The work day wasn’t even an hour old, and already there were fatalities.
Ms. Harshwhinny, recently-minted regional manager of the Fillydelphia Department of Magical Anomalies, squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on the voice coming from the telephone receiver.
“I understand her legs are broken,” she said in a slow and measured voice, “but there aren’t any proper claims forms at the hospital. If she wants to petition the city for assistance, then she has to come to city hall to get the forms.” She paused. “The city can’t spare an ambulance. Ask the hospital.” She paused again. “On fire, you say. Have you checked with the administrators?” Another pause. “On fire, you say. Look, you’re her daughter. Maybe you can carry her to city hall if it’s that important. Rules are rules.” Another, much longer pause. “I don’t know. Tell her to crawl.”
Estimates put the number of deaths at several thousand and climbing. None of the deaths were ponies, thank goodness—but when it came to these kinds of emergencies, it was only a matter of time before some idiot had a heart attack. Harshwhinny had enough on her plate as it was, and death carried enough paperwork to make coffin burials look eco-friendly in comparison.
Someone knocked on her office door. “Come in,” she said. The door swung open a little too fast. A splatty thud filled the air. A trail of slimy green blood painted the wall.
The pony on the other side of the doorway let out a cry of surprise. “Oh my gosh, was that—”
Harshwhinny sighed. One more death to catalog. “Yes. Yes it was.”
The pony at the door was named Starlight Glimmer. Harshwhinny had pulled her file yesterday evening, when she received word that the princesses were sending a specialist to help get the mess under control.
This first impression did not scream specialist. Starlight Glimmer took one step into Harshwhinny’s office and slipped in the spreading pool of blood. She fell backwards. Another splat. Another mess for the janitorial staff. Harshwhinny wondered if the city would ever be able to recover financially from all the overtime they’d have to pay them.
That, and the counseling they’d all require.
Starlight Glimmer picked herself up. Her flank was caked in bright green blood. Where she’d fallen backwards, there was the crushed corpse of a little monster ringed in its own blood. It looked like a bagpipe had grown arms and legs and a pudgy bulldog face. In life, it would have looked less flat.
“I see you’ve met our new friends,” Harshwhinny said. She glanced at Starlight’s flank to gauge the extent of the mess, then realized the optics of this move and looked away. Harshwhinny was not some smooth-brained office neanderthal. She was an ass kicking, water cooler swilling professional.
One of the monster’s shattered legs twitched. A burble of what could generously be called speech escaped its mouth. For how flimsy these things were, it was remarkable how they could cling to life.
Harshwhinny pressed a button on the landline. “Have sanitation come to my office,” she said. The receptionist on the other end told her it would be another hour before the cleaning staff could get to her. Harshwhinny groaned. Inefficient.
Starlight looked from the dying monster to her own gore-covered flank. “I. Uh. Do you happen to—”
Harshwhinny grabbed a folded towel from a pile in the corner. “This is city property. You’ll need to fill out a form 309-A before you can use it.” Starlight looked at her expectantly. “Not after. Before.”
Starlight filled out the form with dutiful efficiency, then did her best to clean her flank. When she was done, Harshwhinny motioned to a hamper basket by the door. Starlight’s nose wrinkled at the sight of several equally gory towels already stuffed inside.
“They appear when you least want them to,” Harshwhinny said. “They can’t appear inside solid objects, but they have a habit of appearing when you’re about to sit down. How often do you really look at a chair when you’re sitting down?”
“Princess Twilight has... uh...” Starlight tore her eyes away from the hamper of bloody towels. “Formally allocated me to your department to provide additional logistical support.”
“So the princess thinks we’re incapable of handling our own business?”
“Couldn’t be further from the truth. You stack monster bodies like you stack paperwork.” Her voice found its footing. She stood up a little straighter. “This is purely protocol. If someone finds a monster we haven’t encountered before, the princesses have to get involved.”
Anomaly Protocol 8-1. Harshwhinny knew it by heart. She’d also read it in the briefing Princess Twilight had emailed her earlier that morning. Starlight Glimmer was apparently not high enough in the chain of command to be CC’d on that email, and therefore didn’t know that Harshwhinny knew exactly who she was and why she was here. Her comment was a classic corporate ruse. Perhaps it was a little mean. But a good shit-test was always helpful to determine the mettle of a pony before things got hairy. And for now, at least, Starlight passed.
Starlight’s horn lit up, and a stack of forms appeared at her side. The presence of all that paperwork seemed to relax her somewhat. “My official title falls outside the government hierarchy, but consider me your direct subordinate for the duration of my stay. These are all the requisite forms officiating my temporary installation, insurance nuances—you know the drill.”
The sight of so many forms made Harshwhinny's heart speed up. Harshwhinny loved forms. She flipped through the stack the way lovers threw open freshly-made bedsheets.
Her eyes flicked to Starlight, then back to the forms. This work was immaculate. A true professional left a big fat paper trail wherever they went, and this Glimmer mare’s paper trail was thicker than the green blood congealing on her flank. Where the first impression stank, the second soared.
