Daisy is a no good rotten bitch and I hate her.

At least, that was the immediate thought running through my head when I stepped through the front door of ‘The Grotto’ and realized two things: First, I was woefully underdressed for this sort of establishment. Every other creature that I could see at the tables was wearing either a fine silk or satin dress, or a well-tailored suit of some sort. Meanwhile, I was just wearing my sleeveless faded vest like usual. The second thing I noticed as the host―who was wearing an understandably dismissive expression on his face―guided me to the table was that this was not, in fact, going to be a ‘team celebration event’ as the little yellow earth pony had described to me earlier.

This became clear to me when I saw that the table which had been reserved was actually a booth, and it was located near the rear of the upscale restaurant, and it was clearly only suitable for two creatures to sit at…and there was already a creature seated there. The creature in question was a very familiar gold and white griffon tiercel who had apparently been well aware that this place had a dress code and was wearing a very nice looking maroon blazer. He glanced up from the tiny little menu held in his talons as he noticed mine and the host’s approach and gave me a small wave.

She’d set me up! Why that conniving fucking c―!

“Can I get anything for the table to start?” Our pegasus stallion host asked tersely, favoring me with another brief displeased look before turning his attention fully to Gerry.

The griffon glanced my way, but I wasn’t ready to meet his gaze yet as I siddled onto the bench across from him in the―intimately close-quartered―booth. He then looked back to the host and said, “Just a couple of waters for right now.”

“Of course, sir,” the host acknowledged with a nod of his head. “...ma’am.” How had he managed to lace that one outwardly respectful word with so much thinly veiled derision? I was too impressed to be offended. Besides, I was actually a little onboard with his assessment that somepony like me didn’t belong in a place like this. If I’d known what this was, I wouldn’t have come.

However, I’d been tricked, and now it was too late. I had to ride this whole thing out and hope I didn’t die of embarrassment. Then―assuming I survived―when I got back to the loft, I’d kill Daisy…

For now, I just had to get through this dinner with my dignity intact. To that end, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly to try and calm my nerves. Then I tried adopting what felt like a neutral expression as I picked up the menu sitting in front of me and started to look through it. In the interest of breaking the silence hovering between us that I knew needed to be addressed eventually, I offered up some small-talk.

“Has anycreature heard from Jenny yet today?”

The donkey’s absence had been a topic of some conversation when she hadn’t returned by noon the next morning. While I had learned that Jenny skipping out with Baton Rouge for the night wasn’t something wholly unusual, she was usually back by midmorning. Or at least found a way to get word to the rest of the band if she was going to be held up until later. In this instance, however, there hadn’t been any word from her.

I hadn’t realized before how frustrating it could be to know somecreature who wasn’t equipped with the standard arcanetic interface suite that every other creature in the city had. It meant that there wasn’t any way to reach out to her directly and ping her with a clairaudience cantrip for a call. Or even a message.

“Actually, Harriet just sent me a message about an hour ago,” Gerry informed me. “Baton Rouge checked in with her and said he’d be bringing Jenny back later tonight.”

“Oh. Well, it sounds like the two of them had a lot of fun, I guess.” Daisy had alluded to me a while ago that Jenny and the batpony were ‘more than friends’; but that mare did a lot of alluding, and I’d since decided that some of what she said was best taken with a grain of salt. So I’d hedged my comment a little while also eyeing Gerry from over the top of my menu while I waited to hear confirmation one way or the other from a more reliable source.

Gerry snorted under his breath. “Even odds whether she’s still drunk or grinning like a donk when he drops her off,” he muttered while wearing a knowing smirk. “Either way, she’s not going to be walking straight ‘til morning…”

I felt my cheeks flush in spite of myself. I then quickly chased away the mental image I had of a ‘trot of shame’ Jenny Silverhoof ambling down the corridor. If only because it felt wholly unnatural to picture Jenny wearing a genuinely happy smile on her face. I also had to work very hard not to envision the gifted attributes―or raw talent―which any stallion who could produce such a result must possess.

A change of topic was in order. “So what’s good here?” I asked a little too abruptly, even to my own ears. I hid my wince behind my menu, and only now actually focused on the listed items and their prices. My eyes went wide enough that there might actually have been a real possibility of them falling out of my skull. “A side salad is how much?!”

I heard the restaurant go deathly silent around us, and I suddenly felt the burning stares of every well-dressed diner in sight being turned on me. My menu offered scant protection from their judgment. All I wanted to do at that moment was sink right through the bench of the booth and descend into the bowels of Tartarus. Hellfire would have felt cool compared to how much my cheeks were burning with embarrassment.

And not just because of the attention I was being paid by the other patrons present either. My thoughts immediately shifted to how many large salads that I’d eaten while in the Green Room and, by extension, how much money I must have been costing the team with my―apparently―indulgent eating habits. A quick bit of mental math suggested that I’d been eating more in one sitting than I’d typically spent on food in a month. Factoring that in with what my augments must have cost when they replaced my jaw and hind legs after the raid on Grinder’s warehouse, I was pretty sure that my grandfoals were going to be working off my debts. Fuck my life…

“I think I should just stick with the glass of water,” I muttered under my breath as I put down the menu, no longer able to stomach looking at the prices. “Just the one.” The menu had stipulated that refills were not free. “On an unrelated note: can you spot me fifteen gibbies?” I asked the griffon meekly. “...Plus tax?”

Gerry had the good grace to only softly chuckle over the miserable state of my nonexistent finances. Then he paused and glanced at me over the top of the little booklet in his talons. “...You’re serious?” I winced and looked away as shame knotted my stomach. I heard the tiercel curse, and expected him to make some comment related to my being useless or worthless. I was quite used to that little song and dance. But, instead, I heard Jenny’s name escape from between his clenched teeth. “That fucking―” the epithet devolved into a grumbled snarl, followed by, “she really hasn’t been forwarding you your cut?”

I met the griffon’s gaze once more, confusion plain on my face. “My ‘cut’?”

“You know, for the ops?” He prompted, but still I didn’t quite register what he was talking about and shrugged to signal my lack of understanding. “You didn’t think we expected you to risk your life for free, did you?”

“Well, I mean…” I started kneading my hooves in my lap. “I know my arcanetics must have been expensive.” I rubbed an idle hoof over my relatively new thigh. “And then there’s the room and the food…I figured it was all balancing out or something.”

“What?! No! You got hurt helping us avenge Hash Stack; getting you fixed up was the least we could do! You don’t owe us for that―if anything, we still owe you!” Gerry insisted, almost sounding affronted at the notion that they would have financially indentured me like that. In stark contrast to exactly how Grinder had done. “And putting you up at the loft doesn’t cost us a thing; so we’re certainly not going to charge you for it.

“You’re supposed to be getting an even cut for the jobs like the rest of us…” he growled under his breath, looking over his shoulder towards the exit as though he expected to see the donkey walking in right at that moment to be yelled at. Then he let out a frustrated sigh and shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

He forced himself to take a deep breath to calm himself so that he wasn’t using a frustrated tone while talking to me, which I appreciated. When he let it out again, his expression was far less critical as he looked back at me. “I’ll talk with Jenny and Daisy when we get back,” he assured me. “Trust me, you can afford to eat here. I’ll spot you now and you can pay me back later. If you want.”

He gestured at the menu at my hooves. “So, yeah, order whatever. Treat yourself; you’ve earned it.”

A timid little smile managed to work its way onto my cheek at the griffon’s assurance. Though I found it hard to envision what ‘treating’ myself would look like, given how I had been regarding those fresh salads back in the Green Room as something approaching the height of luxury. I pushed aside the concerning notion that Jenny had been hiding money from me for some unknown reason. It wasn’t like I didn’t already know that the donkey was tight-lipped and hard to read. I’d let Gerry tackle the issue.

After all, I certainly didn’t want to confront the donkey to her face about a topic as potentially thorny as finances. I might ask Daisy about it though, seeing as how she was the mare handling their finances. Maybe she could help shed some light onto what had fallen through the cracks where my compensation was concerned.

…Then I’d punch her in the face for trying to so brazenly hook me up with Gerry like this.

I floated the menu back up with my arcanetics. “...Okay.” My eyes danced over the contents again, finally drifting to the items in the little booklet which had had associated prices which had made me reflexively avoid even looking at their names, as there would have been little point in even glancing at what I clearly couldn’t have. Now though, I found myself confronted with other issues. While my arcanetics projected some illusionary script which translated the foreign writing, I found that, even when described in Ponish, I had absolutely no idea what it was that the menu was talking about.

What even was a ‘confit’?

“Does this menu come in Ponish?” I asked through a slightly uneasy chuckle as I once more set the menu down.

Gerry’s beak creased with a smile as he continued skimming through the options. “I’ve never actually had Fancy cuisine either,” he admitted.

“Really? Daisy makes pretty elaborate layouts,” I noted, thinking back to the meal presentations I’d seen her serve.

