“Didn’t your mother ever teach you that your face would get stuck that way if you made those kinds of faces for too long?”

I froze mid-grimace. My eyes darted away from my expression in the mirror, glancing past my reflection and out the washroom door into the common area that lay beyond. I’d very much forgotten that the gold and ivory griffon tiercel, Gerry, was currently reclined on one of the lounges there, idly progressing through the chords of what I presumed was one of the band’s new songs. It could have been an older song though. I wasn’t very familiar with their music.

Significantly more self-conscious than I had been a second ago, my mouth clamped shut with an audible click. My ear flicked and I repeated the movement. I did so several more times in quick succession. I could swear that I was hearing a clicking sound coming from somewhere inside my jaw that wasn’t simply my new teeth meeting each other. I craned my neck and slowly opened my mouth as far as I could, paying close attention to how the movement of my newly-acquired composite jawbone felt as its joint pivoted in the socket which was fused to the rest of my skull. For the most part, the motion seemed to be pretty smooth. However, I was convinced that when it got to a certain point, and if my chin was canted just slightly to the right so that it offset―

“So that’s a ‘no’ on the face-sticking thing then?”

That clicking sound was probably just my new dental implants smacking together when my mouth slammed shut really fast, I decided. I flushed with mild embarrassment and turned away from the mirror with the intention of finally leaving the washroom, but caught myself up short before I was completely out the door. I stared at myself in the mirror, my eyes narrowing slightly as I focused on my shoulder, and then darted to my flank. My gaze bounced between the two locations several more times. I reached back and lifted the side of my now blood-free vest that somepony―I assumed Daisy―had been kind enough to clean for me. My eyes slowly traced their way from one end of my barrel to the other. I let the vest fall back into place…then lifted it again.

The sound of a door opening in the lounge barely registered with me, as did the sound of a feminine voice wafting across the air. “How’s our newest groupie?” I was pretty sure that was Harriet.

“I think she finally hit puberty,” Gerry quipped, an audible smile in his voice. “Judging by how thoroughly she’s been ‘exploring herself’ in there for the last hour…”

The embarrassment I felt was no longer merely ‘mild’ as I slinked out of the washroom. I did my best to glare at the pair of feathered fliers, noting the shared grins that each of them were wearing as they watched me. “I don’t think that doctor matched the shade of my coat quite right,” I mumbled defensively.

“You look fine,” the hippogriff mare insisted, issuing a dismissive flick of her talons. “Shade’s an old hat at that stuff; she did all mine and Barkly’s arcanetics.”

I found myself ultimately nodding in agreement with the blue and green nettrotter. She was probably right. That didn’t stop me from being far more self-conscious about my movements though. Not until I got used to them, at least. I’d gone through the same period of adjustment when my forelimbs had been replaced. Within a week of the procedure, I’d mostly forgotten that my legs were arcanetic augmentations. It would likely be the same with my face and hindquarters this time too.

A grimace worked its way across my lips as I thought over the last couple of days in my head. After leaving Grinder’s warehouse, I’d fully expected the group to drop me off at a clinic somewhere and wash their hooves of me, leaving me at the mercy of the staff and whatever bill for my treatment they ultimately pinned me with. I’d certainly never have predicted that the band would take me to a ripperdoc for treatment.

When confronted with the prospect of dealing with serious injuries―like, say: a broken jaw and a shattered hip―there were two options available for treatment: ‘cheap’ and slow, or expensive and fast. The former involved more ‘traditional’ medical treatment methods: surgery, casts, and weeks of convalescence and physical therapy. In my case, I’d likely have been mostly bedridden for a month with my jaw wired shut drinking protein shakes through a straw.

Alternatively, there was the option of just giving up on trying to get my organic bits to mend together into their original configuration and instead elect to swap them out for artificial replacements. The ‘bounce back’ time under those conditions was dramatically lessened. A decent ripperdoc would have you back on your feet and walking around before dinnertime. Provided there weren’t any complications. Of course, that sort of treatment tended to cost a lot more. Like, a lot lot more, because the surgeries were far more involved and the cost of the replacement parts had to be factored in. To say nothing of the long term costs associated with the alchemical inhibitors that needed to be taken for the rest of the patient’s life.

I was doing my best to try not to think about how long I was going to be beholden to Jenny and her group to work off my medical debt. It was easily going to be decades longer than I’d have been under Grinder’s hoof. At least they seemed nicer about the leverage they had over me.

For now.

I made my way over to one of the unoccupied chaise lounges and crawled up on it, trying not to eye the pair of musicians too warily. They weren’t even paying attention to me anymore, and were instead involved in a discussion that I assumed had to do with the song Gerry had been playing. The word ‘harmony’ was being tossed around a good bit anyway. It went way above my head, that was for sure. All I knew about music was what I liked to listen to, and absolutely nothing about how it was made.

Because I didn’t want to be caught simply staring at the pair, I focused instead on surveying my surroundings again. I’d only just arrived a few hours ago after spending most of yesterday at the ripperdoc’s, a Doctor Nightshade, undergoing treatment for the injuries I’d suffered at Grinder’s hooves the night before. We were back at that building where the concert Hash Stack had taken me to had been held, only now we were on the second floor. Apparently this venue was far more proprietary than I’d initially assumed. This wasn’t somewhere that Hussar just happened to be performing that night, this was their own personal concert hall. As well as their ‘base of operations’, it seemed.