“Receipt of this paperwork is acknowledged.” Harshwhinny took a pen from her desk and signed the hundred forms in under a second, flipping through the paper so fast it whined like a gatling gun. “Welcome to Fillydelphia, Miss Glimmer.”
The two mares strode down the central corridor of the Fillydelphia Government Building, colloquially known as the FGB, or Effing Giant Building to the office drones. Harshwhinny’s office was one of several hundred that made up the seat of city governance. There were no coffee machines. There were no break rooms. Cheap LEDs threw flickering light onto real marble floors. The FGB was a model of architectural compromise and peak bureaucratic efficiency. For her, it was home.
“Before we get too deep into business,” Starlight said, “I just want to say I’m a fan of your work.”
Harshwhinny raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Who wouldn’t be? Your administrative work on the last Equestria Games was impeccable. Anyone can throw forms at problems. Heck, with the kind of logistics the E-games have, you could throw forms until there are no more trees in Equestria. True genius is throwing just the right form at just the right time.”
“I’m not sure I would call it genius.”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to gush—but are you kidding? The way you redesignated the arena as a state park so you could bring in endangered wolves for the hunting events was genius. And when you temporarily reinstated single combat statutes so the guards wouldn’t have to intervene in street fights—” She let out an honest to goodness squeal of delight. “And no one had to walk through a metal detector on the way in!”
“I put a non-aggression pact in the ticket rider,” Harshwhinny said with a shrug, though she noticed with no small amount of chagrin that her face was heating up. Ego, she mused. How disgusting. “Ponies are good at following orders.”
“That’s why your paper trail is the fattest in the game.” Starlight paused. “Respectfully.”
Harshwhinny tried to take the compliment with grace, but she couldn’t help herself. “I’m only as good as my solution to the current problem. Let’s focus on that.”
The corridor led to a stately grand mezzanine. The architecture mostly took its cues from the grand government buildings of Manehattan. The two sister cities were constantly being compared against each other, and Harshwhinny thought copying the design of Manehattan’s buildings was akin to admitting defeat. But she had to admit, the place was beautiful. This room served as both an entryway, a picturesque spot for citizens to protest, and a panopticon from which a keen-eyed observer could look into some of the more important governmental ponies’ offices located on the upper floors.
The assembled crowd was smaller and less organized than a normal protest. They carried no signs and chanted no slogans. Most of them had green splotches on their fur.
“We stationed lookouts on the upper balconies so no pipers can appear in the crowd,” Harshwhinny said.
“Does that actually work?”
“No. They just appear in the corners and run into the crowd. You’ve seen it yourself, they have a nasty habit of getting underhoof.” Or underrump, she wanted to say, but stifled it. That would be profoundly unprofessional.
Starlight craned her neck and looked at her flank. “This gunk really sticks around.”
Harshwhinny’s eyes flickered to Starlight’s flank for exactly as long as was needed to gauge the severity of the stain and not a nanosecond more. “It would appear so.”
Starlight fixed Harshwhinny with an inscrutable gaze—culty, for lack of a better word. Harshwhinny felt her tempered bureaucratic glaze shattering. Were they not hundreds of years removed from the times of priests and priestesses, those eyes would have surely overseen pony sacrifices. Come closer, they whispered, I have grand ideas. I’ll share them with you.
Just then, there was a shout from below. A wave rippled through the crowd. Someone screamed. A piper trumpeted its squelchy call and raced from an unseen corner into the midst of the crowd.
Harshwhinny and Starlight watched in fascination as the piper wove through the crowd. Its short dash ended when it threw its fragile body beneath the hooves of a heavyset older stallion. The weight was too much. The piper popped. Green blood flew everywhere. The screams turned to cries of revulsion.
“What’s the government doing about this?” one pony cried. The rest took up the call. A few beleaguered guards tried to help the stallion up. The crowd closed around them. The guards pulled out their truncheons.
In perfect sync, Starlight and Harshwhinny sighed and leaned against the balcony railing.
“Do you ever wonder if there’s a more efficient way of running things?” Starlight asked.
“Yes. Tyranny.”
Starlight chuckled. “That’s awfully reductive.”
“So is tyranny.”
“But you’re not advocating for that, right?”
“Heavens, no. I only said it would be more efficient, not better.” Harshwhinny gestured to the massive dome above them. “Fillydelphians are brutal creatures. They’d probably be thrilled if we overstepped our authority.”
“Why’s that?”
“Two words: tar and feather.”
Harswhinny had meant that mostly as a joke, but the uneasy look on Starlight’s face made it clear it hadn’t landed. “It sounds like the city hasn’t put a lot of thought into fostering dialogue between its servants and its citizens.”
