Pinkie Pie entered the bar with her guest at sometime around midnight. Looking around the place, she scrunched up her nose in distaste.

Ugh, this smells worse than my baked bads mixed with some toilet water.

She took another sniff.

Used toilet water.

Her guest was hobbling beside, and after spotting her blind date in the center of the relatively empty bar, she deposited him on one of the many fragile-looking stools that sat next to the bar's counter. She slid into the seat across from a young colt in a suit as expensive as her own slim black dress. She grinned at him. He did nothing, save look at the clearly drunken colt on the stool next to her. He flipped his stringy, grease-covered purple hair back, and the colt in the suit turned back to Pinkie.

"You brought a date?"

"Well of course, silly filly!" she purred, still grinning hugely at him. "They're good for opening doors for you!"

Business Suit shut his eyes for a minute, resisting the urge to shoot her down. He knew how the pink mare across from him worked. His eyes opened again, and he asked, "Do you have what I want?"

The mare nodded eagerly. She slid a tiny envelope out from under the table and across it. Business Suit took it, pulled from it the hoofprint of Rainbow Dash, smiled, and put it back in the envelope.

"Thank you for your services, Ms. Pie."

"Sooo, where's my present?" She still held the giddy air of somepony who had just gotten everything they wanted for their birthday.

The suit-wearing colt smiled for the first time that evening. "Of course," he said, and clicked his hoof against the wood of the table twice.

One of the other patrons at the bar stood up at the sound of the clicks. He trotted over to where Pinkie was sitting, drew a gun out, and aimed it directly at her head. The pink mare on whom the gun was trained looked neither scared or fazed whatsoever. She still bounced excitedly in her chair, a remarkably wide grin still plastered to her face.

"Ooh, are we playing Russian Roulette?"

The colt smiled again. "Yes we are. Only, in this game, all the chambers are full of bullets."

The grunt cocked the weapon.

"I think that's cheating," replied Pinkie Pie, still paying no attention to the gun barrel now pressing into the side of her head. "Oh! I know! Let's play 'Count the Hoof Marks!'" Her grin widened (if that was even possible), and the colt in the suit looked back down at the envelope. He pulled out the hoofprint again, and this time noticed that it was incomplete. His face twisted in anger a bit, and he looked back up at the mare before her.

"Looks like I win!" She leaned back in her chair, pushing the weapon pointed at her away from her head with a hoof. "Don't worry, though. Lot's of ponies aren't good at counting to one. I know a pony who can't even count to zero! She just says 'Muffins!' and-"

The mare would have continued, if the barrel of a certain goon's gun hadn't found its way into her mouth. She pulled it out of her mouth in a second and spit onto the floor repeatedly. The Suited Colt smiled.

"I can count fine, thank you." He gestured to the gun-holder, and he pointed the weapon at Pinkie's head once more. The Suited Colt ignored the brief attitude change Pinkie went through as she rose back up to the table, wiping her lips and giving him a look that would have scared a cop into having nightmares. "In fact," he continued, "I'm counting to ten right now."

The barrel of the gun pressed against her head (again), and Pinkie sighed, her bouncy nature replaced with the calm and collected one that had spoken with Rainbow Dash the night before.

"Fine," she said, and reached for her purse. The goon snatched it away before she could reach it, and tossed a cell phone over to the Suited Colt.

"Just hit Send," explained Pinkie Pie. "She'll be here in a minute."

The Suited Colt hit Send, and more than a minute later, a very young looking unicorn came inside the bar, looking apprehensive about the situation. She had brilliant orange hair that covered her face slightly, and her outfit of a short skirt and a form fitting tank top screamed Jailbait, come and get it! She trotted up to Pinkie, giving the gun a mere glance before handing her another small envelope.

"Nice place. A bit dull, don't ya think?"

"Don't worry your little head, Pumpkin," said Pinkie, taking the envelope without looking at the young filly.

"Everything cool in here?" Her eyes were on the gun.

"Great," Pinkie lied. "See ya later."

The filly exited with a dubious look on her face.

Pinkie sighed and slid the envelope over to the Suited Colt. "You didn't have to make this so complicated. You could have just given me what I wanted."

For the third time that night, the colt in the suit smiled. "Well, ponies would have asked how your payment ended up as your payment, and I don't like leaving loose ends. Which brings me to my next topic."

