Arc ONE: Chapter 8

Like most every building on the outskirts of Manehattan, and much like the asylum near Hollow Shades, the jailhouse was very old. The outside had undergone much refurbishing, and now resembled a more modern structure—a modern cathedral to be exact—with its stark white walls and dramatically sloped roof. If its architects meant to rob the building of its macabre appearance, they had failed remarkably. It crouched at the eastern-most edge of the city, a stout, brick gargoyle dressed in the trappings of an angel.

The inside of the jailhouse looked its age. While the outside seemed new, the collection of underground cells resembled a medieval dungeon, with crumbling stone walls and rusted iron bars. The cells stood in two parallel, single-file lines that spanned the length of a long corridor. Twenty’s cell stood at the end of one of these lines, making it the farthest from the entrance.

She was sleeping fitfully now, dreaming of her past. The dream had the surreal quality of a well-acted stage play: close enough to reality to feel believable, but still fantastic enough to tickle the imagination. Twenty fulfilled the role of heroine, as all ponies fancy themselves the heroes of their life’s narrative. The villain was none other than Berry Punch, dressed from head to hoof in police riot gear and standing in the middle of a battle-torn street, eyes gleaming with confidence, lips smirking around the handle of a baton in her mouth. Despite the several yards of cracked asphalt that separated heroine from villain, Twenty could smell the booze on Berry’s breath. It was a sickening odor, one Twenty associated with death.

Slowly, Berry reached into the holster fastened to her hip. But instead of removing a gun, she withdrew a severed eye and balanced it on one upturned forehoof. Just as Twenty could smell the booze at such a great distance, she could also see the eye perfectly. It was grey. Dull. Sightless.

With an indignant cry, Twenty flung herself headlong at Berry punch, leaving a trail of hoof-shaped impressions in her wake. She was strong in her dream. Her steps were explosions that tossed up bits of gravel, and her cry shook windows in the faces of the buildings that lined the street. And she was fast as well; the backdrop of the city blurred into an unreadable grey mess as she sped along the street.

But for all her speed and strength, Twenty couldn’t reach the smirking villain. Manehattan was protecting Berry Punch. The street stretched longer and longer with every step that Twenty took, ensuring she would never make use of all that power.

She didn’t get any closer, but the eye became clearer. Now she could see that it was hollow and made of glass. There were two ponies trapped inside the glass eye: an old mare and a young stallion. Her mouth flew open to shout their names, but the dream had robbed her of such knowledge.

“Mother! Brother!” she shouted instead, stinging tears wetting her face as she sprinted.

“Help!” they shouted back. “Help us, Twenty! Save us!”

Twenty ran faster. Again, she tried shouting their names but couldn’t remember them. She couldn’t remember her own name either. It wasn’t Twenty. Twenty was a nickname given to her by Berry Punch, a slur dreamed up by a hateful mind to insult and humiliate her.

A dozen tiny hammers pounded nails into her fatigued muscles, but she ran on in spite of the pain. She was gaining now. The city had given up on shielding Berry from her fate; the street didn’t stretch another inch.

But Berry was unruffled. She waited with a predator’s patience until Twenty was only a few paces away. Then she placed the glass eye on the ground, reared up on her hind legs and neighed into her baton handle, blooddrunk, a cloud of white mist billowing from her nostrils.

With a helpless scream peeling back her bloodless lips, Twenty dove for the glass eye…

Her family shrieked…

And the baton came arcing down…

Then a silence-shattering bang catapulted her from the nightmare. She heard gunfire; somepony was shooting at the guards upstairs. A calamity of sparks, smoke and screaming metal had bolstered into the jailhouse, bringing mutilation and death to any in its path. Twenty flung herself from the cot and landed on all fours, her senses on high alert.

They were here. Blitzkrieg’s thugs—they had come for her.

The color drained from her face. Her body trembled, her nerves suddenly out of control. Her first impulse was to flee, but that was impossible; the walls and the bars had other plans for her…

The crumbling walls...

The rusting bars…

A half-mad thought flickered to life in her mind, like a lit match in perfect darkness. She sprang to her hind legs and jammed her front hooves between two adjacent bars in her cell door. Then she took a deep breath and tried to force her hooves apart, gritting her teeth as she struggled to widen the space between the bars. Her muscles strained. A dozen insect mandibles bit into her wounded shoulder, and a spider’s web of thick, crooked veins bulged beneath the skin of her flexing forelegs.

The bars didn’t budge.

The jailhouse guards were returning fire now; the pauses between gun reports had become shorter and less frequent. Twenty’s fellow prisoners scampered to the fronts of their cells, roused to action by the clamor coming from upstairs. Several poked their heads between bars. Some shrieked in panic, and a select few cackled like hyenas, cursing the guards and thanking Luna for this nightmare she had conjured to send their jailers to the next life.

