Arc ONE: Chapter 2

It was dark but not quiet. The chirping of crickets and birds, and the rustling of autumn leaves surrounded Pinstripe—a veritable chorus of night sounds orchestrated by the moon goddess, or perhaps, by the now distant city itself. He stood beside his parked carriage, staring up at the ivory towers that comprised Manehattan’s asylum for the criminally insane.

Though it was considered one of the oldest buildings in the city, the asylum wasn’t actually in Manehattan. It had been built on the outskirts of Hollow Shades, a sleepy village just west of Manehattan that was nestled in the center of a dense wood.

Manehattan’s founders believed that during the era of Discord’s reign, weary travelers had found refuge from the constant cannonade of madness here in the forest that surrounded Hollow Shades.

Feeling bored, Pinstripe let his gaze wander down the stretch of road that had led him to this eerie place. It was a dirt road, flanked on both sides by dense woods. A great deal of the forest had been cleared away to make room for the construction of the asylum, though the cluster of buildings seemed to emerge from the forest as naturally as any tree or shrub. It stood darker than a tomb; there were no lamps to a road so far from the city. The only light came from a pair of lanterns mounted on the back of Pinstripe’s carriage. And the moon.

After ten minutes of this bored waiting, a dark shape approaching from the asylum caught Pinstripe's unprepared eye, startling him. It wasn’t fear that tightened his stomach as he watched the silhouetted figure approach the iron gate, its mane or tail or long overcoat trailing ghost-like in the wind. He wasn’t flooded with feelings of terror, only a heightened sense of discomfort.

The shadowy figure moved with a distinct, almost calculated wobble. It staggered toward the gate intently, seeming to make a point of stumbling every few steps. As it neared, its features began emerging, its veneer of mystery made plain in the lanterns' glow.

Now Pinstripe could see that the phantom was only a pony, a mare, judging by her size and stature. His eyes were drawn to those clumsy hooves. They carried her so precariously, and as she neared, he saw the thick leather gloves on her front hooves, as well as the worn boots on her back legs. Frizzy strands of mane caught the light, giving Pinstripe an eyeful of the tangled pink mess on her head. This surprised him. He acutely remembered Blitzkrieg telling him the boss’s mane was long, and straighter than a razor’s edge.

When she reached the gate, she stopped and shielded her face. At first Pinstripe thought she was giving her eyes time to adjust to the light. However, when she resumed her skillful staggering, moving on three legs now, he realized she wasn’t protecting her eyes from the sting of the lanterns' glow. No, she was hiding her face from him.

He took a step forward to meet her, and she made a harsh, blood-freezing sound that halted the zebra in his tracks. With wide eyes and raised brows, he stood rigid as a plank, waiting, for what he didn’t know.

She mimicked him, freezing ramrod straight as well. Both held this strange reflective stance for several seconds, neither budging an inch.

And then she started laughing.

“Hehehehehe—sorry, did I scare you?” The cadence of her voice surprised him more than her mane. Much more. It was rich, smooth and sugary sweet; she had a lilt one could pour over pancakes.

“Startled me, maybe,” answered Pinstripe. He straightened his tie, a little embarrassed.

“It’s alright if you were scared…heh heh heh… I’m a scary pony.”

No, not scary, Pinstripe thought. Disquieting, maybe. Odd, definitely. But not scary. He felt more awkward around her than frightened. “I’m here to… ah… pick you up, I guess,” he said tentatively. “Kriegy sent me. Blitzkrieg, I mean.”

She shuddered violently at the mention of Blitzkrieg’s name. With fear or rage, he didn’t know; the tremor came and went too quickly to tell.

“You got a name, zebra?” she asked.

“Pinstripe.”

She laughed again. “You got a name, Stripe.”

“I just told you. It’s Pinstripe.”

“A zebra named Stripe?”

“Pinstripe,” he tried again, emphasizing the “Pin”.

“Stripe…” she said as if she hadn’t heard him. “Heh… heh… hehehehe…” Her laughter

began as a deep rumble at the back of her throat, then exploded into something clamorous and manic. She reeled and swayed from the force of it. She folded double and clutched her sides, shaking as if in great pain, laughing long and loud. The longer she laughed the less her cackling sounded like laughter. The full-breasted guffaw warped into a dry cough, until eventually she was covering her mouth and hacking as if very sick. Pinstripe moved to help her, but she stayed him with an outstretched forehoof, panting as the last of the coughs waned and died in her throat.

