BridgeWorld

[994AB Day 294]
"Oh! Look at what the digits of the clawless paw dancing on the tiles has led us to!" the unicorn stallion gleefully cheered.

"W-we-we shouldn't be out here!" his companion said, fearfully looking about the ruins they were approaching. The pegasus mare would've much preferred doing this at night, despite how much spookier it would make the place seem. But to her, the bright daylight was an even more fearful environment for them to be in. "Somepony might see us!"

Years ago, it was the Colt Island Amusement Park, a place where families would come, and colts and fillies would laugh and play without a care in the world, all day and all night. But that was a very, very long time ago. Now, it was just a large collection of abandoned and decrepit junk: broken rides, ruined façades, rusted frames, trash of every sort littering everywhere, a mess that was simply too hazardous to dismantle and properly dispose of, too expensive for the authorities to try doing anything about, a blight on the community that the officials believed would just go away on its own if they just ignored it long enough. Just yet another failed capital venture which had been purposefully mismanaged and sabotaged beneath the nose of its creator due to too much trust put into his envious lieutenants, its dead carcass long ago left to rot under the sun.

He led her forward, fearlessly stepping through the broken gate that was supposed to keep wandering foals out.

"Relax, my dear. Nopony can recognize us," he said, grinning at her, using his right forehoof to gesture to both his features and hers. The royal purple fur, ryb green mane and tail, and beer-orange irises he now sported was far different from the colors he used to have. Even his cutie mark, a poker deck's face card of a Joker, was substantially different from the smooth tall red silo bin that he originally had. Likewise, her colors, consisting of her fur with a red and black diamond pattern across her figure, bright yellow mane and tail, and even her eyes had different colors; her right iris was dark green while her left iris was bright red, as well as her jester's hat overlaying a large mallet cutiemark were completely unlike the features she used to possess.

"Besides," he gestured with his hoof at the scene in front of them, "there's nopony here to see us." He smiled that ever-present smile he now wore. "This place is perfect! Heh! Heh! Ha! Ha! HA! HA! HA! HA-A!!"

Celestia casually walked through Ponyville after leaving Dandelion to start her new life at the Town Hall to head for the train station. She trusted Buck Mane and Lucius to unobtrusively return to Manehattan through their own means, and there was no intent to rejoin them as doing so would jeopardize the entire operation. By necessity, she had come with no Guards in attendance, but Ponyville was generally a safe town, despite its well-earned reputation for being a weirdness magnet.

Naturally, ponies spotting her stopped and stared before quickly bowing to her, and she quietly nodded her head to acknowledge them and serenely continued walking.

"OHMYGOSH!OHMYGOSH!IT'SPRINCESSCELESTIA!!HEREINPONYVILLE!!!" a sudden high pitched, rapid fired scream, like almost right beside her ear, startled her out of her calm, quiet reverie. Glancing over and then down, she saw an exuberant bubblegum pink colored earth pony mare gleefully staring up at her, a pony whom she had seen before but only in a few occasional premonitions.

"Why, hello there, my little pony," Celestia greeted her. "And whom might you be?"

"I'm Pinkie Pie!" the little mare exclaimed. "But—you already knew that somehow, didn't you? Just as my Pinkie sense told me when it let me know there was a new pony in town!"

"I've—seen you before, yes, but I never knew your name," Celestia replied. "And as far as me being new here, I'm—not exactly new. I've been here many times before, just not recently."

"OH! So that must have been a 'welcome back to Ponyville' twitch!" Pinkie Pie happily cheered. But then she frowned. "No, what I felt was definitely the 'new pony in Ponyville' twitch. So, how am I supposed to tell the difference between them if I can't tell which is a new pony and which is a returning pony!? It's going to ruin the party if I get it wrong!"

"Well, actually, there is a new pony in town, Pinkie," Celestia told her. "I just left her with Mayor Mare at the town hall. Her name is Cheerilee."

"OH! That's wonderful! Thank you, Your Highness!" Pinkie exclaimed. "I've got to get started on the 'Welcome to Ponyville' party right away!"

"Then I shouldn't keep you from your duties, my little pony," Celestia agreed, smiling.

"You—know? Something about you being the one to say that—? It just sounds so weird," Pinkie said, cocking her head.