While most of what was present in the loft made a certain amount of sense as far as what members of a band would have lying around where they lived―instruments, amplifiers, sheet music, and such―the massive computer and monitor setup in one corner of the loft’s main lounge area and the pegboard full of pinned-up documents and strings next to it felt decidedly not music-related. Then there was also the massive armory downstairs that looked like it was stocked with enough guns and munitions to fully equip the entire security detail protecting Aeriesaka Tower…twice.

I’d also never heard of a music group that could wipe out a whole boosterherd in less than five minutes. Whatever Hussar was, they weren’t ‘just’ a band, and its members weren’t ‘just’ musicians. I also got the impression that my old roommate hadn’t simply been a mere fan of their work. The level of sophistication of that computer setup in the corner, as well as the bathtub next to it, made me wonder if Hash ever dropped by for reasons other than to listen to their performances.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. My gaze shifted just in time to see Jenny Silverhoof striding briskly into the lounge. Dandy and Barkly trailed in behind her. The donkey’s eyes briefly lingered on me as she crossed the room, but she didn’t say anything, not even by way of greeting. Nearby, I noted that Gerry and Harriet paused their discussion and focused their full attention on their band’s lead singer.

Jenny came to a stop in the middle of the room, while the other two with her continued on and took up seats on some of the available unoccupied couches. Once eveycreature seemed to be in place, Jenny gave a slight nod of her head. “Alright, it’s time to talk about Elysium.”

There was a moment of disquiet from the others, and I sensed a few pairs of eyes lingering on me. Feeling that I was the odd mare out, I started to rise off of the lounge I was laying on and make myself scarce. I probably wasn’t supposed to be privy to any of what they were about to talk about, even if I was still quite curious to learn what connection had existed between my former boosterherd leader and the company managing the megasilo I’d been living in.

“Where the fuck are you going?” Jenny snapped, glaring at me. I immediately froze, staring at her with surprise. “Stare at your new flank on your own time; you’re on the clock now.” The donkey flicked her head back in the direction of the couch I’d just vacated. Hesitantly, I resumed my seat, my cheeks flushed at being called out. Even though I felt it was perfectly reasonable for me to have assumed that I wasn’t a part of this.

Gerry cleared his throat. “Jenny, do you really think it’s a good idea to bring her on like this?” The griffon asked, drawing the attention of both myself and the donkey. He briefly glanced at me. “No offense, kid,” he said by way of a caveat before once more looking fully at Silverhoof, “but we can’t just bring some filly in cold at the last minute.”

“Without Hash, we’re down to five,” Jenny responded, as though that was a completely sensible counter-argument to the griffon’s voiced objection. “We gotta have a sixth. Whoever it is is going to be brought in at the ‘last minute’ regardless. So it might as well be her.” She flicked a hoof in my direction. For all the donkey was nominally insisting that my inclusion was somehow essential to this mission, the way that she was acting made me feel like I was really little more than a packet of extra duck sauce being tossed into a bag of kirean take-out that was just going to be thrown in the trash with the bag once it reached home anyway.

The guitarist seemed to have interpreted Jenny’s tone in much the same way, because he didn’t look very convinced by the donkey’s reasoning. “First off: you can’t just ‘bring’ a sixth. You know it doesn’t work like that. It has to be her choice or it doesn’t count.”

“Fine,” Jenny snorted and then glanced over at me. “You want to come help the crew that just spent a fortune patching you up, or be a little bitch and welch out on us after we saved your li―?”

“Jenny!” The griffon snapped at her, glaring at the donkey. He held up a talon and pointed it at her. “An informed and non-coerced choice. You know why that matters.”

Jenny returned the tiercel’s glare with equal intensity. Every other creature in the room seemed perfectly content to remain outside of their exchange, and I didn’t blame them. I certainly didn’t want to get in the middle of…whatever this was. Even though I couldn’t help but feel like I already was pretty involved in it based on how they were acting.

Eventually, Gerry seemed to ‘win’ the staring contest that they were having and the donkey let out a resigned―if extremely annoyed-sounding―sigh. “Fine. Whatever. ‘Inform’ her then.” She waved off the griffon and wandered over towards a refrigerator, where she fetched herself a bottle of beer. The jenny then deftly flipped the cap off with a twitch of her arcanetic hoof and propped herself up against the wall, sipping at her drink and doing her best interpretation of a mare pretending that none of the other creatures in the room existed.

The griffon’s gaze lingered on her for a short while before he too sighed and shook his head. Gerry then turned his focus on me and I immediately saw his expression soften. It was almost apologetic as he leaned forward, folding his talons together and resting his arms on his knees. “You were a part of Grinder’s herd, right?” I nodded in the affirmative. He already knew that, of course. “Do you know what your herd was involved with? Like, ‘illicit activity’-wise?”

I shrugged. The short answer, of course, was that I actually didn’t. I’d just been some low-level thug. I didn’t pretend to know all of Grinder’s angles. “Drugs, guns, extortion―” I started to list off what I thought of as being ‘typical’ boosterherd activities, though I admitted I was only personally aware of the ‘protection’ racket that I was―nominally―a part of. I was mostly just assuming the other stuff happened, because why wouldn’t it?

It was that last activity that Gerry seemed to latch onto though. “Extortion; right! Specifically around your megasilo? He sent you door-to-door, hitting up creatures for money every month, didn’t he?”