“Zebra named Stripe…” She breathed deeply, attempting to catch her breath. “…And I thought my jokes were bad.” She stood up straight and turned her head so that her frizzy pink mane veiled her face.

Pinstripe’s discomfort became annoyance. The mare’s laughter conjured in him memories of his youth: the childhood he had spent in the slums being bullied by the Trottingham hooligans that lived in the shantytowns west of Discord’s Kitchen. He recalled their taunts, heard them in his memory as if those schoolyard bullies were here now.

What’s black and white and red all over, they had often jeered before dragging him to the playground restroom, where they proceeded to beat him senseless and leave him facedown in toilet full of red water. They pounded him, stole his money, spat on him, insulted his mother, his race—but nothing stung like their laughter. He loathed that sound. A sound that still haunted his nightmares to this day—and this pony… this mangy thing with the sweet voice and the tangled mane… her laugh tore into his heart with claws. It peeled away the ugly black scabs that marred his essence, opening old wounds.

Anger seized every muscle in his body, every fiber of his being. For a moment he forgot who she was and started toward her.

Then, a moment after that, Pinstripe took a calming breath that ended the rage rising in him. He was not a colt anymore. The bullies and the laughter still infuriated him, but now he knew better than to wear that anger on his sleeve. Anger was a form of power, he had learned, and if one could anger his enemy than one held the power. He hated being laughed at, but he hated being manipulated much, much more. “And what about you?” he said after regaining his composure. “You got a name, Prankster?”

The pink mare twisted her head, giving Pinstripe a view of the other side of her mane. Now he wasn’t sure if she was hiding her face or looking for something.

“That’s The Prankster to the likes a you, ya mook,” she said playfully, twisting her sweet voice so that it sounded like the gangsters Pinstripe had seen in movies when he was young. He still had a soft spot for those old films, with their shameless and often silly glorification of the gang lifestyle. Despite himself, and the moment, he laughed at the Prankster’s gag.

“Hey, that’s pretty good,” he said.

She smiled behind her shield of pink mane, still refusing to show her face. “No, no, no, that’s no good at all,” she said. “The Prankster—that’s just some stupid name the papers gave me. You can call me… Pinks...” She said the name ponderously, as if using it for the first time.

“Pinks?” Pinstripe echoed. He wasn’t sure he liked this name any better.

“Pinks and Stripe… Stripe and Pinks…” she said slowly, testing how the names sounded beside each other.

“Ah…Pink Stripes…?” Pinstripe offered, hoping that playing along with this "Pinks" character would better aid him in understanding her odd behavior.

“Hehehehe. Another bad joke; we’re really slaying the audience tonight,” she giggled, looking all around as she moved closer to Pinstripe. “Yes—Pink Stripes! That’s what they’ll call our act. Ho ho, we’ll knock ‘em dead, you and me!”

Pinstripe noticed that Pinks was searching for something. He looked around too, but there wasn’t much to see. Nothing but crows perched on tree branches and miles of empty road that evaporated into darkness in both directions.

And the asylum. Somehow Pinstripe had forgotten it was there. Perhaps because the ancient collection of white walls, darkened corridors and flickering light fixtures had somehow walked through its own gates in the shape of this pink pony. She wasn’t terribly unpleasant, but Pinstripe had decided she was undoubtedly mad.

Remembering now that it was still there, Pinstripe looked to the asylum and wondered which was crazier: the madmare, or the madmare who had set this lunatic free?

When his gaze returned to Pinks, he noticed she was still looking around, being careful to keep her face hidden.

“Is something wrong with—”

“My face,” Pinks snapped. She turned toward him, but kept her eyes and mouth covered with her foreleg. “If Blitzkrieg sent you, I assume it’s in the trunk.”

Pinks marched past Pinstripe, who followed her as she circled the wagon, peering around before stopping at the trunk. She opened a latch and swung the trunk lid upwards.