"You're right, it does," Celestia said, nodding after thinking about it for a moment. "It would be nice if I could use it more often. It feels rather refreshing," she added, smiling.

"Glad I could help, Your Highness!" Pinkie cheered before rushing off.

"Yes, Corporal?" Shining Armor asked, looking up from his paperwork in response to the knock on his door frame.

"Sir, the prisoner in the infirmary has awakened," the soldier reported.

"Ah, good," Shining Armor stated, using his magic to retrieve a file folder to take with him. "Perhaps we'll finally be able to get some answers."

Resuming the walk to the train station, Celestia's attention was drawn to the sight of a pegasus stallion engaged in a workout routine involving a number of dumbbell weights.

It's uncanny, she thought, stopping to stare at him. His build, his eye, coat, mane, and tail colorings, his facial features, even his manecut are all identical to the stallion that I fought the other night! Only his cutie mark and the size of his wings are different. While it wasn't unheard of that so many similar identifying features could appear in any two random ponies, it was more often the case than not that this many usually appeared only in ponies who had close familial relationships. It can't be mere coincidence, she finally decided after watching him for several minutes.

Summoning the note that she had made regarding the fugitive stallion from its location on her desk, she approached him with it in her telekinesis hold.

"Oh, Your Highness!" Shining Armor called out when she returned to her Throne Room. "That injured pegasus stallion, Shetland Hoofley, finally woke up long enough to be interrogated. We were able to get leads on all those ponies working for Jack Black. A great many of them were former Royal and Equestrian Guard ponies, most of whom had been dismissed for conduct unbecoming or had resigned in disgrace, including a beefy large white stallion, named—"

"Sergeant Decker, a former drill instructor for an Equestrian Guard unit, who had been relieved several years ago for abusing recruits," Celestia finished for him, causing Shining Armor to blink in surprise and making her giggle at his reaction.

"Don't worry, I haven't developed mind reading as a skill," she assured him. "I encountered his younger brother earlier today and got the lowdown from him."

"Oh," Shining Armor said, wiping his forehead in relief.

"Well, in addition to what I was able to pull up on Sergeant Decker, I have yet another reported sighting of Jackie Valentine from last night," Shining Armor told her, pulling up a map showing the area between two of Equestria's major cities. On it were dozens of colored threads crisscrossing the region. "This one in a small community called—Locksburg," he finished after confirming his note. Then he added another colored thread to the map.

"Hmm. Almost five full leagues from Millstone," Celestia muttered, looking at the display. "Nearly backtracking her last movement only to overshoot it by a good thirty percent."

"She's simply too fast to chase, too random to predict, and too long ranged to set a trap for her. There's no pattern to her movements at all," Shining Armor said, looking at the map.

"Not—entirely," Celestia said, perking up her ears as she studied the map again. "There is a pattern, we're just having a hard time seeing it."

"There's no discernable goal that we can determine," Shining Armor protested. "With her ability to move so quickly and over such distance, I'm surprised that she's not on the other side of the continent by now!"

"And you just showed me her pattern, Shining!" she crowed.

"I did?"

"Don't you see? She's avoiding both Manehattan and Fillydelphia!" Celestia pointed out. "She left Manehattan three and a half weeks ago. She came quite close to Fillydelphia just a couple of days later before turning around. She's been bouncing between them ever since!"

"Then why hasn't sh—oh!" Shining suddenly exclaimed, now seeing something to the fugitive's pattern. "There's a large river on one side, and the ocean on the other. She's boxed in! But why hasn't she used any of the bridges over the river?"

"She might not know of them," Celestia suggested, looking at the map. "As you said, her movements are entirely random. She might not know how the land is laid out and as a result, she's going in whatever direction she can to get away. This also points out that she does have a discernable goal: evasion! Plain, simple, evasion."

"And doing a pretty good job at it, too," Shining Armor observed sardonically.

"There is another pattern that's evident, if you'll notice," Celestia said, smirking. "I saw it earlier in our discussion. All of these sightings are in towns. Think about it: she's a predator, Shining."

"Well, that's to be expected," Shining Armor complained. "Towns are where the most eyes exist to see her. She could spend some of the time hunting for food or sleeping in a field or woods or something."