The tiercel looked up and cocked his head for a moment, clearly confused by my statement. To the point that I wondered if I’d somehow said something that didn’t make any sense; though I couldn’t see how. Then comprehension dawned on Gerry’s face and he let out a small laugh. “No no no; ‘Fancy’ as in: ‘coming from Prance’. A region of Equestria.”

“...Oh.” I shrank down in my seat once more, feeling like an idiot again. Maybe I could excuse myself to the restroom and just…never come back out? Would that be easier? Probably not. It’d probably just make it more awkward later.

The griffon frowned. “You know, it’s okay not to know something. Nocreature is born knowing everything there is to know. You shouldn’t come down on yourself on stuff like that.” He leaned forward, favoring me with a sympathetic smile. I couldn't help but instantly reflect on how I'd received a nearly identical such talk from Jenny yesterday. Perhaps there was actually something to that advise then, if Gerry was agreeing with Jenny.

Then he followed that sentiment up with something the donkey hadn't said to me: “I happen to think you’re pretty amazing, if that means anything to you.”

It very much did; and I didn’t need my racing heartbeat to clue me into how much I enjoyed hearing that praise from the griffon. I felt my cheeks flushing again.

…I really needed to ask if there was some sort of mod I could get for my jaw that would help with that.

“Thanks.”

“Just calling ‘em like I see ‘em,” he assured me. “We’ll get a server to help us with the menu.”

As if that was the line they’d been waiting to hear, a pegasus mare wearing one of the cafe’s uniforms showed up at our table carrying a pair of glasses of water. She set them down between us and was kind enough to help Gerry navigate the menu and make some recommendations for our meal. By the end of their conversation, it had been settled that we’d start with something called ‘fawn-dew’ as an appetizer. Then Gerry would have ‘cock-oh-van’―which earned a snigger from me every time it was spoken aloud―and I’d have something that I was assured―repeatedly―wasn’t actually made from rats, in spite of its name. Even by the time the pegasus server left, I wasn’t sure she and Gerry weren’t just fucking with me for laughing at the ‘cock’ thing.

When the server left to put in our orders, another uncomfortable silence descended over the table, causing me to squirm slightly in my seat. I caught myself glancing around at other diners nearby, and saw that they consisted mostly of other couples sequestered in their own little booths. This cafe clearly had something of a ‘theme’ going on, and it was glaringly obvious what it was. I wondered if it was too much to hope that Gerry hadn’t noticed.

“...This wasn’t really your idea, was it?”

The question caught me off guard and I whipped my head back around to look at the griffon. “What?”

“Coming here,” Gerry explained, waving a claw around at the cafe. “Daisy said that you ‘really liked me’, and that you wanted to have dinner together. I’m thinking that wasn’t actually the case?”

“Daisy said…” I blanched. Somehow it didn’t make me feel any better that I wasn’t the only one that the little earth pony had misled about this evening and effectively tricked into going out on a date. I let out an aggravated groan and buried my face in my hooves. What had that mare been thinking?!

“Don’t take it so hard. That pony’s been trying to fix me up for a while now,” the tiercel said with a soft chuckle in what I presumed was an attempt to make me feel better. “She says that a guy like me is ‘too nice to be single’.”

I raised my head up, eyeing the griffon with a confused expression. Wait…Daisy was fixing him up? With me? Was I supposed to feel better about being the one being dangled out there like a prize, or worse? She and I were going to have a long talk either way. Though, for the moment, I seized onto an opening to direct the conversation and hopefully lift some of the awkwardness surrounding this fiasco of a ‘date’.

“Why are you still single?” I asked. Then I hurriedly followed up my question with an addendum that made it sound a lot less critical than I’d meant it. “I mean, you do seem like a great guy, and I can’t imagine you don’t have all sorts of mares or hens knocking down your door.” I paused for another moment, considering. “...Or stallions?”

Gerry chuckled again. “I lean towards preferring the ‘fairer sex’, yes,” he confirmed with a smile. “And you’re right: I can’t flap a wing after a show without a feather landing on some pretty little hen eager to follow me back to my room.” The smile waned now. “That’s not the issue.”

“...So what is?”

“There’s no appeal there,” the tiercel said with a sigh. Then he added by way of caveat, “Not anymore, anyway. A much younger―and hornier―Gerry didn’t miss many chances to get his dick wet. But now…” He shrugged. “Sex is overrated. Especially if it’s just sex for the sake of having sex.”

“Tell that to Dandy,” I scoffed, thinking of the drummer’s cutie mark-studded vest he wore during performances.

Gerry nodded and laughed along lightly. “Different strokes,” he offered. His phrasing prompted another snigger from the both of us. “Like I said: I didn’t used to be much different. Over time though, my view on it changed, and it started to make me uncomfortable.”

“How do you mean?”

Now Gerry squirmed slightly in his seat, briefly hesitating as he seemed to debate how much detail he was willing to share with me. Then, finally, “I started to notice that I could make the hens and mares who came back with me…do things. Like, things that―looking back now―they probably weren’t actually comfortable with doing, even though they’d come back to my room totally willingly.

“At the time, I was too horny to really notice, but now―with a decade’s worth of post-nut clarity―I think I was taking advantage of the fact that, for them, I was this really important figure in their lives and they didn’t want to feel like they’d disappointed me or let me down; and so they’d agree to do things I was telling them to do…even though it wasn’t what they wanted to do.” His features had creased into a grimace at this point. “I never actually forced anything―I don’t think―but I know I got pretty insistent a few times until they'd finally give in.

“In the moment, I didn’t see any issue with any of it. I was a rockstar; they were my groupies,” he gave a sarcastic flick of his talons as he rolled his eyes. “They were ‘supposed’ to fuck me, right? That’s what groupies did, and that was one of the perks of being a rocker.” I vaguely nodded along, familiar with the commonly accepted stereotype for how the relationship worked between well-known musicians―or any celebrity, really―and their more adoring fans.

“It wasn’t until later in life that I took a step back and really looked at what was happening, and realized that what I was doing wasn’t…entirely ‘right’. I had power over those hens and mares, and I was using that power to get what I wanted out of them.” The griffon glanced over at me. “Not entirely unlike what those corporations are doing to the rest of us, in a way.

“When I realized that there was that very real imbalance that existed, I swore off taking fans back to my room after shows. As time went on, and I thought back on how those encounters had felt―like, really felt―I started to realize that it didn’t hold a lot of real appeal for me anymore. Sexual gratification without intimacy―real intimacy―is just…empty. I don’t like it, and I don’t want it.”

As Gerry’s explanation wound down and silence descended once more over our table, the griffon began to fidget again. “Sorry. That was probably a lot more detail about my sex life that you wanted to hear.” He offered me an apologetic smile and cleared his throat, glancing around to see if he could catch sight of our server or our orders.

“No! Well, I mean, maybe a little,” I countered, fiddling with my hooves on the table as I tried not to think too much about Gerry fooling around with a bunch of hot mares and hens on his bed after a show. I was definitely not envisioning a hypothetical scenario where I was one of them. Definitely not. “But I have to admit that I never quite thought of it that way: celebrities having ‘power’ over fans, I mean.”

“I don’t know that it’s always quite as toxic as I’m making it out,” the tiercel qualified. “Dandy would point out that they’re grown creatures, and they’re fully capable of making their own decisions, and that it would be kind of ridiculous to propose that the only ‘reasonable’ partners creatures like us should limit ourselves to is other celebrities or something,” he offered with a shrug. Then he snorted and a wry smile flickered across his beak. “That’s debatably 'elitist classism'. Or something like that.

“And I’m sure that there were plenty of times where some fan was just using me as a way to gain clout among their friends or something too. I don’t like being thought of being ‘bragging rights’ any more than I like racking up a high bedroom body count. None of that shit interests me anymore.”

“So…what would interest you? Hypothetically?”

“Somecreature with shared interests. Who’s easy to talk to.” He smiled and let out a soft snort. “Who maybe just wants to sit around and be held for a while. Little things like that.

“I know that probably sounds a little stupid or whatever.” I found myself witness to the rare phenomenon that was Gerry blushing this time. “Not a very ‘hard’ thing for a 'hard rocker' to want, right?”

“No, I think it’s sweet,” and I did. I continued to play with my hooves for a few more seconds. As much as I might have resented Daisy for orchestrating this encounter, I might have to admit that it had presented me with something of an opportunity. If I was willing to take the leap, that is…

“...I like talking with you.”

I tried not to hold my breath as I awaited the griffon tiercel’s response to what was hopefully not too blatant a statement of interest. It probably didn’t help that I couldn’t hold Gerry’s gaze when he looked back at me, electing instead to stare at my hooves.

“I like talking with you too, Pel.” I felt my chest swell with excitement. Then he followed up his statement with, “and I like hanging out with you a lot too.” My heart skipped an initial beat, but then I felt myself start to despair almost immediately afterward. Something about the griffon’s tone had suggested that there was a―

“But…” Oh fucking damn it! “I think we should stay friends.”