Again I nodded, though my expression was probably a little more guarded this time. He was exactly right regarding the specific type of extortion that I was involved with. I wasn’t certain how he knew about that though. Exactly what I was tasked with doing in Grinder’s herd wasn’t anything I’d ever spoken with Hash about specifically. I knew she wouldn’t have approved of me ‘robbing’ our neighbors―not that I ever managed to do it successfully on the scale I was supposed to. It was possible that Hash had figured out what I was meant to be doing for Grinder anyway. She had apparently known far more about him than even I did.

“What if I told you he wasn’t doing that just for shits and giggles?” The griffon asked, a mirthless smile tugging at his lips. “What if I told you that Grinder had actually been on Elysium’s payroll and was working on their behalf?”

I balked, feeling my new jaw going instantly slack with shock. How could I not be surprised by that revelation? I’d just been told to believe that the company who controlled the rent on my apartment was also using thugs like me to squeeze more money out of their tenants. What sense did that make? It seemed like such a convoluted way for a ‘landlord’ to get money. They controlled the building anyway; they could just charge us more rent if they wanted more money! Why on Equis would they need Grinder to collect it for them?!

Either Gerry was good at reading faces, or he’d correctly anticipated how I’d react to the news, because he was ready to launch into an explanation which addressed my most pressing unasked questions. “Megasilos like the one you live on aren’t owned by Elysium Property Management. They’re officially owned by the Light City council. The council just contracts out to Elysium to manage them.” That much I actually already knew, and was nodding along as the griffon spoke. The next bits were genuine news to me though.

“However, because those buildings are the property of the city, and are part of a low-income subsidized housing initiative, the rent isn’t controlled by Elysium. They can only charge residents the rates that the city council sets, and those rates are tied to poverty and cost-of-living metrics generated every five years by a special subcommittee at city hall.”

My eyes must have started to glaze over, because Gerry cleared his throat and reined in his explanation slightly. “All that to say: Elysium is only allowed to make a certain amount of profit off the megasilos they run. Compared to what they make off of the higher-end properties they manage, it’s honestly a pittance. However, unlike their other properties, it’s also a steady rate of return guaranteed by the city. Enough to cover their operating costs and net the company a respectable profit at the end of the year.”

“Not a lot left over for their shareholders to split up though,” Harriet cut in, offering a wry smile of her own.

Gerry nodded in agreement. “Exactly. Nothing left over for bonuses or dividend payouts. A hundred thousand creatures squatting in the buildings they manage, and they only collect a little off the top. The manticore's share goes right back to the city that built those megasilos in the first place.”

“Only a megacorp would think that was ‘unfair’,” came Dandy’s derisive snort.

“That’s where Grinder, and other boosterherds like yours, come in,” the griffon continued. “Elysium can’t collect extra gryphusbits from the tenants directly, so they use boosterherds like his to go around and shake the residents down for extra gibbies. Elysium makes sure any police reports get squashed, and the boosterherds get to keep a cut of their own. Meanwhile, Elysium rakes in an extra hundred million or so a year. Minimal ‘operating expenses’ tied to it on their part, because it’s all boosterherds, so it’s basically pure profit for them.”

“The corpo execs just have to lightly cook the books and then they get to send that money right into their own pockets,” Harriet finished off.

“That warehouse your boy Grinder worked out of was preeeeetty pricey, rent-wise.” Dandy chimed in with a wink. “And also conveniently owned by…wanna guess?” He asked me.

“...Elysium?” I ventured.

“Dingdingding! Give the filly a prize! Tell what she’d won, Jenny!” The purple unicorn beamed in the direction of the donkey, but only received a scowl in return. He cleared his throat and turned back around in his seat.

Gerry was just finishing up rolling his eyes when I looked back in his direction. “So, yeah, that was what Hash and us have been working on for a while: exposing what Elysium’s doing with the local boosterherds. We’ve known what’s been going on for a while now, sure, but it’s taken us time to gather up real proof to go public with. At the moment, nearly all of what we have is circumstantial, at best. Just about everything can be refuted by Elysium’s PR team as speculation and conspiracy theories.

“But, now that we have the access runes for Elysium’s corporate offices, we can finally get in and get some hard evidence. Something that proves their executives not only know that the tenants in their buildings are being extorted, but that it was specifically ordered by their board of directors.”

What I was being told was…well, to say it was overwhelming would have been putting it mildly. I was experiencing such a whirlwind of emotions that it was really hard to separate everything that I was feeling. To be told that I’d been an unwitting part of some grand corporate conspiracy? Learning that my former boosterherd had been run by some kind of megacorp patsy, or whatever? Had any of the others in the herd known?

Then one emotion began to make itself felt more prominently through the tempest broiling within me: anger.

I’d grown up in one of those megasilos that Elysium had been managing, watching my mother struggle to come up with not only the rent for the month, but the money that Grinder’s goons demanded from her―money that I had just now learned was being demanded on Elysium’s behalf! Years of struggle and hunger. Dozens of brutal beatings that my mother suffered―beatings that ultimately killed her―all so that some rich corpo exec could pad their already absurdly robust bank account?!

I could almost have accepted the idea that my mother had died because some boosterherder like Grinder wanted her gibbies. After all: down here at the bottom it was a struggle to survive for all of us, and sometimes the weak just ended up getting stomped down by the strong who were just trying to keep their heads above water like the rest of us. The only difference being that they were ‘better’ at it by virtue of their strength.

But that hadn’t actually been the case this time. It wasn’t Grinder and his goons flexing their might to get a comfortable living off the backs of those who couldn’t resist them. It was all in service to creatures who flew around in luxurious sky wagons so they could sip expensive coffee in the living rooms of their opulent multi-floor downtown condos. My mother was killed because some…fucking corpo who’d paid more for a suite than my mother had earned in a year wasn’t already satisfied with having more money than they could hope to spend in a lifetime.