The mare in the cell beside Twenty pointed a hoof and laughed, mocking her neighbor’s effort to escape. Then the gunfire ceased and a sudden hush came over the prisoners. Silence blanketed the dungeon like a pall covering a casket. Time was caught on hooks and hung suspended in space, unable to progress. Even Twenty had relinquished her mad ambition. Still standing on her hind legs, she rested her head against the cold iron bars. Her chest rose and fell slowly as she waited—for what, she didn’t know.

A uniformed earth stallion tumbled down the flight of stairs that led to the holding cells. At the bottom of the steps, he scrambled to his hooves and tried to flee, but a single bullet fired from the top of the staircase cut his flight short. The round punched a hole in the back of his head. He jerked from the impact and dropped with a thud, his final thoughts spilling out and staining the floor red.

A triad of griffins dressed in black coats descended the steps, walking in single file. Grift wore her usual bored expression, her brows flat with detachment. Lintsalot strolled behind her, clutching a snub-nosed revolver, and Mr. Turnip walked behind him, toting a shotgun, the barrel resting against his shoulder.

The Carnie leader approached the first cell. She poked her beak between the bars, eyes shifting, searching. The cell was empty. She approached the next one in line and did the same, this time finding a unicorn mare with a dull coat and an enchanted clasp fastened to her horn to hinder her magic. The mare backed away as Grift poked her face between the bars, squinting. A disappointed grumble escaped her, and she aimed her pistol into the dark cell.

The unicorn gasped sharply. She couldn’t find the breath to scream.

Twenty heard an explosion of shouts and gunfire erupt from the opposite end of the dungeon. They were coming for her—coming to gun her down like an animal, to dispose of her like so much trash piled high in an alley dumpster.

Anger erupted from deep within her being, a volcanic burst of pain and hate that boiled her insides in molten ferocity. With a curse on her lips, she breathed deep and began pulling at the bars once more. She wouldn’t die here, she told herself. She couldn’t die here; there were still too many ponies in this wretched city that needed to meet a slow end beneath her hooves.

Her powerful hooves! She was strong now. She hadn’t been the night Berry took her family from her, but she was now. With gritted teeth and eyes screwed shut in concentration, she pulled at the bars with every ounce of power she could muster.

A great wailing lament rose up from the prisoners, filling the dungeon with a groaning funeral dirge for the damned. Some banged on the bars of their cells and hurled curses at the griffins, lips flapping and foaming like rabid animals. Some cowered in the darkest corners of their cells, hoping the triad of murders wouldn’t see them in the dim light. Others wept, and the others still dropped to their haunches, clasped their front hooves together and stammered out half-coherent prayers.

A solemn few stood their ground, heads held high, and awaited their fate with dignity. They didn’t scream; they didn’t weep; they didn’t pray. But they did die. The triad of causal executioners strolled by their cells; and their bodies jerked as bullets ripped through their flesh; and their courage awarded them no reprieve from the smoke or the screaming metal.

Twenty redoubled her efforts, but still the bars refused to budge. She could hear the prisoner’s voices becoming quieter and fewer while the gunshots grew louder. How many more cells until they reached hers? How long did she have until—

She shoved the thought aside and pulled harder.

A shotgun blast exploded in an earth stallion’s face, practically decapitating him.

A revolver round punched a hole in a pegasus mare’s throat.

A unicorn stallion dropped to the floor after a bullet struck his side, shattering a rib, and he sputtered and writhed on his back as he fought for breath. Grift didn’t waste another round on him. She moved on to the next cell, leaving him to suffer as he bled out.

A hot snort billowed out from Twenty’s flared nostrils. Fat droplets of sweat rolled down her knitted brow, and frustrated grunts wormed through her gritted teeth. The stitches in her shoulder tore open, and a red spot appeared on the bandage binding her injury. She waded through the sea of fire in her limbs, in her open wound, and redoubled her efforts once more.

She was too strong for these bars, she told herself. She was too strong for this cell, too strong for this entire city. It couldn’t hold her.

Maybe once upon a time it could. Maybe when she was younger and smaller and weaker and could still see with both eyes. Maybe when she was just a foal and her mother woke her early on Monday mornings and cooked her breakfast before kissing her nose and hurrying off to work. Maybe when her older brother took her to the playground and pushed her on the rusted swing sets, his normally sullen face beaming, his rough, labor-weary hooves doing their best to be gentle as they caught her and pushed her, caught her and pushed her, caught her and pushed her... Maybe five years ago on her nineteenth birthday, when a gang of thugs in police uniforms trampled on her frail world, smashing it and scattering it to the wind.

Maybe the city had been able to hold her then. But not now. Not ever again.