There was no way that Gerry missed the pained wince which creased my features. The cliche rejection had hit me pretty hard, after all. So he was kind enough to continue on and try to further soften the blow to my self-esteem. “And that’s not because I think that there’s anything wrong with you,” he assured me.

“So, then what is it?” Oh, wow; that came out way more bitter-sounding than I’d intended it. I immediately cringed and was about to try and claw back my words, but Gerry held up his talons and nodded his acknowledgement of my un-voiced apology.

“First, before I do that, I want you to answer a few questions for me: what’s my last name?”

I blinked in mild confusion at the griffon. Then I opened my mouth to respond and…Huh. I…didn’t actually know what his last name was. I couldn’t recall anycreature actually saying it out loud. Nor had I ever thought to look it up, I didn’t think. If I had, I’d apparently forgotten it by now. Which wouldn’t have been any better than never knowing it in the first place.

As though fully anticipating my silence, Gerry nodded and posed his second question: “What hobbies do I have? And, no, music doesn’t count; that’s my job. I have actual hobbies. What is one of them?” Again there was a protracted silence from my side of the table that didn’t seem to surprise the griffon at all. If there was any silver lining, he didn’t look particularly annoyed or disappointed by my lack of responses. He went on to pose his third question. “What foods do I like?” More―apparently―fully anticipated silence from me.

To his credit, Gerry was not dismissive in tone or expression. If anything, he was still being quite soft with his questioning, and was clearly just trying to make a point. A point which I was slowly―if grudgingly―getting. “Can you tell me anything about me that would justify you wanting to pursue a relationship?” He asked, fixing me with a patient look.

“...You’re really nice to me,” I didn’t quite mumble in response, recognizing how lame an answer that probably was.

Gerry reacted like he had actually expected that to be the reason, or at least something very similar. I wasn’t sure if that made things better or not. “You probably don’t encounter a lot of creatures that are nice to you, huh?” I shook my head slowly. Until being inducted into this crew, I could count on my hooves how many individuals in my life had ever even given me the time of day. My mother, Hash Stack, Gary down at the bar…Not many beyond that, really.

I jerked slightly as I felt the griffon’s talon lay over my idly fidgeting hooves. Gerry leaned in, craning his head down so that he was almost eye-level with me. I could see the genuine sympathy in his gaze as he spoke. “I’m really sorry your life has been like that. Truly. You deserved better. Anycreature does.

“But…you see how that can’t be enough for this to be anything more, right?” He asked hopefully. “If I cashed in on you latching onto the first ‘nice guy’ who’s primary redeeming quality is that they didn’t immediately treat you like shit…that’s a kind of ‘power’ that I’d be holding over you, like I was talking about earlier.

“What would you be willing to do for me, just so that I continued to be nice to you? What if I casually mentioned that I’d be disappointed in you unless you did ‘X’ for me? What would you be willing to submit to just to hang on to the first ‘good guy’ you’ve had in your life and not be alone again?

“Tell me, honestly, that there’s no way you’d allow yourself to be emotionally coerced and manipulated by things I said, even if I didn’t mean them to be?

“Tell me you’d be completely comfortable telling me: ‘no’.”

I felt myself swallowing back a lump of fear as I digested the griffon’s questions. Not fear at the prospect that Gerry might actually exert that kind of emotional control over me―or any other creature, for that matter―but fear at the realization that he was absolutely right: I wasn’t entirely sure what lines I wouldn’t cross if Gerry asked me to, in my desperation to feel ‘loved’ by a ‘nice guy’. It was a repulsive thought, and I felt myself sinking low into my seat at the table.

The tiercel gave my hooves another squeeze. “Pel. Pel! It’s okay. It’s okay…” he cooed in a soothing tone, coaxing me once more out of my slump. “It’s not your fault you’ve been treated like shit your whole life. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re not ‘weak’, or ‘pathetic’, or anything else like that you might be thinking. You just didn’t know that you deserved better, and that’s not. Your. Fault.

“You’re stronger than you know, too,” Gerry went on, favoring me with a warm smile. “You stood up to that cop in city hall. You told Dandy to sit and spin.” He flashed me an infectious grin this time that managed to draw a tiny little smile out onto my own lips at the memory, despite my melancholy. “You stood up to Grinder and helped us take his whole crew down. You stared death in the face, and you didn’t blink.

“You are―genuinely―one of the bravest and strongest mare’s I know. I sincerely mean that. I am proud to consider myself one of your friends and I’m glad I have you in my life.

“The fact that I’m not comfortable slamming you against my headboard…that’s more of a ‘me’ issue than a ‘you’ issue,” Gerry’s smile became more lopsided even as I felt the color briefly drain from my face right before my cheeks flushed once again as I pictured the proposed scene in my head. My reaction earned me a chuckle from the tiercel.

“Tell you what though: There’s nothing that says we can’t revisit this topic again someday,” he pointed out. “So how about this: One year from now, we’ll come back here,” he pointed down at the table sitting between us, “and we’ll talk and see if―maybe―we’re both interested in escalating from ‘comrades-in-arms’ to ‘input-output’. How does that sound?

“Friends now; maybe something more sometime later.”

My most recent blush resulting from Gerry’s headboard crack was starting to fade from my face as I mulled over the proposal. It wasn’t a wholly unpleasant proposition, I admitted to myself. Besides, Gerry had made a lot of good points, and some of them had gotten me to start thinking over a few things. Chief among them: did I really want a relationship right now? Or had I just really liked the prospect of being around somecreature who was nice to me? If Gerry was going to continue to be nice to me whether I was letting him under my tail or not…then why couldn’t things stay the way they were?

Which wasn’t to say that the thought of having my face pushed up against the griffon’s headboard while he was looming over me wasn’t doing something for me…

Friends for now. Headboard-slamming…maybe later. Maybe.

“I think that I really like having you as a friend, yeah,” I agreed, smiling at the tiercel. “Though let’s hold off on meeting here―specifically―until we’ve at least tried the food first.” I eyed him with faux suspicion. “I’m still not fully convinced you didn’t order me a rat for dinner.”

“Ha! Fair enough,” Gerry conceded as he finally pulled back and made himself more comfortable in his seat. “Agreed. You’ll eat your rat, I’ll see how much I actually like ‘cock’,” I sniggered again, because it turns out I’m actually still an immature filly at heart, “and then we’ll decide if Fancy cuisine is really for us. Or if we’d be better off meeting up at a Burger Princess somewhere.”

“Deal,” I confirmed with a nod. “And, either way, when we get back home, we totally need to figure out how we’re going to fuck with Daisy for tricking us into doing this.”

Gerry nodded. “We also can’t let her know that it actually did kind of work out in the end,” he pointed out.

Ooh, that was a good point. If that little mare ever learned that she’d mostly succeeded in getting Gerry and I to cement what our relationship was as a result of her machinations, we’d never hear the end of it. She might even be spurred on to orchestrate more meddling in our future. That this had all worked out for the best was besides the point, I felt. The fact was that she’d suckered us, and thus we were obligated to get her back somehow.

“Definitely not.” I nodded. Then a thought occurred to me. “Out of curiosity, what is your last name, anyway?”

“Aerodynamic. Gerry Aerodynamic.”

“Oh. I like it.” I was also definitely not thinking about how it would roll off the tongue following my own name. We planned our mutual retribution over lunch, which was surprisingly delightful―and also one hundred percent rat-free, it turned out!

Our retaliation against Daisy for setting Gerry and I up on our ‘date’ proved to be in need of postponement. We were only just finishing up our entrées when Harriet reached out and informed us that Jenny wanted us all back in the loft right this moment so that she could brief us on the operation that we were―apparently―running tonight. Gerry expressed some concern about the short suspense time for conducting another mission, but Harriet replied that Jenny was very insistent that it couldn’t wait.

Unsurprisingly, we were the last to arrive at the loft. It looked like we weren’t the only ones who were a little put off by the lack of warning on this operation too. This was becoming something of a theme, it felt like. Granted, I wasn’t as familiar with how the donkey did things normally, but it seemed like those who did know here also weren’t comfortable with such tight timetables. The mission into city hall had ultimately worked out, sure, but that didn’t mean that these high-risk operations should continue to be conducted from the hip.

What was surprising was that there was one more creature present in the loft than usual, though it was one that I recognized: Baton Rouge was sitting off to the side on one of the couches, sipping idly at a mixed drink that I presumed Daisy had brought for him. I cast a questioning gaze at Gerry, but the griffon merely shrugged in ignorance and guided us to an unoccupied lounge.

When Gerry and I had finally seated ourselves, Jenny paused to eye us like it had been our fault we showed up ‘late’ to a meeting we hadn’t been told about until less than an hour ago. Then she finally spoke up. “Now that we’re all finally here,” the donkey stressed in mild annoyance, “we can begin.” The tiercel beside me merely rolled his eyes before deciding that he needed a drink if he was going to be subjected to the donkey’s passive abuses. He stood back up and walked over to the fridge to fetch himself a beer. He offered one to me, but I declined. The griffon then turned and held out the second beer towards Jenny.