A cracking sound drew me out of my hazy red reverie. I glanced down towards the source and saw that my hoof had tensed up and was in the process of snapping off the headrest of the chaise lounge I was reclining on. I carefully released my hold, noting that there were already signs that significant damage had been done. Ah well, I already owed these creatures the better part of a hundred thousand gibbies for the arcanetics I’d just been outfitted with, what was the price of a new couch on top of that?

“...What’s going to happen to the execs when we out them? How long will they go to jail for?” I asked, barely even noticing that I’d subconsciously already included myself in their scheming. How could I not want to help the creatures who would bring justice to my mother?

Dandy let out a peel of laughter that drew a confused look from myself. “Ha! Oh, you precious summer-foal! Jail!” Another fit of laughter overtook the unicorn as he drew a hoof across his tearing eyes. “Oh, wow…remember when we were that naive?” He asked the diamond dog sitting next to him who was also quite obviously amused by my commnet. However, Barkly at least had the decency to keep her reaction restrained to a stifled snicker.

I looked back to Gerry, seeking assurance that there was going to be some form of punishment coming for those responsible for the pain my family had endured because of them. Unfortunately, I could tell from the griffon’s resigned expression that I wasn’t going to be thrilled with what I was hearing.

The tiercel was shaking his head slowly. “It’s…very unlikely that anything like that will happen. There’ll be layers of legal insulation and obfuscation in place that protect those high up. At best, we’d get some low to mid-level managers charged with racketeering. Maybe. Not likely though. Probably a few firings to appease the public and a lateral transition of a VP or two to make it look like something was done to ‘fix’ the problem.”

“So, what, Elysium just loses the contract and that’s it? They go on making slightly less money?”

Another round of giggling from Dandy. Another pause and an uncomfortable shift from the griffon. “...Elysium is the only firm large enough to manage the megasilos properly. The city can’t realistically give the contract to any other company.”

“So then what’s even the point?!” I yelled, drawing a look from Barkly that was equal parts surprise and amusement.

“The point is that they’ll stop,” Gerry assured me.

I snorted, not bothering to hide my skepticism. “And why would they? None of them are going to jail, they aren’t going to lose the contract―I bet they won’t even get a fucking fine either…”

“That much they’ll get,” Harriet nodded. Then added, “...but that’ll just get written off on the company’s taxes next year, meaning a smaller tax bill and more net profits. So, ultimately no ‘real’ loss for them there.”

I threw up my hooves in resignation and glared back at Gerry. “So, again: what’s the point? Why would they stop?”

“They’ll stop because the other megacorps will make them,” the griffon answered simply.

Oddly enough, and despite my assumption otherwise, none of the others thought that Gerry was joking or being sarcastic. I raised a quizzical eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“Think about it,” Gerry said. I tried, but still came up against a wall where the logical progression of events were concerned. I couldn’t see how Elysium’s shenanigans becoming public knowledge would infuriate other companies enough that they would be the ones to put pressure on the property manager. Weren’t they all out to make money?

“If a tenant in your megasilo didn’t need to pay off Grinder,” the griffon said, “what would they use that money for?”

I frowned. I knew what my mother would have been using it for. “Food, clothing, other stuff they needed,” I replied, though I still didn’t understand what the griffon was trying to get at. Yet, somehow, I seemed to have stumbled onto exactly the answer he was looking for, judging by his reaction.

“Exactly! That money wouldn’t just go into a black hole. It would be spent on other things. Other things owned by other companies,” Gerry stressed. I blinked a few times, and then what he was getting at finally started to dawn on me. “Those hundreds of millions of gibbies that Elysium was using boosterherds to funnel into the pockets of their higher-up execs were hundreds of millions of gibbies that weren’t going where they were ‘supposed to be’: into the pockets of the city’s consumer goods companies.

Harriet chimed in once more. “The membership of the board of directors for Elysium overlaps a little with the boards of other major Light City companies. The day after the story on Elysium’s operation breaks, there are going to be a lot of very angry board members in a lot of other companies who are going to realize that their company’s profits―and thus their personal bonus and dividend payments―could have been a lot higher for the last decade or so…except that one of their members got greedy and didn’t want to share.” The hippogriff mare wiggled her eyebrows knowingly, a predatory grin on her face.

“You don’t get to pinch gibbies from the pockets of your fellow board members and expect that they’ll let you keep on going ‘business as usual’,” Gerry nodded. “If Elysium’s execs want to stay on those other boards and keep earning a slice of all those other pies, they’ll be under pressure to stop Elysium from extorting their tenants so that those gibbies can resume flowing to the ‘right’ places.

“So, no, we’re not looking for the city or the police to do anything about this. We’re fighting fire with fire and sending the elites after each other. Is it real justice?” Gerry shrugged his shoulders in a helpless gesture. “I’m sorry, but that’s just not how Light City works. But the shakedowns will stop. That’s enough.”

For the first time during that interaction, Jenny reacted. Though it was with a derisive snort. Gerry flashed the donkey a brief look of annoyance before rolling his eyes and looking back at me. “It’s enough for now, anyway.”

