Ponyville Noire Respite: Misty Streets of Equestria
by PonyJosiah13
First published
Scarred from their final encounter with Zugzwang, Phillip Finder and Daring Do struggle to make peace with the past while balancing a slew of new mysteries that will take them beyond Ponyville.
Zugzwang is dead, Scarlet Letter is in prison, and Ponyville is safer than it has ever been before, the once invulnerable crime syndicates in fragmented disarray. But Daring Do and Phillip Finder still dream of the red sky and the empty black eyes; Trace's dying scream echoes in their ears when they try to sleep, and they feel Zugzwang's ghost haunting them.
But even as they struggle with their demons, more cases come to the doorstep of 221 Honeybee Bakery. And as hard as it is, Phillip and Daring cannot turn away from those in need. Dragons in Canterlot, changeling intrigue in their own hometown, murder in the Crystal Empire, and treasure hunts in the Aushaylian Outback: these new, fantastic cases will take the detectives on strange journeys across Equestria, introducing them to new allies and friends. And maybe they will find peace along the way.
This smaller series is intended as a sort of coda to Volume Two. As I prepare to plan out the next major story of the Ponyville Noire series, I decided to write a few shorter cases to keep the gears greased. The purpose of this story is primarily to introduce some new characters and locales to the Noireverse, but also to show Phillip and Daring dealing with the trauma of what they went through in Volume Two: all things I wasn't confident I could do well in Volume Three, considering what I had planned for that.
I hope that you enjoy this work!
Updates every Saturday. Edited by Eagle--Paladin of Shadows!
Case Fourteen, Prologue: Open Account
“One thing about Canterlot,” Detective Hidden Ace mused, taking a sip from the coffee cup floating in front of him. "Can't say it's ever boring around here."
He was currently standing in the middle of a grand hallway of granite and marble, staring at what had been the vault of First Equestrian Bank, flanked by great portraits of the bank’s founders and previous presidents. Normally, the vault would have been secured with an enormous door of magically reinforced and warded steel that was twice as tall and three times as wide as a pony, weighing almost ten tons and proof against all sorts of charms and spells.
The door was hanging ajar, the lock having been violently ripped open. Inside the vault were rows and rows of safe deposit boxes, their steel doors all torn from their hinges and laying on the floor amidst spilled gems and bits.
Even though he already knew what he would find, Detective Ace lit up his horn and passed a light red aura over the torn metal. As he’d suspected, there was no trace of magic over the vault lock. In fact, upon closer inspection, he could see the heavy dents in the side of the lock where the intruder had gripped the door when they ripped it open.
“They took the recording crystal, too?” the white unicorn asked, brushing a strand of his black mane out of his rosy eyes.
“Yes, sir,” the officer replied, staring at the torn open door in awe.
"And you found the Nightpoppy next to the door?" the unicorn continued, not even bothering to turn around.
"Right, sir," the officer nodded. "Guards were all fast asleep, didn't see anything." He whistled at the door. “This is...what, the fifth one?”
“Correct,” Ace nodded, pulling the tracking wand out from the saddlebag and switching on the aurate glow.
“What kind of creature could do this?” the rookie asked aloud.
“Not a pony,” Detective Ace said, sweeping the wand over the marble floor. Tracks appeared on the floor in a shining golden glow: tracks that did not believe to a pony.
The officer had been expecting it, he knew about the other robberies. The sight still made him shudder slightly. "It just doesn't seem believable," he said, mainly to himself.
“Who else would be strong enough to rip open a steel door?” Ace asked, nodding in confirmation as he took out a camera and snapped a few pictures of the tracks.
“That Ambassador isn’t gonna be happy,” the officer commented warily.
“Let him kick up a fuss,” Ace snorted. “He can’t protect his kind from this.”
Both stallions stared down in contemplative silence at the line of tracks revealed by the tracking wand, a trail leading into the vault, and a trail leading back out. A trail composed of long talons with three separate distinct toes.
“You ever go after a dragon, son?” Detective Ace asked. The rookie just gulped in response.
Case Fourteen, Chapter One: On Scaly Wings
Ponyville was used to unusual sights. A city of four hundred thousand creatures is guaranteed to have its share of strangeness on a regular basis, never mind the fact that it had, until last month, been ruled by a succession of crime lords.
However, a dragon strolling down Golden Oaks Street was definitely odd.
Heads turned as the orange dragon walked down the sidewalk past the enormous oak tree at the mouth of the street, glancing at the map that she’d pulled out of her backpack. Mothers pulled foals back into their homes with yelps of fright and doors slammed shut in her wake, shades snapping down over windows. The dragoness paused, glancing around in confusion and irritation before sighing and continuing on. “Ten-ten, ten-ten…” she mumbled to herself, checking the numbers of the houses that she walked past.
She finally paused in front of a two-story brown cottage with golden trim. “Ah, there we are!” she declared, replacing the map in her backpack and striding up to the door, which she knocked at, hard.
After a few moments, the door opened and an orange pegasus peered out the opening, his blue eyes widening in surprise. “Hello,” he nodded politely.
“‘Sup,” the dragoness replied. “Do Twilight and Spike live here?”
“Smolder!” a voice cried from inside and Spike rushed out the door past Flash, hugging the orange dragoness around the waist. Smolder smiled and patted Spike on the head.
“How you doing, little guy?” Smolder said. “Still haven’t molted?”
“Not yet, but we’re expecting it any day now,” Twilight said as she entered the hallway, telekinetically scooping up the morning Foal Free Press from the front step. “Good to see you, Smolder! Come on inside.”
“I, uh...take it you know this dragon?” Flash commented, stepping aside as Smolder entered, closing the door behind her.
“I see your detective training is paying off,” Twilight smirked, booping Flash and setting the newspaper on a side table as they proceeded into the sitting room. “This is Smolder. We knew her when we lived in Canterlot. She helped the Princesses and I make sure Spike was growing properly and gave us some advice on dragon growth. She's been a big help.”
“You’re just lucky Ambassador Krein took a liking to you, kid,” Smolder grinned, playfully punching Spike on the shoulder. “Babysitting wasn’t in the original job description when I signed up as his assistant.”
“Yeah, I know, dragons don’t do soft stuff,” Spike smirked and rolled his eyes as Smolder began to unpack her backpack, dumping notebooks and books written in Dragontongue over the study materials that Twilight and Flash had set out for the detective written test.
Amidst the spilled materials was a photograph of baby Spike sitting at a table holding up a plastic teacup for Smolder, who was wearing a turquoise dress, a tiara, and a smile as she poured tea into his cup. Twilight, wearing a pale yellow dress and hennin, was giggling from the other side of the table.
“Apparently, some dragons do,” Flash smirked as Twilight giggled.
Smolder let out a squawk and quickly snatched the picture back into her backpack. “You didn’t see anything!” she snarled at Flash, baring her pointed teeth. Flash gulped and quickly wiped his smile off his face, nodding rapidly.
“So how’s Krein doing?” Spike asked.
“Could be better,” Smolder admitted, opening up the book on dragon development.
“Why?” Twilight asked. “Is something happening in the Dragonlands?”
“Nah; most exciting thing going on over there is Princess Ember fending off would-be suitors.” Smolder stuck her tongue out and jammed her finger in her throat, gagging loudly to express her opinion of it all. “No, the big issue right now is in Canterlot.”
“What’s going on?” Spike asked.
“Some dragons in Canterlot are disappearing,” Smolder explained, putting her talons in her lap. “More than a dozen in the past five months. The police are looking into it, but they’re coming up with nothing. Not that they’re being much help,” she added with a grumble.
“Why not?” Flash asked. “If they’re anything like Ponyville used to be, then—”
“It’s not that,” Smolder interrupted. “There’s been a spree of bank robberies in Canterlot, and the police suspect a dragon, so they’re cracking down on the dragon neighborhoods.”
“Why do they suspect a dragon?” Twilight asked with a frown. “What evidence do they have?”
“Well, there is that,” Flash commented, picking up the Foal Free Press and holding up the picture that his eyes had fallen upon.
Twilight and Spike both stared in disbelief at the photograph. It showed the facade of the First Equestrian Bank, according to the gold lettering over the doorway.
Or rather, over the massive, jagged hole where the door used to be. The massive ten-foot-tall door, made of iron with bars over its windowed center, lay on the ground next to the marble steps, having been ripped from the hinges and flung aside to allow access to the bank. Police officers stood on either side of the staircase, holding back a curious crowd as a pair of plainclothes officers ducked underneath the crime scene tape cordoning off the area.
“Superstrong Stealer Strikes Again!” read the headline.
"Who wrote that?" Flash asked, his brow furrowed in befuddlement.
Twilight took up the paper and started to read through the article. “According to this, that was the fifth bank hit in three months,” she reported. “Just like the other ones, the robber or robbers ripped the front door and the vault door open, stole several bags of bits and gems, then took the recording crystal from the security room. There was no trace of magic spells being used at the scene...police have not announced any suspects…”
“See, the cops think that only a dragon would be strong enough to rip open a vault door like that without a spell,” Smolder replied. “So they’ve been cracking down on the dragons, prying for suspects. They weren’t on good terms with dragons anyway, and this is just making it worse.”
“I mean, I’d suspect a dragon, too,” Flash mused. “I mean, no other creature is strong enough tooooo....I should shut up now, shouldn’t I?” he asked, looking up to find the other three all glaring at him.
“That would probably be a good idea,” Twilight stated.
“And if the dragons don’t trust the cops to help them with these disappearances, who are we gonna ask for help?” Smolder asked, flinging her claws up in frustration.
Spike, Twilight, and Flash all exchanged looks. “We might have an idea,” Twilight said.
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
He exhaled sharply with every punch, his hooves hammering into the heavy bag with a steady rhythm. Jab-cross, hook. Jab, body shot, elbow. Cross, double elbow, clinch into knee strike. He drove his knee up again and again with a convulsive motion, like a sharp cough. If the bag was a foe, every strike would send them doubling over, wheezing and coughing.
Unless it was...
Phillip Finder paused, recovering his breath. No. Don’t think about that. He’s dead. Phillip leaned against the bag, mopping sweat off his brow with his gray t-shirt as he tried to banish the images from his head.
Forget the red sky. Forget the black eyes. Forget the way its voice gurgled as it laughed...
“You all right?” Daring Do asked, dropping down from the exposed pipe that served as a pull-up bar. She wiped her sweaty face with a foreleg, briefly hiding the entrenched shadows that were carved around her haggard violet eyes.
“I’m fine,” Phillip grunted, shaking his head as he shook out his forelegs. He started punching the bag again, adding in ducks and weaves as he avoided the imaginary enemy’s attacks. Daring watched him for a second, then dropped to the floor and started doing wing-ups.
“Phil?” a voice called down the stairs. “There’s a client at the door.”
Something stabbed Phillip in the chest and his breath hitched hard. He staggered against the bag, sucking in air for a moment.
“Okay, dad,” he called. He mopped off more sweat and started up the stairs. Daring followed him, her face fixed masklike as she studied his back. She tread lightly on her right foreleg; a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth with every step was the only indication of pain that she allowed herself to give.
Bobby Baseline was waiting at the top of the stairs for them, an eager smile on his face. “Here’s the stallion and the mare themselves!” he announced, gesturing to Phillip and Daring like a circus ringmaster introducing the center act.
Both Phillip and Daring blinked in surprise at their client. The orange dragonness, by contrast, looked decidedly unimpressed. “So he’s the bigshot detective who took down that big crime boss?” she asked Spike, who was standing next to them.
Zugzwang. He took down Zugzwang...Zugzwang, with the black eyes and—
Stop it, Phillip ordered himself, taking a few deep breaths to try to erase the crushing pain in his chest at the thought.
“I know, they’re awesome,” Spike replied with a grin.
“Thanks, dad,” Phillip said, dismissing his father with a wave. Bobby retreated out the back to where Rain Rhythm was sitting on the porch in her wheelchair, enjoying the sun on her face.
Phillip beckoned Smolder to the long green sofa where clients sat as he and Daring both collapsed onto the pair of old couches opposite the coffee table with the chessboard. Smolder glanced around the room as she sat down, taking in the overstuffed bookshelf, the battered but well-polished saxophone on the stand next to the stacks of records and the record player, and the table littered with chemistry equipment and experimental notes.
“So, you here to enjoy the scenery?” Daring asked with a quirked eyebrow as Spike climbed up next to Smolder. “I’m kinda reaching here, but something tells me you’re not from Ponyville.”
“Name’s Smolder,” the dragoness replied. “I’m from Canterlot; I work for Ambassador Krein, Speaker of the Dragons.”
“So what’s a high-roller like you doing in our humble abode?” Daring asked.
“I’m here because Spike and Twilight suggested you,” Smolder explained. “We’ve got a problem up in Canterlot.”
Smolder proceeded to give an explanation of the situation, detailing the disappearing dragons, the superstrong bank robber, and the tense relations between the dragons and the police. Phillip and Daring listened attentively, occasionally interjecting with a question.
“It’s been more than a dozen dragons that have disappeared, starting about three months ago.” Smolder scowled bitterly. “No one except us dragons gives a damn,” she growled to herself.
“That’s not true,” Spike protested, placing a claw on her forearm.
Smolder paused for a moment, then sighed. “The last dragon who disappeared...she was a friend of mine.”
She pulled a photograph out of her backpack and handed it to Phillip and Daring. The picture was of a dark green dragon whose scales looked like they were made of solid rock, grinning up at the camera with twinkling brown eyes. She was holding up a hunk of granite, which appeared to have a large bite taken out of it; small specks of stone clung to the dragon’s sharp teeth.
“Her name is Kreidol,” Smolder stated. “She’s a stone dragon, came over here hoping to get a job in construction. She vanished four days ago, right when she was about to start her new work.” She let out a noise that was partially a sigh, partially a growl as she took the picture back. “I’ve looked for her everywhere I can think of. Nothing.”
“They can find her,” Spike reassured her, gripping her forearm comfortingly.
“Wait a minute,” Phillip said with a frown. “You said that the dragon disappearances started three months ago?”
“You sure you’re a detective?” Smolder asked.
“Smolder!” Spike chastised.
Phillip and Daring glanced at each other. “Those bank robberies started about three months ago,” Daring mused. “I remember reading about them in the papers.”
Smolder’s eyes brightened a bit. “So you have some idea how they’re doing it?”
“No,” Phillip said. “Mistake to theorize before you have evidence. We’ll have to—”
He paused and swallowed, wincing as a stabbing pain raced across his chest.
“We—”
The pain increased, like somepony was shoving a crowbar into his chest. He curled up into himself, trying to suck in deep breaths to calm his frantically pounding heart. His hooves clenched the armrests, grip tightening so much that the wood cracked.
“Phil, you okay?” Spike asked, concern flashing across his face. His voice sounded distant and echoing, like Phillip was trapped in a well.
“Phil?” Daring called, gently shaking his shoulder.
He gasped at the touch, twisting and shoving the grasping tentacle off him as the cold acid bit into his skin. It took him a second to recognize that it was just Daring, who was now backing up with her hooves raised. “Easy, easy,” she urged.
Phillip took in a deep breath, gritting his teeth as he forced the pain down, forced his hooves to unclench, ignoring the way his innards squirmed and writhed beneath his skin.
“I’m fine,” he said, trying to put force into his words in place of conviction. “I’m fine.”
“Maybe I should get somepony else to help,” Smolder said, looking increasingly skeptical.
“No, we’ll help,” Daring said firmly, rising. “Dragons or ponies, there are creatures that need our help.”
“Great!” Spike cheered.
Smolder thought for a moment, then shrugged. “If you’re sure, sure as hell won’t hurt.” She stood and stretched. “There’s a train back to Canterlot around noon. I’ll meet you there.”
“Bye, Daring, Phil!” Spike said, waving as he and Smolder exited. The door closed behind them.
“Phil, what is it?” Daring asked sharply, staring at Phillip. Bobby and Rain both reentered, their faces creasing in concern as they studied their son.
Phillip’s mane was matted and spiky, sweat shimmering atop his head. His gray eyes were dull, shadows beneath the orbits. He was currently staring down at his clenched knees, hugging himself loosely as he tried to take slow, even breaths.
“I’m fine,” he grunted through the pain of his crushing ribs and burning lungs.
“You’re not fine,” Bobby said plainly. “Neither of you. You’re not sleeping, you’re barely eating—”
“Wow. It seems detective work really does run in the family,” Daring commented to Phillip with a facsimile of a smile.
Phillip scowled at her, then at his parents. “I said I’m fine,” he grunted, rising.
“Ampa, please,” Rain said, placing a hoof on his shoulder. “Just—”
Phillip shoved her off, then stamped down the hallway, passing by the green vest and gray trilby hanging up on the coat rack. “I’m going on a walkabout. I need air,” he called, opening the door.
“Phil!” Rain called as she tried to urge her wheelchair forward, but Daring held out a branded hoof, stopping them. She shook her head, dull eyes peering out of the pallid mask that was her face as the door slammed shut.
Author's Notes:
And a warm welcome back to you, reader! Hope that you've been looking forward to this as much as I have: a chance to spread our wings and explore more of Noire Equestria!
Things aren't looking so hot for Finder and Do, are they? Tough as they are, they've still got a long way to go to heal from what Zugzwang did to them last time. Maybe a new case to snap them out of their funk will be what they need.
Like what you read? Leave a like and a comment to show your support!
Case Fourteen, Chapter Two: Buried
The graveyard was quiet save for the rustling of the leaves in the trees, the green in the foliage fighting a valiant but losing battle against the invading reds and browns. Phillip proceeded down the rows of granite monuments, his head lowered against the onslaught of cold wind and warm sun. The scent of turned dirt and freshly cut grass filled his nostrils as he studied the names carved into the stones that he walked past.
Finally, he found his target. He walked up to the grave and sat down in the sun-kissed grass, blinking at the name before him. The golden medal embossed into the stone winked at him, the star, sun, and moon emblem of the Medal of Honor reflecting the amber glow.
“Trace Evidence. Fifth of the Moon of Hunters, 1909—Ninth of the Moon of Grain, 1950. You don’t have to be a hero—just an ordinary pony, sufficiently motivated.”
Looking down the row, Phillip saw three other graves marked with the same medal, all of them with the same death date etched into the stone. Officer Creek Dancer, Officer Red Rover, and Sergeant Tire Track, all murdered on the Ninth of the Moon of Grain, 1950.
Murdered by...him. By that thing.
Trace shrieked. The black tongues writhed like serpents as they carved through his eyes; Phillip could hear his brain squelching as it was blended and churned; pink liquid and black slime dribbled down his face like tears. Trace's entire body trembled, his jaw hanging open as if in a horrible, silent scream. His hooves slackened and released Phillip's foreleg and Phillip was helplessly dragged across the foul-smelling red clay, clawing for some purchase, watching as the eyeless corpse crashed to the floor, face forever frozen in agony…
Phillip collapsed against the stone, clinging to it, gasping for air. His chest felt like he was being crushed in a vice, every breath a struggle against the iron walls. Hot tears ran from his eyes, even as he clenched his lids shut as tight as he could.
Stop it! he ordered himself. You’re not a bloody baby!
But the tears did not yield to his commands, continuing to leak out from beneath his eyelids. He lay against the cold stone, battling to wrest back control of his breathing. It took several minutes for his heartbeat to slow to more manageable levels, for the iron vise to release his ribs. He continued to sit still, glaring at the blue skies and warm sun that seemed to mock him.
A sound alerted Phillip to two interlopers approaching. Flash Sentry was trotting up, one hoof on the fetlock of his mother, Pastor Joyful Sound. “What’s wrong, Phil?” Flash called from a couple rows down.
“I'm fine,” Phillip grunted, turning away to try to hide his damp face.
“I may not be a detective yet, but even I know that that’s a lie,” Flash commented with a raised eyebrow.
Phillip shot him a glare and Flash cringed a bit. “Son, that’s not helping,” Joy scolded gently, her dim blue eyes fixing upon him for a moment.
“Sorry, Phil, mom,” Flash mumbled, rubbing the back of his mane. “I, uh...I should be meeting with Twilight. She’s going to be going into conniptions if I don’t make it to my pre-test study session.”
“I’m sure you’ll pass with flying colors tonight,” Joy smiled, kissing her son on the cheek. “Good luck, honey. Give my love to Twilight and Spike!”
“Good luck, Flash,” Phillip called, trying to force some enthusiasm into his voice and hating himself for the hollow feeling in his gut. If Flash detected anything wrong with his voice, he didn’t indicate it, dismissing himself with a wave of his wing.
Joy turned and proceeded up to Phillip, her cane tapping against the ground. She ran a hoof over the etched surface of the grave at the mouth of the row, then proceeded confidently down the row to sit beside him.
“I figured you’d be by to see him sooner or later,” she said, not even having to examine the name on the grave.
Phillip remained silent, not looking at her.
Joy reached out and took Phillip’s hoof. He did not resist as the warm grip ran up and down his fetlock.
“I know you’re hurting,” she said. “I can’t imagine what it feels like.”
“It’s been weeks, and I’m not getting any better,” Phillip mumbled.
“Healing from trauma isn’t a linear path,” Joy said. “After the accident that left me blind, I had more bad days than I’d like to remember. Some days I’d be fine, looking forward to the future with a smile, and then something would happen and I’d be alternating between crying all day and being angry at the whole world.” She sighed and leaned back against the stone. “Flash and my husband were both the pillars that I leaned on during those times. I hope that you have similar ponies that you can lean on.”
Daring, his parents, Flash, and Twilight’s faces all floated before his gaze for a moment. Phillip grunted in confirmation and allowed himself to rest his head against Joy’s for a moment. Her cloud-soft mane smelled of lilies and morning dew, her hoof warm on his fetlock.
“I should be tougher than this…” he muttered, pulling away from her.
“Phillip, you know that Storm hated war and conflict,” Joy said. “You know that he cried over his lost soldiers. Was he not a brave and strong stallion?”
Phillip was silent for long moments, then nodded.
“I’m going to assume that that was a nod,” Joy said with a wry smile.
“Sorry,” Phillip winced.
“It’s all right. There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there?” Joy asked.
Phillip didn’t answer for a few seconds. “There...was a client who came today.”
“Yes?” Joy pressed.
“She was describing her case and I…” Phillip sighed and began to tug at the grass, ripping at the green leaves and feeling childish. “I froze. It kept feeling like...like I was back in that forest...facing that thing…”
Black eyes, like holes into Tartarus. Veins of tar that pulsed and oozed. A gurgling voice like something without vocal chords imitating equine speech. Phillip swallowed and gripped the grass like it would keep him from floating away, the vise gripping his chest again.
“Slow breaths, slow breaths,” Joy whispered, stroking his foreleg.
Phillip wrested control of his breathing, fighting off the crushing vice. Air returned to him like he was surfacing from deep underwater and he swallowed down a breath. “I should go with her,” he said throatily. “I have to, but…” He groaned. “I don’t know if I’m ready…”
“Why not?” Joy asked.
Phillip swallowed down his shame and spoke. “I’m scared, Joy. Scared I’ll freeze up again. Scared something will go wrong. Scared Daring will get hurt. Scared I’ll fail.”
“That means you’re a pony, not that you’re weak,” Joy replied. “Fear, uncertainty, these are all marks of life.” She smiled at him. “But a wise pony once said that being brave isn’t the same thing as not being scared.”
Phillip let out a soft laugh as his own words were echoed back at him. “True.” He took a long sigh. “I just don’t know if I’m ready yet…”
“Only you can answer that, Phillip,” Joy replied. “But I believe I know something about that. You remember that colt, years ago, who heard a young mare crying herself to sleep every night and decided to do something about it?”
“That colt’s long gone,” Phillip muttered.
“I don’t think so,” Joy replied. “Because that mare crying to herself was a trumpet call, Phillip, a trumpet call that you answered. A trumpet call that you’ve answered every time you heard another cry for help, from a murder victim lying in the street or from a wronged pony sitting in your home. It’s not just a mark on your flank, Phillip; it’s part of who you are.”
“But how do I know I won’t fail?” Phillip asked.
“You never do,” Joy answered. “You’ve risked failure every time you’ve gone out on a case; we all risk failure every time we make a venture. All we can do is have faith.”
Faith. The word triggered a rush of bitterness up from Phillip’s heart, flooding his throat. He spat it out before he could stop it.
“And what good did faith do anypony?” he grunted. “Is faith supposed to bring Trace back? Undo what happened to Daring and me? Did your faith ever get your sight back?”
Even blind, Joy managed to lock her gaze upon his and give him a scathing look one eyebrow raised. Phillip withered and looked down at the ground. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “That was a low blow.”
“I forgive you; we often speak without thinking when we’re hurt,” Joy replied with a smile. “As for faith, you’re thinking of it the wrong way. Faith isn’t about taking pain away or solving all our problems with words and hope. Not even the Holy Mother can do that. Faith is about helping us through the pain, of promising a better day, telling yourself that there will come an end to the darkness.”
“I’m not a pony of faith,” Phillip stated. “I’ve never believed in gods, you know that.”
“You believe in what you can see and hear and feel,” Joy nodded. “So believe in your friends and family, who love and support you. Believe that your client came to you seeking help. And believe in yourself.”
She patted his shoulder and stood up, grunting as she heaved herself up with her cane. “I’m sure Trace appreciates the visit, but you shouldn’t stay here,” she told Phillip as she started to head back. “Only the dead stay here.”
Phillip watched her leave in silence, then turned and looked back at the grave. He ran a hoof along Trace’s name, sighing as he did so.
“Sorry, Trace,” he mumbled through the choking vice, and stood up.
Daring glanced at her watch and frowned. “It’s nearly noon,” she sighed. “I guess he’s not coming.”
Rising, she proceeded to the front hall, checking over her pockets to make sure she had everything ready.
“Are you sure you can’t wait a little longer?” Rain asked, shifting in her wheelchair.
“Sorry, but I’ve got to get moving,” Daring replied. Taking her .38 from the holster on the wall, she snapped open the chamber to ensure it was loaded, then strapped the holster onto her chest. She took her pith helmet from the coat rack, sighing as her gaze fell on the green vest and the gray trilby.
“I’ll, uh...let you know when I get to Canterlot,” she said lamely, reaching for the door.
But before Daring’s hoof could fall on the doorknob, the door opened. She blinked in surprise to see Phillip standing on the other side of the door.
“Hand me my hat and vest,” he stated.
A grin spread across Daring’s face and she tossed him the gray trilby and green vest, the gear in it jingling in the pockets. “I knew you’d pull through,” she declared, helping him strap his shoulder holster on.
“I just needed to get my head back on,” Phillip replied, fitting his ears through the holes in the brim of his trilby.
“Oi!” Bobby called, rushing up the hallway with two necklaces dangling in his mouth. “Nearly forgot these. Your mom wants you to keep these.”
Daring took one of the little totems, studying the black and gray zebra-like figure with its wide, white eyes, spread wings, and crown of clouds and lightning bolts. Awely-Awely, the queen of the wandjina, protective Aborigineigh spirits of rain, stared back at her with her wooden white orbits; for a moment, Daring thought she felt a strange, cold tingle of power in her hoof. A familiar, comforting tingle that she half-remembered from a dream of underground chambers filled with heavy, hot air and snarling things that crawled on unseen legs.
“Thanks,” she nodded to Rain, who nodded approvingly from the living room.
“Right,” Phillip said, putting on the necklace of Angkakert and tucking the idol beneath his shirt, so that it rested next to his heart. He patted himself down, checking his pockets to ensure that he had everything ready. “All set,” he nodded, giving the totem a final pat.
Bobby seized both ponies in a bone-crushing hug, driving the breath from their lungs. “You two stay safe,” he declared, giving both of them a hot, rough kiss on the forehead. “We’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.”
“We’ll call when we get settled in,” Phillip stated, squirming out of his father’s grasp.
“Save us a lamington for when we come back victorious,” Daring grinned to Bobby.
He gave them a salute and Rain waved them out. Phillip shut the door behind them both and turned the key in the lock. A purple glow washed over the house as Twilight’s protective wards reset themselves. Phillip hesitated briefly on the porch, staring at the house with a haunted gaze.
“They’ll be fine,” Daring said, placing a hoof on his shoulder.
He gave her an uncertain glance, shifting his weight on his hooves in a small, anxious dance.
“Your dad punched an ancient monster in the face. I’m sure he can handle things,” Daring smiled at him.
Phillip swallowed and nodded. “Let’s get to the train station,” he stated, turning.
Daring’s smile turned into a gleaming, narrow-eyed grin, spreading her wings wide. Phillip froze and glanced over his shoulder at her like a mouse staring at the cat that had just caught it prowling through the pantry.
A moment later, a gold and gray blur streaked through the air, accompanied by a high-pitched yelp.
“It wouldn’t kill you to walk!” Phillip protested, trying to keep his eyes averted from the city speeding past several stories beneath him.
“Aw, don’t be a fraidy-cat,” Daring laughed. “Besides, you get to relax on the way there and I get some extra exercise.”
Phillip grumbled and shifted in Daring’s grasp, holding his hat down onto his head. They glided over the city in silence for a minute.
“So…” he finally said. “Are you doing okay?”
Daring was silent for a moment, then sighed, slowing her flight. “I’m not,” she said. “I thought the nightmares would go away, but it seems every time I close my eyes, I’m...I’m back in that dream temple. Or the door forest. But this time, I’m all alone...with him.”
She shuddered, and Phillip did not need to ask whom she meant. For a moment, the pitch black eyes and the leech-like tongues dancing out of the too-wide mouths floated before his own gaze and his heart convulsed in his chest.
“I’ve been...struggling myself, too,” he admitted.
“I’m not the detective that you are, Phil, but I kinda noticed,” Daring commented.
Phillip shot her a cold look over his shoulder. “Sorry,” Daring said sheepishly.
They continued in silence for a few moments, then Phillip spoke again. "You scared?"
Daring didn't answer for a long time, then sighed. "A little," she admitted.
"Me too," Phillip admitted, briefly squeezing one of the hooves that was wrapped around his chest.
"And here's where you say that as long as we're together, we'll be okay?" Daring asked with a dry smile.
Phillip let out a brief chuckle. "That's not what I was gonna say, but nice sentiment." He looked up and saw the skylight of the train station approaching. "But what matters right now is we've got a client who needs our help."
"So," Daring said. "We ready?"
Phillip stuffed the squirming anxiety down into the back of his mind and closed the door on it. "Ready."
"Then onwards!" Daring Do declared. And with another golden streak and a startled yelp, she zipped off again.
Smolder leaned against the steel column holding up the platform skylight, tapping her foot and glancing around the empty platform. She looked over her shoulder at the station house. The eyes that had been staring at her through the window immediately retreated.
“Ponies,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.
She looked up at the clock hanging from the eaves, noting the time as ten to noon. “Guess they’re not coming,” she sighed.
A sudden rush of wind made her look up, then something dove down from the sky, landing in front of her.
“I bet right about now, you were thinking that we weren’t coming,” Daring grinned, adjusting her pith helmet and giving Phillip a smirk as he glared at her, smoothing out his trilby. “Hate to disappoint you.”
Smolder considered them for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess we could use the help,” she admitted. She pulled a notepad out of her backpack, scribbled out a quick note, and then rolled it up into a scroll. With a puff of blue flame, she set it alight, and it floated up into the air and vanished in a puff of smoke.
“Just sent a note to Krein,” she stated as a whistle sounded, announcing the approach of the northbound train.
