Title:           It’s cold out. The humble town of Neighagara falls had never been swarming
Author:          Anonymous
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/1bpHnPD6
First Edit:      Monday 25th of January 2016 05:18:44 PM CDT
Last Edit:       Monday 25th of January 2016 05:18:44 PM CDT

It’s cold out.
 
The humble town of Neighagara falls had never been swarming with people, but there’s something creepy about how down-right silent it is this late at night. The entire time walking home from work, you haven’t seen another living soul. The only sound is the distant rumble of the falls, the only thing to really keep this podunk town alive.
 
Most people would be surprised to see you out this late. What job are you making your way home from, so late at night?
 
A long day at school. It’s a labor of love, you remind yourself. It has to be. After all, with play practice, grading papers, and clean-up, it’s close to midnight before you finally make your way back home, horn aching from the constant telekinesis of moving papers, props, and pencils on your never-ending quest to get the job done.
 
You do count your blessings, though. Equestria has enough respect to give you a fairly decent wage, and while today was one of the harder days the time spent with the children, helping them grow and learn is enough to bring a small smile to your face. Most people who get a job outside of their cutie mark aren’t nearly so happy as you are.
 
As much as you enjoy your special talent, it’s not the most practical for day to day life. Why’s that? What is it?
 
Well, it’s hard to put it into exact terms, but as a stallion with a fine touch, you found yourself accidentally falling into a trap of doing the wrong thing at quite the right time. An unhitched lock as your cutie mark, it was easier than you were willing to admit to take the less savory route to get what you wanted. But that wasn’t who you were. In spite of your cutie mark, or your parents naming you “Perfect Crime” or even the way that you occasionally found yourself pocketing shiny things out of mere instinct, you never wanted to be a criminal, and so you put that life behind you.
 
It’s fairly terrifying, then, when you hear a cry of “Stop, thief!” from an authoritative voice, booming its way across the almost empty plaza. A panicked glance back reveals a slender white and blue mare behind you wearing the standard guardspony armor, but you can tell they’re not calling at you, but rather the cloaked figure dashing in your general direction. By the looks of it, their saddlebags are absolutely filled to the brim with shining bits, and they’re a little bit off balance.
 
You figure you’ve got a few seconds as they pass you. What do you do?
 
With instincts that drive you to see just how many shinies we’re talking about, you whip around to look and see if the thief left himself a trail of any sort. And you do indeed so a rather hearty trail of bits, not that you’d ever take any of course. You just want to see them. The thief himself doesn’t appear to be paying any attention to you or your bits related gazes. Thus, while, part of you recognized getting out of the way as a good idea, it’s ultimately too late and the pony knocks against you, tumbling to the ground with an almighty clatter as the bits spray everywhere, rendering the ground little more than dropped bits.
 
The guardsmare quickly approached as you look over at the massive pile of ill-gotten loot, but you can’t help but notice something. The cloaked pony’s head slips down and you see a familiar face.
 
Your little brother Imp.
 
What do you do?
 
You swear internally. You knew he had gotten into trouble from time to time, even with the law, but this… This was a whole different can of worms. “Dammit Imp,” you swear at him in a whisper, nervously glancing over at the guardspony. “What the hell are you doing?”
 
He looks stun-shocked as he hears his name, then smile as he looks at you. “Cover me,” he whispers. Without telekinesis or wings to help grab the bits, he settles for snagging a chunk of them and tossing them in his bit bag, still significantly emptier than before but almost certainly with at least a decent profit for his troubles. He always was a fast one, too, and he flips up his hood before he starts streak out of the area. Without the significant weight, he’s practically a blur as he slips away between the buildings.
 
So now you have an impossibly large number of bits resting underneath your hooves and a guardsmare quickly making her way towards you. What’s the gameplan?
 
You flail about a bit as she draws near, appearing pathetic enough to get her to stop. “C-can you help me out a bit?” You ask, offering a hoof. She looks at Imp regretfully for a second, but he’s little more than a vague dot by this point. She looks back at you and at him once more before she swear and takes your hoof, pulling you to your hooves.
 
The guards sighs rather heavily. “Did you at least see the guy?” She asked, and you think over what Imp looks like real quick. A light grey coat, a black mane, and a general thin-ness about him with an almost luminescent pair of brown eyes. Who could you mistake him for? More importantly, who could you not give a shit about enough?
 
“It looked a bit like one of the Coal Boys from south end,” you offer, thinking back to the family that has caused your family, the Perfect Clan, so much trouble over the years. Their general distaste for you and criminal attitudes were bound to get them in trouble anyway, so why not have to happen on a timescale that was generally incredibly convenient for you? You nod at her. “Definitely one of them.” She swear and stomp on the ground, loud enough for some of the bits to clink and jingle against each other. She mutters something about almost having them.
 
She gets your information and sends you on your way, waiting and watching over the massive pile of bits with a bit of a glare at you to make it clear that they are not for you, waiting for back-up so she can get on with doing whatever she was hoping for. You quickly walk away, suddenly feeling a lot more full of energy than you were just a couple of minutes prior.
 
Where are you going? What do you do?
 
You try and think of something, anything to get your mind off of those bits, the bouncing shinies as they rolled across the floor, the valuables spread across the ground, and you find yourself thinking about Imp.
 
He’s never been the best at anything. He always tried the hardest. Tried so very hard.
 
And you find yourself thinking, as you make your way towards the boardinghouse you know he stays in these days, you find yourself thinking about one of those times, so long ago.
 
Your name is Perfect Crime, and you are a colt. It is early in the morning and you are brushing out your silver mane as you get ready for the ready for the day, still blinking sleep from your eyes. You have a long day at school. Maybe today you’ll find your cutie mark!
 
The door to your bedroom’s latch clicks and as you look over the door flies open, and a light grey blur rushes over to you, almost knocking you off balance as an even smaller colt clings to you, sniffling.
 
“Crime!” He says, looking up at you with bloodshot, tear-stained eyes. “Crime! Please please please I need your help crime.”
 
“What is it THIS time?” You ask with an exasperated sigh. Part of you felt like he wouldn’t do anything right if you weren’t always there, helping him whenever he screwed. But after a glance down at him, you couldn’t help yourself, and slipped around arm around him to pull him in for a hug, letting him know that everything was alright.
 
He calmed down a bit, sobs replaced with hiccups, and led you quietly over to his bedroom. Opening the door to let you inside, it was pretty clear what the problem was: broken clay. Half of a crudely make vase was lying on the ground while the other half appeared to be littered about the entire floor of his room.
 
