I’ve heard that Princess Celestia’s wrath is a terrible thing to behold, imbued with the solar fury of the sun itself. However it's hard to compare it with the fury I saw from Octavia; If looks could inflict harm upon somepony I had little doubt the glare she was directing at me would have banished me to Tartarus and locked me in a cage with some ancient unspeakable horror.
“Well,” I chuckled nervously. “I, uh, I didn’t watch,” ever hopeful I suppose.
She snorted steam from her nostrils, literal steam. “Of course you watched. What kind of stallion are you?”
“I hope I’m a fairly fast stallion.” I looked over her shoulder. “Oh hello, Vinyl.”
Octavia froze and looked over her shoulder at the empty doorway. The brief distraction was all I needed to rediscover my earth pony heritage in speed and I took off like a wonderbolt. The mare was between me and the service entrance, so I went the other way toward the dance floor. Octavia an earth pony herself came galloping after, slowly gaining on me as I burst through the stage door. The delay brought my pursuer right up to my flank as we crossed the stage.
I ran past the DJ and leapt over the turntables. One of my rear hooves caught the arm of the record player and dragged the pickup needle across the record as I flew toward the dance floor. Octavia crashed through the DJ before jumping over the turntables herself.
The screech that came from the turntables, as I leapt over them, brought the dance floor to a standstill as dancers suddenly lost their beat. I wove my way through the stunned ponies, not even daring to shift my focus to find out how close Octavia was behind me. The sound of her threats was encouraging enough to keep me running.
Fearing for my life, I put on a burst of speed as I cleared the crowd and ran for the exit. It was shut and still guarded by the bouncer, but I was going at full speed, it didn’t stand a chance.
I blew the door right off its hinges as I flew out onto the street. My cast iron shoes slid across the cobblestone and threw off sparks as I changed direction to go down the street back to my office.
Octavia wasn’t far behind me. She caught up while I was still disoriented from slamming through the door. She picked up speed by running in my wake and came up alongside me.
“Pull over!” She rammed her shoulder into mine and nearly threw me off my hooves.
“Are you always this aggressive? Or is it just your time of the year?” I shot at her as I returned the favour.
Octavia gave a feral growl and threw herself into my flank, spinning me off course. I got a small measure of vengeance by flicking my tail at her face and heard a cry of pain. As I spun away I saw her lose balance and fall, a hoof cradling the eye I had just flicked.
The victory was short lived as the bump from Octavia sent me stumbling in a lamp post. I hit the post with the same momentum that took down the club door. Unfortunately, lamp posts are a lot less yielding than doors and the impact felt like it broke more than a few bones.
As I fell to the ground I slid to a halt on the rough road and between my cries of pain I pulled together everything I had, “reset.”
Between the injuries and the pain I could only throw myself back in time to a few seconds before I hit the lamp post. Doing my best to avoid impact I pushed out my legs, brushed past the post and hit a market refuse cart instead. The impact was painful, but more forgiving, and threw me head over hoof into the rotten pile of fruit in the cart. I let myself sink in the refuse, too dizzy to do anything else.
The markets were closed for the night. The bare stalls giving it an eerie feeling when compared the hustle and bustle of the day. Octavia trotted through the market, searching for any sign of me as I hid myself in the pile of rotten fruit. I willed myself to stay hidden, restraining my gag reflex from adding my dinner to the terrible stench.
Octavia muttered a few oaths about what she would do to me if she found me before she gave up and went back the way she came. As she left the smell of rotten apples and oranges – which are very similar – finally got to me and my dinner joined the stench of the cart.
I’ve never seen the point in having a house as well as an office. I live on my own so there’s no need for me to waste bits on two places to rent. When I got back to my office I smelled like the compost bin of an apple orchard, next to the pig sty. In dire need of a wash I got my portable tin bath out and dragged it to the bathroom to fill it with hot water from the sink. It’s not a very modern arrangement but I consider it an efficient one.
After a good hour of soaking in the soapy water I came out of the bathroom smelling of lemons, rotten lemons. I still felt like a new stallion considering how filthy I was before. I wandered back into my office, locked the door behind me and dried myself off. Once I was back to a normal state I got my bedroll out of my desk and set it up by the window.
As I laid down to sleep I took a few moments to consider the afternoon I had: I’d been kissed by a desperate and dateless veterinary nurse, trapped in a closet by a pair of fillyfooling mares – incidentally, Vinyl is a screamer – and finally I was chased halfway across Canterlot by a vengeful spirit of Tartarus before being thrown into a cart that stank worse than a skunk after a twelve hour run.
Mares, if I ever understand them I’ll die laughing.