With the same listless expression on her face, Grift leveled her pistol at a caged earth stallion and opened fire, not bothering to look where she aimed. He turned away as the gun barked and caught three rounds in the side of his midsection, and one more in the center of his cutie mark. Lintsalot laughed aloud as he walked by wounded pony’s cell, noticing that the fallen stallion’s cutie mark was a dartboard. He took a shot himself, trying to match Grift’s marksmanship, but missed and struck one of stallion’s stifles, earning an agonized yell from the defenselessly pony.

“Come on, quite moving around.” Lintsalot stuck out his tongue, shut one eye and aimed his gun again. The stallion tried to crawl and hide under his cot, but five more rounds sunk into his torso. He plunged into shock before dying an ugly death.

The gunshots were close now. Nearly all the screaming voices had fallen silent, but Twenty didn’t care about any of that anymore. Everything—the pain in her body, the wails of the dying, the gunfire, the old memories of her long dead family—everything was gone now, lost in her need to be stronger than she once was. She didn’t care about Blitzkrieg or the assassins he had sent to kill her. This was between her and the bars now. Her and the city.

Bits of gravel sprinkled down from the where bars met ceiling, iron met stone. Her chest heaved; her veins pulsed as if moments form bursting. Blood dripped from her shoulder wound and splashed on the stone floor. It hurt. Everything hurt—but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. She dug deep and summoned whatever brute and uniquely earth pony strength she could still muster, assuring herself that it was enough.

A loud bang bludgeoned her eardrum, and the pony in the adjacent cell struck the floor like a dropped brick, dead before she had even started falling.

And then, with the low groan of bending iron, the city finally yielded to Twenty. A joyous half-grunting, half-laughing noise flew from her, and the bars opened like a door leading to a new world, a new life.

Her eyes were still shut when she felt the pistol’s hot barrel press against her forehead. They remained that way, closed and uncaring as a gale of hysterical laughter came gusting up from her exhausted lungs. She did it! She won! She had conquered the city with nothing but her will and her naked hooves, and soon she would do the same to Berry Punch.

When she finally opened her eyes, Twenty glanced up and saw an amber gaze peeking at her from beneath flat eyebrows.

“Twenty, right?” Grift holstered her pistol and extended a semi-friendly claw. “I’m Grift. My boss would like a word with you.”

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

Pinstripe sat at the dining room table and gnawed impassively at his plate of steamed vegetables. He felt famished, but the smell of cooked meat wafting in from the next room had diffused his appetite. He didn’t know how Stephen Scope could stand it.

He couldn’t cease pawing at his side where Pinks had stabbed him. The knife wounds were gone now, all traces of physical pain purged from his body, leaving him with nothing but the memory of the blade piercing his skin, and a deep emotional ache in the pit of his stomach. The pleasant fog that had settled in his mind was clear now, and he felt sick without it. He knew for certain that he was still alive. Somehow, the notion wasn’t as comforting as it should have been.

“Are you sure you don’t want any roast?” Stephen called from the kitchen. “I would hate for it to go to waste.”

Pinstripe massaged his temples and wondered why his hallucination of Tartarus had made more sense than the real world. Scope took his silence to mean that his guest wasn’t interested in the meat and promptly disposed of it. His mood unsullied, he pranced back to the dining room and pulled up a chair beside Pinstripe, casually brushing his tail against the zebra’s thigh as he did so.

“Are you feeling better now?” asked Scope. Pinstripe nodded but remained silent. “Oh, goodie!” He clapped his hooves together, the gesture reeking of girlishness. “I gave you such a strong dose I was worried I might have killed you. I’ve never treated a zebra before, and it turns out your physiology is closer to pegasi to earth ponies. Who knew?”

“A strong dose of what?” asked Pinstripe, uncertain if he really wanted the answer.

“Oh it’s just a simple healing potion Temporal and my wife have been working on for the past few months. It’s only good for closing flesh wounds now, but Temporal says it will be able to repair organs when it’s finished,” Scope explained. “I gave you a dose fit for an earth pony of your size. We earth ponies are built tougher than other equines, you see, and… well… as I said before, I’m terribly sorry.”

“Is that why I thought you were Discord?”

“Mild hallucinations are indeed a side effect. You’d be surprised how many of my patients mistake me for the Lord of Chaos. I’m quite comfortable in the role by now. Would you like something to drink?”

“I’m fine.” Out of habit, Pinstripe motioned to adjust his tie, discovering its absence. Feeling silly, he pretended he was only scratching his throat, but Scope saw through the clumsy pantomime and smiled cutely. Pinstripe could feel Scope’s eyes treading up and down his body, and was suddenly hyper-aware of his nakedness. To his surprise, he didn’t feel embarrassed. He scooted his chair closer to Scope and rested his front hooves on the tabletop. “You work for Blitzkrieg?” he asked.

