Mercer

After nightfall, Alex picked up his ping.

He was somewhat glad. Crime lords and such. They were trash, surely and simply. Absolutely had nothing to do with a canadian in his distant past. Nope.

Zeus strolled through the streets (trotted?) like he owned the place, as his usual style dictated. The center of the pings was around the area of... A street called Mane Street? Supposedly nice, yet people -ponies- usually avoided it. And for good reason.

The leader of a local salt (pony equivalent of alcohol) and shaving (cocaine) distribution ring had taken up residence in one of the nicer buildings. Completely evicted half of the residents on her floor and pretty much tortured the manager of the building with death by heights. Rumor said she was a sadomasochist.

As he got closer, a plan on what he was going to do came into his mind. Now, being Alex Mercer, plans tended to go right out the window in favor of violence that still ended with the primary target alive for consumption. He did however have plans when he just wanted to mess with people or break their sanity.

This will be fun.

As he made it to the building, a huge metal building with a bronze statue on top, he saw a perfect opportunity to get inside and cause as much fear as possible, and all wrapped up in a nice pegasus suit.

Alex walked over to said pegasus.

"Yo." the pegasus said when he saw Alex. "You can't be here."

"Okay. But you can." The pegasus was speared on a hoof that was sharpened by metal. Carbon to be specific. He was consumed before his body realized he was dead.

Alex ignored the rush of memories and smiled, knowing this would be fun. "Yo, Grime!" he shouted to a nearby griffin. "Take my watch!"

"No."

"Yes!"

"Okay."

"Excellent." he was inside. Let the games begin.

Pompoya

Pompoya, a brown griffin female, was walking through in the lobby of the building when she heard a crash. She wasn't the only one, as everyone within her sight turned their heads to that direction. "What's going on over there?" she asked.

"Nothing." Came a voice. "Somepony is just being a prankster. I don't know, but there's a rock here."

Pompoya just shrugged and continued her business, when she heard a loud crunch that made her involuntarily flinch. "Are you okay?" she called out. When she heard nothing, she went over to the source. She saw a green earth pony stallion laying in some glass with his head facing the wrong direction. Pompoya gasped and prepared to shout out, but her breaths were silenced by a stallion appearing besides her.

"Pompoya, be quiet. This was planned." The voice said. The griffiness looked up to see a familiar, dark blue face. A face belonging to a pegasus.

"Ray?"

"Who else, love?" he asked. "Who else do you know that doesn't horrifically butcher your name? A pony, I mean."

"Oh, right. What were you saying?" She laughed.

"You always had bad memory. I was saying this attack was planned. Like, somepony came in here and did this." Ray said, looking at the body with a grimace. "I liked that guy..."

"We need to inform Cirra!" Pompoya was about to rush away from the window until she was tackled to the ground. "Why?" She almost had trouble speaking. Ray got... Heavier.

"This isn't the time to bring our menile troubles to her attention." He said with a startlingly calm demeanor.  He then got off of her.

"Then why did you tackle me, huh?" Pompoya demanded and fluffed her wings. "And why are you so heavy? Pegasi aren't that heavy!"

"I eat a lot. You have to have seen this coming, and did you just call me fat? I'll have you know I am very slender in the pegasus community."

"I'm going to Cirra anyways."

"Are you ignoring me?" she did. In fact, she left.  "And that's one " he said once she was out of earshot.

Cirra

Cirra looked out at the landscape of Manehattan from her room, thinking on whether or not to accept the latest financial advice. Sure, it would help her, but it would cripple her brother and his legitimate business. She didn't have much time to accept. A proposition from the stallion known only as The Big Daddy was a one time deal. "I'm hungry." Cirra said to no one in particular.

A loud crash echoed through the otherwise silent room as Pompoya burst through the doors. "Cirra, somebody killed Mi-"

"Did you kill them back?" Cirra asked.

"Well... no, but-"

"Then why did you tell me this," Cirra asked. "Instead of finding the ones responsible and delivering me their heads!?" She shouted and gripped the base of Pompoya's wing with a talon. The result was a griffin in immense pain.

"Now, I want you to find-" Cirra was interrupted once again, this time by a griffin head rolling through the door, completely severed. "Cletus!" Cirra shouted. "Who dares!"

"I thought this would be fun and all... It wasn't." A voice that seemed to echo around the roam said. "Really, a griffin who can't take a hint, a leader who won't play along, and pretty much an entire hallway of jumpy pricks." The voice echoed and then sighed. It sounded... Bored?

"What have you done to them!?" Cirra shrieked in rage.