The barrel of the gun pressed against the back of her neck again. She gave her current business partner a deadpan stare.

The colt continued: "Nopony is going to miss you, so why bother leaving you out there with the knowledge of our little deal?"

Pinkie looked at the colt who had been sitting through the whole scene at the bar counter. Her grin returned, and she said, "You're absolutely right, buddy. But him..." She pointed at the drunken colt, then the television next to him. "Him, he's a different story."

The Suited Colt looked over at the Drunken Colt, and his eyes caught a glimpse of the news story playing on the local channel:

He glanced between the photo of Fancypants on the screen and the colt at the bar, then turned back to Pinkie, a smirk on his face.

"Well, aren't you the colt-magnet. But I don't think the cops'll be looking for him in a place like this."

Pinkie's grin widened. "Of course they will."

"What are you talking about?"

Half of her face showed of her pearly whites to the Suited Colt. "You just used his cellphone, silly!"

He had time to look down at the cell phone he had indeed just used before the sound of cop cars filled the bar.

Pinkie swung into action, quite literally. She swung out of her chair and bucked the colt with the gun in the face. He fell to the ground, unconscious before her hit it, and Pinkie turned her attention to Business Suit, who was pulling his own pistol out of a pocket in his jacket. She swiftly hopped over the table and held his hoof with hers. Then she turned, fired a shot at one of the other patrons at the bar (it had taken her only a moment with the gun pointed at her to see that everypony in the bar save for her and Fancypants were working with the Suited Colt), and turned the gun on the colt she'd brought in with her. The other goons made for her, but when she shot the celebrity in the leg, they paused long enough to listen to his scream of pain.

Then the police began beating down the doors to the bar.

Pinkie dispatched another henchman before pistol-whipping the Suited Colt with his own gun (she was still holding his hoof over it) before crouching down beneath the table just as the police came bursting into the room. She shoved the Suited Colt away, and while he made his escape (some of the goons hid him behind them while the police approached), she began to shriek herself. Like a special effect, her hair shifted from it's bouncy curls to straight cascades, and she frantically snatched at a police officer's vest as they made their way through the room.

"Just stay down, miss," the guard said. "You'll be alright."

She was alright, that much she knew. But she wasn't going to stay still, as more and more police stepped into the bar, she made her way from under the table to past where her one night stand was currently lying on the ground, clutching one of his hind legs.

"Don't forget to put pressure on that, baby," she said, adjusting her dress as she exited the bar.

The hopeless celebrity watched her go.

"Call me?"

Scootaloo ran into Pinkie when the latter came rushing out of the bar. One mumbled apology later, the pink mare was explaining the situation to the cop.

"Th-There's a stallion in there!" Her voice revealed nothing but innocence and fright. "He's bleeding!"

"It'll be alright, miss," said Scootaloo. "Just stand by and let us do our job."

The mare did just that, and Scootaloo entered the building, gun raised and held (quite impressively) in one wing. She looked around quickly to see if anypony was still there, but it seemed as though the guards had taken everypony out through the back door. She found the colt the mare had screamed about near the bar's counter, holding his hind leg and groaning in agony.

"Help me," he whispered as Scootaloo approached him. It tool the pegasus to realize who exactly this colt was, and when she did, she pulled her radio out with her free wing and held it up to her mouth.

"I found him. The missing celebrity. We'll need an ambulance." In her excitement, she forgot about snooping around a bit to gather evidence.

She also forgot about the pretty young mare in the tight black dress.

In the alley behind the bar, all Tartarus broke loose. The hoodlums responsible (it was assumed) for Fancypants' kidnapping were so desperate to get away that they began firing any weaponry they had at the small army of cops heading their way. A small group of the hoodlums went down a narrower alleyway, and one of the three patrol cars in the fray managed to get around the other fighting ponies and follow them. Sitting at the driver's seat of this car was Twilight Sparkle.

The patrol car stopped when Twilight saw the band move into an even narrower alley, one that the car could never fit into. She sighed, stepped out of the car, and levitated her gun up to face the entrance to the alley. She steeled herself for a fight, and raced into the alley to find...

...nothing. The alley was empty.

What in Celestia's name...? She scanned the alley with ultra-observant eyes, never once considering the use of magic as an assist on the chase. After a full minute of staring at the alley, Twilight noticed a ponyhole cover hiding in the shadows. A ponyhole cover that was slightly ajar...