“Huh?” Scope had been too lost in Pinstripe’s eyes to hear the question.

“Do you work for Blitzkrieg?” Pinstripe repeated. “You mentioned something about knowing Temporal, so I figure you must know Kriegy too.”

“I work with Blitzkrieg,” Scope corrected, “and only on occasion. I’m freelance, dear, I work with whoever is willing to pay.” He placed his forehooves on the tabletop and inched them toward Pinstripe’s.

“No loyalties, then?” Pinstripe took the doctor’s hooves in his own. They were so small, he thought, so small and smooth and girlish.

“I have a few,” said Scope, inching closer in spite of himself.

“She doesn’t have to know.” In one swift motion, Pinstripe pulled Scope out of his seat and into his lap, earning a delighted squeal from the doctor. He wasn’t under the drug’s spell any longer. He was thinking clearly now, and he knew exactly what he wanted.

“I envy you.” Scope made himself comfortable on Pinstripe’s lap, stroking the zebra’s mane gingerly. They were chest-to-chest now, and Scope could feel the pounding of Pinstripe’s heart, young and strong and full of hurt and longing. “I always wanted to be a gangster myself, but I’m too… frail, I’m afraid. This world didn’t bless me with the challenges it gave you.”

“That’s nothing to be jealous of.”

“It is. Those challenges led you here to me, and too the Prankster as well,” said Scope. “You should go back to her; she’ll take good care of you.”

“She killed me,” Pinstripe said with a curt laugh.

“If she had wanted you dead, you would be.” Scope climbed down from Pinstripe’s lap and started toward the kitchen.

“Oh come on,” Pinstripe complained, “you came on to me. The whole thing in the tub, and the questions, and… I spilled my guts for you, asshole! Now you’re just gonna leave?”

“I took advantage of you while you were drugged,” said Scope. “Don’t feel special; I do it to all my first time patients. I like hearing their stories, and they are always so eager to tell. Each of them believes their hardships are unique: abandoned by their parents, bullied as children, raised in poverty, raped, molested, mutilated, manipulated… I’ve heard it all countless times before, and your story was no different. Disappointing, really.”

So he was just a story to this stallion, was he? Just an amusing distraction, and apparently not even a good one. Another laugh escaped him. There was something dreadfully funny about that.

“If we’re all the same, then why keep drugging us?” said Pinstripe. “Why keep asking questions?”

“Every once in awhile somepony tells me a story about The Prankster,” Scope said thoughtfully. “She killed you, and I suppose hearing that excited me. I wish I could have seen it with my own eyes. It must have been… romantic.” With that, Stephen Scope skirted out of the kitchen, leaving Pinstripe alone with his empty stomach and his thoughts.

He ate his plate of vegetables in somber silence. The relief of being dead had left him and now he felt numb. Even the discovery of his apparent homosexuality didn’t quite register with him. He had never thought of himself as being gay before, and maybe he wasn’t now. Maybe he had just gone too long without being cradled in a loving embrace.

The thought sounded pathetic in his head. He munched on a mouthful of broccoli and tried to dream up some other reason for his unusual male attraction, but nothing came of his efforts.

It’s been awhile, huh? he heard Pinks say in his head, her voice dripping with its usual syrupy sweetness.

A new thought came to mind, one that seemed so obvious he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him first. This was a prank. Pinks had stabbed him for the sole purpose of sending him to this mad doctor. She knew Scope would make a move, and that Pinstripe wouldn’t be able to resist his gentle touch because it had ‘been a while’.

At the thought, Pinstripe flew into a sudden rage and flipped the table, knocking the last of his food to the floor. Pinks was back at her stupid underground hideout right now, laughing at him, Pinstripe thought. She and her gang of carnivores were making fun of him, calling him a faggot and a pussy and a—

He picked up his chair and hurled it at the wall. “That’s not funny!” His cheeks grew hot with anger, and his heart thudded so heavily that his chest hurt and he could hardly breathe. Fury shrouded his vision like a mist, lending the dining room a red tint. He flew into a fitful tantrum, shouting curses at the empty room. He grabbed up another chair and repeatedly banged it against the wall until it turned to splinters between his hooves.

In that moment he hated everything in the world. He had been forced to relive all those traumatic memories, and for what? The amusement of some lunatic? He felt violated. Humiliated. And he could hear all of them laughing in his ear. Pinks and her Carnies. Blitzkrieg and his Shadowbolts. The uptown big-shots, the playground bullies… He wanted to scream. He wanted to tell them that his life wasn’t a joke, that he wasn’t a joke.

Then he remembered the bullies’ taunt. It echoed through his head like a voice calling from some faraway mountain top.

What’s black and white and red all over...

