Montgomery, Oracle of Delphi, Won't Save You
Dan's Comments
DISCLAIMER: My Little Pony is the property of Hasbro, Inc.

He was snickering as he walked towards the seedier part of town, where the local underworld would provide him with his favorite type of entertainment. As he walked through the twisted alleyways, he stumbled upon his second favorite form of entertainment.

Long ago he'd learned that heroes would beat you up if you beat up the 'innocent'. But if you beat up people beating up the innocent, they would lecture you, but they'd let you continue on your way. 'But Dr. Baby-Eater was eating a baby.' 'You should have tried to talk to him first, before you shot him.' 'Oh, I called for him to repent his evil ways and put down the baby, but he refused. Then I shot him.' 'Well, all right then.' Second, the victimizers rarely thought they'd be targeted by another villain, so you often got the first shot. Fair fights were for practice or for suckers. The centaur in the cloak was draining the life out of some poor schmuck. Said schmuck was already on the ground, insensate and motionless.

"Would you like to talk about the redeeming value of hugs and cuddles?" he asked, right before he smashed his forehoof into the brick of the building wall of the alley hard enough to chip the brickwork. The centaur's lack of response was initially due to surprise, then entirely due to his head being between said hoof and the wall. The energy poured out of the centaur and scattered in discrete packets in all directions.

"You may have felled Tirek, but you cannot withstand me!" the alicorn announced as he stepped out of the shadows while flaring his wings to display the red underplumage and ignited the glow of his horn. A black aura, completely in keeping with the black and red color motif of the younger alicorn. His own solid black and apparent Earth pony appearance did not impress the alicorn. Unfortunately for the youngster, neither had 'Tirek's' swift departure from the mortal coil.

Nice trick, he thought of the web of darkness that enclosed him, But the bakery's security system did it better.

"You've fallen into my trap," he told the pompadoured alicorn as he stood, unimpressed by the youngster's net as it vanished, followed by the youngster's bravado, "Now you must answer to me: What is the airspeed of a swallow in flight?"

The young alicorn's terror at having his best trick shredded so easily changed to a smirk. "African or European?" he tossed back.

"Disintegrate."

We're having none of them, he thought as he considered the victim, the only other pony left in the alleyway. Initially he'd thought she was the pony equivalent of a crack whore, emaciated almost to death, now she 'reinflated' gaining more muscle and curves. Towards the end of the process, he recognized her as one of the female cops who'd flirted with him. The grinning flower emblazoned on her flank seemed incongruous with her tough persona. No wonder she hides it with her uniform, he thought as he waited until she seemed on the verge of cognizance but still disoriented when he hugged her.

"Oh thank you, thank you thank you!" he said, "I know as a stallion I should be brave, but that monster was just so scary, and then you appeared out of nowhere and saved me!"

The completely disoriented mare just hugged him back. "It's all right, I'm sure everything will be all right." The hug quickly went from comforting a victim, to seeking comfort herself as her experiences overwhelmed her and she snuggled against him.

"Oh, officer, I'm sorry, it was terribly disrespectful!" he said and very slightly pulled away. He could almost hear her vexed expression.

"Given the situation, it's understandable," she said, still holding him.

Annnndd . . . ? he thought and waited, Is she going for the gold?

"I'm a little fuzzy, er frightened myself," she said.

"Okay," he replied and hugged her a good deal more firmly. His grin as she snuggled against him would have sent her scurrying away. He let her snuggle while he 'petted' her pate with his chin. "Did you see a dragon when you rescued me? I saw a lot of weird stuff before you arrived, but you and that big dragon really stood out."

"So me, and a dragon?" she asked.

"If you didn't see it, it was a hallucination," he replied, "You're real." He pulled away, so he could look her in the eye, and see she was blushing. "Aren't you?"

The miffed look returned and she pulled him into a kiss. Another human action rather than the more logical equine one. He was well versed in human interactions, and he realized that ponies seemed as nose-blind as humans, because the cop didn't realize the signal her pheromones were broadcasting to anyone who could pick up the olfactory heraldry.

He broke the hug, and could smell the female's frustration. "I think we'd get you in trouble, messing up a crime scene," he told her, and hid his pleasure at the look of chagrin on her face. "And I need to do the report, and get back to work, or I'll have half the force trying to break down my door."

She frowned at that, but nodded. Her frustration was olfactively screaming as she hunted down an on-duty guard. He gave the statement that he'd already discussed with her, which he'd been attacked and the officer rescued him, but with all the other weird stuff he saw during the attack he wasn't sure how reliable it was. The sergeant who'd arrived to take over the investigation sent them both to the local station. It seemed that there had been a rash of ponies having their magic drained, and they'd all recovered when Tirek was defeated.