Pinstripe watched her rummage around, hearing her giggle as she removed a plastic container of some kind. It was white, unlabeled and shaped like a jar. Pinks twisted the lid, then dabbed her gloved hoof into the nondescript container. Pinstripe saw that it was full of some kind of white cream. Makeup, he figured. He peered over Pinks' shoulder and into the trunk, and saw that there were other containers, spray-cans, and something that looked like a stick of lipstick.

Pinks began rubbing her face with the cream, but stopped after applying only a few dollops.

“You mind,” she growled in a new, knotted voice that made Pinstripe jump. He looked away, then slunk off to the front of the carriage where the Tongueless stood with animal-like patience, awaiting the order to return home. As Pinstripe neared them, they greeted him in their peculiar way. Both snorted and lowered their heads, welcoming the zebra to pet them. They were mares: one an earth pony and the other a pegasus. Pinstripe petted the pegasus.

“There’s a good girl,” he cooed, scratching her behind the ear. He reached into his coat and produced a sugar cube, then fed it to the mare. She chewed clumsily without the aid of a tongue, and neighed contently, though she couldn’t properly taste her treat.

Of all the Tongueless owned by Blitzkrieg, Pinstripe was most fond of this grey-coated pegasus mare. He didn't know her name. The Tongueless lost their names when they lost their tongues, and Pinstripe hadn’t known her while she was still working for Krieg.

All of the Tongueless were ex-Shadowbolts who had, at one point, failed Blitzkrieg in some unforgivable way. As punishment for their shortcomings, Krieg had them sent to a unicorn named Temporal who used her magic to lobotomize them. Afterwards, the nearly brain-dead ponies became the loyal, unthinking slaves of whomever held their reigns. Krieg mostly used them for drawing carts, because their clumsiness made them poor maids or house servants.

Pinstripe didn’t like the idea of his fellow equines, even if they were ponies, being turned into Tongueless. Not because he cared for them personally, but because he found the sight of mares and stallions behaving like common animals unnerving.

Still, he was always kind to them, and especially to this grey-coated pegasus. She had a charm about her that he couldn’t resist, with her lazy yellow eyes that never seemed to focus on the same thing at the same time.

“Your boss tried to turn me into one of those things.” Pink’s voice echoed from behind Pinstripe. It had lost much of its sweetness, and now resonated with something new and dangerous. “It was a long time ago, back when I still had a sense of humor. Sometimes I wish ol’ Temporal had lobotomized me. Then I’d be all smiles all the time, not a care in the world… Not that I have any now. Hee hee hee hee hee…”

She let out a deep, humorless laugh. It had a tumbling quality to it, and seemed to roll like an ocean wave. Pinstripe turned around and quickly found himself staring at Pinks. No… now he was staring at The Prankster, at the subject of so many Manehattan horror stories.

White makeup of some kind covered her pink face, except around her eyes, where the white was disrupted by inky black circles. A sloppily painted teardrop decorated her left cheek, but Pinstripe hardly noticed it, or the tinge of green now coloring the ends of her tangled mane.

He was busy staring at her scars.

“TA-DAAAAAA!” she shouted, springing upright and spreading her gloved hooves in a grandiose gesture. She twirled inelegantly, nearly tripping over her unlaced boots, before returning to all fours. “What do you think? I do have to look my best for her, you know. She’s always out there. Watching…”

“W-who is she?” asked Pinstripe, trying without success to tear his gaze from the mare’s painted scars. They began at the corners of her mouth, and the vibrancy of her red lipstick made them look like fresh wounds, as if she were bleeding at this very moment.

“Who is who?” asked Pinks, tilting her head in confusion and then looking up at the sky.

“Who is She?” Pinstripe tried again. “You said she was watching us.”

Pinks’ gaze dropped suddenly, as if weighted, and Pinstripe saw that she was the owner of two beautifully haunting, or perhaps haunting beautiful, blue eyes. They were a light shade of cerulean, all the more pronounced by the dark rings of paint that seemed to cage them. Both eyes were beehives of activity. They pondered and observed and focused and scanned and daydreamed—and without the black circles to keep them in place, Pinstripe worried they might fly from her face in search of new stimulus down the dirt road.

“Who is she?” Pinks echoed, her voice carrying a note of innocent curiosity. “Who is…hehehe…heh heh heh...WHAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!” She erupted into a storm of unbridled laughter. This laugh was new. It had a rapid spinning quality to it, like a cyclone, whirling and whirling and sucking everything into itself. “Why—haha…hoho…heh…heh…heeeee…why would I know that?” She moved closer and threw a foreleg around Pinstripe’s neck, making his whole body go stiff.