“Aces,” Phillip nodded, heading over to the ticketmaster’s stand, where the mustachioed unicorn cowered behind the desk. “Two more for Canterlot, mate,” he declared, slapping some more bits on the desk.
Author's Notes:
Did I give you feels, reader? I hope I did. And I hope you're looking forward to more next week!
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Case Fourteen, Chapter Three: Diplomacy
The train pulled into Canterlot with a hissing of brakes and steam, and Smolder disembarked onto the gilded platform, with Phillip and Daring following, stretching in the afternoon sun.
“Okay, first stop: embassy,” Smolder declared. “Follow me.”
She took off with a flap of her wings. Daring scooped up Phillip and took off after her, soaring over the streets of Canterlot. Looking down, Phillip watched the streets passing below them, creatures of every type walking the white sidewalks. Pegasi, hippogriffs, thestrals, and dragons passed them by in the sky.
“You know, walking is supposed to be beneficial for ponies our age,” he declared to Daring.
“You calling me old?” Daring asked with a quirked eyebrow.
Phillip opened his mouth, paused, then closed it. “I should not answer that, should I?” he asked.
Daring smirked. “You’re learning,” she said, giving him a boop with one of the hooves that was now wrapped around his chest.
Finally, Smolder banked and started to dive towards the ground, prompting Daring to follow. They landed on a commercial street in front of a huge building, the brick so dark red that it was almost black. The massive gray ironwood doors were flanked by stone golems in the shape of dragons, glaring imperiously at the visitors. A flagpole over the doors bore a flag depicting a white dragon skull on a black background. A few dragons and ponies wandered in and out of the doors, and a dragon guard adorned in steel armor, head and shoulders taller than Phillip, nodded to Smolder as she approached.
Smolder pushed open the door and they entered a grandiose lobby. Dragons of every type and size were meandering around, standing in line, sitting behind desks filling out paperwork and answering ringing phones.
“Oi, Smolder!” a sea-green dragon called, rushing up to Smolder with his wings fluttering in agitation. “Tell Krein I have to reschedule the meeting about setting up the employment center. Someone back in the Dragonlands decided to redesign the work visas again and—”
“Not now, Heim,” Smolder grunted, pushing a path through the crowd to a huge elevator in the back. Ushering her guests inside, she hit the button for the top floor. The doors slid shut and the elevator started to trundle upwards.
“So is there a protocol for this?” Daring asked. “I mean, we’ve met royalty before, but…”
Smolder quirked an eyebrow at her and smirked. “Nervous?” she asked.
“Maybe a bit,” Daring admitted.
“Krein’s pretty laid back,” Smolder explained as the doors opened with a ding, revealing a long hallway with several doors lining the walls. “Just don’t say or do anything insulting and he’ll be good.”
“Got it,” Daring nodded as they proceeded down the hall.
“And relax, he doesn’t bite,” Smolder said as she knocked at the door. “Often,” she added with a smirk.
“Come in,” a voice spoke from inside. Smolder opened the door and the trio entered a large office.
Phillip and Daring entered and immediately halted in their tracks, their eyes widening at the sight of the enormous dragon sitting behind the ornate desk at the opposite end of the massive room. The golden-brown dragon was at least twice as tall as a pony, and every inch of him was built as if from stone. His massive wings were currently folded, but Daring could tell at a glance that they were more than thrice her wingspan. A black brand of a dragon’s skull, exactly like that on the flag outside, was etched into his right shoulder blade.
The dragon looked up at them and blinked owlishly, his red eyes glittering like little smoldering fires. Daring gulped.
“Ambassador,” Smolder said, entering with a small bow. “As I promised, Detectives Finder and Do. Spike and Twilight say hi, by the way.”
“Thank you, Smolder,” Krein nodded, the friendliness in his rumbling voice going a long way towards dispelling the ponies’ nervousness.
Phillip and Daring both bowed low. “Ambassador. I understand that there are some dragons disappearing. We are here to offer our help,” Phillip said.
“Detectives, thank you for coming on such short notice,” Krein nodded, rising and walking on all four legs up to the two ponies, extending a claw to shake. Phillip shook first; his foreleg felt like a twig inside Krein’s massive claw, but the dragon shook gently. “The dragons here are becoming extremely restless; if this continues, we might have riots on our claws. We need all the help we can get.”
“Let’s start with who the victims are,” Phillip said.
“Smolder compiled a list of all the dragons that have gone missing in Canterlot,” Krein stated.
“Fat lot of good it did,” Smolder grumbled. “Police barely looked at it.”
“I hope you can find something there that we and the police missed,” Krein said. “Smolder, show them to the office where your notes are. I need to send a note to Princess Ember.”
“Got it,” Smolder nodded.
“Keep me informed of your progress, please,” Krein requested.
“We'll let you know if we need anything, Ambassador,” Phillip said. “We also might need to speak to the police officers working this case.”
“Good thinking,” Krein nodded. “I will put in a call to the local precinct and ask for them.” He bowed. “Thank you again for coming.”
“We will do our best,” Phillip bowed back.
Smolder led them to a nearby conference room with a circular table surrounded by several massive cushions. Daring sat down on one; the cushion was so large that she sank down into the center of it, looking like a child sitting on her parent’s bed.
“Wait here,” Smolder said, disappearing briefly. She came back a moment later with a single folder, about an inch thick. “This is a list of all the dragons who went missing,” she declared, slapping the folder onto the table to reveal sheets of claw-written notes and photographs. “Krein and I started making it up when the bank robberies started and the police started asking us about the missing dragons.”
Phillip flipped through the list, letting out an approving noise as he noted the photographs of the missing dragons, lists of addresses and workplaces, and notes on who had last seen them and when. “Good work,” he nodded approvingly. “This helps a lot.”
“Thanks,” Smolder grinned.
“Fourteen dragons?” Daring said out loud.
“And it gets shunted to the side because dragons are apparently less important than ponies’ money,” Smolder grumbled.
Phillip turned to the last page. Kreidol smiled up at him from her passport photograph, her grin earnest and brown eyes shining. Phillip’s eyes went to the necklace around her neck; a simple twine cord went through a granite charm roughly shaped like a hammer. Smolder’s face fell and she folded her arms across her chest, looking down at the ground.
“We’ll find her,” Daring promised, laying a hoof on Smolder’s shoulder. Smolder just shrugged and grunted.
A rapping announced the presence of a black and silver winged dragoness at the door. “Smolder, Krein needs you for a bit,” the dragoness said.
“Okay, Niirah,” Smolder said, rising. “I’ll check on you in a bit,” she said to the detectives, heading for the door.
“Wait a minute,” Phillip said, raising a hoof. “You said that Kreidol was here on a work visa for construction?”
“Yeah,” Smolder replied.
“So were these six,” Phillip said, holding up some folders. “And they all disappeared soon after arriving in Canterlot.”
“We noticed that, too,” Smolder said. “But we weren’t sure if that was a common thread or not.”
“Well, we seem to have a celebrity couple in Canterlot,” a voice declared in a tone dryer than desert sand.
Both dragonesses turned and growled as a white unicorn in a red-trimmed suit approached up the hallway, brushing a strand of his black hair out of his light red eyes. His cutie mark was a deck of cards, all but the ace of diamonds turned facedown.
“Detective Ace,” Niirah growled. “Don’t you have somedragon else to bother?”
“Far be it from me to ignore a summons from the Ambassador of the Dragonlands,” the detective said coolly.
“I would not have called you here if I didn’t have to, detective,” Krein’s voice rumbled as he walked down the hall, glaring at the unicorn. “You are in my domain, and I will ask you to treat my staff with respect.”
“Right,” Ace growled at the Ambassador. “I’m sure that advice would’ve helped my brother a lot when he went off on that aid mission.”
“If you’re anything like your brother—!” Niirah started to snarl.
“Niirah,” Krein cut her off. Niirah and Smolder both backed down with the reluctance of a dog being called back from a treed cat, glaring daggers at the unicorn.
“Again, I am sorry about your brother,” Krein said diplomatically. “But the dragons who killed him are serving their sentences. You can’t blame all dragons for his death.”
Ace just grunted and walked into the conference room. The three dragons outside all shot him one final glare before Smolder slammed the door shut.
The unicorn looked over Phillip and Daring and nodded respectfully. “Detective Hidden Ace. I heard what happened in Ponyville. I’m sorry about your friends.”
Again the knife slid between his ribs. Again his heart throbbed. Again Trace’s scream sounded in his ears. Phillip took a breath and nodded. “Thank you, detective. Let’s just focus on these robberies and disappearances.”
“I suppose we could use the help,” Ace shrugged. “But your client’s not going to be happy when we find it’s a dragon robbing the banks.”
Daring and Phillip both exchanged frowns. “You seem awfully convinced,” Phillip said.
“How about we start at the beginning?” Daring asked. “What’ve you got on these robberies?”
“The MO is always the same,” Detective Ace stated. “The robber first enters the banks through the back door or window and places a Nightpoppy inside.” He held up a picture of a potted plant, a purple and dark blue pod, slightly larger than a softball with several fuzzy feelers extending from it, on top of a long purple stalk. The potted plant sat in a marble hallway, next to a door that had been forced open and hung yawning, the jamb ripped from the wall.
Daring whistled. “Nightpoppy’s tricky stuff to handle. One false move and those spores are putting you to sleep instead of your targets. I only used it a couple of times to knock out a large group.”
“Only times I’ve seen it, wankers knocked themselves out with it,” Phillip commented.
“The thief then takes the surveillance crystal from the security room, destroys the alarm circuit board, and tears open the vault door before making off with as much loot as they can carry. And trust me, that’s a lot,” Ace continued. He showed them a picture of the vault door.
Daring let out another admiring whistle. The humongous, multi-ton door had indeed been ripped open, the locks warped and pulled aside to allow entry. A close-up detailed how the time lock mechanism had been laboriously pulled open so that the massive bolts could be freed. Safe-deposit boxes lay open, their covers ripped off. Bits, gems, and other valuables were scattered on the floor.
“Finally, they load it up into a truck waiting outside and drive off,” Ace concluded, placing more photographs of glowing tire tracks, taken in the alley outside of the bank. “They’re smart enough to plan out their route so that they avoid our surveillance cameras and even with filtered tracking wands, we always lose them not far from the banks, though we’ve managed to kind of narrow down what type of truck it is.”
“Chevroneigh 1948, looks like,” Phillip said.
“Correct. We know they’re not using a spell to pull it open: even if there was any trace of magic around the lock, the doors are charm-proof,” Ace explained. “So whoever ripped it open had to do it on natural strength. And then there’s this,” he added, triumphantly slapping some more photographs on the table.
Phillip and Daring looked over the close-up snaps of the glowing tracks on the bank floor, two lines of three-taloned paws leading from the back of the bank, through the back door, into the security office, wound through the vault, then exited once more.
“We took measurements of the tracks, and we figure that it’s an around four-foot-tall dragon; possibly a drake, considering that they take a truck instead of flying. I’d say that seems pretty convincing,” Ace said with no small amount of smugness in his voice.
“I’d say you need to look again,” Phillip said.
Ace blinked. “What?” he asked.
“First, this evidence list,” Daring commented, holding up a list of recovered evidence from the banks. “I don’t see any scales or claw marks anywhere on there. Quite a few hair traces, though.”
“And the dents on the vault,” Phillip said, holding up the closeup. “Those don’t look like claw marks ripping at the metal: that looks more like hooves to me. And speaking of which.”
He held up a close-up of a photograph of a track with a ruler next to it. “Notice anything odd about this?” he asked.
“Looks like a normal dragon clawprint to me,” Ace shrugged.
“Not to me,” Phillip said. “Tracking spells work by picking up sweat, dust, and other traces that were left behind by prints, leaving a shape of the object that made the track. Dragon talons have wrinkles, ridges, just like our hoofprints: I know, I saw them on all the dragons here. These prints here? They’re completely smooth. No ridges or markings at all. Odd.”
“They look more like drawings of prints than actual prints,” Daring mused.
Ace took another look, frowning at the tracks with a reluctant grunt.
“And then there’s these,” Phillip said, pointing at another photograph, a wide view of a line of glowing talon prints trailing into the security room. “Some of those tracks have these odd circular ridges around them. They’re faint, but you can see them.”
“And what do you suppose made those?” Ace asked.
“A horseshoe,” Daring said. “I’ve seen these used sometimes: special horseshoes that have a raised impression of a different creature’s track on them. Normally, they’re used for leaving tracks on beaches or something, but this is the same effect.”
“Seems to me, it might not be a dragon at all,” Phillip said. “Might be a pony framing a dragon.”
Ace scowled. “So maybe it’s a pony trying to frame a dragon. That doesn’t change the fact that no pony can rip steel open with their bare hooves without magic,” he pointed out.
Daring’s eyes wandered over to the list of dragons. “I wonder if the robberies and the disappearing dragons are somehow related,” she mused.
“Seems to be a bit too much of a coincidence,” Phillip agreed. “Ace, you working on the disappearances as well?”
“No,” Ace replied. “I work robberies, not missing creatures. The dragons are being handled by Detective Paw Print. She’s making some headway, but the dragons aren’t really willing to talk to her either. Or any cop, for that matter.”
Wonder why, Daring thought dryly.
“And is she in today?” Phillip asked.
“I saw her this morning,” Ace said. “Don’t know why she hasn’t shown up yet.” He gathered up his stuff and stood. “Thank you for your assistance. I’ll take this into consideration going forward. Good luck with your investigation.” With a final nod, he exited, closing the door behind him.
“Prick,” Daring muttered.
“I was going to say wanker, but yeah,” Phillip agreed. He stood and stretched. “We should work our end. Try to find Detective Print and start talking to witnesses. Maybe there’s something they missed.”
Daring grinned. “Hooves on the ground detective work?”
Phillip nodded and stood, taking the folder. “Good to get back to work,” he admitted with a smile.
Exiting, they followed the sound of voices to an open conference room. Krein was speaking to a teal dragoness with fish-like fins instead of wings and a large dragon with slate-colored scales like metal armor, with Smolder standing off to one side.
“Quarry, you know the agreement: the mine is on yak land, so they get the majority share,” Krein was saying to the scowling slate dragon. “Algae, send a letter to Baltimare, tell them that we need to renegotiate that trade agreement if they’re not going to take responsibility for our cargo.”
“Will do!” Algae chirped. Quarry grunted and exited. Krein turned to face the detectives, dragging a claw over his face.
“Ambassador, we’re going to go out and start questioning witnesses,” Phillip said. “We’d like to borrow Smolder. Might be easier for them to talk to us if there’s a dragon with us.”
“Makes sense,” Krein nodded. “Smolder, have you finished your work for today?”
“Yes, boss!” Smolder nodded, eagerly bouncing in place. “Can I go?”
“One moment.” Krein pulled out a small scroll, wrote down a note on it with a large red pen, then pressed a small ring on his talon to the bottom of the paper. With a sizzling noise and a wisp of smoke that smelled like charcoal, a dragon’s skull image was burned into the bottom of the note.
“This note will tell all dragons to aid you, by my decree,” Krein said, handing the still slightly smoking paper to Phillip. “I gave one to Detective Paw Print last week; it was the only way she could get some dragons to talk to her.” He frowned in thought. “I called her down here with Detective Ace. Wonder where she is.”
“If she comes by, tell her we went to do some investigation on our own,” Phillip said, taking the letter.
“I will,” Krein nodded. “Good luck.”
“Thanks, boss!” Smolder cried, zipping out the door. “Hey, slowpokes, get a move on!”
“Who’s a slowpoke?” Daring called, snatching Phillip and racing off after her, ignoring Phillip’s yelp of protest.
As they rocketed out the embassy doors and into the sky, Phillip glanced over at Smolder. “So, we never asked. Tell us more about when Kreidol disappeared.”
Smolder frowned. “Like I said, she came over five days ago: I met her on the airship docks and brought her over to her hotel, the South Cavern. It’s a big stone place that’s popular with dragons in the undercity. She was supposed to report to her new construction job the next morning. I went looking for her in the evening, but couldn’t find her. I even checked with the construction company that she was hired for, Brick and Mortar, but they said she hadn’t even shown up for work.”
She growled as they flew along the edge of Canterlot, where the ledge of the mountain gave way to the open skies, down to the mountain base. Equestria stretched out for miles before them, glowing beneath the noontime sun. “What the hell happened to you, Kreidol?” Smolder muttered.
“Is the Cavern close by?” Daring asked. “Maybe we can start there. We can check her room and there’s a witness who lives there.”
“It’s this way,” Smolder said, banking to the right and diving over the lip of the city.
Daring grinned. Phillip gulped, looking at the sloping granite cliffs stretching far beneath them. “Daring, can we—AAAAAAAAAH!”
The undercity of Canterlot, home of the lower classes and many of the essential city functions that were considered uncouth and unfit to be displayed to the public, was like an entirely new city. The main city formed the roof of the massive cavern, supported by massive stone columns carved with scenes from Equestrian history. Light filtered in from massive skylights placed in strategic intersections, but most of the illumination came from street lamps and flickering neon signs. Phillip noticed that there was a larger concentration of non-ponies living down here, spotting larger groups of griffons and dragons walking up and down the cobbled streets.
“This place is pretty cool,” Daring commented as they wandered past a winding ramp that allowed access to the surface. Some ponies were gathering into an elevator formed into the center of a massive concrete pillar.
“Cavern is this way,” Smolder said, leading them around a corner.
The South Cavern proved to be a huge hotel carved out of the side of the mountain that Canterlot rested upon, lights flickering from the windows cut into the stone. The hotel’s name was displayed with a golden neon sign that flickered like a fire over the revolving glass door, which was more than three times as high as most ponies. Several dragons were milling around the hotel, talking, throwing dice, and competing in fire-belching contests that filled the air with the scent of sulfur.
Daring entered first, followed by Phil and Smolder. The huge lobby was decorated to look like a natural cave, with flickering torches set in sconces on the wall that sent light and shadows dancing amongst the stalactites and stalagmites. A large circular fire pit in the center was filled with glowing coals; a piglet with an apple stuffed into its mouth roasted on a spit over the pit.
A blue dragoness standing behind the counter looked up with a smile. “Welcome! Are you here for a room?”
“Detectives Finder and Do,” Phillip said, extracting Krein’s note from his vest. “We’re checking on Kreidol’s disappearance from a few days ago.”
The hostess frowned at the note and sighed. “We’ve kept her room locked up, per the police instructions,” she stated, taking a key. “Nothing’s been touched or changed, except for what little the police took. We're keeping it closed until the police close the investigation.”
She led them up the wide stairs to the second floor and down a hallway lit by torches to room number 214, as declared by the gilded numbers etched into the stone door. Crime Scene: Do Not Cross tape was stretched across the doorway, placed so that it would tear if someone opened the door. A chain of custody sheet was stapled to the door, protected by a plastic sleeve.
As Daring and Phillip signed the sheet and carefully peeled the tape aside, the hostess unlocked the door and opened it wide. “Hope you find something; she was a sweet girl,” she said, departing. Smolder waited in the hallway as Phil and Daring entered.
The room was small and cozy, roughly carved out of the stone. A simple chandelier hung from the stalactites above. A raised circular stone in the center covered with a mattress and sheets served as a bed, with a few couches, a dresser, a desk and chair, and a radio rounding out the room. A side door led to a bathroom with a shower that was the size of 221 Honeybee Bakery’s entire bathroom. The only sign that anyone had ever been in the room was a big battered canvas bag laying open on the floor next to the bed.
After scanning the room for anything of interest, Daring started searching the contents of the bag. There were some books in dragontongue, some personal hygiene items, notebooks and what looked like some formal letters, also written in dragon language, and winter clothing made of furs, but nothing leapt out to her.
“Can you read these?” she asked Smolder, holding them up.
Smolder glanced them over. “It’s a message from our embassy regarding his work visa. ‘Dear Kreidol, your work visa has been accepted. Please report to Brick and Mortar on blah blah blah.’”
“Police should’ve taken these,” Phillip snorted. “Bogans. Probably left it because they couldn’t read them.”
“Are there no dragon police officers?” Daring asked Smolder.
“The idea isn’t really popular with Canterlot citizens,” Smolder grunted. “Or with us dragons.”
“G’day,” Phillip muttered, bending over a notepad on the desk. The top sheet was torn off and there was the faint ghost of writing on the sheet. Phillip took a pencil out of his vest and gently rubbed the notepad, revealing some more dragon runes.
“It says ‘102 Smart Cookie Lane, enter through the side door,’” Smolder translated.
Phillip frowned, then checked the phone book in the desk drawer. “Odd. Brick and Mortar isn’t on that address.”
“Might be worth checking that out later,” Daring commented, filing the address away in the back of her mind.
Nothing else stood out to them, so they exited and relocked the door and replaced the tape behind them. “Okay, there’s a witness who lives here,” Phillip said, consulting Smolder’s notes. “Let’s go talk to him.”
The trio proceeded up to room 313 and knocked at the door. After a moment, the door opened and a sand-colored dragon peeked out.
“Sandstorm?” Phillip asked.
“Yes?” the dragon replied in a low, raspy voice.
“Detectives Finder and Do,” Phillip said. “We’re looking into the disappearance of your friend, Geode.”
“You with Detective Paw Print?” Sandy asked. “I haven’t seen her in a bit.”
“We’re working with her,” Daring said. “Can we come in? Might be easier to talk in there.”
“Yeah, yeah, come in,” Sandstorm said, stepping aside.
Sandy lived in a double room. He plopped down on the closest bed, moving aside a few comic books to make room. The other bed was neatly made, with a few stacks of books on landscaping and construction on the floor next to it. The desk in the corner was set up in the middle of a game of Battleship.
“Geode’s been gone for two weeks now,” Sandstorm murmured. “Please, do you have anything?”
“We just need to go over what happened,” Daring said gently. “We might be able to find something that got missed the first time around.”
“Don’t know what to tell,” Sandstorm said. “Geode had been working here for eight months before he invited me over. We set up here: it’s cozy, it’s affordable. I started working for a mining company. Unfortunately for Geode, the landscaping company he was working for folded two months ago and he had to get help from our employment office. Got another job with the city public works.”
“And he disappeared the day he left?” Daring asked.
Sandstorm nodded. “From what they told me, he never showed up to work,” he mumbled. “I don’t know what happened to him.”
Daring patted the dragon on the shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll find out what happened to him.”
“Do you remember anything odd that day?” Phillip asked.
Sandstorm thought for a moment. “The day before he left, he got a phone call. Something about meeting up at a worksite. I don’t remember the address, though. Sorry.” He sighed. “It’s the same as what I told Paw Print, guys. I don’t see what this does.”
“Any luck that he wrote it down somewhere?” Daring asked.
“He took his notebook with him, sorry,” Sandstorm shrugged.
“Do you remember anything he said specifically?” Daring pressed. “Sandstorm, this is important.”
“I was busy with a comic and wasn’t really listening,” Sandstorm sighed. “Maybe if I…” He shook his head.
“This isn’t your fault,” Daring said. “But even the smallest detail might be able to help us. Please, think hard.”
Sandstorm closed his eyes and tapped his head a few times. “I...wait, there is one thing I remember,” he murmured. “He was repeating instructions the guy on the phone told him. I remember he said ‘left at the fountain’ and ‘side door.’”
Smolder brightened a bit. “Hey...there’s a big marble fountain at the corner of Smart Cookie Lane and Puddinghead Street.”
“And that note said, enter through the side door,” Daring pointed out with a grin. “We might be onto something.”
Author's Notes:
Krein belongs to my good friend Olakaan Pellik, and is the star of his story Flames, which I highly recommend!
This was a great chance to show off a bit more of dragon culture in Equestria, and a good way to introduce Smolder to the Noireverse. I hope you enjoyed, and if you did, leave a like and a comment!
Case Fourteen, Chapter Four: A Taste for Mystery
There was indeed a marble fountain at the corner of Puddinghead and Smart Cookie, a pure white construction featuring an earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn cavorting amidst the running water.
“This way,” Phillip said, turning down the cobbled side road, with Daring and Smolder following. They proceeded down a street that was populated primarily by brick and slate retail and office buildings of humble size and decoration.
“You sure we shouldn’t call the police on this?” Smolder asked as they proceeded through the thin crowds of pedestrians who milled on the sidewalks in the early evening red glow.
“Every witness we talked to mentioned something that ties to this place. We want to take a closer look at it first,” Daring said as both she and Phillip dropped a couple of bits into an empty coffee cup being held by a bearded gray unicorn sitting against the wall of a small clothing store.
“Right,” Phillip nodded, hoping that maybe some speech would wet his suddenly dry throat, would relieve some of the pressure that was squeezing his chest.
A few steps more and there it was: 102 Smart Cookie Lane. It proved to be a two-story edifice with a glass door, just another quotidian edifice amidst the street. The interior of the room was dark, and a brief test of the door proved that it was locked. Pressing her nose up against the glass, Daring saw that the room was populated only by a few old desks, a glass display set that was currently empty, and some chairs.
“Doesn’t look like anypony’s used this place in a long time,” she mused out loud.
“Oh, that place used to be a nice little jewelry store,” a passing mare in a long cloak commented. “But the owner died a few moons ago and it folded. It’s been for rent ever since then, but no one’s bought it as far as I know.”
“Thanks,” Phillip nodded to the mare as she continued on her day.
“So why the hell were Kreidol and Geode both sent here?” Smolder asked.
“There’s a bit of tape on the door here,” Phillip commented, pointing at the little bit of adhesive still clinging to the interior of the window.
“Maybe someone took down the For Rent sign,” Daring mused.
“Let’s check the side entrance,” Phillip said. The tension was still there, but it had faded into background noise, easily ignored, and he could ascribe the dry throat to the humidity of the city evening. There was work to do now.
The side entrance was accessible from a surprisingly wide alleyway that was inhabited by a couple of dumpsters and layers of graffiti on the wall. The side door was solid steel with a pick-resistant lock and narrow handle.
Phillip and Daring both paused, studying the alleyway for anything of note before Daring proceeded to the door. She tried the handle and satisfied herself that it was locked. “The lock is unmarked,” she reported, studying it with Phil’s magnifying glass. “No one’s picked it; in fact, I don’t think this door has been opened in a long time.”
Her gaze was attracted by some odd marks in the wall next to the door. “Phil, take a look at those,” she pointed.
Phillip bent down to take a closer look. “These look like...claw marks,” he said, studying them with the aid of a tape measure. “Four marks...dragon. Looks like they were dragging their hand down the wall here.”
He followed the trail down to the ground and frowned, pawing at the sediment on the ground. “Coal dust, tobacco, and asphalt...this isn’t dust,” Phillip murmured, bending down close to the ground. He used the side of his pocket knife to sweep some pale off-white motes that lay on the ground into an envelope.
Daring took a closer look at them. “I think...yup. Those are spent nightpoppy spores,” she reported. “Harmless now, but that’s a lot of spores.”
“What is nightpoppy?” Smolder asked from her position at the mouth of the alley.
“It’s a magical plant,” Daring explained. “When it’s agitated, it releases spores that send anycreature nearby into a deep sleep, but the spores are only good for a few minutes.”
“You used them in the Family?” Phillip said in an undertone.
Daring frowned a bit, scuffing her right hoof against the floor, where the cursed brand stung at her. “A few times,” she mumbled. “They can take out an entire building, but you have to be really careful with them; they’re very sensitive. That, and they only grow in dirt from a mountain forest mixed with ashes.”
Phillip noticed her scuffing her hoof and briefly took her hoof. “It was in your past, Daring,” he whispered. “You—”
“Leave it,” Daring grunted, yanking her hoof away. “Focus on the case.”
Phillip paused for a moment, then looked around, spotting a side alleyway. “That’s wide enough to hide a truck,” Phillip mused. “My guess; whoever lured the dragons here hit them with the nightpoppy, then dragged them off. Somedragon made those marks when they fell.”
“Makes sense to me,” Daring nodded.
Smolder gritted her teeth and rushed into the alley. She started looking frantically around, pawing at the ground, the walls, eyes darting about everywhere for any clue, any sign.
“Smolder, stop,” Phillip said, gently pushing her back.
“There’s got to be something here!” Smolder cried, trying to shove him off, but he gently deflected all of her shoves. “Some clue, some trail or—”
“We will find it,” Phillip said gently, directing her out of the crime scene. “Just give us time, all right?”
Smolder stomped her foot. “Kreidol has been missing for two days now! We’ve already wasted hours, we don’t have time!”
“Smolder, listen to me,” Daring said, taking over for Phil. “We are doing everything we can, but it’ll take time.”
Smolder growled, then flapped off. “I’m going back to the Embassy, talking to Krein. At least then I’ll feel like we’re accomplishing something.” She disappeared over the rooftops.
Daring sighed and shook her head. “She’s scared and confused,” she mused out loud.
“Can you blame her?” Phillip asked, still checking the ground around the wider side alley. “Hang on, got something here.”
He bent down closer to an oil stain on the ground, pulling out a magnifying glass. “There’s a partial tire track in the ground here,” he said. “It looks like the same track that Ace showed us.”
His eyes panned over to the opposite wall. “Scratch mark here,” he said, walking over and pointing to the brick wall where a thin scratch, no wider than an inch and a couple of feet off the ground. A small piece of red plastic was embedded into the brick, amidst a faint layer of light gray paint.
“The scratch is arced down,” Phillip said. “Seems like somepony was opening the tailgate on a truck and scratched the edge against the wall here.”
“You think it’s a Chevroneigh 1948?” Daring asked.
“Can’t be sure,” Phillip said, using a tape measure to measure how high above the ground the scratch mark was. “Bet Trace would—”
He froze for a moment, the realization reflecting dully in his eyes, and he mopped his face with a hoof. Daring planted a hoof on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off, shaking his head.
“Let’s get the police down here,” he muttered, rising.
“So,” Hidden Ace said a half-hour later, mopping a thin layer of sweat from his brow. “In just one day, you manage to make more headway in two cases than we have in months.”
“We do have a reputation for a reason,” Phillip commented.
Ace glanced over at the alley and the front of 102 Smart Cookie, which was now secured with Crime Scene tape. A crime scene technician was studying the ground with a tracking wand, casting the entire ground into shades of scarlet.
“There’s a lot of tracks here, detective,” the technician reported. “But I can definitely make out dragon prints coming up this way and tire tracks over here.” He twisted the glowing wand a few times, filtering out the tracks by casting the tire treads into a dark yellow.
“Yup, most of these are the same vehicle,” he said. “Can I see your photo of the tracks?”
Ace floated his picture over to the technician, who bent down closer to the glowing tracks. “I can’t be sure, since the tracks are all overlapping each other, but I think it’s the same truck.”
“Hmm,” Ace murmured. “So it seems that these are connected after all.” He glanced around. “Wonder where Paw Print is. She should be here.”
“What does Paw Print look like?” Phillip asked. “Might need to know if we see her again.”
“Unicorn mare, blue coat, blonde mane, cutie mark of a trio of dog paw prints,” Ace reported. “She’s got an earring of her cutie mark, too. Can’t miss her.”
“Noted,” Phillip said.
“Okay, we’re gonna wrap this up here,” Ace said. “We’ve already got more police patrols near the banks. We’ll keep you in the loop if we find anything of note. Thanks for the help.”
“Keep in touch,” Phillip said, briefly bumping his hoof against Ace’s. Daring declined, following Phillip off the crime scene.