“It was a present for mom,” he said, still sniffling, one hoof rubbing his eye. “An an an an I dropped it and now its broken…” Part of you panicked. You hadn’t gotten mom anything. But it wasn’t Hearthswarming, and her birthday wasn’t for a whole two months… Imp was just a momma’s boy, you guessed.
 
He’s looking on the verge of breaking into tears again. What do you want to do?
 
 
“It’s alright,” you say. “I-I have an idea.” You pat him on the head in a way you hope is reassuring and start to lead him out of his bedroom, mentally noting to scoop up the shattered remains of the vase later. For now, you have a replacement to get somehow. Leading him through the house is easy: mom wouldn’t be awake for at least a couple more hours because she had to work really late last night. Plus you and Imp go to school by yourself so even when a couple of adults see you winding through the streets its nothing unusual.
 
You make your way to a shop you had seen once, with tons of vases, all of which have pretty colors and were really well made. Plus you have three bits to spare, so you can obviously get her one that’s perfect, just like she is. ...Just because Imp is too much of a momma’s boy doesn’t mean that you don’t love her, too. You start to smile as you think about how happy she’ll be to get a brand new vase as you make your way to the store.
 
That smile is abruptly ripped off as you stand in front of the store. It’s closed, and it looks like its not gonna be open at all today. There’s a big sign in the window saying “Out for the Week, Vacation”. Imp looks at it like its a stallion just telling him that his puppy bit someone and now it needs to be put down.
 
You wonder if you could get inside and leave the money for the vase? I mean, it’s not wrong if you pay for it, right? You push your nose up against the door, trying to peer inside. And the door swung open slightly, lazily drifting inside with nothing more than the jingling of bells to announce it opening. They didn’t lock up their door? That doesn’t seem very smart.
 
Looking back at your brother you start to sneak inside. He quickly starts to dart around, looking at everything available. There are all sorts of strange and beautiful crafts, all of them wrought with care and many of them you would have thought impossible, much less the colors. As for vases, though, you see three option. One is a simple cylinder, open at the top. It’s a faint rose color. The second is an hour glass shape, kind of, little at the top and big at the bottom with a couple of bumps. And the final one is a purple one made up of three tubes that all swirl around each other.
 
Imp’s face scrunches at he looks at them, seeing just how pretty they are. “Which one should we get?” He asks. “They’re all really perfect and pretty.”
 
The first one seems fairly simple. But it also probably costs the least (though for the sake of your conscience it’s a good thing you don’t see the B50 sign on the other side of the podium. You carefully take it in your magic and put it in your saddlebag, then grab the three bits and put it down. From there, a glance at a fancy looking clock lets you know that it’s time for school. You don’t have a lot of time, but its seem mean to just take it without saying anything, so you check behind the counter.
 
“Sorry,” you scratch out as best as you can ,though your writing in your telekinesis is still a bit shaky and it’s hard to read. “But you weren’t open and I had to get my mom a vase. I put the money on the podium. I hope you’re not angry.” Then you try to add your name with a bit of a flourish at the bottom, but it’s not easy to tell what it says. You hope they can find you if they need to!
 
From there, you’re almost certain you’re going to be late if you don’t hurry. You’re halfway there before Imp stops you. “Look!” He cried, pointing at your rump and an unlocked padlock on your golden coat. You gasp in surprise and spin around trying to get a bit look at it. You’re not quite sure what it means, but you helped mom! Maybe your cutie mark is in helping ponies?
 
You abruptly stop when you notice something else though: a new symbol on Imp’s flank, his cutie mark! It’s a bit stranger and you can’t tell what it is, but it looks like a circle split into two by a giant crack down the middle. “Imp, look!” You exclaim, point. He glances down and gasps in surprise, repeating your trick of spinning around to try and look at it. “What is it?” He exclaimed. “What is it?”
 
“I’m not sure,” you say, giving him a little bit longer before you start to to tug him alone once more. “We can get a better look at it at school, okay? But we gotta go…” You pull him along.
 
You smile as you start to shift back towards the present, thinking over that day. Your first criminal act, but was it all that bad? It had made mom so happy, and it had been the way you and Imp got your cutie marks. Of course, it was also the beginning of many run-ins with the law during your younger years, and Imp had never really figured out what the real meaning behind his cutie mark was, but nothing really ended perfectly. anway. You weren’t a perfect brother to him, but you had always had his back. You wondered vaguely if you could keep that up here.
 
You find yourself at the boarding house where Imp lived and knocked on the door, asking about your brother to the owner as they got the door. After a brief delay they led you to the attic where Imp was staying. This might be the rather unfortunate answer to the long-standing question of where he had been getting the money to stay here, seeing as you weren’t aware of him holding any sort of legitimate employment. Most of his jobs tended to end with him fired for bizarre, costly incidents he claimed to be accidents.
 
As the door opened, he took a quick glance around and quickly pulled you inside. “C’mon,” he whispered, closing the door and letting you into the room. It managed to be both sparsely furnished and very messy at the same time, which was a bit bizarre. The stretched-out saddlebags were laying on the bed and you could practically feel the presence of the bits still hovering inside.
 
“Alright,” he said. “What happened? How hot are they gonna be on us? We gotta move quick, y’know.”
 
“We?” You spit back at him. “We aren’t doing anything. I covered for you, Imp, but this is the last time, I’m done with this shit. Where the hell did you get those bits, anyway?”
 
“Done?” He asks, sidestepping the question. “Are you shitting me? Crime, this wasn’t just me doing something and you getting pulled into it. This was destiny! I know we haven’t been that closely lately… but maybe this is the best chance to fix that. I’m heading out to the Crystal Empire. it’s a protectorate of Equestria but they don’t have a deportation treaty or anything. You and I can sneak past the mountains, and start a new life! Its warm, there’s tons of opportunity, and I’ve heard the mares there have really great cleavage. You could be an English teacher, and I’ll finally start my business up. We’ll be brothers again.”
 
He seems genuinely excited by this, eyes flashing when he talks about his plan. You know that he’s right about the Crystal Empire: they don’t deport criminals back to Equestria for some reason or another, and everything about it is supposed to be nigh unto paradisical. On the other hand “sneaking past the mountains” isn’t as easy as it sounds. There’s a border town, sure, but there’s also only one pass into and out of the crystal empire, flanked on all sides by week’s worth of harsh, mountainous terrain that you aren’t prepared for.
 
 
"Imp," you say. "I can't... just leave. I don't think you're ready to cross the mountains, I don't think you've got a plan for a business, and I've already done enough. I covered for you, okay? I… I hope you make it. But I just… I can’t leave.” You feel bad. Truly, you do. This is your brother, and you love him but Imp is a fuck-up. Everything he’s done, he’s ruin one way or another, and this is just another example, stealing money that wasn’t his. You can’t just leave your job and your friends behind.
 