'All the survivors recovered', he considered as they walked back to the station, That's a nice euphemism that some of them died. He noted that she was walking close enough her swaying hips made her periodically brush against him. When he looked at her after several dozen such brushes, she just grinned at him. He just raised an eyebrow at her and returned to walking. And her pheromones announced her determination to get him.

The interrogation at the station was both less friendly and far more professional. It was also wider ranging.

"Have you seen this pony?" the lieutenant asked as he hoofed over the same picture he'd seen on his arrival.

"Yes," he said, "But with all the weird stuff I hallucinated when Tirek attacked, that's not saying much. Besides that was the picture they compared me to when I arrived in town last night."

The lieutenant stared at him, and he felt magics coursing around him, as if to strip away a disguise. But his spells were transformational, not illusions. The shape-change held. The lieutenant left the interrogation room with an odd expression, passing the female officer as she entered. While it was subtle, he heard the lock on the outside slide into place. While he considered the possible left-handed compliment that he was 'safe', he briefly considered, Is this the good or the bad cop? Time to play along.

"Are you okay?" he asked, standing up quickly, and collecting her into a hug.

"I am now," she replied giving him some bedroom eyes.

He glanced at the door, then stepped away from her. "A little protection," he said earning a perplexed look, then comprehension as he wedged a chair under the doorknob.

"Now that I've made my statement, I made a promise," he said as he nuzzled her, her pheromones screaming as he lifted her up and sat her on the table.
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They were walking out of the station, Posey Blossom, the female officer was walking a lot more sway hipped than before, and not because she wanted to brush up against him. She was leaning on him, to prevent her from falling down.

He glanced back at her to judge her reaction to his last statement, and watched her eyebrows rise as what he'd said dawned on her. If they rise too much farther, he thought, They'll be clinging to the tip of her tail.

"She said you were inept?" she asked, almost choking on the words.

"Yes, but she kept coming back to me," he said and shook his head, "It never made much sense."

She laid a hoof on his shoulder instead of facehoofing. "If that was 'inept', then Celestia is merely good at magic."

Full points, he thought as they walked, But time to lay down the cover up.

"What confused me is why her twin sister tried to trick her way into my bed if I was no good. She was chief magistrate, and could have had someone better than me." He shrugged. "She said she'd 'get me' if I ever told her sister, which I did, and started traveling after that, town to town doing odd jobs."

He practically saw the light bulb go off over her head. A couple of the officers at the doughnut shop had mentioned the corrupt magistrate and her twin sister in an area outside Baltimare. A few months would be plenty of time to 'lose' all the records of someone's existence, even the copies in the Royal Archives. Making his lack of existence not only plausible, but reasonable.

He shrugged. "But I have a job here and can just rebuild my life," he said and looked at her smiling at him. "I am curious, why was there such concern about that alicorn showing up here?"

She was back to frowning. "There's been a spate of these alicorn-shaped aliens, bronies, they call themselves. They have been nothing but trouble. Fortunately, none have shown up here, they mostly, or have mostly, shown up around Ponyville. That Tirek character might have been one, but he doesn't seem to meet the profile."

"Yes, having someone like that show up in your backyard would not be my first choice of roommates," he replied, "What did they want? You go somewhere, you have to want something."

She stopped, blushing.

"Oh. So aside from my lack of horn and wings, you thought I was one?" he asked.

"None of them would let a mare say yes," she replied and nuzzled his side, "And none of them are as cute and fluffy as you."

"That vision I saw, some tough guy wannabe, black and red alicorn," he mused, "I guess I overheard the rumors and comments and just made it up out of whole cloth, same thing about the dragon, something my mind made up."

"Probably," she said leading him back to the doughnut shop, saying she knew where he'd be, before she left. He watched the sway of her hips and tail and knew he had a contact inside the police.

Mammals are so wonderfully predictable, he thought as he circumnavigated the place spotting the nodes for the security system, and that the owner hadn't come back.

Former owner I guess, he thought.

The shop, which had been a bit of a mess, was spotless. The smell of baking pastries filled the air. And the owner was no where to be found inside either. He'd also had enough of this mysterious business. He dropped his disguise and told them, "Come on out. I know you're there, and I know the difficulty I had leaving was due to you or some property of the store."

He waited a few minutes, checking on the scrubbed pots and trays, the swept floor, and urns of coffee loaded and ready to perc to add to the dispenser. "I can always decide to never open the place again, it wouldn't take more than a few days to lose all the clientele."

The creatures all came out of hidey-holes even he would have missed, if they didn't simply materialize out of thin air.

Few things would make his blood run cold, but the assembly before him got closer than anything in recent memory. Elves, he screamed internally, while considering just incinerating the whole block to guarantee getting them all.