I’ll admit that I was largely ignorant of how true clandestine operations were undertaken in Light City. I’d seen vids and such as a filly growing up, and those had left me with certain expectations. In some ways, those expectations were being met. Such as how I was presently standing in a dimly lit parking garage in the middle of the night on the outskirts of Clawcifica while I waited to meet my contact. That tracked pretty well with how I thought shady dealings would start out.

It was the next part that didn’t live up to the hype, if I’m being honest.

I assumed that the driver of the van which pulled up in front of me was who I was supposed to make contact with. If for no other reason than because it wasn’t like an old abandoned amusement park saw a lot of visitors at one in the morning. Certainly not this one specific parking garage. The hippogriff driver got out, looked me over, and then promptly took out a cigarette and lit it up with his talisman.

“You got the money?” The stallion asked through a puff of smoke.

I remained where I was leaning up against one of the garage’s pillars, doing my best to affect what I assumed was the expected ‘indifferent coolness’ that a mare in my position was supposed to be projecting. Without speaking, I lit my own talisman and floated over a wad of gibbies that I had been provided with expressly for this purpose. The hippogriff took the money in his talons and briefly flipped through the notes before apparently deciding that the amount he was holding was satisfactory. He then turned around and walked off without another word, leaving the van behind.

My lips pressed into a frown. That was really it? No ambiguous parting words? No insistence on ensuring that every last gryphusbit was accounted for? No attempt at a double-cross? The transaction was really going to go that smoothly? I mean, I guess that was okay…but it was kind of boring.

With what I swear wasn’t―quite―a disappointed sigh, I got into the van’s driver’s seat and peered into the back. I noted the stacked uniforms on the floor and the collection of mops, brooms, buckets, and the numerous jugs of various colored liquids. Pretty much everything that a professional cleaning crew would need on the job really. All of it was emblazoned with a “City Center Cleaners” logo. I turned on the engine and drove off.

What followed was ten minutes of the most careful driving I’d ever engaged in in my life. I didn’t technically have a license and so I didn’t want to get nabbed by a bored LCPD officer who had nothing better to do than pull me over for a traffic violation. That would have been a decidedly underwhelming way for this mission to end, I figured. Fortunately, I arrived at the next waypoint for the operation without mounting too many curbs―by which I mean three. I did manage to snap off the passenger-side mirror while pulling into this second parking garage though.

Five creatures standing around a group of other vehicles paused their conversation at the sound of scraping metal and shattering glass and turned to watch what must have been a very red-faced yellow unicorn slowly pulling a van up next to them. I very pointedly avoided making eye contact with a nearby glowering brown jenny.

The griffon tiercel in the group didn’t visibly judge me and simply moved around to the back and opened the door, stepping aside so that the rest of the group could pile in. Curiously, I noticed that the diamond dog was already carrying a mop bucket with her. Which seemed odd to me, considering that there were already a couple of them stowed in the back and it had felt like the van already having everything we’d need to appear like a cleaning crew had been part of the plan the others had all been briefed on. None of the others were carrying anything with them. When the whole band was seated, Gerry finally climbed in and closed the door behind him. Harriet was already sorting through the uniforms and doling them out to their intended respective owners.

The hippogriff paused as she examined one more closely. She frowned as she passed it to Barkly. “Looks like the best they could do for you was a minotaur-cut,” the nettrotter informed the burly diamond dog as she passed on the dark green coveralls.

Barkly just shrugged. “Eh; is not so different, honestly.”

I was finally passed a jacket of my own by the mare and set about dressing myself in the uniform. Once we were all properly attired, Harriet then issued each of us our freshly-forged employee identification cards. I glanced down at mine before affixing it to the jacket. The headshot was fine, but the name drew a squint from me. “...Rainbow Sunshine?” I grimaced and shot a look towards the hippogriff. “Seriously?”

Harriet held up her talons in mock surrender. “I was limited to names in the CCC database,” she explained in an attempt to absolve herself of any additional criticism. “I did my best.”

“You’re telling me that there’s actually some poor sod in Light City named: Spotted Dick?” Dandy deadpanned, holding up his own badge for all to see. Barkly did a poor job of suppressing a chortle; eventually giving up the effort and settling into a wheezing laugh. The lavender unicorn glared at her.

“Zip it, Dandy.” The donkey growled from where she’d taken up position next to me in the van’s passenger seat.

“Don’t you mean: ‘zip it, Dick’?” Barkly snickered. The large diamond dog stifled her mirth when she caught the unamused glare that Jenny shot her from the front of the van. Her gaze whipped briefly to Harriet when the nettrotter mumbled under her breath: “Everypony’s a fucking critic…”

Silverhoof held her glare for several more seconds until she was assured that the antics in the rear had ceased, and then turned back around and waved her hoof towards the road. “Take us to Elysium.” I nodded and carefully guided the van along the illusionary route that Harriet had provided for me prior to starting this whole operation. I managed to only just slightly jump the curb on the turn out of the garage, earning scattered exclamations from the back.

“Remind me again why the filly’s driving?” Gerry asked as he reached up and idly rubbed the back of his head where it had bounced off the metal wall of the van when I’d mounted the curb.

“Because she was already in the driver’s seat and she could use the practice,” was Jenny’s curt reply. Then, with an aside glance in my direction, she added: “...Apparently.”