"PONYHOLE!" she shouted. The teams nearest to her responded almost immediately, and they rushed forward with the commissioner. The ponyhole was removed, and Twilight dropped down into the sewers without hesitation. Only a few of the cops that had originally followed her down the alley went into the sewers with her, though. They knew there was still plenty of danger above ground, and it was most certainly less danger than what might await them down below.

As Twilight descended into the sewers, she prayed that she wouldn't end up lost in the system of tunnels.

Scootaloo arrived on the scene soon after delivering Fancypants into the hands of the paramedics, and found the small group gathered around the ponyhole. They explained the situation to her, and she was surprised to see that Big Macintosh was still above ground, and not running after Twilight.

"Ah'd be a nuisance, nothin' more," he said. "Besides, Twilight's go th' situation under control."

Scootaloo wished she could believe that, but for some reason, she couldn't.

Twilight and her small gang of law enforcers trudged through the tunnels, the shining light of Twilight's horn casting a purplish shadow on everything around them. Twilight struggled to hear where the criminals had gone. There was a small splash of water from somewhere far off, and she followed it eagerly, trying to hide the sound of her hoofsteps splashing the water around. Her gun was still raised.

The group approached a corner, and they paused for a moment. Then, after gesturing to the others that they follow her lead, she turned the corner, gun raised high and pointed straight ahead.

She was met instantly with a barrage of gunfire from the criminals. The group sprang back behind the corner, but the sound of automatic gunfire continued incessantly, chipping bits of the tunnel walls and mixing the smell of sewage with that of gunpowder.

Twilight wished she had body armor like her group-mates did.

The gunfire stopped, and Twilight waited a minute before slowly turning her head around the corner to check...

The sewer blew up.

Twilight felt a wave of heat hit her with such force that she thought her mane might singe. She stubled backward, as did the other cops, before turning and running straight back towards where she believed the entrance was. She came to a stop after the ceiling behind her decided to stop crumbling. She was in the stage of contemplating the means for causing an explosion when the sound of somepony trotting towards her caught her attention.

She turned around to slowly. Something large and heavy struck her head, and everything turned to black.

Scootaloo sat in her patrol car, disappointed in herself, but more the Deputy Commissioner. Big Mac had not allowed her to follow Twilight down into the sewers, and though her arguments had been reasonable, the stallion had sent her to wait for further orders by her patrol car.

My flank, she thought, spitting on the ground beside her car. She thought of Twilight, and how much danger she could have been in at the moment, and where she might end up if she were injured down there-

An idea came to mind. Grinning, Scootaloo stepped inside her car and drove off to find just the place she was thinking of.

Twilight felt a dull sting on her knees from being dragged across the floor of the sewers. The rough texture of the hooves grabbing her told her that she was most certainly not being taken back up to the surface to be treated by the paramedics. The stench of sewage and her captor's clothing invaded her nostrils, and when she gagged, one of them kicked her in the ribs.

She heard them mumble about her being the police commissioner, and again found herself wishing Celestia hadn't given her that "surprise reassignment" all those years ago.

She saw lanterns, half alive, half put out, lining the walls of the new tunnels her captors took her down. Beefy colts trotted through the tunnels, and Twilight realized that there was an entire community living underneath the city she wanted so desperately to protect. What worried her most was the task each pony seemed to be up to. They were excavating throughout the tunnels, building...something. She didn't know what.

This is more than a kidnapping, she thought, and for the first time that night felt terrified. So much more.

She was dragged into a cavernous area, complete with sewer-waterfall as a centerpiece. There was no time to admire the grimy architecture, however, as the two hooligans tossed Twilight onto the ground before a startlingly large and scaly form kneeling before her, its back turned to face a wall of computer screens.

"Why are you here?" asked the creature, it's voice deep and slightly hard to understand.

The two stallions kicked Twilight again. "Answer him, ya pig!" one of them shouted. Twilight was too busy gasping in pain to answer. There was no need to, though; she was not the one being addressed.

"I am asking you," said the creature, and it turned to face them. The mask covering half of his (Twilight could see it was a male, though there had been almost no doubt from the beginning) face looked to her like that of a skull. The purple dragon looked between the two, waiting for an answer.