His excited face slips down into a more cold visage, and he turns away from you. “I thought you were the only family I had left,” he said. “I guess I was wrong. I don’t have any family left.” He sounds bitter, simply sifting through the bits that are in his saddlebag silently, not looking at you. “Goodbye, Crime.” He finally says, grabbing a few things from around his room while pointedly avoiding you, looking at you, or going anywhere near you.
 
The door lies behind you. Do you leave?
 
A lump in your throat you leave the boardinghouse, head hanging low. You’re a good pony, you tell yourself. You don’t do crime anymore, you haven’t stolen anything five years, and you’ve got your kleptomania under control. Imp made his choice, you made yours. You ignore the landlord as you swiftly exit the house and make your way back to your apartment.
 
Your digs are a bit nicer than your brothers, a lucky consequence of finding an apartment building whose owner had a lot of respect for teachers and leased you a rent-controlled apartment at a very nice price. The trip back to your place seems shorter, quieter, and your house is empty when you get there. You check the clock and notice with a grimace that its fifteen minutes past midnight by the time you get back, and you’ve got to be at school at 8 the next morning to get ready for your classes on Neigh Miserables.
 
Anything you want to do before you hit the hay?
 
(Gonna stick with it. Don’t worry too much, though.)
 
One last pang of guilt washes over you, thoughts had at the last second, but you can’t consider them right now. You have students to take care of. Maybe you can catch Imp in the morning, tell him you’ll help? Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. You set your alarm a bit early and plan to do that…
 
THUD. THUD. THUD.
 
A loud booming knock awakes you from your slumber and your eyes slowly slide open, bloodshot and not happy. They slide over to your clock. 3 AM. Fucking hell. That sets the general mood of your tone as you slowly get up and wind your way over to the door. And slowly open it up and are greeted with an unfamiliar, unpleasant sight.
 
Guard-Captain Ballin Chain, a massive earth pony whom you have far too much experience with. You’re certainly not the biggest of stallions (okay, so you’re on the short side) but he’s twice your size, with lean, mean muscle and a brilliant white coat and mane to blind any evildoers, a category he’s slotted you nder one too many times for you to be too appreciative of. He raises a hoof and pokes you, raw strength refined enough to avoid breaking your wither but enough to wind you just a little bit.
 
“Where is he?” He asks, sneering at you. “I know that the first thing Imp does when he’s in trouble is run to dearest big brother for help.”
 
“What the hell are you talking about?” You answer him, sitting back on your flank as you rub the sleep out of your eyes. “I have no idea what Imp’s done now, and he sure as hell isn’t here right now.” Chain narrows his eyes at you and takes a step forward. With one hoof he picks you up and walks into your apartment, holding you up with his erf pony strength. Meanwhile, two or three guards step inside and quickly start to comb through the apartment.
 
“I know he stole that money,” The captain said, drawing you in and holding you eye to eye, close enough that your snootle bumps against his. “And I know you tried to pass it off as one of the Coal brothers. So don’t give me this shit. If he isn’t here now, then you’re going to help me find him. Or I’m going to drag you away too, for aiding and abetting.”
 
Your mind reels with this information. No way in hell he could get away with that, right? I mean, you may have had some mistakes in the past, which is probably why he jumped on you so quickly, but the odds of him being able to get you in serious trouble for this have to be miniscule… Then again, dragging you along to help is something he quite literally has the capability to do, considering that you’re currently suspended in the air.
 
 
“Sure,” you say with a tone of heavy snark. “Barge into my house. We’ll see how much the judge likes it when he hears that you didn’t have a search warrant and you still-” You’re cut off by the officer in question shaking you a couple of times until you’re a touch to dizzy to remember exactly what you were saying.
 
“Shut up,” he hissed. “I’m so sick and tired of it. Of you and your brother getting off based on the goodwill of other ponies, people who should have nailed you to the fucking wall. People who keep saying that you’re good deep down. I’m calling this probable cause. I’m pressing you into service. Whatever. I’m getting your brother for this, this proof that he’s a monster once and for all. Even if I have to drag him off the map and jail him myself.”
 
The guardsponies look visibly disturbed by this suggestion on his part, but they’re a bit too involved with their search to really say much. Eventually, the three of them that you see line up. One is a slender unicorn mare, and you suspect it’s the guard from earlier. One is a short and stocky earth stallion, and the final is a well-built stallion pegasus with surprisingly large wings that hang off his torso even when folded up. As per regulations, they’re all in their armor, enchanted to keep them with their white coats and blue manes. Only captains and above don’t wear them, as far as you know.
 
“Sir,” the mare said with a wince to her face and voice. “No signs of the suspect, sir.”
 
Chain, for a second, looks extraordinarily pissed, but he finally sets you down and is silent, glowering. Then, he gets an evil look on his face and reaches into his armor, producing something that looks halfway between a manacle and a leash and tosses it to you. “Alright,” he said. “Didn’t keep your brother here? Put that on. You’re going to make sure I find him.”
 
You muster your best glare at him, but he snaps the manacle on you regardless, not waiting for you to do it yourself. Fine by you, all the more money you’ll be making when all this comes to light. “I hope you know that after this is over, I’m going to get you fired,” you inform him. “If not arrested for what you’re doing.”
 
“I don’t care,” he says, attaching the chain to his armor and storming out of the apartment. Moving at a fast walk, you practically have to run to keep up with the massive pony, huffing and puffing as you make your way along. The three stooges fall in behind the two of you, moving at a brisk trot as you start out from your apartment.
 
“We’ll start simple,” the captain says, fixing his dark, dark brown eyes on you. “Tell me where he lives,” he said. “And tell me where he’s going.” It’s still dark, but it’s colder than ever as you’re finally pulled outside. The moon is high above you, and the night is incredibly bright thanks to it being full and bright.
 
You stare back at him in stone silence. He yanks on your manacle, but other than a slight yelp, he doesn’t say anything. His expression shifts slightly, and for a second he looks about ready to pick you and smear you across the wall but then it slowly simmers down and he moves past the burning hot rage to a cold, calm hate. A hoof points at the pegasus. “Cold Front,’ he said. “Grab me Trace Tracker,” he said. “And pick up the address of where Imp Perfect was staying.”
 
There’s a short period of time as the pegasus flies off. The mare eventually clears her throat. “C-captain,” she says. “Those records are for tracking mob activities. We don’t have evidence to link-”
 
“I’m putting my badge on the line for this,” he says gruffly. “And I know that I’m doing, Private. But if I can get proof that the sack of shit we’re after stole from Lord Mayweather’s bank, it’ll be all worth it.” You feel the blood drain from your face as you hear this. A local Lord wasn’t a dictator by any means, but Mayweather was one of the most beloved rulers in all of Equestria, thanks to dedicating his familial ties mostly to charity and helping the less fortunate. If anything was about to get Ballin Chain off of the hook for what he was doing, it would be the impossibility of finding an impartial jury when he could frame it as helping Lord Mayweather.
 