“I like you, Racing Stripe. You’re a funny zebra…” She pulled him closer so that they were cheek-to-cheek, stroking his mane without love or lust. Then, in a blur movement, seized his neck and slammed him into the side of the wagon, pinning him, strangling him with powerful forehooves. “But if you don’t stop staring at me by the time I count to three, I’m going to break your neck!”

Startled, the pair of Tongueless at the wagon’s helm rose to their hind legs, kicking and neighing.

In the span of one second, maybe two, Pinstripe watched The Prankster’s painted expression mutate from gleeful to livid. Her active eyes seemed to shake in her head, as if trying to free themselves from the black circles. She brought her muzzle close to his, staring at his face, into his eyes, watching his cheeks change color, watching him die by degrees.

“One…” she counted, twisting Pinstripe’s neck, tightening her grip. “Two…”

He let out an oxygen-starved gurgle, screwed his eyes shut and tried to turn away before Pinks reached the number three.

“There’s a good zebra,” she said brightly, releasing her hold and patting him on the head.

Pinstripe let out a gasp, shocked by the sudden flood of cool air filling his lungs. She was strong. Pinstripe knew that earth ponies were renowned for their superior physical strength, but Pinks was alarmingly powerful for a mare her size. Instinctively, he tugged at his shirt collar and adjusted his tie. Catching his breath proved difficult, and when he was breathing easy again, Pinstripe was careful not to look directly at Pinks.

The flustered zebra opened the carriage door for his new boss. “We should probably get out of—”

“It’s the scars, isn’t it,” interrupted Pinks, flashing her new friend a knowing smile. “The reason you were staring. It’s the scars, right? Tell me, do you have a knife, Awning Stripe?”

He nodded, indicating that he did.

“Give it here. And I’ll show you how I got them.”

Pinstripe started sweating. “Sorry, boss, but we really should get going. It’s… ah… late and...”

“Give. Me. The. Knife.” Her voice was murderous, each word a stab in Pinstripe's ears.

He stood paralyzed between the open door and the mare’s outstretched hoof. He swallowed hard and reached into his overcoat, searching for the handle of his butterfly knife. When he found it, he thought hard about using it on Pinks.

“Hurry now, we don’t have all night,” said Pinks.

Again Pinstripe’s eyes fixed on her scars, and he recalled how quickly the gloved hooves had found his neck. Could he draw the blade fast enough? Or would those strong, agile limbs of hers snake around his throat again, finishing the job for good this time? The slight upturn in her cheeks seemed to ask these questions and more. The expression challenged him. Dared him.

“There’s a good zebra,” said Pinks, as Pinstripe passed her knife without fuss. She flipped the blade open and bit down on the handle, gripping it between her teeth. Then she looked around one more time—searching again for her, or whatever apparition her deranged mind had conjured. After nearly a minute of this aimless searching, Pinstripe summoned his courage and attempted to reason with the unreasonable mare.

“You’re wasting my time and yours, boss. There ain’t nothing out there,” he said. “Let’s go already. Kriegy’s waiting for us to—Hey! Hey, what are you doing!”

Pinks ignored Pinstripe’s sudden outburst. She wandered to edge of the road where the woods began and knelt down. Fresh blood dripped from a new, self-inflicted wound on her foreleg, where she had cut herself moments ago. Humming pleasantly, she extended the bleeding limb, dangling it as if to bait some unseen predator.

“Here boy,” she said, speaking clearly despite the knife in her mouth. The blade hung comically from the corner of her mouth, bobbing as she spoke but refusing to fall, like a fat cigar in the mouth of cartoon character. “Heeere boy. Come to mama. Come and get it.”

“What are you…?” Pinstripe’s voice trailed off. His eyes shifted toward the line were the edge of the road ended and the wildlife began. That line… it seemed to separate civility from nature, sanity from madness, but on which side of the spectrum he stood, Pinstripe didn’t know.

Something rustled the undergrowth.