“Sorry.” I mumbled as I took the next turn a little wider. I only briefly strayed over the double-yellow lines before swerving back into the lane’s boundaries. “This is only, like, my third time driving.”

Jenny slowly turned her whole head in my direction while wearing a stoic expression. “What.” I felt additional movement behind me as other interested parties leaned forward so that they could stare at me.

I nearly ran a red light due to how anxious I was feeling with all of those judgmental eyes now suddenly watching my every move. “You asked me if I knew how to drive, and I told you: ‘yeah, my herd showed me last year.’ You didn’t ask me if I was any good at it!

“Why’d I need to be the one driving at first anyway?” I countered. “What did all of you have to do that was so important?”

“Nothing. But this way, if the guy who dropped off the van gets questioned about any of this later, he can’t point any hooves at the more easily recognizable members of Hussar. Just you. Some random filly who was part of a boosterherd that Elysium was employing.” Jenny explained. “Now any investigation that Elysium does about tonight will just end up pointing right back at them.”

“Okay,” I nodded in understanding. That did sound like a pretty reasonable precaution to take, I had to admit. However, it did leave me with one question: “So what happens to me if Elysium comes snooping around?”

“We’ll kill you.” Harriet quipped from the back without any hesitation.

I mounted another curb. Once I had the van back on the road, I turned around and gaped at the hippogriff. However, before I could demand an explanation, Jenny smacked me upside the head with her eponymous hoof and snapped, “Eyes on the road!” I resumed facing forward, but I certainly didn’t let the matter drop.

“You want to run that by me again?!”

The hippogriff nettrotter was happy to elaborate, sounding completely nonplussed by the idea of my demise. “Yeah: we’ll amend the police report the LCPD did when they finally swung by to clean up the warehouse after we iced Grinder and his crew and add your name to the list of those killed. Elysium’s investigators will hit a dead end and be fresh out of leads.

“Why? What’d you think I meant?” The mare’s tone and her broad grin of obviously feigned innocence made it clear that she was perfectly aware of how her initial statement could have been easily misconstrued to imply something else entirely.

“Cut the filly some slack, Harriet.” I heard Gerry lightly admonish before he directed his next words at me. “You’re part of our crew now, Pel. We’re not going to just leave you with your flank hanging in the breeze. We all look out for each other.”

“Exactly!” Dandy chimed in. “The only ‘dying’ you should be thinking about are the numerous ‘little deaths’ that you’d experience during a night of passion with yours tru―OW!” That last outburst was accompanied by what sounded distinctly like a head hitting the side of the van.

“Thank you.” I was surprised to hear those two words come out of my mouth in chorus with Jenny’s. The pair of us exchanged a brief look, where I thought I saw the briefest hint of a smile touch the donkey’s face before she once more directed my focus back towards driving the van.

“De nada,” Barkly responded.

The offices of Elysium Property Management Services were located in Aeriesaka Tower. Which I’d found to be something of a surprise when this part of the operation was first briefed to me. I’d assumed that the building was exclusively used by Aeriesaka. Gerry had explained that most of the larger skyscrapers in Light City played host to several different corporate offices. Even a lot of the larger organizations in the city couldn’t justify needing a whole fifty-plus floor building to manage their operations. To that end, only about a dozen or so floors of the massive building we were approaching were actually explicitly used by Aeriesaka. Something like three quarters of the building was leased out to other organizations.

Though it did seem that only one company was used to clean it, judging by the half dozen other identical Central City Cleaners vans that were parked on the main level of the otherwise sparsely occupied subterranean garage. Jenny directed me to park among our other ‘fellow cleaners’. When I finally situated the van and turned the engine off, I heard activity in the rear of the vehicle as the others set about extracting themselves out through the back doors, along with most of the cleaning supplies.

I extracted myself from the driver's seat and fell into step with the rest of the group. I was passed an empty push-cart and a roll of plastic bags. The latter I shifted to my new company-branded saddlebags with my talisman while I reared up on my hind legs to push the other. I followed the rest of the group as they headed for a nearby service elevator. When we stepped in, I noticed that there wasn’t an option for us to go any higher than the lobby. If any of the others thought this was odd, they didn’t react. Gerry reached out with a talon and keyed in the main floor of the building as our destination.

The trip took only moments, and then the doors opened up into one of the most opulent and cavernous rooms that I’d ever seen in my life outside of vids. The ceiling was easily ten meters above the floor, hosting a half dozen gargantuan chandeliers that were each larger than the van we’d driven up here in. It took me almost a full minute of staring before I realized that those chandeliers weren’t actually mounted into the ceiling itself, but were instead affixed to clouds and lazily orbiting around the lobby like some ethereal merry-go-round.

Beneath those masterpieces of lighting, my eyes spotted several long reception counters that looked like they’d been carved out of singular slabs of granite dozens of meters long and polished to a mirror shine. They were all unoccupied, but the computer terminals sitting atop them suggested that a significant number of creatures could normally be found working behind those counters during normal business hours. Presently, however, there was only one occupied space: a centrally located U-shaped desk with a pair of uniformed griffons sitting at it. One of them was standing up, eyeing us as we stepped out of the elevator.