Still, for all my attempts at progress I still hadn’t found Opalescence. I decided I could attempt understand chaos in the morning after I slept on it. Lying in bed my mind drifted back to my escape from Octavia, and the uncomfortable memories of the bone breaking impact. No amount of sheep counting served to shake my mind from its thoughts. It was going to be a long night.
I woke up the following morning to the sound of a hoof knocking on the door. I groaned and rolled over to ask the ultimate question.
“Who is it?” I called out with a groan. Sleep was a weasel to catch last night, so enthusiasm was a tall order.
“Darling its Rarity, I simply must talk to you about last night and what you did to poor Octavia.”
“Reset,” I said as I fell back onto my bedroll.
Time flew backwards to before I was woken up. The memories from the future slapped me and brought me back to consciousness. Hearing the hoof falls on the stairs beneath the office I rolled myself out of my bed and stumbled toward the door.
I slapped myself a couple of times as I walked to bring my mind back to whatever counted as sanity for me. I reached the door just before Rarity could knock and opened it for her.
“Good morning, Miss Rarity,” I put on as much cheer as possible. “It’s lovely to see you.”
“Mr Turner, it's two in the afternoon,” she said dryly.
I cursed the fact that my reset was still rewinding. I should have checked the clock damn it.
“Well come on in, Miss Rarity.” I moved aside to grant Rarity entrance.
“Why thank you, Mr Turner, I would—“she froze in disgust at the state of my office/home. “Oh this room is so... filthy.”
“I know it might not be up to your standards Miss Rarity, but you’ll just have to ignore it for now.” I led my client across to my desk and we took the seats on either side. “So Miss Rarity, I suppose you want to ask me about last night.”
“I will admit to being rather curious as to why Octavia was so upset with you.”
“What?” I twitched in surprise, sitting up straighter in my seat. “Miss Rarity, would you mind telling me how you know Octavia?”
“I met her at the club last night before she chased you out the front door. She came back afterwards looking quite furious. What in Equestria happened between you two?”
I leaned back into my seat with a sigh. It seemed I wasn’t going to get out of this without explaining what happened in Vinyl’s room. I avoided going into too much detail and my client listened intently as I spoke. She was unsurprised to hear about Vinyl’s early return and gave me an unbelieving look when I explained my imprisonment in Vinyl’s closet.
“Mr Turner,” Rarity said consolingly. “I think under the circumstances you can forgive Octavia for being somewhat angry.”
“She intended to kill me,” I replied dryly.
“With the exception of your pride you are entirely unharmed.”
That’s what you think, I thought as I remembered the injuries I had narrowly escaped from.
Rarity continued uninterrupted, “She is quite a nice mare if you get to know her.”
I rubbed a fetlock across my forehead. “Alright Miss Rarity. Taking into account that she was angry for a good reason, I’ll hear you out. How is Octavia a ‘nice mare’?”
“Well as I said before I met Octavia at the club last night.”
“After you said you would go back to your hotel room.” My eyes narrowed, “how did you get in anyway?”
“I just batted my eyelashes at the bouncer.” I raised an eyebrow in interest. “Though she spent a little too long staring at my flank,” Rarity finished with a huff.
Hmm, so Rarity’s straight, I noted to myself.
“I met Octavia at the bar,” Rarity continued. “She was gazing toward Vinyl from a distance. When I sat down next to her I noticed that she looked rather down, so I struck up a conversation with her.”
I tilted my head forward, “About what?”
“Why, music of course. Did you not see her cutie mark when you were watching them?”
“Hey, I didn’t watch them,” I objected. “Anyway it was a pink… thingy.”
Rarity gave me an amused snort, “Turner, I am surprised that you do not know what that is. That ‘thingy’ is a treble clef; a part of formal musical notation. I asked her about what she thought of the music, and she said that she enjoyed Vinyl’s work, even if it wasn’t to her normal classical taste.”
That was mildly surprising. “Why would somepony with a taste in classical music enjoy Vinyl’s noise?”
“Octavia described it as being a, ‘wild mix of low repeating base notes like baroque, yet filled with the passion and expression of romanetic music.’ So – taste aside – Vinyl’s ‘noise’ isn’t too different from the orchestral concertos that Octavia preferred.” Rarity gave me a shrug, “Though to be honest I cannot say I feel the same way.”
“I know what you mean.” I’ve heard a lot of Vinyl’s music before, I never enjoyed it. “I hope Octavia doesn’t play the same music,” I groaned. “The world’s only got room for one mare like Vinyl.”
“She said that plays for the Canterlot Symphony Orchestra,” Rarity continued as my eyebrows came together in thought. “Though I didn’t ask what instrument she plays.”