Harshwhinny frowned. Idiot, she thought, you shouldn’t have said that. Jokes are unprofessional. She tried to salvage it by replying, “There’s respect, mostly. But there are also boundaries. We need big stacks of paperwork and ponies like me to make sure the average Jockular Joe keeps his grubby mitts off the proverbial steering wheel.”
“Do you really think they’re that helpless?”
Jeez. Starlight really had her dialed in. Harswhinny tried to redirect. “Do you think there’s a better way?”
The question came out all wrong. Her tone was too confrontational, too forceful. Starlight hesitated. For a moment, Harshwhinny was certain she would throw it right back in her face. She probably would have deserved it, too.
Instead, Starlight replied, "Probably a cult."
Harshwhinny raised a single eyebrow. “A cult?”
Starlight snapped back to reality. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Cults are definitely not better. I just...” She trailed off. “I would never presume to know what’s best for someone without getting to know them first. I get that not everyone has the time or ability to look at the bigger picture. But big-picture logistics is my bread and butter. I have degrees in it.”
The way Starlight danced around outright saying my constituents have no idea what they’re talking about struck Harshwhinny as admirable, if not a little naive. “Some ponies would say degrees make you less trustworthy.”
“Exactly! But their support is as valuable as someone who thinks the opposite. How can I capture the trust of both camps? I’d have to make a single appeal that satisfies both contradictory demands. That appeal has to take the form of a cult. Any logical appeal just spins out into polarization.”
One guard slipped in the piper’s blood. The crowd pounced. Fur and feathers flew. Harshwhinny chuckled. “I can see why you went into local government.”
“It’s an ethically impossible ask. But if I told them to spread out in a circle and watch their own slice of the pie, and they listened, then none of this would happen.” She shook her head. “And it wouldn’t be better, because sooner or later even the smartest cult leader is going to get it wrong. But—”
“But you’re not. Not about this anyway.” Harshwhinny grimaced as a guard sent a young mare flying across the room. She slid across the waxed stone floor and came to a stop against the far wall, where another piper was waiting to get crushed.
“I'm being weird. Sorry for bringing this up Miss Harshwhinny. It’s easy to imagine what it would be like if this system worked for us specifically instead of working for everyone.”
Harshwhinny thought about putting a hoof on Starlight's shoulder, but didn’t act on it. “Please, call me Harshwhinny. And don’t take this the wrong way, but it's good that it doesn't.”
Starlight chuckled. “Couldn't agree more. It doesn’t matter how wise you claim to be, ponies will still resent you if you leverage ideology to sleep with their wives.”
The blush on Harshwhinny’s face turned into a raging fire. “You... what?”
“Come on, don’t be naive. Every cult has an orgiastic element to it. No exceptions.” Nostalgia tinged her words the color of a sunset through someone else’s bedroom curtains. “Bring the sheep to pasture, and they will frolic.”
The crack of a baton hitting something hard, but definitely not stone, filled the air. The sound triggered a lightbulb over Starlight’s head. She let out a little oh of excitement and ran a hoof over the blood-matted fur on her flank. “Harshwhinny, quick! Feel this!”
Harshwhinny’s eyes flicked from Starlight’s eyes to her flank, then back again. “That’s liable to draw disciplinary action.”
Starlight laughed and held out her hoof. “Feel the blood.”
Harshwhinny did as Starlight said. “Feels... goopy,” she surmised.
“It’s slick, right? Like oil.” Starlight pointed over the balcony. “Look at how everyone’s slipping down there. What if piper body fluids have oil-like properties?”
“Maybe. So what?”
“So, if my hypothesis is correct, we could handle this the same way we handle every other government problem.” Starlight beamed victoriously. “Does this place have a boiler room?”
Harshwhinny almost said, uh, such was her surprise. “Yes. How did you—”
Starlight grabbed Harshwhinny’s hoof. “No time. Take me there!”
Harshwhinny tried not to get lost in the entirely unprofessional feeling of having a powerful professional holding her hoof as she started towards the staircase. Behind them, a shower of sparks accompanied the whump of tear gas launchers as the brawl turned into a full-blown riot.
A set of spiraling stairs led the duo down into the bowels of the FGB. They passed the archives, a vast library containing three hundred years of turbulent bureaucratic history. Several entire shelves were dedicated to document sets which predated the city itself. Harshwhinny knew this because had spent many long nights down here during her time as a contractor. The archives were a great place to go when the paperwork got to be too much and she needed a cozy secluded corner to cry in. A good bureaucrat always knew a good spot for a cry.
Harshwhinny led Starlight to the very bottom of the basement, to a solid steel door the color of oil slicks and bad dreams. Puffs of soot leaked from beneath.
Starlight coughed. “Should we get masks? I don’t think this is safety-compliant.”
“PPE is a bit of a sore spot in the budget,” Harshwhinny said with a roll of her eyes. “As are the holdover systems.” She rapped a hoof on the door. Dust and flakes of iron-red residue fell to the floor. “Pappy!” she called out. “We’re coming in!”
