Elusive: A detective story

Outside, the rain was falling hard and uncaring, following the royal schedule, all the ponies in the kingdom locked behind doors, aware from days ago that this day they were not allowed to go outside. As usual, every pegasi foal and colt was sad and blue but even some adult ones couldn't help but sigh, the joy of flight denied to them, just for this afternoon.

The doctor scribbled some more notes and looked at his patient, the pegasus colt wings flat at his sides, one of them still marked with the claws of the enemy side. Since the cyan pony wouldn't, the doctor had to take the first word.

“Rainbow Blitz, you have been quiet the entire session.”

Silence.

“We need to talk for the healing process to begin. Now, tell me about your week.”

“You know very well how my week was.” He turned over, his rainbow mane had grown to cover the upper side of his face, he let it grow wild and disheveled, a clear sign of the distress he was enduring. “My best friend just died and I couldn't save him.”

“Please Rainbow Blitz, you need to talk about it.”

Rainbow Blitz sighed and sit straight on the chair on a pose a unicorn friend of his back in the military, used to take.

“Well, I suppose the story began when we solved the case of the Marzipan Cake...”

*********

All the ponyrazzi were desperate that day to get a picture of us. Well, a picture of Elusive. He was the main star, the Great Detective whereas I was merely the companion when not just outright the “partner”. We stood there, in front of the Canterlot Express trying our best to smile while chef LeGrande repeated for the fifteenth time the story of how we captured the culprit. Of course, he made himself sound like the hero, very politely skipping the aprt where he hide behind a table while we fought against the ninja mule.

A strange weekend indeed.

“...and that's how I, Gustave LeGrande, save the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue cake!”

“Pompous arrogant feathered head, I should have left him fall off the train!” Elusive complained at his back.

“He would have just fly back up.” I gently remind him.

“Still, I can't believe a perfectly fine weekend in Canterlot got ruined!”

“Donpt be so upset. You solved another case, I said that's a green check on my book.”

“Oh yes, I figured who took a bite of a cake! Surely they would give me a medal for that!”

And of course, the Royal Captain was there to handle a big shiny medal.

“Oh my heavens!”

“Shut up, smile and take the medal. And put on the bowtie, the press loves it.”

“I certainly won't put on that ridiculous thing!”

“Put. On. The. Bowtie.” I said, pushing the jewel encrusted present  Spines, our dragon assitant made for him almost a year ago, on his neck.

Elusive put on his biggest and most rehearsed smile for the cameras.

Little did we know, that while we were busy being regarded as heroes, another pony was making to himself a name as a villain.

I still don't know how he snuck inside the Royal Castle, bypassing magic barriers and fooling pegasi squads; but I have stopped trying to find an explanation for the things he does a long time ago. Being in the brink of death several times makes you accept the craziest things in life. And there was no better definition of craziness as that bouncing, grinning pink pony. The evil mastermind that hide behind silly baking songs and party decorations loaded artillery.

He made his way up to the chambers of the Sun bringers, laid in top of Princess Celestia bed and waited for her to come in. I can only imagine her reaction. Her jaw must have dropped to the ground upon seeing, there laying over the blankets, covered on frost cake; the slim figure of Berriswainer DaVinci Bubble.

“Hello Cely, care for some mmmmbananas?”

********

“Wait wait, you are way ahead of yourself Rainbow Blitz!”

So immersed was on his story that for a second, Rainbow Blitz had forgotten the doctor was even there. “What do you mean?”

“Your description of Bubble Berry is quite detailed and frightening. Far worse than anything the papers could do. But that's understandable since both you and Elusive had first hoof contact with this criminal. It's plain obvious the tremendous influence this pony had on both of your lives.” Rainbow Blitz snorted at this commentary. “I need you to tell me exactly how you two met him.”

Rainbow Blitz snorted again.

“Fine...”

*******

The streamers hanged on the ceiling like a macabre exhibition on of those frontier pony towns were they used to execute criminal on the gallows. The eerie polka music continued  to play even when the player had fell to the ground several minutes ago. I struggled against my binds to no avail, still tied to that chair, head place of that insane celebration that nopony other than Berry would dare to call a party.

All the other inanimate guests were still there, the pile of rocks, the sack of flour, the bucket of turnips and the clump of lint; still grinning their invisible smiles. Probably it was still the effect of the poison joke (even when I had developed a small level of resistance to the thing which allowed me to regain consciousness faster than Berry expected.) but I could swear those things were laughing at me.

Elusive had arrived just in time. Berry had just finished placing the cupcakes and was about to play “Cut the Pony Tail” and considering I was the only other pony there...

“This game ends now!”

“Oh don´t be such a party pooper!”

He had promised to let us go. Of course he was lying. A second after he left he was back, bouncing and giggling all the way, He had already killed six ponies that week and Celestia knows how many more over the years, what's two more names to the list? And while Berry was a mad pony who had no resemblance of a soul inside him Elusive, despite his cold and uncaring exterior, was truly a noble heart so I was sure that despite his glaring horn he wouldn't shoot that beam at Berry; so only question remained, how were we supposed to get out of this one?

We stood there in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before the tension was broken by a clumsy grey pegasus crashing into the ceiling. She quickly got up and hovered over Berry´s head.

This is your singing telegram ♪

A really important one

Your special somepony is calling you ♫

So you better take it back

She stopped the second she realized exactly where she was standing.