“Vamos.” I heard Barkly softly growl from behind me as a paw gently nudged me forward. It was then I realized that I was lagging behind the rest of the group and spurred myself into a brisk two-legged trot to catch up, wincing as I heard one of the wheels of my cart squeaking loudly. The others were already lining up at what was very clearly some sort of security checkpoint, where a black-feather griffon tiercel who stood a whole head and shoulders above Gerry was ushering our group through an archway. Meanwhile all of our gear was being placed onto a belt and fed through a scanning machine of some sort.

Jenny was the first one through. As she presented her badge to the tiercel for him to examine, I heard the griffon proclaim: “You guys are getting in pretty late.” He refrained from returning the donkey’s badge, clearly awaiting an explanation for our apparent tardiness.

“Our usual truck wouldn’t start,” our leader replied with a dismissive shrug of her shoulders. “Took a while for management to find us one that worked, then a bit longer to move all our shit into it.”

The guard’s only response was to grunt before finally returning her badge. Then he moved on to check Gerry’s. He didn’t seem to have any further questions for our group.

When it was my turn, the Aeriesake security guard took a look at my cart and indicated that I should just push it through the archway. I tried to hide my nervousness as I cautiously stepped through, warily eyeing the array of glowing diamonds that adorned the metal ‘door’. They didn’t seem to react to my passage, which I took as a good sign. Not that I could think of any reason why they should have reacted. It wasn’t like I actually had any weapons on me. To the best of my knowledge, our whole group was unarmed. At least, I hadn’t been given a gun before being sent out to collect the van.

Once I was through, the tiercel reached out his talons towards me. I managed not to flinch away as I activated my talisman and floated my identification badge to him. The griffon’s eyes briefly scanned it and passed it back. I let out a breath I hadn’t realize dI’d been holding and reclipped it to my jacket before clearing out of the way.

Barkly was the last to step through the security checkpoint and be checked, at which point we were directed to collect all of the gear which the other guard had finished examining through the machine and pointed at another service elevator. This one allowed for significantly more options where destination floors were concerned. Gerry keyed in the code for the floor which would take us to Elysium’s offices.

This ride was significantly longer than the one up from the garage had been. It appeared that Elysium’s leased suites were on the thirty-second level of the building. When the doors opened, we were greeted by the sight of a long hallway. We filed out but didn’t make it far before Jenny subtly motioned for us to stop. I furrowed my brow in confusion but said nothing. The donkey glanced over her shoulder at Harriet and then jerked her head in the direction of a security camera nestled in the corner by the elevator door. The hippogriff mare merely nodded and then glanced up at the indicated camera. A second later, the little glowing red light on the front which announced its operational status dimmed and the servo holding it erect powered down, leaving the surveillance camera hanging limply against the wall.

Just as the camera went down, Barkly reached into the mop bucket that she was pushing around and used one of her claws to pull out the bottom. At least, I thought it was the bottom. However, as the circular metal sheet was lifted into the air, I saw that it revealed a false compartment. Gerry reached in and started to remove the pistols that had been sequestered there.

As the griffon tiercel passed them out to the group, I cocked my head. “...How did Aeriesaka miss those?” This building was supposed to have some of the best security in the city. Was I to believe that their sophisticated scanning equipment couldn’t see through a metal bucket?

Barkly flashed a grin in my direction and then flipped the lid towards me. It was then that I noticed the talisman embedded on the bottom of it. “Warding talismans,” the diamond dog said, confirming my assumption. “Blocks scrying. Shows up as a void.”

“Which might be a problem in most situations.” Gerry chimed in now as he turned to hand me my own pistol. I noticed the others were tucking theirs out of sight under their uniforms, so I used my talisman to do the same. “However, an empty bucket is supposed to have a void in it. So it’s fine.

“These are precautionary only,” the griffon went on, passing out the last of the weapons to Jenny. I felt like I saw them exchange a meaningful look, but it was broken before I could be sure. Then he was looking back my way. “Only take it out if your life is in danger. Otherwise, try to run and evade as a first option if you’re discovered. This isn’t Haywood. Bodies draw attention here.”

“Especially ‘here’,” Harriet stressed. “If word got out that Aeriesaka Security couldn’t protect its clients from armed intruders, you can bet heads would roll. Probably literally. Whoever is in charge of security would want to make examples of whoever shamed them before they got axed too.”

“This is an info-grab job anyway.” The donkey finished stowing her own pistol and cast one last look around to make sure that we all still looked like innocuous janitors. She nodded her head in satisfaction. “There’s nothing here we should need to shoot at.” With that, she turned around and signaled for us to follow her down the corridor.

A short walk later, it emptied out into another―though dramatically more reserved―reception area. This time the―much smaller―desk was occupied by only a single guard. Though this one was wearing a different uniform than what the griffons had been dressed in downstairs. Where the Aeriesake Security officers had been attired in matte black armor-reinforced uniforms with blood-red trim and the winged crown of the griffon royal family emblazoned on their shoulders, the earth pony mare half-asleep in the chair up here was dressed in a simple white button-down shirt and black tie and wearing a navy blue cap with “SECURITY” embroidered upon the front.

The mare glanced up at us with a quirked brow as we all walked into view. She immediately sat up straighter in her seat, a critical eye fixed on all of us. “Hold on; who are you guys? You’re not the regula―!” The guard suddenly stiffened, her talisman bursting to life with crimson light. It pulsed once and her mouth opened in a silent gasp of pain…and then she went completely limp, falling out of her chair onto the floor below.