The donkey was just about to reach out and take it, but then hesitated and shook her head, earning a slightly surprised look from the griffon, who continued to hold out the beer as if he didn’t believe that Jenny had actually meant to turn down the drink. The donkey glared at him and shook her head more insistently, prompting the griffon to finally relent and place the second beer back into the refrigerator before reseating himself.

“The more observant among you,” Jenny continued, “will likely have noticed that the van has another new paint job.” She pointed at Barkly who smiled and nodded. “That’s because we need to sneak into a Redheart Medical clinic. Specifically, Trotson Clinic.”

“Why Trotson specifically?” Dandy inquired.

Jenny and Rogue briefly shared a look before the donkey decided that she was willing to provide an answer to the question. “...Because there’s a Health Harras airwagon sitting on the rooftop pad there getting serviced tonight.”

I doubted I was the only one who instantly made the logical connection between that information and our intent to go there, but it was Gerry who decided that it still behooved explicit confirmation of our objective. “We’re stealing a Health Harras airwagon?” Jenny nodded in confirmation. “Are you going to tell us why?”

“Because Health Harras’ transponders grant them de facto clearance into any and all airspace around the city,” the donkey replied simply. “They don’t trip automated security alerts when they approach.” Another brief pause and a look towards the batpony before addressing the rest of the group with obvious reluctance. “...not even for the Anzû.”

I felt decidedly out of the loop when I was the only one who didn’t immediately gasp and stand up to voice their objections. “It’s here?!” “Have you finally lost your fucking mind?!” “You can’t be serious!” “We’re going after the King?!”

Jenny had obviously been prepared to receive a…let’s call it a: ‘less than enthusiastic’ response to her revelation and didn’t seem the least bit put off by the yelling and cursing, waiting for the rest of the band to get the shock out of their system before she spoke again. “We knew he was coming,” the donkey reminded us, “we learned that at Aeriesaka Tower. And of course he was going to be coming here on the Anzû. He treats that dreadnought like it’s his personal fucking yacht. He doesn’t leave his palace without it.

“And I am damn serious,” Jenny said, glaring at each of us. “This is our chance―our only real chance―to remove the source of all the fucking bullshit and strife in this city! You think it’s Equestria that turned Light City into a suck-fest? You really think that the Princess Twilight Sparkle in that journal would let any of this happen?” She gestured broadly around the room, though she clearly meant the city beyond the walls.

“Obviously it’s the griffons―or at least their king,” Jenny amended with a look in Gerry’s direction, “who are enabling the megacorps who are responsible for all of this shit. We take him out―cut the rot out at its source―and maybe this place can finally start to get right.

“Because what we’ve been doing up until now hasn’t done fucking squat, has it?” The donkey looked over at Dandy. “How many of your investigative exposés have you broadcast over the years? And what has ever changed as a result?” She challenged. The unicorn stallion squirmed a little uncomfortably in his seat, his lips pulling into a bitter smile at the recognition of how impotent his efforts had been in aiding the group’s crusade against corporate injustice.

“Did any of you see the latest news from city hall last night?” Jenny asked. Nocreature answered, but it was plain on all of our faces that we knew what she was talking about.

A press conference had been held late last night. In it, the mayor had outlined the city’s intended plan of action to address the problems caused by Elysium’s sudden financial insolvency: The city was going to pay their debts for them.

That was it.

Light City’s taxpayers were going to refill Elysium’s coffers, and then the company was going to get to go on with business as usual. There had been some remark about investigating the disappearance of the funds and such, but it had sounded more like an afterthought than anything else.

One of the reporters at the event had at least thought to ask about the company’s practice of extorting tenants through the use of boosterherds―a revelation about Elysium that had unfortunately managed to fall by the wayside in the wake of the embezzlement scandal. This too had been waived aside by an affirmation that the LCPD would be cracking down harder than ever before on ‘suspected herd activity’ in Haywood. Checkpoints and cordoned sweeps of neighborhoods would be conducted periodically in an effort to round up and disperse the boosterherds.

As though that had been the ‘real’ problem; and not the fact that Elysium’s leadership had effectively hired mercenaries to shake down their tenants.

It was disheartening, but not wholly unsurprising, that all of the group’s efforts had amounted to nought in the end. Things would go on, business as usual. Just as Gerry had predicted. At best, Elysium might keep things lowkey for a while.

“Exactly,” the rockerfilly snorted. “No consequences. No change. Just about everycreature went back to their homes, ready to put up with the same fucking shit all over again. The system remains intact and unblemished,” she spat. “But!” She held up her arcanetic hoof. “We saw that, when pushed, the creatures in this city will try to make their voices heard. The problem is that they stopped just short of the goal line.

“What they need is a ‘spark’,” she explained. “And the king’s death can be that spark. We take him out, we show the city that the system isn’t invincible. Those fuckers fucking us over aren’t untouchable. That creatures of action, who are willing to go the distance, can remove the obstacles standing between them and real change!

“If the fucking king can be taken out, then surely some feckless mayor, or corrupt police chief, or any of those mobsters posing as corporate CEOs, can all be removed! If we do this, it could finally be the start of the whole system coming down once and for all!”

As impassioned as the donkey’s words might have been, and I had to admit that I felt my own chest swelling a little at some points, it was pretty clear that not everycreature was on board with the plan yet. It was Gerry who voiced the largest of our concerns though. “And you figure the place to start is aboard the flagship of the Griffon Kingdom’s Royal Navy?” There was an understandable amount of skepticism in the tiercel’s question.

Jenny didn’t appear to be the least bit phased by the implication though, nodding vehemently. “We’re setting a high bar for a reason. If the Anzû can be brought down, then anything can.”

“Okay, sure,” the griffon conceded with no hint that he’d actually be persuaded by her argument, “but how exactly are we going to bring it down? The thing’s the size of a city block! So unless you’ve got a hundred or so cruise missiles shoved up your ass…?” He let the rhetorical question hang for a few seconds to let it sink in for the others just how ineffectual he believed this operation could be before giving voice to the issue at hoof. “How are we planning to take it out exactly?”

The donkey didn’t have an immediate answer for the griffon’s question, it seemed. At least, she didn’t give one. There was a brief flicker of her gaze in the direction of the batpony sitting apart from the rest of us, and the two shared a look that I couldn’t read all that well. Baton Rouge’s lips twitched into a bittersweet smile before he was forced to look away and take a sip from his drink. Jenny cleared her throat, looked back at the group, and finally responded. “Harriet’s going to crack the ship’s systems,” she informed us with a nod in the direction of the hippogriff nettrotter. “Once we have control, we can crash it right into Aeriesaka Tower. Take out two symbols of our oppression at once.”

The mare didn’t look caught off guard by the revelation, but neither did she seem particularly enthusiastic at the prospect. Her reaction didn’t do a lot to fill me with confidence, honestly. As skilled as I knew Harriet to be, I found myself wondering if she was really up to the task of hacking what sounded like was effectively a flying palace for the griffon king. Surely that had to be one of the most physically and technologically secure places on the whole planet, right? Were the six, or maybe seven if Rouge came, really all it was going to take to bring it down? To say that sounded ‘optimistic’ was an understatement.

“Look, I get that this whole thing sounds like it’s out of our league,” Jenny conceded in what felt like a fleeting moment of rationality, given the topic at hoof, “but I promise you we can do it,” she assured us. “I’ve got the details worked out. I’ve got schematics, floorplans, security protocols―everything is in place for this op.” My ear twitched at the slight crack in the donkey’s voice that I’d almost taken to be a note of desperation. I saw Gerry’s brow quirk slightly as well, but none of the others reacted to it. “I just need bodies―I need you―to help make it happen.

“Please.”

That got a much more pronounced reaction from everycreature, myself included. Had Jenny really just said the word ‘please’ while asking us to help her out? And without any hint whatsoever of sarcasm? At least, none that I heard. Nor anycreature else, given how they were all staring at her, wide-eyed. She was really set on this, wasn’t she?

If this really was just some clever machination on the donkey’s part, then it proved to be an effective one. That one word seemed to be enough to push everycreature who’d been on the fence up until now on the feasibility of this op over the edge onto her side. Gerry let out a sigh and nodded. “...We’ll do it, Jen.” A chorus of murmured assents from the others followed his statement.

Jenny let out a relieved sigh. “Alright, good. Good.” She cleared her throat. “But, yeah, the first step is getting the airwagon from the Trotson Redheart Clinic. That’ll be pretty simple. We have the disguised van and some uniforms. We’ll be able to get to the roof easy enough.”

“Okay, sure, but what about actually flying the airwagon?” Dandy asked. “None of us are pilots.”

“That’s why Rouge is here,” Jenny said, gesturing towards the batpony, who nodded. “He can fly it, and he’ll be flying us in and out of the Anzû.”

I noted more than a couple looks of relief―which I shared―at the voiced implication that this wasn’t going to be some sort of suicide mission, and that there was an intent to get us off the griffon warship before it blew up, or crashed, or whatever it was that Harriet was going to do to it.

