyssinia. We are in the process of repatriating our lost property, and while we haven't much use for magical objects, this is still a piece of our heritage that's being kept from us." His whiskers bristled. "And by people whom we had thought were our allies."
"But the danger!" Princess Luna began, leaping upward again.
"Your Highness!" Magnus let fly his best drill sergeant voice and was more than a little pleased to see the princess flinch before settling back to the floor again. "All right, then," he went on in more measured tones. "First, let's get everything entered properly into evidence. We'll call this—" He wafted the tiniest possible breeze at the paper with the Felid writing on it; it drifted up into view of all those in the courtroom before settling back onto the desk. "—Exhibit A. And I'll ask the bailiff to bring in this amulet so we can mark it as Exhibit B." He nodded to Glass Glow.
The unicorn nodded in return and pushed through a doorway on the left side of the courtroom.
Applejack chuckling beside him drew Magnus's attention back to the proceedings. "Well, now, Mr. Ambassador. The way your ears and whiskers perked up, I'm guessing you ain't even had a chance to see this here amulet yet." She stopped and blinked. "Wait. I gotta knock that over sideways into a question, don't I?"
Ambassador Adalbert gave a purring sort of laugh. "I'm happy to answer anyhow, Your Honor. For as a student of Abyssinian history, I have been looking forward to this moment for a number of moons now."
Princess Luna rose in what Magnus was happy to see was a more orderly fashion. "If it please the court," she said, the words emerging clearly even though he could see her gritted teeth, "until we have a better idea—which is to say any idea at all—what magic this amulet holds, it would be best to keep it under lock and key."
Rarity was tapping her hoof gently against the counter. "Might I ask the defendants for more details as to how the amulet was stored? Twilight said something at lunch recently about how she still seems to learn about new secret repositories here in Canterlot every other week even though she's your former student, Princess Celestia, and currently a princess of Equestria herself. So was the amulet found in some such ancient vault, sealed away to protect the world against its malign influence?"
Princess Celestia's smile faded a bit. "I must admit, Your Honor, that it was merely sitting on a back shelf amongst some other, non-magical artifacts of Equestria's earliest days." She held up a hoof. "But considering the age of the amulet, I would posit that it was placed in the most secure facility available at the time." She turned once more to the ambassador. "I would again like to offer Equestria's services to our friends in Abyssinia for—"
"And I," Ambassador Adalbert said, all trace of purr, laugh, and smile gone, his ears tucking close to his head, "would again like our friends in Equestria to return our—"
His voice choked off the instant Glass Glow stepped back into the courtroom, some sort of glittering bauble floating in his hornglow. The ambassador's eyes widened as well, his pupils expanding like ink drops across a sheet of paper, and he swung unsteadily around to stare at the unicorn with what Magnus could only call a hungry look.
Squinting, Magnus couldn't see the amulet's allure. It sparkled prettily enough, he supposed, but as far as he could tell, it was just a small lumpy sphere of clear crystal with strands of gold woven throughout and an eyelet at the top where a chain could perhaps have been attached.
"Gracious!" Rarity was leaning across the counter on Magnus's left. "Unless I'm mistaken, the design appears to be suggestive of a ball of golden yarn." She blinked. "A bit 'on the nose,' I suppose, for a Felid artifact, but—"
"Mine!" a wild voice yowled, and Magnus snapped his head over to see Ambassador Adalbert crouched on top of the plaintiff's table, his gaze intent on the amulet, his whiskers jutting straight out from his snout, and his tail lashing behind him like a snake on a hot stone.
Opening his mouth to call for order, Magnus instead found himself gaping as the ambassador sprang with surprising speed across the courtroom and snatched the amulet from Glass Glow's magical grasp. Green fire immediately burst from the little golden ball, swept through the Abyssinian's dark fur, and flooded his eyes, the light so bright, Magnus could feel the heat of it.
"Uhh," Applejack said behind him in the sudden silence. "That ain't good, is it?"
Celestia and Luna leaped to their hooves, their horns flashing golden and silver respectively, but before they could unleash any sort of spell, Ambassador Adalbert had already begun changing, his paws getting larger, his face broader, his ears closer to the courtroom's ceiling. He threw his head back, spread his arms, and with another yowl, his fancy red coat tore to shreds around him.
"No!" Rarity shouted. "That exquisite brocade work!"
