The train lurched back into motion on the initial stroke and we began to pull out of the station. I yawned, slumping back in my bench as the platform out the window began to slide away. Almost there. I hadn't exactly found an express. This was my third stop on the line so far but next was Ponyville. If it weren't for my mind burning with a million worries, the passenger train trip would have been a normal, relaxing one, almost like the old days.

The coalescing rhythm of locomotion was broken as the door of my cabin slid open. A bespectacled yellow pegasus stumbled his way in, panting and flush-faced. He tossed his saddle bag on the opposing bench. "Made it," he sighed to himself. He sat and gave me a quick once over and nod of acknowledgement before diving into his pack for a mess of papers. Total desk jockey type. Probably his first time out of the cubicle in months.

I'd only had one other companion for a short while on the trip. I didn't think much of the intrusion and just went back to disassociating out the window.

His ruffling of papers paused occasionally as he would review a document before moving on to another. I became lost in the rhythmic pounding of metal wheels on tracks but in my peripheral vision I suddenly became aware of the ghosted reflection on the glass of the interior of the cabin. The pegasus across from me was sitting motionless with his stack, no longer shuffling it but instead studying me.

My eyes flicked back to him and he quickly looked down and resumed his organizing. I watched him fumbling around for a few moments before tentatively returning to the scenery but I continued to covertly observe his reflection in the window. I saw him look back up at me once more, hurriedly stuff his papers back in his bag before standing up. Alarm bells went off in my head. This felt suspicious.

The pegasus placed a hoof on the door handle and tugged but my magic held the partition stationary.

"Where you going?" I grumbled.

"Oh, I was just… heading to the restroom," he replied meekly without even looking back at me.

"Take a seat," I ordered.

The stallion didn't move. "Well if could just-"

"I said sit down," I snarled. I ensnared him with my aura and wrenched him away from the door, slamming him back on the bench. His bag overturned, the buckles unsnapping and letting loose a cascade of documents on the floor.

"Sorry about that," I sighed, looking down at the mess.

He sat rigid but shaking in his seat directly across from me as I gathered up his papers with my magic. All and all the documents looked pretty boring as expected. He was some kind of government auditor based on what I could piece together from the bold face headers on the pages.

On the bottom layer of the mess, one particular paper stood out from the hundred other walls of legal text. I paused in the middle of my task to bring it closer for scrutiny.

"Ten thousand bits," I mumbled, scanning over the poster and the rough mimeograph of my face. "For any information leading to the arrest of New Moon. Wanted for bludgeoning multiple officers and resisting arrest. Considered extremely dangerous. Do not engage." How flattering, I thought. I felt accomplished to be recognized as a serious threat. But also having my face circulated was a pretty bad development.

"That look like me?" I asked my hostage, levitating the poster up next to my face for comparison. "What are you even doing carrying around a reward poster?" I scoffed. "Are you that strapped for cash or do you just think it's your civic duty?"

"They… issue the new ones to everyone at the bureau," he replied weakly. "Listen, I wasn't going to turn you in. I just didn't want to be in the same cabin with a violent criminal."

"Uh-huh," I grunted incredulously, crushing the poster into a ball with my magic and teleporting it outside into the wind. "Well, unfortunately, you're stuck with me now." I stowed the rest of his papers and fished out his ID.

"Like your job, Mr… Red Tape?"

"Well… it puts food on the table." His eyes drifted over to the window and then quickly back to me as if he'd promptly dismissed the idea of crashing through the glass to get away. "Please, I didn't even do anything," he begged fearfully.

I sighed in frustration. "Put yourself in my position for a minute. What would you do in this situation?"

His eyes ping-ponged back and forth as he quivered in his seat. "Let me go as long as I promise not to tell anypony?" He hazarded a nervous yet hopeful grin.

I returned a humorless but equally condescending stare.

"You can't just… kill someone on a passenger train and get away with it," he blurted.

I shook my head absently. "I don't have to kill you on the train. I can just teleport you under the train and whenever they find your mangled remains they'll just think you were some poor bastard who lost his balance switching cars."

The color left his face and I gestated on the fact that this all somehow felt so natural for me and how I wasn't entirely certain just how idle my threat was. Clearly something needed to be arranged here. I guess it would be preferable if it wasn't messy.

I started going through his pack again, pulling out something with an official letterhead. Looking at the ID, I used Red's pen to scribble his name and address on the page.

"What are you doing?" he asked in alarm.

"Copying down your information so I know where you live and where you work." My eyes landed back on him. "Just in case I need to pay you a visit for some reason." I folded up the paper and slipped it into an outer pocket on my satchel. "Now here's what's going to happen-"

My fiendish explanation was interrupted as the door to our cabin slid open and a gray-maned earth pony in a waistcoat poked his head in. "Tickets, please." He eyed the both of us strangely as if the tension in the room exuded a rank telltale odor.

I promptly floated my ticket to the stallion for reinspection while side-eying the pegasus with an ominous glare.

"Oh, yes," Red chuckled nervously. "My- my ticket." He got into his pack and sifted around excruciatingly slowly as he bought time to think. "I always do this," he chided. "Can't keep track of anything."