Normally the memory made him want to scream, but now it forced him to think of night he met Pinks. She had laughed at him then, but in that moment, outside of the asylum, he had remembered to control himself. He wasn’t a colt anymore, and he couldn’t afford to let his emotions be manipulated.

He took a deep breath and reclaimed his composure. He wasn’t afraid of Pinks, he assured himself. She was just a mare in makeup, nothing more. She was intelligent and manipulative, but that was it, and many Manehattan criminals possessed both of those qualities in abundance. From this moment forward, Pinstripe resolved to no longer fear her, and to pay her back for trying to kill him.

He also decided to find Scope. He wasn’t done with the good doctor just yet.

He wandered from the kitchen up to Scope’s bedroom, but didn’t find him there. Next, he walked into the bathroom where he had first laid eyes on the beautiful stallion. Again he found no trace of Scope; the only things to see were the tiled walls and floor, the massive tub and what looked like a body bag draped across the toilet.

Had that been there before? He thought to examine it, but his survival instinct trumped his curiosity, and he moved on to check another room.

He wandered around the entire house but found no trace of Scope. It was as if he were never there to begin with. Wondering why Scope would leave a stranger alone in his house, Pinstripe wandered back into the bedroom. There was still no sign of Scope, but he did notice an expensive looking suit-coat, shirt and tie laid out on the bed. It didn’t make sense for Scope to lay out clothing and then leave in the nude. Pinstripe moved closer and noticed a sheet of lined paper taped to the suit-coat. It read:

A burst of senseless fear filled him, and he backed away from the suit as if it might suddenly gain life and lunge for his throat. He looked around frantically, his mind racing. He wondered how long it had taken him to search the entire house. It was a big house to be sure, but Pinks couldn’t have had time to slip in here, lay out the clothes, leave the note.

Of course she had enough time, you idiot, Pinstripe chided himself. She wouldn’t have needed more than two minutes, and you definitely gave her that.

Did she take Scope? Was she still in the house? Still in the room? Suddenly any notions he had of not fearing Pinks were squashed like an insect carapace beneath a stomping boot. She was here! Maybe she had been here the whole time.

He threw open the closet door in burst of blind panic, fully expecting to find her sitting there beside Scope’s butchered corpse, clutching a bloody kitchen knife and grinning at some private joke. When he didn’t find her there, he dropped to his stomach and searched under the bed. The sight of a fuzzy pink slipper caused him to jump with fright, and it took his fear-addled mind several seconds to realize that it was only a shoe and not her tousled mane or tail.

“Ponyfeathers,” he cursed under his breath. She was in his head after all, poisoning his thoughts, sabotaging his sanity.

“Why don’t you just come and out so we can settle this face to face, you demated stack of shit!” he shouted at the empty room. “You scared I’ll wipe that ugly grin off your face?”

His nerves shot, he started to say more, started to demand that Pinks tell him what she had done with Scope... And then he remembered the body bag.

He stormed into the bathroom like a monsoon, all but kicking the door off its hinges. “If you’ve hurt him, I swear I’ll—!” His threat—that bold and furious declaration of war against the madmare—fizzled into a slew of half-coherent curses and hateful slurs. Frantic hooves reached for the body bag like the claws of some rabid predator reaching for fresh meat. But his hooves were useless here; this was a task better suited for talons or fangs or a razor sharp beak. Lacking these things, he clamped his teeth around the zipper and tugged.

The smell of dead flesh struck his nose like a punch. Now the corpse was exposed from the torso up—a dead caterpillar lying in a torn cocoon. It was an orange-haired stallion, and his green eyes were still open, still gaping in nameless terror at the last horror her ever knew.

Pinstripe jumped away, heart pounding, mouth gaping, throat shuddering as it filled with noiseless alarm. He stumbled backwards into a wall of shower curtains, yanking them down with thrashing limbs as he fell. The curtains smothered his cries as he wrestled with them. The more he struggled, the more entangled he became, until finally, with a desperate wriggling and squirming, he managed to kick them away. Once free, he ran from the bathroom, stumbled down the stairs and dashed headlong through the empty house, tripping several times as he fled.

And then he was gone, screaming and weeping and sprinting into the night.

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

A raucous blur of black and white raced down the sidewalk and nearly crashed into Hazelnut, an earth stallion who wore the hollow-cheeked face of a pony much older than himself. Hazel was sweeping the sidewalk outside of his liquor store, standing upright with a broom in his forehooves, when the blur sped by. It had been a sprinting zebra, he noticed, likely a junkie having a very bad trip. After a dejected headshake and a few more lackadaisical sweeps, he went back into his liquor store, wondering if he should stay open a bit later tonight.

