A Hero Untold

Not more than a few minutes after Wolfram got home from his excursion about the city, he had gone to bed. Everything that had gone on had completely sapped him of all his energy, and he wanted nothing more than to rest. However, recent events proved to haunt him. The mind does not easily forget exciting things, and his day had no lack of those. For what felt like an eternity Wolfram lay in his bed, trying to sleep through his racing thoughts. Even once he had settled into a slumber, his mind was plagued with recollections and revisions of the day's events. He dreamed uneasily of the many things he could have done, and the things that could have happened.

This pseudo-rest went on for some time. Wolfram had felt that only a few minutes had passed, as is the way with dreams, when the next mind rattling event took place.

He jolted awake to the sudden feeling of rough fabric on his face. However, to Wolfram's dismay, his vision was still plunged in darkness. He was fairly certain that someone had placed a sack over his head. For this reason he attempted to shout, only to have his attempts cut short by a rope being shoved between his jaws, even through the cloth of the sack on his head. The gag was tied before Wolfram had any time to think, he was very distressed, as one might presume.

He felt cold steel grip his ankles, and clamp shut. There were some very hushed voices in the room, but he could understand what none of them were saying. Only a few moments later, it became apparent at least one of the voices was a unicorn. Wolfram felt himself being lifted, but by no particular point. It was obviously a levitation spell. During his ascension he heard an audible grunt of strain, quite masculine in tone, which identified the captor whom was picking him up as a male.

There was much moving about, and through it Wolfram could find no way to provide resistance. He had been caught with his guard down, and now he was truly caught. During the travel Wolfram made note of a few things. He felt the temperature drop significantly at one point, which indicated he was brought outside. For a few minutes after that he could feel and hear that he was in a coach, the cool night air pierced through the walls around him.

Besides the sound of the wooden wheels bouncing around on the road, it was eerily quiet. None of his captors spoke even a word, yet they still operated in perfect unison. Obviously they were a well trained team, and had someone planning out there operations very particularly. This unsettled Wolfram, for he could not think what he had done to upset a large professional organization. He was capable of making many enemies, but only on an individual, and sometimes social level.

The silence of the atmosphere was soon ruined though. A substantial boom, and whoosh of air was heard, not long before Wolfram began to feel the coach tipping. When the second boom came around, sealing the coach's decent, knocking it past it's apex, he could see a bright flash of orange light, even through his head sack. He could here a male voice shouting orders, only to be cut off by the coach hitting the ground on it's side.

"Get the prisoner out of here! Move! Move!" A commanding female voice could be heard. She began to speak up again but halfway through her sentence was cut off by an audible thud, and a crack. Wolfram was now trying his best to try and break the manacles around his ankles, but they were not giving way.

"Who took it?" A voice asked loudly, the sound rung a sense of familiarity in Wolfram.

"I- I don't kno---"

"I'll bet it's in the coach, eh?" Angry, yet certain. The voice was all too familiar. Slightly rasping, due to the mineral deposits in her lungs. Even more gruff, from the constant yelling she had to do whenever she tried to talk around her machines. It was Amp.

Wolfram heard some wood being torn away, and the sound of a form clambering up the roof, what was now the side, of the coach.

"All right, where is it? I know one of you must... Wolfram?" Amp was startled. Expecting to find a fighting force, or warden to protect whatever had been stolen from her, only to find the adolescent colt.

"Hell, man. I didn't expect to find you here. Have you seen any blueprints?"

Wolfram wanted to respond with something along the lines of 'I haven't been up to much seeing at all, lately.' Irritated that Amp was taking so much time in noticing, or caring, about his bonded condition.

"Well, I suppose you haven't been doing much seeing at all with that sack over your head." Amp did that a lot. She seemed to be able to predict what people wanted to say. When asked about her prescience, she would simply explain it as the subject being as predictable as anyone else.

"I'll try and get you out of there, let me just blast this blasted roof off. Face away from the ceiling, please." Wolfram did his best to shift in place to face away from the ceiling, as instructed. He only got so far when he heard yet another disruptive explosion, and felt the air around him rushing out of where the roof was.

"Hold still, I can get those cuffs off. I brought my plasma cutter as a precaution." Wolfram was not comfortable with the idea of having anything that hot near his hooves, but he couldn't exactly protest at the moment. Amp was never one for consent, anyway.