“The CSO?” I asked as I leaned forward. “That orchestra is almost exclusively funded by the nobility, and half of its members are noble unicorns. Do you know how many members are earth ponies or pegasi?” Rarity shook her head. “Not many and they have to be absolutely amazing to get in without connections. Octavia’s an earth pony so she would have to have pulled a lot of strings to get in, and she’s a fillyfooler to boot.” I chuckled and Rarity’s face turned to shock when she realized as well.
Octavia was walking a dangerous road. Any rumour about being a fillyfooler or any involvement in a public scandal and she’d lose her seat in the CSO in an instant. It was an interesting titbit of information that I filled under B for blackmail. If Octavia ever tried to come after me I could just send a letter to a gossip magazine and ruin her career, so long as she never slipped up herself.
“So,” I asked my gossip source. “How did Octavia meet Vinyl?”
“After a performance by the orchestra, apparently Vinyl’s agent sent her to one so she could improve her music.”
I laughed, “Yep, that’ll work.” Rarity gave me a disapproving look and I quieted down. “Sorry, continue.”
“They met at the bar and got talking. Then they struck up a friendship that grew over a few months.”
“Cute,” I said dryly. “So it wasn’t love at first sight then.”
Rarity tilted her head in thought, “I would have thought it would be. They seem like the perfect couple.”
Somepony reads too many romance novels, I thought. I’m a detective and I know from experience that love at first sight doesn’t always last.
“It’s such a shame they have to hide it,” she said with genuine sadness. “I’d hate to think what would happen to Octavia if ponies started to talk.”
“Yeah”, I said while thinking about how to use this info. “Let me show you something interesting to take your mind off it.” I led Rarity over to the Mystery Wall. The notes pinned up can have an almost hypnotising effect on ponies, it’s a good distraction. “See if you can see anything interesting, Miss Rarity. I’ll just make a few additions for your case.”
I selected one of the few blank sections left and started adding some notes relating to Opal’s disappearance. “Cats getting lost everywhere in Canterlot” was connected to, “most get returned” which lead to the conclusion: “Opal is either willingly lost or being held” which was in turn linked to a central note labelled “The Missing Kitten of Inspiration”. Another set of notes were, “Vinyl Scratch returns cats” connected to a note labelled, “Nepeta” to which I attached a sample of the herb Vinyl had in her room backstage.
“There is something strange about this herb,” I mused. “Vinyl had a whole box of it and was adding it to her cider. Do you know what it is?”
Rarity didn’t answer, instead she was staring at a section of the wall that related to the various rumours I had heard about vamponies – a pet project of mine. There’s usually some truth in fiction after all and there is a lot of fiction about vamponies, a fact I later came to hate (1).
“Miss Rarity, you awake in there?” I asked as I tapped her on the shoulder. “Better to focus on something more important.” I tapped a hoof on the wall near the herb asking, “You wouldn't happen to know what this herb is by chance?”
“Sorry to drift away darling,” she apologized and asked, “that herb?” I nodded. “Turner, I would be a poor caretaker for Opal if I did not recognise it. That is catnip.”
“Catnip?” I said as I looked at the herb shoot. “Vinyl was using it to make her alcohol stronger.” The pieces were starting to fall into place.
“I suppose it could have that effect. Catnip causes numbing and drowsiness in ponies but with cats the smell is a very sweet narcotic.”
I wrote catnip onto the Nepeta note and linked it to “illegal alcohol”.
Rarity brightened up, “Turner, Vinyl told me she has been returning a lot of cats that have been following her home. They must be following the smell of the catnip!” I suppose she was right to be cheerful, progress was being made. I linked, “cats are going missing” with, “illegal alcohol”.
“It's likely more than just Vinyl,” I said. “The illegal alcohol trade the Marefia runs has a lot of customers for an expensive product. I’d wager that catnip is being sold all over the city with the cider.” I linked the catnip with an existing note further across the board: “The Marefia” which had existing links to several crimes, lists of suspected members and photos of thugs armed with violin cases.
“Well, looks like this is starting to go deeper than I thought.”
There was a knock on my office door, I froze and assumed that fate in its sadistic ways had brought the Marefia to me. Speak the name and they shall appear. I trotted over to the door and cautiously opened it, discovering that fate was even more sadistic than I thought.
Luna’s Notes:
(1) There is indeed truth in the fiction surrounding vamponies. We spent a great deal of our time in the past containing them and other creatures of the night in order to protect our subjects. Our dear sister hath however allowed them to flourish out of ignorance of their activities, something we have started putting right after our return.