Do you do anything or are you just going to wait?
 
For now, it feels like everything has just stuck you in a bad place, so all you can really do is wait. You take a seat and just sort of passively wait. Neighagra Falls isn’t a massive town, so it isn’t long, maybe thirty minutes, before the pegasus comes swooping back with a piece of parchment in hoof. He swings down and comes to a halt in front of the captain and passes it to him.
 
“Tracey, I mean Trace Tracker wasn’t happy about it, sir,” he said, panting slightly. “But she’s heading to the address now.” The captain noddd. If he cared about the new guard’s feelings on the matter, he didn’t really show it, and simply started off quickly. You tried to walk at a more normal pace, but the captain didn’t particularly care about your comfort or walking speed, simply trucking you along and dragging you whenever you weren’t moving quickly enough for his taste.
 
At the very least, resisting him was having some effect. Imp had to be getting away by now, and with his speed, he’d have a pretty nice head start, which meant it’d be that much harder for them to set up anything to catch him. And as you think about it, if you can get this madman to stop chasing you in the end, odds were that he was going to go to jail. But for now, he would not stop, in more ways than one way.
 
As you ended up at the boarding house, there’s a tan unicorn with a straight cut, blonde mane looking very bored and very tired as you arrived on the scene, with a jacket cozy enough she looked ready to fall asleep where she stood.. She gave the captain an annoyed glare as he stepped up closer to her. “Let’s get this over with,” she said in a dispassionate tone. “The guy bleed magics, assuming you’re looking for the one who made his way out of town at a really fast pace. Doubt even a flier could catch him, but it’s damn cold out there. He’ll have to stop for supplies somewhere.”
 
“Alright,” the captain said, then looked at her pointedly. “Lead the way.”
 
“What?” She said, annoyance reaching critical levels. “No. Hell no. You call me out here in the middle of the night and that’s one thing, but I’m telling you he’s going north and going home.”
 
“Just be lucky I’m not demanding you rush back and get your enchantments on,” growled the captain. “And start leading us. Now.”
 
The unicorn huffed and started off down the street. “Yeah, and when you go to jail over this I’ll be the key witness,” she grumbled as she made her way down the street north, horn glowing faintly. “Jackass.”
 
The pace slows down a bit. As much as Chain has a distaste for you, he needs to walk at a pace that his officers can reasonably manage. You slowly exit the city, buildings becoming more scarce before they disappear altogether leaving the bleak, empty, flat landscape of the north in front of you. The walking continues, but you refuse to talk. You’re not going to give him anything until you absolutely have to.
 
And as you walk, your mind turns once again to memory, drifting into the hazy ether and pointing you back to a time some thirteen years ago. The first time you went to jail, and the first time you met Chain.
 
Well, “going to jail” is what your panicky adolescent mind told you that you were doing. It was more of a holding cell then that, and to be honest, you were only in there because the captain at the time was a little too preoccupied to keep track of two colts who had gotten in trouble for shoplifting. As you sat there, one Private Chain was looking over you, glowering at you in particular while you waited for your mother to arrive.
 
With your mother busy at work, you had time to reflect on your wrong-doings. What was it that you actually stole?
 
Two years of stealing things with Imp’s help and you had been getting better and better. That lead you to start getting greedy. Now you were grabbing pretty much everything you could get your hands on. A magazine with some bats that you had seen a bunch of older kids staring that you just couldn’t put back, gum, candy… It had all been going great, but then you got greedy. Mom had been talking a lot about how hard it was going to be to make rent that month and she just looked so tired… She always looked tired, but this was just too much to take. So you had snagged it and were almost out of the store when an employee named Trips had managed to grab you, calling the police right up. Doing good had felt good… really good. But doing bad, man that was the worst.
 
The Private was looking at you rather intently, not helping matters much. He narrowed his eyes at you. “I hope you learned your lesson,” he said. “Because so help me, if I ever catch either of you brats stealing anything ever again I will do everything I can to ship you off.” He said with a chilling tone. The captain of the guard looked up at this and the private suddenly stopped talking, taking a step back away from the bars, not breaking his cold, icy glare at you.
 
The captain himself stood up to you. “I hope you know that what you did was wrong,” he said. “I know you’re just boys but… stealing things hurts people. Stores can’t just give all their things away. Somebody has to pay for it, and it comes out of the employee’s paycheck.”
 
You sniffle and nod. “I’m sorry,” you say, tears welling up in your ears. “I just wanted to help my mom!” And that’s why, deep down, you couldn’t say “I’ll never do it again.” She just worked so hard. She just deserved to have someone help out every now and then, even if that meant you had to steal some food, or try and get some money. Imp, for his part, didn’t say anything, curled up on the prison bunk and looking down at the mattress thoughtfully. He glanced over at the sheriff and at you, but didn’t seem particularly remorseful or even concerned.
 
Then the door swung open and one large, green earth pony mare stomped right in, brown hair tied back into a bun and an absolutely furious expression on her face. “And just WHAT do you THINK you are doing?” She hollered in her Manehattan accent. Your mother, Perfect Storm, strode right up to the sheriff and swung a hoof at him, boxing in him in the ears and sending him for a loop. Chains stepped up threateningly as she did this, a glower on his face, but she shot him a particularly nasty expression and it suddenly dissipated into the look of a mouse.
 
“Get my boys out of there right now,” she said, pointing at the sheriff. “I don’t know what they did but I am not going to have them treated like criminals, ya hear me?” She shot you a sweet smile. “Hey there, boys. This’ll just be a second, okay? Are you doing okay?”
 
You nod eagerly as your mother smiles at you, sniffling again and expending serious effort in an attempt to make sure you don’t break down and cry tears of relief. The captain reaches into his pocket from the floor and produces a key, shakily holding it up with a hoof, which Mom snatches out of his hand and uses to unlock the holding cell herself.
 
“I just wanted to help!” You exclaim, pushing your face into her chest as soon as the door is open and letting the tears flow, a little hiccough here and there. Imp slowly sauntered out past you but didn’t engage Mom, which was pretty weird. Mom wrapped a leg around you and let you cry it out, not seeming to mind at all while you cried, though you’re fairly sure she was keeping Chain at bay the whole time with glares to curdle milk.
 