"Tons, nothing, everything... Depends on how you look at it. I assure you, I wont be doing it to some of them anytime soon." The voice chuckled and the sound fumbled. "Sorry, I dropped it."

"...What?" Cirra tried to run down the hall, but stopped when she saw the massive makeover it went through. Blood littered the walls and caked over everything in sight. The bodies of her friends and employees were all over, mostly unrecognizable, brought tears to Cirra's eyes and bile up her esophagus.

Pompoya rushed out of the room and slipped on some entrails, but stopped herself by flapping her wings and hovering in the air. She gasped at the scene.

"What did you do with Ray?" She yelled, unable to find where the voice came from so she instead opted to not yell at a single point, and turn around almost non stop and yell at whatever she saw. "Tell me what you did!"

"I did something, but it was his fault for being in the open." The voice sighed. "Are you going to run or something? Anything?"

"No-no..." Pompoya sunk down to all fours, in a puddle of blood and guts.

"Nothing?" The voice seemed depressingly disappointed. "Waste. Of. My. Time " there was a pause.

Cirra took this as the perfect opportunity to sneak back into her room. 'Just need to not make a sound and...' she grabbed a heavy statue head and moved to chuck it at the window. As she threw it, her body went stiff and the head fumbled out of her talons.

She paused in fear and looked down at her hind legs. There lie a black spike that was driven through the back of her leg, and protruding from the front. Due to some odd lapse in brain activity, she didn't feel the pain until she looked at it. She immediately wished she didn't look.

Aside from the piercing agony in her leg, there was something more. Her leg felt like it was pulling itself apart and being sucked through a tube at the same time. Cirra screamed and gasped at the same time and demolished her lungs, making her agony continue.

"Yeah, this is taking longer than you would like, but I wanted to see if it hurt when I do this. Apparently it does. Check."

The pain spread to Cirra's heart in just a moment, and she couldn't scream or stand anymore. Instead she fell over and currently lie on the floor. "You probably want to see the face of your killer?"

Cirra whimpered.

"Too bad, you're dead." Her entire body was now a black liquid, and it got completely sucked through the area where the spike came from. The voice sighed. "Alright, time to deal with you."

Pompoya

Pompoya pretty much abandoned the thought of running the moment she saw the hallway of blood. Before she made it to Cirra, it was pretty much filled with ponies and griffins that were faster, stronger,and more likely to survive in a situation than she was.

And the fact that she was in Cirra's room not ten seconds before she saw the bodies. And the fact that it said it killed her best friend...

Yeah, this was it for her. She didn't want to live anymore, anyway.

"You're not gonna try and run? I wasn't even paying much attention to you while I killed your boss."

Silence.

"Come on, run. Do you know how tiresome it is to kill someone, especially if you don't get any kicks from it?"

This time, he got a sob and a whimper.

"I guess I can take that." The voice said.

"You killed all of them." Came a weak response. "Why?"

"Why did I kill all of those people on the hallways, including your friend? To kill your boss. I thought it was obvious." The voice said. Pompoya sat up on the gore with a rage she's never felt before. The monster would kill so many for so few?

"Are you mad? If it makes you feel better, it was pretty boring. I guess I can kill you now. Sure, I got nothing else to do, but there's plenty I can do. That's the mentality."

Pompoya trembled in rage and fear, and she looked for a way to escape. She had no idea where this thing would be, and all the windows on this floor didn't open for enough room to get a full griffin out.

"Trying to run? Not trying to fight?" The voice asked. "I guess I should just end this now, I guess."

"No!" Pompoya shouted. "I-" she stopped herself, not wanting the creature to have information to get to her family. No matter how vague.

"Continue." The voice said.

"I... Have a family to care for..."

"Okay? You aren't the only one. I can assure you of that."

"Please. They don't have anyone else to care for them. If in gone... they'll go to a place where they won't have the things they are grateful for, and their childhood's will be taken away. They wi

"I see." The voice said. "Get out of my sight. Now."

Pompoya was stunned. She looked from the area where the voice last echoed from and to the bodies. Was it really letting her live? After she witnessed what it could do? "Do you really need to be told twice?" She didn't. She scrambled down the hall, occasionally tripping over a corpse or sliding over blood, completely forgetting she had wings altogether. The last thing she heard of the voice was a sigh.

Later

Lieutenant Razor Wing

Lieutenant Razor Wing, a large wine colored griffin with little armor, with scars on his face near his eyes and beak, had several groups of guards, a combination of Minotaur, Griffins, and Ponies alike positioned all around the Hotel, all awaiting his orders. After a panicking griffiness practically trampled her way into the dispatchery, he pretty much had to get whoever he could as soon as possible. He still had a headache from her ear shattering shrieks.