The ambassador's flailing tail, thickening and lengthening, smashed down across the plaintiff's table, splitting it in two, and the next instant, the ambassador's right shoulder, bigger now than two ponies rolled together and still growing, collided with the upper corner of the courtroom.
The whole place shook, cracks spidering across the stone, rubble falling and dust scattering. Magnus flared his wings, swooped over to grab Rarity as chunks of the shattered wall and ceiling began raining toward her, and followed Applejack over the edge of the judges' platform toward the two princesses. A silver and gold woven shield spell swept over them, a tendril of it lashing out to drag Corporal Glass Glow into its embrace, and through its shimmering, Magnus watched Ambassador Adalbert crash upward through the courtroom ceiling and tower into the blue afternoon sky above Canterlot.
The gigantic Abyssinian's roar shook the building again, but then he stopped, his ears pricking, his head—about the size of a three-passenger Royal Guard scout airship, a part of Magnus's mind informed him—turning toward the west. For another instant, he stood still, then he fell onto all fours out of sight and loped away, the thunder of his paws becoming quieter and quieter with each passing second.
"Is everypony all right?" Princess Celestia's voice rang out, the golden strands of the shield pulling away.
Magnus did a quick visual check. "All present and accounted for, ma'am."
The silver filaments of the shield puffed to dust, and Princess Luna sprang forward to land on the rubble beneath the hole in the ceiling. "Come then, Sister! I doubt our quarry will prove difficult to track, and—!"
"Order!" Magnus barked, the tips of his primary feathers tingling when the princess stopped and stared at him. "Article I, section 3 of the Facilities Court Charter declares that the security of all proceedings shall be the sole responsibility of the judicial panel." He looked over at Applejack and Rarity. "We're also responsible for any damages caused as a result of our proceedings, so I suggest we return our errant ambassador to the courtroom as quickly as possible."
Rarity's jaw fell open, but it was Applejack who shouted, "You mean we gotta round up that there monster?"
A crinkle of paper behind him, and Magnus glanced back to see Princess Celestia leafing through that big old book again. "He's right," she said. "Though it says that the judges can deputize other ponies to assist in the smooth running of the session."
Princess Luna's face lit up, but, well, after however many moons stuck training recruits... Magnus took a breath. "I might characterize it as a confict of interest, Your Highness, should I send the defendants out to track down and capture the plaintiff. So I'll ask you please to head up damage mitigation efforts here in the city. Applejack? Rarity?" He leaped onto the judges' platform. "You're with me!" He wheeled, charged through the black curtains, kicked the door open, and galloped down the hall.
"Now hold on!" Applejack's yell echoed along the marble walls, but Magnus smiled to hear two sets of hooves clattering along after him. "How're we s'pposed to stop a giant cat? I ain't even got rope for a lasso!"
"At least," Rarity panted, "let us...send for...Fluttershy! She can—!"
"No time!" Rounding a corner, Magnus headed straight for the farthest doorway. "We're responsible for that monster every second he's out there! So the sooner we stop him—" Spreading his wings, he leaped and spun, bucked with the force of his hind legs and his momentum, slammed the door out of the way, and skidded to a halt in the airship bay, a dozen and a half small dirigibles lashed to the structure sticking out into the open sky behind the palace. "The better!" he finished.
The troupers at the base of the docking platform gaped, then snapped to attention. "By order of the Facilities Court," Magnus shouted, "we're commandeering that vessel!" He snapped a hoof toward the three-passenger scout ship that had caught his eye, its bag all gassed up and its ties mooring it to the very end of the wooden walkway.
"Yes, Sergeant!" the troupers called back in unison, and Magnus threw them a quick wing salute as he thundered past. At least he wasn't going to have to stop in the middle of everything and give them his standard lecture on the difference between a sergeant and a sir...
Spreading his wings, he left the platform and swept several tight circles around the airship. The designs had changed a bit over the centuries, but he'd leafed through enough spec sheets to know where to look on these new models for leaks or fraying lines or anything that might cause any of the various bad days a soldier's life was prone to.
All looked well, and he swung himself into a hover at the bow of the gondola to unlatch the harness compartment, the lines attaching it to the ship nicely coiled and the harness itself nicely padded. Slipping into the thing, tightening it about his shoulders, and shortening the painters—he could tow the thing faster than the little magical engine attached to the stern, but he needed to be close enough for voice communication with his comrades: he rather doubted either of them knew pegasus whistle code—he glanced back to see Rarity leaping into the long, narrow, open basket under the gasbag.
