Franz had experienced an unbelievable few days.

While nothing would ever approach the mania of his initial arrival in Equestria – getting bitten by a runaway bug, only to run into a family of them hiding in a waterside warehouse was on another level of weird. As weird as things could be in a world with talking animals and magic. Franz had rightfully worried about the blunt force impact that he received, but for Franz the subject of changelings had never crossed his mind in the way that it did the average pony.

Because Franz didn’t know what a changeling was.

And since he didn’t know – the mare’s threat to keep them a secret was effective. Franz didn’t want to pull himself into any trouble for no good reason. In actuality the sooner he could forget about it the better. What was preventing that was the continuing charge of the infection up his arm. The herbal remedy that the doctor had given him two days ago had done nothing to slow it’s progress. Franz’s bandage was slowly growing in area every day.

The headache had gone, at least. Franz was counting the little miracles. But being in the presence of Red Rope for an extended period of time was liable to bring it right back again. Super Trouper swung on his little pony chair as the team meeting assembled for the morning session.

“You don’t look too hot Franz,” he preened his hair like a vulture. The challenges of styling your mane with blunt instruments was evident. Trouper usually poured a gallon of hair product over himself to wrestle it into submission.

“Some fucking crazy man bit me, I have rabies or something.”

“Uh-huh.”

Red Rope trotted into the meeting room and sat at the head of the table, behind him was a board covered in charts and statistics. The room quietened down. “Good morning fillies and stallions. Let’s get this meeting done with quick.” There’s a murmur of agreement from the cast. Red pointed to a chart that showed attendance numbers.

“You see this? This is the good stuff! Numbers are up! Prices are up! We’re picking up a lot of speed. I ain’t gonna’ pretend that it isn’t because of our tall friend here – but we’re aiming to build a company that isn’t just a gimmick.” Nods and agreements echoed through the room.

Poppy butted in, “But Franz isn’t just a gimmick…”

“I know Poppy, but what if Franz isn’t here? I want those numbers to be real. Every show has a selling point, we need some more of them that aren’t Franz. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“We can’t afford a big expensive set, or costumes, we’re cutting it close just paying you for being here. So I want some ideas, some great ideas that’ll get all those snobs talking!” Red tapped the table with his hoof for emphasis. Franz screamed internally. These were the worst kind of meetings. Many of the ponies at the theatre didn’t exactly have the idea generation skills to deliver a world beating concept.

Franz’s mind was once again cast back to the shock that they bore when he suggested that a character die in one of their pieces. Most plays in Equestria ended with everybody happy, and if they didn’t it was usually because they were historical re-enactments. Poppy leaned in again, “I think our current play is really good…”

“Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with it,” Trouper added. “What do you think Franz?”

Franz blew air through his nose and relaxed into his seat. “It’s okay.”

“Okay? Buddy you came up with it!”

“Well, I’m not always happy with my own work.”

“I don’t like the murder…” Poppy mused. “Maybe next time we should do a play without it.”

Franz shrugged, “If you want, I just wanted a classical tragedy.”

Red Rope swung on his chair, “A classical what?”

“A tragedy, a story with a sad ending.”

Poppy covered her muzzle, “Why would you want that?”

Franz sighed, “People like to feel all kinds of emotions. Sometimes people want to feel sad too.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You don’t need to get it, it just works.”

Red waved off the topic, “He’s right, it does work. Sales are through the roof, and we’re getting rave reviews in all the papers.” Franz had seen some of them himself. It was flattering to see other people praising his work openly. Although many of them criticized the ending, and the murder. It was even more of a taboo than he expected. Franz was by no means a writer himself. Any other professional could do better with the same subject material.

“Might I suggest that we hire a proper writer,” he floated. “I am no expert; I can only provide so much shock value.”

Red Rope nodded, “Shock value… never heard of it.”

“It’s where you put something that will cause trouble on purpose.”

“That sounds amazing! And I guess we can hire a writer too… anypony know a good one? Because I don’t.” Rope scanned the meeting room but was only met with blank stares, “Am I going to have to put out an ad?”

“I know somebody,” Franz stated, “I don’t know if they’ll be available though.”