Despite having lived much of his life in the most dangerous city in Equestria, Hazel had always been a chipper pony, but tonight he felt disenchanted. A friend of his had died earlier today, a fellow storeowner named Decaf, and Hazel was in no hurry to close shop and go home to face the silence of his darkened bedroom. After learning of Decaf’s death via news broadcast, he had kept himself busy all afternoon and evening by performing needless task after needless task. He rearranged items on shelves. He took and re-took inventory. And, most recently, he swept the sidewalk outside.

It was late now, and the store was empty and very quiet. Hazel stood behind the front counter and tried to distract himself with a magazine, but couldn’t concentrate on what he was reading. He would read a paragraph, his mind would drift back the news broadcast, and he would have to reread the same paragraph because he couldn’t remember it.

After attempting to read this same paragraph for a fifth time, a customer came in. Judging by her languid movements and threadbare clothing, Hazel assumed the customer was a homeless wino. They were a common sight on quiet nights like this, and often the last customers to shuffle into Hazel’s store. He set the magazine aside and greeted the old mare with a friendly smile and a nod, happy to have some distraction from the indecipherable paragraph and the memory of the reporter’s dour voice.

The wino stumbled through the store with a clownish, exaggerated wobble, as if meaning to draw attention to her apparent drunkenness. Hazel watched the hooded figure retrieve a bottle of liquor and wobble up the front counter. He grinned inwardly at the silly drunk. She was a comforting sight to him, as all the late night winos were. Most Manehattanites were short with the city’s homeless drunks: they shoved past them on crowded sidewalks and often ignored their humble requests for spare change. But Hazel had nothing but empathy for them, and he sometimes gave them discounts on alcohol when they were short a few bits. In strange way, he even envied them. Their lives seemed so simple; they were always too entranced by the spell of intoxication to realize what a miserable place Manehattan was.

The wino set her prize down in front of Hazel and asked for a pack of cigarettes and book of matches from behind the counter. Up close, he noticed a slight dreariness to the mare’s movements.

“Long day, stranger?” said Hazel as he rang up and bagged the items.

“The longest,” answered the wino, a faint slur in her words. “You hear about what happened at that store further uptown? Bunch’a crazy thugs tore it pieces. I was there, ya know. Saw the whole thing go down with my own two eyes.”

“Yeah, I heard.” Hazel’s heart plunged like boulder tossed in a lake. “A friend of mine died because of all that… senseless insanity.”

“What a coincidence…” Before Hazel knew what was happening, the wino’s gloved hooves shot forward and clamped around his neck, squeezing with a python’s strength. “…A friend of mine died today because of my senseless insanity—hehehehehehe!”

Hazel knocked over the plastic bag as he twisted in the mare’s grip. Scrambling to free himself, he lashed out at her face and managed to land a blow that snapped her head back. Her muzzle jerked up, facing the ceiling, and her hood fell away, revealing a thicket of frizzy pink hair. She laughed, front hooves still gripping his neck, and her gaze fell from the ceiling. It was heavy with murderous intent, dropping on him with the weight and sharpness of a guillotine.

With a lunatic’s strength, the mare hoisted Hazel up by his throat and threw him backwards. He crashed into the wall behind him before falling to his haunches, his head swimming more from fear than pain.

Before he could regain his senses, the mare’s gloved hooves were back around his throat, and his back was pressed hard to the wall. A knife slide from one of her sleeves, held in place by some hidden mechanism. She pressed it against Hazel’s neck, drawing a trickle of blood. The blade was cold, but not as cold as the active blue eyes or the scarred grin.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.” Pinks licked her lips, smearing a bit of her makeup. “What do a bored griffin, a cowardly dog, a lonely zebra, a one-eyed earth mare, and a clown all have in common?”

“P-please don’t hurt me!” Hazel cried. “The combination to the safe is ‘23—4—12’. Just take whatever you want and go.”

“Ponyfeathers, I guess you have heard that one before,” she said, her lips curling down in a comical parody of a frown.

Hazel shut his eyes and tried to shrink away, but there was nowhere to go with his back to the wall. This wasn’t happening, he told himself. He had owned this store for five years and had never been the victim of even one robbery, so there was absolutely no way this was happening.

“Come on now! Let’s not be a scaredy-pony. No one likes a scaredy-pony!” Pinks patted one of Hazel’s cheeks, making him squirm. He kept his eyes shut tight. “It’s the scars, isn’t it? You won’t look at me because of the scars.” A giggle flitted up toward the ceiling. “It’s fine, really; they don’t bite, you know. Go ahead and take a look. If you do, I promise what comes next won’t hurt too badly.”

Hazel sniveled, fighting back a stream of threatening tears, and slowly opened his eyes.

“There’s a good pony,” she crooned. “Hey… you wanna know how I got ‘em?”

Hazel remained silent. Pinks didn’t wait for an answer. She wetted her lips and began her grim tale.