Applejack stepped in more gingerly, her eyes wide and focusing back and forth between the thwarts and the rigging. "Land sakes," though, was all she said, strapping herself into the middle seat.
Rarity, meanwhile, was leaning over the bow, one hind leg crooked carelessly around the safety belt. "Which way did he go?" she asked, her voice practically dancing with excitement.
"West." Magnus gave the tow lines behind him one last shake. "Cast off, then!"
"Aye, aye!" he heard Applejack call, and the ship's buoyancy shifted, that subtle change that came over any airborne vessel when she found herself untethered from the ground once more. It always set Magnus's feathers to tingling.
"And we're away!" Curving his wings, he snapped them back, and the ship responded as eagerly as he'd known she would, taking to the air like the fluffiest of cumuli. The docks fell away, and Magnus brought the ship about to face the direction the sun was heading.
He blinked, the valley beneath the Canterhorn nothing but green and unruffled, the hills rolling gently all the way to the horizon without a trace of—
"He's gone!" Rarity cried behind him. "How is that even possible?"
A snort from Applejack. "Typical cat. If you're looking for 'em, they's nowhere to be found."
The snort from Rarity was just as robust, something that took Magnus a little by surprise. "And you're certain, Flash, about the direction?"
"I am." Realigning his stroke, he kept his heading but began gaining altitude as well, hoping to expand their field of view. "It looked like something grabbed his attention, too, like a call or a scent." He glanced back from the catless landscape below. "My modern geography's not the best, so what's west of here that might attract a magically enlarged feline?"
Applejack was tapping her chin, but it was Rarity whose eyes flew wide. "Of course!" She spun, the gondola rocking and Applejack grabbing for the gunwales. "When we took that trip to Applewood several summers ago! We stopped off in Salt Lick City to see—"
"Tarnation!" Applejack's eyes went as wide as Rarity's had been. "Equestria's Biggest Ball of Yarn! That amulet thingee looked just like it, too!"
"Well..." Rarity shrugged. "One ball of yarn looks much like another, so I doubt there's a direct connection..."
"Still!" Facing forward, Magnus unfurled his wings further and began increasing their velocity. "It gives us a solid lead! But where exactly is this Salt Lick City?"
The silence made him look back again, Rarity's grin the height of sheepishness. "West?" she said with a tiny wave of her hoof. "And slightly south possibly?"
Giving another snort, Applejack pointed over the port rail, her other fetlock holding firmly to the starboard. "Follow the train tracks. 'Course, it took us more'n a couple hours to get there, so—"
"Ha!" Magnus focused on the miniature steel rails winding generally west through the hills below. "You're traveling by pegasus express this time, friends!" And summoning his strength, he dug into the air around him.
Even then, it took the better part of an hour, the countryside flattening and yellowing, then giving way to gorges and flattop mesas, little green farms tucked here and there. Signs of their quarry kept popping up: windmills knocked down and shredded; a clawed paw print visible in the mud of a riverbank even from their height; several earth ponies in overalls chasing chickens escaped from a pen with half its roof torn off.
They discussed strategies, too, and while Magnus would've preferred a direct attack, it only took a few stories from the two mares about a creature of their acquaintance named Opalescence to convince him that something a bit less confrontational might be to their advantage. And by the time they'd put together several possible approaches, they were rounding the last bend in a canyon the train tracks were using to pass through the mountains, a broad plain opening up ahead.
The tracks descended the foothills in a series of switchbacks, but Magnus didn't need to follow them at this point. The largest city they'd seen since leaving Canterlot lay directly in front of them, and, well, the cat squatting in the town's central park and taller than any nearby building was something of a giveaway, too.
"Tarnation," Applejack mumbled again.
"Indeed," Rarity added before gasping. "But I don't see the yarn! Whatever could've—?"
The cat tumbled head over heels then, dust flying into the air, to reveal a ball of red thread that to Magnus's trained eye seemed to span about sixteen stories from top to bottom. The former Abyssinian ambassador had the thing tucked to his midsection, his hind paws kicking at it and his teeth, sharp and pointed and each, Magnus was certain, larger than the average pony, gnawing at a strand that had come loose.
Refusing to focus on the cuteness of the scene—a cat playing with a ball of yarn was still a cat playing with a ball of yarn even if both were monstrously oversized—Magnus cleared his throat. "Rarity? Can you detect if he still has the amulet?"