“Pappy? Who’s—”
Starlight was cut off by the shriek of the door’s ancient hinges. A wave of heat and carcinogenic fumes slapped them across the face. The roar of fire and steam filled the air.
“This is your holdover system?” Starlight had to raise her voice to be heard over the din. “What’s it a holdover from, the industrial revolution?”
“Actually, yes.” Harshwhinny was about to add a snarky comment about how the public, in their infinite wisdom, had voted not to allocate additional funds to update the FGB’s systems for two hundred and twelve consecutive years—but then one of the boilers belched a tongue of fire and grit into her face, and she ducked out of the way to keep her eyebrows from igniting.
Out from the smoke scuttled a stallion with a mane like a trillion dust mites. His jumpsuit had soaked in so much soot that it was more carcinogen than khaki. His teeth, unsettlingly, were a dentist’s dream shade of white.
“Morning, boss!” The stallion tipped his old-timey train conductor hat, because of course that was the hat he was wearing.
“Good morning Pappy,” said Harshwhinny. “I’d like you to meet Starlight Glimmer. She’s on special assignment from Ponyville to help us deal with the piper problem.”
“Is that so? Well, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Name’s Prospect Pappy.” He held up a coal dust-caked hoof. “We’ll save the hoofbumps for another time.”
The look of relief on Starlight’s face was palpable. “I take it you maintain the boiler?” she asked.
“Sure do! She’s living history. Corlassy Marina, model 882. She’s a bit of a Thessian ship, what with all the repairs and retrofits, but her spirit’s all there.” His teeth stuck out like searchlights through fog as he smiled. “Want me to give you a tour?”
“Maybe another time,” Harshwhinny jumped in. “We were wondering if we could borrow your boiler for a minute or two.”
“Why of course. You’ll need a form 342-A if I recall correctly—official requisition of holdover—”
Harshwhinny had already produced the document and held it up for him. “Already sent a copy to your work desk. I just need your signature on this one.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Starlight gawking the way that all unicorns did when they saw earth pony magic at play. Musicians had instruments, and farmers had plows, but Harshwhinny’s magic speciality was getting the forms ready before you knew you needed them.
Pappy, who had seen this trick before, merely chuckled and signed the form using the soot-stained tip of his hoof—no pen needed.
“Alright,” Harshwhinny said to Starlight, “the boiler is ours. What do we do next?”
Starlight recovered quickly. “We need a piper. This room’s all nooks and crannies, so we should be able to find one no problem.”
“Remember, they don’t just show up when you’re not looking. Pipers only appear where you least want them to.” Without looking down, Harshwhinny rocked back on her haunches until she was almost sitting down. Then she grabbed the empty space between her rear end and the ground.
Her hooves caught only air. Pappy understood what she was doing and joined in. Harshwhinny nodded at Starlight in a follow suite motion.
“This seems rather scattershot,” Starlight said. “Couldn’t you set out a cage and just ignore it for a bit?”
“Perhaps in Ponyville they have cages just lying around. Ours are all requisitioned for more important matters.”
Before Starlight could ask the eye-rollingly needless question of Where are the cages and how many are there are what’s in them, Pappy gave a cry and jerked around. Clasped tightly in his hoof was a piper. It shrieked wildly over the bellows of the boiler.
Harshwhinny gave a nod of approval and took the piper from Pappy. “Alright, Miss Glimmer. What’s your plan?”
Starlight prodded the piper, eliciting an off-key honk. “My plan is simple: get some piper blood in the fire and see what happens. If you want to hold the thing here, I can run upstairs and get a syringe kit.” She noticed Harshwhinny’s forlorn smile. “Unless the public didn’t approve installing a health center in the building?”
Harshwhinny smiled sadly. “Didn’t even make it to the ballot.”
Then she tossed the piper towards the opening of the boiler.
Both the piper and Starlight let out a scream at the same time. Starlight dove forwards and managed to catch the piper before it could be consumed by the fire. But just as her hooves touched it, the piper let out a sound like bagpipes being squashed by a carriage. It almost sounded like a high-pitched, hurrah!
It leapt out of Starlight’s hooves and into the fire.
Its little body spasmed as the flames licked its sides. Almost instantly, Its eyes began to melt. Its baggy folds inflated as its internal pressure rose. A fine sheen of oily sweat slicked its body as the outermost layers of skin melted.
Its cries ended abruptly as its whole body popped. Molten hot blood sprayed everywhere, sizzling where it landed.
Pappy hollered and dove for cover. A fleck landed on Harshwhinny’s shoulder. Her nice business shirt flamed up around the point of impact. Fur curled and blackened.
“Ow,” she said in a nonplussed voice, and wiped the smudge off. “So what exactly were we trying to gain from looking at its blood? If we were trying to get sensitive information out of its friends, then I would understand, but that seemed a bit unnecessary.”
For a moment, Starlight was too stunned to move. A rivulet of sticky flaming piper blood trailed down her foreleg, leaving a tiny channel of charred fur in its wake. “What—” She snapped out of it in time to smother the flames before they could burn her fur off permanently. “What?”