As soon as they were out of sight, Daring glanced over her shoulder, then hissed into Phillip’s ear, “You know there’s a chance that he’s the one behind it, right?”
“Possibly,” Phillip conceded as they trotted past the marble steps of a modest white building with great glass doors, gilded gold, the same color that declared “Equestrian Amalgamated Trust” in three-inch high letters over the archway. “But even if his brother’s murder is sufficient motivation, clumsily framing some dragon is a bloody roundabout way to get revenge. And it doesn’t explain how he was somehow strong enough to tear open steel doors.”
Daring groaned and rubbed her slightly damp forehead. “All I know is, we need to get some food.” She paused, sniffing the air, then a broad grin crossed her face. “I smell Marwari.”
Phillip sniffed and smelled it, too: warm broth on his tongue and the sharp tang of spices scratching at his nostrils.
“This way,” Daring said, beckoning him on, bumping into a bearded unicorn wearing a single battered saddlebag. The two detectives followed their noses down several blocks and up a small side street and up to a restaurant. The storefront was painted in vivid orange, with accenting stripes around the purple-curtained windows. A red flower with an elephant embossed over it was painted over through the door.
“I haven’t had Marwari in so long,” Daring said, practically drooling as she entered, with Phillip behind.
The same flower and elephant symbol was displayed on the opposite wall, with more indigenous Marwari artwork hanging from the walls. Vividly colored curtains hung from the walls, lit by warm firefly lanterns. More lanterns sat on the low wooden tables, which were surrounded by cushions. Mouthwatering scents filled the room, wafting in from the kitchen, and a record in the corner was playing Marwari music, though Phillip detected the faint audio of a radio coming from the kitchen, which was separated from the rest of the restaurant by a beaded curtain.
“Welcome to the Tasty Treat!” an orange unicorn mare with a poofy fuschia mane and tail sang as she entered, the beads on her clothes jingling as she walked. “I am Saffron Masala, please be seated! Can I start you off with a drink?”
“Do you have aam panna?” Daring asked Saffron, who smiled and nodded. “Mango drink, great for hot nights,” Daring explained in response to Phillip’s querying look.
Since there were only a few customers inside, Daring and Phil chose a small table near the back of the room, where they could both watch the front door. Saffron floated over two tall glasses filled with a green liquid topped with mint leaves and a platter of small fried snacks.
“Vegetable pakora as an appetizer, and your drinks. I’ll be back in a bit to get your order,” she said, exiting with a small bow.
Daring licked her lips as she looked over the menu. “Oh, this is just what I needed.”
“I’ll have to pick up some recipes if I want to keep up, then,” Phillip said, experimentally dipping a pakora into the green sauce and taking a bite. Instantly, his mouth was filled with flavor, the hot, sharp spice of the pakora mixed with the smooth sweetness of the fruit chutney, and he failed to suppress a groan of delight. “Bugger, that’s good,” he said, devouring the rest of the fried snack in two bites.
When Saffron came back, Daring ordered rogan josh—caramelized lamb with spices—and Phillip asked for a dish of tandoori chicken marinated in yogurt. While they waited for their food to come, they sat back in their seats in silence.
“So what are you thinking?” Daring asked.
Phillip closed his eyes and took a slow breath. “A unicorn, evidenced by the fact that they somehow removed that lease sign from outside the building,” he mused out loud. “Somepony who knows how to work with exotic plants, so maybe somepony who uses potions.” He frowned, furrowing his brow. “That may be how he got the superstrength. They’re relatively smart…” He rubbed his face.
“But why take the dragons?” he asked. “Why rob banks? It’s beneath somepony who can do that.”
Daring glanced around, then leaned in and lowered her voice, despite the fact that the few other attendees were paying no attention to them. “You don’t think Kreidol is alive, do you?” she whispered.
Phillip was silent for several seconds, then shook his head. “Instinct tells me no,” he admitted.
“There’s something that’s been bothering me,” Daring said, “How’s he getting rid of the bodies? It’s hard enough to get rid of a pony body. A dragon body, especially an adult one, has to be harder to deal with. After a few months, somepony should have seen something.”
Phillip nodded slowly. “Good point,” he admitted. “He might be using a magical method for that, as well.”
A hissing of steam came from the kitchen and Saffron exited with a platter with several bowls of curry, passing them out to the delighted occupants of one table.
“Pointless to try to figure it out without evidence,” Phillip stated, closing his eyes.
“How you feeling?” Daring asked.
Phillip was quiet for a bit, then nodded. “Good,” he said. “Better than I have in a while, actually. I feel like I needed this, doing detective work.”
“Me too,” Daring said. “I felt trapped, waiting at home. Having something else to think about, being able to help somecreature, was a huge help.”
She looked over at the now-empty platter being taken back to the kitchen and licked her lips. “Some food will help, too,” she said.
“Seconded,” Phillip said.
They sat in a more comfortable quiet for a while, occasionally speaking of other things, of Canterlot and the Tasty Treat, of dragons, of past cases and adventures—anything but their current mystery. When their dinner finally came out, they dove into the entrees with great eagerness.
“Give me a taste of that,” Phillip said, jabbing his fork at the lamb meat floating in the red sauce.
“Trade you for that,” Daring said, looking over at the grilled chicken wing with the rice and yogurt sauce.
“Deal,” Phillip said, stabbing a particularly large string of lamb and placing it into his mouth. The firm, tender texture of the lamb carried the sweet tang of the caramel and he let out a delighted moan.
As Daring chewed her taste of chicken, there came the sound of the door opening. Phillip looked up to behold a blue unicorn with a short silver mane and the cutie mark of a star coming out of a test tube wearing a white saddlebag entering the store. The visitor paused at the door, wiping his face off with his foreleg.
But something called Phillip’s attention to the stallion, his eyes instinctively following the heavily breathing visitor as he proceeded to a single corner booth. Phillip took a long sip of his aam panna, ignoring the sharp tang of mixed mango and mint.
“What is it?” Daring whispered through another casual forkful of lamb.
The clues suddenly clicked in Phillip’s mind. “That stallion who just came in,” he said. “He’s the pony we bumped into outside the bank.”
“You sure?” Daring asked, studying the pony out of the corner of her eyes as Saffron bustled over to him.
“Same height, same build, same saddlebag,” Phillip recited.
“He doesn’t have the beard,” Daring pointed out.
“Notice the faint markings behind his ears,” Phillip said. “He was wearing a fake beard. And why is he breathing hard and sweating so much?”
The sound of a siren approaching intruded upon the music and chatter of the restaurant. A cruiser passed by outside the Tasty Treat, lights spinning and siren blaring. Several heads turned to catch a glimpse of the vehicle.
But Daring and Phillip were watching the new stallion. He’d remained still, but his green eyes were darting around everywhere, his shoulders suddenly tensing as he gripped the cup of chai tea he’d been given. Daring recognized the look of a pony who is suddenly taking stock of the exits.
A sound caught Phillip’s attention. Closing his mouth, he swiveled his ears towards the beaded curtain, listening to the voice on the radio coming from within.
“—again, we interrupt for an important news alert,” an announcer was saying. “An unknown assailant just attempted to rob the Equestrian Amalgamated Trust. It is believed that this robber may be the same robber who has struck several banks in the past months. A night guard saw the figure attempting to enter through a window and forced him to flee on hoof down the alley. The robber was a unicorn wearing a dark hooded cloak. Police are already scouring the local area for him, but all ponies are asked to be on the lookout for anything suspicious—”
Phillip took another bite of his chicken, keeping his gaze on the unicorn stallion. As he chewed, he raised a hoof to his eye, disguising the gesture as brushing his mane back behind his ear, and tapped the side of his head next to his right eye twice.
Daring recognized the silent signal: I have the target.
She nodded and scratched her nose: I see him, too.
The blue stallion relaxed slowly, but kept his head down and his green eyes alert as he sipped his chai. When Saffron came back, he just ordered a small platter of potato and vegetable squares, which he quickly devoured. Leaving some bits on the table, he left quietly as soon as he was done.
Leaving payment and a sizable tip on the table, Phillip and Daring both exited as well. As they proceeded out the door, they caught a glimpse of the blue unicorn walking quickly down the side street to their right. The detectives turned left and walked casually away.
The blue unicorn turned a corner, disappearing from sight. Daring took to the sky as Phillip jogged around the block. He paused behind the Tasty Treat, pressing his back against the wall. Taking out a small green hoof mirror, he peered around the corner and spotted his target in the reflection, fast approaching down the street.
Looking up, he confirmed that Daring was flying overhead; she pointed to her eye briefly to indicate that she still had him. Hiding behind a dumpster, Phillip pulled a small purple bag out of his vest: from this, he extracted a makeup kit and stencil, a ball cap and a pair of sunglasses. Stuffing his trilby and gray undershirt into the bag of holding, he donned the cap and sunglasses, reversed his vest to the blue interior and zipped it up loosely so that he could still reach his shoulder holster, and then used the makeup kit and stencil to cover his flanks with generic horseshoes.
His disguise complete, Phillip stepped out of the alleyway and crossed the street, pretending to study the mannequins in the window of the clothing store. In the reflection, he saw the blue unicorn walking down the shadowed sidewalk, his head lowered and his step quick. Daring was hovering overhead, peering down at him over the rooftops.
Phillip began to casually follow their target, keeping him in his peripheral vision. The unicorn suddenly paused and turned around, gaze sweeping back and forth.
No need to panic. He’d been through this before. Phillip kept walking, never slowing or faltering, turning to look straight ahead as if he was just another shopper checking out the wares on the way home.
The target kept moving past him, but Phillip noticed him checking in the store windows, probably not looking at the wares. The unicorn adjusted his saddlebags and marched on.
Phillip continued to the end of the block, then quickly sprinted around the block, doffing his cap and sunglasses. A quick glance up confirmed that Daring was still on the rooftop; she tapped her eye again to indicate that she still had the target. He paused at the corner, glancing around the edge to spot his target crossing the street, away from him. Another quick change of hat and glasses from the Bag of Holding and Phillip proceeded after him.
This could take all night, he thought to himself.
He was suddenly interrupted when the unicorn whirled around and glared right at him, green eyes blazing with hate. He froze, his heart leaping into his throat.
“I see you, detective!” the unicorn shouted, causing everypony in the street to stop and turn as the unicorn lunged at a parked motorbike on the street next to him. Before everyone’s astonished eyes, the grunting and snarling unicorn heaved the vehicle up over his head and threw it across the street at Phillip.
Phillip froze. The mass of deadly metal was tumbling through the air right at him, and all he could do was stare at his oncoming doom. His heart was pounding hard against his throat, but his limbs felt as if they were turned into granite. The spinning motorcycle blotted out the sun, casting him in shadow.
A golden angel streaked down from the sky and tackled him, knocking him out of the way as the bike crashed down onto the ground with a great cacophony, rolling over to smash into a storefront, sending glass spilling everywhere.
Daring set Phillip down on the sidewalk, drawing her revolver from her shoulder holster and taking aim. Reality snapped Phillip out of his daze and he swung his vest around to its green side, drawing his own revolver.
“Don’t move!” Daring barked at the unicorn.
The unicorn moved, charging right at them with a bellow. Daring and Phillip both opened fire, but their bullets merely cracked harmlessly off the conjured yellow shield that he projected in front of him. Seizing a street lamp, their foe yanked it out of the ground with a grunt and swung it like a baseball bat.
Daring shot up into the air, while Phillip hit the ground, rolling like a log as the steel lamp wooshed over his head. The unicorn grunted and slashed the lamp down at him like an ax. Phillip threw himself into an aerial cartwheel, the world spinning on its axis as the makeshift weapon missed.
His hoof darted to the pocket near his back and snapped out towards the upside-down unicorn in a trained motion even before he landed. His boomerang whistled through the air and cracked the unicorn right in the forehead between his furious emerald eyes. He staggered with a grunt, dropping the lamp with a clatter. Bolts of ochre energy zipped at Phillip, and he dove to one side, tumbling across the hard concrete, grimacing as the hot stone burned his flesh.
Daring rocketed down behind him and her kusarifundo snapped out, ensnaring his foreleg, and she locked it out like a lever, smashing her own foreleg down on his elbow. The blow should have shattered the joint with a crack like a tree limb, eliciting a screech of agony.
Instead, the unicorn shoved her back, sending her flying several feet with a surprised grunt of “Shit!” Daring landed hard and opened fire again as she wheezed, but her last two bullets merely bounced off the shield with musical pings. With a bellow like a steam engine, the blue stallion leaped up into the air.
“Whoa, fuck!” Daring shouted, quickly rolling out of the way as he came down like a jackhammer. The impact formed a crater in the concrete where she’d been lying, sending dust flying into the air. The ground shuddered as if in terror, making Daring stumble. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Phillip stagger, nearly dropping his baton as his charge was halted.
Then she saw his back hoof barreling at her face like a train. With a gasp, she dodged to one side, snapping her kusarifundo at his supporting knee.
She felt the weight crack into his knee, grinned as she heard him grunt and saw him buckle, lunged forward for the clinch.
And then she felt a sledgehammer crash into her chest, sending her flying into the air. Instinctively trying to grab onto something as the ground left her, Daring wound up seizing the unicorn's saddlebag, her momentum tearing it from his body; she thoughtlessly gripped it like a lifeline even as she tumbled across the air.
She remembered the brick wall behind her right before she smacked into it, the impact crushing the wind from her lungs. Daring blacked out before she hit the ground.
“Wandjina!” Phillip screeched as another spell rocketed at him. He felt the ward cover his body in a warm blanket just as the incantation reached him, smashing into his shield like a brick wall had suddenly charged into him. He stumbled, but snatched a smoke bomb out of his pocket and threw it at the unicorn. Daring’s new formula worked perfectly: a little bit of pegasus magic and thundercloud mixed with the potassium nitrate caused the bomb to go off with a crackle of lightning before covering his foe in smoke. Panting, Phillip lunged for his target's injured knee.
Coughing and choking, his red face drenched with sweat, the unicorn lunged blindly forward, right into Phillip's path. With no time to dodge the incoming cannonball, Phillip braced for impact, tightening his chest and turning to one side. Shitshitshit this is gonna hurt—!
The unicorn’s head smashed into Phillip’s obliques like a battering ram. Phillip was launched as if out of a cannon, flying back three yards before crashing onto the concrete and rolling several more feet before halting in a wheezing, gasping heap. He gulped like a fish that had been plucked from its tank, staring up at the orange sky.
The blessed howl of sirens caused the madpony to halt. He stood for a moment, hunched over and panting, staring at his groaning attackers, then turned and leaped. His jump launched him up to the third-story landing of a fire escape ladder, which he clambered up with a grunt. The robber sprinted up the ladder and over the rooftops, disappearing from sight just as the first police cruisers pulled up to the curb with screeching tires, officers bustling over to assist the gasping Phillip Finder and the feebly stirring Daring Do.
Finder stared after his foe, fighting to get his breathing under control as a mare officer soothingly urged him to calm. Somewhere in the back of his racing mind, he realized that his hooves were shaking.
Author's Notes:
Marwari, for the record, comes from a breed of Indian horse.
So our mystery foe reveals himself! How are our heroes going to deal with this one?
Leave a like and a comment if you enjoyed!
Case Fourteen, Chapter Five: Marks of the Past
Daring groaned as she opened her eyes, blinking in the harsh orange light. She tried to sit up, but stopped when her everything protested having to move. “Ow...anypony get the number of that truck?” she groaned, her chest burning when she tried to speak.
“Daring Do?” a voice came to her from a mile away. She looked up and immediately winced when a bright light shone directly into her eyes.
“My name is Daring Do, I’m in Canterlot, it’s Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of the Moon of Grain, 1950, and I don’t have a concussion, bug off,” she grumbled, waving the light away.
“I still need to check, Miss Do,” the voice said patiently. Daring’s vision cleared to see a pair of Canterlot police officers, a male hippogriff and a mare unicorn, bending over her.
The mare scanned Daring with a medical spell and clicked her tongue. “You and your partner are both lucky for that armor,” she reported.
The mention of her partner made Daring jolt upright with a gasp, then immediately grimace in pain, clutching her chest. “Where’s Phil?” she cried.
“He’s okay, he’s over here,” the mare said, gently placing a hoof on her shoulder to try to stop her from rising. “All you both got were some cracked ribs and bruises. You should be okay, but I recommend taking it easy for a few days.”
Daring’s retort of “fuck that” died in her throat when she saw Phillip sitting on the curb, turning his trilby over and over in his hooves. His eyes were on the smoking wreckage of the car that was now sitting in the center of the road like some strange art piece that officers and cordoned civilians alike were gawking at. Shoving off the unicorn officer, she got to her hooves and trotted over to him.
“You okay?” she asked, sitting down on the curb next to him.
Phillip shook his head. “Should’ve been faster,” he mumbled, twisting the hat in his trembling hooves. “Shouldn’t have frozen...should have…”
Daring draped her wing over his shoulders and squeezed him to her side. “Hey, we’re both okay,” she whispered into his ear. “Bastard hit us with his best shot and missed. We’re gonna find him, and we’re gonna make him hurt.”
Phillip didn’t respond. Daring squeezed him a little harder. “It’s okay, Phil,” she soothed. “We’re both okay.”
Phillip nodded and stood up with a slow breath, placing his trilby back on his head. “Where’s that saddlebag?” he grunted, looking around.
The battered white saddlebag was currently being photographed by a pair of officers. Phillip strode over to the saddlebag and after a brief nod from the sergeant, opened up the bag.
Inside was a bag of bits, a notebook that was filled with illegible writing, a black hooded cloak and ski mask, several purple cloth bags, and two small bags, one filled with dead rats, the other with soya beans.
“Interesting collection in here,” Phillip mused, shaking the Bags of Holding and finding them empty. “These didn’t come cheap. Probably what he used to haul the money away.”
“And what the hell are these for?” Daring asked, looking at the rats and beans.
“Look like they’re from a pet shop,” another officer commented. “Maybe he’s got a cat and a chicken or something?”
Phillip looked over the cloak. “Take a butcher’s,” he said, lifting up the dusty, bespotted hem. “Dust on the cloak matches dust in the alley. And spent Nightpoppy spores.”
The sound of a car honking made Phillip and Daring look up. A long black car pulled up to the corner just outside the crime scene barriers and halted. The back window rolled down and the head of a silver unicorn mare, her turquoise and pink mane cut into a masculine style, leaned out. The mare tilted her sunglasses down and her eyes focused on Phillip and Daring.
“Detectives, over here,” she called, beckoning them to the car.
Phillip and Daring glanced at each other, then shrugged and walked up to the side of the new car, skirting around the wrecked heap of metal. As they approached, they noticed that despite the warm weather, the mare was wearing a loose dark blue jacket. A jacket with a distinct bulge on the side of her chest.
Once they got a few feet away, the mare held up a hoof to stop them. Her horn lit up with a blue aura, sweeping over the pair of them like a spotlight.
“They have more than earned our trust, sergeant,” another mare’s voice spoke from inside the car, this one sonorous and authoritative. “Let them in.”
“Ma’am,” the mare said, opening up the car door with her magic. She slid aside and beckoned for the detectives to enter, sitting in the seat opposite her.
Daring ducked in first and found, to her complete lack of surprise, that the interior of the car was much larger on the inside. The front- and back-facing seats were both large enough for five ponies to comfortably sit side by side. A pane of bulletproof glass separated the back of the car from the driver and front passenger, who were also dressed in long, loose dark blue coats and scanning the street outside the window.
On the seat opposite her sat the white unicorn mare, who had closed the door and was rolling the window up after Phillip. Next to her was a tall, midnight blue mare, her sapphire mane and tail spilling down her body like waterfalls, her wings folded to her sides. She studied the two detectives with a single cyan eye, her right orbit covered with a patch.
“Your Highness,” Daring said, bowing as best as she could within the confines of the car. Phillip mimicked the gesture.
“Good evening, detectives,” Princess Luna nodded. “I wish this were under better circumstances. Here, allow me to assist you.”
Her horn lit up and waves of indigo magic slowly passed over Phillip and Daring’s bodies. Both ponies let out quiet groans of contentment as bruises quickly faded and cracked bones knit back together, the pain slowly fading away into a dull ache.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Phillip nodded, stretching his shoulders with a series of pops.
“You are most welcome,” Luna nodded. “I’ve been keeping abreast of the bank robberies and the vanishing dragons these past few weeks. When word came up the grapevine that you were involved, I knew it would only be a matter of time before a lead came up.” She leaned forward.
“We heard that you had an encounter with a superstrong felon,” she said. “What happened?”
Phillip gave the Princess a brief rundown of what happened: the suspect entering the Tasty Treat, following him across Canterlot, the fight in the street, and the attacker making his escape by bounding a tall building.
Princess Luna frowned and leaned forward. “This unicorn. Describe him,” she said.
“Blue, silver mane, green eyes,” Phillip recited. “Cutie mark was a test tube with a star coming out of it.”
Princess Luna gritted her teeth, her eye flashing dangerously. “He changed his marks and coat,” she growled.
“Who?” Daring asked.
With a small pop of indigo light, a file appeared before Princess Luna. She opened it up to reveal a photograph of a stallion. This picture appeared to be a cropped part of a larger photograph of a group of ponies, taken from a distance. The unicorn in question was turned slightly towards the camera and appeared to be speaking to somepony to the photographer’s left; he had a muddy brown coat and his cutie mark was a smaller test tube with no star, but the silver hair was the same, as well as the glaring green eyes set in the angular face.
“That’s definitely him,” Daring nodded. “Looks like he got the cutie mark altered with tattoos. There’s an underground and heavily illegal market for that.”
“His name is Rare Reaction,” Luna said, revealing a Crystal Empire military record, with a photograph of a slightly younger Reaction at the head of it. The record noted his rank as Maggiore, major.
“He served under Sombra when he was Prime Minister, and then when he was King,” Luna explained. “During the Crystal War, Sombra did horrific experiments with dark magic in an effort to gain an advantage. Rare Reaction was one of his blasphemous apostles; his specialization was potions. One of his favorite ingredients was dragon blood; in fact, it’s part of the reason why the dragons entered the war. When Princess Cadenza demonstrated proof that dragons were being abducted and used for these experiments, they readily agreed to fight on our side.” She glared at the photograph. “He was one of the few members of Sombra’s circle that escaped at the end of the war.”
“Dragon blood,” Phillip murmured. “Is there a potion made from dragon blood that can grant superstrength?”
“Rare Reaction and his colleagues were working on one such potion towards the end of the war, but based on what we found, he was not successful before he was forced to flee,” Luna said.
“I’m willing to bet he figured it out,” Daring grumbled. “And I think I know where he got the supply.”
“So how does a major in the Crystal Army go from that to robbing banks?” Phillip pondered.
“Pony’s gotta eat. And I’m willing to bet that he doesn’t have a lot of choices for legitimate employment,” Daring commented.
“I fear it may be more than that,” Luna commented. “Part of the reason why using dragon blood in potions is forbidden is because they often cause the user to take on dragon-like aspects—including their greed and anger. I fear that these robberies may be a sign of growing instability on Rare Reaction’s part.”
Daring groaned. “Great. You wouldn’t happen to have an antidote for that, would you?”
“Not without knowing the exact contents,” Luna replied. “But there is something I can do.”
She opened up a panel in the side of the door and pulled out a phone, punching a number into the keypad. The line buzzed a few times, then Luna spoke.
“I need to speak to Doctor Burner,” she said. After a moment, she spoke again. “Doctor, I need a weakening potion, as strong as you can make it.” A few moments of silence, then Luna said, “Make it within two hours.” She hung up, then leaned back in her chair.
“What I am still concerned about is how this fiend is able to find his victims,” she said out loud. “There must be some common thread.”
“They were all lured to an alleyway,” Phillip said. “It appears to have been a fake call from work—”
He suddenly blinked, then smacked himself on the forehead. “Bugger me, I’ve been a right bludger. We need to get to the Dragon Embassy.”
“What is it?” Luna asked.
“Not a coincidence that all of the dragons who vanished were looking for new jobs,” Phillip growled. “We’ve all been stupid. Somedragon working with the employment department was helping him.”
Luna magically knocked at the glass pane. “Driver, the Dragon Embassy,” she ordered.
The car started up with a grumble and pulled away from the scene, heading towards the north. The four ponies inside the cabin settled in for the ride.
“Detectives, there are a few other things my sister and I wanted to discuss with you,” Luna said, leaning forward.
“First, the Kyaltratek. You still have not found it?” she asked.
“No,” Phillip admitted. “We still don’t know where Zugzwang was hiding, and none of Scarlet’s hideouts had it.”
“Damn,” Luna growled. “That tome is extremely dangerous in the wrong hooves. It must be found again. You must not stop looking for it.”
“We won’t, Your Highness,” Daring said. “I’m sure it’ll turn up sooner or later.”
Luna nodded. “Second…” She turned to Daring Do. “Your brand.”
Daring frowned and looked down at her right hoof. The mark stared back at her pitilessly.
“My sister and I have noticed it before,” Luna said. “We understand that it is cursed?”
“Yes,” Daring muttered. “From some kinda cursed iron made over a hundred years ago. It marks me as a member of the Family, forever. It's connected to my magic so it can never come off.”
Forever marked as a thief. Forever marked as a murderer. Forever marked as a coward, a traitor. Forever carrying that burning pain deep in her bones that flared up whenever guilt reared its head. Daring bit down on her lip as the pain bit into her and turned away, taking slow breaths to master herself.
Phillip took her left hoof and squeezed, his grip warm and soft. She shook her head and refocused, turning back to the Princess, who was gazing at her with a look of soft, sad compassion.
“We disagree,” Luna replied. “It might take some time to work through the curse, but I’d like to try to remove it.”
A bitter voice in Daring’s gut whispered, Why bother? It’s not like she can somehow wipe all the blood off your hooves.
But...didn’t she deserve it? After everything she’d done, all the lives she’d saved, the criminals she’d put away? Wouldn’t it be great to not have to worry about the burning pain whenever she was reminded of her past?
The call of freedom outweighed her guilt. She looked up at Luna and nodded. The Princess nodded with a smile.
“Hold out your right hoof, please,” she said.
Daring did, extending the mark of the Family to the Princess, who began to scan it with her magic in silent contemplation. As they worked, Phillip looked over at the silver unicorn, who had remained stone-faced and silent throughout the entire conversation. She met his gaze silently.
“You were at Ponyville,” Phillip said.
The Guard hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “First Sergeant Iridescence,” she reported.
“I’m sorry about your comrades,” Phillip said quietly.
Iridescence blinked and took a slow breath, steadying herself. “Thank you. I am sorry about yours,” she said quietly.
Luna draped a wing over her guard’s shoulders as she completed scanning Daring’s brand and jotted down a few notes. “I should have a test spell ready soon,” she reported, patting Daring’s hoof. “Take heart, Daring Do.”
“Thank you,” Daring said.
The car’s engines slowed. “We’re here,” Iridescence stated, opening up the door.
Daring and Phillip exited the car to stand before the Dragon Embassy, the flags flapping in a light breeze and the sentries on duty staring in confusion, claws wrapped around their lances and armor shining in the setting sunlight, partially hidden by an invading force of gray clouds. As they shut the door behind them, the window rolled down.
“One more moment, detectives,” Luna called, holding them back. She leaned forward to speak more clearly to them.
“Your dreams,” she said. “I expect you may have been wondering why I did not appear in your nightmares yet.”
Phillip frowned a bit as a flavor of bitterness bubbled up his throat, but nodded.
“I apologize for that, I truly do,” Luna said with a remorseful bow of her head. “Some dreams are harder to reach into than others.” She leaned forward a bit more. “It helps if the other pony tries to reach out. I know it hurts. I know it must still be hard to talk about. But hiding your pain will only make it worse. Believe me, I’ve seen it too many times.”
Phillip and Daring remained silent.
“I can help you,” Luna said. “But you have to let me.” She settled back in her chair. “I will contact you later when we have the Weakening Potion ready. Good luck, detectives.”
The thick window rolled back up and the car pulled away, disappearing into the evening traffic. Daring and Phillip turned and walked back up through the embassy doors.
The chaos that they had encountered that morning had died away, now that only a few more dragons were left inside, most of them just milling about.
Phillip approached one of the secretaries. “Where are the offices for employees and work visas?” he asked.
“That would be Consuldragon Heim. He’s in office 319, on the third floor,” the secretary replied.
“Thanks,” Phillip said. He and Daring entered the enormous elevator at the end of the hall and hit the button for the third floor. The elevator doors closed and the elevator trundled upwards, shuddering to a halt on the third floor. The doors dinged open and they walked down a long hallway of office doors, each one spaced out by several meters. A few guards stood post in the corners, leaning against the walls in obvious boredom.
Daring and Phillip trotted down to 319, which was partially cracked open. Angry voices could be heard from inside. The two detectives glanced at each other and opened the door.
Smolder and Krein were both standing on one side of an ornate oak desk littered with papers. Heim, the sea-green dragon that they had encountered that morning, was sitting on the other side, looking down at a binder. Potted plants lined the walls, providing a rainbow of color to the otherwise drab office and filling the air with mixing aromas. A large cloth bag sat next to the desk. On top of the desk stood a framed photograph of Heim with his arm wrapped around a light purple male dragon, a little shorter than Smolder, smiling embarrassedly at the camera. The towers of Manehattan Trade Center could be seen in the background behind them across the choppy waters of Horseshoe Bay.
“I still don’t see why you need this list,” Heim was saying, handing over a list.
“It’s not a coincidence that all the dragons who disappeared were ones who were on visas or were changing jobs,” Smolder replied, snatching up the list. “Somedragon who works in this department knows something.” She gave Heim a rather nasty look. “We would’ve gotten this sooner if you hadn’t flown off.”
“I needed to take care of some business,” Heim said defensively. “We all have our jobs.”
“We’ll have to arrange interviews with all of them,” Krein said, turning to note the ponies’ entrance. “Detectives, glad you’re here. I see you had the same idea we did.”
“This’ll help,” Phillip nodded, taking the list and looking over the list.
Daring winced at the length of the list. “That’s quite a few names—”
She paused, glancing around at the plants all around them. “Heim, you raise these yourself?” she asked, studying the broad leaf of a fern.
“It’s a hobby,” Heim said modestly. “I think it brightens up the place a little.”
“You’ve always been good with plants?” Daring asked.
“I grew up on a farm,” Heim said, straightening his back in pride. “I was tilling the land back when I was knee-high to a roc. I have my own mini-greenhouse at home.”
“You think you could grow anything?” Daring asked. “Even Nightpoppy?”
“Hmm,” Heim mused; he steepled his claws in thought, but his eyes darted to one side for a half-second. “I could, but I wouldn’t try it any day. Way too dangerous.”
“Where’d you go earlier today?” Phillip said, walking towards the desk. His eyes were on the list that Krein had handed him, but Daring could see that his gaze was unfocused, taking in more of the room through his peripherals.
“I was just visiting some of the employment offices we have set up for dragons,” Heim said, his wingtips fluttering a bit. “I was working on some paperwork.”
“You didn’t go up into the mountains?” Phillip asked innocently, pausing near Heim’s bag.
Heim blinked in confusion. “No,” he said slowly. “I haven’t been up there in a while.”
“Really,” Phillip deadpanned. He plucked a small green leaf from the strap of the bag. The elliptical leaf had jagged edges like a saw blade, and the stem had some small white flowers attached to it.