"A moment," she muttered, and a glance back showed silvery light wavering around her horn. "I'm sensing something crystalline in the area of his right forepaw." Her hornglow whisked away. "I'd wager it's caught up between his pads and claws."
Magnus faced forward again, the outskirts of town already passing beneath them. "Plan B, then, I suppose?"
"Reckon so," Applejack said with a sigh. "Rarity, you sure you can run this here airship?"
"Oh, please." A familiar chug-chug-chug started up, and Magnus felt the lines connecting him to the ship slacken. "The engine's hardly as complex as the larger sewing machines I employ, and the way Flash described the controls, they seem less burdensome to operate than the average counterbalance loom."
"Then we're go." Magnus slipped out of the harness, spun, and shoved the whole set-up back into its storage space below the ship's stubby bowsprit. Swooping under the hull with a few flips to stretch the kinks out of wings too long constrained by the need to fly straight and steady, he came up athwart the starboard beam, grinned at Applejack, and held out a hoof. "May I have this dance, milady?"
Her lovely hide appeared a bit paler than before. "The things I does for Equestria," she muttered. Unbuckling her seat belt, she turned a glare toward Rarity. "No lollygagging, now. This ain't a time for sightseeing."
Even with Rarity bent forward to adjust the control pedals for the ship's rudders, elevators, and ailerons, Magnus could tell that she was rolling her eyes. "Let me get my make-up fixed first, darling, and I'll be right with you."
Applejack took a very deep breath, planted her front hooves on the starboard rail, and the gaze she fixed on Magnus was about as intent and somber as any he'd ever seen. "You're sure?" she asked.
Unfurling his most charming grin, Magnus said, "It'll be a quick descent but a controlled one. After all, I doubt you're as heavy as Rockhoof." Though he didn't add that he'd never actually tried flying while carrying that big galoot...
She nodded and leaned forward, the gondola tipping as her weight shifted. Magnus took a breath of his own, darted forward and sideways, slid his forelegs under hers, scooped her out over the gunwale—
And plunged instantly into the steepest nosedive he'd ever experienced.
The sound Applejack made was more yelp than screech, Magnus supposed, though it was really more a difference in tone than volume. He managed to keep his own surprised exclamation to a mere grunt and quickly brought himself up to full wingpower in an attempt to wrest some of that control he'd been talking about away from every flier's archnemesis: gravity. "Hang on!" he pushed out between gritted teeth.
"You think?" she shouted.
Abandoning all attempts to arrest their fall, he concentrated instead on bending it while doing his best to ignore the squat buildings of Salt Lick City rushing up toward them. Fortunately, the whole place seemed to be laid out in a straightforward grid pattern, roads running north-south and east-west between the city's blocks, so he curved their trajectory, rolled some, pitched a bit, and yawed a little more till they were racing up one of the boulevards toward the park in the middle of town, the cat and the ball of yarn looming closer and closer.
Braking without breaking, he decided, should be his next trick, and the sooner, the better. "Stand by!" he tried to say, but the way the wind was pinning his ears to the top of his head, he wasn't sure what actually came out of his mouth. Still, he reared up to create as much drag as he could, started backflapping, and braced his hind legs for impact against the cobbled street, whipping by beneath them a good deal closer and more quickly than he would've liked.
Oh, well. Nothing he could do but hope he didn't snap too many bones when he—
"I got it!" Applejack yelled, and before Magnus could do more than gape, she was slamming her rear hooves directly into the ground speeding past.
An explosive crash like every mudslide, rock slide, and avalanche he'd ever flown search-and-rescue on smashed over him, dust and stones and clods of dirt filling the air. Everything inside him spun, half his pegasus senses screaming that he was plowing into a mountainside, the other half informing him that he'd gone from speeding to stationary in the space of two heartbeats.
It took another two heartbeats for this last piece of information to trickle up into his conscious brain, and he cracked one eyelid open to see that he was still clinging to Applejack's back. She was standing up on her hind legs, but she began to list forward almost at once, dropping to all fours with a thud that he swore he could see spreading in a shock wave through the ground around them.
She blew out a breath. "That's the ol' terra firma..."
Several blinks cleared Magnus's eyes, and he saw ponies in blue police uniforms staring at them. He would've leapt off, introduced himself and his companion, and informed the citizenry that they had nothing more to fear, but he couldn't get his jaw to do anything but hang there when he saw the twelve or fourteen taillength-long trench torn into the road behind them.