Shocked, and mindful of the warning that I’d been given less than a minute ago about the desire not to leave behind any casualties, I leaped over the desk to check on the downed mare. I began to tap her on the cheek, trying to get a response out of her. Harriet was stepping around the desk as well, though without nearly any of the urgency which I’d had. I looked up at the hippogriff, waiting for her to tell me what should be done for the guard…but the mare just ignored me. Instead, she turned her attention to the computer terminal that the guard had been dozing in front of.

A set of talons gently gripped my shoulder and urged me back onto my hooves. “It’s okay,” Gerry assured me in a calming tone. “She’s fine. Harriet just put her out for a bit.”

The nettrotter was presently teasing out the access cabling implanted in her wrist and plugging it into the open port on the terminal, but she seemed completely aware of the griffon’s assurances. “There’s something of an ‘exploit’ present in the standard arcanetic talismans everycreature has―” Jenney cleared her throat. “Most creatures have,” Harriet corrected with an audible eyeroll before she continued her explanation. “Thanks to a lawsuit that FF.Inc lost years ago after one of their talismans shorted out, they put out a patch that casts a sleep charm on the user if a dangerous overload is detected.

“So, all I have to do is feed somecreature’s implant a couple of runes that sends the talisman into a power-feedback loop and, in a few seconds,” she snapped her claws for dramatic emphasis, “out like a light.”

“A lawsuit caused that?” I glanced up at Gerry.

The griffon shrugged. “Some corpo exec’s kid was dicking around with back-alley ‘upgrades’ for his arcanetics. Accidentally triggered that same sort of power overload that Harriet was talking about. But, without the sleep charm, the kid was conscious the whole time the talisman built up mana. There’s a safety feature that prevents the talisman from outright exploding,” the tiercel assured me.

Harriet interjected with a “Usually!”

Gerry waved away her contribution and continued on. “But not before it’s built up a lot of mana; and right on top of your brain. Think of the worst headache you’ve ever had, and then multiply that by about a thousand.” He shared a knowing look and I felt myself wincing in sympathy.

“Kid survived, but his mom filed a massive ‘pain and suffering’ suit against FF.Inc. Updating their talismans with the sleep charm trigger was their solution.”

“Cheaper than actually fixing the overload bug, apparently,” Harriet contributed.

“So she’ll be out for a while,” the griffon motioned to the prone earth pony, “but is otherwise fine; I promise.”

I nodded in understanding. A second later, Harriet disconnected herself from the terminal and announced the completion of her latest task to the group. “Triggered a server update and reset for the cameras. It’ll look like some IT tech fucked up and mistimed the maintenance cycle. We’ve got an hour to ourselves.”

Jenny nodded. “Good.” She glanced at the rest of us. “Harriet and I will head for the executive suites and grab what we came here for. The rest of you…” The donkey made a show of running her hoof along the top of the reception desk that the guard had been sitting at and looking at the results with a mildly disgusted look on her face. “This place is filthy. Get cleaning.”

“Wait, really?” I balked, looking between the faces of the rest of the group to see whether or not she was making a joke in an effort to mess with me. “We’re actually going to clean this place?”

Gerry reached out and snapped up a roll of plastic bags in his talons. “There’s no guarantee that this office is completely empty,” he said as he started walking off down one of the other hallways. “Emptying the trash and shit gives us a chance to scope the whole floor without looking suspicious. Plus it might raise questions if management comes in tomorrow and sees that nothing got done by the cleaning crew.” The griffon motioned for me to follow him, and so I did. Meanwhile, Dandy and Barkly went their own way, pushing a mop bucket and a vacuum cleaner. I didn’t see which way Jenny and Harriet went.

The hallway that Gerry led me down eventually opened up into a cubical farm. Just as he’d suggested we were going to do, the tiercel started hoisting bags of the day’s trash out of the small waste baskets under the desks and tossing them into the large bin I was still pushing around. Then he’d stuff in a fresh liner from the roll he was carrying. It was a little surreal to realize that this mission to break into a corporate office and steal sensitive company data about their illegal shakedown operations would also involve me doing the closest thing to ‘an honest day’s work’ that I’d ever done in my life.

Huh.

After we’d worked our way down a couple of aisles of claustrophobically-cramped cubicles, Gerry turned and tossed the significantly diminished roll of liners at me, which I barely managed to catch in my telekinesis. The griffon then snatched up a rag and a bottle of cleaning solution. “You keep on with the trash; I’m going to wipe stuff down.” He then walked off, leaving me on my own.

I did as I’d been told, using my talisman to levitate out the bags of refuse from the bins and replace them with fresh ones from the roll floating beside me. All the while I kept my ears open for any sounds that might suggest somecreature besides us was among the workstations. I didn’t end up coming across anycreature, much to my relief. At least, not anycreature that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Jenny gave me a bit of a fright when she unexpectedly stepped out of the door to an office bearing a placard which indicated it belonged to the ‘CFO’―whatever that meant―which I’d been about to go into. My telekinesis had my pistol halfway out of my jacket by the time I recognized the donkey. She cast me a withering look as she noticed what I’d been about to do. “Calm your teets, you fucking donk. You either keep that thing out of sight unless your life is in danger, or I’m taking it from you to make sure you don’t do something stupid and fuck this up for us.”