“Because this is a mountain ash leaf,” he said. “Daring and I have been all over this city and we didn’t see any mountain ash here. But it does grow on the mountains over Canterlot.”
Heim blinked and swallowed. “That...must’ve been from a while ago,” he said slowly, his wings fluttering even more. “I—hey!” he cried in protest as Phillip suddenly grabbed his arm and pulled his claw forward, studying his claws.
“Is this ash?” he asked, pointing to some black residue beneath Heim’s talons.
“Funny,” Daring said. “I remember that Nightpoppy grows in dirt from a mountain forest mixed with ash, and yet you said you don’t grow it.”
Heim’s golden eyes widened and he gulped audibly as every pair of eyes facing him narrowed.
“I think you need to answer a few questions,” Krein growled.
Heim stared for a second, then suddenly launched himself forward, snatching up his bag as he flew over everycreature’s head and crashed through the door. Crashing into the reinforced wall, he started scrambling for the window at the end of the hallway. Two guards standing post at the end of the hall started in shock, staring in confusion.
“Guards, stop him!” Krein roared as he leaped after his foe.
Snapped out of their stupor, the two dragon guards raised their lances, the blades extending towards Heim, who skidded to a halt. The blades began to glow vicious orange with enchanted fire, flooding the entire hallway with heat as doors began to open, heads peeping out in confusion.
Heim looked back and forth between the oncoming guards and the furious Krein and Smolder, trapping him in. Desperation shone in his eyes, then suddenly resolved into determination. He dug a claw into his bag and whipped out a small jar of ochre pollen, which he scattered through the air with a long exhalation.
Every dragon staggered, blinking as the honey-smelling pollen hung in the air. Then the sniffling started. Daring gasped, then tackled Phillip, diving back into the office. A moment later, every dragon was overcome with fits of violent sneezing, jets of flame rocketing out of their snouts. The multicolored array washed over the fireproof walls and floor, blanketing the hallway in scalding heat. Phillip and Daring ducked behind Heim's desk, hissing in pain as the forelegs were washed in intense warmth.
Taking advantage of everydragon’s momentary disability, Heim dove for the window and crashed through the reinforced glass. Flaring his wings, he shot up into the golden sky, heading for a nearby bank of clouds.
“Not…ah-choo! Not so fast!” Smolder yelled, fighting through the dragonsneeze pollen to chase after him.
“Smolder!” Krein shouted, reaching out to stop her before being overcome by another fit of sneezing.
Daring glanced at Phillip, receiving a grim nod. Seizing one of Heim's potted plants, she flung it through the window with a great crash. Phillip broke off the remnants of the glass with his baton, then ducked as Daring dove out the opening into the open evening air, banking around to the other side of the Embassy.
Heim was pushing himself as hard as he could with his great reptilian wings. Smolder was right behind him and gaining: with a great snarl, she sent a jet of flame at her target, which Heim clumsily rolled to avoid.
“What did you do to my friend?!” Smolder yelled, her rage giving her a burst of speed. She managed to tackle Heim, wrapping her arms python-like around his wings. He screeched in rage, the two dragons tumbling through the air.
“Dammit,” Daring muttered, drawing her revolver as she dove for the struggling forms.
Suddenly, Heim twisted about and his claw snapped out, talons striking into Smolder’s throat in a trained strike. Smolder reeled away, coughing and choking, and Heim seized her in a chokehold, holding her tight against his body; his torso was almost as large as Smolder’s entire body, Daring realized.
“Come any closer and I’ll snap her neck!” Heim shouted at Daring.
Daring flared her wings and halted in midair, glaring at the traitorous dragon over her iron sights. Smolder struggled and squirmed in Heim’s iron grasp, choking and gasping for air as she clawed at his arm.
Daring growled, gripping her right foreleg with her other hoof to steady her aim. Nothing short of a direct shot to the eye would be enough to stop Heim, and even if she didn't have to worry about shooting Smolder, she wasn't close enough to hit that.
“Why?” Daring asked, the gears turning rapidly in her mind. “You betrayed and killed your own kind.”
“Do you ask ponies that when they murder other ponies?” Heim growled, tightening his hold on Smolder as she tried to wriggle out of his vise. “You have family, detective? Somepony you’d do anything for?”
“Oh, let me guess,” Daring scoffed. “Your kid has cancer or something and you needed the money.”
“Yes,” Heim replied, ignoring Smolder’s weakening struggles as he kept flying back towards the hanging cloud cover. “Suvulaan is my world. I can’t just stand by and let him die.”
“You think Rare Reaction cares about you or your kid?” Daring snapped back; out of the corner of her eye, she could see Krein and the two Dragon Guards flying towards them, rage in their eyes. “You think he won’t use you for an experiment?”
“You think I don’t know that?” Heim snapped, a few tears suddenly glowing in his eyes, reflecting the sunlight. “If I die, Suvulaan dies, too. I can’t risk that!”
He hefted the limp form of Smolder in front of him as a shield, heading for the clouds. “I’m taking her. You get anywhere close, she’s dead.”
“You know you can’t get away,” Daring growled, keeping her sights on his face even as he retreated. “We will find you and Rare Reaction.”
“You can try,” Heim replied. And with a final flap of his wings, he disappeared into the clouds.
“Fuck!” Daring snapped, chasing after him just as Krein and the two guards caught up to them. She rocketed up into the clouds, suddenly finding herself blanketed by the heavy gray fog that smelled of rain and ozone. She clawed her way through and popped up again on the other side of the clouds, glaring around the darkening skies.
But Heim and Smolder were gone.
Author's Notes:
Iridescence belongs to my friend Anzel and is a major supporting character in his awesome Royal Guard trilogy!
Oh, yeah, and Smolder's gone.
Honestly, I'm not really satisfied with this revelation--I'm pretty sure that most of you figured it out pretty quickly--but I'm trying to move through here fairly fast. I hope you enjoy regardless!
Leave a like and a comment to show your support!
Case Fourteen, Chapter Six: Quarry
“We should’ve known,” Krein growled, pacing the hallway outside Heim’s office. “He needed money for his son, he knew all of the dragons who went missing...we should’ve known!”
“Easy, Krein,” Daring said, not looking up from her search of Heim’s desk and drawers for any clues. “He’s smarter than we thought.” She paused for a beat, holding up a document with the official seal of Equestria on it. “This says he served in the Crystal War.”
“Yes,” Krein nodded with a growl. “We all knew about Sombra using dragons and dragon blood in his experiments; a blasphemy like that would earn a death sentence in the Dragonlands. The idea that Heim could…” He growled, clenching his claws tight as smoke billowed from his nostrils. “If he hurts Smolder, I’m going to flay him alive!” he declared.
“I think you’ll have to wait in line,” Daring commented dryly, tossing aside a binder. “Dammit. I hope Phil’s having more luck at Heim’s house than I am here.”
The sound of arguing voices from outside drew everycreature’s attention. “What are you doing back?” Niirah’s voice growled.
“Look, I heard about the dragon,” another male voice came. “I need to speak to Daring and Finder.”
“I’m in here, Ace,” Daring said, leaning out.
Detective Hidden Ace trotted up. “I heard what happened about those two dragons,” he said. “And Princess Luna briefed me about Rare Reaction. Did you find anything here?”
“Nope,” Daring said. “Phil’s over at Heim’s house, trying to find anything over there.”
“Well, I might be able to help with that,” Ace said. “Remember that Chevroneigh 1948? We found it outside that last bank.”
Daring blinked, then dove out the door. “You could’ve said that earlier! C’mon!”
The white Chevroneigh truck sat in the alley behind the Equestrian Amalgamated Trust, the beautiful white facade belying the dinginess of the dirty, graffiti-strewn alley. The truck itself molded into the surroundings quite well: the paint was fading and the chassis was covered with dents and bumps, with rust creeping up from the undercarriage.
“License plate’s gone, and the VIN’s been removed,” the forensic unicorn studying the interior of the cab reported as Daring and Ace approached, ducking the crime scene tape at the mouth of the alley. “We might have some trouble narrowing down who owns this.”
Daring noticed a faint chalk circle drawn around the truck. “He used some kinda spell to hide it?” she asked.
“An Ignore-Me spell woven into the circle; we only noticed it when one of our forensic guys broke the circle on accident,” Ace nodded. “Rare’s got some pretty decent magic backing him up.”
Daring walked around the truck to the back. After receiving a nod from the forensic worker, she carefully opened up the hatch to expose the inside.
The large bed of the truck had several grooves in the bottom of it. The first thing she spotted was the small debris embedded in said grooves. “Granite?” she wondered aloud, prodding at the cracked stone fragments. “These look more like broken fragments than just pebbles or something. Like he smashed a stone tablet or something. Hmm...no soil fragments either so it’s not just from the ground.”
“Yeah, but it’s generic,” Ace stated. “It could’ve come from anyw—”
He paused, staring in shock. Daring followed his gaze and spotted one fragment: a piece shaped like a butterfly, with one wing fragmented, metal instead of stone. Ace slowly reached out with his magic and lifted it up.
As Daring feared, it was indeed a small silver earring.
Ace pulled a picture out of his coat. The photograph was taken in front of some bar and featured Hidden Ace standing with his foreleg around a blue unicorn with a curly blonde mane and three paw prints for a cutie mark, both ponies mugging for the camera with wide grins that could only be worn by best friends without a care in the world.
A silver butterfly earring glittered on Paw Print’s ear.
Ace’s hoof trembled, causing the picture to shake violently. His breathing hitched, hissing through gritted teeth. Tears shimmered in his narrowed eyes.
“I need a moment,” he growled before Daring could say anything, retreating to a corner of the alley, away from any prying eyes. He faced the wall, his shoulders shaking, sometimes jerking violently as he fought to control himself.
Daring stared piteously at him for a few seconds, futile words tumbling in her gut, then pushed it aside and focused on her work. She continued to scan the bed, noting some loose scales and bits of fur that would no doubt be collected and analyzed later, but nothing else of note. The granite remained in the grooves: there wasn’t a lot, but enough to be noticeable, and enough to make her wonder.
Daring sat for a moment, allowing the clues to tumble freely in her mind. Rare Reactions’ face floated before her, twisted in rage as the motorcycle came sailing towards Phillip. For just a moment, she saw terror etched in his face before the massive metal crushed him into the ground with a horrific sound, spreading red blood across the asphalt—
Daring shook herself out of the vision, ordering her heart to be still. It didn’t happen. It wouldn’t happen.
She steadied her breathing, focusing. The evidence floated before her: Heim. Smolder. Rare. Banks. Granite. Truck. Seed and mice. Bodies…
A flash of insight raced across her mind. She turned back to the truck, staring at the crushed stone fragments, turning over the broken butterfly earring in her hooves.
“I think I know where these came from, and how he’s getting rid of the bodies,” she said aloud.
“What’s that?” the forensic unicorn asked.
“He’s got a cockatrice,” Daring said. “That explains the seed and the mice he had in his pack. He turns the bodies into stone, smashes them up, and probably dumps them somewhere.”
“I think you’re right,” Ace growled, walking back over. “But that doesn’t solve the problem of where he’s hiding.”
“It’d have to be somewhere he could work uninterrupted, with all the gear that that must include,” Daring mused out loud. “Somewhere he could make the noise of breaking the statues up. And somewhere where he could store all of that cash he’s got by now.”
“And someplace where some gravel wouldn’t be out of place,” Ace added.
“Daring!” a voice called, and Daring looked up with a brief sigh of relief to see Phillip ducking beneath the tape. “You find anything?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Daring said, holding up the earring. “He’s using a cockatrice to get rid of the bodies.”
Phillip stared at the earring for a bit, then closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath. “Bugger. Need to think of a way around that. Anything else?”
“Not much here,” Daring admitted. “You find anything at Heim’s place?”
“Not much,” Phillip admitted. “But there were some odd payments in his checkbook that I found. Listed several checks being paid to somepony named Silver Lining.”
Ace’s ears perked up. “Silver Lining? That's not a pony, that's a real estate company. They own construction sites.”
“The payments might be bribes to use one of their properties,” Phillip said. “We’ll have to talk to them, find out which.”
Daring and Phillip stood at the top of a steep decline, looking down a winding dirt road leading to their target. A chain-link fence with a padlock provided a token attempt at security. Behind it was a huge pit of granite walls, gigantic steps of stone that led down into a muddy pit. Set on a plateau of dirt overlooking the pit was a semi-dilapidated factory of rotting wood and rusting metal, the frames in the windows bare. Some rusting construction equipment and a few smaller buildings lay scattered on the dirt plateau, abandoned nearly a year prior when the original company folded and was bought out by Silver Lining Industries.
“You think he’s down there?” Daring asked, staring down at the quarry with her binoculars, the night vision enchantment allowing her to see into the darkening pit with perfect clarity even as the sun crept lower in the sky and more clouds rolled over the domes overhead, rumbling with distant thunder.
“I’m sure,” Phillip said, crouching down on the ground next to the gate. “I recognize this tire track. The truck’s been coming in and out of here.”
Daring gritted her teeth as another roll of thunder echoed around the stone walls. Scanning the construction equipment scattered amongst the plateau, she spotted a machine with a hopper feeding into a conveyer belt. She recognized it as a rock crusher.
She also noticed the gray pebbles that were scattered on the ground around the machine and the tire tracks that led from it to the edge of the pit. A sick feeling nestled in her gut and she growled.
“Smolder could be dead by now. We should be headed down there.”
“You wanna take on a dragon, a cockatrice, and a superstrong insane unicorn by yourself, be my guest,” Phillip commented dryly.
Daring frowned for a moment, then grunted in acquiesce. “Fair.”
A few droplets tumbled from the sky, then sheets of rain began to pour down. “Great,” Daring grumbled, tilting her pith helmet over her face. “Did Awely-Awely and Angkakert really need to do this now?” she asked dryly.
Phillip looked up at the gray skies overhead. Rare Reaction’s face danced before his eyes, twisted in rage as the motorcycle tumbled towards him. For a moment, the traitor’s eyes turned black as pitch and black serpents slithered out of a mouth that was opened impossibly wide. Phillip’s hoof shook and his breathing hitched, heart trembling in his chest.
But the rain poured gently on his back, cool and soothing. The wind whispered over his body, and slowly he breathed in the calming scent. One hoof went up to the necklace of Angkakert around his neck and he rubbed the carved wood. He thought, once again, that he felt a tingle of power inside the totem, like a small lightning bolt dancing against his skin.
Calm, calm, he whispered to himself, his heartbeat slowing to a steady drumbeat.
“You okay?” Daring asked, looking at him in concern. “You were shaking for a bit.”
“I’m fine,” Phillip replied, keeping his eyes on the buildings below. His enemy was down there, along with Smolder, an innocent endangered. He allowed the rage to slowly slither out of his gut, washing away the fear in his veins like a rising tide, then commanded it to settle in his gut like a coiled serpent, where it lay controlled, ready.
“Are you okay?” he asked Daring.
She frowned for a bit, her own hoof going up as if on its own to the totem of Awely-Awely around her neck. She gently stroked the carved face of the queen of the wandjina for a moment, then took a breath of the rainy wind. “I’m okay,” she nodded, her eyes hard, without a single trace of fear or doubt.
As if on cue, the sound of tires crunching on gravel announced the approach of a contingent of cruisers and vans, led by an armored limousine, which parked right behind Phillip and Daring. Princess Luna exited the limousine almost before it had stopped, rain glistening off her silver cuirass.
“Detective Ace, do you have the warrant?” she asked the unicorn detective exiting the unmarked car as she tied her mane back into a ponytail.
“Got it here, Your Highness,” Ace grunted as he exited his cruiser, holding up the signed and sealed piece of paper.
“You joining us, Princess?” Daring asked.
“A dragon, a cockatrice, and a rogue dark magician are at large. This is beyond the scope of normal police,” Luna stated as Iridescence and five other Royal Guards exited, already equipped with full-body armor and N4 submachine guns. “You will stand aside and allow us to handle this.”
A sting of bitterness struck both Phillip and Daring. “Your Highness, we’ve handled eldritch monsters,” Daring protested. “We—”
“Got lucky,” Luna interrupted, giving her a sympathetic look. “You survived last time because you were lucky that it was weakened and underestimated you. Please, you need not endanger yourselves trying to fight somepony who is out of your weight class. Let us handle this.”
Daring glared up at the Princess, who maintained her calm composure. Seeing that she was not going to budge, Daring sighed and reluctantly nodded.
“Thank you,” Luna nodded, turning as a dragon who seemed to be built from slabs of solid gray stone exited a large black van, followed by a half dozen Dragon Guards, each wearing heavy armor and carrying an enchanted lance. “Commander Dwiin?” Luna asked.
“We’ll handle the traitor,” Dwiin growled to Luna. “You worry about the cockatrice and the wizard.”
“We will,” Luna declared as dragons and Royal Guards gathered around her, readying weapons. Luna struck the crescent moon emblem on the chest of her cuirass with a hoof. Metal pieces extended from the cuirass, unfurling into leg armor and a helmet.
“Be still for a moment, all of you. This will be slightly uncomfortable,” Luna announced to the Guards around her. Her horn lit up, then everypony and everydragon’s eyes flashed with azure light, drawing grunts of pain. “There,” Luna declared. “You are now all temporarily immune to the cockatrice’s gaze. But be forewarned: it has other weapons, namely its claws and venomous saliva.”
“Great,” one of the Royal Guards muttered. “Because the dragon and the superstrong wizard weren’t bad enough.”
“The wizard’s strength can be countered,” Luna stated, pulling several syringes filled with a pale green liquid out of her saddlebags. “This is a weakening potion, strong enough to put him into a powerful lassitude. Inject Rare Reaction with this, and he will be easy to defeat.”
“Of course, we have to get close enough to him to do that,” a dragon commented as the Princess handed the syringes out.
“One step at a time,” Dwiin replied as he took one of the syringes. He grunted and tilted his neck to the side, loosening the muscles with a crack. “All right, team, let’s take ‘em down!”
A blast of Luna’s magic disintegrated the gate. With a chorus of roars, the dragons took to the sky and flew down to the quarry, with Luna and her Royal Guards teleporting down to the bottom of the dirt path in a flash of blue light. Daring, Phillip, and Ace were left standing at the top of the road.
“This is bullshit,” Daring growled to herself, sitting down and huffing like a child being sent to timeout.
“I, for one, am perfectly content to let the dragons and the Royal Guards deal with it,” Ace said, sitting down.
Phillip scowled and raised his binoculars to his eyes, watching as the team stacked up at the metal doors of the factory. His heart continued to beat steadily, like a drumbeat on his ribs.
Wait. Wait.
“Iridescence, be ready,” Luna ordered. Her sergeant nodded tersely, hooves tightly gripping her submachine gun, and her horn glowed silver, a sphere of light like a miniature star blossoming from the tip. The Princess’ horn glowed, then the entire door was yanked off its hinges, as if it had been pushed by a giant from inside the building, skidding across the ground.
Iridescence immediately followed by throwing the sphere of light into the factory. Everypony turned away as the light bomb detonated, light pouring out of the doors and windows as if the sun had just risen within. A roar of pain and confusion came from inside.
“Go, go!” Dwiin shouted as the ponies and dragons poured into the door, spreading out to cover every corner. Guns were raised and lances glowed with enchanted fire.
What had been the place where stone taken from the quarry was shaped, smoothed, carved, and polished was now merely empty rooms with torn down walls. Dust clung to what little furniture was left.
They cleared the first few rooms, then proceeded around a corner to an open area lined with conveyor belts and countertops. The countertops were littered with laboratory equipment, bottles and vats filled with ingredients and supplies that no one had a name for: one burner was still on, the green liquid in the jar it was placed beneath bubbling furiously. At the end of one counter was a large cubed water tank. The top was open to reveal that the tank was filled with a thick, dark red liquid that filled the room with a nauseating reek of copper. Dwiin and several of the dragons with him growled at the scent.
Light glittered in the back. Luna turned the spotlight beam from her horn upon it and discovered the source to be piles and piles of bits and diamonds, the stolen loot from the banks. At a glance, there was enough money here to make Rare Reaction one of the ten richest ponies in Canterlot.
“Keep your eyes open,” Iridescence ordered as they proceeded forward, eyes and flashlights panning over every shadow three times.
A feeble moaning from the corner drew the group’s attention. The beams of the flashlights revealed Smolder, chained down to a slab with iron manacles, her mouth secured with a metal muzzle. A needle had been stabbed into her forearm, with a long vein carrying her blood into a large vat, which was about a quarter full; another IV led to a stand with a jar of pale white liquid that trickled down into her other forearm.
“I’ll get her out,” Dwiin stated, rushing forward. He carefully pulled the tubes from Smolder’s arm and began to bandage the wounds as two other guards began to remove her shackles. Smolder groaned as she fought the sedative; she tried to sit up, but Dwiin gently pushed her down. “Easy, it’s okay,” he soothed.
“Contact!” a Royal Guard shouted, whipping his submachine gun around. Everycreature turned their head to follow, eyes focusing on the shape that was lunging out at them from the shadows.
Heim stood stock-still beneath their gazes, eyes wide in horror, one forearm held up before his face as if to shield himself. He didn’t move despite having several guns aimed directly at him.
A moment later, everyone realized that this was because he’d been turned into stone. Weapons were slowly lowered.
“Guess Rare didn’t need his help anymore,” a dragon commented.
A faint whistling caused everyone to pause. Luna sniffed the air and her nose wrinkled at the acrid scent of kerosene.
Then she realized that it was coming from the bubbling green liquid in the boiling jar. Which was bubbling even more violently and now starting to whistle loudly. Before her eyes, the liquid caught fire as the shriek reached a crescendo, flames billowing out of the top of the jar into the air like clouds.
“OUT!” she ordered. Dwiin seized Smolder and dove for the exit as everyone turned and sprinted for the door. The flames spread over the air, sparks falling like rain onto the concrete.
And then came a great roar.
The explosion echoed off the stone of the quarry, roaring back at the thundering skies. Flames shot out of the factory doors and windows, smoke catapulting into the air. Bodies were hurled out of the factory like rag dolls, tumbling across the ground.
“Shit!” Daring cried, springing to her hooves. With a flap of her wings, she took to the sky and soared down to the faintly stirring forms that surrounded the burning edifice.
“Daring!” Phillip called. “Don’t—bugger,” he growled, sprinting down after her. Ace followed, coat flapping in the rainy wind.
Over to the right, Phillip spotted movement between the abandoned construction equipment. Raising his binoculars to his eyes as he slowed to a trot, he spotted Rare Reaction, face twisted in rage, emerging from behind the rock crusher, stamping the granite pebbles into the mud beneath his hooves. He drew back his teeth in a snarl, and Phillip saw through the lenses that his teeth had sharpened into fangs, and his tongue was now slightly forked.
And then came a slithering motion behind him and for the first time, Phillip saw the cockatrice. Its body was shaped like a chicken, but only vaguely, for instead of feathers, it was clothed in dark green scales that shimmered dangerously, with viciously sharp claws extending from its rotund belly. Its tail was like that of a dinosaur, long and studded with purple spines. It flapped its reptilian wings to propel itself forward in a bizarre motion that combined slithering, hopping, and gliding. Its head was the only part of it that was made of feathers, but it resembled a chicken like a timberwolf resembles a pomeranian. Its red crest appeared to be made of sharp spines, needle-like fangs dangled from its hawkishly sharp beak, and its eyes glowed a solid crimson.
It should’ve looked ridiculous. It was horrifying.
As Phillip watched, the cockatrice pounced upon one of the dazed dragons. The dragon locked eyes with the beast, seemingly unable to turn away, but nothing happened. The cockatrice hissed like an enormous serpent, then spat into the dragon’s face. Sickly green liquid spewed from its beak right into the dragon’s eyes. The armored dragon screeched in pain and clutched his face, writhing as tears and acid ran down his face.
Rare Reaction’s horn lit up and he began to chant, a circle of purple energy burning into the ground around him. “Thutshig nd b’kn, gb’ran nd nt’yah!” he howled. “Rise again and serve me!”
The muddy water bubbled and churned, and then granite pebbles flew from the surface like they were pulled by a tornado. They circled around the laughing Rare Reaction. Legs formed, then trunks, tails, wings, and heads.
The fourteen missing dragons and Detective Paw Print stood before them, stone expressions forever frozen into looks of fear as they staggered towards the still-dazed ponies and dragons, every motion making a low grinding noise.
“Die!” Rare Reaction screamed, seizing a frontloader’s rear wheels and heaving it up with a massive grunt. The metal behemoth rolled end over end, crashing noisily against the ground as it tumbled towards a pair of Royal Guards, who looked up too late to dodge.
A beam of azure magic pierced the sky with a scream and the tractor was destroyed in a flash.
“Get up, soldiers!” Luna ordered, drawing her silver broadsword from its sheath. “We are not dead yet!”
Rare pointed and the golems lunged forward, stone limbs flailing at every enemy they could reach. With a crashing, the still petrified Heim staggered out of the burning factory, lunging at a Royal Guard that just barely managed to roll out of the way.
Luna zipped past the golems and charged at Rare, who stood his ground. “I do not fear you!” the former major snarled. “I served in the war!”
He snapped his hoof out in a punch, the limb racing through the air like a train, enough power to plow through bone and flesh with one strike. A train that came to an abrupt halt when it impacted against Luna’s hoof, the reverberation of the crash echoing across the quarry.
“I have served in dozens,” Luna snarled to the shocked Rare before a glowing blue cannonball sent him flying back into a stone wall. The crash of his body against the stone mixed with the growing chaos of gunfire, roars, shouts, and hissing flames as the golems lunged at the guards; the sound of battle was matched by crackles and booms from the storm overhead.
Hauling a dragon guard back to his claws, Daring looked up just in time to see what had been a sea dragon swinging her granite fists down at her head. Diving to one side, Daring rolled through the mud, drawing a smoke bomb from her vest and flinging it at her hooves. A flash of light and a billowing of acrid smoke covered her escape as she retreated back to where Dwiin was holding up Smolder. The dragon's head was rolling and she groaned as she tried to rouse herself.
As Daring reached her, another stone golem crashed down in front of them. Everyone looked up at the dragoness before them. The once-brown eyes were now dark and wide with horror, the smiling jaw locked open in a silent scream, but they all recognized her stony build and sharpened teeth.
“Kreidol,” Smolder whispered.
With a long grinding noise, Kreidol raised her forearm to crush her friend, her stone body backlit by a flash of lightning.
Dwiin dived to one side to avoid it as Daring lunged at the blow, kusarifundo held tight between both hooves. She met the blow and twisted to one side, entangling the stone limb in her rope as she pulled forward, stretching out her hind leg in front of Kreidol’s. She grinned as the golem stumbled forward, tripping over her leg and toppling into the mud with a crash.
Daring’s grin was wiped from her face when a granite wing smashed into her chest, sending her flying. She crashed to the ground and clumsily rolled with a grunt, wheezing and clutching her burning ribs.
Hurts, but nothing’s broken. Get the fuck up! she ordered herself.
Hissing in breaths, she pulled herself to her hooves just in time to see Paw Print lumbering towards her; the unicorn’s mouth was locked open in what looked like a wail and Daring realized that she had died crying. That didn’t stop her from charging at her with murderous intent.
“Great,” she grumbled, squinting through the rain at her foe and spinning her kusarifundo to gain momentum, trying to consider how she was going to hurt stone.
“Arestius!”
A bright blue bolt struck Paw Print and encompassed her in a fuzzy aura, and the golem slowed as if it was trying to run through molasses. Phillip bounded past Daring and seized the statue’s forelimbs, twisting to throw it over his shoulder and onto the ground with a crash of mud.
“You okay?” he called to Daring as Hidden Ace caught up to them, wrapping magical bands around the golem to pin it to the ground.
“I’m fine,” Daring wheezed, clutching her chest as another wave of pain crashed through her body in protest of speech.
“No need to thank me,” Ace muttered, turning and firing another slowing spell at Kreidol, who was attacking one of the Dragon Guards. The Dragon Guard swung her lance with a grunt, using the blunt end to smash the statue’s lower legs at the knees.
The other dragons were currently fighting the golems: Daring spotted Dwiin trying to protect Smolder while holding off a stone dragon that was clawing violently at Dwiin’s wings. Princess Luna, having been disarmed of her sword, was fighting Rare with the aid of her Guards; the mad unicorn was wearing a suit of armor constructed of solid purple magic that glowed as it blocked bullets and blows alike. Rare slipped one of Luna’s punches and countered with an uppercut that dented her cuirass like a sledgehammer warping a tin sheet.
“Let’s help Luna!” she called, rallying herself to charge.
A scream bade her halt. Daring looked over to see Hidden Ace, holding a hoof up before his terrified eyes as he screamed in horror. A hoof that was rapidly turning to stone.
The cockatrice was standing before him, red eyes shining with malice. Before either Phil or Daring could do anything, Ace was completely encased in stone, jaw locked in a scream. With a hiss, the cockatrice turned to them.
Slamming his eyes shut, Phillip sprinted at the cockatrice, snapping his baton open. The cockatrice growled and flapped away from him: tracking the beast by sound, Phillip drew his boomerang and threw it in one swift motion. The weapon whistled as it spun through the air, its sound carrying even through the cacophony of battle, and Phillip heard it strike scaly flesh with a thwack and a squawk. Grinning in victory, he smashed his baton down like a hammer at the source of the noise.
His strike impacted against mud instead of flesh, and then he heard a heavy step beside him. Risking a look up, he spotted Heim, his tortured countenance inches away from his own face, about to bring his stone claws down onto his head.
“Fuck!” he shouted, diving to the side and rolling through the mud, narrowly avoiding the blow that would’ve crushed him.
The cockatrice turned now to a flanking Daring. With a gasp, Daring turned away and shut her eyes. Too late, she heard it hissing in a breath.
Burning pain spread across her foreleg and she screamed as the acidic breath ravaged her flesh, instinctively opening her eyes to study the wound. The green saliva was spread across her foreleg, boils and burns bubbling up her reddening skin.
A moment later, her gaze was drawn like a magnet upwards. The red eyes locked onto hers and she felt a wave of power crash over her; she swore that the monster’s beak curled into a grin.
A terrible feeling of coldness began to spread across her hind legs, and Daring felt her heart tremble as she realized that she could no longer feel her hooves. The image of her limbs turning into stone, the granite crawling up her body to her head, flashed before her eyes.
Look away! Move! Do something! she screamed at herself.
But her eyes were locked onto the red orbs like she was already paralyzed. The horrific numbness was already spreading up her flanks, to her wings. She tried to lift her foreleg to her shoulder holster, but it moved slowly, the injured muscles screeching in agony.
She was sliding her foreleg into the weapon's sleeve, but already her body was numbing and she was choking as her lungs failed. Her vision was blurring, the red eyes seemingly growing in size to encompass her vision, and she knew that it would be the last thing she saw…
And then a purple jet of light cleaved her vision and the cockatrice was sent flying, squawking and screeching in pain. Feeling returned to Daring in a flash and she collapsed, gasping and shaking. She glanced back at her hind legs and let out a hysterical laugh of relief when she saw not a trace of stone on her body.
Looking up, she saw Smolder standing a few feet away, swaying slightly even as smoke billowed from her nostrils and her eyes glowed with defiance.
“Fuck off,” she snarled at the cockatrice, which was feebly stirring in the scorched mud, smoke hissing as it rose off its blackened scales.