“I-I-I know how hard you work and I felt bad b-b-because you do it cuz we’re poor and we don’t have nice things and you want me and Imp to have nice things,” you exclaim. “S-so when you said we were having trouble with the rent I-I-I thought maybe we could get some money and help you pay that way…” Mom simply hums softly, sweetly. Its oddly comforting, and before long, your outburst has subsided to a dull roar, she starts to lead you out of the jail, pausing to pull Imp a little bit closer as you wind your way out of the police station, most of the staff there knowing much better than to get in her way, though you’re not sure why…
 
Eventually, on a street corner a couple of blocks away from the station, when no one else is around, she stops and turns you toward her. “Hey,” she said, stopping and turning you to face her, then giving you both a quick swat. “No more of tha’, okay? You’re good boys and I know I raised you better than this. No more stealing.”
 
Imp looking down at his hooves once more, having yet to say anything before he mumbled. “It’s all my fault,” he said. “I was too obvious as lookout. I screwed everything up again.” This got him another swat on the head.
 
“No,” she said. “What was wrong was stealing stuff. I know I gotta work a bit harder tha’ most, but I do it cuz I love you, ya hear? And I ain’t about to have that love go to waste by raising a couple of criminals, got it?” She fixed you both with a serious expression.
 
Part of you can’t shake the feeling that this was all just Imp’s fault, but you just give her a hug and mumble that you appreciate all that she does. She smiles and gives you a hug, giving you each a gentle rub on your swat-spots before you go home for dinner. That was about the day you decided you didn’t want to be a criminal. It would be a few more years before you could finally wean yourselves off of the habit: kleptomania died hard, but that was when you resolved yourself to finally be more than just a petty thief.
 
Not, of course, that Imp had the same aspirations, but that problem wouldn’t really come up for years to come afterwards.
 
“I’m surprised you’re still going,” the earth pony guard said casually to Tracey, the unicorn currently leading you all on the chase towards your brother. “Most of the time you just say something like ‘the magic trails are too mixed’ or some bullshit like that so you can head back to the barracks and take a nap.”
 
“Can it,” Tracey said back, in her usual dispassionate tone. “You know full well we’re not just chasing some foal who stole shit from the convenience store. This is the devil’s fucking best friend. Besides, he leaks magic energy like a motherfucker, not like mister fuzzy chained to mister grumpy back there.”
 
Chain growled, low and menacing. “Don’t antagonize her, Holes Dug,” he commanded the earth pony private. “As aware as I am of Tracey’s less than stellar work ethic, she’s never outright lost a lead as much as told us it wasn’t worth it. And we all know that this is worth everything.”
 
There was a small shack in the distance that you all currently were heading towards, the only thing in the vast distance except the occasional dying tree. It appeared to be a guard safehouse, and it made sense you were bedding for the night: dedication to the search was one thing, but it was getting too dark to walk, most of you weren’t clothed for this level of cold, and even Chain was appearing a bit too tired to keep going.
 
Any action you’d like to take?
 
Being silent is getting a bit boring, not to mention by now you’re fed up with the lukewarm attitude of the ponies around you. This is against the law, and its personally harming you, a citizen they swore to protect! "Are you really going to go along with this? He's gone way beyond what he can do as an officer, violated pretty much every single one of my rights as a citizen, and is now kidnapping me and forcing me to walk across the country after my brother. You're really just going to let him do it?"
 
This shuts them all up for a while, and you see most of the guards look away from you guiltily, even Chain. They don’t say anything for a while until Cold Front takes a deep breath and looks over at you. “I guess…” he said. “You don’t know. Your brother he… We think…”
 
“We don’t think, we know,” Ballin Chain barked out at you. “Your piece of shit brother killed Captain Bitter Cup, one of two ponies who ever really believed in him. We’ve been waiting for him to pull something like this for a while now, so that we can-”
 
“We don’t know,” Trace Tracker said. This got a reaction just short of a vein bulging from the forehead of the current captain of the guard’s forehead..
 
“I saw him running out of the alley where the captain was lying, bleeding to. The hooves punctured through the fucking armor he was wearing. If he didn’t do it, what other pony is fucking strong enough to punch through guard armor?”
 
“My brother?” You ask incredulously. “We must be thinking of two different ponies if you think that my brother, all by himself managed to somehow punch through solid metal before stealing from the lord’s bank. And where was the blood trail?”
 
“The captain’s been dead for two year’s now,” Chain snapped at you. “Your brother has gotten away with murder for two fucking years, but now he’s slipped up enough that I can finally fix this. I can finally make him PAY for what he did.”
 
“But none of that explains why you’re bringing me along,” you retort back. “Because as far as I’m concerned, you’re so far out of the law, no arrest you’ve made is going to hold up. You can just take me back to the station and process me like you should have done so, because there’s no way in hell you’re going to be able to arrest Imp on all this.”
 
This shuts Chain up as you all approach the shed. Trace pulls a piece off of her armor and touches it to run. There’s a brief pulse of magic that runs over her for a couple of seconds, and the door swings open. It appears to be a fairly standard, if small barracks. Three bunk-beds with two bunks each and a lot of equipment sorted out in lockers near the back.
 
“You’re right,” Chain finally says as he pulls you along into the safehouse. “I guess it was stupid of me to think the best way to finally make sure that piece of shit’s got what’s coming to him was to use the law…” He undoes the collar and attaches it to the door, then checks the area to make sure no loose bits of wire are around for you to use as a lockpick before he wanders away.
 
The guards start to sort themselves out into bunks and quickly start to bed down for the night, none of them much in the mood for talking.
 
 
“Well, some of us actually care about our jobs,” you call out to any of the guards who are listening. “Can I at least call the school and leave a message? Let the principal know I won’t be making it to class tomorrow?” There’s no reaction for a second, but eventually the mare perks her head up and pokes it down to the bunk below her where Chain is lying.
 
“He’s right,” she said. “I mean, don’t let him make the call or anything. But it wouldn’t be too hard to call the station and let them know…”
 
“Alright, Loose Lips,” he grumbled, turning over as if to get away from her talking. “Go ahead and make the call to the station, let the school know what’s going on. She gave you a half smile and got down from the bunk, making her way to an antiquated phone over in the middle of the station and dialing a few numbers.
 
“Now go to sleep,” Chain said. “You’re not getting more than a few hours and I want you at tip-top shape tomorrow. Or at least awake, I’m not carrying you.”
 
Mentally ticking another box on rejected rights for “not giving me my phone call” you curl up and try to get to sleep. “So what?” You mutter, loud enough for the guards to hear. “What happens to me? Am I just a loose end? Gonna kill me, too, just to keep me quite?”
 