He heard the sound of the plasma cutter crackling away at his manacles. The metal clamps heated up just enough to hurt before they fell to the ground in succession. Feeling the freedom of his limbs finally returned, Wolfram was eager to stand up. But he soon found that all the shaking about his environment had been doing had thrown his balance off, and without sight to coordinate his stance, he quickly collapsed to the ground.

"My my, so eager to be free." Amp began "I'll take the hood off if you let me off the hook for the bits you won last poker night." Amp spoke with a friendly tone, despite blackmailing a friend with their very freedom.

Wolfram quickly nodded in response. He didn't care for the fifty some bits he had won, and he knew that Amp would be willing to wait a very long time for his compliance. But with his agreement, came his freedom. Before he knew it the hood was off, along with his gag. The only thing now on him was his necklace.

With his vision returning he was allowed to look on Amp for the first time tonight. Her hair was soiled with a black substance, and she had several cuts on her face. She was wearing a leather and denim jumpsuit, ending in a threaded steel ring hanging loosely around her neck. Upon her back was a strange metal block, with slots and cogs all about it, along with a steel cylinder hooked up to a few hoses. She had a pair of steel extremities extending from a shoulder mounted contraption, ending in a few crab-like pincers. One of them was grasping onto a device connected to the cylinder via hoes, and the block via some cords. Amp had dubbed it a plasma cutter, but never bothered explaining how it worked.

The scene around Amp was a lot less relieving. The coach which Wolfram was in was now on fire, and hopefully unconscious ponies littered the area around it. A few of them were visibly leaking blood. They were mostly stallions, with one mare lying near the front of the coach.

"Amp, did you..." Wolfram began to ask hesitantly.

"Oh no, don't worry. I only sapped or tranquilized most of them." She excused.

Wolfram was about to hesitantly quote the 'most' in her sentence, but decided he would rather fantasize they were all okay.

"So, what about those blueprints?" Amp asked, very business-like in her ways.

"I haven't seen any, as of late." Wolfram replied honestly.

Amp sighed angrily, and began muttering something about crooks and bastards. She started rummaging throgh the flaming carriage, and the uniforms of the 'unconscious' ponies around her. Wolfram began to walk away from the scene, hoping to avoid any legal aftermath of the situation. But as he took his first steps away Amp shouted.

"If you're going to leave, come see me at my place tomorrow. Don't come between 2:00 and 2:45 AM; I'm working on something very sensitive then."

"Is this an invitation, or a summoning?"

"The latter." Amp said sternly. Indicating Wolfram had no choice in the matter.

He sighed out of exasperation, not wanting to have to do anything the day after all this had occurred. But he remembered that Amp pretty much always had something interesting, if not important, to talk about. He had already decided against telling his father that any of this had happened, hoping he could stay out of any official knowledge to do with this. His father was a guard, so he had to be careful what he said around him. Even though they had a good relationship, the law demanded certain behaviours of guards.

Wolfram began to trudge away from the scene.  He quickly identified some landmarks by the light of the moon, and started his journey home. Filling in behind him, like water through open flood gates, were crowds of ponies all clambering to see what the loud sounds had been.

Wolfram quickly made it back home, and attempted to sneak his way in without being heard. Unfortunately his hooves betrayed him quickly, before he even heard his father speak he knew he had failed to stay silent.

"You know, I was actually trained to catch people trying to sneak like that." The voice of his father came from behind.

"Plus a first response squad just came rushing past our house. I knew one of the guys there, and he told me that explosions had been reported. I noticed you were missing, and waited here."

Wolfram didn't know what to say. His father seemed to already know everything that he wanted to. But he turned around to face his father, and took a deep breath. However he was cut short before he could speak.

"Explosives? I didn't know you were one for that kind of trouble, how did you even get anything like that? I'll bet it was Amp, she's never cared about anyone's safety, not even her own. I'm going to have to talk with her sooner or la---" Wolfram cut his father's rambling off.

"It wasn't me, and Amp's not to blame either." He said, only partially in truth.

"Oh? Then what do you know of this whole thing." His father inquired, not quite believing Wolfram.

And so; Wolfram began his improvised story, trying his best to cover up any loose ends.