“I don’t understand,” Harshwhinny said. “What do you mean, what?”
“I was going to put a little drop of its blood in the fire! Not the whole thing!”
“Pragmatism, Miss Glimmer. There isn’t any legal way to take blood from a piper. Even if there was, we’d need a licensed veterinarian, and who knows when we could get one of those in?”
“But—but—you just killed it!”
“Yes. Since pipers are classified as type-one malicious anomalies, they fall under unlimited open-season hunting permits.”
“Hunting permits?”
“Yes. Every able-bodied pony within city limits is automatically granted a permit. You got one in the stack of forms I gave you when you got here.” Harshwhinny’s eyes narrowed. “You did read through the forms I gave you, right?”
Starlight seemed taken aback. “Of course I did. Don’t try to distract me. You just burned a creature alive.”
“Technically, I was engaging in recreational sport.” The look Starlight shot at Harshwhinny could have melted through concrete. Harshwhinny admired it. Every great professional had an intimidating side to them. That was a big green flag. “You didn’t answer my question, by the way. What were we trying to gain from looking at its blood?”
Slowly, Starlight’s stare lost its power. Her shoulders sagged. The defeat of a bureaucrat having her concerns glossed over was deep and profound, Harshwhinny mused. If it were liquid, it would fill an ocean. Thank goodness it wasn’t, or her department would sink like so many stones.
Starlight said, “Did you see the way it got all shiny before it...”
“Popped like a balloon? Yes.”
Starlight gulped. Then she held up her forearm, which was still just a little bit on fire. “And look at the way the blood burns.”
Harshwhinny nodded. “It is undoubtedly on fire.”
Starlight shook the flames out. “That tells me its blood is a flammable substance. Like oil.”
“Aah, interesting. And what do you make of the way it jumped in all on its own?”
Starlight flinched at the fresh memory. Her eyes flickered to the boiler opening. “The why could be any number of things. The important thing is, if you had hundreds of living breathing molotov cocktails itching to set themselves on fire, where would you want them to be the least?”
A surprised glint filled Harshwhinny’s eyes. It was the most her face had moved in years. “A fire.”
Starlight nodded gravely. It looked like she was about to be physically ill. “A fire.”
“I like your idea Miss Glimmer, but there’s no way to control a fire if hundreds of those things are jumping in.”
"There has to be a parking lot big enough to accommodate a fire of that size."
“I still don’t like that idea. The way local developers play fast and loose with fire codes, a stray breeze is liable to torch half the town.”
At that moment, a flash of synchronized thought passed between the two mares. Perhaps it was the fumes in the air causing a mutual hallucination. Maybe they were both just that good at their jobs. Whatever it was, the spark of inspiration came to them, and they saw it in each others’ eyes, and that made it all the more real.
Starlight’s face contorted in revulsion. “No... no, you can’t be serious—”
Harshwhinny’s lips peeled back in the widest, most genuine smile she’d had in years. She smiled so hard it hurt. Her lip, dry and cracked from the heat of the boiler, split a little.
"Fillydelphia bay,” Harshwhinny said.
"That’s—no. That’s a terrible idea. That’s—”
"It wouldn't be the first time the bay was on fire."
Harshwhinny kind of enjoyed the way Starlight’s face squished up and went red. Teasing wasn’t professional, strictly speaking, but Harshwhinny wasn’t heartless. A little bit of legal gamesmanship went a long way to keeping a working relationship fresh.
“Pappy?” Harshwhinny said. “Thank you for your time. We’re done here.” Before he could reply, she hoofed him a 342-B form—official relinquishment of previously requisitioned holdover systems—and strode out the door with renewed purpose. Starlight straggled behind.
If Harshwhinny’s longshot plan succeeded, this would actually mark the fourth time Fillydelphia bay was set on fire.
Officially, this would be the first such fire to be set intentionally—unless one counted the gross negligence and mismanagement of the oil transportation companies that caused the first three fires "accidents," which harshwhinny didn't. The word “accident” implies no one is at fault. That sort of buck-passing didn’t fly on Harshwhinny’s watch.
Luckily for her, there were plenty of perfectly legal ways to start a natural disaster.
The riot in the grand foyer had turned into a bloodbath. Slick green piper guts painted every surface. Dozens of protestors found themselves trapped in a puddle of slippery gore. The city guards were attempting to mop a clear path to them, with little success.
One guard slipped on the approach. A flintlock rifle strapped to his back ignited, sending a spray of beanbag pellets into the crowd. Pipers paused to look at the rifle in head-cocked curiosity before returning to their rampage.
“What a mess,” Harshwhinny surmised.
“It’s getting worse,” Starlight said. “There’s more pipers than ever.”
She was right. The little menaces sprung from every shadow like water from a leaky ship’s hull. If someone didn’t do something, the protesters were liable to be smothered.