If I said I wasn’t disappointed with what the realistic end goal appeared to be for all of this, I’d be lying. It infuriated me that the creatures who’d orchestrated all of the suffering my mother had gone through wouldn’t really receive anything close to what I thought of as real ‘justice’. They wouldn’t lose their ill-gotten wealth and have it returned to the public which they’d wronged. They wouldn’t go to prison. All that was going to happen was that they were going to receive a few harsh glares from their peers and be pressured into essentially taking a mild ‘pay cut’ of sorts.

Receiving slightly less obscene amounts of wealth for putting into motion the events that led to the deaths of my mother and my best friend―to say nothing of the suffering that tens of thousands of Light City’s most vulnerable residents had endured. No wonder Dandy had been moved to laughter: it was indeed a joke. Still, if the alternative was to sit by and do nothing while the practice continued…well, that was hardly an ‘alternative’ at all, was it?

“I’ll help,” I informed the griffon. “Whatever you need me to do, I’m in.”

The sound of the buzzer going off in my ears signaled the start of the latest round of drills I was currently undergoing. My arcanetic talisman lit up and drew the pistol from the holster hidden beneath my vest. About the time I managed to whip the weapon’s barrel downrange, an image of some generic boosterherd lowlife shimmered into being directly ahead of me. I pulled the trigger and heard the sound of the gunshot ring out. The target evaporated as my shot struck true. A second later, another similar target materialized off to my right. I shifted and fired. This time I found myself needing to take a second shot, my first apparently having gone wide.

The third and fourth targets also went down without any issue as I whipped around from one side to the other. However, I found myself wincing in acknowledgement of my failure when the fifth target materialized and I put a round directly through the image’s head. Something told me that I hadn’t been meant to shoot the stallion dressed in a business casual shirt and jacket carrying a cup of what was most likely coffee. Confirming those suspicions, I was immediately greeted by a sour chime in my ear just before the augmented reality simulation dissolved around me.

I was greeted to the sight of a familiar griffon reclining on one of the loft’s chaise lounges, a guitar held in his talons as he progressed slowly through a series of somber chords. He looked over at me. “Your aim’s gotten a lot better.” He waved a talon in the air and pointed over at the array of display screens on the far wall. A moment later, they produced an image of my last target. Gerry whistled and shook his head. “Ain’t no arcanetics that’ll fix that.”

I grimaced. “If I hesitate, the simulation ‘kills’ me for being ‘too slow’,” I pointed out to the griffon who was ostensibly ‘coaching’ me in order to get me ready to come along with them on their operation against Elysium Properties in a few days. The training was going…not preem so far.

“It sucks to be the ‘good guys’,” Gerry agreed with a knowing nod of his head as he went back to strumming chords.

“Oh, come on; it’s stupid for the sim to put random donks in there like that,” I protested, waving a hoof over at the screen and my latest innocent victim. “No way some rando wage-slave is going to be wandering around during a gunfight with a Haywood boosterherd!”

Gerry paused his strumming once more and shifted his gaze back to me. “What about when we’re running through Elysium’s offices in the middle of the night? You don’t think it’s possible that some poor sap might be hanging around after hours trying to get in a little overtime so they can afford a Hearth’s Warming present for their foal?” I didn’t have a response for that. “Sure, ideally we won’t even need to draw our guns if things go well,” he acknowledged with a shrug. “But if they don’t and we find ourselves getting chased around by Elysium security and bullets start flying…

“Don’t sit there and tell me you’ll be okay if you end up plugging some nine-to-fiver because you got caught up in the moment.”

He had a point. It wasn’t like I hadn’t already accidentally shot somepony who didn’t deserve it.

My telekinetic field started to waver as the bitter memories took hold. I holstered the pistol in my grasp before it could fall. I’d done enough practicing for one morning anyway. I stepped over to the fridge and withdrew a beer, deftly popping the cap with my talisman before finding a spot for myself to relax on another of the loft’s couches. For a while, I sipped at the drink in silence while the gold and ivory griffon resumed playing the guitar he held. Eventually though, I wasn’t able to hold back any further on a few of the questions that had been building within me since arriving here. Early on, it had been simple enough to keep quiet, since I didn’t want to risk wearing out my welcome with complete strangers. However, now that I was―apparently―a nominal member of their ‘crew’, it felt to me like I could be forgiven for wanting to understand them a bit more.

Besides, Gerry had thus far shown himself to be one of the more amicable members of their group. He was certainly the least likely to bite my head off if it turned out I was overstepping. “How did you guys get into all this…I don’t know, ‘vigilante business’, I guess? Is the band angle just a cover, or…?”

The griffon chuckled in response, his talons continuing to pick at the strings as he replied. “Nah, the music came first. At least, for most of us.” His gaze briefly flickered in the direction of Jenny’s room before returning to the instrument he was holding. “It was our outlet. Our way to ‘wail and gnash teeth’, as it were, against the monster that Light City had become. We wanted to wake creatures up to the problems that the system had created for us that seemed to just go unaddressed.

“It’s worth knowing that this was all back when we were naive and idealistic,” he added by way of caveat, “like you.” I narrowed my eyes at him and tried my best not to be overly offended by the latter comment. The griffon chuckled again and continued. “Of course, the trouble with music is that it’s pretty easy for creatures to just see it as entertainment. A distraction, more than any call to action.

“That’s hardly their fault. It’s not like we really have any ground to stand on getting upset that other creatures don’t feel like becoming revolutionaries when even we weren’t really doing anything to help either.

“So we started taking action ourselves.”

“So you guys are like, what? Robin Hooves and her Merry Mares? Robbing the corpos and helping the poor?”