“We’ll review the details later,” the donkey went on. “In the meantime, we still have a concert going on tonight. Let’s start getting things set up for it. I want this to be a smooth show.”

“We’re really still going on with the show, even with an op like this happening later?” Dandy asked, sounding equal parts impressed and incredulous. “Shouldn’t we put it off for a night?”

“No!” Jenny replied without hesitation, and even a little forcefully. Enough that the purple unicorn recoiled slightly. She took a breath and reined in her ire. “We have an obligation to our audience. We promised them a show, and we’re going to give them a show. It’ll be fine. We have plenty of time. The Anzû isn’t going to be near Light City airspace until close to three AM, and the less time there is between when we snag the HH airwagon and when we get to the ship, the better. It means there won’t be a lot of time for HH to realize they have a wagon missing and report it to anycreature.

“We’re doing the show,” she reiterated once more. “It’ll be fine. There’s time.”

“Alright, we’re doing the show,” Gerry agreed. “If there’s nothing else…?” He held the donkey’s gaze until he received a shake of her head. “Okay.” He stood up and motioned for the others to follow him. “Let’s start getting set up. Sound checks in thirty.”

I watched the others start filing out of the loft, leaving Jenny and Baton Rouge behind. I lingered though. I’d had a few questions smoldering in the back of my mind for a while now, and while I’d been willing to put off asking them, the revelation of the magnitude of this latest mission had finally lit enough of a fire under me to confront the donkey about what I felt she was hiding from me.

It was time to see if her ‘no more secrets’ policy that she’d set for the rest of the crew applied to herself as well, I decided. The moment the last of the band was out of earshot, I looked pointedly at the donkey. “What happened to the zebra we ‘rescued’ the other night?” I asked her bluntly, making it clear that I did doubt the purpose of our mission. Or at least its outcome.

Off to the side, I noticed Baton Rouge hide his expression behind his drink as he took a slow sip, pretending that he hadn’t heard the question, or was at all interested in Jenny’s response to it. For her part, the donkey regarded me with a cool expression. I wondered for a moment if she was actually going to answer it. Or if she was, whether it was going to be a lie. In an effort to undermine the latter, I added: “He used to work for the King. I found his pin.

“You used him as a source of intel on this, didn’t you?” More silence from the pair. I felt a cold lump growing in the pit of my stomach as I grew to suspect the answer to my question. I’d been nursing the thought in the back of my head for a while now, but it was looking like my ‘idle speculation’ was actually going to prove to be true. “...Did you kill him?”

“He was dead the moment he ran off to GlimTech.” There wasn’t even a hint of regret or remorse in her response. “He knew what the penalty was. At least this way some good might come out of it.”

My brow furrowed. “Ran off to―? But I thought―” I cut myself off with a muttered curse as I realized how naïve I’d been to think that the Aeriesaka minotaur had been upfront with us the whole time. The biggest take-away from the last few weeks was that the corporations were all manipulative, lying, extortion rackets masquerading as legitimate businesses. No wonder he’d looked so terrified when I’d told him who we were working for. He hadn’t been foalnapped by GlimTech; they were sheltering him.

And we’d abducted him from the safehouse.

There hadn’t been a disclosed ‘drop-off’ location in the mission because the zebra wasn’t meant to be returned to Aeriesaka custody. He’d been slated for ‘disposal’ so that none of the corporation’s―or the king’s―dirty laundry could be brought to light.

“He didn’t suffer,” Jenny said. Her assurance was immediately undercut by a roll of her eyes and an added, “Needlessly, anyway. The extraction process isn’t easy, but Harriet was as gentle as she could be.” I found that to be of shockingly little consolation for my own conscience. I’d been party to what amounted to an assassination plot for an old zebra who―to the best of my knowledge―hadn’t done anything wrong. Sure, there was always the possibility that, as a member of the griffon king’s personal staff, he’d been a party to something moderately horrendous or something, but I couldn’t know for sure.

Besides, if what Barkly had told me yesterday was to be believed, I knew that Jenny’s hooves were at least as dirty as his were. Likely a whole lot dirtier.

“...You stole the money from Elysium, too. Right?” Looking back―and having researched what a ‘CFO’ was―it had to be more than a coincidence that the company’s funds had flatlined the morning after we’d broken in. Of course, I felt that I at least knew the donkey well enough to know that she hadn’t done it for personal enrichment. She wasn’t that much of a hypocrite. The others would have noticed by now if that was the case. So the question became: ‘why?’. What did she need that much money for?

Paying off Baton Rouge for the job he’d run for her? No way. Elysium was a corporation worth billions of gibbies. There’s no job that even the most preem fixer in Light City could set up that would carry a price tag like that. So what was the money for then? Or…was it less about her having the money, and more about Elysium not having it? Bankrupting a corp did sound like a worthwhile goal on the surface…

But she didn’t seem the least bit surprised that the city had sorted the funding issue out to save the megasilo situation―

I blinked, realization dawning on me. The megasilo situation. The rioting. Breaking into city hall while it was the next best thing to a madhouse of protests and police officers. We’d never have been able to pull off sneaking in while posing as members of the LCPD if there hadn’t been so many uniformed officers out there that nocreature could reasonably keep track of them all, and were too busy keeping back a mob of upset citizens to do proper identification checks.

“You wanted the riots. Did you plan all of this from the start?” Another piece of information floated to the surface of my thoughts which had been easy to dismiss in the moment, but felt more meaningful now. “You knew that the king was coming before we even hit Elysium. You’ve had us laying the groundwork for this for weeks. This was your goal the whole time: killing King Grover. You didn’t care about Grinder and Elysium extorting my megasilo at all,” I sneered, glaring at the donkey. “You just needed a distraction to break into city hall.

“How many creatures got hurt in those protests you used as a smokescreen?”

Jenny rounded on me now, charging ahead a lot faster than I’d have believed she could. I barely had any time to react before the donkey had shouldered me in the chest. The air was forced from my lungs as the mare―who was a lot sturdier than she looked, it turned out―pinned me to the wall, glaring at me with baleful blue eyes. “How many creatures did Grinder kill while doing Elysium’s bidding?” She retorted. “Or the other dozen boosterherds they enlisted?

“The LCPD breaks a few bones of some justifiably upset creatures shouting their anger at the city, and you want to lay that at my hooves?! Fuck. You,” she spat. Only then did she pull back and let me down off the wall. I spent a few seconds coughing and catching my breath. I looked up, glaring at the donkey, and noticed that the batpony stallion had finally gotten up from his seat, though it had not appeared to be in an effort to lend me any aid. In fact, it was Jenny that he was looking at with concern. However, the donkey brushed him aside as she continued to glower at me.

“Yeah, you’re damn right I’ve been planning this for a while. It’s an op targeting the king of the fucking griffons; you can’t just slap a mission like this together the night before! I’m sorry if this wasn’t all neat and tidy and clean enough for you; but we’re fighting a fucking war!

“And don’t you think this is anything less than a ‘war’,” Jenny snapped, cutting off any response I might have made, even if I wasn’t still massaging my aching chest. For a creature who reportedly had extremely limited arcanetics, she’d felt exceptionally solid when she rammed me just now. And this was coming from a mare who knew what being hit by heavily kitted out creatures―like Grinder―felt like firsthoof. “It’s a war that the corps have been waging on the rest of us for a long time, and it’s a war with one Tartarus of a lopsided body count.

“It’s time the other side finally started to bleed.”

That last line was delivered with a cold finality that formed a lump in my throat, and I wasn’t even the target of her ire. At the same time, there was a part of me that I could hear agreeing with her. My mother had died being beaten to death by Grinder’s donks. Hash Stack had died in a shootout with them. Grinder and his boosterherd were only even in the picture at all because a large corporation enlisted them to strong-hoof their tenants out of more money. I couldn’t even begin to guess at how many decent creatures were dead because of Elysium’s scheme. And I’d recently learned that absolutely none of the corporation’s leadership was going to face any sort of repercussion. They’d all get off free and clear, and probably go on to concoct some new scheme that would probably get even more creatures killed, or at least leave them suffering greatly.

So, yeah, if they were going to get innocent creatures killed to sate their greed, then why shouldn’t somecreature work to even the score?

It was such an enticing thought. On the surface, it even sounded right and proper. Eye-for-an-eye. Karma. Balancing the scales. There were all sorts of terms for it. However, there was one that didn’t measure up:

Harmony.

What Jenny wanted―what she was advocating―wasn’t Harmony. It wasn’t right. Not that I felt Light City was any sort of place where the ideals of Harmony and Friendship had even a chance of flourishing on their own merits. Not with the way that things were. The world that existed in that journal…it wasn’t anything like this one. There wasn’t that entrenched class of elite corporate executives molding the social system to further enrich themselves while everycreature else was lucky to get by. They weren’t dependent on arcanetic devices melded into their very bodies just to function in the world around them, that also served as a tether which slowly drained them of their lives and their livelihoods. Magic was an asset, rather than a curse.