“What if we built a normal-sized fire, then ferried the pipers in a few at a time?” Starlight suggested. “We could control the fire without having to burn the bay.”
“It’s just not a juicy enough target.”
“We’ll make it a really big bonfire then. We can get the fire brigade involved.”
“We could set a whole forest on fire and it wouldn’t get all of them out here. The mess we make will only be worth it if we can actually solve the problem.” Harshwhinny tapped her hoof in thought. “We need to show them something they can’t resist.”
The two lapsed into quiet contemplation. Below them, the viscera slip-n-slide only grew worse. The number of popped piper bodies on the ground numbered at least a hundred by this point. The protesters who weren’t already cuffed made a desperate push for the exit only to be innundated with suicidal pipers and more guards. Another flintlock beanbag rifle went off. Every living piper in the room turned to look at the noise with deranged hunger in their eyes.
But that wasn’t exactly what happened, Harshwhinny realized. The pipers hadn’t turned at the sound of the explosion. They’d turned their head at the sound of the flint smacking the pan. It wasn’t the explosion and the cloud of smoke belching out of the rifle. It was the quiet clack the second before.
The sequence of events played itself over in Harshwhinny’s mind. Clack. Look. Fire. Clack. Look. Fire.
A lightbulb—or perhaps more accurately, a compressed wad of black powder—lit up over Harshwhinny’s head. She grabbed Starlight’s shoulder. “Forms!” she cried. “341-A. 5487-11. 801-A-1!”
Starlight smiled in that sweet, confused way everypony did when Harshwhinny started talking about forms. “Uh.”
Harshwhinny took off towards the exit, beckoning Starlight to follow. She leapt onto the bannister and slid down three flights of stairs. At the bottom, they found dozens of guards with their shields abreast blocking their path.
“Hey, we can’t go that way,” Starlight said. “Harshwhinny, we can’t go that way!”
Harshwhinny sped up. She flicked a hoof at lightning speed and produced a manilla envelope of forms. With a grunt of effort, she flung the form like a frisbee into the guard captain’s visor.
“341-A,” Harshwhinny announced. “Official requisition of city property.” She put on the brakes at the last possible second, skidding to a halt inches from the lineup of shields. “I need your saddlebags.”
The guard captain peeled the form off his visor. His face clouded over in confusion as he read the paper. “I need to get my supervisor.”
Harshwhinny hoofed him another form. “Already got his affidavit. A copy’s waiting for you on your desk.”
The guard captain’s jaw worked from side to side, chewing over several colorful responses. When he found no loopholes in Harshwhinny’s request (because of course there weren’t any), he shrugged his shoulders. “Alright,” he said to his troops, “give the mare some saddlebags.”
“Actually.” Harshwhinny pointed at the guard captain. “I need yours.”
“Uh. No.”
“Uh, yes. Yours are bigger. C’mon. Empty them out—or do I need to send out a G32-3?”
The guard’s face turned a parchment-shade of white. He hastened to unclip his saddlebags and hoof them over before taking a terrified step back.
“G32-3?” Starlight asked.
“It’s what every guard fears the most,” Harshwhinny said with a cavalier glint in her eyes. “Follow-up from the accountability office.”
Harshwhinny led Starlight around the gore blob and out the main door of the FGB. She was half convinced she was going to catch a beanbag in the back for her troubles, but somehow they made it through the grand foyer’s gaudy copper doors without suffering any reprisals. The way the afternoon sun burned like antiseptic against Harshwhinny’s eyes served as a painful reminder that she'd slept in her office the night before and hadn’t ventured outside since the previous morning. Such was the pain of a professional.
Outside, they found a second crowd of protesters and guards, as well as a single elderly mare attempting to crawl up the steps. Thankfully, they were too consumed in the act of egging on the guards to pay them any mind. For onece, Harshwhinny was grateful her constituants were the way they were.
The next stop was just down the street, at the fine cheese and fireworks emporium. Harshwhinny put a hoof on Starlight’s shoulder just outside the front door. “Stay here,” she said. “This could get hairy.”
How exactly this could get hairier was outside of Starlight’s ability to comprehend, but she knew from experience the darkest demons sometimes hid in bougie gentrified cheese shops. She nodded and stepped aside.
A minute of silence passed as Harshwhinny worked her bureaucratic magic in the shop. Suddenly, Starlight heard a shout from inside. A moment later, an argument flared up. It escalated to an all-out struggle. A bright spark of light flashed through the window. Everything went still. Then a lone firework exploded inside, spidering one of the front windows with a muffled whump.
Harshwhinny emerged a moment later. Her saddlebags were stuffed full of bags of black powder. Her tail was smoldering. A black soot mark splotched her flank.
“What was that all about?” Starlight asked.
“5487-11,” Harswhinny replied. “Official requisition of private property not intended to be returned.” She licked a hoof and put out her mane. “I know what you’re going to say, and don’t worry. There’s a compensation subform nested inside it. Very efficient.”