You’re not sure what you expect back for an answer, so maybe it’s for the best that no one bothers doing so. Eventually, Loose Lips hangs up the phone and makes her way over to her bunk bed, stopping briefly to give you a kiss on the forehead as you fall asleep.
 
Its not easy to get there, but eventually you fall into a fitful, dreamless sleep.
 
You’re awoken by a thud against your horn. You open your eyes and see a hairpin lying on the floor. Your eyes flick up and the door is open, the wind howling quietly on the outside. It’s hard to make out, dark as it is, but the bright moonlight lets you see Imp standing in front of you, a grim expression on his face.
 
You raise the hairpin to the lock. There’s a moment’s trepidation, but just a moment. You can’t forget your cutie mark, not really. It always come back, just like the hairpin clicking into the grooves before the collar slips off and clatters to the ground. You stand up, shaking out your neck, still aching from the chafing of the collar for so long. You step outside and take a look around. The bleak night is still illuminated by the moon. As you step outside, you see the rune that examined Trace’s armor dimmed out and sparking sightly, with the door itself crinkled at the edge. Imp gingerly pushes it shut, where it hangs slightly ajar.
 
“We’ve got to get back to the Neighagra Falls PD,” you say, looking around for the path that you took. You can vaguely see a trace of it, and start down but Imp stomps his hoof and you look back over at him.
 
“No,” he says. “Chain is insane, but they’re not gonna fucking look the other way on what I did just because he’s insane. I… I can’t go to jail,” he said. “I’m heading off to the Crystal Empire. I need to go there.”
 
He’s not saying it, but he’s afraid. He probably knows Chain is after him. He doesn’t know if he can do this.
 
“Look…” You say, big brother instincts kicking in, in spite of yourself. “Prison… It’s a scary concept. But these guys, they aren’t just out to take you back there. They’re out to kill you. They think you’re a murderer.”
 
Imp doesn’t say anything. His ears pin back and he stares at the ground, kicking a rock with his hoof. Oh. Oh no.
 
“Imp…” You say, a sudden softness to your tone. “You didn’t…”
 
“It’s not that simple, okay?” He shouts, before wincing as he looks back at the door. “It’s not that simple. I didn’t want to. I had to… Just like I have to go now. He starts off, north towards the tall mountains. “I… I c-can make it on my own, okay?”
 
“Imp…” You say. He halts in his tracks, but doesn’t turn around. “Please just come with me to prison. Even if it is true, what are you going to find in the Crystal Empire that you didn't find in Equestria?
 
A clean slate, sure, but I don't want to watch you make the same mistakes we've made since we were kids. When I said I was turning my life around, I meant it, and I've done it. If you killed him, then as your brother, I'm begging you, please come back and turn yourself in.
 
I'm saying this because I love you Imp. There's nothing there for you in the Crystal Empire.”
 
He heaves a breath and sounds almost choked. “Up to today,” he said. “There were only three ponies who never gave up on me. Now two of them are dead, and both of those are my fault. I guess this is my fault, too.” He walks off north, not running this time, but just walking, slow and quiet.
 
Part of you wants to shout after him. But he’s not listening. You’ve got a job, kids to teach, responsibilities. You can make your way back home, find a police officer who’ll listen to you… You can still help him. He walks away, and you make your way in the other direction, the best way to Neighagra Falls. You fight the memories this time, but they come again anyway.
 
You’re in college, six months before your mom died, not that you could know it at the time. But you knew she was sick, and so when she asked you to visit, you couldn’t in good conscience say no.And now, late at night you’ve finally made it back home after a long train ride from Manehattan U. After that exhausting affair and treking across half the town, you find yourself standing in front of your childhood home, with Imp laying on the steps. He doesn’t seem conscious, absolutely passed out. He looks sickly. Gaunt, even for him. And he reeks of alcohol.
 
You poke Imp a couple of times. He’s… still breathing. Probably alive, smells very drunk. That handled you poke your head in through the window. next to the front door. Everything looks to be in order: there’s a bit of a dust layer, since mom hasn’t been up to cleaning much and Imp isn’t doing it. Other than that though, most of the furniture is pretty much the same, a bit plain, but comfortable, and sturdy, with a pink ceramic vase messily displayed absolutely front and center. You and Imp had worked that off for four hours each when they finally figured out your chicken scratch, but mom had been so happy both of you had agreed it was worth it. You have your key in your bag. What do you do?
 
You unlock the door and picked up Imp, jerking him onto your back, and pausing briefly when you see purple and brown bruises peppering his sides and flanks. That’s… bizarre, but he should still be inside. You finish lifting him onto your back and make your way inside, depositing him on the couch inside and heading further inside. You close and lock the door, and Imp rolls over with a slight whimper before he settles down. You find a nearby blanket and pillow and give them to him.
 
The foyer leads directly into the kitchen/dining room. The house was always a bit small, especially for how much space there is the barren midnorth region, but it was all clean and comfortable. Less so today: dishes litter the sink and lots of mail is scattered out over the counter, including one unopened letter with an ugly, red “PAST DUE” stamped on the front.
 
Mom isn’t visible anywhere just yet.
 
The letter looks important. Maybe you should take a look…?
 
Be it genuine goodwill, idle curiosity, or snooping desire, you can’t keep yourself from popping open the envelope and taking a peek inside. It’s long, and you can only really keep your interest by skimming past it. It’s informing mom that her healthcare expenses have gotten bad… really bad, like in the “tens of thousands, verging on the hundreds of thousands” bad, and her healthcare has run out, and won’t be covering any more of the payments.
 
After a long table covering the total expenses, it ends on the rather gruesome note that until more payments are made, she won’t be receiving any more care. Or rather, that’s as far as you get into the paragraph covering possible options before you feel a familiar, stinging sensation on the top of your head, and you drop the letter with a yelp. Surprised, you glance back and see mom standing there.
 
She looks like ten pounds of spirit in a five pound, rotting bag. There’s no snuffing the fire in her eyes no matter how glazed over they are, and even with her muscles atrophied and her cheeks sunken in, she still stands with as much confidence and bluster as you’ve seen her have.
 
“Hey,” she said. “I know I taught you better than to snoop through people’s mail, ya dingus.”
 
“S-sorry Mom,” you say, ears pinning back. “I just saw what it said over there and it looked too important to let it lie. I found Imp on the front doorstep, he’s on the couch right now.” Mom slowly melts a little and pulls you into a hug.
 
“Don’t you worry about none of that,” she said. “Those leeches have been trying to get more ‘n’ more of my money for half a year now. They keep changing their mind and doing whatever it is they’re doing every time it’s time for treatment, though. Buncha pansies won’t even kill me when they say they’re going to. C’mon, sit.”
 