That world―that Equestria―it would choke and die in Light City before it could even draw breath. Too many powerful creatures had a vested interest in making sure that the society in that Journal didn’t take root. Because, in such a world, there wasn’t a place for creatures like them. Their ‘values’ were anathema to Harmony. They wouldn’t let it happen. Not on its own.

If they were removed though…if the source of the oppression was removed, so that Harmony had a chance…

There were those dangerous thoughts again that I knew, in my gut, went contrary to everything I’d read in that journal. Yet, at the same time, I couldn’t see any other way. There was the possibility that I simply wasn’t smart enough to. It wasn’t like I was a genius. On the other hoof, I liked the idea that there really just wasn’t any other way a lot more.

…So I let myself believe the latter.

“Alright, Jenny,” I said, finally managing to straighten back up after the blow I’d been dealt. “I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.”

The donkey stared at me, a small smile tugging at her muzzle. “I hoped you would.” Then her expression hardened once more and she took another step towards me. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I flinched away, but she didn’t make any physical contact this time. “But you also need to understand that this is the exception, not the rule. We want them scared of us, yes, so that they stay in line; but not so scared that they feel their only recourse is to crack down harder.

“It’s a tricky balance. And it means that force like this can’t always be the solution,” Jenny explained. “Which is one of the reasons we’re going so big this first time: hopefully this one hit will make enough of an impact that, whenever a corpo boardroom is discussing their next money-making scheme, they’ll think to themselves: ‘but will this piss off creatures to the point that they Anzû us?’, and they’ll back off if they think the answer is: ‘yes’.

“We’re drawing a line. As long as they stay on their side of it, then we shouldn’t smack them around too much. Remember that.”

I nodded. “Right, right. I’ll remember,” I assured her, though I couldn’t quite keep all of the confusion out of my voice. I couldn’t recall Jenny ever being this emphatic with me before. At least my words seemed to relax the donkey a decent bit. She backed off again, at least.

“Good. That’s good.” She turned and headed for the fridge, but stopped just short of opening the door. Her muzzle wrinkled in annoyance and she muttered a quiet curse under her breath. “Guess I’m doing this sober,” I heard the donkey grumble before she finally turned away from the fridge. She swung wide around the loft and grabbed up her guitar before heading for the stairs.

She paused as she got near me again. “You’re a good filly. Stay that way.” Then she descended. Baton Rouge followed somberly after her.

I watched them leave, puzzling over Jenny’s last comment, and trying my best to recall any other instance where she’d ever complimented me. Or anycreature else, now that I thought about it. If I asked Daisy about it, she’d probably suggest that the donkey was still riding the after-effects of Baton Rouge riding her. Especially given how late she’d returned this morning. If that was really what it was, then hopefully the batpony would whisk Jenny away more often…

“I’ll bend it backwards until it breaks!

“Crystals ringing inside my brain!

“Agent of Discord, call me a scam;

“I’m gonna take out the corporate mare!”

It was uncomfortably surreal to once more be standing in the wings of the stage listening to Hussar performing for a crowd of their cheering fans. The last time this had happened…the night hadn’t exactly gone very well for me. Perhaps it was a little silly to think that this was a pattern that would repeat itself. I hadn’t just recently ripped off a boosterherd leader, and I wasn’t aware of any particular creature who was out for my blood. Sure we were about to embark on possibly the most dangerous mission that any of us had in our lives, in order to break into one of the most powerful warships on the planet in an effort to assassinate the king of the griffons, but that didn’t mean that things were bound to go poorly for us…

…Right?

We had the ‘Power of Friendship’ on our side, or whatever Gerry had called it. He’d assured me that, as long as we were working together in the quest to bring Harmony to Light City, there was a powerful magical force that would make sure we succeeded. Given that we’d thus far managed to penetrate Aeriesaka Tower and city hall without incident, I was starting to believe him. I’d feel a little better if I could see a more obvious form of that alleged magic manifesting itself so that I didn’t feel like we’d just happened to be lucky these last few times, but there was also something to be said for the power of positive thinking.

After all, Jenny had been helping us to lay the foundation for this operation for weeks. Apparently. Behind our backs.

“Start the fire! Start the fire!

“Come join the dance of destruction!

“Valor, sweet as a kiss!”

Maybe I was feeling jitter than usual because the lyrics of the band’s final song of their performance was more than just a little on the nose…

Given how much else it had turned out that Jenny had been orchestrating behind the scenes, and how long she’d known about this operation, I was finding myself doubting very much that this was a coincidence. Had the donkey written this song, intending for it to be played the night that the king died?

“Set it off and it will never stop!

“Come join the dance of destruction!

“Valor, sweet as a kiss!”

Suddenly this piece felt far more like a ‘call to action’ than any of the other songs that the band had ever written. Which I supposed made a certain amount of sense, if Jenny really had planned out this performance to coincide with the mission. She was going to create the spark, and when she did, the ponies of Light City who heard this song would immediately connect the dots, and some of them might even rise up and join in on this pseudo-revolution that she was trying to launch.

“Set it off and it will never stop!

“And it will never stop!”

I felt my lips pull into a thin smile. I supposed that we’d have to wait and see on that front.

Jenny screamed her lungs out into the microphone, pouring more passion into her words than I recalled hearing during the last concert. The energy of the crowd was intoxicating, even for me. I could practically feel them resonating with the donkey’s words. A few of the pegasi and griffons in the crowd weren’t even on the ground anymore, they’d taken to the air on their arcanetics and were gyrating above the rest of the crowd.

“Tear out the fabric, rippin’ the norm!

“Destructive Architect with somewhere to go!

“I’ll rip right through your sheepish herd!

“Feed insurrection to this broken world!”

I was grimacing slightly now. Sure, to all of the creatures in the crowd tonight, this probably all sounded like metaphor and hyperbole, but what I knew about what was going to happen tonight allowed me to see the song in a clearer light. Others would make the connection too by morning. It would be plain for all to see, in fact. Which made this performance not merely a call to action…

…but the next best thing to a confession.

We’d have to be crazy to think that killing King Grover wasn’t going to have consequences. Whoever succeeded him―and there would be a successor―could hardly let the assassination of a ruler of the Griffon Kingdom go unpunished. If for no other reason than to discourage future ‘revolutionaries’ like ourselves.

As long as we got in out relatively undetected, it would be unlikely that the griffons would know we’d done the deed. Frankly, if we were detected while aboard the Anzû, it was unlikely we’d survive long enough to make our escape anyway. So if we got away at all, we’d almost certainly have gotten away clean, and could mostly not have to worry about Max-Tack or proper soldiers coming down on us soon after.

“I’m a lawless outcast always on the run!

“I’ll challenge everything, I’ve just begun to…

“Start the riot! Start the riot!”

Of course, that was a lot less likely to be the case if the king died just hours after a well-known band performed a song where the lead singer was all but explicitly vowing to bring down those in power…

I let out a heavy sigh and listened as Hussar’s final song of the night began to come to a close. Even as the final chords started to fade away and become completely lost in the din of the crowd, I could hear a multitude of voices calling for more. They didn’t want the concert to end. And, as I looked on at the donkey panting at the microphone, I could see a longing in her eyes that hinted that Jenny herself didn’t want the performance to be at an end either. Sitting back on her haunches, she held the guitar in her hooves tight to her chest, almost charessing it, and I could see her hesitantly draggin her arcanetic hoof along its frets like she wanted to launch into another song.

Jenny glanced back at the rest of her band. From what I could see, despite the sweat running down their own faces and the heaving of their chests, they looked like they were perfectly willing to play another song too. All they were waiting on was for their leader to pick the tune and play a chord…and they’d follow her. Gladly.

For a few moments, it looked like the donkey might very well have gone on. I could see that there was a big part of her that wanted to. Then her eyes darted in my direction. Though Jenny wasn’t looking at me directly. She was glancing at Baton Rouge, who was standing nearby watching the performance with me. I didn’t see the batpony do or say anything, but all the same Jenny’s smile waned slightly; became sadder. She turned back to the crowd and grabbed the mic stand with her eponymous limb.

“I want…” Jenny’s words caught in her throat and she was forced to swallow before she could continue. The crowd misinterpreted the pause as her desiring them to soften their cheers while she addressed them, even though the speaker system was more than capable enough to make the donkey heard over their roaring enthusiasm. “I want to thank all of you for coming here tonight. It…it means a lot to me―to all of us.

“And I want to tell you all…” Again a hesitation. Again she forced down the lump in her throat. “Goodbye.”

The mood of the crowd shifted dramatically now. The earlier moderate dip in volume now became a dramatic lull as sheers and whistles were replaced by confused whispering and scattered exclamations of surprise. It was clear that none of the gathered fans understood what Jenny was talking about, or what her ostensibly cryptic comment was meant to convey. At worst, they probably assumed she was suggesting that Hussar was going to be breaking up or something like that.

My mind was racing with far more dire interpretations.