“I... was actually going to ask why they shot a firework at you.”
“I don’t think they read the form when I gave it to them. They probably thought I was trying to rob them.” Harshwhinny laughed, for lack of a better word, harshly. “Can you imagine that? They thought I was robbing them.”
“Did you not explain what you were doing?”
“The form sufficed.”
Starlight slapped her forehead. “No, Harshwhinny! The form never suffices.”
Harshwhinny blinked. “Are you actually upset?”
“Yes!”
“Well, don’t be.”
“I—you—ugh. Listen, I understood why you were short with the guards, but this is completely different. You can’t just go barging into ponies’ businesses and doing the form thing.”
“Actually, the forms dictate that I can. That’s the beauty of the forms.”
For a moment, Starlight screwed up her face like she was about to say something really nasty. Then her lips tightened together and she stormed off towards the hulking shape of the FGB.
All the wind whooshed out of Harshwhinny’s sails. What was up with Starlight? She was supposed to be a professional. She should have understood the necessity of expediting urgent matters. There wasn’t always time to hold a random citizen’s hoof through ten pages of heavy legal jargon. That was what being a professional meant: making tough choices. Not that the choice to raid the cheese and fireworks shop was tough for her—moreso it was tough for the family whose black powder she had appropriated. They’d get paid in three to five business years. She wasn’t the villain here!
“What’s wrong?” Harshwhinny asked when she finally caught up with Starlight. “Was it something I said? If you felt demeaned in any way, there’s a form you can fill out that will—”
“I don’t care about the form,” Starlight snapped.
Harshwhinny recoiled like she’d been slapped. “It’s for sensitivity training. It’s okay. I want to know what I did wrong.”
“You really want to know what you’re doing wrong? You don’t care.”
“That’s ridiculous. I work harder than anyone else in the FGB. I care the most.”
Starlight groaned and redoubled her pace. With the heavy load of explosives on her back, it was all Harshwhinny could do just to keep up.
When the duo returned to the FGB, the guards took one look at Harshwhinny’s saddlebag full of black powder and retreated behind their shields and barricades, leaving the remaining protesters to flounder helplessly in the gore puddle in a futile effort to escape.
“Take it easy,” the guard captain said through a bullhorn. “We can work this out.”
Harshwhinny said, “Everypony, please relax. I have the situation under control.”
Then she lit a match and touched it to a long fuse sticking out of her pack.
Sparks flew. The protesters cried out. The guard captain said, “Well, we did all we could,” and ordered his ponies to retreat.
As the guards filed out, every last piper in the building turned their fleshy, wrinkled heads towards Harshwhinny.
The weight of all those eyes almost toppled her. But Harshwhinny stood strong. She turned and started out of the grand foyer, leaving the gaudy copper doors of the FGB open behind her. Concerned citizens on the steps eyed her with undisguised malice. The weight of all those looks rolled off her back like so many corruption allegations of a career politician. It felt like getting the job done. It felt good.
Harshwhinny and Starlight did a complete loop of the city to gather up as many pipers as possible before heading east, past the city limits and into the forest separating the city from the bay. Slowly at first, then building in intensity, the trees came alive with the deflating bagpipe sound of pipers.
“Think we’re getting all of them?” Starlight asked.
“We can only hope.” Harshwhinny noticed Starlight’s eyes wandering around. “Try not to look back,” she reminded her. “If you look at them too much it could scare them off.”
Starlight nodded and turned her eyes forward reluctantly. Harshwhinny’s heart soared. This moment was building a tremendous amount of momentum, and it wasn’t just the explosives strapped to her back.
The trees along the path parted, revealing the windswept Fillydelphia bay. The sound of water grew from a rumble to a ceaseless crash. A field of tall grass rose, then ended abruptly in a hundred yard drop. Far below, the dark water churned white against the rocks.
Moment of truth time. Harshwhinny turned around and saw an army of pipers at least a thousand strong staring back at her. Another hundred more wounded pipers dragged themselves out of the treeline, their flappy faces set, their eyes glued to Harshwhinny and her payload.
Something between a grunt of approval and a gulp of nervousness came out of Harshwhinny. The fuse ran short. Time was of the essence. It was now or never.
But before she could finish the job, there was one more bit of paperwork to do.
She hoofed a form to Starlight. Starlight read the title aloud. “801-A-1.”
“I’m going to need your signature at the bottom,” Harshwhinny said. “You’re my witness.”
Starlight squinted at the fine print. Her eyes slowly widened. “This is—”
“Yes.” Harswhinny unslung the saddlebag. The chemical reek of cordite from the fuse filled her nose. “801-A-1. Official declaration of a citywide state of emergency.”
801 forms were to bureaucrats what mana bombs were to politicians. She could smack the mayor’s mother upside the head and dance over her body as she writhed around on the ground, but if that slap constituted a reasonable effort to solve a citywide emergency, there were nothing the mayor or his mother could do about it. 801s were no joke.