I nodded and very hastily slipped the pistol back out of sight. “Sorry.” My eyes caught a brief flicker of crimson as Jenny’s arcanetic hoof moved to her side and tucked something out of sight beneath her own uniform. It had looked to me like a shard of some sort, but I couldn’t be sure. I pushed the thought out of my mind and was about to slip past the jenny to get into the office and empty the trash can within when the donkey singer’s organic forelimb snapped out across the doorway and blocked my progress. I drew up short with a start and looked, wide-eyed, at her.

“This room’s good.” Silverhoof stared at me for several seconds before finally jerking her head further down the hall. “Move along.”

I gave the jenny another―much less sure―nod of my head and continued pushing my cart further down the corridor without argument. I made a mental note to ask Gerry about this later. At this point I wasn’t sure if it was me, or if the donkey was just a hard creature to read in general. Granted, I could well imagine that I wasn’t the jenny’s favorite pony on the planet. Intentionally or not, I had killed a good friend of hers not too long ago.

That sobering reminder in my head, I slipped into the next suite along the hall. I suffered another brief round of heart palpitations when I saw that this office wasn’t empty either. At least this time I managed to keep from going immediately for my pistol long enough to identify the familiar hippogriff nettrotter. Harriet glanced briefly in my direction from where she was presently sitting at the desk bearing the nameplate: ‘Summer Wind, CEO’. I said nothing, not wanting to risk antagonizing another member of the band, and simply used my talisman to extract the trash can from beneath the desk.

A moment later, Jenny stepped into the room. The donkey seemed content to ignore my presence entirely as she walked up to the aquamarine hippogriff. She held out her hoof, passing a small sapphire shard to the nettrotter. “Finished planting the messages.”

“Good,” Harriet said, taking back the offered crystal. Her eyes then glazed over. “Now for the part of this I’m going to hate…” she muttered through a disgusted sigh. “I’m a disgruntled finance officer whose conscience finally got the best of them,” the hippogriff sarcastically sing-songed as the talisman mounted just below her crest flickered with activity. “I just finished spilling the beans to the news, and now I’m going to do a really shitty job covering my tracks because I’m a glorified CPA and don’t know anything about how network security works. Aaaannnnd…done!”

The hippogriff pushed back from the desk, a physically ill expression on her face. “Intentional or not, I can genuinely taste the bile from how disgusted being that sloppy made me feel.” She glanced back in my directions and held up a single talon. “Don’t leave quite yet. I may need you to change out the liner again, because I think I may actually puke.”

“I’m starting to think being a drama princess is intrinsically linked to being a nettrotter,” Jenny said with a snort directed at the other mare.

“A strong sense of professional pride is installed into our implants as part of the firmware package, yeah,” she quipped, a smug expression on the hippogriff’s face just before she returned her attention back to the terminal. “Now that the important bits are out of the way, let’s see if there are any other juicy nuggets of intel here for us to―woah!” The netrotter bolted upright in the chair in clear surprise. “Oh, shit!”

“What?” Both the donkey and I chorused. I felt my gut tightening with dread. Anything that would take the otherwise calm and collected mare by surprise like that certainly couldn’t be good news, after all.

“Are we compromised?” Jenny added, her own tone hardening in anticipation of having to make some contingencies to the mission.

“No,” the netrotter assured us quickly, but I didn’t see her relax in the slightest. “Just found a high-level secured message to the CEO from Aeriesaka. It’s a courtesy announcement giving them a warning that tower security is going to be getting a lot tighter next week.” Her eyes finally regained their focus once more, but now they were filled with awe. “...The king’s coming.”

My brain locked up. I might not have been ‘in the know’ about most of what went on in Light City, but I knew enough that I didn’t have to ask which ‘king’ Harriet was talking about. After all, there was only one ‘king’ in the world―or, at least there was only one king that mattered: King Grover V, the supreme ruler of the Griffon Kingdom which lay a few hundred miles across the western sea. And while the technical legal semantics were a bit murkier on the subject, it wasn’t entirely inaccurate to say that he ‘owned’ the whole of Light City.

That being said, visits from the griffon sovereign were, to put it mildly, extremely rare. As in: ‘the king hasn’t been to Light City since the official dedication over fifty years ago’ rare. Not that any of Equestria’s alicorn princesses had been by in just as long either, but still…

At least there was the occasional piece of news coming out of the Griffon Kingdom. I couldn’t really recall the last time I’d seen anything mentioned regarding Equestria or its ruler.

One had to wonder why it was that King Grover V was motivated to swing by now though. It had to be for a pretty important reason, right?

Oddly enough, I saw that Jenny was looking a lot more relaxed after receiving the news that either Harriet or I appeared to be. The donkey frowned and shook her head. “Fuck’s sake, Hare; you about gave me a fucking heart attack. We’ve got bigger things to worry about right now than some cat-assed royal who’s not even here. We’re in Aeriesaka Tower; stay focused until we’re out of here and back at the loft.”

She looked around the office once more and then nodded her head towards the CEO’s terminal. “Are we wrapped up here?”