If the crowd was hoping that they were going to get any sort of further explanation, they were going to be disappointed it seemed. As soon as the last word left her lips, Jenny turned away from the mic stand and trotted for the stage’s exit. The rest of the band shared concerned looks among themselves for a moment before abandoning their instruments to follow her. Meanwhile, the members of the band’s security detail ensured that none from the crowd tried to follow after them, even as the volume grew as more and more creatures called out for some sort of explanation of what Jenny had meant.

As Jenny passed by, the batpony stallion stepped away from my side and fell into step beside her. I held back, sensing that whatever they might be able to talk about wasn’t meant for my ears. Instead, I waited for Gerry and the others and started walking with them.

I cast a glance at the griffon tiercel. “What was that about?”

“I’m...not entirely sure,” he admitted, his lips tightening into a concerned frown. “If she’s leaving the band, she didn’t talk about it with us.” Gerry looked briefly to the others for confirmation that none of them had any deeper insights into the donkey’s intent than he did, and received nothing but shaking heads in response.

My brow furrowed as well. My thoughts wandered back around to my conversation with the jenny from yesterday, where she’d mentioned that somecreature would have to take over running things because she ‘wasn’t going to be around forever’. At the time, I’d figured that she had been speaking in much broader terms.

…Could she have been referring to something much more imminent?

Was Jenny sick?

“Come on!” I was jerked out of my thoughts by the annoyed shout from the donkey in question and looked up to see her and Baton Rouge looking back at the rest of us. “Let’s get the van loaded and head out; we’ve got an op that’s on a deadline.

“So let’s move it!”

“Redheart has a pharmaceutical arm of their business,” Gerry was explaining to me as we climbed into the back of the van. We then turned around and helped Dandy and Harriet load on the dollies and boxes that they were pushing along. All of the boxes were adorned with quite real-looking markings which identified them as being various medical supplies. What was really inside of them were our weapons and other gear that we’d be using aboard the Anzû.

“So we’re just going to roll up to the loading dock, tell them we have a shipment, and they should let us just walk right into the building. From there we just take the elevator to the roof and snag the airwagon.”

“Won’t they know something’s up when they realize they’re not expecting an order?” I asked as the last of the gear was finally loaded.

Dandy and Harriet climbed in and took their seats, then the hippogriff supplied an answer to my question. “I already slipped in delivery info to the hospital’s system,” she informed me. “It wasn’t hard. There’s not a lot of security when it comes to telling the hospital that it’s getting things. It’s just on their side though, so if they compare records with what the warehouse says they’ve sent over during their next audit, they’ll see that it was all bogus,” the nettrotter said with a dismissive shrug of her wings. “Figure that won’t affect our op much.”

“Not unless they’re doing an audit at one in the morning,” Dandy chimed in, stifling a yawn a moment later.

The van shifted slightly as a fifth creature started climbing into the back of the van with us. “Muevan,” Barkly mumbled as she gestured to Gerry and I. Without thinking, we scooted further down the benches towards the front of the van in order to ensure the diamond dog had enough room for her much larger frame. I was briefly confused as to why the band’s bassist was getting in the back with us, and not into the front where she usually did. Then I recalled that Baton Rouge was going to be joining us in the operation. Apparently he was going to be doing so up front with Jenny.

Once more there was a noticeable rocking of the van as Jenny hauled herself into the passenger seat up front. I was busy trying to help Gerry sort out where to put his wing so that I wasn’t inadvertently pinching it against his side with our much more cramped seating arrangements, so I only barely registered the sound of the van’s protesting shocks. A moment later our batpony pilot was in the driver’s seat. He leaned over and whispered something to the donkey next to him, but I didn’t catch it. Whatever it was though, Jenny waved him off and told him to start driving.

The van lurched once more as we sped off from the band’s little headquarters nestled in the dilapidated industrial quarter of Haywood and took us towards the heart of Light City. Other than the hum of the engine, there was silence as we drove. At least, for a time.

Then Jenny finally spoke up. “Harriet, run them through the layout.”

The hippogriff mare nodded. A second later, I received an alert regarding an incoming clairvoyance request. I accepted it, and was immediately presented with a technical schematic for what I assumed was the griffon king’s airship. Almost immediately, my attention was directed towards a portion near the bottom rear of the massive dreadnought, which was apparently the focus for this operation.

“The Anzû has a total of five hangars,” Harriet began. “Two lateral hangars on either side of the ship which service the air superiority wings, one ventral for its bombers, one aft for cargo loading, and finally the one that concerns us: the dorsal VIP hangar.” One area of the schematic flashed amber, drawing my gaze to the mostly open area. “Officially,” the nettrotter continued, “it’s called: the ‘Staff Hangar’. The Anzû was built to serve as a flag ship for the Royal Air Force, so it has a flag bridge and a whole lot of additional suites and cabins meant to accommodate admirals and their staff.

“When the king claimed it as his personal yacht, he scrapped most of that and had that section of the ship remodeled to serve as his personal suite, along with some rooms for guests and a small ‘throne room’ to receive foreign dignitaries and such. Because it all serves government functions more than military ones, it more or less exists apart from the rest of the ship. There are only a couple ways to get to this area from the rest of the ship. Which works out great for us.”

Other areas of the illusionary schematic hovering in front of my eyes became highlighted now. Two doors and an elevator. One of the doors was off to the side in the hangar that we would be using to get onto the airship. The other was significantly closer to the throne room. Given how Harriet had been describing things, I presumed these to mostly be intended as points of entry for service or maintenance staff.

The elevator was more centrally located though. It took me a moment orienting myself to the layout of the ship to realize that not everything I’d been looking at up to this point had actually all been on the same level. Examining the illusion more closely, I realized that the section of the dreadnought we were concerned with was actually three levels. The first was little more than the hangar and its associated ancillary rooms. The second level, resting just above it, looked like it contained the suites and cabins and other living areas. Above that was a massive room which had to be the ‘throne room’ that Harriet had mentioned.

She’d described it as being ‘small’. Looking at it now, I wondered if I might be using a different definition of that word than the Hippogriff was. That room was at least as big as the concert hall that the band used, and was located at the absolute top of the airship, capped by a circular glass dome.

“If we can lock down and hold those two doors, we’ll have a clear run at the king. Given the time we’ll be arriving, he’ll more than likely be in his private quarters.” Once more the image shifted and a section on the middle level of the three that concerned us flickered, along with a dashed line which plotted the route to the indicated room from the elevator. “We can land, get to the room, break in, and get out in minutes,” she asserted.

“The ship’s air-traffic controllers probably won’t even have time to grill Baton Rouge too bad about why he’s there in the first place.”

“What about his personal security detail?” Gerry asked.

Harriet turned and gave the griffon tiercel a flat look. “...the airship is his ‘security detail’,” she deadpanned. “Three dozen fighters and heavy bombers, a hundred weapon mounts of various types and calibers, and a crew of over five thousand.”

“His Majesty travels alone,” Jenny said from the front of the van, followed by an absently added, “mostly.

“There’s probably a platoon of knights from his House Guard on the ship, sure, but they won’t be near his quarters. They’ll be bunking with the rest of the regular crew, and will need to use the elevator to reach us.”

The hippogriff mare nodded in agreement. “I’ll be plugging into the ship’s network and keeping it locked down as best I can. They’ll have to use the doors to get to us, and those will be easy to barricade and cover. Baton Rouge can use the main gun on the Health Harras’ airwagon to cover the hangar’s door. Barkly shouldn’t have any issues covering the staff entrance near the kitchen.” The two indicated doors flashed briefly as Harriet listed them.

“Harriet will be plugged in, Barkly on the service door, and Batty covering the hangar,” Jenny summarized from the front seat. “That leaves the rest of us to find and kill the king.” She turned her head and locked her eyes on Dandy, Gerry, and I in turn. “I trust I can count on you three to be able to help me kill one old griffon?” We all nodded.

“Good. Once he’s dead, Baton’ll fly y―us out.”

My ear flicked at what had briefly sounded like a verbal flub. However, nocreature else seemed to have registered it. So maybe I’d just imagined it myself.

“We’re here,” the batpony driver announced.

I leaned forward and glanced out through the windshield. Sure enough, we’d arrived at the hospital. It almost looked very much like the rear of the building as well. Baton Rouge and Jenny opened their doors and hopped out. Barkly handled the door at the back of the van. The rest of us filed out in short order, dragging out the dollies and their burdens with us as we went. I looked over and saw that Jenny was already in something of a shouting match with a confused-looking earth pony holding a clipboard.

“―on’t care what your manifest says!” The donkey snapped at the unfortunate stallion. “Our manifest says we’re supposed to bring those crates here. Tonight.” She jabbed a hoof in the direction of the rest of us and we all shuffled into view with our burdens, patiently waiting to be allowed into the hospital’s rear entrance.