“You really can do everything can’t you? Give him a holler for me and get back.”

---

The rest of the meeting was mostly uneventful, but Franz had placed a foot firmly into his own mouth yet again. There was nothing wrong with keeping quiet once in a while – Franz ought to learn. He chided himself as he strode down the roads of the city. His arm hurt, he was tired, and now Red Rope was giving him more work to do.

Script (the pony, not the style of theatrical writing) was not going to be happy to see him. And yet Franz found himself stood in front of his home slash office, preparing to knock down his door. Franz knocked thrice. The only response was the groan of a tired stallion.

“Script? Are you still asleep?” Franz was paranoid about waking up the other residents. He heard him shuffling around inside of his small apartment. Papers crunching underfoot as he tried to get his bearings. “Script, I have a job for you.”

“Give me a minute for Celestia’s sake!” The nasal stallion yelled. “Where is this… ah! There you are.” The door clicked as he unlocked it with his key. The door opened to reveal a young stallion with white fur, a messy black mane and yellow eyes. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Franz knew that Script would become impatient quickly. Unless he invited you into his apartment, you were on borrowed time. “Red Rope wants a new play for our company, and he doesn’t know where to look.”

He leant up against the doorframe, “What’s the budget?” Franz gazed past the pony and into his apartment. The floor was carpeted with discarded pieces of paper and half-finished concepts. There was a small kitchenette, a desk with a typewriter, and a bed. Another door led into the only other room, the bathroom.

“Brave of you to assume that it has one.” Franz stroked his chin; he was starting to grow into a beard.

Script glanced at the black mark on his arm. He grumbled, “What? So I don’t even get paid?”

“No, you get paid. You just don’t get to splash it on expensive costumes and sets.”

“Ugh, this sounds like a terrible job!”

Franz shrugged, “Do you know somebody who would want to do it?”

“Is this what they call networking…”

“Script.”

“Fine, I do - as it happens - know somepony who would like to get a shot at the big time. She’s a mare who came to the writing workshop a few weeks ago.” Script pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled down an address and name. Franz took it from him.

“Sally… Scribble?”

“Yeah, but she just prefers scribble.”

“And she lives down by the docks.”

“Yes.”

Franz kicked the tip of his toe against the floor, “Not again.”

“Huh?”

“I had a bad time down there the other day.” He put the paper into his pocket next to his own apartment key.

“Tourists?”

“No, the tourist was actually rather friendly.”

Script bobbed his head back and forth, as if deciding to broach an uncomfortable subject, “Does it have anything to do with your nasty looking arm?”

Franz held it up and ran his fingers across the hardened skin, “It does. That Doctor I saw was a complete quack, no help at all.”

“That sucks. It looks… bad.”

“I know, it keeps getting bigger. I’m going to end up wrapped in bandages.”

An awkward silence settled over the pair. Franz and Script truthfully had very little in common, and Franz dreaded having to speak with him. They’d met a few times while “networking” with other theatre people – and their relationship was strictly professional. Franz didn’t hate Script, far from it. But this kind of silence was the one that made him break out into a sweat.

“Just one last word of warning, she’s a bit… eccentric. So bear with her.”

“Okay.”

With their transaction finished, Franz waved him off and descended the stairs back to the lobby. He had too much to do. He needed to organize that blood test that the Doctor offered, find somebody to work on a script for the theatre, and the other day some silly bastard had bucked a hole in the wall outside his apartment - which meant that he needed to find a plasterer too. Whoever did it had hell to pay when he found them.

Franz was lost in thought when he came to an abrupt stop. The pony who ran into him tumbled over onto his back and cowered beneath his legs, “Don’t hurt me!” It was Shady Palm again, the tourist he’d helped the day before. His floral shirt was dirty and matted with what seemed to be blood.

“It’s me Shady, what on Earth happened to you?” Franz bent over and pulled him back onto his hooves. The stallion didn’t answer at first, glancing behind him as if he was being chased.

“The pony mafia are after me!”

“The what what?”

“The pony mafia! The most notorious gang in the country!”

He certainly looked the part. He’d clearly been in some kind of scuffle. “So why are you running down the road like a madman? I don’t see anybody.”