The hippogriff blinked a few times in surprise, apparently just as caught off guard as I was that Jenny wasn’t reacting more strongly to what genuinely had to be some of the biggest news in Light City since its founding. She glanced briefly at the nearby computer and nodded. “Yeah, we’re all good here. Got what we need and the breadcrumbs we want laid are scattered where they can be not-too-easily found. We can leave any time.”

The donkey turned for the door and started heading out of the office. “Then put the word out to wrap things up and let's get out of here.”

Harriet started trotting out the door after the singer. As she left, I heard her voice simultaneously in my ear and in my head. “Jenny says: rally at the elevator. We’re clocking out.” A chorus of acknowledgements followed shortly after and I pushed my mostly full cart after them.

The trip out of the building was fortunately just as uneventful as getting in had been. We returned our firearms to the false-bottomed mop bucket, loaded into the service elevator, and exited back out past security in the building’s lobby before returning to the parking garage. We piled into the van along with all of our gear and supplies. I was replaced at the wheel by Gerry though, which I was perfectly fine with.

I started shucking my City Center Cleaners uniform off the moment the van was back out on the street, and I wasn’t the only one either. The rest of the crew seemed just as happy to be out of their disguises as I was. I watched Harriet pass a crystal shard to Dandy, the unicorn accepting the little piece of storage medium with a broad grin and a gleeful laugh. “Mulitzer Prize, here I come!”

The lavender unicorn’s mirth was interrupted by a sudden slamming of the breaks of the van, which itself was accompanied by an outburst of curses from Gerry and Jenny both. “Fucking shells!” “Rat fuck!”

No sooner had the van come to a complete stop than I heard blaring sirens growing lowder. My heart leaped into my throat as I began to panic, certain that we’d somehow been identified and were about to be swarmed by LCPD and arrested. I wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines either, it seemed. I noticed that Barkly had already pried the lid off of the mop bucket’s hidden compartment and was holding a revolver in her paw. Apparently aware of the move, Jenny whipped her arcanetic hoof into view from where she was sitting in the front passenger seat and waved for everycreature else to remain calm and seated.

From where I was in the back of the van, I didn’t have a clear view through the front windshield, but I was able to catch the glints of reflected red and blue lights as LCPD cars approached us…and then passed right on by down the cross-street. Not just one or two of them either. It felt to me like every officer in the city’s entire department was whipping past us on their way to…somewhere.

Harriet provided the answer to my unasked question a few seconds later. “According to the police scanners, there’s something big going down at GlimTech. LCPD wants all hooves on deck.”

We all exchanged glances with one another. It appeared that ours was not the only crew doing something in City Center that they shouldn’t ought to have been. However, it did seem that our operation had gone a lot more smoothly.

It was the better part of five minutes later before the sounds of sirens and the flashing lights had cleared and we were allowed to proceed on our way back to Haywood. Even then, we didn’t make it more than a few more blocks before we stopped again―albeit much less abruptly. I did notice more flashing lights though. Once more, Jenny motioned for quiet.

A short while later, after creeping forward a bit, Gerry rolled down his window and leaned his head out. “Busy night, officer?” I heard the faint lilt of a joking undertone in his rhetorical question. At least the LCPD officer he was speaking with seemed to be in a good enough mood to roll with it.

“The overtime tonight is going to put the bean-counters through an early molt,” I heard a gruff feminine voice typically reserved for a griffon hen respond with a mild chortle. “Where’re you folks coming from?”

“Just finished a shift in Aeriesaka,” the griffon replied easily, affecting a pleasantly conversational tone with the unseen officer who’d stopped us. “Heading back to the bullpen to resupply and then it’s on to the LCU annex by GlimTech.”

“Ha! Not tonight it’s not; not anymore,” the officer corrected him. “You’re going to want to tell your boss everything within three blocks of GlimTech is going to be locked down all night. An official announcement will go out over the Net soon, but figured I’d save you a trip back out here just for me to turn you around again in an hour.”

“Oh, wow!” Gerry probably didn’t have to do much acting to sound surprised by the news. Considering Harriet hadn’t been able to find out many more details herself. “What’s going on?”

“Break-in at GlimTech is all I can tell you. Just stay out of the area for a while, alright?” A set of talons could be heard smacking the side of the van. “Drive safe!”

“Will do; good night, officer!” Gerry pulled his head back into the cab and rolled up the window as he resumed driving us away from downtown. “Break-in at GlimTech…” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head. “Wonder who it was and what they were after?”

The griffon’s question hadn’t sounded like it had been directed at any of us in particular, but Jenny answered anyway. “Just drive,” the donkey snapped. Both myself and Gerry glanced at the irate Silverhoof. The griffon soon turned his full attention to the road, but my gaze lingered on the singer for a few moments longer. Her eponymous limb was resting on the dashboard, tapping away at it rather anxiously. She didn’t say anything further; and neither did anycreature else for the rest of the ride.

The five of us who didn’t have ‘real’ jobs were gathered in the Green Room late the next morning, our attention fixed upon the large-screen television mounted on the wall. Daisy had just come by with refreshments less than a minute ago as we prepared to watch Dandy’s upcoming segment on Light City News. For the members of Hussar, the unicorn’s report represented the culmination of months of investigation and planning―and had ultimately cost a good mare her life. All of it had been leading to this moment: where Elysium’s dirty dealings would finally be aired to the public.