“Something like that.” Gerry shrugged. “Nothing quite that simple and direct though. Just outright stealing from the megacorps wouldn’t fix anything. If anything, it would honestly create more problems than it would solve. We try to work within the system a lot more than we try to buck it. Mostly.”

“The same ‘system’ that won’t actually do anything to punish those Elysium fuckers who created an extortion racket that got my mother beaten to death?” I all but growled. Gerry at least had the decency to wince as he nodded soberly.

“Yup…that’s the one.”

“It seems like a pretty broken system, if you ask me.”

Another nod. “You won’t find anycreature here who’d argue that point with you,” he acknowledged, “but that doesn’t change the reality of the situation. There’s no practical way to ‘fix’ it in the short term. There’s certainly nothing the five of us can do. Er, six, rather.”

“Okay, so what can we do that works ‘within the system’ then?”

“We expose the problems. Get the word out to the public and create pressure on the city officials and megacorps, like how we talked about with Elysium’s board members. Dandy works as an investigative journalist for LCN. He has a weekly show on Saturdays. When we uncover really screwed up stuff like what Elysium is doing, he airs it on his segment.”

I frowned at the griffon. “And how does him talking about it on the news help with anything if nocreature is going to actually get arrested or anything? What’s the point?”

To my surprise―and presumably even Gerry’s, if his shocked expression was enough to go by―it was Jenny herself who provided the answer to my question. At some point during our conversation, she’d apparently wandered out of her room and was on her way to the fridge for a beer of her own. “The ‘point’ is to get creatures ‘in the know’,” she quipped, “to let them know how the system’s fucking with them. To remind them that this isn’t how things should be and get them mad.”

The donkey used her arcanetic hoof to deftly remove the cap from her bottle, but she didn’t take a drink yet, instead continuing to explain the plan to me as she circled around the lounge I was reclining on. “Sure, at first the masses are probably just going to grumble a bit. They’ll whine into their whiskey at the bar and talk a big game, but ultimately not do anything but get drunk and go back to their shithole lives; rinse, repeat. Complaining is the oldest pastime of the peon. In the end, they’ll just take it on the chin and wake up the next morning asking for another hit from The Mare.

“How many times did you let Grinder hit you?” The jenny asked me with a sneer on her lips that left me feeling a mixture of anger and shame. I didn’t respond though, because I knew that she was right. I’d let my late boosterherd leader smack me around for years without raising a hoof against him. Out of fear for the most part. That was the easy answer though, looking back on things. A more honest part of me knew that I’d let it happen in part because I didn’t really believe that things could be better for me. That what I was enduring was just the way my life was ‘supposed’ to play out at the hooves of the powerful. Because, what was I realistically going to be able to do to change how things happened in the herd?

“But,” Jenny continued, “most creatures can only be pushed so far before they finally stand up and cry out: ‘no more!’” Her sneer was more predatory now, and I could see a hungry glint in her sapphire eyes. Determined. Unwavering. I wondered if that was what Grinder had seen in me in those last moments when I’d finally stood up to him after seeing what he’d done to Hash Stack’s body.

The rockerfilly seemed to know exactly what I was thinking about at that moment, because she started nodding in my direction. “Exactly! Even a submissive little bitch like you eventually stiffens up after she’s taken it up the ass for long enough!”

My expression immediately soured, both as a result of not-a-compliment as well as the mental image her phrasing evoked. Ew.

“We push the public far enough and hard enough by shoving shit like Elysium in their faces, and someday they’ll finally stand up and burn this shithole system to the fucking ground! Those elite corpo fucks will fall from their ivory towers as the whole house of cards they built for themselves on our backs comes tumbling down around their ears!”

Jenny punctuated her declaration by raising the bottle clutched in the crook of her organic forehoof into the air in a gesture akin to a toast before finally bringing it to her lips and chugging the contents of the bottle in their entirety. She then discarded the now empty bottle by apathetically tossing it away, causing the glass container to roll noisily along the floor, and somehow managing not to break it. The donkey then leaned over the lip of the chaise I was on and jabbed her arcanetic hoof at me. “That’s why we need you,” she declared, much to my own obvious astonishment.

“You need me?”

The donkey nodded her head sagely. “We need a spark to kick off the fire that’s going to burn the system down, and it takes six to create the spark.”

“...What?” I’d heard Jenny speak in a good deal of hyperbole up to this point, but this was the first time that I hadn’t been able to at least vaguely follow what she was talking about. Though it wasn’t the first time I’d heard the number six discussed where it related to me being a part of their crew. I craned my head back to look at Gerry once more. “Why is it so important that there be six of us?”

“Because there are six Elements,” the griffon tiercel replied, as though that answer was supposed to make any kind of sense to me.

“Old Equestrian legend…prophecy…thing,” Jenny explained, twisting her mirror hoof in the air in front of her lazily. “If we want to restore Harmony, then we need to work as a group of six.” The donkey must have seen my blank stare for what it was and gave a shrug before gesturing in the direction of the band’s guitarist. “Gerry’s the expert on that stuff. I just know that it’s been working out for us so far.

“I’ll let him explain it to you.” She glanced pointedly at the griffon. “I’ve got a meeting with Rouge at the Glue Factory. I’ll be back later.” And, with that, the jenny turned and trotted out the door.

I stared after the donkey before slowly turning my head to look back at the tiercel. “...Was that some weird way of saying she was going to go take a shit?”

The griffon chortled. “No,” he assured me, shaking his head with a soft chuckle. “The Glue Factory is the name of a bar in Trotson. Rouge runs the place. She’s also the best fixer in Light City. She and Jenny go way back. Like, before she was ‘Silverhoof’ back.”