Berry sighed and said in an exhausted tone. “You mind if I take that?”

“Please, you have the entire day.” Elusive said.

The pegasus whispered something to Berry while Elusive looked at me for an answer. I couldn´t help but giggle at little at the fact he was so confused he asked ME for an explanation.

“WHAT?!” Berry grabbed the pony by her throat. “This is exactly what she told you?! Her exact words?!”

The poor pegasus barely nodded.

“AAAAARGH!! Okey okey, tell her...tell her that if she´s lying to me I would find her and I would made a fine dress with her coat, yo got that?” The pony nodded again. “Fine, go.”

As the pegasus fled for her life, Berry pulled his mane up, returning it to his bouncy state. “Sorry so sorry but I had to go. This was fun though, we should have another party soon only then...I would kill both of you! See ya later, alligator!”

And with that he was gone but that was not the last time we will see Bubble Berry.

*****

The record finally hit it´s needle, stoping the recording.

“Oh pony feathers!” the doctor rushed to change the disk while Rainbow Blitz took the time to once again look at the dark stormy sky.

“I´m sorry Blitz, I need to find another disk. In the meantime, why don't you refresh my memory? You met Berry after the Nightmare Night incident, right?”

“No, before that. The Nightmare Night case was shortly after Spines´ birthday.”

“My notes are such a mess...why don't we start all over again? Tell me how you met Elusive.”

For what he felt liek the fithites tiem that night, Rainbow Blitz sighed.

******

I was one of the many curious ponies in the crowd, listening to Chief Inspector Butterscotch as he was giving a press conference related to the sudden parasprite´s infestation. The poor fella had a hard time finding the right words, unaccustomed as he seemed to public speaking.

“So the umh investigation has leaded us to well to what we believe the umh source of this eh infestation lies in…”

Suddenly one of the dragons blurted out a scroll. The reporter pony took it and after reading it raised his hoof.

“P-please, I know what´s in that scroll and I´ll prefer it if you could just ignore it…if thats what you want, of course…”

A second dragon blurted out another scroll followed by a third one.

“P-please! Ju-just ignorethemn! And can we continue with the umh press conference?”

Then all the dragons simultaneously blurted out, flooding the place with colored smokes and paper scrolls.

Poor Butterscotch facehoofed as somepony read a paper scroll directed at him:

“You´re an idiot!”

The parasprites incident was resolved in a discreet manner thanks to the assistance of my friend but I didn’t become aware of that until much later. A few days after the press conference incident I was in Ponyville, my old home town, looking for a place to live. My army pension wasn’t exactly generous and with my wing broken I sure wasn’t able to get a job at the weather patrol. That made accommodations a problem that needed to be solved quickly. After unsuccessfully visiting five locations, I ended up visiting my old army friend Klutz Hooves, now chief of the town post office; but, when I got into his office, I ran instead into a white alabaster unicorn sorting through all the packages and envelopes. I looked at him confused but I figured he wasn’t a thief because Klutz was on a nearby desk helping him search for something. I gave Klutz a nod and talked to the stranger:

“Hi! My name is…”

“Griffon or dragon?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your wound. griffon or dragon? I´m going for griffon since I don’t see any burn marks…”

“How did you…”

“You like the violin?”

“What?”

”I like to play the violin when I´m thinking. Sometimes for two or three hours straight, usually at 3 or 4 at the morning. I figured it will be better we straighten that up before we start living together.”

“Wait! How did you know I was looking for a place?”

“Unless you have developed some kind of paranoiac habit, those saddlebags on the door were clue enough.”

“Oh, right…but wait, how did you know about my wound?”

“We´ll talk later. At dinner or maybe not I usually don’t eat at home or eat at all for that matter. Food goes for your own, by the way. We have a housekeeper but she´s not particularly adept at her work so each pony at this own, I presume.” and he took one brown package and head for the door.

“Wait! What makes you think I´m going to say yes? We don’t even know each other´s name!”

He sighed and turned around to face me. “Your mane is rainbow colored and your tail follows a lightning bolt shape so I´m torn between Spectrum Strike or Rainbow Blitz. I´ll go with the last one. I know you serviced during the war in the zebra´s land due to the spots on your left hind leg, signs of poison joke poisoning. You work out everyday but you´re not very applied to exercise, preferring to take long naps and you just waked up from one as your disheveled mane proves it. You hate losing and had a bad temper but you´re also loyal and dedicated to your friends and I’m sure you got that wound protecting one of them. And you have a pet turtle as the sand in your hooves shows.”

“Tortoise.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Turret is a tortoise.”

“Oh, whatever.”

“That was…amazing!”

” You think so?”

“Of course, it was! It was extraordinary. It was quite extraordinary.”

“Huh! Not what most ponies would usually say…”

“And what do ponies usually say?”

“Are you a wizard?”

“Okay, if we´re doing this I need to set a few rules. First, I can take any mare I want home…”

“Vetoed.”

“Two. I always take an hour and a half nap so I’ll appreciate it you don’t play the violin during that time.”

“I’m not going to change my habits solely for you. Go sleep on a cloud or something. You’re a pegasus!”

“And three…never call me Blitzie. I hate that name.”

He smiled at this. “Jeh. I see you at home, old chum!”

“I never said yes!” I shouted as he was leaving.

Surprising, he peeked through the door to tell me something more.

“By the way, the name is Elusive and the address is 221b Baker Street. “