“My daddy was… a very loving stallion. He was always laughing, always smiling, always making up fun games for me and my sisters to play,” she began, her tone low and theatrical. “And one day, Daddy made up a very special game. It was a tickling game, and Daddy was very, very ticklish. The rules of the game were simple: Daddy would take turns tickling me and my sisters, and whoever laughed the quietest was the winner. Daddy said we had to play quietly or we’d wake Mommy. He said Mommy wouldn’t like the tickling game. He said it was just for Daddy’s and pretty little daughters.”

Pinks licked her lips and made a lewd smacking sound.

Hazel cringed but remained silent.

“But I loved Mommy very, very much, and I wanted to make her happy. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I told her about the tickling game. Daddy was so happy when he tickled me, and I wanted Mommy to share in that happiness.”

Hazel made the mistake of meeting The Prankster’s hyperactive gaze as she spoke. It was endless. Her eyes were bottomless pits, and every thinkable sin, every devious thought and violent impulse that had ever manifested in the collective consciousness of equine existence had been tossed into the pits—falling and falling and falling for entirety.

“But instead of making Mommy happy, the game made her very sad and very, very angry.” An expression like sadness came over Pinks, and her bottom lip quivered. “With tears rolling down her face, she took one of my sister’s dolls… And she sat me down on her bed… And she made me show her where Daddy had tickled me…”

She blinked. Licked her lips.

“…And I told Mommy that Daddy had tickled me here…”

The blade at Hazel’s throat slid down to his chest.

“…And here…”

It poked at his stomach.

“…And way down here…”

It tapped against his groin, its sheer coldness making his breath catch.

“After that, Mommy and Daddy got into a big fight, and she said we couldn’t play the tickling game anymore. You see, Daddy was right. He said Mommy wouldn’t like the tickling game. He said Mommy was jealous because she was old and ugly, and because he didn’t like tickling her anymore.

“When the fight was over, Mommy made Daddy promise to never play the game ever again. But Daddy didn’t listen, and Mommy didn’t like that…” She licked her lips, lifting the blade back to Hazel’s neck. “Not. One. Bit.

“So one night, as me and my sisters are laughing after another fun game, Mommy comes into my room… with a knife clutched in her hooves. She walks up to Inky and puts the blade in her mouth, crying while she does it…”

Hazel cringed and squirmed as Pinks forced the knife into his mouth, his tearful eyes begging for mercy.

“…And she says: WHAT’RE YOU SMILING AT!”

The blade sliced open the left side of Hazel’s face in one fluent stroke, carving a bloody gash from mouth to ear.

“…Then she puts the blade in Blinky’s mouth…” A titter rolled off her tongue. “…WHAT’RE YOU SMILING AT!”

Hazel screamed as the knife worked its terrible magic again, splitting the opposite side of his face with equal ease and brutality. He clutched at one shredded corner of his mouth, hot tears streaking down his red cheeks while bubbling snot ran from his nose.

“Then she put the blade in my mouth…” Pinks paused for a moment. “Hey—” she flashed a smile that was too wide for her face, amused by Hazel’s new crimson grin. “What’re you smiling at?”

With a crazed laugh that was almost a roar, Pinks pushed the knifepoint deep into Hazel’s mouth, feeding him the blade one bitter inch at a time. He gurgled, choking on a mouthful of blood as it pierced the back of his throat; and during his final moment a morbid kind of humor tickled his brain. He might have smiled if he were able to—he might have even laughed.

He couldn’t believe it. Five years without so much as a robbery, and now the city’s very own Clown Princess of Crime was stuffing a knife down his throat. Five years of buildup for one grisly five-second punch line. It’s all a joke, he thought, as the world around him grew quiet and dark. It’s all a stupid, unfunny prank.

Then his eyes rolled back, his body convulsed and he drowned in a cataract of his own blood.

Pinks withdrew her knife and watched Hazel’s lifeless form slide down the wall. He came to a final rest seated on his haunches, his head drooping forward, his forelegs flaccid at his sides like the limbs of a haggard doll. Blood continued pouring from his mouth, pooling in his lap and spilling onto the floor.

He was still smiling.

Pinks took a moment to bask in the artistry of her grim work. Her smile shrank from the grin of manic killer to the small, content expression of mare reveling in the joy of a simple pleasure.

She retrieved the bottle of liquor from the plastic bag, unscrewed the cap and took a long swig. Then she hopped up on the counter and spat the bitter liquid on the floor, and on the face of the dead stallion.

“Aw, what’s the matter?” said Pinks, staring into the security camera that hung from the ceiling. “Was that not funny enough for you?” She threw the bottle to floor, smashing it, then fumbled around in the bag for the book of matches. “Well then, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A clown walks into a city… and sets it on fire…” She struck a match and dropped it, watching with childish glee as flames engulfed the dead stallion.