“Oh.” I nodded slowly in vague understanding. Then I suddenly paused as a thought occurred to me. I briefly glanced in the direction of the exit to ensure that the donkey was truly out of earshot before returning my attention to the griffon. I leaned in closer to him and spoke in an almost conspiratory whisper, as I suspected that a question like this would be considered something of a sensitive matter. “Hey…so I noticed that Jenny doesn’t have a talisman to let her use magic like everycreature else. Is there a reason for that, or…?”

Comprehension blossomed over the tiercel’s face and a soft smile spread across his beak. “Ah, yeah, that.” He leaned back in his own lounge. “It’s pretty simple really: She sees these implants as a form of ‘control’. Or maybe ‘leverage’ is a better word for it…?” He pondered the thought for a second before shrugging. “Regardless: she refused to patronize Light City’s corporations any more than is absolutely necessary. It’s her own little passive way of ‘fighting the system’ on a day-to-day basis.”

“But none of the rest of you feel the same way?” I asked, gesturing at the gemstone mounted just below the griffon’s crest plumage. My tone wasn’t accusatory; I was genuinely just curious.

“For some of us it isn’t an option. Like Hariett and Dandy,” he noted. “Can’t nettrot without a lot of invasive implants, and most white collar jobs―like news reporting―require a creature to be able to interface with most Light City systems through arcanetics. For me and Barkly, it's a little simpler: it’s another weapon in our arsenal to use against the megacorps. Though with Barkly that metaphor is a bit less ‘metaphorical’,” he added with a wink.

“Jenny gets by without it though. Honestly, she wouldn’t even have the arcanetic hoof if she hadn’t lost her real one in an accident years ago.” At my unasked question, the griffon elaborated. “She worked at some kind of factory early on in her life. Pretty mundane story: manager was bucking for a promotion. So they rolled back some safety regs to increase production numbers to help themselves look good. It ended the way you’d expect.

“Jenny lost her leg. A few others were maimed too. Earth pony working next to her was killed outright. Pretty messy end too, if I recall. Production line was back up and running before lunch like nothing happened.

“Manager got his promotion and a performance bonus at the end of the quarter.”

“Damn. That’s fucked up,” I said.

“That’s Light City.”

I once more directed my gaze in the direction of the loft’s exit. I suspected that Jenny wasn’t the sort who put up with offers of sympathy, but she still had mine. I could certainly understand why she was so pissed off at how things were for most of the creatures on the lower rungs of Light City’s societal ladder.

I once more turned to the griffon. “So, what is the whole deal with needing six of us? Jenny mentioned a prophecy?” I quirked a skeptical brow as I put a little more stress on the last word. It was pretty hard to tell with the donkey when she wasn’t just being colorful with her word choice. I assumed it was a consequence of her lyric-writing vocation. I might not have any sort of formal education or experience in song-writing, but I’d certainly listened to enough music to know that most musicians leaned heavily into hyperbole and metaphor with their writing. I was starting to wonder if I was supposed to not take everything that Jenny said a face value.

Judging from the griffon’s crinkled expression, I suspected that he wasn’t the greatest fan of the donkey’s word-choice either. “‘Prophecy’ definitely isn’t the right word, no. I’d say that it’s more of a guideline? That seems closer.

“How much do you know about Harmony?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never done anything with music,” I told him.

A look of confusion flashed briefly across Gerry’s feathered brow before he let out a chirp of laughter and shook his head. “Ha! No, not that kind of harmony―though I can see why you’d assume.” He tapped a talon on the guitar he was holding. “I’m talking about big-H Harmony.” I felt an eyebrow rise up involuntarily, earning another soft chuckle from the griffon.

“So, the short version is that working with a group to pursue a shared goal can facilitate magic that helps accomplish that goal. The optimal number to generate that magic is six.”

I frowned at the griffon. “But won’t we only be generating magic using five of us if Jenny is there? You just said she doesn’t have a talisman that lets her use magic.” I pointed at my own forehead, and the gemstone mounted at the base of my horn to illustrate my point. “How’s she supposed to link up without one to do…whatever it is we’re going to do?”

Gerry shook his head. “No, I’m not talking about talisman magic. I mean the innate magic present in all living things.”

This time it was my turn to laugh. “What are you talking about? Living things don’t have ‘innate magic’; magic is toxic to us! That’s why we need to take potions if we have extensive arcanetic implants: so our bodies can adjust to interacting with the magical energy powering the augs.

“Everycreature knows that!”

“...What if I told you that everycreature was wrong?” Gerry asked, giving me a pointed look which no longer contained any mirth.

My own expression faltered briefly beneath his gaze. I sought out any hint that the griffon was engaging in some sort of elaborate attempt to deceive me for some purpose. It wasn’t like I’d never been lied to by others before so that my ignorance could be exploited. This was feeling like one of those times, given how outrageous the griffon’s claim was. Yet, at the same time, the tiercel’s expression was unwavering. Either he was completely serious, or he was one of the best liars I’d ever encountered.

Or maybe he just sincerely believed the lie?

“...Magic isn’t a natural phenomena,” I insisted, though without quite the conviction I’d had a few seconds ago. “That’s why we need talismans to use it. It’s technology.”