He walked to the doors of the building, and looked at the single dead body and demolished window. "This all the damage?" he asked to a grunt.

"No, the witnesses reported more on the upper floors." A unicorn said. "They were really freaking out, sir. Said they heard screaming, saw a lot of blood, the likes."

"What do you think?" Razor asked, turning to the grunt, which took on a pondering expression.

"I expect some exaggerating, but maybe more truth than false." The grunt said.

"Well see about that." Razor said, then he turned around to the rest of his men. "Alright men, I want this area completely blocked, no one in or out until I say so. If there's anyone still in there, keep 'em there until we can question then. I need all fliers positioned around every window of every floor in case of attempted escape and a group of everyone else coming up through the inside. Remaining troops will keep the area blocked." Razor coughed into his talon after finishing that. "Oh, I can't do that ever again..." he said to himself as he rubbed his throat.

Razor flew up to one of the.middle floors, and the rest of his subordinates went inside, and climbed stairs. Any way to get up as fast as possible. His men weren't idiots. They just sent small groups to search each floor.

The Lieutenant slowly floated up the building, searching inside many of the rooms, but mostly found nothing in there. No one hiding, at least. "Sir?" A pegasus searching a room above him asked. "Somepony wants your attention in this window. He looks pretty bad right now."

"Alright, Dancer." Razor said, floating up to said window. He saw an earth pony on his hind legs, waving his forelegs all over. He for some reason took his guard helmet off. Knowing he had Razors attention, the pony cane to the window, and bucked it, breaking the glass. "Your paycheck if the manager wants money for that, Swift." Razor said.

"Lieutenant, y-you just gotta see this..." Swift Hooves shakily said. "Its something..."

"Its what?" The pegasus besides the griffin asked.

"Come see for yourself."

Razor and Dancer landed in the room, and proceeded to the area of interest, which was the hallway of the building. Swift opened the door slowly, and showed the two a gruesome sight.

Blood, entrails, unrecognizable bodies, vomit, a revolting stench. The works. The rancid smell made Razor throw up right there, and Dancer threw up from just the sight. Stomachs empty, and a hoof (or talon) covering their noses, Razor questioned. "What in Tartarus happened here?!"

"Bloody murder..." Dancer said, with a grave voice. "I haven't seen something like this in my career, and the last thing recorded like this was the 'Ripper Cases'."

"This is terrible... what kind of sick freak would do this?" Swift Hooves asked, backing up slowly from the scene and moving to the window to look outside.

"Don't know. But we have to get the word out somehow. But we can't let ponies or otherwise have the full story." Razor said. "Are any of the remains recognizable? Identifiable?"

"Yes, the confirmed ones have some backgrounds." Swift called from the window. "I got Triads and Apex."

"We call it a dispute." Razor said. "A deal went horribly wrong. Triads wanted something, Apex didn't want to give. Threat turned to another, and we got a warzone."

"Sir, some of the damage can't be done by some simple thugs." Dancer said. "Some of this looks like a manticore ran through here." He knelt next to one of the bodies and held back bile and a grimace. He motioned to halves of the bodies. "This looks like claw marks, much too long for a griffin and unconventionally sized to be hoof spikes or claws, metal or natural. I would suggest a sword, but this is cut in threes. Unless its double bladed, maybe."

"I doubt there's one culprit." Razor said. "Maybe a dozen did this. Perhaps two struck the sane griffin?"

"Witnesses only heard one scream." A unicorn across the room said.

"An ambush?" Razor called.

"Probably." came the response. "Most likely, I guess."

"Must have worked fast..." Razor said. "Found anyone?" he asked to the entire team. He got multiple head shakes and one 'Not alive.'

"Damn..."

"We got nothing." Dancer said. "Just a hunch, that's all. Unconventional weapons, soundless target, after one person judging by the only sounds. We need to keep our eyes open and our ears to the sky. I suggest more patrols around."

"Noted." Razor said. "I need to document this, get a story down as well. Some pictures."

"Sir?" A guard down the hall called.

"What?"

"What next?"

"We catch these guys. Like Dancer said, we need more guards around. Not too much, don't want to exhaust our budget for this month. We also don't want it to be a noticeably high amount, so spread out. I want a letter to the Princess on standby, but don't send it without my specific approval. Clean up this mess and see what else you can piece together. That is all for now." The lieutenant saluted his men, with a bloody talon.

Everyone did the same.