Snapping back to reality, Daring drew her pistol fully and opened fire, six disciplined shots barking out. Bullets smacked into the cockatrice’s body, with Daring’s two final shots snapping its head back like a twig, but no blood was to be seen. The cockatrice writhed on the ground, hissing in anger as it tried to get back onto its feet.
“Crap,” Daring muttered, taking a step back, her mind racing furiously. A desperate idea flashed across her mind, and she grabbed at her vest.
The cockatrice squawked in fury and its head snapped up, furious red eyes locking onto Daring again. But then it let out a cry of alarm, fear flashing across its beaked face when it saw what she was carrying.
“Ha!” Daring taunted, holding out her hoof mirror like a shield as she approached. “Reflect on this, you creep!”
The cockatrice let out a high-pitched screech of fear, its gaze seemingly frozen on its reflection. First its tail, then its legs and wings turned to stone. The beast shrieked and writhed to escape, but all in vain: the stone spread up its body, then its head, then lastly covered its eyes, the red glow fading away behind the stone seals. The statue fell to the ground, rain falling into its shadowed eye sockets.
With a snap, the stone encasing Hidden Ace cracked and broke apart like a shell. The unicorn shook his head, shuddering. “Holy shit, I’m alive!” he gasped, patting his chest.
Kreidol, Paw Print, and the other golems crumbled, then fell apart into pieces, sinking into the mud. Heim’s stone body cracked, then he too was returned to flesh, his punch freezing in midair. He barely had time to gasp out a “What—?” before Phillip seized his extended forelimb, flinging him over his shoulder and onto the ground with a wet smack. His yelp of fear turned into a cry of pain when Phillip trapped his forearm in a pin, pressing the dragon’s elbow against his knee.
“Stop! Stop! I surrender!” Heim wailed.
“Yeah, you probably should’ve tried that sooner,” Daring snarled, giving him a kick in the gut for good measure that left him wheezing and her wincing as fresh pain ran up her leg. Three Dragon Guards ran up to shackle Heim.
Looking up, Daring caught sight of Hidden Ace staring down at a pile of pebbles where Paw Print had once lain, a haunted look in his eyes like he was staring right through the ground. Her heart twisted like something had grabbed it in her chest and squeezed.
Rare Reaction’s bellow of rage caught everyone’s attention. All of Luna’s Royal Guards had dogpiled the unicorn, who was writhing beneath them in impotent fury. Luna, her armor battered and her one eye shining in fury, was pulling out a syringe of pale green liquid as she approached.
“Hold him still!” she commanded her guards, who were struggling to keep Rare still even as he nearly heaved them all off. One of the Guards grabbed at Rare’s horn, tilting his head back to expose his neck.
“No!” Rare howled, his forked tongue flashing as Luna jammed the syringe into his neck, pushing down on the plunger.
His horn sparked, then there was a boom like thunder and all of the Guards and Luna were flung like ragdolls by a great wave of purple energy, sent screaming through the rain. Snarling, Rare grabbed the syringe from his neck, glaring at the half-full container, then the syringe glowed with a purple aura.
A moment later, both it and the syringes being carried by the other ponies and dragons shattered into pieces, the weakening potion spilling into the mud to be washed away by the rain.
“Great!” Daring snapped.
Panting, Rare Reaction looked around as his magic armor fizzled out, assessing the situation. Luna and her Guards were scrambling back to their hooves; worse, Dwiin and the other Dragon Guards were fast approaching. With a growl, he sprinted up towards the path, his body glowing with purple energy that carried him at the speed of a car.
Time froze for Phillip. His eyes tracked the path of his target, predicting his movement. He knew that he was going to pass him, that he was going to run between him and the great mud pit where stone had once been extracted.
A plan flashed in his mind. He watched as in the span of a single inhalation, Rare came in range; Phillip could see now the subtle tinting of the tattoos that were added over his real cutie marks, the sweat covering his coat, his pointed teeth clenched in rage.
Now!
With a yell, he dove forward and his forelegs met flesh. Rare screamed in shocked rage as the two stallions flew through the air, propelled by their combined momentum.
The ground left them, the wind whistled, and then they splashed into the mud. Filthy water filled Phillip’s lungs and he rolled away in the knee-deep muck, sputtering and coughing, allowing the rain to wash the mud from his face.
Then he bumped into a wall where there shouldn’t have been one and the rain suddenly ceased, like a shower had been turned off. Looking up, he realized that he was trapped inside a purple bubble of energy. Daring was currently flying about it, huffing in exhaustion as she pounded weakly against the shield; Ace was firing spells at it, all of them bouncing off harmlessly. The dragons stood on the ledge of the pit, staring down at him with bated breath.
The mud behind him rippled. Phillip dove aside and rolled through the mud as a bellowing stallion leaped at him, narrowly missing. Drawing his pistol in the middle of his roll, Phillip snapped his sights up to Rare’s torso and pressed down on the trigger.
The bullet whistled over Rare’s form as he ducked and a purple aura seized his weapon, yanking it from his foreleg and flinging it into the mud, where it sank beneath the surface.
“There’s no way out for you,” Phillip snarled at Rare, snapping his baton open with a flick of his wrist.
“I don’t care!” the mad pony shouted back, lifting up a stick that had fallen into the mud. The stick, about as wide across as a pony’s thigh bone, cracked in his grip, then snapped in half. “You are trapped in here, and I’ll gladly die here to crush your skull!” Rare snarled.
Crap, Phillip thought, watching the two halves of the stick splash into the mud. The weakening potion must have had some effect, but Rare was still strong enough to break him in half if he got a good hold of him.
So don’t let him get a hold of you.
Rare Reaction’s screech of hate mixed with a crackle of thunder as he charged. Instantly, Phillip realized that he had an advantage: knee-deep in the mud, Rare was slowed down significantly.
He sidestepped and swung his baton, the weapon cracking down on Rare’s horn. The appendage splintered and purple sparks flew from it as the shield shuddered and flickered. Rare shrieked like a rabid animal and threw himself at Phillip. His shoulder rammed into Phillip’s gut and he was sent flying with a grunt, tumbling through the mud and striking the ground to break his fall. His heart pounded in his chest with a quick, but steady beat.
That’s good. Use the fear. Use the anger. He’s just another punk. You can do this.
Rare was after him again, sloshing through the muck and sending a wild haymaker at Phillip’s head. Slipping the sloppy attack, Phillip countered with a baton strike to floating ribs, a thrill of victory rushing through his body at the crackle of breaking bones.
An elbow rushed at his face like a bullet. Phillip ducked, his trilby falling from his head over his eyes; snatching it up, he tossed the hat at Rare’s face. The unicorn roared, swinging blindly, and Phillip’s struck at his kneecap, cursing as Rare's last-second shift caused the blow to smack against his thigh instead.
The two combatants disengaged, then circled each other like caged tigers. Lightning crackled overhead and rain began to fall in earnest, pounding on the flickering shield. Rare panted and snarled, limping slightly on the wounded leg; Phillip glared coldly, tightening his grip on his baton as he drew his breath in heavy, controlled cycles.
“Come on, Phil!” Daring shouted, still trying to beat through the shield. Luna was hovering over her, concentrating a beam of thin azure magic onto the dome, which was crackling as it fought off her invasion. Ace had given up trying to break the shield and was now watching in silence, eyes wide with horror. Up on the ledge, the dragons and Royal Guards were roaring and cheering, stamping their hooves and lances against the ground in support.
Rare leaped again and again Phillip sidestepped, flinging a hoofful of mud into Rare’s face. The blinded beast crashed into the ground and Phillip bucked him hard in the side with a crash like thunder. Rare stumbled, but stayed on his hooves and lunged.
His hoof seized Phillip’s tail and Phillip gasped in shock as he was yanked towards his foe. A jackhammer pounded on his back, and Phillip wheezed as pain rocketed up his spine, sending a mental thanks to Twilight and Rarity for the armor. He swung his baton at Rare’s head, only for his weapon to be pulled from his grasp and flung aside.
A hoof crashed into his jaw and Phillip felt like he’d been hit by a train, somehow managing to roll with the blow; his head spun, his vision whited out with pain, and he felt himself whirling through the air. He landed facedown in the mud, gasping, spitting out blood and teeth, vision returning in watercolor blurs of gray and brown.
“Look out!” Daring and Luna both shouted.
Lifting his pounding head, Phillip saw five Rare Reactions racing at him. He forced himself to roll away, drawing his boomerang and flinging it out. The weapon flailed clumsily through the air and landed pathetically into the muck.
“Fuck!” he gasped and then Rare Reaction was upon him, seizing him by the throat and lifting him up. Phillip choked and sputtered, flailing helplessly at the iron rod that was crushing his neck. Blackness was creeping in around his vision, which was centered on Rare’s venomous eyes, burning with hate.
“This mud hole is your grave!” the unicorn snarled.
No! I am not dying here!
Phillip’s hoof went to a pocket in his vest, extracting a black spray bottle. He aimed it at Rare’s face and sprayed. A peppery odor filled his nostrils, scratching at his face, and Rare screamed. He shook his head furiously as the homemade pepper spray dripped down his face, releasing Phillip.
Phillip gasped in air as he landed, and immediately, blindly pounced, wrapping his forelimbs around Rare’s hind legs and driving his shoulder forward even as his aching body protested every movement. Rare toppled over, scrabbling at him to try to pull him down with him.
As Phillip wriggled away, his hoof brushed against something: the Angkakert totem, which had slipped out from beneath his vest and bounced against his chest. Rare slithered back through the mud, drawing his knee back and sending it at Phillip’s chest like a cannonball.
Finish it.
A burst of energy rushed through his veins. Whipping the necklace off his neck, Phillip wrapped the cord around the oncoming limb as he dodged to the side. Phillip laid down on his side so that he wound up perpendicular to his foe, his own limbs wrapped python-like around Rare’s hind leg, which he pulled straight out.
“You made a mistake,” he growled through a mouthful of mud as thunder boomed overhead. “You didn’t trap me here with you. You trapped yourself in here with me.”
He pushed. Bones and joints cracked and broke. Rare Reaction screamed and choked, the shield disintegrating into purple specks of light. Rain fell onto his face, reactivating the pepper spray and drawing new gasps of agony. He curled up into a ball, covering his face and choking even as Luna pounced upon him, binding him with bands of magical energy.
Panting, Phillip lay in the mud as the rain washed over his aching body, fresh pain covering up the adrenaline; his head began to pound rhythmically like someone was using his skull as a clock tower bell. Daring landed next to him, worry glowing in her eyes as she checked him over, hissing as she ran her hooves over his bruises. The dragons were roaring in triumphant cheers as Dwiin wrapped Rare Reaction in shackles.
“We won, right?” Phillip muttered to Daring, still gripping Angkakert in his hoof.
“Yeah, I think we did,” Daring grinned at him.
“Okay, good,” Phillip nodded with a smile, and gratefully passed out.
Author's Notes:
Long chapter. I hope that you enjoyed that fight! Just one more chapter and then we can call this case closed.
Like what you read? Leave a like and a comment to show your support!
Case Fourteen, Chapter Seven: No Longer Alone
The first thing Phillip noticed when he started to wake up was a thick, fluffy mattress that he was laying upon, covered by a thin cotton sheet that smelled far too clean: only a hospital bed felt and smelled like that. The second thing he noticed was the dull, thumping pain that spread across his entire head, which made him groan: the bandages that were wrapped around his skull and jaw shifted as he moved, scratching at his flesh and smelling of oil and salves.
And then the third thing he noticed was a scent tickling his nostrils: the familiar, teasing aroma of jasmine shampoo and rain. A smile crossed his face before he even opened his eyes, raising a hoof to run it through the cloud-soft mane.
“G’day,” he whispered in a slightly raspy voice, opening his eyes to behold Daring curled up on top of him, her head resting on his chest.
She beamed up at him, raising her head to kiss him on the nose. “Don’t scare me like that, you dork,” she said. “I’m the impulsive one, remember?”
“You know, we seem to be winding up in here a lot,” Phillip said, snuggling Daring as he looked around the hospital room, which looked practically identical to every other one he’d been in. The morning sun was shining through the window, warm on his face. “Was I out all night?” he asked, reaching up to examine the golden band around his head, tingling with the magic that was repairing his concussion. He coughed, his throat prickling in protest of speech.
“And most of the morning,” Daring replied, getting off of him and stretching.
“Did we lose anypony?” Phillip asked, stomach twisting in worried anticipation.
“No casualties,” Daring smiled broadly. “Except for that damn cockatrice.” Her smile vanished after a moment, replaced by a sad frown. “Unfortunately, Luna couldn’t bring back any of the dragons or Paw Print.”
Phillip took her hoof. “We got the wanker, right?” he asked.
Daring nodded. “Heim spilled everything. Rare Reaction is in the prison infirmary: from what I’m told, he was ranting for hours before they finally decided to tranq him.”
Phillip nodded. “At least there’s that.”
A nurse entered the room. “Oh, Mister Finder,” he said, giving his patient a smile and a quick scan. “How are you feeling?”
“Throat and head hurt, but I’ve been worse,” Phillip replied.
Daring gave him a tall glass of ice water from the side table while the nurse scanned him over, checked his pulse and breathing, and shone a painful light into his eyes. “You seem to be in good shape,” the nurse nodded, giving him a painkiller. “You’re lucky you rolled with that punch, and that Princess Luna was there to give you a quick healing spell, but that fella still rang your bell pretty hard, didn’t he?”
Phillip nodded, running a tongue over his gums and noting that his teeth were all back in place.
“We’re going to have to keep you in bed for the rest of the day for observation, but barring anything serious, you should be okay to go home tonight,” the nurse said. “Just don’t do anything strenuous for a week or so.”
“Got it,” Phillip rasped, taking another glass of water.
The nurse exited, leaving Phillip and Daring alone once more. Daring rubbed Phillip’s hoof; her touch was warm and soft and he smiled as he squeezed her hoof back.
“Has anyone called mom and dad?” he asked.
“Yeah, I called ‘em last night,” Daring nodded. “They were just happy to hear from me. They send their love.” She rubbed his hoof. “How you feeling?” she asked.
“Been worse,” Phillip replied.
“I don’t mean physically,” Daring answered. “I mean with…” Her voice trailed away, clearly unable to articulate what she was thinking.
Phillip thought for a beat. For a moment, he was back in the mud pit, cold mud dripping from his face, heart pounding fast and the taste of blood in his mouth. Rare Reaction was lumbering towards him, face twisted in rage, one hoof drawn back to strike.
He took a breath and studied himself, like he was pulling his emotions and thoughts out of his body and pinning them on a slide to study. He noted that he’d been breathing fast, that his hooves had been shaking slightly when he gripped his baton, that there had been ice prickling in his stomach when his foe charged.
But he’d stood and won. He hadn’t run, he hadn’t cowered, he hadn’t frozen. The echoes of fear retreated from his stomach, and a thrill of victory flowed through his body at an unhurried pace, down to the tip of his tail and up to the crown of his head, temporarily banishing the pain.
“Good,” he nodded with a contented smile. “Real aces. Honestly, better than I’ve been in a long time.”
“Me too,” Daring said. “I was kinda worried that we’d freeze up or something, but...didn’t happen. Didn’t even think of that the entire time.” She grinned. “I think that we needed this, to be honest. To get back to work instead of sitting at home, just thinking about—”
She stopped abruptly, turning her head away to hide the small flinch. Phillip felt the pang in his chest as the memories of black eyes and red skies and death screams flashed unbidden into his mind. He trembled, gripping Daring’s hoof tighter like a lifeline as she replied in kind; his heart started to speed up as if trying to race away, his breath came faster.
Stop.
He held his breath for a moment, then let it out slowly, controlling it, controlling the fear. Exhale for five counts, hold. Inhale for five counts. Hold. Repeat. He heard Daring’s breathing echoing his own as she battled her own terror.
The sounds, smells, touches, and sights rose up like a tidal wave to envelop him. He kept his breathing controlled as the memories washed over him. He didn’t fight it: he allowed them to come, to pass over him, and then he let them go.
The wave slowly faded away, and he sighed as its pressure left him. The last image that left him was Trace’s face, sad and reproving, his dead gaze stabbing Phillip in the chest. Wiping two tears from his face, he blinked up at Daring. She swallowed, blinking rapidly, and leaned down to rest against his chest.
“It’s okay to not be okay,” he whispered, stroking her mane.
She took a ragged breath, one final shiver running through her body before she sat up. “Hey,” she whispered, leaning in close. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Phillip answered, raising her chin and kissing her on the lips.
A rap at the door sent Daring quickly retreating from him. “Am I interrupting?” Hidden Ace asked from the door.
“No,” Daring replied as the unicorn entered.
“Glad to see you’re awake,” Ace grinned. “So, two PIs from Ponyville come up here and, in one day, manage to solve two cases that the entire Canterlot PD were stumped over for months. I hope you heal up fast: if you hang around here much longer, you’re liable to make us all look bad.”
“If you and Stacked Deck are the best you have to offer, that won’t be too hard,” Daring smirked. “How’s he, by the way?”
“On vacation, but he said hi,” Ace replied, extending his hoof. Daring bumped her hoof against his. “Thanks for the help, you two. And thanks for getting me out of that statue.”
“Just doing our job,” Daring answered.
There came another rap at the door. “Hey, you guys decent?” Smolder asked, entering and shooting a brief glare at Ace. Krein followed, having to bend almost all the way over to enter the door.
Ace frowned at the Ambassador, who frowned back at him, letting out a brief huff of smoke through his nostrils. After a moment, Ace sighed.
“I owe you an apology,” Ace said, stepping forward and extending his hoof.
Krein blinked at him, then nodded and took his claw gently, shaking the proffered limb like a twig. “And I owe you our gratitude for finding Smolder and getting her home safely,” Krein nodded.
“Thanks,” Smolder nodded. “I’m sorry about your friend.”
Ace nodded and swallowed dryly, shaking her claw as well. “And I’m sorry about yours,” he said. He gave an embarrassed cough. “Um...I gotta head back to the precinct and finish up some paperwork. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
With a final nod, he exited.
“How are you doing?” Krein asked Phillip.
“Fine,” Phillip replied, massaging his throat. He looked over at Smolder. The dragoness was hovering behind Krein, her arms folded and her gaze cast down. Her puffy eyes were rimmed with red. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
“Fine,” Smolder grunted, turning away.
Daring Do stood up. “Smolder, no offense, but we both know you’re not,” she said. “You lost one of your friends and nearly died. No one would be fine after that.”
Smolder turned her head even further away. “Maybe dragons are just tougher than ponies.”
Daring sighed. “I know you think you can tough it out. That you can just bury it and pretend it’s fine and it’ll go away.”
Smolder didn’t answer, but she shifted in place.
“It’s not going to get better if you hide it,” Daring said. “Look, just...get some help. Maybe you can come down to Ponyville and talk to Twi and Spike. You don’t need to keep hurting yourself because you’re trying to be tough.”
Smolder didn’t answer, but her lips quivered and she sniffled. “Yeah,” she said after a minute, turning back towards Daring and wiping her watering eyes with a forearm. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
Daring briefly patted her on the shoulder as Krein draped a wing over her. Smolder didn’t quite smile, but her lips did twitch upwards.
“I also wanted to give you something,” Krein said. “First of all, your payment.” He pulled a large bag that jingled with coins out from his pack.
Daring blinked. “Ambassador, that...that’s way too much,” she protested halfheartedly.
“I’d argue that it’s not enough for what you did, especially since you didn’t have to come in the first place,” Krein replied. “There is also this.”
From the pack came two iron necklaces inlaid with Dragontongue symbols around the edges. “These necklaces, marked with our alphabet, mark you as Zinfahdon, as friends of the dragons,” he explained, ceremoniously placing one over Daring’s head. The surprisingly light accessory was still warm from the furnace; she ran a hoof over the runes, already trying to commit them to memory.
“When you wear these, you will mark yourself as friends of all dragons, and guarantee safe passage and assistance from dragons,” Krein continued as Phillip obligingly bent his head forward to allow Krein to adorn him with his necklace. “As Speaker of the Dragons and the Voice of Lord Torch, this is my gift from all of us to you as our thanks.”
“Thank you, Speaker,” Daring replied with a grateful bow. “It was our pleasure to help.”
Krein and Smolder both gave the detectives a final bow and bade them farewell. Phillip laid back down in the bed and closed his eyes to rest. Giving him a final farewell kiss on the cheek, Daring exited quietly.
The evening came on slow over Equestria, the sun seeming to reluctantly dip beneath the horizon to give way to the moon.
“I will ask the prosecutor to go easy on Heim,” Luna told Daring as they stood beneath the glass dome of Canterlot train station. “His son will be coming up to testify on his behalf.”
“And Reaction?” Daring asked, watching as the loudly chugging train south trundled up the rails towards the platform.
Luna paused as the train let out a piercing whistle to announce its arrival. “He was already wanted on a laundry list of war crimes. As I speak, he is being prepared for transport to Clovenworth Island,” she replied.
“Good,” Phillip answered in a much less raspy voice.
"I wish to apologize for not getting you out sooner," Luna said, lowering her head a bit. "Reaction's shield was heavily layered; if I tried to simply smash through it, the energy required would have been too powerful and imprecise; the risk of hurting you was too great."
"It's fine, Princess," Phillip shrugged it off as the train pulled onto the platform, brakes squealing.
Luna turned to the detectives and bowed her head low. “This city owes you a debt,” she stated. “Be well, detectives.”
“Thanks, Your Highness,” Daring replied as Phillip shook hooves with Iridescence and the other Guards on duty.
The doors of the carriages hissed open and passengers began to disembark. Luna looked over at Smolder, who was leaning against a steel column a few feet away.
“I will be seeing all of you tonight,” Luna stated to Daring.
Daring stared at Luna for a moment, then nodded, swallowing quietly. “Right. See you tonight,” she said as she, Phillip, and Smolder entered the carriage.
Smolder slid into a seat and curled up against the window, staring out at the purple sky. Phillip and Daring sat down opposite her, leaning against each other. The train trundled away from the platform, heading south with a heavy chuffing.
Their passage south passed in silence, but Smolder gradually pulled away from the window as they came closer to Ponyville, huddling closer to the ponies and leaning forward over the table with her head down.
Daring patted Smolder’s scaly arm. Smolder looked up, blinking her wide purple eyes, and managed a feeble smile.
Night had long fallen by the time they arrived in Ponyville. When the trio disembarked onto the platform to find a familiar group waiting for them.
Smolder slowly walked over to Twilight, Spike, and Flash, her head lowered and one claw rubbing at her forearm. Spike immediately walked up to her and hugged her around the waist. She froze for a moment, then hugged him back, tears falling from her eyes as Twilight joined the embrace. Flash gave Phillip a pat on the shoulder and a smile before putting his forearms around the small group.
Phillip and Daring moved on to where Bobby and Rain were waiting. Bobby strode forward and immediately seized them both in a crushing hug that pushed the air from their lungs.
“We knew you’d come back safely,” he grinned, kissing them both on the forehead. “We saw the paper!”
An evening edition of Foal Free Press was prominently displayed in a nearby stand. The bold headline read, “Local Detectives Crack Dragon Disappearances!” and featured a photograph of Princess Luna standing outside Canterlot hospital, giving an impromptu press conference before a crowd of reporters. An archival picture of Phillip and Daring was placed next to that image.
“How’d it go?” Rain asked, wheeling herself over to them.
“Went aces, mom,” Phillip said, kissing his mother on the forehead. “But we’re just glad to be home.”
“Your voice sounds a bit rough, ampa,” Rain said as they started to head towards a waiting taxi, the wheelchair ramp already waiting for her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Just a bit of a tingle,” Phillip reassured her as they all climbed inside, waving goodbye to Twilight, Flash, Spike, and Smolder, who were set to head home on Flash’s motorcycle.
Once they were all in the back, the taxi started towards Honeybee Bakery Drive, passing beneath glaring streetlights and twinkling stars. Daring and Phillip both stared out the window at the night sky above them for many streets.
When the taxi paused at a red light, Phillip looked over at Daring. She frowned a bit, then let out a slow breath and nodded.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you before I left,” Phillip said, not able to meet his parents’ eyes. “I was…” he sighed and mopped his face, noting the moisture in his eyes. “It’s been hard,” he admitted. “And I’m tired of feeling weak. Of being scared all the damn time.”
“It’s okay,” Bobby replied, gripping his son’s shoulder. “This has been hard on all of us: we’re all struggling to make peace with what happened.” He looked down at his wife’s paralyzed legs trapped in the wheelchair and made a small grimace of a smile. “I’m just glad that we’re all alive. If there’s one thing I learned in the ring, anypony can learn to swing hard. What matters is learning to roll with the blows, to get back up when you’re knocked down.”
“You should be a life coach or something,” Daring said with a dry chuckle. Her smile quickly faded and she found herself rubbing her right hoof, where the brand prickled and stung.
Rain reached out and took her hoof in both of hers; her warm touch banished the pain in an instant. “If you’re ready to talk, we’re here,” she whispered with a smile.
Daring smiled back and leaned forward, rubbing her forehead against Rain’s mane. “Thanks, Rain,” she said as Bobby and Phillip leaned against them as well.
When they got home, Bobby and Phillip prepared eggplant parmesan on the grill while Daring created pavlova under Rain’s careful guidance. They ate beneath the stars, laughing quietly at past memories, blushing over embarrassing anecdotes, performing impromptu concerts on sax, trumpet, clarinet, and didgeridoo.
As the night wound down, Bobby and Rain started to play a familiar tune on trumpet and clarinet, the soft melody carrying up to the stars. Phillip stood and gently pulled Daring to him and they started to revolve on the porch, just holding each other and resting their heads on each other's shoulders, Phillip whispering the lyrics into her ear:
“You know I can’t smile without you, I can’t smile without you…”
When the song finished, Phillip lifted Daring onto his back and carried her inside; she murmured sleepily, nuzzling his ear. Giving his parents a tired smile that they returned, Phillip carried her upstairs into their bedroom. Drawing the sheets back, he gently deposited her onto the mattress and drew the sheets up over them both. He pulled her already sleeping form into his arms, sniffing at her mane. The scent of jasmine and rain carried him into sleep.
The sky was cold red over his head, the clay cold and unyielding beneath his hooves. All around him were doors of every shape and size, jutting out of the ground like some bizarre plants.
An icy laugh stabbed into his ears and Phillip spun around, panting; he shivered in the cold and was suddenly aware that he was nude, unprotected. The voice bubbled out of an inequine throat, like something that had no vocal cords trying to mimic laughter.
Acidic pain bit into his foreleg and he drew away, yelping in terror. The tentacles that dangled from its mouth waving in ecstasy, the Ngluwi emerged from behind a blue door with golden letters nailed to it: 221.
“There you are,” Zugzwang smiled, something horrid shining in the tarry voids that served as its many eyes, connected by bulbous, pulsing veins.
Phillip turned and sprinted away, darting in between doors, skidding and slipping in the clay. But no matter where he ran, the thing was always behind him, biting at him with its stinging tongues, laughing when he screamed or cried out.
Phillip stumbled and slammed into a large set of double doors that were set in a brick archway. He tried to grab the handle, but it rattled mockingly in his hooves, refusing to open.
He turned around and looked up. The hideous thing loomed over him, desire etched in every inch of its predatory posture.
“You cannot run from me, Liebling,” Zugzwang crooned in that revolting voice that sent shudders up his spine. “I will always be here. I will always be with you.”
Phillip stared up into the cold voids, gasping for air...then paused. He closed his eyes and took in a slow breath, forcing himself to still even as the hot, disgusting breath washed over his face.
“Help,” he breathed out.
There was a clap of thunder, a flash of blinding light. The thing reeled away with a startled shriek.
“BEGONE, BEAST!” a voice roared with the fury of a hundred storms, and Phillip opened his eyes to see Luna descending from the sky like some vengeful goddess, eyes glowing bright white. Her horn shone like a silver sword. The Ngluwi retreated, but a beam of moonlight cleaved it into pieces; with a horrid scream, it dissolved into black ooze that quickly evaporated.
Luna landed before Phillip and extended a hoof with a maternal smile, both of her eyes twinkling. “You’re safe now,” she promised, helping Phillip to his hooves as the door forest dissolved around him, giving way instead to a peaceful forest; the doors were replaced by tall trees, grass sprang up from the cold clay, and the red sky became twilight purple, bespeckled with stars.
“You are all safe now,” Luna declared, looking around.
Phillip watched as more figures emerged from behind the trees: first Daring, who immediately walked to his side, her face lowered meekly. Then Twilight, Flash, and Spike, who joined them with soft smiles. Rain and Bobby followed, Rain smiling as she walked on her own hooves. Rainbow Dash flapped in, her left wing made of flesh and bone here in her dreams, and landed between Daring and Twilight.
Then a final figure emerged slowly from the trees, pausing at the edge of the group. The red pegasus hovered near the treeline, blinking at them in uncertainty.
“Come on, Red,” Flash called, beckoning the detective on.
Red Herring stared for a beat more, then slowly, like a foal walking out onto the diving board for the first time, walked over to join them. He sat down near Flash, offering him a tight smile and a small nod.
“I’m glad to see you all here, my friends,” Luna said, smiling around at them all. “I know that this is hard for you all, to open up and speak of things you’d rather forget, but looking around here, I want you all to understand and take heart: you are not alone. You are never alone.”
She sat down in the grass in the center of the small circle, removing the crown and gorget that marked her as their superior.
“I, uh,” Red admitted, shuffling his hooves. “I’m not real good at these therapy things. I’m not really sure what to do here.”
“That’s all right,” Luna reassured him. “For now, you just need to say what’s on your mind.”
Red blinked at his hooves for a moment, then sighed. “I...I miss my friend,” he said quietly.
Flash slowly raised a hoof, then placed it over Red’s withers. Red glanced at him, but did not resist.
“That’s what we’re all here for,” Flash smiled at him.
Author's Notes:
And so ends this case, bringing our two detectives back into the fray of crime-solving!
I hope you enjoyed this case and are looking forward to more! It's exciting for me to keep writing like this for you all. I look forward to reading your comments and seeing your upvotes if you liked it!
Case Fifteen, Prologue: The End of Quick Step
Quick Step woke up late that morning and frowned to find that the mattress was unoccupied save for her.
He must’ve left before she woke up. Darn it all, he’d promised that they’d talk about this in the morning. What was with him these days? Always coming back late, putting down the blinds as soon as he got home…he’d never been like this before.
She could blame it on his job, but he’d been working there for years now. Okay, so Eagle Trust always had a shady reputation, but the pay was good and they’d both learned long ago that ponies who keep their heads down and stay quiet are the ones that are left alone.
“What did you do?” Quick wondered to herself, shaking her long blonde mane out of her face as she climbed out of bed. She trotted into the bathroom and quickly showered. She emerged a few minutes later, toweling herself off and lifting a curry brush in her magic to smooth out her cyan coat.
As she trotted into the combination kitchen-dining room, she smiled as she saw the box sitting on the table. Inside the open box, which had arrived yesterday afternoon, was a set of clothing: a baby pink saddle embossed with the image of an airship set before a golden-orange sun, a studded pale yellow collar with a tag labeled with her cutie mark--a lightning bolt and two hoofprints--and four thigh-high golden stockings. The entire ensemble was artistically accented by blue and pale yellow gems, and a trio of blue diamonds was sewn into the back of the collar and the strap of the saddle.