“You’re right. We do need talismans.” I felt some measure of relief that Gerry was at least willing to agree on that point. However, then he went on to add: “Now.” Again I felt myself growing more wary. Secret corporate conspiracies I could accept. They were at least logically consistent. But now the griffon was asking me to believe that everything I knew about how the world worked was a lie. Which I felt was a pretty big thing to ask me to just take on faith.

“You really expect me to believe that, once upon a time, we could all just do magic? No talismans involved?” I scoffed at the notion. Yet I noticed that the tiercel’s expression didn’t change, and I felt that nagging doubt growing more pronounced beneath the guitarist's conviction.

Gerry nodded. “Yup. There was a time unicorns like you could use your horns to cast spells on a whim and griffons like me could fly with just a flap of our wings. No gems needed.” He extended one of his wings, tracing a talon along the array of glittering topaz nodules embedded along its leading edge. A wan smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he briefly imagined what such a feat would be like.

As he’d talked, I’d found my gaze darting up briefly to my horn, going briefly cross-eyed as I tried to catch sight of its tip. Then I looked at Gerry’s wings. Admittedly, there’d always been a nagging thought in the back of my mind about pegasi, griffons, batponies, and such and their wings; and how they could only fly around with implanted talismans. We were told in school that their wings were just aesthetic, like unicorn and kirin horns. Hash had once explained that wasn’t how biology worked. Much like the conversation I found myself in now, it was hard to take an individual’s word over what everycreature ‘knew’ was the truth; no matter how much respect I might have for the specific individual.

It had created a crack in my old convictions though, and I’d found myself thinking about horns and wings and things more and more over the years. I wasn’t quite ready to let go of all of my skepticism yet though. This whole idea about innate magic seemed like a much bigger stretch than using wings to fly without the aid of implants. “So why can’t we do that stuff anymore?”

In an act that honestly didn’t do all that much to help the griffon’s case, the tiercel held up his talons in an exaggerated shrug, flashing me a lopsided smile. “Nocreature knows! Magic just doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Except for what we can pull from gemstones anyway.” Then, just as I opened my mouth, but before I could call him out on what was feeling a lot more like obvious bullshit, he held up a claw. “Except…for Harmony. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. We all have.” He gestured around the loft, clearly meaning the other members of the band.

“You might see it too during the Elysium op.” He flashed another grin my way. “Then you’ll be a believer too, I bet.”

I was still frowning at the griffon though. “So why is the number six so important?”

The tiercel opened his mouth as if to answer, then hesitated, and finally offered another―albeit smaller―shrug. “I don’t know.” I let out an audibly exasperated sigh, prompting the griffon to throw up his talons in mock surrender. “I know, I know; it sounds like the biggest cop-out ever!” At least he had the self-awareness to recognize how outlandish his claims were sounding. “But it’s the truth; I don’t know. None of us do. But we’ve been running ops for years and we know that we only experience Harmony when there are six of us working together.

“If it helps,” he went on, “I’m not asking you to ‘buy in’ to any of this. It’s not some kind of cult religion thing. You don’t want to believe it; that’s fine. By all means, don’t believe me. It won’t affect anything that happens. It just matters that you’re with us and that you want us to succeed. That’s all Harmony seems to care about either.”

I regarded the griffon for several more seconds in silence as I mulled his words over in my head. It was good that he wasn’t insisting that I take his claims on faith; because I doubted that I could. It wasn’t that I thought I knew better than the griffon. I’d never made any great claims in my life to omniscience. However, he had basically asked me to accept that everything that I’d ever seen and experienced all of my life wasn’t ‘normal’ or ‘right’, essentially. Which wasn’t how ‘normal’ definitionally worked, as I understood the word.

Creatures didn’t inherently possess magic. Magic interacted negatively with our bodies in large quantities, and that was why we needed to consume alchemical potions if we possessed substantial quantities of arcanetics. That was how things worked. How things had always worked.

…Right?

Where would Gerry have even heard any differently? Actually, now that I thought about it, that was a good question. I peered over at the griffon. “How’d you find out about all that Harmony stuff, anyway? By accident?”

The guitarist shook his head and then tossed me a wan smile. “Hash Stack, actually.” That got my attention, and it seemed that the tiercel was able to instantly recognize my interest in the subject. “During a dive into some records at city hall―records that led us to this whole Elysium job actually―Hash found an old archive. According to her, that thing had more wards and ICE than she’d ever seen in her life. Even Aeriesaka didn’t protect their most top secret files like this thing was―I don’t think she was exaggerating either.

“She never managed to fully break the wards on what she found,” Gerry admitted with a somber roll of his shoulders, his features briefly dimming at the recognition that the pegasus never would now. “She eventually cracked open a few smaller pieces though. References to Harmony―big ‘H’,” the tiercel amended with another wink in my direction before continuing. “Friendship―with a big ‘F’―and magic. Barely any mention of arcanetics or talismans though.

“Trust me, we were just as skeptical as you at first.” Gerry admitted with a warmer smile in my direction. “Then we saw the results for ourselves.”

I felt more of my earlier conviction wavering at the revelation. This information had come from Hash? Her I was more willing to believe―nothing against the griffon personally. He seemed nice enough. But Hash was Hash. She’d done so much for me without ever asking for anything in return. To say nothing of risking her life to save mine.

If it had been her sitting across from me telling me about Harmony, would I have been more willing to accept the notion?

…Honestly? I probably would have. Though seeing it with my own eyes would go a considerable way towards convincing me. I rolled off the lounge and relaunched the earlier simulation I’d been struggling with. “Then I guess I’d better make sure I’m ready to go with you guys on the op so I can see it too.”

Author's Note

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