There was a celebratory energy in the air as the other four members of the band quietly congratulated themselves for their own parts in the campaign to finally put an end to the pervasive extortion racket. Even for myself, while I had only been a part of the operation for less than a week and had only been actively involved for the tail end of it, there was no doubt that I was also―if not more―personally invested in exposing Elysium. Their practices had ultimately been responsible for the deaths of both my closest friend, as well as my mother. To say nothing of contributing to how shittily my life had turned out. While Gerry and the others had already tempered my expectations in regards to the likely only mild fallout that the corporation and the overall architects of the extortion scheme would suffer, I was determined to see Dandy’s exposé today as a ‘victory’ anyway.

At the moment, it seemed that we were just catching the tail end of an update regarding whatever it was that had happened at GlimTech: “―a spokesmare for GlimTech, Miss Carat Clarity, would say only that their grounds were briefly breached by unauthorized individuals. She would not comment on whether any material or information was stolen, citing confidentiality concerns for their clients. She did assure our station that GlimTech’s security staff were working diligently with LCPD investigators to identify and apprehend the intruders, and that updates would be released to the press as they became available.”

“Corpo media relations speak for: ‘we lost something very important and we have no idea who did it or where they are’,” Gerry commented right before taking a sip from a beer. Beside him, Harriet was nodding along in agreement. Barkly was more interested in a bowl of pork rinds that had been brought out to her by Daisy.

Jenny was anxiously bouncing her arcanetic hoof against the headrest of her chaise lounge. At least, she was until she noticed my stare. Then she folded her forelimbs across her chest and leered at me until I turned my attention back towards the television.

“―now go over to investigative reporter Dapper Dan, who has uncovered some startling revelations regarding one of the city’s largest property management firms: Elysium Property Management Services. Dapper?”

The view of the pair of reporters seated behind the anchor desk shifted then to show Dandy―whose real name was apparently ‘Dapper Dan’, I now knew―as I had never seen him before: Looking genuinely suave and attractive. The lavender unicorn was not dressed in the iconic patch-riddled vest of his drummer persona which had been the only way I’d known him up to this point, but instead wore a navy-blue blazer over a white shirt and maroon tie. His mane was styled to be less ‘punk’ and now looked properly kept and combed. Honestly, if I hadn’t explicitly known that he was Hussar’s drummer, I wouldn’t have recognized him. The change was uncanny.

Heck, if the Dandy I was seeing on screen had walked up and asked me out to dinner, I would almost certainly have said, ‘yes’. Which was a concept that I found quite concerning the more I dwelled on it…

“Thanks, Eddy! That’s right, viewers; thanks to documents that were recently leaked to our staff by what appears to be the last remaining employee at Elysium with a conscience―which is something that’s rarer in Light City than an alicorn princess, it feels like,” the unicorn stallion added as an aside to the audience with an look that was far more ‘Dandy-like’ in my opinion. “We now know that the property management company was working directly with several street thugs in Haywood and Trotson in what can only be described as: ‘an extortion racket’.”

The view on the screen cut away from the stallion and now showed several message excerpts which I assumed had been taken from whatever files that Harriet had hacked into while we were at the office. “Internal messages between high-level executives reveal that the company had effectively ‘contracted’ with local boosterherds to actually go door-to-door in Elysium-managed megasilos and extort ‘protection money’ from the residents. This money would then be wired to accounts operated by shell companies controlled by members of Elysium’s board of directors.” Additional documents flashed across the television, highlighting the names of trustees managing the shell companies, and showing the identical names of board members on official filings that Elysium had made with the Light City government.

“As our viewers are most certainly aware, boosterherds have been a persistent issue in several Light City boroughs for many years. Often engaging in violent ‘terf wars’ that ravage our city and endanger residents.” Footage that I recognized as being the aftermath of the band’s ‘assault’ on Grinder’s warehouse was being shown now, the camera doing a good job of highlighting the bodies and gore which was all that remained of my former herd. “The LCPD has earned something of a reputation among residents in heavily affected neighborhoods for their slow response times and perceived indifference to the shakedowns happening in the city’s megasilos. LCPD Chief, Blue Line, has gone on record insisting that the department was doing all they could, but simply lacked proper funding or staffing from the city.

“However, also revealed in these leaked documents were messages exchanged between Elysium executives and Chief Blue Line asking him to reduce police presence in certain neighborhoods and have his officers deliberately drag their hooves on response times during calls. I’ve reached out to the LCPD for comment, but have not received a response yet. I’ve also reached out to the mayor’s office for her opinion on the quality of Light City’s policing.” The last was said with an audible smirk.

“That’s going to be a fun press conference to watch,” Gerry chuckled, earning a chorus of agreements from the rest of the group. “Cue the gaslighting about ‘fake documents’.”

“In fairness, those messages actually are fake,” Harriet remarked, earning a look from the others, which she simply shrugged off. “Dandy’s idea. He thinks this’ll light a fire under the LCPD to stop being as shitty as they are for a while.”

“Won’t including forged messages in this report undermine the real stuff?” I asked. “If they prove the messages to the LCPD are faked, then can’t Elysium claim all of it was made up?”

“The only way they’d be able to genuinely ‘prove’ that with any credible weight would be by letting the city’s auditors comb over their systems. Which, let’s be honest, is the last thing that either group wants. So it’d just be Elysium and the LCPD’s word against Dandy’s; and Dandy has at least some real messages with legit system logs that he can turn over to prove the stuff about working with the boosterherds,” The hippogriff explained.