“Rarity, you never cease to amaze,” Quick sighed, running a hoof over the leather material. She’d already tried it on and had not been surprised to find that the entire ensemble fit perfectly, accenting all of her curves (as her coltfriend’s red-faced stare had proven). She purred to herself, remembering how much fun they’d had last night after she put on a private show just for him.
Next to the box was the note that had come with it.
Congrats on the promotion to lead dancer! This was a little gift Rarity and I made for you. Can’t wait to see you in it! XX, Petina.
Quick let out a little delighted noise and trotted in place. Headliner at the Heavenly Bawdy! After years of hard work and practice, of ups and downs! Faust, it felt good!
When she came down from her high, she noticed that something was missing from the sitting room: the brown nylon suitcase with the pen and the gold bar embossed onto the side. Did that mean that he’d gone into work early? Yet another odd change.
As Quick Step ate her breakfast of rice cakes and two bananas, she pondered what he might be doing now.
Maybe he’s meeting with that reporter? she wondered with a frown. Was that...mare even a reporter? She certainly talked a mile a minute. And what kinda creature was she? She’d never seen a unicorn with scales like that.
She shook her head and chugged down her orange juice. Enough. She had to focus on her job now. Headliners couldn’t afford to be distracted. Besides, he’d be back home tonight. And then she’d get some answers.
Closing the box with her new costume in it and balancing it on her back, Quick Step headed for the door, gathering up her purse and...damn it, where'd her backstage key go?
Oh, well. Honey was working the same shift as her this week, she could let her in. Quick opened up the front door of the apartment and paused.
Sitting on the hallway floor outside her door was a small box, covered in pink wrapping paper and adorned with a bow. Quick looked back and forth, but nopony else was to be seen.
“Okay, then,” she said to herself, lifting up the box with her magic and studying it. Curiosity compelled her to open up the box and see what was inside; probably something from some secret admirer, maybe a fan from the Bawdy--
“Ow!”
Quick dropped the box in shock, staring at the spring-loaded needle that had stung her as soon as she’d opened it. The metal appendage glistened strangely in the hallway lights. Quick glanced at the small wound on her hoof, a little trickle of blood running from it.
“Great,” she growled to herself, turning to head back inside for a bandage and some antiseptic. Now what kind of asshole--?
The world tilted on its side and Quick Step tumbled to the carpeted floor, her vision swimming before her eyes in a blur of colors. She coughed heavily, tasting bile.
What was happening? She’d never been sick like this before. She tried to stand up again, but her legs felt like they were made of wet noodles, trembling and refusing to take her weight.
Poison. The realization flashed through her mind with a thrill of horror.
“He...he...help…” she tried to scream, but all she was able to make was a wheezing: it felt like her chest was filling up with cotton, pushing the air from her lungs. She tried to crawl towards the phone, trying to focus on the small table next to the doorway even as blackness started to creep up on the swirling colors.
She tried to climb up, but her legs didn’t work; her horn only briefly flickered in response to her will. She resorted to shaking the table, causing the phone to fall off onto the ground next to her; she felt the clatter through the floorboards, but couldn’t hear it over a rapid thumping in her ears. Her heartbeat, she realized with a sickening chill.
She grabbed the hoofpiece and reached out for the dial. Darkness was creeping over her vision: she had to struggle to focus on the white circle.
Nine…she tried to cough to clear the cotton filling her throat, but she couldn’t summon the effort.
One...the pounding in her head hurt like nothing she’d ever experienced.
One--
The hoofpiece slipped from her grasp. Her chest was being crushed in a car compactor; she tried to suck in air, but her lungs weren’t working. She managed to let out a feeble sob and felt tears burning in her eyes.
Far away, she heard the line click and a voice respond, the sound too indistinct for her to understand.
The blackness overtook her completely. The last thing that crossed Quick Step’s mind was that she didn’t want to die.
Author's Notes:
And so starts another case. I'm proud of this one: I wrote this volume intending to bring the Noire series back to its roots, and that's what I think this one does quite well. I've got a couple of new guests coming in on this one, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to meet one of them!
Like what you read? Leave a like and a comment to show your support!
Case Fifteen, Chapter One: With Much Ado
The crisp, sun-kissed air smelled of fruit and honey. Beneath the baby blue sky, warmed by the sun that was approaching its apex, a Macintosh apple tree and a Bartlett pear tree dripping with fruit stood in the middle of a grove of apple and pear trees, both trees wrapped around one another like a close embrace.
In the shade of the intertwined trees, two mares in short white dresses danced upon a makeshift dance floor, smiling at each other as they stomped and kicked in time to Country Roads, the melody carried on saxophone, trumpet, and clarinet. As she whirled around her wife, Rara gave a brief wink towards the raised stage where the band stood. Phillip nodded back as he went into the next measure, tapping his hoof in time to the beat. Next to him, Bobby swung his trumpet into an ad-libbed bridge, with Rain following close behind on clarinet.
More ponies sat around the grove on tables covered in white tablecloths, the dishes taken from the long buffet table briefly forgotten as they watched the dancing couple. Phillip spotted Daring sitting at a table on the outskirts of the celebration and Joyful Sound sitting near the dance floor, smiling and thumping her cane against the grass in time to the beat that she could feel through her hooves. Steamed Carrot was singing along to the music as she manned a large grill, while Pinkie Pie stood near the buffet table, cradling a smiling and gurgling Endeavor. Apple Bloom was sitting with her two friends, all three fillies adorned in flower filly dresses, and nearby sat Spike, Rarity, and Fluttershy. Granny Smith was beaming at her granddaughters, wiping tears from her eyes as she sat next to a golden earth pony stallion with graying brown hair, and Big Mac sat next to a small granite mare with a long gray mane, both of them sneaking glances at each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking.
As the song reached the final chorus, Applejack gripped Rara’s arm and swung her into a dip, prompting Rara to burst out laughing. The newlyweds kissed as the song ended and the crowd burst into applause. Smiling, Applejack and Rara both bowed and joined the attendees.
Rara trotted over to the stage and approached Phillip with a wide smile and wide forelegs. “Phil, I can’t thank you enough for being here,” she said, hugging him.
“No worries,” Phillip said, returning Rara’s hug with a small smile. “But you’ve already thanked me a bunch of times. Starting to get kinda embarrassed.”
“I know, but it really does mean a lot,” Rara beamed at him. “We’ve known each other for years now. You’re family, too.”
Phillip turned away, but could not conceal his smile, nor the heat rushing up to his face. He turned his attention to Steamed Carrot, who was balancing two heaping, steaming plates on her wings as she carried them over to where Daring was sitting. She placed the plates next to the surprised Daring. The two mares spoke briefly, then Steamed gave Daring a tight hug, which she returned after a moment of surprise.
“I see Steamed’s doing well,” he said.
“Pinkie says her nightmares have gone away,” Rara smiled at her head chef and part-time singer. “And she’s getting more and more confident on stage, too.”
“That’s great,” Phillip nodded, eyeing the heaping plate that Steamed Carrot had set aside for him. “And how’s Endeavor?”
“He called Applejack mama last week,” Rara said with a warm smile, looking over at her son, who was currently being held by Applejack. The little golden colt was gurgling happily as Aunt Pinkie made faces at him.
“I’m glad the anklebiter’s got a good family,” Phillip smiled briefly at Rara.
“Thank you,” Rara said, giving him a peck on the cheek, which promptly began to heat up again. “Now, go on. I see you watching that plate,” she chuckled. “I’m sure your parents can keep the guests entertained for a bit.”
“Yeah,” Bobby said with a smirk. “It’ll be good practice for when you and Daring get married!”
He, Rain, and Rara laughed as Phillip hopped off the stage, his face now furiously scarlet. He trotted over to Daring’s table, where she was digging into a large gyro filled with grilled apples, lettuce, and tomatoes, all dripping with juices.
“I’m just glad that AJ didn’t require formal dress,” she commented, tilting her pith helmet back. “Promise me that if we get married, I don’t have to wear a dress.”
“Promise,” Phillip said, reaching for a fork and a slab of hay steak. A moment later, he and Daring both realized what she had just said and they stared at one another, faces reddening and eyes wide.
“If! I said if! It was hypothetical!” Daring sputtered.
“Right, right,” Phillip nodded, trying to ignore the way his heart was dancing in his chest at the mental image of himself and Daring before an altar. He heard a giggle behind him and gave his mother a brief glare over his shoulder. She smiled and waved at him, eyes twinkling with humor.
Phillip carved out a piece of the hay steak and started to chew it, barely suppressing a groan of delight as the wondrous flavor spilled over his tongue. He glanced over at Daring and noticed that she was staring at Endeavor, who was fussing as Applejack tried to feed him some mashed potatoes.
“He’s going to have a good home here,” he said quietly, reaching out and taking Daring’s hoof.
Daring swallowed, then nodded. “I know,” she said, turning back to her meal and poking at some salad with her free hoof.
“How’s Sparks?” Phillip asked.
“Doing okay,” Daring replied, reluctantly releasing his hoof. She gave a weak smile. “She said that after everything she’s done, the next three to ten years will be like a vacation.”
“At least she’s keeping her head up,” Phillip said. Daring just grunted and kept eating, her right hoof twitching a bit. Phillip turned back to his meal and carved himself another piece of steak.
“Uh-oh,” Daring muttered, looking up. “We got incoming.”
Phillip turned around and blinked in surprise. The broadly smiling creature that was trotting directly towards them definitely wasn’t here for the wedding. She had a lion-esque mane and tail the color of autumnal leaves, and her coat was the color of cream save for her back, which had a patch of apple green dragon-like scales. The dark red horn sticking out from her mane jutted out into two branches like a tree limb.
“A kirin?” Daring murmured to herself. “Don’t see them outside their home country much. Wonder where she came from.”
“Detectives Finder and Do!” the kirin cried, bouncing over to them with a wide smile. “I’ve been looking all over this city for you! I started at your place, 221 Honeybee Bakery--sounds like I’ve heard that somewhere else before--but you weren’t there, so I tried at the police station, the Apple Pie, and I was wandering around the city asking some of your friends because I thought they might know where you are, so I stumbled up here to ask Applejack, because I know she and Rara are friends of yours, but then I found this amazing party--oh, it’s a wedding, how sweet! Oh, right, I was looking for you and mmmph mmblm mgmm…”
The kirin’s speech was cut off by Phillip stuffing an apple into her mouth. “One, who are you? Two, why are you looking for us?” he asked.
The kirin chewed her apple and swallowed before answering. “I’m Autumn Blaze, I’m an independent journalist. I came down to Ponyville to write some articles for the Foal Free Press; I was doing a piece on Eagle Trust banking, and I think I found something that I need your help on.”
Daring and Phil glanced at each other, then scanned the crowd around them. A few ponies were giving them curious glances, and a couple ponies were scowling suspiciously at Autumn.
“Let’s go somewhere a bit more private,” Daring said, gesturing with her head.
The trio walked over to a more secluded area of the grove, between a couple of pear trees that were still dripping with golden fruit. Autumn studied the late-blooming fruits with a lick of her lips before refocusing.
“So, what do you know about Eagle Trust?” she asked.
“I know that it was one of Monopoly’s companies,” Phillip scowled. “He started it up with his investment companies. We investigated it several times in connection with racketeering and money laundering, but could never prove anything. Bit surprised it’s still running after Monopoly went away.”
“Their current president, Bottom Line, is a devious character,” Autumn Blaze reported. “He’s been working with Monopoly since ‘38 and was appointed president by the board when Eagle Trust was founded on the Eighth of the Moon of Frost, 1941. Since the founding--”
“The point. Get to it,” Daring interrupted.
“Sorry; I’m a bit of a talker,” Autumn said sheepishly. “Anyway, the reason why I was investigating Eagle Trust: I’m trying to shut them down.”
“How?” Phillip asked.
“You know how they get most of their money?” Autumn said with a scowl. “Repossessing property and cheating creatures out of their money. They make scummy deals and investments, and when their clients can’t live up to them, they steal their homes, their money. Bottom Line and his company destroy families and lives because they’re thieving, greedy, cheating--”
Autumn’s teeth gnashed, her brow furrowed as she glared. Her eyes began to glow pure white, her pupils vanishing into the milky glow, and then, bizarrely, purple and red flames flickered at the edge of her eyes.
“Uh...Autumn?” Phillip asked, resisting the urge to step back.
Autumn’s eyes widened, then she turned away from them and started taking several slow, deep breaths. Slowly, the flames faded away and her eyes returned to normal.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said, looking down at her shuffling hooves. “It’s a...it’s a thing with my species. When we get angry, we uh…” She chuckled. “We start to literally heat up with magic fire. You can imagine how hard it can be in our homelands sometimes, what with the Firewatch patrolling around all the time, making sure that no one's about to try to burn down their neighbor's fruit stand. And raising kirin babies, woof! Good thing kirin milk is naturally calming, and we’ve gotten really good at building fireproof houses over the years!”
She kept the fixed smile on her face and forced a laugh through it, her eyes darting nervously from Phil to Daring, a silent plea reflected in her golden irides.
Daring raised a hoof placidly. “It’s fine. We’ve dealt with dragons, we can deal with kirin.”
Autumn brightened up immediately, her smile becoming genuine. “Dragons? You worked with dragons? What are they like?” she asked, then shook her head. “Sorry, sorry. Gotta focus. Did you hear that there was a murder this morning?”
“Not yet,” Phillip said.
“A mare named Quick Step; she’s a dancer at the Heavenly Bawdy,” Autumn stated. “She was found dead at her apartment this morning from poisoning. Her coltfriend was Gold Signature, he worked for Eagle Trust for a long time. When I came to Ponyville two weeks ago, I started asking some questions about Eagle Trust, how they operated, their history. A few days ago, Gold Signature approached me, said that he had enough info to stop Eagle Trust, all of them: evidence of how they broke the law and bribed officials and lawyers to get what they needed. I was supposed to meet with him around noon today, but he didn’t show. And then I learn that his marefriend was murdered? Coincidence? I think not!”
Phillip and Daring looked at each other with frowns. “Do you have any way to contact Gold again?” Phillip asked.
“I already tried everything: tried his home, tried the office--they booted me out--tried his stepbrother’s place--he hung up on me,” Autumn shook her head. “He’s gone off the grid.”
“What does he look like?” Phillip asked.
“Tall paper-white unicorn with light brown hair like freshly turned soil,” Autumn reported. “His cutie mark is a pen and a gold bar. And he’s got a suitcase with his cutie mark embroidered on it. Carries it around everywhere: told me it was a gift from Quick Step. He’s probably got whatever he wanted to show me in it.”
“We’re going to need everything you’ve got on Eagle Trust. Everything,” Phillip said.
“You got it!” Autumn saluted. “It’s all over at my place at the Red Barn on Sweetgrass. We can go now!”
“I’ll go with,” Daring said. “Someone needs to watch your back.”
“Where does Quick Step live?” Phillip asked.
“Twenty-eight Morgana Avenue, number 15,” Autumn said. “I think the police are just wrapping it up over there.”
“I’ll go take a butcher’s,” Phillip said. “Meet you at the Red Barn.”
“Got it.” Daring smiled and gave Phil a quick boop on the nose, causing his face to scrunch up briefly. “Be safe, Phil.”
With a wave of her wing, Daring scooped up Autumn beneath her forelegs and flew off. Autumn gave an excited whoop as she disappeared over the treetops.
“Who was that, ampa?” Rain asked, pushing herself towards him on her wheelchair with Bobby following close behind.
“A client,” Phillip replied. “Sorry, mom, dad. I gotta go.”
“No worries, son,” Bobby said, giving him a brief hug that Phillip returned. “We’ll take care of the music here. You go catch the bad guys.”
“Too right. We’ll be home soon.” With a nod, Phillip sprinted out of the grove, racing over rolling green hills and through the gate to the dirt road that led up to Sweet Apple Acres. Breathing deep the warm, crisp air of the farmlands, he raced after the dinging of a streetcar trundling down Grapevine.
Twenty-eight Morgana Avenue turned out to be a modest brick and concrete edifice that sat near the corner of the block, four stories of darkened windows glaring down at Phillip as he trotted up.
A single cruiser was parked in the lot before the oaken doors, along with a familiar rust-colored Diplomat 600, a low white van with “Medical Examiner” painted on the side, and a blue pickup truck with “Police CSU” displayed on the sides.
As Phillip approached the door, he noted the panel of buzzers and a speaker next to the entrance. He reached for the buzzer for number 15, but the door opened from within as he did. A stretcher bearing a zipped-up black body bag exited through the door, followed by Doctor Mortis, who was pushing it along with her magic.
“Hi, Phil!” Mortis chirped as she passed him. “You’re a bit late, but Red and his new partner are still up there, wrapping things up.” She shook her head. “It’s a terrible shame. She was a young, lovely girl with so much ahead of her.”
“May I?” Phillip asked.
Mortis nodded and stepped back a bit. Phillip carefully unzipped the bag to behold the pale face of Quick Step. Her formerly cyan face was pale with death, and he noted the beginning of lividity on the left side of her face. Her blonde mane was in disarray, shiny with sweat. Her eyes were shut and a few dried trails of blood ran from her mouth.
Looking further down her body, Phillip spotted a small wound on her right hoof, blood staining the appendage. “No other wounds,” he noted.
“There was some kinda gag gift on the floor outside her place: a box with a needle on a spring in it,” Mortis reported. “Looks like she opened the box up and the spring hit her on the hoof. Whatever it was, it killed her fast. I’ll know more once I complete the autopsy.”
“Thanks, doc,” Phillip nodded, moving past her into the carpeted hallway. He proceeded upstairs to the second floor, nodded to the rookie officer pacing his patrol route along the trampled red carpet, and trotted down to the open doorway marked with crime scene tape.
As he approached, a familiar figure stooped beneath the tape, but what surprised Phillip was that he was not clad in a police uniform, but in a pale blue suit and tie.
“Flash?” Phillip felt himself smile. “Look at you, lad. A detective.”
“Yeah,” Flash said with a broad grin. “Captain Oak promoted me himself.”
“And you deserved it,” Twilight said, climbing out from under the tape and giving Flash a kiss on the cheek, causing a wide smile to spread across his now-glowing face. Phillip noted that Twilight was clad in a light blue vest with lime highlights and a replica of her cutie mark on the back, along with a trio of small blue diamonds on the collar. Multiple pockets lined the vest, which was slightly bulkier than a mere cloth vestment would be. He glanced down at his own vest, noting the trio of small blue diamonds sewn into the collar, and smiled briefly.
“Don’t get your ego up, son,” Red Herring said, emerging from under the tape as well, still adorned in his familiar trench coat.
“Sorry, sarge,” Flash coughed.
“And don’t call me sarge,” Red grumbled, turning to Phil. “Should’ve known you’d be here sooner or later. What’s the stake in this one?”
Phillip explained what Autumn Blaze had told him and Daring.
“A kirin?” Twilight asked, her eyes brightening. “Amazing! It’s rare to see them outside of their homelands, and most of them have very strict beliefs about self-control. I--” She cleared her throat when she noticed Flash and Red both giving her quirked eyebrows. “Sorry.”
“We did find evidence of another stallion living there, and a few of the neighbors did mention that the vic had a coltfriend,” Red commented. “None of them seem to know much about him, though.”
“Walk me through what happened here,” Phillip said, walking up to the threshold. He noted the telephone laying on the floor beneath the hallway table, the hoofset next to the chalk outline that marked where Quick Step had lain. A purple set of glowing hoofprints, small and bare, appeared around the scene, leading down the hallway to the door, pausing, then stumbling back inside to where Quick had fallen.
“Emergency dispatch received a call from her at 0946 this morning,” Twilight reported, her horn lighting up. An illusory image of Quick Step laying within the chalk outline appeared on the floor. “Officer Grove arrived to find the victim already deceased and called in the crime scene. We arrived here at 1024, about an hour ago.”
A ghostly image of a box and a layer of discarded wrapping paper appeared on the floor just inside the threshold. A spring with a needle on the end was uncoiled from within the box, laying around it like a coiled serpent.
“Based on the scene, we believe that Quick Step found the box laying on her doorstep when she opened it to leave,” Flash said. “The spring stung her and whatever toxin was on it overcame her when she tried to go back inside and call for help.”
“And that’s when the intruder came in,” Red added.
“What intruder?” Phillip asked, his ears perking up.
Twilight lit up her horn and a new set of hoofprints appeared on the ground, glowing a darker shade of purple. They led from the end of the hallway and into the room, stepping over the body before proceeding into the apartment proper.
Phillip scowled as he ducked beneath the tape and entered the apartment, slowly following the intruder’s trail with Twilight and Flash on his tail. The intruder went straight into the bedroom and the hoofprints circled around the room. The glowing prints passed beneath clothes and bedsheets that had been flung onto the floor.
“He was looking for something,” he murmured. “Flash?”
“Skytrotter brand horseshoes, size thirteen. Worn by a three-foot eleven pony with black hair, we’ve already collected hair samples for analysis,” Flash reported.
“Aces,” Phillip nodded, noting a proud smile briefly glowing on Flash’s face. They followed the trail out of the bedroom and into the hallway, where they met with a frowning Red Herring. Twilight’s magic revealed that the intruder had run back down the stairs and back outside into the parking lot. The trail led to a pair of glowing tire tracks that ran back onto Morgana Avenue, disappearing amidst the overlapping trails of other vehicles.
“And that’s how he got away,” Red concluded. “Bet Trace could--”
Silence fell like a gavel striking. Red visibly flinched and his eyes sank to the ground, studying the asphalt. Flash and Twilight both bowed their heads.
Phillip turned away, closing his eyes, but the visions came just the same. Trace, grabbing his hoof, bracing against the threshold. Black serpents lashed out overhead, stabbing into the unicorn’s eyes with a horrible squelching sound. The scream echoed in Phillip’s eyes, the sound rumbling in his heaving chest, where his heart throbbed violently.
It’s not happening. It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re here. Here and now.
He took control of his breathing, slow inhalation, pause, slow exhale. Repeat. His heart began to slow down bit by bit and the images and sounds faded away, departing with the ghost of a slimy touch on his face. Phillip opened his eyes, wiping away a few tears.
“The hoofprints show that the intruder was hovering in the stairwell for a good while,” Red said, a throaty edge to his voice as he frowned at the tire tracks. “I figure he put the box there for Quick, then entered when she went down. We wondered what he was looking for: guess we know now,” he nodded to Phillip.
“I don’t know,” Flash said. “The box thing is kinda convoluted. Why not just use a gun?”
“What I want to know is how he got in,” Twilight mused. “None of the other tenants that were here said that they let anypony in around that time.”
“They might’ve forgotten, or just don’t want to get involved,” Red grunted. “We’ll probably learn more once we get the stuff down to the lab. In the meantime, probably best we speak to the vic’s friends at the Heavenly Bawdy. Bet somepony there knows something.”
Phillip frowned and looked up at the sunny sky, with only a few white clouds floating around. “I’m going to meet up with Daring first,” he reported. “Can you give me a lift to Turnip Avenue?”
“I can take you down,” Twilight offered, beckoning him over to the crime scene truck.
Phillip nodded his thanks and proceeded after her, nodding goodbye to the detectives. He kept his face neutral as he climbed into the passenger seat of the cab, but a sick feeling was twisting in his stomach. As the truck pulled out far too slowly, visions flashed before his eyes of Daring being caught in a net and dragged into a van by figures in masks.
The Red Barn motel was a long, single-story building with a red-tiled roof that sat in a block of asphalt that had been carved out of a thick copse of trees. The sign of the picturesque barn stood next to the sloped driveway, with “Vacancy” flickering beneath it.
“Right there, number eighteen,” Autumn said, pointing to the door marked with a golden number eighteen nailed to it. Daring dipped out of the sky and landed in front of the door.
“That was fun!” Autumn declared with a broad grin. “Wish I had wings! You ever look around up there, see all the sky stretching out before you with all the beauty of the sun and the moon and the stars, and it feels like it’s all looking back at you, smiling, welcoming you?”
“No,” Daring replied.
“You’re such a grump,” Autumn pouted as she unlocked the door with a key she plucked from her mane. “You should learn to look at the bright side. Life is short and when it’s over, it’s over. Why not enjoy it?”
Daring followed Autumn into the motel room. The brown-walled sitting room was covered in a light red shag carpet and featured a large double bed, a sofa and desk, and a television with rabbit ears. One door led to a closet, while another led to a bathroom, both of them shut; a window on the wall admitted sunlight filtered through the layers of green leaves. Notebooks with shorthoof writing splashed over them were scattered over the bed, along with several photographs. A camera, boxes of film, a tape recorder, and rolls of tape were strewn around the room, and a typewriter sat on the desk. Tacked up on one wall was a dartboard with a photograph cut out of a newspaper. Daring recognized the ink-black earth pony with the silver hair and goatee wearing a charcoal suit and tie, his fat flank adorned with the image of a piece of paper with a bit sign on it: Bottom Line, president of Eagle Trust and four-times acquitted fraudster. His photograph was pockmarked with holes and two of the six darts were embedded in his chest and face; clearly, Autumn had gotten a lot of practice in.
But what made Daring quirk her eyebrow were the several arts and crafts pieces littered around the room. Sketches in various mediums, from pencil to charcoal to watercolor, were taped up on the walls. Lined up on the dresser and the windowsill were several small gourds, balls, and rocks, all with faces painted on them.
“Didn’t know it was a party,” she commented as Autumn relocked the door. “Looks a bit crowded in here.”
“Yeah,” Autumn said with a slightly embarrassed chuckle. She went over to a dirty baseball with two eyes painted on it so that the seam formed a wide smile. “I like having someone to talk to, but it turns out that being known for turning into a raging fire monster when you get angry kinda makes it hard to make friends, so you try talking to inanimate objects because they won’t leave you or make fun of you or be scared of you, only then it makes real creatures think you’re not just a raging fire monster, you're a crazy raging fire monster.” She let out a humorless laugh through a forced smile and looked at the baseball. “Talk about a vicious cycle, eh, Speedy?” She tilted the ball to make it look like it was nodding.
A pang of emotion echoed through Daring’s gut, silencing any attempt at a dry comment, and she looked around for something to change the subject. She spotted a watercolor painting on the floor of a skyline, the sun setting behind a river displayed in glorious reds, oranges, and golds. “Is this from the roof of the Corral Market?” she asked, picking it up.
“Oh, yeah,” Autumn said, putting Speedy back down on the windowsill. “I painted that on my first day here. Just managed to put the finishing touches on it before the owner chased me off.”
“It’s beautiful,” Daring said earnestly.
Autumn’s face brightened immediately. “You think so?” she asked. “I--”
She paused, frowning. “Wait a minute. Jack, you were holding this.” She picked the paper up in a light opal aura and placed it back underneath a small pumpkin on the dresser.
The hairs on the back of Daring’s neck stood up. “Autumn, where’s your stuff on Eagle Trust?” she asked.
“Uh…” Autumn began to sort through the mess on the bed. “I really need to learn to be more organized!” she cried, tossing a few papers aside. “Where is it, where--?”
The sound of the bathroom door squeaking open and the distinctive click of a .38 revolver made both mares freeze in their tracks. Daring slowly turned to behold the black-eyed abomination trot out the door, backlit by the unnatural red glow.
Author's Notes:
Introducing Autumn Blaze, in person! But what will our heroines do to get out of this one? I hope you enjoyed her intro and are looking forward to more!
If you did enjoy, please leave a like and a comment to show your support!
Case Fifteen, Chapter Two: Dance of the Dead
Daring’s heart leaped into her throat, but she forced it back down with a swallow, taking in a slow, controlled breath. The memory retreated back into her subconscious and reality bled back in.
It was not the Ngluwi...Zugzwang...emerging through the door from the red-skied forest. It was a unicorn wearing a long dark blue trenchcoat and a ski mask that covered his entire body. His cold green eyes glared hatefully at them over the sights of the .38 Steel and Eastson revolver, his hoof inserted into the large trigger guard and lightly pressing against the hair-trigger. A bag stuffed with notes and other materials was strapped to his back.
“Where’s Gold Signature?” the intruder snarled, aiming his weapon at Autumn.
“Who?” Autumn asked, raising her hooves in surrender. “I have no idea who you’re talking about! I’ve never heard of Gold Signature!”
“Where is he?” the intruder snapped again, thrusting the weapon at the kirin, who yelped and backed up.
Now!
The kusarifundo snapped out of her pocket and came down like a hammer, the weight snapping bone with a crack. The intruder howled and dropped the gun with a clatter.
“Ha!” Daring barked with a grin, drawing back for another strike, but a brick wall composed of blue energy slammed into her. She crashed into the wall with a grunt, but landed on her hooves, growling at her attacker.
The intruder pulled the gun back into his hooves with a blue aura as he pulled a small crystal from his pocket and flung it into the air. The teleportation crystal hovered in midair over his head, glowing bright blue, flashing out cyan lightning with a great crackling that made Daring and Autumn’s hair stand on end.
“No, you don’t!” Daring snarled, diving forward, but a bolt of lightning struck her on the wing and she fell with a grunt. A moment later, there was a flash of blinding azure light. When it cleared, the intruder was gone.
“Damn!” Daring snarled, forcing herself back up. She winced and checked her wing, flexing it out slowly to test the muscles. They responded sluggishly, every nerve protesting having to move, but there was no visible damage.
“Are you okay?” Autumn asked, recovering slowly.
“I’m okay. You?”
Autumn nodded, then started sorting through her notes with gritted teeth. After a few moments, she grunted and slammed her hoof against the mattress in frustration. “He took them!” she snapped. “He took all of my research on Eagle Trust! My notes, the photographs, the interview tapes, everything!”
Daring growled, glaring at the area where the intruder had jumped through the portal. “It’s fine,” she tried to reassure Autumn, holstering her weapon. “We can start again.”
“This is how Eagle Trust works!” Autumn shouted, pacing in a small circle, her eyes starting to glow again. “They find and eliminate anything and anyone who can work against them! If we don’t stop them now, they’ll just keep going and going, taking and taking, ruining more lives--!”
Her hooves started to glow, crackling with magic fire; the acrid scent of burnt carpet wafted up into Daring’s nostrils. “Hey, Autumn?” she called. “Take a few deep breaths before you burn the place down.”
Autumn paused, then turned away, breathing deeply. The glow slowly faded from her eyes and hooves.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
“It’s fine,” Daring said, patting the kirin on the shoulder. “We’re both okay, and we’ll both find the bastard.”
There was the sound of tires crunching outside. Daring tensed up, one hoof going up to her shoulder holster as she peeked through the peephole set in the door. It was only when she spotted “Police CSU” painted on the side of the truck and the stallion in the gray trilby jumping out of the cab that she relaxed.
“In here, Phil,” she called, opening the door and exiting with Autumn.
“You okay?” Phillip asked, noting the tension in their bodies, the remnants of shock in Autumn’s eyes.
“We’re both fine,” Daring said. “But we just met a friend from Eagle Trust.”
She gave them both a quick explanation of what had happened. Twilight gasped at all the right parts, her eyes widening, while Phillip scowled.
“Did you get any details?” Phillip asked.
“Green eyes, about three foot five, left hooved,” Daring reported. “He had a Steel and Eastson Model 10 with a blue finish.”
“Twi?” Phillip asked.
“Right,” Twilight said, entering the room and scanning everything with her magic aura. The lock on the door sparkled and she leaned in closer.
“Looks like the intruder used a spell to unlock the door from outside,” she commented, scanning the ground. A line of glowing hoofprints--Skytrotter brand, size thirteen--appeared on the ground up to the threshold but vanished when it reached the carpet.