She makes her way over to the kitchen table with slow, shuffling steps, a bit of pain clear in her movements before she takes a seat. “Y’found Imp on the doorstep?” She asked, looking concerned. “I don’t know what’s up with him lately. He’s out late every night… doesn’t always make it back, doesn’t always make it in. Not sure what to do with him.”
 
“Has he been… helping at all?” You ask. If you find out Imp’s been taking advantage of your mom when she’s in this state you’ll…
 
“Hm? Oh yeah,” she says with a curt nod. “Keeps bouncing from job to job, but he’s been helping with the rent and food these days.” She seems embarrassed by this somehow. “But, uh, he keeps staying out later and later…”
 
“He’s been taking all of this hard,” you say. “You know how much he loves you… I’m not surprised he’s kind of freaking out at the thought of…”
 
“Yeah…” your mom says back. “Right.” There’s an awkward silence for moment.
 
“Well, thanks a million for coming out to visit,” she says, more brightly. “I promise you in the morning I’ll make you a breakfast that’d feed four princesses.”
 
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” you say. “I can just grab a bite to eat at the diner.”
 
“I won’t hear of it!” She barks, slowly standing up. You get up and help her start to make her way towards her room.
 
“Alright, alright,” you say. “Can we at least settle on a normal breakfast? You don’t have to go too far out of your way…”
 
The memory slowly fades out as you realize three things. One is that you have no idea where you are. The path seemed to lead vaguely back to Neighagra, but that’s not saying much considering your best idea of the direction you were going was ‘north’ and then ‘south’. You… might remember some of the rock structures. Should you have taken a left back at the dead tree? You can’t even hear the falls or see the river… Fuck.
 
The second thing is that you’re cold. You were cold before, and that was before you had been trekking out in the cold wastes with no wind to protect you. No guard armor to protect you from the elements, and even your coat is starting to get all the heat leeched out of it after being alone in the dark for hours. Fuck it’s cold.
 
Finally, there’s a pegasus waiting for you up ahead. It appears to be a purple mare with an off-white mane, and she’s wearing what looks to be a thick, fluffy coat. She’s reclining out across the path you’re headed in, looking perfectly relaxed. She does, oddly enough, have a single eyepatch stretched across her face with a small heart stitched onto it. She casually pats the ground beside her with a wing, as if to say, come have a seat.
 
Frankly, you’re fucking freezing and, hell, the mare is cute. A bit cautiously, you still make your way over to the pegasus and take a seat next to her, giving her a suspiciously glance all the while. The effect is immediate: the jacket seems to be radiating warmth, and as she drapes a wing over you it all gets held in rather expertly. In seconds, you’re feeling rather toasty and let loose a small sigh of contentment.
 
“So,” she says, starting to nuzzle with you casually. “What brings a stallion such as yourself all the way out here? Eh, nevermind, let me give it my best guess. Your brother stole money from some big-wig mob boss, now people are after him with blood in their eyes, you got dragged along by some douchebag of a cop who’s gone insane, until your brother shows up apropos of nothing to save you?”
 
You back away slowly, regarding her cautiously. “This… is a little bit suspicious,” you admit, before she wriggles over and starts to nuzzle you once more. “And a mob boss? I thought he was caught stealing from Lord Mayweather…”
 
“Oh whoopsie me,” she said in the same relaxed tone as before. “I have let something slip I should not have, what a grevious error I have made.” She snorted. “My name is Scale Tipper, and someone very interested in you has given me some critical details regarding what’s-all going on here. And I’m here to take you north to Border City, should you so request it. The reason you would so request it being that upon your arrival, you will be receiving a sum in the range of a million bits from said interested party.”
 
“What?” You say, incredulous. “I don’t believe it, nor for one fucking second.” A million bits is a lot of cash. You make to leave if you don’t like the answer, but every time you move she wriggles right back. Though you’re not sure if she’s prepared to grab you if you refuse or just really likes cuddling. Then a hoof slides down below your belly and your start to lose all sense of everything as it comes very close to a very special area.
 
“The current leader of crime in Border City has a… vested interest in the safety of Imperfect,” She said, rubbing in slow circles closer and closer to that area. “And you are one of the few people who have shown that they are not willing to screw over Imp for the… shall we say indiscretions that he’s been involved with?” She shrugged. “So the million bits is for hearing the deal, probably compounded with another million bits upon getting your dear little brother over the border, after which he’ll take measures to keep him from being murdered by everyone’s favorite psychopathic guard. Personally, I think two million is a lot of money to spend just to screw over your rival and save one of like, three ponies to ever embarrass him, but smuggling is lucrative enough that it’s not like we’re hurting for the cash.”
 
You grab her hoof and abruptly move it away, and she acquiesces, letting it rest on your side but not moving it anywhere inappropriate right now. “Imp? In with the mob?” You say. “I knew he did some illegal shit, but that’s… a bit more than I thought was going down.”
 
She looked at you for a second and chuckled, with broke out into snorts and ended with a deep belly laugh. “You don’t know?” She finally said. “Honey, Imperfect is the head enforcer for the mob and has been for two years now. They can’t fucking send anyone to stop him, and word on the street is that they have some kind of dirt on him that keeps him in the business no matter what.”
 
“...even to the point he’d kill the former captain of the guard?” you ask, not liking the sound of this.one bit.
 
“Hm? Ol’ Bitter Cup? Yeah, I heard about that one, caused a massive fuss and is probably the reason why there’s such blood in the Chain Gang’s eyes. Yeah, Mayweather put out the hit on the captain. Supposedly it tore ol’ Imp up something fearous, but I don’t know much more than that, sorry.”
 
“So what am I getting two million for?” you ask, not entirely understanding.
 
“Look,” she says, tapping the ground as she talks to punctuate her words. “My boss (tap) is at it with the mob boss (tap) of Neighagra Falls. Something over  greenleaf smuggling, ain’t important.  Your brother Imp (tap) was the head enforcer for the Neighagra Falls mob. Your brother steals from the bank (tap) the mob boss is pissed (tap). So if Imp goes back, he gets punked, if Chain catches him, he gets punked. But my boss (tap) wants to make the mob boss of Nieghagra Falls (tap) to look like a fucking moron, gettin’ worked over by his best boy. So he thinks you” -she pauses to poke you on the nose- “can get him across the border safely, and is willing to pay handsomely for it.”
 
“And who were the ponies who embarrassed him?”
 
“Hm? Oh, that’d be the old guard, who he took care of, some old enforcer for my boss who settled in right under his nose, who he also took care of, and your brother, who’s he trying to take care of. Likes to keep things all neat and tidy like that.”
 
“...and what happens if I say no.”
 
“To two million bits? Well I guess I’d just report back. I could show you the way back to your home town, of course, but, well, favors for favors.”
 