Jenny was the next to contribute. “Even if Dandy turns over the forged messages and the city announces them as being faked, all that he has to do is point out how convenient it is that the messages he had which implicated a private corporation were substantiated, but the moment city officials got stuff that reflected poorly on the mayor’s office…” The donkey let the implication hang.

Harriet felt compelled to fill in the blanks. “The city is insisting that just the messages which paint them in a bad light are the ones that happen to be ‘fake’? Wow, how convenient…”

“Public pressure is gonna pile on the LCPD no matter what,” Barkly agreed.

I could understand the rationale, I suppose. And I sure didn’t feel bad about the LCPD getting their leg figuratively twisted into actually doing their jobs around Haywood. However, I had to admit that it didn’t entirely sit right with me that we were lying to the public, when the whole point of the operation―at least as it had been explained to me―had been to finally get the truth out. Not that I thought we were exactly all paragons of truth and justice or anything. It was just…

Lying like this felt wrong.

I turned my attention back to Dandy’s broadcast and found that it was wrapping up. “―we’ll be following up on this story over the coming weeks as additional details develop and Elysium and city officials issue their comments. But, for now, that concludes our coverage and so I’ll turn you lovely creatures back over to Coastal Eddy and Gertrude at the main desk.”

The camera shifted away from the lavender unicorn stallion and back to the hippogriff stallion and griffon hen anchors pair who normally hosted the morning segments of LCN. The griffon was wearing a professional smile as she accepted the transition. “Enlightening reporting as always, Dapper. Thank you. It also pairs well with this next breaking report that our newsroom received only this morning:

“There are preliminary reports that Elysium Properties has been the victim of perhaps the single largest embezzlement scheme ever reported in the city―” I recoiled as I found my backside suddenly drenched in beer as a result of Gerry’s spectacular spit-take. My instinctive desire to cry out and chastise the tiercel was overridden by my own unbridled shock upon hearing the new revelation regarding Elysium. “―ompany’s CFO apparently drained all of Elysium Property’s operating accounts early this morning. While Mister Book has been taken into custody by LCPD officers, it is unknown when―or even if―the funds can be recovered. When reached out to for comment, Balanced Book’s attorney would say only that his client ‘vehemently denied the charges’.

“I’ll leave it to Dapper Dan to fill us in later if this latest report is in any way connected to the company’s dealings with boosterherds.” The griffon glanced to her left and the camera briefly cut to an obviously quite surprised stallion who flustered his way through a “...We’ll have to see, Gerty!” before the view recentered on the chow’s primary hosts.

“It remains to be seen how this effective ‘bankruptcy’ affects Elysium’s ability to manage the city’s megasilos, which house nearly one million residents. Any thoughts, Eddy?”

“Well, in the short-term, not much should change for those living in the megasilos, but this is something that will certainly be felt down the line,” the hippogriff remarked. “Especially when it comes time for Elysium to cover the utility bills for those buildings. With most Light City utilities being a ‘pay-as-you-go’ service, it’s unclear how Elysium would be able to cover providing water and electricity to residents on their managed properties. Currently, lines or credit are not accepted for private citizens, but we’ll have to see if an exception might be made for something on this scale…”

I became aware of the hushed whispers being exchanged behind me now, as well as a towel that Gerry was passing to me. Unsurprisingly, most of the conversation had to do with this wholly unanticipated revelation regarding Elysium.

“Holy fuck―” “Mierda…” “How did I miss seeing that?!”

“Zip it!” Jenny snapped. The room quieted down almost immediately. The donkey reached over to the remote and turned off the television. “None of that’s our problem. We did what we set out to. Now we focus on the next op.

“Which can wait until later anyway. We have a gig tonight.” The jenny climbed off her couch and headed for the door, leaving without another word. Everycreature stared after her in silence for several long seconds before resuming muttering amongst themselves about that last shocking tidbit of news.

“...This isn’t good,” Gerry muttered, shaking his head.

“No kidding,” Harriet agreed. “I still can’t get over how I didn’t catch that while I was poking around in their files last night. I didn’t even think to check their financials…”

Meanwhile, I was biting down on my lip to keep from blurting out something I wasn’t sure I was supposed to. I recalled seeing Jenny stepping out of the CFO’s office while tucking away that strange shard she was carrying, which hadn’t been the one that I’d seen her return to Harriet. It was possible that there wasn’t any connection between what I’d seen and the ‘embezzlement’, but…I wasn’t so sure. I was pretty sure that bringing the matter up with Jenny herself wouldn’t prove particularly fruitful. I also didn’t want to just speak up in front of the whole group either. I was the newcomer, and I sure wasn’t about to put my word about what I’d seen up against any of the donkey’s denials. If I got bucked out of here, I didn’t have anywhere to fall back on.

I resolved to speak to Gerry later in private and see what he thought of it. Of all the band’s members, I felt the most comfortable around him. If nothing else, he might be able to explain away Silverhoof’s actions and put my own mind at ease. After all, maybe this whole embezzlement thing was legit. It wasn’t like we didn’t already know Elysium’s execs were slimy. Maybe one of them was a crook too?

Funny how I was having a hard time convincing myself of that…

Author's Note

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