The two of us waited impatiently for him as he continued to mill about aimlessly in his things. "I was sure I put it right…" Finally he looked up. I'm sorry, I can't seem to find it. I think it would be easier to just buy another one."

The ticket taker sighed and adjusted the little mechanical dispenser strapped around his neck. He ventured into the middle of our cabin right in between the two of us. "What's your destin-" He was cut off abruptly as Red Tape shoved the guy roughly right into my lap and broke for the open door with a flutter.

"Help!" screamed Red. "Police! Criminal!"

Looking back, that was the moment where I probably should have just fled the train. There was a decent chance I could have escaped the area without incident and found my way to Ponyville on hoof but I was like a dog chasing a squirrel.

I teleported into the hall, appearing right in Red Tape's path. His eyes bulged in horror and his wings parachuted out from his sides as he tried to stop. I wound up and clapped him with one hoof right in the jaw, sending his head slamming into a wood partition. His glasses went tumbling through the air.

"You idiot," I snarled. Serving him a second blow to the gut though he was already out cold.

"What's going on here?" shouted a mare who I didn't even need to see to know was a guard.

I clenched my jaw in livid frustration and turned to see two officers, a unicorn and a mind controlled pegasus. My eyes went back to the limp bureaucrat on the floor and suddenly I realized I wasn't screwed just yet. "Uh, this guy snuck onto the train and tried to run when they asked for his ticket." Pure genius, Shining.

"Did you just teleport?" shouted the ticket taker, poking his head into the hall some distance away.

Thanks, old guy, I thought. You're just ruining everything today, aren't you? I turned back to the guards who'd suddenly become noticeably more menacing.

"You're under arrest," declared the pegasus.

"Seriously?" I frowned. "I just helped apprehend a criminal."

"It's the law."

Giving absolutely no thought to where I was or how fast the train was moving, I focused a spell to take me to presumptive safety outside. Nothing happened. They fucking trapped me again.

"Submit to an inhibitor," ordered the unicorn, lifting the device with her magic. "This is your last chance."

Done with the discussion, I sent a diamond cutter blade flying at her horn. She relinquished the inhibitor and put up a magical barrier to block. The blade went through the barrier but lost enough potency that it dissipated on contact with her. She returned a laser blast from the tip of her horn which I deflected with my own summoned shield. I grabbed her in my magic field, intending to slam her into submission but she broke out of my grip just after her hooves left the ground. She was more well versed than the average unicorn but the fact that she had to drop the inhibitor to rumble was telling of her multitasking limitations.

Frustrated, I turned my attention to the pegasus who was circling around to flank me. I teleported him to me and held him frozen between us like a living shield. Then I expanded a barrier over the two of us. "Drop the ward or I'll snap his neck," I demanded coldly.

She seemed surprised at my myriad of abilities but no more compliant with letting me leave.

"It's not my ward," she replied.

I looked over my withers to see another unicorn guard, mind controlled, at the end of the hall, his horn glowing with a magical aura.

"Doesn't matter," I growled. I stretched one of the pegasus' wings out with my magic and tweaked it unceremoniously at the midway point. It bent ninety degrees straight up with a blood curdling crack. Though mind controlled, he still let out a sincere scream of agony.

"Stop," ordered the first guard, her eyes betraying an air of desperation.

"No, you stop," I shot back. I wrapped the broken wing flat around the pegasus officer's back, breaking it audibly at the base.

Though he was in extreme discomfort, the pegasus was not going to plead in support of my release because that would be a programming conflict. I waited for his cries to subside before barking again. "Two wings, four legs, one neck. Drop the ward."

The mare unicorn's face tightened with panic as she looked back to her partner who's horn was still glowing. "Just let him go, Onix!"

"No. We just have to hold him here a while longer."

"He's going to kill him!" she argued.

"This guy is dangerous. We can't just let him go."

I stretched out the other wing, preparing to apply more leverage.

"Fucking drop the ward!" she shouted urgently. Then charged up her horn in an aparant threat to get him to comply.

"What hell?" he retorted. "You're crazy! This is a violation!"

With neither one of them paying attention to me anymore, my eyes fell on the forgotten inhibitor laying open on the floor and I quickly formulated a plan F. I teleported the device down to the other end of the hall, right under Onix's chin and snapped it shut in almost a single fluid motion.
Without even waiting to confirm if the light of his horn was fully doused, I tried teleporting myself out of the train again. The sudden sensation of the wind whipping through my mane and blasting in my ears jarred me into a panic. Shit, this was fast. Go limp, was the first course of action to shakily come to mind but it evaporated quickly as the unforgiving but solid embrace of the ground never came and I realized I was just tumbling through space. Disoriented and terrified, I could not visualize an anchor point to jump to. Eyes wide, the last thing I saw was a cloudy sky and the train disappearing over the end of a high trestle. Then black.

Author's Note

This chapter got too long so i decided to split it in two. Standby for another chapter very soon, (a sort of doubleheader.) Point out errors if you see them. (I'm tired and a little less patient with proofing at the moment.)