“Fine, don’t laugh, then,” She scoffed at the security camera. “You can stay quiet all you want, but I know you’re there, watching with those big scary eyes of yours.”

She sat down on the edge of the counter and made herself comfortable, swinging her hind legs like a foal sitting on a park bench.

“Do you know why they let me out of the asylum?” she asked the camera. “It’s because the doctors finally realized what you and I have known all along. I’m not crazy. I’m not. You’re the crazy one, with your silly little hat and your silly little cape. You’re the one who belongs in the madhouse. You’re the one who’s wrong this time. You!—not me!” She leaned forward and trusted an accusing hoof at the camera, flecks of spit flying from her lips. Then she fell quiet and listened to the flames crackle for what seemed like a long time.

“And these, uh, these so-called… innocents,” she began anew. “They don’t want to be saved. They don’t want your—hehehehe—your order. Your justice. They just want to laugh, and I’m gonna prove that.”

Her composure returned as she spoke, and her active blue eyes glinted in the firelight, vivid with renewed self-assurance. She was right. She had to be. She needed to be. It was the only thing she still needed—the last trace of the pony she had been before that fateful night of blood and pain and broken promises and shattered dreams.

And severed bonds. Ruined friendships.

Sometimes, if she screwed her eyes shut and concentrated very hard, she could still remember the vague shapes of their faces, those haunting specters of her old life, but she could never hold the shapes together for very long. They always blurred and twisted into a single black miasma, becoming a shapeless, formless smear of nonexistence. And if she stared at the smear for long enough, eventually a pair of eyes would emerge from it—her eyes—like glowing orbs rising to the surface of a tar pit.

Pinks reached into her pocket and withdrew a shred of tattered, blood-stained fabric. “The ponies of this city… they’re gonna run to me,” she said with an easy grin, “and they’re gonna beg me to make them smile.”

Carefully, she unfolded the piece of cloth, handling it the way one might handle a priceless heirloom. Indeed it was priceless. It was a simple dark purple mask, with two opaque lenses stitched into it for eyes.

She pulled the mask over her face and remembered the look of madness in Digger’s eyes as he lunged for her throat in the dark kitchen. She recalled the panic that shattered Grift’s poise, and the bark of her pistols firing blindly.

And she remembered the fear swimming through their features, so different from the terror she conjured with her scars and her laughs.

“They’re still afraid of you.” She caressed the tattered fabric on her face. “But you can’t rule them with fear alone; that’s the one thing you never understood. They’ll get bored of you. They’ll find a new monster to hide away under their beds—they always do.”

She sniffed at the mask and purred. It still smelled like her.

“But they’ll never get bored of me. Do you know why?” Pinks paused as if waiting for an answer. “It’s because they love me! The cops and the crooks—and the nice ponies, and the mean ones, and the ones who don’t care either way—they all love me! And the real goody-goodies… the ones like Celestia and Luna and Cadence and the so-called Elements of Harmony… they love me most of all. I tell all their favorite jokes. The ones they’re too scared to tell themselves.”

With a flick of her wrist, Pinks slid her knife from its hiding place in her sleeve. She parted her lips and cut a wide grin into the mask, drawing scarlet trickles from each corner of her mouth as she did so.

Standing upright on the counter, her eyes shifted from the security camera to the hanging monitor. She looked at herself, amused by what she saw. The mask more closely resembled a face now, though its eyes were cold and lifeless and its grin bereft of joy.

“What’re you smiling at!” she exclaimed to the empty room.

Then, cackling with a hyena’s voice, she hopped down from the counter and fled from the store, leaving Hazel to his vital work of sitting and burning. It was important work indeed; she had left him there to fulfill a solemn duty. He was to herald her return, for whoever happened upon his corpse—that blazing sacrifice laid upon Manhattan’s demonic altar—would know that madness had once again descended upon the city, and that this time, it was here to stay for good.

Everything was coming together according to plan. That was her greatest weakness, the only flaw in her methodology: she didn’t think The Prankster made plans. She couldn’t see the method hidden in the madness. Nopony could, and they would all burn for blindness...

Somewhere in Manehattan a griffin was cleaning her pistols, her face frozen in expressionless concentration.

Somewhere a diamond dog was baying at the moon, afraid of what he was and starving for a meal that would scream for him.

Somewhere an angry one-eyed earth mare was sleeping soundly for the first time in years, dreaming of revenge; and somewhere else her rival was doing the same.

Somewhere a grown zebra was weeping for his mother, yearning to be cradled and longing for the childhood this city had stolen from him.

And here—right here in the black heart of downtown Manehattan, the rotten, festering heart of Equestria, and maybe the entire world—a clown was laughing as she barreled down the street in a carriage drawn by tongue-less mares…

And somewhere high above them all, a faceless monster was watching…