“That’s because I got my behind outta’ there! You should have’ seen the face on this fella, he looked like a hive of bees!” The first thing that Franz wanted to do was walk away before he got dragged into something else, but he knew it was probably too late to do anything about it now.

“And what happened between yesterday and now to cause this?”

Shady began regaling the story, complete with mimed actions. “So you see, I was down at the waterfront enjoying myself a big bowl of Manehattan’s finest, when I bump into this big fella. Wouldn’t you know it? Food everywhere! And man, his suit looked expensive. He was furious!”

“So you got into a street fight.”

“Well, yeah!”

While ponies were adverse to violence in most cases, that didn’t mean that they’d avoid fighting if you made them angry enough. Franz had seen a few dust ups himself during his time in the city. “I don’t follow, why is the mafia after you?”

“Well, he was ranting and raving in front of me about how much it cost to dry clean, so he spilled a bunch of beans about how he was a bigshot in the pony mafia. Then we got into a tussle, I would have had him if his friend didn’t join in!”

Franz’s belief could only be stretched so far before it snapped. He didn’t believe for a single moment that there was such a thing as the pony mafia, or that a random stallion would declare that he was part of it because he got food on his clothes. “I’m going to be honest; I think you made some of this up.”

Shady was visibly offended at the suggestion, “I’d never do that! They ruined my favourite shirt.” He pulled on the fabric, wringing out some water. Did he get thrown into the bay too?

“Maybe you did get into a fight, I doubt that the pony mafia are going to hunt down some random tourist just for that.”

“They’re pretty easy to spot – they’ve been all over the city for the past few days. Looking for me!”

“It’s nice to know that you have such a high opinion of yourself.”

“Thank you!”

“That was sarcasm.”

His ears drooped, “Oh.”

“I think you need to go relax somewhere and stop worrying so much. At least you didn’t get bitten by one of them.”

“I might have, my flank hurts.” Shady sat down in the middle of the road and smoothed over his mane. Franz looked up, his eyes meeting a pony wearing a white suit jacket. He looked like bad news, he had the frown, the jewellery and the slicked hair. It was like a pony Robert de Niro.

“Don’t look but I think one of them is over there.” Shady, being stupid, tried to look. Franz intervened and held his head in place. “What did I just say?”

“To not look.”

“Just ignore him. He has a suit, is this one of these mafia guys?”

“Does he look mean?”

“Yes, very.”

“That’s two strikes.”

There was a brief moment that struck fear into Franz’s heart as the gangster looked his way. After a moment something else seemed to grab his attention and he peeled off into a nearby alley. “Where’s he going?”

Shady pushed away Franz’s hands, “I rightly don’t care!”

“Stay here then.”

Franz walked past and dashed towards the alleyway. He could hear the sound of the stallion opening the lids of the dumpsters and bins. He was looking for something. “Come on out dead meat! I’ll go easy on you.”

There was no response to his vague threat of violence. Not that any rational person would jump at the chance to surrender to a mobster. “I’ll find you eventually, make it easy on yourself.”

The invisible man wasn’t in the mood for a beatdown. Franz was struck with a sudden sense of déjà vu. Wasn’t this what happened to him yesterday? If his life was a play, he was currently enduring some incredibly lazy dramatic irony. As if on cue, a trash can fell. The mobster swung around, “Hey! Get the buck back here!”

A black blur dashed past him with such speed that he was almost unsure of what happened. Franz vacated his spot before the mobster spotted him. Shady pushed through the ponies who had gathered, “Did you see that? A changeling! Like a bat out of tartarus!”

“Oh my goodness! A changeling, how horrible!”

“We need to call the guard!”

“Are they going to invade the city?”

One mare fainted. A sense of panic was rapidly spreading through the crowd.

“Shady, what is a changeling?”

“What? You don’t know what a changeling is? They only invaded Canterlot castle during the royal wedding! They’re the most wanted creatures in Equestria.”

And he was the one person who knew where they were hiding.

“Oh, good.”

Franz’s day just kept getting worse and worse.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3: Scribbling on the Walls Estimated time remaining: 20 Minutes