“If… if I didn’t have kids waiting on me back home, things might be different… I don’t know. It feels like everything is pointing to do this, to the point I’m pretty sure cosmic retribution is going to strike me down the very second I get back home, but there’s nothing I can do. I need to go back.”
 
“What do you want in exchanged for getting me back home?” You ask with a bit of concern.
 
She wriggles her eyebrows.
 
“What do you guys even make your money smuggling?” You ask. “It’s not like there’s any differences that big in law. Imp’s just going there because of some sort of weird loophole.”
 
“Mostly contraband into the Crystal Empire. It’s not easy to get shit into there, and all of the land is tightly controlled ‘cause they need to use conductor crystals to make it sunny. So you can’t grow Greenleaf too easy and the guards there are good enough that you can’t make most of the stuff yourself without getting the popo on your ass. Plus the occasional criminal needs to get there.”
 
“Right… and is there anything else I could do to pay for me getting home?”
 
“I’d be willing to wait until we get back to your place, if that’s what you’re asking.”
 
“I’m not going back to my place,” you say. “I’m heading right to the police to turn myself in. I was technically arrested, and I’m going to press charges against Chain, get that mess all sorted out.”
 
She nodded. “Alright,” she said. “So… you want me to show you the way back? I mean, you still haven’t convinced me.”
 
Are you going to take her up on her offer? Or do you have another bargaining chip you’d like to use? Or would you just like to try and find your way back to town on your own?
 
“Look, I’m saving you two million bits here,” you say, exasperated. “You don’t need me to keep my brother safe, you just need me to get to that police station and we can have them do all the work. Tell your boss that and he’ll fuck you out of sheer gratitude.”
 
She frowns and this but eventually nods. “Alright,” she said. “Alright yeah, fair enough.” She stands up, getting clear you of you before she slips off her coat and passes it over to her. A quick glance at her reveals that her coat is relatively poofy and warm, in comparison to your more sleek figure. The benefits of living so far north, one supposes.
 
“This way,” she says, and starts walking off in a direction about forty-five degrees off where you were heading yourself, and you fall in line. She doesn’t seem to have much to say once you get walking, looking a bit disappointed, personally. Anything you want to say to her?
 
“What’s your boss going to do to keep Imp safe? He’s his own worst enemy, and if you’re set upon keeping from not getting offed… It could be tricky.”
 
“Well, we already have the whole of our smuggling ring looking to keep him safe. The real problem is just getting him over the border before the half-mad police officer goes and kills him… Or he kills the police officer when the big asshat goes after him. Which would be just as big a problem because you can be sure if an officer dies Equestria’s gonna make a couple of exceptions about foreign policy.”
 
You nod, but you’re not much in the mood for talk at the moment. You still don’t quite trust her, and you want to keep on her. And so you do. For about a mile before you hear a familiar sound of the falls crashing against the water below and realize you were really damn close to home. It’s not more than two hours after before you finally make your way back, the familiar sight of home heaven to your hooves.
 
You breath a sigh of relief as you make your way further within. The police station isn’t too far from here. That sigh of relief halts as Scale does, leaving your snootle to bump into her rear. As you lean over to grouch at her for the obvious sex move, up ahead you see dark figures. All of them quickly heading towards you.
 
“Shit,” she mutters. “Mob ponies.”
 
You look around for anything you can use, but most of your fighting skill comes from Saturday Morning cartoons and you don’t see a conveniently placed piano anywhere. That said, there are a couple of buildings around, but most of them are set together rather densely and-
 
Your thought process is broken as the first pony, an Earth pony, charges in fully steam, the other one arching overhead with their wings. Scale’s wings flare out as she lifts herself up onto her hind legs, balancing herself carefully on hind legs before the Earth pony makes its way towards her. The other pegasus lands on the other side for her and apparently decides she’s the more critical target, swooping down towards her.
 
The Earth pony charges at Scale, but she stops that with a hoof to the face and a sidestep. She doesn’t seem to be aware of the pegasus heading towards her. You can’t see any weapons, but it’s hard to see much of anything.
 
Well, you don’t have much of a choice… She’s clearly the only thing keeping these mob ponies from overwhelming you, and you can’t exactly pick a lock and slip away. She’ll be overrun in a two on one, so you take the most brave and selfless act of the entire night, and turn to step in front of the pegasus swooping towards her.
 
Immediately it air-brakes, wings flaring out to slow it down as it isn’t prepared for aiming at you. It comes to a halt a couple of feet before you, but you don’t let it. You bring your hoof up to your chest before you jab forward, impacting against the pony’s snootle with a wham, striking true.
 
The mare (apparently it’s a mare) squeaks as her wings flop backward and she falls back, flipping over and crawling forward and hopping. Meanwhile, Scale is moving quickly, clinging to the ponies side while it tries to get a good angle and using her smaller former to hang onto it and rain weaker blows on it.
 
You’ve got a moment to think. What’s the plan?
 
Scale seems like she can reasonably well handle the stallion who she’s currently engaged with (and considering how hard she’s clinging to him, maybe engaged to), so you figure what you can do best to help is hold onto the pegasus and keep her from double-team Scale. You move yourself over her and try to hold onto her as tightly as you can. She looks up at you, and you see that she’s got a coat dyed black, or rather what appears to be a very dark blue from its normal color.
 
She yelps as you grab her and starts to wriggle around. You try to grasp her in your magic, but your telekinesis has never been the strongest and you can’t seem to get a good enough grip to keep holding onto her. She keeps breaking your grip as soon you manage to hold onto it, and flips out her wings. The pinions go to your side and start to slide up and down, tickling you. You can barely hold back the laughter, and are bothered by the sudden need to laugh in spite of how serious the situation is.
 
Don’t laugh, you think to yourself, concentrating hard, holding your breath even as the breathe starts to bead on your forward. You laugh, you lose. Your horn starts to glow and you summon a small feather out of thin air, one of those random spells you’d figured out for making quills when you need one. You dangle it over to her wingpit and start to wiggle it around, and she’s apparently much more sensitive than you are, and can’t hold back from wriggling and giggling underneath you. You take a couple of hits to the face, but the pegasus isn’t terribly strong to begin with, so you manage to keep her pinned down without too much problem.
 
This is a bit of an enthralling task, as the shakes and squirms to get out of your grasp. So much so that you all but jump when a hoof comes down to clunk against her head, and the mare in question slumps down to the ground. Looking up, Scales it standing over you, and a glance back reveals her opponent lying in a slump on the ground, conscious but exhausted and battered.
 
“Tickling,” she says in a deadpan tone. “I mean, if I knew that was your fetish we could have been fucking hours ago.”