“Darn. The carpet makes it too hard to pick up traces,” Twilight frowned.
The trail itself led around to the back of the motel and through the copse of trees behind the Barn to a street, where it disappeared amidst a cluster of tire tracks.
“Sorry, guys,” Twilight said, shaking her head.
“It’s fine, Twilight,” Phillip nodded. “But we do know one important thing.”
“What’s that?” Autumn asked.
“They asked you where Gold is,” Daring said. “Which means…”
“They don’t know where he is!” Twilight cried. “We still have a chance to find him!”
Autumn let out a cheered laugh. “So what do we do now?” she asked, hopping around excitedly.
“We should go to the Heavenly Bawdy, ask about Quick,” Phil said. “One of them will know something.”
“Oooh, can I go?” Autumn asked.
“No,” Daring said. “You’re going with Twilight to the police station to give a statement.”
“I have so many questions!” Twilight cried, immediately beckoning Autumn over to the truck. “I’ve read about kirin in books, but I never thought I’d meet one in real life!”
Autumn’s look of mingled disappointment and surprise turned into a broad grin as she climbed into the truck. “Well, today’s your lucky day, then!”
“To the Bawdy?” Daring asked, scooping up Phillip beneath his forelegs.
He sighed in resignation at her touch. “Let’s go.”
With a whoosh of wings, Daring shot into the air and headed west.
Right on the western edges of Ponyville, just barely within the city limits, past the tall buildings and ornate mansions of the Financial District, an airship gondola sat within its own little block, as if it had fallen out of the sky and miraculously landed in one piece. The entire edifice was painted in sensuous reds and whites, and a flickering neon sign over the door featured an image of an airship set before a golden-orange sun. Even this early in the day, there were quite a few cars parked in the lot.
Above the neon sign was a poster featuring a familiar cyan unicorn mare posing against a pole, smiling coquettishly at the visitors through her golden bangs, her flank tilted to accentuate the lightning bolt and two hoofprints on her flank. Phillip frowned at the poster, the specter of the dead mare’s pale, purple-specked, bloodstained face dancing over the picture. He shook his head to refocus, trying to ignore the ice that was settling in his stomach.
As Phillip and Daring approached the door, they spotted a sign nailed next to the door declaring that all entrants would be charged a ten-bit cover fee, with another sign beneath it reading “Rules of Conduct.” At the top was a bolded warning:
Feel free to look, but DO NOT TOUCH THE GIRLS. Harassment will not be tolerated!
On the other side of the door was a large sign declaring that the Bawdy was holding auditions and performances for new dancers over the week, with young mares of all species being invited to join.
Phillip opened the door and they entered into the welcoming embrace of cool darkness. A small dark hallway with red carpeting opened up before them, leading to a pair of double doors. Music and the sound of voices thumped from behind the doors, inviting them closer.
“Welcome to the Heavenly Bawdy!” an attendant in a suit and tie declared through a screen that led into what had been the ticket office.
“Detectives Finder and Do,” Phillip said, holding out his PI license. “We’re here to ask about the murder of Quick Step.”
The doorpony’s face fell. “Yes, yes,” he nodded. “Petina is doing a show right now. She’ll speak to you.”
They proceeded through the double doors into a large, dark room that smelled of grilled food and expensive alcohol, with a teasing aroma of flowery perfumes behind it. The wide-open sitting room had several round tables beneath dim lights. A long bar took up most of the back wall, the drinks displayed with the aid of cool blue and orange lighting; the scent of food wafted out from the double doors next to the bar. As the detectives entered, a waitress in a tight, backless blue dress exited the doors, balancing a steaming tray of pasta on her back. A trio of lean bouncers, two unicorns and a griffon, all dressed in loose-fitting suits and fedoras, sat in the corners of the room, all of them wearing suits that were clearly tailored to hide body armor. What was not hidden, however, were the stun batons and pepper spray canisters on their belts.
But the main attraction in the Bawdy was the dancing stage. The curtained stage took up the entirety of the far wall and featured three gleaming silver poles; an extension of the stage extended out like an inlet to a smaller, circular stage, the entire construct lit with golden lights. Three mares, all of them clad in stockings and saddles, danced upon the stage to “Geraldine’s Routine,” tossing their manes and shaking their flanks as they twirled and spun around the poles.
Phillip and Daring approached the bartender. “Detectives Do and Finder,” Daring introduced themselves, laying some bits on the bar. “We’re looking for Petina and a Manticore Rare on the rocks.”
“You’re here about Quick, aren’t you?” the griffon in the bowtie and suit asked, already pouring her a glass of bourbon. His voice carried a tinge of a Griffonese accent. “The police were already here, talked to us briefly. Petina broke the news to the rest of the crew already. Damn shame. That’s her up on stage, the white unicorn.”
Daring and Phil turned to face the pony in question. The pure white unicorn clad in red that accentuated all of her athletic curves had a large, poofy mane and tail and a cutie mark of a bit sign. Her green eyes twinkled as she spun around the pole in the center, flanked by a hippogriff and a pegasus, and she winked at some of the cheering patrons watching hungrily from the edge of the stage.
But Daring and Phil had seen enough wooden smiles to recognize one when they saw it.
Petina spun around the pole, hooking her hind legs around it to hang upside down. As she completed her twirl, she spotted Phil and Daring at the bar and frowned for a half-second, clearly recognizing who they were. She climbed off the pole, recollecting herself and replacing the mask as the song began to swing into its final verse.
“What’s your name, mate?” Phillip asked.
“Dricka,” the griffon replied, refilling the beer glass being held by a slouching pegasus with scruffy blue hair. “I’ve been working here for some thirteen-odd years now.”
“Did you know Quick Step?” Phillip asked.
“Ja,” Dricka nodded. “She started working for us a couple of years ago. Sweet girl, one of our best dancers. In fact, she was going to be our headliner: you probably saw the poster out front.”
Phillip nodded thoughtfully. “You know if there’s anypony here who might be jealous of her?” he asked quietly. “Anypony who might be angry about her being the headliner?”
Dricka glanced up at Petina as the song ended. The trio of dancers all took a pose as the crowd applauded and whistled. The bartender leaned in closer.
“The pegasus on the left, Honey Melody,” he muttered, nodding to the golden pegasus who was smiling coquettishly at her admirers, winking through her brown and green bangs and wiggling her rump to display her stocking-accentuated flanks, each adorned with a honey jar with a musical note printed on the label.
“She was Quick’s neighbor, lived in the same apartment building,” Dricka said. “And she really wanted that headliner position. Put on a brave face when Petina announced that Quick won, but she was really pissed after, unburdening herself to me like I’m her therapist and priest.” He frowned and wiped down the bar. “They were friends, but competition can change ponies.”
Petina hopped off the stage and trotted over to the bar, her tail swishing behind her. “Well, well,” she said in a purring tone, a trace of a Neigh Orleans accent around the edges of her syllables. “The most famous detectives in Ponyville. Welcome to the Heavenly Bawdy.”
“Thanks,” Daring nodded, extending her hoof. “Sorry we have to meet under these circumstances.”
“I’m sure,” Petina said, looking the couple up and down with a strange glimmer in her eyes. “Shall we discuss this in private?”
She led them through a set of double doors labeled “Employees Only” to the backstage area. A set of curtains hid the staging area from the main stage. Another bouncer was leaning against the wall, tossing his stun baton to himself. A hallway led down to a large green room; a cluster of dancers was chatting around a row of brightly lit vanity tables, adjusting their costumes and applying last-minute touches to their makeup. A line of lockers stood in the back of the green room: as Daring and Phil passed, Honey Melody unlocked her locker with a small blue key on a ring and pulled out a bar of nicotine gum.
Petina continued to a door marked “Office” and opened it, beckoning the detectives inside. They entered what looked more like a living room than an office: the desk with its papers neatly stacked upon it had a chaise lounge instead of a chair, a low sofa with several cushions was set up for visitors, a minibar held a collection of expensive wines and liquors, and the walls were lined with art of a decidedly sensuous nature. Photographs of Petina with what appeared to be staff members of the Heavenly Bawdy decorated the desk, and Phillip and Daring both quirked their eyebrows when they saw a plushie of Princess Celestia the size of a small mare sitting behind the chaise lounge. The place smelled of lavender and roses.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Petina said as she took off her costume and hung it up on a ponyquin in the corner. “Much as I’d love to invite you to stay longer, business before pleasure.” She sat down on the chaise lounge, gesturing for her guests to sit down on the sofa.
“I already spoke to the police a few hours ago when they came to tell me that they found her: I don’t know what else I can tell you,” Petina sighed. “But I’ll answer any questions you have.”
Phillip nodded. “When did you last see Quick Step?”
“Last night when she was leaving around nine PM,” Petina replied. “She’d just finished her shift and was headed home.”
“Did you notice anything unusual that night?” Phillip asked.
Petina frowned. “She’d seemed a bit preoccupied with her coltfriend recently, and she said that she wanted to get home quick to talk to him. He’s some kind of banker. I asked her what was wrong, but she didn’t want to talk about it.” She scowled bitterly. “No doubt had something to do with the fucking mob.”
“You think the mob had something to do with this?” Phillip asked, tilting his head to the side.
Petina made a noise like an angry cat and began speaking, her Neigh Orleans accent slipping deeper and deeper into her words with every sentence. “I’ve run the Bawdy for years, and practically on day one, that bastard Monopoly and his shit-faced thugs were knocking on my door. Every month, I had to pay up or risk getting my dancers or customers hurt. I remember how Mother-damned hopeless and frustrating it was, knowing that these bastards were running things and there was fuckshit nothing I could do about it...and then you two came along.” She gave the detectives a hard look.
“There was a time when young, sweet, innocent girls with stars in their eyes like Quick Step wound up dead on a regular basis. But that was before you two. Before you took out Monopoly and Silvertongue. Before you killed Whitestone and Zugzwang.”
Black eyes flashed before Phillip’s eyes. A gurgling, inequine voice laughed in his ear and cold slime ran down his face. His chest tightened and his breath began to stab at his lungs; it took a moment for him to push the panic down, and he almost missed Petina’s next words.
“Detectives, are you okay? What’s wrong?” Petina asked, her face creased with concern.
“It’s...it’s fine,” Phillip said and cleared his throat, ordering the memories to get back into the dark where they belonged.
Petina looked down at one of the many pictures on her desk, a framed photograph of herself and Quick Step, both of them posing on stage and grinning at the camera. “This was from her first day here,” she mumbled, mostly to herself, then shook her head and looked up. “This shit isn’t supposed to happen. Not anymore,” Petina was growling, anger and grief sparkling in her emerald irides. “Find them, detectives. Find the bastards who killed Quick.”
“We will,” Daring said reassuringly, raising her left hoof in a conciliatory gesture even as she tucked her right hoof closer to her side, hiding a wince. “Anything you know might help.”
“Have you ever met Quick’s coltfriend, Gold Signature?” Phillip asked.
“A few times,” Petina nodded. “She brought him backstage a few times to chat and meet the other girls. He was nice enough, but I didn’t know him that well. You’d have to talk to Honey Melody about him: Honey was her neighbor, lived in the same building as her.”
Daring and Phil glanced at each other. “Speaking of Honey,” Daring said. “Would you know if any of the other dancers had reason to be angry at Quick?”
Petina’s eyes widened in shock. “What?! You think one of them killed her?!” she cried, her accent biting furiously into her words.
“We have to consider every possibility,” Phillip said calmly. “Did she ever fight with the other dancers?”
Petina glared at him. “I know that show business can be cutthroat--Faust knows, I’ve been stabbed in the back by ponies I thought were friends more than once. And yes, sometimes the girls argue or fight amongst each other, and I know a few of them were upset that I chose Quick to be the new headliner instead of them, but none of them would kill her.”
Phillip decided to say nothing. “We’ll still need to talk to the dancers and employees here.”
Petina glared at him for a moment longer, then composed herself and nodded. “Of course you do,” she grumbled through her teeth. “I’ll call you if I think of anything else, but right now, I’ve got some work to do.”
Phillip and Daring stood up and headed for the door, but as they crossed the threshold, Petina called, “Detectives, if you’re going to accuse one of my girls, you’d better damn well have some good fucking proof.”
With that thought, the two closed the door behind them. As soon as they were alone, the panic came back in, waves of crushing pressure rushing over them as his name echoed in their ears, his face danced before their eyes. A passing dancer looked them over in concern, her offers of assistance washed away by his bubbling laughter.
“I need some air,” Phillip said, shaking his head and heading for a backstage door.
“Me too,” Daring said, following him.
They pushed their way up the hall to a backstage door, pushing it open to head outside. The warm sunlight on their faces brought them back to reality, the crisp air that they breathed in deep slowed their heartbeats.
“Is this ever gonna get better?” Daring asked, shaking her head and mopping her face.
“I hope,” Phillip nodded.
“You two all right?” a voice asked. They turned to see Honey Melody herself leaning against the wall of the Bawdy, still chewing on her nicotine gum and doing some light stretches to ease the kinks out of her joints.
“We’re fine,” Phillip said, his heartbeat returning to normal. “You’re Honey Melody?”
“I am,” Honey said, wiping some of her mane out of her face. Up close, the detectives could see beneath the mask of makeup that she wore. Her golden eyes were moist and streaked with red, and every trace of the smile she wore earlier was gone, replaced by an aura of grief.
“I know who you two are,” she said. “Detectives Finder and Do. You’re here about Quick.” She sniffled and wiped at her eye. “Sorry, I...I’ve been crying on and off since Petina told us this morning.”
“You sure you’re okay to perform?” Daring asked.
“Petina already asked if I wanted to go home,” Honey replied. “I gotta dance, otherwise I’m just going to be crying all day. She was my friend, and now she’s just…” A strangled sob escaped her and she buried her face into her hoof for a moment, her body quivering as she fought for control. It only took a moment for her to force the tears down and look up again.
“Is it okay if we ask you some questions?” Daring asked.
“Okay,” Honey nodded.
“When did you last see Quick Step?” Phillip asked.
“Last night, when I got home,” Honey said, her voice shaky. “I...congratulated her on getting the headliner spot. She said I should’ve won…” A shadow of bitterness danced across her countenance for a moment, but then was gone. “But she won fair and square and I told her so. We chatted for a bit and then said good night.”
“And this morning?” Phillip asked.
“I was out the door just before ten, took the bus in,” Honey replied. “Quick usually takes the bus with me, I was wondering where she was. I’d just gotten myself ready when Petina came in and…” She sniffled again and swallowed.
Phillip paused for a moment. “Did you know her coltfriend, Gold Signature?”
“Fairly well,” Honey nodded. “I know he works at some kinda shady bank, but he seemed nice enough, and Quick liked him. That was good enough for me.” She chuckled once. “Can’t hold his liquor worth shit, though. Is he okay?”
“We’re still looking for him,” Phillip said. He paused for a beat, then added, “Honey, I’m sorry to ask you this, but was there anypony who had reason to be angry at Quick?”
Honey shook her head and sniffled. “No, no, everypony liked her,” she said, her voice quivering. “Everypony here loved her. She knew how to make everypony here smile even if they were having a shit day, she helped teach the newer dancers, she always…”
Her voice cracked and she buried her face in her hoof, her entire body shaking as a fresh wave of tears racked it. “I’m sorry, I need to be alone,” she croaked out. She stumbled over to the door and pulled out the same blue key that she’d used to open her locker. After a few blind attempts, she managed to insert the key into the doorknob and turned it. The pickproof charm on the doorknob flashed briefly and she opened up the door, heading inside with a last choked sob.
Phil and Daring glanced at each other. “What do you think?” Phil asked.
“She managed to put on a smile on stage; she’s definitely a good actor,” Daring commented. “But she’s just one dancer here. Any one of them could’ve had a reason to not like her. And then there’s still that angle with Eagle Trust.”
Phillip sighed and mopped his face. “I hope the others are having better luck than us. Let’s see what else we can find out here and then head to the precinct.”
Author's Notes:
Petina belongs to Baron-Engel, used with his knowledge and permission. If you're not already watching him on DeviantArt, go do it!
I'm particularly proud of this chapter; I think it really brings back the noire-esque themes that were missing in some of the last parts of V2. If you liked it, be sure to leave a like and a comment!
Case Fifteen, Chapter Three: Catching Up
Phillip and Daring pushed through the revolving doors of the Ponyville Police precinct, sighing and stretching as they entered. Daring looked around the lobby, remembering the first time she had stepped through that revolving door. The black and white tiled floor had been dingy and scuffed, the waiting area next to the door furnished by old, creaky furniture, featuring an ancient coffee machine and water dispenser. She glanced down at the floor that had been stained by blood from the prisoner that two cops had dragged past her. A creaky fan had provided a constant, irritating background noise beneath the chatter of muted voices.
But now the lobby was pristine, the summer air cooled by a low-humming fan. A few ponies sat on the inexpensive but comfortable couches, a pegasus stallion taking a cup of water from the cooler and warm coffee from the dispenser for his wife; though their faces were far from happy, they were no longer avoiding the eyes of every officer who passed by. A gray-maned burro, his uniform and corporal’s chevrons clean and well-pressed, bent down to speak to a teary-eyed young stallion, resting a comforting hoof on his shoulder.
As Daring and Phillip proceeded through the lobby, a low rumble of voices followed, like the wake from a ship. Daring gritted her teeth, imagining the hisses of accusations and suspicion...but then she listened closer and realized what their observers were saying.
“Is that them?”
“It’s them! Detectives Finder and Do!”
“He’s even more handsome than he looks in the papers. What a dreamboat!”
“You think she’d sign my notebook?”
“I saw her, man. She took on Roaring all on her own. Nearly took him out the first time, too!”
“Whoever they’re after doesn’t have a chance!”
“Hey, detectives! Go get ‘em!”
The voices were like a beam of light through the fog of fatigue that was clinging around her. She turned around and shot a smile and a tilt of the pith helmet at the smiling creatures cheering them on.
“And you tell Rainbow not to get a swollen head,” Phillip muttered through a small grin as they proceeded through the doors to the interior of the station.
“Ah, don’t be such a grump,” Daring grinned, booping him as they headed for the stairs.
They climbed up to the second floor and headed to the detective’s offices. Entering the main area, they found a mess of cubicles stretching through the open area, with creatures bustling through the maze-like rats searching for cheese. A constant clatter of voices, ringing phones, hoofsteps, and rustling papers filled the air.
“How does anypony get any work done here?” Daring mused as they proceeded along a hallway, squeezing up against the wall to try to stay out of the near-constant stream of detectives rushing past them.
“You get used to it,” Phillip said, spotting his target. They trotted up to one of the doors along the outer edge of the maze. The lettering on the frosted glass window had been recently replaced, the name on it declared in fresh, bold lettering:
“Sergeant Red Herring, Major Crimes.”
Phillip paused at the door, staring at the name and letting out a quiet sigh. With a swallow, he knocked at the door.
“Come in,” a voice grunted from inside.
Phillip opened up the door and they entered the office within. Red hadn’t had much time to decorate his new office, but there were still a few pics set up on the white wall. One was a photograph of his academy graduating class: he was nearly unrecognizable in the middle row, third from the left, with his shorter haircut and wide smile. The smaller middle picture was Red, younger and adorned in a well-pressed dress uniform, one wing draped around a pale yellow pegasus with wavy green hair and one hoof placed atop the head of a red pegasus colt with a frizzy, leonine blonde mane.
The third picture was taken on a houseboat, surrounded by the sapphire waters of the Maresippi River. Red was standing in the center, mugging for the camera with a bottle of beer clutched in his wing. Next to him was Lug Wrench, sunlight reflecting off his glasses, his oily mane tussled by the wind. His foreleg was around Trace’s shoulders: the unicorn’s horn was alight as he held up the camera, and his smile was small but genuine.
Phillip forced himself to turn away from the picture to face the rest of the room. Red was currently sitting behind the desk, turned away from the mess of paperwork tossed across it as if a small tornado had passed through the room, staring instead out the window at the sky painted by the setting sun with a scarlet that almost matched his coat. Flash was sitting on a cushion in front of the desk, looking over an autopsy report. Autumn Blaze was sitting next to Flash, chattering away.
“Oh, hey, there you are!” she cried, greeting them with a broad grin. “Didja find anything at the Heavenly Bawdy?”
“Not much helpful,” Phillip admitted. “How goes it here, mates?”
“About the same,” Flash admitted.
“I told Detectives Sentry and Herring everything I could remember about Eagle Trust and what happened at my motel room,” Autumn chirped. “We’re making a great team!”
“A team that doesn’t have much to go on,” Red commented, spinning around in his chair. “There wasn’t much evidence at her motel that we or Twilight could find, and since that fink took all of her physical proof, there’s not much we can use to go after Eagle Trust.” Red glanced over at Autumn, who had scowled briefly at the mention of the intruder but showed no sign of starting to turn nirik. “Flash and I already dropped by the place, but they basically told us to fuck off and come back with a warrant,” he added.
“I’m back,” Twilight called, reentering the room with a glowing crystal floating next to her head.
“Ooooh, tell them about the car!” Autumn said, bouncing in her seat slightly.
“What car?” Daring asked.
“We got followed on the way to the station!” Autumn said.
“What?” Daring and Phil both cried.
“I just liked writing: stories, plays, musicals, you name it,” Autumn said, leaning out the passenger window to enjoy the sun on her face and the wind blowing through her mane. “And the best stories I wrote were the ones that made other people happy. But when I left the Grove to travel, I figured I could do more than just write stories. I could write freelance for papers, talk about the problems that everycreature knew about but wasn’t talking about: corruption, pollution, discrimination, poverty. And I still write stories, too!” She smiled. “I’ve been all over Equestria and beyond: Thrussia, Mount Aeris, Prance, Gerwhinny, Nippony, you name it. I’ve done some good: helped get a lousy mayor voted out in Prance, got some pollution laws passed in the Fillypines after the ponies protested a chemical factory…” She gave Twilight a small grin. “Unfortunately, being a kirin and a nosy reporter means I wear out my welcome pretty fast everywhere I go. But, there’s a whole world out there, full of creatures that need some smiles!”
“I see,” Twilight smiled as she turned onto Silver Street, checking her mirrors. “Autumn, it’s great that you’ve dedicated yourself to trying to make this world a better place. It’s why I started working in forensics, too.”
“Oh, I’m sure!” Autumn said. “It’s good to know that there are good ponies out there, trying to--Twilight, what’s wrong?”
Twilight’s eyes were fixed on the rearview mirror, staring at a dark blue Mustang Economy Coupe with tinted windows that was trailing behind their truck.
“I think that car’s following us,” Twilight said, fixing her eyes on the road. “He’s been behind us for five turns now.” She squinted at the plate. “ZM1 2HR,” she murmured to herself.
“You sure?” Autumn asked, turning around to watch the car.
“Don’t look at it! We don’t want him to know that we’re onto him!” Twilight snapped, turning left onto a residential street. “I’m going to try to make sure, hang on.”
Autumn let out a nervous chuckle. “This is kinda like in a detective novel,” she said through a grin, keeping her gaze on the mirror. The blue two-door followed around the turn with them.
Twilight slowed to a halt at a stop sign, then turned right. A red van pulled in behind the forensics truck, trundling behind them at a lazy pace.
“Maybe he’s not following us,” Autumn said hopefully.
“We’ll see,” Twilight said, sweat running down her mane. She drove carefully through the narrow, winding streets of the neighborhood, glancing at the mirrors every second. Autumn kept her eyes on the passenger side mirror, one hoof tapping at the door like she was trying to send a telegraph.
Twilight stopped at a stop sign, throwing a terse smile at a cluster of chattering children that crossed in front of her, then turned right again. The red van puttered off to the left as they passed around a curve shaded by thick trees. Both mares kept watch on the reflections, but instead of the blue Coupe, a newspaper filly on a bike pulled in behind them, whistling cheerfully as she tossed a paper onto a porch.
“Guess he wasn’t following us after all,” Autumn grinned at Twilight. Twilight gave Autumn a relieved smile as they paused at a stop sign. “Let’s get back onto that Silver Street, we’ve got time to make up!”
Twilight proceeded through the stop sign, paused to allow a griffon and a thestral playing basketball to step aside, then trundled down the road to a four-way intersection, reaching the line just as the light turned red. The street sign on the corner announced that they were now on the corner of Silver and MacHillard. Twilight hit the left signal, sighing in relief as she settled back in her seat. “Thankfully, those detective novels are just fiction,” she said.
“Funny you’d say that, after everything you’ve been through,” Autumn commented as the light turned green.
“Point,” Twilight replied, turning back onto Silver Street. “But just because--”
A growl of an engine prompted her to look back in the mirror. Her face fell in a moment when she saw the shape behind them. The blue coupe, license plate ZM1 2HR, was pulling in behind them, closing in fast.
“Oh, no,” Twilight muttered, hitting the accelerator.
“Should we call for backup?” Autumn asked, rolling up the window and looking down at the radio in between their seats.
“Good idea,” Twilight said, lifting the mouthpiece with her magic and clicking it on. “Breaker, breaker. This is Bishop One, 10-33 on Silver and Magnolia. We’re being followed by an unknown car: Mustang Economy Coupe, license Zebra Mike One Two Hotel Romeo.”
All that answered them was a hissing of static. Twilight gulped and clicked the radio again. “Breaker, this is Bishop One. Does anypony copy?”
More static hissed back at them. Twilight looked up in the mirror to see the coupe was practically tailgating them, close enough that they could see a dark silhouette behind the tinted windshield. “Fiddlesticks,” she muttered.
“Now what?” Autumn asked with a swallow.
Twilight let out a groan, her eyes darting from mirror to street, then her face brightened with an idea. “Hang on!” she said, slamming the brakes and swerving onto a side street with a squealing of tires. Autumn yelped, bracing against the door as the truck rumbled around the corner. The pursuing Coupe had to brake hard to try to follow them and got stuck behind a pair of cars that pushed in with blaring horns.
Roaring down the road, Twilight swiveled her head from side to side. “There!” she cried, turning onto a decline, descending into a parking garage. Darkness overtook the truck like the garage was some great beast that had swallowed them whole; the headlights from the truck revealed rows of cars sitting in dusty parking places beneath dim, bare bulb lights. Twilight swerved around a cluster of parked cars and slithered into a parking space in a shadowed corner as her horn sparked with lavender magic.
Waves of purple energy spread over the truck as Twilight turned off the engine with a clicking. The blue paint of the truck turned into white, the decals faded away, and the license plate’s numbers blurred and shifted.
“Get down,” Twilight urged Autumn, ducking beneath the windows. Autumn slithered down as well, carefully peeking over the window. She realized that she was holding her breath when she noticed that her breath wasn’t fogging the window.
Twenty seconds passed. Thirty. Forty. Autumn glanced down at Twilight, who had her horn sparking faintly as she maintained the illusion spell. “Maybe we lost him,” she smiled.
A pair of headlights pierced the darkness like the eyes of some beast searching through the night for its prey. The blue Coupe trundled slowly into the garage, turning up their row. Autumn gasped and curled up into a ball, covering her head. Twilight’s breath came hard and fast, her horn flaring faintly with every heavy exhalation. Sweat ran down her mane into her eyes, making her grunt in irritation as she blinked the salt out of her gaze.
Tires crunched against stone and dirt as the vehicle came closer; the beams from the headlight passed over them like some hostile, foreign sun. Both mares tensed up, as if the slightest movement, the slightest noise would give them both away.
A moment later, the light passed them by and the sound of the car retreated. Autumn slowly looked up and caught the tail end of the car driving on. It circled the level, then headed back outside, disappearing into the sunlight.
Both mares breathed a long sigh of relief. “Nice work, Twilight!” Autumn grinned at the unicorn, giving her a playful punch on the shoulder.
Twilight let out a relieved smile as she climbed back into her seat. “Actually, I read that in a detective novel, too,” she admitted. “At the time, I thought you couldn’t make an illusion spell on the fly like that. Guess I was wrong.” She started the truck back up again. “Okay, we’ve wasted enough time. Back to the precinct!”
“I suspect he was using a jamming device to jam our radio,” Twilight said.
“I should’ve been with you,” Flash frowned, taking Twilight’s hoof. “If I’d been--”
“Flash, it’s okay,” Twilight said, squeezing his hoof. “Autumn and I came out of it all right. We’ll be more careful in the future.”
Flash looked unsure, but he nodded after a moment.
“Unfortunately, I already checked on the car,” Red commented. “That plate was stolen from a different car weeks ago, and we’re still trying to find the car, and our suspect. And Gold Signature.”
“I’ve told Detective Herring and Flash here all I can remember about Gold,” Autumn volunteered. “I just hope he’s okay.”
“We’ll find him, Autumn,” Twilight assured her.
“I’m sure,” Autumn said, grinning at Phil and Daring. “You’ve got these two working for you. You’ve taken down a bunch of crime bosses, cleaned up what used to be one of the worst cities in Equestria in terms of crime rates...heck, you two are practically heroes! We can stop Eagle Trust, too!”
Daring let out a small, slightly embarrassed smile. “Nice to hear some optimism,” she confessed, some part of her noting that the branded skin felt warm.
“Life’s too short to be negative!” Autumn declared, booping her on the nose. “I gotta get back to my motel room, I’ve got a lot of writing to do!”
“We’ll have some officers escort you back and keep an eye on your room for you,” Flash offered, signaling to a couple of patrol officers who were speaking to a detective outside. Both of the unicorns gave Autumn confused stares but nodded when Flash gave them their instructions.
“Bye! See you later!” Autumn waved at the detectives with a smile as she trotted out after escorts.
Red let out a puff of air. “Boy, she’s a weird one,” he commented.
“Not the weirdest we’ve met,” Daring pointed out. “What did Mortis say?”
“Uh…” Flash muttered, running a hoof over the file before him. “Here. She says that the cause of death was a type of neurotoxin taken from a...waterspike fish?”
“Lagospherodi diogen,” Twilight said, illuminating her horn and conjuring up a holographic image of a pale yellow and gray fish with spines all over its rotund body and disproportionately wide, bloated eyes. “A type of poisonous blowfish from Nippony. Its organs contain a lethal dose of a neurotoxin, and there’s no known antidote for it. The meat is a delicacy there: according to one book I read, a Nipponese chef has to study for three years to be allowed to prepare it. A single miscalculation can make the entire meal poisonous.”
“Okay, so how did our killer get it?” Flash asked.
“That fish is only native to the Nipponese shores, but you can buy it in some markets,” Twilight mused.
“We’ll have to check with fish markets, too,” Flash added, scribbling a note in his notepad.
Red stretched with a groan. “You two get anything useful at the Bawdy?” he asked.
“Very little,” Daring admitted. “I get the feeling that Petina and her crew didn’t really want us around.”
“Well, until we get something, we’re running low on leads,” Red grumbled. “I can put out a BOLO on your intruder and Gold Signature, but until then, there’s not much we can do but wait.”
“C’mon, there’s probably a few markets that are still open,” Flash said, standing.
“Rookie, what’re you gonna do?” Red asked. “Check every fish market in Ponyville and ask them if they carry this lugosphere diophen?”
“Lagospherodi diogen,” Twilight muttered, mainly to herself.
“It’s late, and we’re all tired,” Daring posited, stretching out her back with a series of pops. “I doubt any of the markets will be open by now.”