Applejack gave a sheepish chuckle. "Sorry 'bout that, folks. Y'all just send the repair bill to Canterlot, and the princesses'll square it up."
More silence stretched, then Magnus shook himself—they'd apparently survived the fall, so now it was time to get to work—and flapped to the ground. "We understand you've got a little cat problem," he said, getting his smile and his banter back into gear.
The local police had done a fine job of evacuating the city center and cordoning it off, and Magnus was happy to tell them so. "But you can just leave the rest to us," he added with a wink.
Rarity and the airship had hove into sight by then, so Magnus turned and started into the trees that circled the center of the park. With a beautiful mare beside him and with the former Abyssinian ambassador lying ahead like a small mountain, curled around the giant ball of yarn and apparently napping, Magnus couldn't help but reflect on how great this day was turning out.
"Okay," Applejack said after a moment. "Thing is? I ain't sure I'm all that clear what goes on with Plan B."
"You want the honest truth?" Magnus waggled his eyebrows at her. "Me, neither."
She stopped, put a hoof on his shoulder, and he decided to stop as well rather than risk dislocation. "You what now?" she asked more calmly than he'd expected under the circumstances.
Magnus reached up to cover her hoof with his. "A great general I once had the privilege of serving under used to say that successful plans were made of string, not steel. We need flexibility, need to stand ready to shift our approach at a moment's notice. Otherwise, we're risking disaster."
"Uh-huh." Her eyes narrowed. "And all that means what, exactly?"
"We keep things simple." He gestured toward the giant cat. "You distract him while I get the amulet away from him and up to Rarity in the ship. That will hopefully cause him to regain his regular size and mental state and will keep the nasty little thing far enough away from him that it won't cloud his mind the way it did back in the courtroom." Knowing that his big smile would be taken as a sign of insincerity and would likely get him stomped, he shrugged instead.
For what was either forty-five minutes or the length of one breath indrawn and blown out, Applejack glared at him. Then she stepped back and said, "I reckon 'simple' musta meant something diff'rent all them hundreds of years ago." But she began making her way through the park again.
Stretching his wings, he flapped to her side. "We'll simply sneak up him while he's asleep and—"
"He ain't asleep." Applejack jerked her chin toward the cat, fewer trees between here and there with each passing instant. "Look at his tail."
With a blink, Magnus snapped his attention away from the nose, whiskers, and ear tips peeking out around the far end of the yarn ball. "It's...twitching?" It was also wider than three ponies standing side by side, but he didn't feel the need to point that out at the moment.
"Yep. The varmint's tracking us just fine by sound and smell." She kept stomping forward. "He'll wait till we're in range, then he'll be all leaping and biting and slashing." Magnus almost thought he could see the breath she blew out. "I always been more of a canine fancier myself..."
A single row of trees stood between them and the cat now, the whole center of the park low, rolling, grass-covered hills of the sort perfect for an afternoon picnic and a little touch hoofball. When they weren't full of cat and yarn, of course. "New plan, then," Magnus said. "I taunt him into focusing on me while you rig that yarn into a lasso and get him nicely hog-tied." He shot her a glance. "Okay?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Reckon that'd work. But I'll hafta—"
"Then do it!" Pumping his muscles, Magnus shot upward through the tree canopy and swung wide to the left so the cat could see him around the curve of the ball, those massive green eyes wide and awake and pointing directly at him. "Ambassador Adalbert!" he shouted. "My apologies if you're still conscious in there, but—"
Yowling, the cat uncurled and leaped much more quickly than anything that size should've been able to. Magnus darted sideways, the whoosh when the cat's paw swept past him shattering the air and forcing Magnus to adjust as if he'd hit a sudden downdraft. Letting himself drop, he waited till the paw's return blotted out the sun before backflapping and pulling away, the crash when the paw hit the ground instead of him as loud as a whole wagon of fireworks going off at once.
Thirty seconds of dodging and whirling became a full minute, then two, the cat's thunderous growls getting more and more frustrated to Magnus's ear, his own breath getting quicker and quicker: these weren't exactly the sorts of maneuvers he'd been drilling the recruits in lately, after all...