Starlight stared at the form for a long time. Then she ripped it in two and stomped on the pieces.
Harshwhinny made a sound like a piper being forcefully deflated. She had printed the form in triplicate, but it was the principle of the act that made it so unconscionable. “That is government property! Why on earth—”
:”Because you’re missing the point,” Starlight shot back.
“Missing the—what are you talking about?”
“Your behavior today has been abhorrent. You’re the reason this city distrusts bureaucrats.”
“One squeaky cog doesn’t make an annoying machine, Miss Glimmer.”
“Squeaky? You stole from a local business. You bullied guards. You throw forms at ponies and act like it’s their fault they don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“But it is. These ponies aren’t obligated to be involved in local government, but it’s my sincere hope this whole experience serves as the wakeup call they need.”
“I guarantee there’s a hundred forms lurking in the FGB that you’ve never even heard of. And forms are your full-time job! Tell me if I’m wrong.”
Harshwhinny didn’t speak. Starlight was right. No bureaucrat was perfect.
Starlight continued, ““The way you’ve been going about this whole process has been... I don’t know, deaf. Your ears are shut. You’re not listening.”
“If I stopped to listen to listen to every asinine complaint from every concerned citizen—”
“I’m not telling you to do that.”
“The town will be swimming in pipers by the end of the week. These cretins—” She jabbed a hoof at the hundreds of pipers gathered around them. “Need to go. And it’s up to us to do it.”
“Who are the real cretins here? Them? Or us?”
The chemical smell of cordite tickled Harshwhinny’s nose. The fuse was the least of her concerns right now, though that was liable to change in about 45 seconds. She pulled out another copy of the 801-A-1 and pushed it at Starlight. “For your own sake, you need to sign this.”
“Or what? Or we’re held liable for whatever damages we incur? Fillydelphia can’t secure federal disaster relief funds? We get accused of domestic terrorism and sent to a black site under the PATROT act?”
Harshwhinny’s eyes narrowed. “Actually, yes. How did you—”
“Don’t look so surprised. I’ve sanctioned a few 801’s myself. Heck, I’ve caused a few of them too. I’m a professional, and I say, if you can’t learn to serve this city with respect, you don’t deserve to serve it at all.”
The sound of the flickering fuse marked the seconds of their standoff. Harshwhinny turned and noted with some alarm that it had already burned down into the backpack. They had perhaps twenty seconds. Maybe more. Maybe less.
Harshwhinny sighed. “If I agree to your terms—”
“We do a full press release on the stairs of the FGB. You tell the public exactly what happened and how the city’s going to help them through the cleanup process.”
“But we do that after every disaster.”
“You’re also going to open up the FGB to the public and make the process completely transparent.”
Fear shot through Harshwhinny’s veins like snake venom. Transparency? At scale? “That’s impossible,” Harshwhinny snapped. “They’d never understand. They don’t want to understand!”
“That’s not for you or I to decide.” Starlight’s voice dropped to barely a whisper over the ocean wind. “This is what it takes.”
Harhshwinny stomped her hooves in frustration. “What if I refuse?”
“Then we both get vaporized. Or audited. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one’s worse.”
The pipers started to press in around Harshwhinny. They could tell the bomb was about to go off. It was an animal signal, like dogs barking before an earthquake. It was now or never. Time to be a professional and make a call.
“Fine,” Harshwhinny growled, and pressed the second form into Starlight’s hooves. No sooner had Starlight’s pen finished its final stroke did Harshwhinny spin herself around like a discus thrower and chuck the bomb off the edge of the cliff.
A trumpeting wail went up from the pipers. It might have been the wind playing tricks with Harshwhinny’s ears, but it sounded just like Hurrah. The mob stormed after the bag as fast as their tiny legs could carry them, flowing around the mares like a wave. They reached the edge and threw themselves off without stopping.
Harswhinny and Starlight stepped carefully to the edge to watch the last of the pipers hit the water. Those that survived the fall swam towards the bomb, which bobbed wildly atop the waves. A few particularly unlucky ones fell on the rocks and splattered. Another wave pounded the shore. When it drew back, the rocks were tinged green.
A strange moment of calm came over the bluff. The wind kicked up, sending waves through the tall grass and tickling the mares’ fur.
“Miss Glimmer?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry for raising my voice. That was unprofessional.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Could I... give you a hug?”
“Oh.”
“That sounded very unprofessional. Let me elaborate.”
“No, that’s... that’s fine. Just—”
“Because of the explosion—there’s going to be shrapnel.”
“It’s fine. You just caught me off guard.”
“And if you died, that would reflect very poorly on the city—”
“I said it’s fine.”
The two mares laid down in the tall grass. harshwhinny wrapped her hooves around Starlight in an awkward embrace. It was a bad hug. But it was earnest. That mattered more.
“I just want to do a good job,” Harshwhinny said, her voice little more than a whisper above the wind and the rustle of the grass.
“I know,” Starlight replied. “You will.”
The bomb went off.