"But look at the times of the sightings," she pointed out. "One day here, that night over there, the next day over in this town, another day another town. There are no days that she's not in a town! So, what would a predator like her find so valuable in towns that are not available in the wild?"

"Easy food," Shining said, understanding what Celestia was getting at. "But that doesn't make sense, Your Highness. She's not attacked anypony."

"Indeed, not," Celestia agreed. "Which means, like griffons, she's a civilized predator! She's going for those meals that are compatible for her. Don't forget, she found like company among the griffon customers of that restaurant. And there's one more thing a creature like her would find in towns that she wouldn't find in the wild, or even in large cities. Shelter."

"But there's plenty of shelter in Manehattan and Fillydelphia!" Shining Armor protested.

"Perhaps, but perhaps not the kind of shelter that she feels comfortable with," Celestia countered. "She was badly hurt when I pulled that sliver of Dark Magic from her brain. She might associate the larger cities as being dangerous to her, but a smaller town makes her feel safer."

"But this doesn't help us catch her," Shining Armor grumbled. "We can't chase her, can't predict her, can't trap her. So, what can we do?" They both grew silent trying to think of a strategy to use.

"We can try to entice her!" Celestia suddenly spoke up.

"Food?"

"Music!" she said, grinning at him.

"Music?"

"She wrote several songs that were being played by the griffon band," she said, reminding him. "We can perhaps try to anticipate her movements by setting up teams of singers to catch her attention with her own songs!"

"But we can't cover every town between Manehattan and Fillydelphia!"

"We don't have to," Celestia said, pointing to the map. "All of her runs are generally three to five leagues, a few that get up to six, but everything seems to be in a straight line from one town to the next town where she's seen next. So, the next time she shows up, we should anticipate that she'll run to one of the neighboring towns that are within those ranges. Then we send teams to communities which are about those probable targets to be ready to belt out one of her songs, along with a verbal message that we hope will get her to pause for a moment and think long enough to realize she doesn't have to run anymore."

"I see," Shining Armor said, nodding after thinking about it. "And if we miss her the first time, we redeploy about her next potential targets and keep at it until we finally get through to her. Yes, it might work. I'll try to round up enough troops who can carry a tune and get them deployed as soon as I can."

"Good," she acknowledged. "You might also look into recruiting the bandmembers who work at that restaurant for this. I'm sure they're as worried for her as we are and will be eager to help. In the meantime, I want several teams of Guards set up to blockade all the bridges across the river, the railroad tunnel from Manehattan, and the stretch between the tunnel and where the river comes out of the mountains. There's no way any of our ponies can stop her, but seeing them may cause her to avoid trying to get out of the region, thus keeping her hemmed in. So far, we seem to have been lucky that she's missed them, but I want to block off any avenues of escape into the rest of the countryside."

"I'm on it, Your Highness!" Shining Armor said, saluting before gathering up the map and running off.

[994AB Day 295]
Shortly after sunset, the shops were all closed in Hoofsville, one of the numerous communities between Manehattan and Fillydelphia, Jackie Valentine cautiously walked down one of the darkened main roads to avoid being seen by the few wandering equines still about. She walked past a shop with a large picture window built into the storefront, and a motion of color out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Looking over, she gasped at the images playing on the monitor. As she approached, she could just make out the sound coming from the television.

"Yesterday, Mane Industries announced the deaths of Thomas Mane and his mate, Mareta Mane, due to the actions of one of the terrorists who was also responsible for the devastating explosion at Manehattan Harbor earlier this week," the unseen announcer's voice could be heard through the glass. "Their son, Buck Mane, assumed control of Mane Industries following their demise. As a result of the news, stocks of Mane Industries were trading 20% lower on this morning's market—"

Boldly stepping up onto the porch, Jackie stared at the antiquated-looking television set, her breath quickly becoming ragged as her mouth suddenly went dry and the rest of what the announcer was saying was dismissed in her mind as being unimportant.

She reached out her paw to touch the window between her and the television, the screen showing the ponies being interview on the stairs leading up to some large concrete building they were all in front of. But her eyes were focused on one creature standing among the equine beings that wasn't an equine.

It was a griffon.

She whispered his name.

"Dmitri…."