“And we’ve got some other things to check on right now,” Red added, picking up some of the papers on his desk and flopping them onto the table. “Sorry, Sentry. Just because you’re a detective doesn’t mean we only deal with one thing at a time anymore.”
Flash opened and closed his mouth a few times, glancing at the darkening sky, then sighed and nodded assent. “Okay.”
“I’ll keep going over the trace evidence from Quick’s home,” Twilight said, kissing Flash on the cheek before exiting. “I’ll see you all later tonight!”
“Aces,” Phillip nodded.
“Now what?” Daring asked.
“Phil!” a voice called. Looking out the doorway, Phillip spotted Bumblebee wandering through the room, head turning on a swivel. When he spotted Phil, he hurried over.
“Phil, you gotta come,” he said. “It’s your parents.”
Phillip’s heart leaped into his throat. A memory of his mother’s scream echoed in his mind, and he smelled the blood that had poured from her back. He sprinted out of the office, following Bumblebee, with Daring right on his tail.
Huffing and puffing, Bumblebee led them down to the first floor and into a side office. Hearing his mother’s voice, Phillip burst ahead, pushing open the door into the blank interview room. Prowl was sitting on one end of a table, notepad in her lap, her calming countenance turning into surprise at his entry. On the other side of the table sat Rain and Bobby, Rain resting her hoof on the table next to a paper cup of coffee, her husband’s hoof atop hers.
“Mom, dad!” Phillip cried, entering. “Are you okay?”
“We’re fine, son,” Bobby said, greeting him with a reassuring hug.
“What happened?” Phillip asked, trying to order his hooves to stop shaking, failing to exorcise the images of his wailing mother lying bleeding on the red clay from his mind.
“It’s fine, son,” Bobby smiled at him. “We just had an unwanted visitor drop by.”
“I’m back, hon,” Bobby called from the hallway, closing the door to 221 Honeybee behind him and latching it shut. The bags dangling from his sides clanked and rustled against his body as he entered, placing the bags on the counter. A low, familiar droning noise was coming from outside, like a buzzing that came from the air itself vibrating with ethereal music. Smiling, Bobby followed the noise to the door to the back porch.
His wife was sitting in her wheelchair on the back porch, playing her didgeridoo. Her hooves gently embraced the swirling red, blue, and white tribal patterns painted over the hollowed eucalyptus. Her eyes were closed as she buzzed her lips into the instrument, the unceasing sound rolling over and over in the air as she breathed through her nostrils with practiced ease.
Bobby just stood at the door with a wistful smile on his face, watching his wife playing: sitting still in her chair, movement barely visible, she looked like a feature of the landscape, as ancient as the soil itself; indeed, a sparrow fluttered over from the bare branches of the cherry tree in the backyard and landed atop Rain’s instrument, head tilted as it listened to her song.
Finally, after an eternity that passed in heartbeats, Rain’s recital ended. She lowered the didgeridoo, prompting the sparrow to fly off with a tweet of thanks, and turned to smile at her husband. “You were staring at me while I played again,” she playfully chided.
“You know I can’t help it, Rainy,” Bobby grinned, exiting onto the porch. “Every time you play, you look just as beautiful as you did the day I fell in love with you.”
“You’re such a dork,” Rain giggled, reaching out her forelegs to him.
“Our son had to get it from somewhere,” Bobby smirked back, taking his wife into his embrace and kissing her sweetly on the lips, running a hoof through her long mane. Rain hummed in contentment as she returned the kiss, gently ruffling her husband’s ponytail.
A rapping at the door ruined the moment quite neatly. Sighing, Bobby released his wife and reentered the house, holding the door open for her as she trundled in on her wheelchair. Proceeding to the front door, Bobby peeked out the window to see an off-white pegasus clad in a trenchcoat, his scruffy blue mane falling about his face. The visitor’s head swiveled from side to side as he looked around.
Bobby opened the door a crack. “Are you looking for Phillip Finder or Daring Do?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” the pegasus nodded, licking his lips and blinking his emerald eyes.
“Sorry, mate, they’re out at the moment,” Bobby replied. “But if you wanna leave a message with me--”
He was interrupted by the pegasus bursting forward like a switch had been thrown, the door ramming him in the chest and knocking him back with a grunt. A wheezing Bobby could only watch as the guest shoved his way into the door.
“Mate, if you want to see them that badly--” Bobby grunted, rubbing his chest as he followed the intruder inside.
The pegasus’ eyes focused on Rain as he entered the living room. She instinctively bristled, pulling away a bit with her wheelchair. “His mom, huh?” the pegasus grunted with a small sneer. “So he’s a stinking crossbreed mudpony, too.”
“Excuse me?” Rain said with a growl.
“You two listen,” the pegasus said, stalking over to Rain and gripping the arms of her wheelchair, leaning down close to her face. His stinking breath, reeking of alcohol and poor dental hygiene, struck her like a slap. “When your freak kid comes back, tell him that if he knows what’s good for him and his family, he and his bitch will stay away from the Heavenly Bawdy, and stop snooping around Quick’s death. She--”
A harsh “Ahem” pierced the air, accompanied by the rattle of a cutlery drawer opening. The pegasus turned to find that Bobby had entered the small kitchen-dining room and was now glaring at him over the wood countertop. As the intruder watched, the glaring earth pony pulled a large knife and a knife sharpener out of a drawer, moving with deliberate casualness. He placed the blade against the sharpener and slowly drew it across the metal with a shiiing.
The pegasus blinked at the knife, then looked up at Bobby. The elder pony kept his gaze fixed on the emerald irides, bringing the knife back to the top of the sharpener and drawing it down with a slow rhythm, making a musical shiiing, shiiing, shining with every repetition.
“That’s my wife and my son you’re messing with,” he growled, a cold fire burning in his wizened blue eyes.
The intruder gulped, the color draining from his face until he was white as a sheet. “Oh-gosh-look-at-the-time-I-gotta-go-have-a-nice-day-bye,” he said, turning and heading for the hallway with his tail between his legs.
Something whistled through the air and struck the wall next to the pegasus with a loud THWACK. The intruder froze, slowly turning to look at the quivering knife stuck in the wall inches from his head.
“Why don’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable,” Rain said coldly, driving herself towards him and using her didgeridoo to push the trembling stallion into a chair. “I’m sure my son and some of his friends would like to meet you.”
Phillip sighed. “Dad, you shouldn’t have opened the door for him,” he chided. “If he--”
“Lesson learned, son,” Bobby said, raising a hoof. “Let’s just be grateful that no one was hurt.”
“Damn, you guys are cool,” Daring grinned. “We should bring you out with us on cases.”
“No, thanks, that was quite enough excitement,” Rain chuckled.
“Where is he?” Phillip growled at Prowl.
“He’s in a holding cell,” Prowl replied, nodding down the hall. “He’s already lawyered up, he--hey!” she called to Finder, who was now storming out of the interview room.
Daring followed him down the hall to the locked metal door that blocked the path to the holding cells. Sergeant MacWillard was sitting behind the duty desk, scribbling on a clipboard.
“I guess you’re here to see our new friend Cross Breeze?” he commented, glancing over his shoulder at the lines of surveillance crystal feeds projected from the wall behind him. The scruffy-maned pegasus was currently sitting on the ripped, flattened mattress in Cell Number Seven, staring at his hooves.
“Messing with family is a scummy thing to do,” MacWillard commented, grunting in pain and shifting in his seat. “If you want, I can kill the surveillance feed for a couple of hours,” he added, pulling a small bottle of painkillers out of his pocket and shaking a couple of white pills into his talon.
“Tempting,” Phillip admitted, the thunder rolling and roaring in his chest. “But no. Just need to talk to him.”
MacWillard nodded as he swallowed the pills dry, reaching beneath the desk and hitting the button. With a buzz, the steel door opened and Phillip pushed through, with Daring right behind him.
A concrete hallway of barred doors stretched out before them. They trotted past a few occupied cells, the tenants throwing out catcalls, taunts, and insults at their backs, before stopping at number seven.
Cross Breeze looked up at them: a glimmer of defiance flashed briefly in his green eyes, but it soon vanished, replaced by a look of defeated contempt.
“The pony from the bar in the Bawdy,” Daring growled.
Phillip gripped the steel bars that separated him from his foe: some part of him, the storm inside the thudding heart that beat against the idol of Angkakert tucked beneath his vest, imagined bending the bars aside and pouncing on his prey, dreamed of hearing him beg for mercy.
But he shook those thoughts aside. He wasn’t that pony anymore. He couldn’t be.
“Who sent you?” he growled at the prisoner.
“I’m not saying shit until my lawyer gets here,” Cross Breeze replied, shooting them a half-formed attempt at a glare. “Nothing except this. Stay away from the Bawdy, detectives. There’ll be others.”
Phillip’s other hoof lunged up and seized the bars with a crash of metal. Cross Breeze yelped and scrambled away from the door, comically tumbling off of the bunk with a chorus of yelps.
“Phil,” Daring said, laying a hoof on his shoulder. He glanced at her, hot breath coming fast through clenched teeth, then slowly let out a long sigh and released the bars, turning and stalking away.
“You got lucky,” Daring scoffed at the cowering pegasus through the bars and turned to follow Phil.
Author's Notes:
Just to solidify where Phillip gets it from.
I originally was going to just use a regular blowfish as the toxin, but the real-life blowfish doesn't kill quite as fast as I wrote it in the script, so I just made one up.
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Case Fifteen, Chapter Four: Homestead
Thump, thump, thump!
“Good!” Bobby grinned, sidestepping his partner, raising, lowering, and tilting the punching mitts to give them moving targets. “Keep your hooves up between hits.”
His red-faced partner nodded, panting heavily as they continued to pummel the mitts. Every punch echoed through the basement gym, each hit hard enough to make his hooves sting.
“Think fast!” Bobby shouted, lunging with his right hoof. His partner slipped the attack, countering with a quick jab to the other mitt held before his chest.
“Good! You’ve been working on that!” Bobby grinned, retreating. “Here it comes!”
His right hoof snapped out. His partner started to slip, but froze, their eyes widening in shock as the feint retreated. A heartbeat later, Bobby’s left hoof crashed into the side of her head, eliciting a startled yelp.
Bobby sighed and lowered his mitts, wiping some sweat from his brow. “You were thinking, weren’t you?”
Twilight rubbed the side of her head where she’d been hit and grimaced. “I know, Bobby,” she admitted, pushing her sweaty mane out of her eyes. “I was expecting the right punch again and reacted too early.”
“When you think, you stop,” Bobby replied. “And when you stop, you get hit, as you did just now.”
“It’s not easy for me to turn my mind off,” Twilight admitted. “There’s just so much for me to think about: using my entire body to strike, how to move, position my hooves, what technique to use…!”
Bobby chuckled and laid a hoof on her shoulder. “It’s a lot to take in at first, I know,” he said. “But with time and some hard yakka, it’ll get easier. I’m sure that those spells of yours weren’t easy when you were starting out, but now I'm sure you can do some truly amazing spells without even thinking!”
Twilight smiled and nodded, a faint blush coloring her cheeks at the compliment. “Thank you, Bobby."
“Now, again,” Bobby said, raising the mitts once more. Twilight took a breath, mopped her forehead, and raised her hooves once more into a guarding position before throwing out a practiced jab-cross combo. “Good, keep going,” Bobby instructed, starting to maneuver around her.
As Twilight continued to work, the thumps of her hooves against Bobby’s mitts mixed with Phillip’s grunts as he pummeled the heavy bag in the corner of the basement gym. He moved around the target with a practiced fluidity, one attack snapping out right after another. In the middle of the room, Daring and Flash were engaged in a wing-up contest; the sweat that dripped from their soaked manes formed puddles on the concrete.
“Eighty-seven,” Daring grunted, her forehead brushing against the floor as she dipped down. Her wings shuddered with effort as she slowly pushed herself back up, groaning through gritted teeth. Her shoulders ached from the effort of keeping her forelegs mounted to her sides, but she kept them locked still. Her wings locked out to their full extension, and she relaxed the muscles, allowing gravity to slowly pull her back down to the ground, inhaling as she caught herself inches from the ground. Flash, however, faceplanted into the ground with a solid thwap.
“Eighty...eight…” the younger pegasus groaned, his wings trembling like willow trees in a hurricane as he tried to push himself back up. He made it halfway up before collapsing in a heap, panting and trembling as his tongue lolled out of his mouth.
Daring grinned at him as she pushed herself back up. “I win,” she panted, placing her hooves on the ground and standing up with a relieved sigh.
“I’ll...catch up...one day,” Flash panted, slowly hauling himself back up. He huffed and shook his head, tossing sweat from his mane.
“I’m sure you will one day, kid,” Daring grinned. “But Rainbow Dash is probably way ahead of both of us by now.” She sighed and ran a hoof through her mane. “I miss her,” she admitted. “Hard to believe she won’t be back for another five weeks.”
“I bet that she’s loving air force training,” Flash replied. “She’ll be an officer in the Wonderbolts before we know it.”
“Guys! Dinner!” a voice called from upstairs. Everypony halted their exercise and headed up the stairs with relieved groans and sighs, rubbing sore muscles.
Rain was waiting at the top of the stairs, smiling at her charges as they filed up past her. “Been a long time since I cooked for such a large party,” she chirped happily.
“Definitely makes up for coming over here to be beaten like I was back in training,” Flash commented with a groan, plucking the shoulder holster carrying his .45 Filly M1912 from the hoofrail at the bottom of the stairs and carrying it up with him.
"You've improved a lot in a short time, though," Phillip said, clapping the stallion on the back. Flash's face briefly lit up with a proud smile.
“So have I,” Twilight said. “But I think I prefer doing research and experiments!”
“You said you wanted to learn how to defend yourself,” Daring pointed out. “We told you it wouldn’t be easy.”
“Well, I think Spike and I have just the thing for after a hard workout,” Rain smiled, wheeling herself over into the kitchen. Spike was currently carrying a steaming pot filled with pasta mixed with mushrooms and beef out onto the porch; the darkness out back was lit not just by stars, but by the glowing coals of a campfire set on the ground before the bare cherry tree.
“Spag bol,” Phillip smiled at the mouth-watering aroma, licking his lips in delight as his eyes tracked the steaming pot.
“It’s not Aussie-quality beef, but we made do,” Rain smiled. “We’ve got some dampers for you to try, too.”
“Damper?” Flash asked, opening the door to invite in the scent of baked bread.
“Soda bread, baked in the coals of a campfire,” Bobby explained.
“Despite the name, it doesn’t actually have soda in it,” Spike commented, placing the pot of spag bol on a rickety table next to a plate loaded with round, white, still-steaming bread and seven plates and sets of cutlery.
They feasted on the dinner, speaking of other things, laughing at stories and memories. When dinner was over, Flash, Spike, Bobby, and Phil walked out onto the backyard and began tossing a ball back and forth.
“So, do you have any ideas on who killed Quick?” Flash asked, tossing the ball to Phil.
“What did I tell you, Flash?” Phillip replied, catching the ball.
“Right, right: don’t theorize unless you have all the data,” Flash nodded, watching as Phillip tossed a curveball to his father. “But what data do we have?”
“Not much, unfortunately,” Phillip admitted. “But we have a BOLO out on Gold, and on the stalker. Tomorrow, we’ll speak to the crew at the Bawdy again, see what else we can find out.”
Flash groaned and shook his head. “That doesn’t feel like enough,” he admitted. “We should be doing more, looking back over the crime scenes, just...something!” he cried, flinging his hooves up into the air.
“You’re awful wound up, kid,” Daring said lackadaisically, looking up from the typewriter that she’d brought out onto the porch.
“Working on your story?” Twilight asked, leaning over to check her papers.
“Yeah, your mom sent over some edits on the latest draft,” Daring confirmed, checking a letter with notes and comments before retyping a sentence.
“A mare is dead and another stallion is running for his life!” Flash shouted. “I don’t see how you can be so calm about this! I...do you just not care?”
Phillip gave him a small scowl as his words struck him like a hammer. The reverberation echoed through the tensed muscles in his gut, making the stress that he’d been hiding beneath the mask writhe like a serpent, raising its hissing head. He braced himself, but the images came, all the same, washing over him in a torrent of noises and smells and sights.
Trace screaming as the beast devoured his eyes and brain. Bodies in bloodied uniforms and armor laying amidst the carnage of a dark, dank tunnel. A silver-haired unicorn that stank of death, one eye missing, the flesh pulled away from his face to reveal rows of yellowed teeth, lunging at him.
“Phil? Son?”
Phillip latched onto his father’s voice and pulled himself back into reality, wresting back control of his breathing. The world shifted back into focus around him and he realized that he was staring at the ground, one cold, trembling hoof rubbing the Angkakert totem that hung around his neck. His father was rubbing his back, bright blue eyes full of concern.
“I’m okay,” Phillip nodded, taking a breath as he ordered the serpent to slither back into its hole. He looked up to find that all of the others were also gazing at him in concern. All except for Daring, who had turned away to hide her pallid face, folding her arms and wings in close in an attempt to stave off the shivering.
“We do care, Flash,” Phillip said coolly. “But we’re all tired and stressed out from a long day. Rest is important, too.”
Flash hung his head. “Sorry, Phil,” he mumbled. “I…” He rubbed the back of his head and sighed.
“I really want...no, I need to get this case done right,” he admitted. “Captain Oak had me brought in to Major Crimes as Red’s partner because of my track record and because I’d worked with Red before, but...there’s a lot of ponies who think that I don’t deserve to be on that desk. That I got promoted because I’m just the department’s golden boy.” He gritted his teeth. “I have to prove them wrong...and prove it to myself. If I can’t do this, then…” He lowered his head. “Then maybe I don’t deserve to be a detective.”
“Flash, you passed the tests,” Twilight reassured him, trotting over and giving him a hug. “You’ve had a lot of experience. You’ve proven time and time again that you’re brave and smart and quick-thinking. You’ve proven that you have what it takes to be a detective. Don’t listen to the naysayers; listen to your experience.”
Flash managed a small smile at Twilight. “Thanks, Twi, but...I still feel like I should be doing more.”
“He’s got a point,” Daring commented from the porch. “I’m no fan of just sitting around and waiting for stuff. At the very least, we could go take another look at Quick’s apartment.”
“This late at night?” Spike commented. “Will they even let you in?”
Twilight suddenly brightened with an idea. “We don’t have to go there! I’ve got it here!” Her horn lit up and with a pop of purple light, a notebook appeared in front of her. She flipped it open to a page that was scrawled over with runic symbols.
“This is an experimental method that I’ve been trying,” she explained, beckoning Flash, Phillip, and Daring over and drawing a circle with them inside of it. “I took a scan of the crime scene when I was there and copied the data onto this. If I did it right, it should give us a three-dimensional view of the scene.”
“Which means…?” Daring asked.
“Watch!” Twilight said, placing the notebook on the ground in the center of the circle, drawing other runes around the book. She lit up her horn, murmuring a soft, rolling chant as purple energy began to fill the entrenched lines, letting out a soft hum. The notebook’s pages turned on their own with a loud rustling, then the lines began to glow.
A moment later, there was a flash of light, and then the four ponies were standing inside the front hall of a cozy, well-lit apartment.
“Whoa,” Daring said, looking around. She reached out to try to open the drawer of a nearby table, but her hoof merely went through the image.
Flash looked down, then gasped in horror and jumped back when he realized that he was standing inside the specter of Quick Step’s body, who still lay on the floor next to the dropped phone. She stared sightlessly up at the ceiling, face blue and tongue hanging out of her mouth ghoulishly.
“Sorry,” Twilight said sheepishly. “But as you can see, it worked! This is exciting: a new way to reexamine crime scenes, preserving it for eternity!” She squeed and clapped her hooves together.
“Wow,” Spike commented, leaning in through a wall to study the projection. “Looks just like a dome of light from outside. You’ve really outdone yourself, Twi!”
“Crikey,” Bobby said as he and Rain both leaned in through the wall. “Sheila, you’re bonzers at this!”
“Yeah, this is awesome!” Flash grinned. Twilight blushed beneath the attention.
“Okay, let’s see if there’s something we missed the first time around,” Phillip said, wandering about the room.
“We’ll leave you to it,” Bobby said as he, Rain, and Spike retreated.
“If Gold Signature left before Quick woke up, he might’ve left behind something,” Flash posited.
“Or taken something with him,” Phillip said, pausing and looking at the small woven basket on the hallway table where the phone had stood. The only things in it were a small key and a bottle of hoof sanitizer attached to a bracelet.
“Bet this basket is where they kept their keys,” Phillip said, glancing down at the dropped apartment key next to Quick’s body. “But there’s one key that’s missing from here.”
“Her backstage key!” Daring cried. “She didn’t have it!”
“Maybe the intruder took it,” Flash pointed out.
“Possibly, but it didn't look like he paused in front of the table,” Phillip mused, moving on.
The living room didn’t yield anything else useful, and Twilight guided them over into the bedroom by turning the pages of her notebook, making the room move around them. A scan of the bedroom revealed nothing else of interest, but Daring turned towards the cracked door that led into the bathroom.
“Didn’t Mortis say that Quick was dying her mane?” she mused out loud.
“Uh...yeah,” Flash replied.
“Let me satisfy my curiosity on something,” Daring said, prompting Twilight to flip a page and sending the bathroom sliding towards them. Daring checked the sink, then leaned into the trash can and poked around.
“Aha!” she declared. “There’s a bottle of mane dye in here, and traces of dye in the sink!”
Everypony else checked and also spotted the spots of blonde liquid in the sink bowl and the empty bottle and brush in the trash can.
“And Quick didn’t apply that,” Flash commented. “That dye in her mane was weeks old.”
“Gold must’ve dyed his mane before he left,” Daring concluded.
Phillip checked the small closet in the bedroom, scanning the small collection of coats and other clothes within. “I see an empty hanger and a missing tie on the rack there,” he said. “If he took the backstage key…”
“Then he could’ve sneaked into the backstage of the Heavenly Bawdy,” Daring concluded.
“Because...he was trying to hide something there!” Flash realized, his eyes widening. “There must be something he had, some proof about Eagle Trust, and he hid it there because he figured that it would be harder to find than in his apartment!” He bounded out of the image. “C’mon, we gotta go now!”
“Hold on, Flash,” Twilight cut him off, closing the book and erasing the magical circle, causing the construct to dissipate into little motes of light that faded away. “We’d need to get a warrant first before we search the Bawdy.”
“And there’s still the fact that we know the Bawdy is being watched,” Daring pointed out. “If we go in there snooping around, somepony there who works for Eagle Trust could let them know what’s happening. We had two close calls already today: pushing our luck too much is a bad idea.”
Flash glanced over at Twilight, who had frowned nervously, shuffling one hoof. “Well, what do you suggest?” he asked, stepping closer to her, one wing half-extended as if to drape around her.
Daring pondered silently for a moment, tapping her chin in thought, then her eyes brightened with an idea. “You think Rarity can do rush jobs?” she asked Twilight.
Twilight raised an eyebrow as Daring outlined her plan. “Are you sure about this?” she asked slowly.
“Can you even dance?” Flash asked, his face the picture of skepticism.
“I can,” Daring said defensively. “I learned how to dance ballroom and swing when I was in the Family; makes for a good cover for high-society events and dance halls.”
Phillip smirked. “Oh, hush. I'm not that out of practice,” Daring hissed, sticking her tongue out at him.
The other three all glanced at one another, then Phillip sighed. “I suppose it’s the plan we’ve got,” he conceded. “In the meantime, I can help Flash and Red interview the staff.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky this time,” Flash muttered, putting on his shoulder holster and tightening it to his body.
“I’ll work on a simple glamour for you in the morning,” Twilight offered to Daring. “I’m not very good at illusions, but I think I can get something to alter your cutie mark and mane and coat.”
“Appreciate that,” Daring nodded, trying and failing to stifle a yawn. “It’s late; we’d all best get some rest for tomorrow.”
“I’ll take you and Spike back home, Twi,” Flash offered as they headed inside, where Spike, Rain, and Bobby were waiting.
“Thank you, Flash,” Twilight smiled as they reentered, scooping up a semi-dozing Spike from the couch. “Thanks for the practice, Bobby.”
“Can’t wait till next time, sheila!” Bobby grinned at her, waving goodbye as the visitors exited into the night. The rumble of a motorcycle starting up pierced the night, then the growling of the engine faded away into the dark.
Gathering up the typewriter and loose manuscript, Daring set the equipment on the small writing table in the living room, opposite Phillip’s experiment worktable. She stacked up the papers with a smile, marking the place where she’d paused her editing with a bookmark.
“I can’t wait to see that published, ampa,” Rain smiled at her.
“Me neither,” Daring replied as Phillip and Bobby headed upstairs, both stallions yawning.
“Good night, ampa. I love you,” Rain said.
Daring paused, the warmly spoken words echoing in her chest. I love you. She could never recall her own mother or father ever saying that to her, or to each other: what little she could recall of them speaking at all was either inebriated slurring or violent shouts that seemed to shake the foundations.
She turned back to Rain, swallowing, finding it hard to speak. “I...good night, Rain,” she mumbled, wincing internally as the inadequate words spilled lamely out of her.
Rain just smiled and stroked Daring’s cheek with a hoof. The touch lasted only a moment, but Daring found herself gently rubbing against the hoof, wishing it would last longer, trying to hold onto the soft warmth of the touch as she climbed upstairs and into bed.
She slithered up against Phillip, who gently wrapped his forelegs around her, murmuring quietly and nuzzling her ears as she cuddled into his embrace. Sleep soon took them both.
“Thanks for the ride, Flash,” Twilight said as she climbed off the back of the motorcycle.
“Yeah, thanks!” Spike said, popping out of the sidecar and trotting up to the door of the squat little house on Golden Oaks Drive.
Flash smiled at Twilight but then frowned, looking up at the house.
“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked.
“I…” Flash muttered, rubbing his mane. “After what happened to you today, you should have some extra protection, but I can’t leave my mom alone.”
Twilight chuckled. “I appreciate the thought, Flash, but I’m not worried about any intruders: after Whitestone, I made sure to double-check all of the wards on my house.” She lit up her horn as Spike inserted the key into the front door. A barrier of magenta energy flashed over the house, arcane symbols running along the length of the wards. “There’s no chance that anypony could get into my house without me knowing.”
“But…” Flash started to say, fidgeting on the bike.
“But I figured that you wouldn’t want to choose between me and your mother,” Twilight said, raising her foreleg and offering it to him. “So I already made plans.”
“Huh?” Flash asked, his mouth hanging open as he took her foreleg and allowed her to guide him to the front door. A grinning Spike held the door open for them both.
As Flash trotted into the hallway, greeted by the familiar photograph of Twilight with her family on the wall, his ears perked up when he heard a familiar mare’s voice humming from inside.
“Mom?” he called as they entered the living room and spotted the gray-maned pale gold unicorn sitting on the couch, her body covered with a thick blanket, one hoof running over a Braille library book.
“Hi, sweetie,” Pastor Joyful Sound smiled in their general direction. “Thanks for inviting me over, Twilight. And thanks for checking out these books for me.”
“It was the least I could do,” Twilight smiled.
Flash looked back and forth between his mother and Twilight before a smile crossed his face. “You brought her over so we could all stay safe?”
“It made sense,” Twilight explained. “The increased risk of being a single target was balanced out by any would-be intruders having to deal with several protective wards, a dragon, and a trained and armed police officer.”
“And one of the best magic users in Equestria,” Flash added, booping Twilight.
Twilight blushed, her ears flopping back. “Thank you, Flash,” she mumbled.
Spike yawned. “We’ve got a pretty big day tomorrow. You’d best get some sleep, Twi, otherwise you’re gonna be up all night making plans.”
“I should be getting ready now,” Twilight said, shaking her head to try to stave off fatigue. “A glamour isn’t that easy to set up--”
“Twilight…” Spike said, raising an eyebrow at her.
“He’s got a point, Twi,” Flash agreed.
Twilight tried to glare at both of them, but could not fight off a yawn of her own, nor prevent her heavy eyelids from blinking. “Ugh, fine,” she mumbled. “Let’s get to bed. Good night, Pastor Sound.”
“G’night, mom,” Flash said, kissing his giggling mother on the forehead.
“Good night, dears,” Joy chuckled, laying down on the couch and wrapping the blankets around herself, continuing to peruse her book.
Twilight led Flash and Spike upstairs to her bedroom. Spike waddled over to a small basket loaded with blankets and pillows in the corner and clambered into it, curling up beneath the sheets. He was snoring within moments.
Twilight and Flash both paused, looking at Twilight’s bed. Flash looked over at the nightstand table. Lit by the bedside lamp was a small vase filled with a light turquoise liquid and a bouquet of lavenders.
“Aren’t those…?” he found himself asking.
“A special potion I made with help from Fluttershy’s friend, Doctor Tree Hugger,” Twilight explained with a nervous chuckle. “It’ll keep the flowers alive and healthy for a long time.”
“Oh. That’s...cool,” Flash replied, rubbing the back of his head.
Both of them looked at the bed, then at each other, their cheeks turning darker shades of red by the moment. “So…” Flash started to say.
“There’s a sleeping bag you can use...unless…” Twilight mumbled, rubbing her foreleg nervously.
“Unless?” Flash prompted.
“Unless...you’d like to sleep with me?” Twilight offered, her cheeks turning red.
“Er…?” Flash asked, his mouth dropping open.
“N-not like that!” Twilight quickly cried, her face doing an excellent impression of a stop sign. “I, I just meant...if you were here, it would...make me feel safer…” Her voice trailed away and she resumed rubbing her foreleg again as her head lowered, but Flash spotted her eyes darting about into every corner, checking the dark night sky out the window twice.
Flash smiled and nodded. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
He loosened his shoulder holster and placed it on the leg of the bed frame. Switching off the light, Twilight pulled the sheets back with her magic and they both climbed onto the mattress. Flash gently wrapped his forelegs and a wing around Twilight, pulling her close to share his warmth. Twilight let out a soft, contented coo as she nestled her head against his chest, right next to his dancing heart.
“Flash?” she murmured, pulling the sheets back over them both.
“Yeah?” Flash asked, trying to keep his heart from leaping right out of his chest and quietly scooting his hips away from her.
She leaned up and her lips brushed against his, soft and warm. He kissed her back, running one hoof along the long mane that smelled of lavender and parchment.
“I love you,” she whispered, blinking up at him with eyes that reflected the shimmering stars through the window and seemed to magnify that light, warming him to the core.
“I love you, too,” Flash smiled at her, kissing her on the forehead and placing his chin atop her head. She let out a little giggle and nestled up against him.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry!” Twilight cried, pulling away from him. “Sorry, I didn’t think about my horn!”
“It’s okay,” Flash said with an embarrassed chuckle, rubbing his cheek where he’d been jabbed. “Maybe...you should be the big spoon," he suggested, trying not to glance down at what he hoped was a relatively small bulge in the sheets.
“Sounds like a plan,” Twilight said sheepishly.
Flash turned around so that his back was to her, letting out a quiet sigh of relief that she hadn’t noticed. As Twilight wrapped her forelegs around his chest and tucked her head against the side of his neck, he thought he heard his mother giggling from downstairs. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and was soon asleep.
Author's Notes:
I liked writing this chapter. It was good to give these characters some time to relax and show off the growing familial bonds between them.
I was trying to imply that these training meetups with Flash and Twi are becoming more common, but it's always bugged me that I"ve never had time to show that in the previous stories. Oh, well, hopefully I can fix that in the future.
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