The earth pony barely had time to scrutinize our group before Jenny was once more waving her own clipboard in his face and reacquiring his attention. “I have thirteen cases of dilopifyzine here that I’m signed for in the chain-of-custody, and so it’s my flank―and my bank balance―that’s on the line if they don’t make it to the freezer on time! I’ve got―” Jenny pantomimed looking at the fetlock of her arcanetic limb, as though she were wearing a watch. There was no watch, of course, but she moved the limb so fast that it was impossible for the earth pony to confirm if she was or not. “―seven more minutes before that shit breaks down and becomes lethally toxic!

“So you can either let us through that door so I can get it to the pharmacist on duty before I’m liable for half a million gibbies worth of ‘damaged goods’, or,” Jenny thrust the clipboard out to the stallion and glared at him, “you can sign for it and spend as long as you want calling whoever you want to about why this shipment isn’t on your sheet.

“Because then it’ll be you who’s in the doghouse with the finance office.”

That implication seemed to be all it took to get the earth pony to back off. “Okay, fine, shit; go on ahead,” he glanced towards the door. The jewel in his forehead blinked and a moment later I heard the sound of the lock disengaging. Baton Rouge wasted no time and opened the door, holding it for the rest of us as we headed inside. “I’ll make some calls and get this all sorted out…” He wandered off to find somepony to corroborate Jenny’s story, likely confident in the belief that he’d be able to track us down later if and when he figured out where the mix-up had been.

We didn’t have to go far to find a sign which alerted us to the direction of the hospital’s pharmacy. However, we patently bypassed it and headed for the elevator with roof access instead. Being that this elevator was intended to allow for patients on gurneys who were in possession of the quite pricey Health Harras insurance packages to be transported swiftly from their airwagons to treatment, the elevator was quite spacious. There was more than enough room for us to shed our Redheart uniforms and don the proper barding and weapons which were in the crates of ‘drugs’ that we’d brought along with us.

I noticed that most of it seemed to be the LCPD uniforms and armor which we’d used to sneak into city hall. I gave the uniforms a briefly appreciative look as I considered how any technicians on the roof might react to seeing a squad of LCPD officers spill out of the elevator and ‘commandeer’ the airwagon. For that matter, I found myself wondering how the Light City government was going to respond when the Griffon Kingdom inevitably demanded to know why a bunch of ‘their’ officers boarded the king’s airship and murdered him.

Maybe, by the time all of this blew over, there’d be some long-standing politicians removed from office.

I was just finishing up getting on my police uniform when I heard a high-pitched whining sound coming from nearby, followed by a rapid staccato of metallic clicking. I glanced over to see Barkly hoisting an absolutely massive gun which featured a set of three rotating barrels that were presently slowly winding down to a stop. The diamond dog noticed my dinner-plate-sized eyes as I beheld a ‘gun’ that was at least as large as I am, and a broad grin spread across her face.

“Me gusta,” the canine all but purred. She reached down into another nearby crate and withdrew a massive circular drum and began to attach it to the weapon, drawing a belt of ammunition from within it.

All around me, the others were assembling their weapons as well. Most of them I recognized from the raid on Grinder’s warehouse. Dandy was putting together his sniper rifle. Harriet was calibrating her assault rifle so that its targeting scope was properly synced up with her optical arcanetics. Gerry was stuffing extra magazines for his submachine gun into the pouches on his vest. Jenny was slapping a fresh clip into the underside of that odd pistol of hers.

Beside me, the batpony was lighting a cigarette. He glanced over, noting my raised brow, and chuckled. “Que dire? I’m a lover; not a fighter.” Nearby, Jenny snorted.

I elected to concede the point. Besides, the plan didn’t seem to call for him leaving the airwagon during the mission anyway. The rest of us were here to do the ‘heavy lifting’―though perhaps Barkly more than others―and there wasn’t even supposed to be a lot of that either. Get in, get the king, get out. Five minutes; in and out. They probably won’t even have time to sound an alarm.

One could hope anyway.

“Harriet,” Jenny prompted, gesturing at the elevator’s control panel. The hippogriff nodded and stepped closer to it. She stared intently at the motionless panel, her silver eyes and implanted forehead jewel flickering with faint orange light as her arcanetics went to work cracking through the hospital’s security. The corner of the nettrotter’s mouth pulled back slightly into a faint sneer of annoyance, but a few seconds later the panel issued out a pleasant chime. Then the elevator began to ascend.

She let out a ragged breath and bent her head, massaging her temple. “Fuck me. This new fifth-gen shit always gives me a migraine,” she seethed under her breath.

“You gonna be okay?” Jenny prompted, raising a brow in the hippogriff’s direction.

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted with a nod of her head. “Wards are just a little more aggressive with the fifth-gen stuff is all. Sort of try to hack you right back, in a way. I’m good though.”

“You better be. I need you to lock down a warship in about fifteen minutes.”

A few moments later the elevator chimed again and the doors opened. I spared a moment to mentally note that the roof of the hospital, even at just after one in the morning, was more brightly lit up than the interior of the elevator had been. And this wasn’t the result of the floodlights illuminating the landing pads either. No, it was the result of the projected advertisement illusions saturating the Light City skyline. It genuinely felt to me like daytime in Haywood was darker than midnight up here in Trotson.

At least it made our target easy to see though.

Our group hastily spilled out of the elevator, leaving behind our discarded uniforms and the empty crates, and cantered off towards the waiting Health Harras airwagon. Gerry and Harriet focused on disconnecting the various bits of diagnostic equipment which the technicians had left in place overnight, while the rest of us headed for the gaping doors which led to the transport’s main cabin. Baton Rouge immediately turned and slipped into the cockpit, his talisman glowing as he initiated the vehicle’s start-up sequence.

A few seconds after we stepped inside, the interior flickered to life with a high-pitched whine of electro-mechanical life. However, this was shortly followed by a curse from the front of the airwagon. Jenny took a step towards her batpony paramour. “What’s wrong?”

“Fuel’s low,” Baton Rouge replied with a grimace. “There’s probably enough to get us to the Anzû, but we’re not making it back to the island with what’s left.”

The donkey frowned now too. Her arcanetic hoof tapped furtively on a nearby bulkhead as hastily evaluated our options. I saw her eyes dart to the outside of the airwagon, where there was almost certainly a way to refuel the transport present and operational. However, the longer that we lingered on the pad, the greater the risk that our ruse would be realized when the pharmacy got tired of waiting for the shipment of drugs it had been promised and asked the hospital’s security staff to start looking for the ‘lost’ delivery crew.

“The Anzû will have fuel,” she finally stated firmly. “Gerry will gas you up while Pel and I go after the king.” The pair exchanged a brief look, but the batpony stallion eventually nodded in agreement with the plan’s revision.

Fortunately, the rest of the airwagon’s preparations appeared to go without a hitch. Harriet and Gerry finished up relieving the transport of its umbilicals and joined us inside. Neither seemed particularly thrilled about the prospect of having to top off the airwagon’s tanks while aboard the griffon warship, but it was agreed that doing so right now instead was at least as dangerous.

“Besides,” the band’s guitarist said while giving his wings a casual flex, “worst case scenario: those of us with levitation arcanetics can just carry the rest of you or something.”

Harriet glanced idly between the tiercel and the nearby towering figure of Barkly. “...Dibs on the new filly,” the nettrotter hastily quipped.

Confusion briefly creased Gerry’s features before he followed the hippogriff mare’s gaze and realized what she’d meant. He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Fair enough. Like I said: worst case.”

“Flight checks complete,” Baton Rouge announced from the cockpit. “All systems nominal. Transponder is…good to go. All automated air traffic systems should give us a provisional green light for approach. Everycreature ready?” He glanced over his shoulder towards the back of the transport.

Jenny gestured for us all to take our seats and get strapped in for the flight. “Take us up,” she instructed the batpony. He nodded and faced forward once more. A moment later, the airwagon’s engines roared to life and the Health Harras transport began to lift off of the hospital’s roof.

I was just securing the last of my seat’s harnesses when I noticed the donkey hadn’t sat down yet. Instead, she was posted by the still open door on the side of the airwagon, staring out at the city that was passing us by more rapidly with each passing second. It didn’t look like she was watching out for anything specific. She just seemed to be taking in the sight. As the last of the largest of Light City’s crystalline skyscrapers whisked past, she finally turned her head slightly, her gaze locked in the vague direction of the airwagon’s heading. It wouldn’t have been possible for her to see it yet, of course, but I suspected that she was ‘looking’ towards our destination.

The donkey’s lips pulled back into a hungry sneer.

“It all ends tonight…” I managed to just make out her words over the din of the wind whipping past the open door. The finality of her tone sent a shiver down my spine. I swallowed back a nervous lump that had been slowly growing in the back of my throat as the weight of what we were about to do was finally given time to sink in. There was no turning back now. We were on our way to plunge ourselves right into the belly of the beast, and no matter how ‘solid’ our plan may have felt, there was no guarantee that any of us would be coming back from this alive.

All that I could do was take solace in the fact that we were doing what was necessary to save the citizens of Light City. We were doing something good. Something noble.

…Weren’t we?

Author's Note

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