What happened next happened fast. Pinstripe heard the growl of a starving animal. He saw the diamond dog leap from the shrubs—leap at Pinks—its maw gaping, teeth gleaming yellow in the low light. And he saw the knife flash, a brilliant silver streak of violence that tore into the leaping dog’s stomach, cutting a crimson swath across the night.

But before any of that—before the growl and the leap and the knife—Pinstripe saw the Prankster’s tail twitch. He saw a tremor run from dock to tip, and after that her movements were more than just fluid and precise. They were anticipatory. She had known the dog was there. She had known when it would pounce and how fast— maybe even how high.

When it was over, Pinstripe rushed to her side.

Pinks stood above the diamond dog, staring down at it with something like sympathy in her active blue eyes. The animal lay on its back, whining as blood gushed from a gash in its stomach.

She spat the knife from her mouth. “Oh there, there, you poor dear.” She crouched down and lifted the animal’s head from the ground, cradling it in her forelegs. “It’s okay, it's okay. Ooohhhh, sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh, you’re gonna be fine.”

The dog looked up at her, its eyes unfocused, its long tongue hanging limp from its mouth. Then it let out a short yip as Pinks twisted its head, snapping its neck easily and without fuss. The deed done, she shut the dog’s eyes and gently laid it down on the ground.

“What did I say about staring?” She glowered at Pinstripe, who was now standing over her. He wore an expression that was at once appalled, frightened and deeply impressed.

“Sorry,” he said, quickly looking away. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“You knew the dog was there. You knew when it was going to pounce. When it—”

“It probably wasn’t alone,” Pinks said thoughtfully, once again cutting Pinstripe short. “You’re right about that much.”

“I’m right about what? What are you talking about now?”

“I agree, it’s definitely one of Blood’s little mongrels. See how its ribs are showing? That crazy stallion—hehehe—he likes to keep his pets hungry. Thinks it makes them better hunters.”

“What? Stop it. Stop rambling and explain it to me!” Pinstripe shouted. Pinks glared at him and he shut up quick. Where that sudden surge of bravery had come from, he didn’t know. Perhaps he had been caught up in the moment, enamored by the quick kill. Perhaps he was losing his mind. It was a scary thought. One night on a dirt road with this lunatic and he was already going batty.

“Blood Orange. He’s an old playmate of mine. And this,”—she grabbed the dog’s tongue and starting playing with it, bobbing it up and down as if it were a cat’s toy—“this is—woohoo—woooo—hehehe—ha ha ha ha ha!—this is just a warning! There are more coming! More watching!"

Abruptly, Pinks released the tongue. She stood up. Her tail twitched again. “We should go now,” she said, her voice suddenly deadpan. “I’ll ride shotgun.”

--------------------------

A black suited stallion waited for Pinstripe’s carriage to pull away before stepping out of the woods. He strode to where his pet lay dead at the edge of the road, his deep maroon mane and tail swaying in the wind.

Sharp eyes noted the length of the dog’s wound. It stretched horizontally from one end of the animal’s abdomen to the other, a thin red cummerbund that cut a semicircle around its midsection. Smiling inwardly, the stallion knelt and slid a gloved hoof between the folds of broken skin.

“My, my,” he intoned, “two inches of penetration. And with a horizontal slash.” He parted the dog’s lips, checking its teeth for any traces of flesh, blood or hair. Then he checked the animal’s nails for the same. He found none. His pet hadn’t so much as scratched her.

But the blood here on the dirt road… not all of it was the dog’s.

The stallion’s chin fell lightly on the dirt, and he sniffed at the speckles of blood suspiciously. His tongue, quick and snake-like, flicked out to taste the red-stained ground. After a moment of thought, he was sure that some of the blood was hers.

His eyes found the dog again, fixing on the ribs that showed beneath the animal’s fur. She must have injured herself, he concluded, giving the dog a whiff of blood to lure it from hiding. She had used its hunger against it. Clever.

“You’re as dangerous as ever,” he mused aloud, his inward grin broadening. Nearly finished gauging the damage, he rolled the dog over and ran a hoof along the its neck, feeling a break in the vertebrae. “But why the quick death? Why the show of mercy? Unless…”

A message, perhaps? But no joke? No prank? Was she finally starting to take this seriously?

The inward smile breached his thin lips, becoming an outward grin. He didn’t laugh, though. He seldom ever did.