Still, he figured he'd given Applejack enough time to get her lasso ready, so flipping into an Immelmare turn, he spun upright and raced full-tilt directly at that massive, angry face. Feline eyes went wide, and the pressure gradients around Magnus went haywire, a sign he'd come to recognize as the forerunner of a paw rushing toward him. A feint to his right made the cat strike in that direction, and a quick roll and dive brought Magnus directly onto the top of that very paw, the right paw, the one where Rarity had sensed the crystal of the amulet.
Clinging to fur and scrambling forward, he almost laughed aloud, picturing himself as Equestria's largest flea. But then he was rounding the end of the paw, tightening his grip at the sudden flailing that rattled his teeth, and slipping in between the cat's pads, the claw jutting out beside him long enough to easily skewer him from tail to brisket if he gave it half a chance.
The paw's shaking grew more violent, but something flashed green and sparkly in the furry darkness to his left. Rolling either up, down, or sideways—he couldn't quite tell at this point—he snapped his teeth at the glow; they closed around what felt like a large, lumpy rock, and he flung himself away, hoping that his training or his pegasus magic or plain old stupid luck would see him through one more time.
Sunlight streamed into his face, his jangled inner ears giving him a tentative guess as to which way the ground was, and he pounded his wings, sliced through the air in what more and more of his senses were agreeing was an upward direction.
"No!" a barely understandable voice roared behind him. "Mine!"
So just getting the amulet away from the ambassador was apparently having some sort of positive effect. Now if Applejack had her restraints ready and Rarity was nearby in the airship, they could—
Wind shoved at him, and Magnus twisted out of the way of the oncoming paw. Or he tried to, at least: the blow to his flank was a glancing one, but whatever else was happening with the ambassador, he was still easily big enough for even a sidelong clip to knock Magnus careening across the sky.
Tucking in his wings, he rolled with the tumble, plummeting him toward the trees and a sight that, if he'd been in better control of his flight path, would've made him jerk to a halt in surprise.
The whole scene struck him in less than an instant: the airship sitting on the grass at the edge of the clearing; Rarity out of the gondola, her horn glowing and weaving the red yarn into something a good deal thicker and more rope-like; Applejack laying the rope out in a big circle on the ground as quickly as Rarity produced it.
Then the first row of trees was lurching up, Magnus barely having time to clench his eyes before he was crashing into the canopy with all its little—and not so little— whip-like branches. He passed stinging through at least three individual trees, he was fairly certain, before fetching up hard against a trunk, his head ringing when it smacked.
The shouted "Mine!" from behind him came through clearly enough, though. Leaping straight up through the limbs and leaves, Magnus swung around, pain jabbing him from chin to sternum. Not that he could afford to pay it much attention: the cat, still furious and towering over the trees—though not, he realized, nearly as towering as before—was rushing toward him on all fours, its bellowing shrieks of "Mine!" folding his ears.
Unlimbering his reluctant wings, he prepared to make another dash for it but stopped himself when somepony shouted "Yee-haw!" The rage in the cat's face twisted into befuddlement, and his forward progress froze, his front paws outstretched, his back paws now encircled with some thin, red rope. The cat shuddered, contracted with a convulsive jerk like a balloon suddenly losing half its air, and dropped to the ground with a crash that Magnus could only call satisfying.
The monster lost more size when he hit, and sprawled there in the grass, the Abyssinian ambassador gave another shiver before shrinking back to what Magnus thought was close to his normal length and breadth.
A second cry of "Yee-haw!" was followed by an equally loud "Indeed!" Shifting his gaze, Magnus saw Applejack and Rarity rushing over from the landed airship, the red rope running taut along the ground beside them till it met the massive bulk of Equestria's Largest Ball of Yarn. With a nod that hurt more than he would ever want to admit, he drifted out past the trees and settled beside the ambassador.
"Flash!" Rarity yelled. "Where's the amulet? I assume you got it away from him if he's back to normal, but—"
A wavering sort of mew rose up from Ambassador Adelbert. "Mine," he moaned, one shaky paw coming up to claw the air in Magnus's general direction.
Three things popped into Magnus's head, then. First, that he'd been holding the amulet in his teeth last time he'd been paying attention to it. Second, that he was sure he hadn't dropped it. And third, that the jabbing pain he'd been feeling since hitting the trees was concentrating itself around his midsection.