"Th-This is the police commissioner, Spike," the one on the left said. He grinned, as if joking, and added, "Brought him to ya ta see if ya could squeeze some info outta him."

"No." The dragon's lips could not be seen, but Twilight could hear the drawn back smile in his words. "What you did was panic. And now, there are three ponies dead because of you." He put a claw on the left colt's shoulder and nodded as he said this.

"But she was alone-"

There was no time left in his lifespan to finish the sentence. Spike snapped his neck with one hand, and the lifeless form slumped to the floor. Unfazed emerald eyes turned from the boy to the other colt, who was shaking slightly, though not bothering to run away.

"Search her," he said, nodding towards Twilight. "Then, I will kill you."

The colt stood there for a moment, and Twilight wondered if he would try and run away. She was shocked to see him nod and bend down toward her. His dirt-covered hooves ran under her coat, and she shuddered when they rested on her chest for a second too long. He took her pen, her quill, her wallet, her badge, her speech...

My speech, she realized. Oh Celestia, not my speech! She could not struggle, though, and watched the death-marked stallion hand the papers to the masked drake slowly. Spike read through them, and his eyes narrowed as he neared the end. If his lips were visible, Twilight was sure she would find them drawn back into a menacing smile.

She noticed then that no one in the area was paying her mind. She also noted that the edge of the platform leading down into the sewer waters was very close by. In half a second, an idea popped into her head. She took another glance at Spike, who was still absorbed in her speech, and turned back to the platform's edge.

Well, as a great doctor once told me, she thought, holding back fear as it tried to take control of her actions, Geronimo! Then she rolled over the edge of the platform and fell into the churning waters below.

She sighed with relief when she felt the waters begin to pull her down the pipe. Then she heard the bullets whizzing past, and she screamed underwater when several of these bullets rammed into her flesh. She swam towards the exit, getting out of fire range as quickly as possible and trying not to fall unconscious and drown in the sewers. She left Spike with her speech still in his hands.

He watched the now-crimson foam wash downstream, and turned back to the colt he hadn't killed yet. His fate had been sealed a long time ago, and now it was doubly so.

"He's dead," said the fool.

"Where's the body?" Spike asked.

The colt shook his head. "We wouldn't be able to find him. The tunnels stretch for miles and miles underground. She could end up anywhere. Really."

After some consideration, Spike turned to a crimson dragon behind him. "Lieutenant Garble," he said, drawing the drake's attention. He gestured to the GPS sitting next to him, and Garble picked it up and handed it to Spike. The purple dragon turned back to the stupid colt, and tucked the GPS gently inside his coat pocket. He patted it to check if it was secure, then told the idiot, "Follow him."

"What?" replied the dead colt.

Spike aimed Twilight's gun and shot him neatly between the eyes. The colt fell to the ground, and Spike kicked him into the water, where the body was swept downstream, the way that the lavender unicorn had. He tossed the gun behind him, where it landed in Garble's lap. The lieutenant held the gun up, examined it, and tucked it in his own belt for later use, then went back to looking at the magazine on the table before him. He'd read about half a sentence before Spike spoke up.

"Track them," said the mercenary. "Make sure that neither of the bodies are found. Then we must board up the south tunnel." He still held Twilight's paper's in his hand, and pointed at the crimson drake with them.

Garble got up and walked off to obey his boss's orders, leaving Spike alone to brood over the speech in his hand. He read through it again, and smiled under the mask, just as Twilight had guessed.

Fate, it seemed, was on his side.

Scootaloo found Twilight where she'd found Thunderlane. Only, this time, there was no corpse to come across. Only a frantic, panicking mare thrashing in the water. Scootaloo rushed over to the commissioner and pulled her out of the sewer water, laying her down on the pavement next to it. She was covered in grime and blood, and Sootaloo saw a set of neat little holes in her lavender coat.

"Spike," she muttered, her eyes already fading into subconsciousness. "Under...sewer...warn Ponyville...need the...B-"

Then she fainted.

Scootaloo kneeled over her for a moment, contemplating what the unicorn had just said.

She couldn't mean... she thought to herself, before realizing that the police commissioner of Ponyville was bleeding to death in front of her. She snatched her radio up again, and called for more paramedics.

Please don't be dead when they get here, she thought while the ambulance was dispatched. That would look so bad on my resume.