"Ah." With a swallow, he watched the ambassador flailing feebly toward him once more. "Let's just say that I've taken the amulet into custody." He flapped upward into a hover. "And since getting it away from the ambassador is the only way he'll recover, let's also say that I head back to the Royal Guard infirmary in Canterlot right now, and the three of you follow in the ship once he's ready to travel. Okay?"
Applejack's brow creased, but Magnus wheeled and took off toward the east before she could open her mouth. She might've had questions, but he sure didn't want to answer them.
"A lovely journey!" Rarity was saying, her voice smoother than ever through the fog filling Magnus's head. Those little yellow pills the doctors had given him when he'd arrived had carpeted over every ache, pain, and anxious thought he'd had swirling through him during that long, long flight back from Salt Lick City—nearly twenty minutes it had taken him!
Now, an hour or three later, a nurse had ushered Rarity and Applejack into his room, and he was doing his best to concentrate on their 'after action' report.
"Lovely?" Applejack looked like she could use a couple of his pills. "Two-and-a-half ding-dang hours putt-putt-putting along in that dirigible with poor ol' Adalbert going on and on about how sorry he was and how embarrassed he was and how he hoped we wouldn't mind keeping that amulet somewhere no Abyssinian's likely ever to stumble across it again." She sighed. "A nice enough fella, but after the first hour, I was hoping he'd take a little catnap or something."
Even the pointed glare Rarity shot at Applejack seemed softer to Magnus's medicated eye. "His Excellency was a perfect gentlecat." She waved a hoof. "Once he stopped being a gargantuan, ravening beast, I mean." The gaze she turned on Magnus, then, seemed to soften even more. "And you, Flash? Have they operated yet?"
Magnus shook his head carefully so it wouldn't come loose and float away. "They had to call in a specialist." He couldn't keep from winking at her. "From Ponyville, as a matter of fact."
"Yip-yap-yeppers!" rang out a voice that ripped through every layer of padding around Magnus. The door burst open, and Pinkie Pie came sliding into the room. She had a flowery apron tied around the middle of her green hospital scrubs, and the little metal cart squeaking along in front of her sported a single covered plate on its top shelf. "'Cause nopony's specialler than me!"
Applejack blinked. "Can't argue with that."
"Pinkie?" Rarity's face did some very amusing stretching and squishing. "What in the wide, wide world of Equestria are you doing here?"
Pinkie clicked her tongue. "Flashy here's got a very serious case of the stopper-uppers. And nothing gets a pony more unstopper-upped than—" She whisked the cover off the plate to reveal a large brown muffin. "Proctological Pinkie's Extra-Strength, Super DeLuxe, Golly-Gosh-a-Rooter-Tooter Bran Muffin!"
Just looking at it made Magnus's stomach—and other nearby real estate—start grumbling, and he turned as solid a smile as he could toward Rarity. "So maybe I could ask you to stop by the Kobresia Cafe just up the street from where we first met earlier today? I'm supposed to rendezvous with a young mare who works there later this evening, and I may be a bit late if I'm—"
"This evening?" Pinkie shook her head, her surgeon's cap sloshing back and forth like it had water in it instead of her mane. "After you gobble this thing down, Flash, you're gonna be incommunicado till at least Saturday." She reached up and snapped a white cloth mask over her snout. "'Cause we're gonna hollow you out!"
"Ah." Magnus could feel the last bit of his smile melting, but he still managed to nod at Rarity and Applejack. "Then maybe you could let her know I've been unavoidably detained, and I'll declare court adjourned."
"Yes. Well." Rarity cleared her throat. "I hope you won't take this the wrong way, Flash, but I'm not entirely certain I'm cut out for the glamorous life of a Facilities Court adjudicator."
"Oh, I dunno." Applejack cocked her head. "You called it 'bout the royal plumbing, didn't'cha?"
Rarity rolled her eyes and started out into the hallway. Applejack gave Magnus a salute, then followed.
Magnus looked at the muffin. "Ah, the things we do for Equestria." And he leaned forward to take his first big bite.
Author's Note
After receiving the following set of tiles as my story prompt:
I immediately went to the internet to see what if anything had ever been said about Salt Lick City in the show. Turns out it's only ever been mentioned in the comics, specifically in Friends Forever #8 when Rarity and Applejack stop there on their cross-country journey so Rarity can look at Equestria's Largest Ball of Yarn. And once I saw that, well, the rest of the story pretty much wrote itself.
I mean, except for, y'know, the words and the punctuation and the paragraph divisions and all. I still had to do that part myself...
Mike
