//------------------------------// // Case Sixteen, Chapter One: Two Plans, Two Bodies // Story: Ponyville Noire: Misty Streets of Equestria // by PonyJosiah13 //------------------------------// “We’ve got a new act for you today, folks!” Rara announced, beaming at the morning crowd from the stage of the Apple Pie in Your Eye. “These ladies are all local talent, and we’ve been looking forward to introducing them to you ever since they auditioned for us last week!”  She stepped aside and gestured to the drawn curtains behind her. “Now, please join me in welcoming to the stage, performing their rendition of St. Megan's Ballroom...The New Flappers!”  The crowd applauded and the curtains drew aside to reveal a charcoal gray mare with raven black hair standing next to a cello, the wooden instrument gleaming with polish. Next to her was a white unicorn with a cropped mane of blue hair and purple sunglasses, grinning from over a small keyboard set upon a black stand, a drum set arranged around her. Both mares were dressed in short-sleeved white shirts with bowties.  In front of them, standing before a microphone, was a tall, ivory white unicorn adorned in a frilled short black cocktail dress, fishnets accentuating her hind legs. Her arctic blue hair was done in a bob cut and accented with a tall white peacock feather, and upon her breast, she wore a brooch with her cutie mark: a blue rose.  “Welcome to St. Megan’s Ballroom!” Blue Rose declared into the microphone with a laugh as Octavia Melody began to strum the cello, the opening of the song accompanied by Vinyl Scratch manipulating her percussion set. At her cue, a trio of mares danced in from offstage: a pink hippogriff with pale blue hair and two earth ponies, one orange and one blue, all of them dressed in similar attire to Blue Rose. They pranced into position with well-practiced synchronization, smiling at the audience over the feather fans that they waved before their faces.  “Daba down at St. Megan’s Dogtown, it was almost after dark…” Blue Rose began to sing, bobbing her head to the song as her melody was carried over the room.  “It’s called a what?” Flash Sentry asked from a table near the back of the room.  “A clavioline,” Twilight repeated, nodding at the keyboard that Vinyl was playing. “One of the latest electronic keyboard instruments. I did some research on it when Applejack told us about Vinyl’s instruments.” She smiled in reminiscence, staring at the keyboard that Vinyl was expertly manipulating, simultaneously striking the drums with the drumsticks she held in her blue aura. “It’s amazing how far technology has come! I mean, can you imagine the potential for electronic devices in the future? Electric typewriters, more portable radios, maybe even the ability to send pictures and letters via electronics!”  “Isn’t that what Spike’s for?” Flash asked in amusement.  “Not everypony has a dragon little brother who knows how to perform a translocation spell with his enchanted fire that he got when he was birthed in a magical overload,” Twilight pointed out.  “Speaking of him,” Flash added. “What do you think he and Smolder are up to about now?”  “Probably stuffing their faces at Pony Joe’s,” Twilight giggled. “If you ever want to go up to Canterlot with me, I’m sure you’d love his donuts.”  Flash chuckled, taking a slow sip of his root beer as he watched the New Flappers performing. Already a few couples, including Rara and Applejack, were taking to the dance floor as Blue Rose swung into the bridge:  “That gal was shakin’ her fan, shakin’ her fan,  while doing the tap dance Movin’ her hooves, tail in the air,  Oh-oh, what a crazy mare!” Flash glanced over at Twilight, who was currently watching Big Mac working his magic from behind the bar, and licked his lips. Just ask her, you big chicken! he berated himself.  “Uh, Twilight…” he stammered out, prompting the mare to turn towards him, a question in her shimmering purple eyes. “Would you like to…?”  “Hey, cousin!”  Flash closed his eyes and let out a long, low sigh before turning to face the newcomer. “Hey, Sandbar,” he smiled at the green earth pony, rising to hug him.  “Oh, is this that Twilight mare you talked about?” Sandbar asked, grinning at Twilight. “Damn, cousin, how are you so lucky?”  “Sandbar,” Flash chided, enforcing his point with a sharp elbow to Sandbar's chest.  Twilight giggled. “You must be Sandbar,” she said, rising and extending her hoof. “I’m Twilight Sparkle.”  “Charmed,” Sandbar smiled. “What do you think of the Flappers?”  “They’re wonderful,” Twilight nodded at the mares onstage, watching as Octavia alternated between strumming her instrument with the bow and plucking the strings with her hooves. “I can honestly say I didn’t know that you could use a cello like that.”  “Yeah, Octavia and Vinyl are really cool,” Sandbar grinned. “And it wouldn’t surprise me if Silverstream got a cutie mark in dancing!” He waved at the hippogriff, who smiled back as she and the other two mares began a kickline. “Uh, can hippogriffs get cutie marks?” he asked. “Not as far as we know,” Twilight replied with a chuckle.  “Aren’t they some of your old classmates?” Flash asked.  “Yeah, Silverstream, Shimmy Shake, Lighthoof, and…” Sandbar’s face fell and he let out a despondent sigh, rubbing the back of his mane. “Ocellus.” Flash blinked at Sandbar, then looked back up at Blue Rose. The singer made eye contact with him for a moment, but if she recognized him, she didn’t show it at all.  “Wish she could be here instead of at the library right now,” Sandbar sighed. “Anyway, I just came here to pick up lunch.” He trotted over to the bar and spoke briefly to Big Mac, who lifted up a trio of takeout bags and passed them over to him in exchange for a hoofful of bits.  “You’re still working at Fluttershy’s place, right?” Flash asked.  “Yeah, she and Tree Hugger are teaching me a lot,” Sandbar grinned through the bags in his mouth. “I’ll have a head start on my Biology degree when I start college in a few years! See you, cousin. Nice meeting you, Twilight!”  “Say hi to your family,” Flash waved as Sandbar exited.  “Well, he’s interesting,” Twilight chuckled to herself. “How’s he related to you, by the way?”  “His mom is my mom’s younger sister,” Flash explained, then cleared his throat. “So, uh, would you like to--?”  The clearing of a throat interrupted them. “Phone,” Big Mac stated to them, tilting his head back towards the bar.  Twilight hopped up and bustled over to the bar, taking up the hoofset. She spoke into it briefly, then nodded and hung up. “Sorry, Flash, but we’ve got a case,” she reported, putting some bits on the table to cover for their meal. “Red just called us in.”  Flash sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Why, Mother?” he mumbled.  “Come on!” Twilight called from the door.  “I’m coming,” Flash sighed, finishing off his root beer and hurrying after her.  Daring dropped her passenger and landed outside the crime scene tape that was stretched across the alleyway, shooting a scowl at the crowd of gawkers standing across the street, trying to get a peek at the grisly scene past the parked cars with their spinning lights and the slightly green-faced officers standing posts.  “Do they have nothing better to do?” she asked Phillip, who was taking his trilby out of his vest.  “Even in the Everfree District, not every day you see a dead changeling,” Phillip commented, looking past the tape into the alley. Red Herring stood at the mouth of the alley, looking down at Doctor Mortis, who was crouching next to the subject of their visit.  The body lay splashed across the asphalt near the mouth of the alley, the head resting against a dumpster. The changeling’s chitin was dark blue colored and rough, holes punctured through its limbs like cheese. The jaw hung open to reveal the curved fangs and the horn had been broken off, revealing only a cracked stump like a rotten tree trunk. At first, Daring thought that there were tear tracks running down their face. Then she realized to her horror that the tear tracks were actually dried blood, so dark it was almost black, running down from their eyes...except that there were no eyes, merely ragged holes that stared sightlessly outwards, silently pleading for help.  A shudder ran down Daring’s spine and she turned away, swallowing back bile. “You okay?” Phillip asked, pausing at the tape.  Daring took a deep breath and shook her head, refocusing. “I’m fine,” she reported, striding forward and ducking beneath the tape.  Red looked up at their approach. “About time you got here,” he commented. “A worker in the motel next door found them thirty minutes ago and called police. Dispatch is already combing through any surveillance crystal footage.”  “This will be the first time I’ve ever done an autopsy on a changeling before!” Mortis chirped excitedly. “There’s still so much about changeling anatomy that we don’t know! I’ll have to send a letter to the Changeling Embassy in Canterlot to see if they can send anything over to help!”  “Doctor,” Phillip chided her.  “Sorry,” Mortis shook her head. “Well, she’s got female genitalia...I think. I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s not a penis.”  Red and Phillip both gave embarrassed coughs and turned away. “Oh, come on, we’re all adults here,” Mortis scoffed, continuing her examination. “Um, rigor mortis suggests that they were killed a little more than...eight hours ago, assuming that changelings go through rigor at the same rate as ponies. Lividity shows that they died lying on their back, so they were placed here for several hours after they died.” She cringed. “And the poor thing did not die well.”  Daring felt her stomach twisting inside of her as she studied the corpse. The dead changeling was covered in blood and burns, their chitin slashed like they’d been attacked by a pack of wild cats. Burns marred their body, and up close, she realized that their wings had been hacked off, only a few shreds remaining like tatters of a flag after a battle. A ragged hole marked with dark red burns was punched through their chest over their heart, a small dribble of dried red blood running down the chest.  Her eyes focused on the ragged holes that were all that remained of the victim’s eyes, dark blood dripping down her face. For a moment, Daring imagined that the changeling was looking right at her, screaming for help.  Black slime dripped from the empty eye sockets, the vitreous humor burst like rotten eggs. The bodies were strewn across the bloodstained hallway, like breadcrumbs leading to Hell.  “Mother of Faust! What is that thing?!” Screams. Gunshots. Rending flesh and bodies thumping to the floor. Daring and Phillip both sprinted forward, pushing through the door into the evidence room.  The thing was there. So was Trace, writhing in agony as the slimy tentacles drilled through his eyes. The sound of his brain blending sounded horribly in their ears, mixed with his shuddering, choked-off screams. Trace’s body slumped to the floor and the thing looked up at them, black eyes blinking, leech-like mouths at the end of his tentacles slurping and sucking the air. It roared at them, the sky turning red as he lunged… “Daring? Are you okay?”  Red’s voice pulled Daring back into reality and she realized that she was panting heavily, her head spinning and her heart thumping in her chest. “I’m…” she started to say, but had to swallow down a load of bile rushing up to her throat. She turned away, taking slow deep breaths, mentally ordering her wings to stop twitching and the visions to leave her.  A warm hoof wrapped around Daring’s foreleg and squeezed, rubbing up and down the limb; she could feel it trembling. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, pressing her forehead against Phillip’s. Five-count inhale. Pause. Five-count exhale. Pause. Repeat. Slowly, the ghosts retreated into the back of their memories. Nodding as one, they opened their eyes and returned to work.  Red was currently panning a tracking wand over the ground, revealing hoofprints in low purple light. “Okay, that’s the worker coming out and finding the body,” he nodded, pointing to a trail of smaller hoofprints leading from the side door to the corpse and running back in. “And these…” He lifted himself off the ground and flew over the corpse towards the back of the alley, revealing two trails of prints, one heading down the alley with a pair of drag marks behind it, another heading back. “Guess that’s our dumper.”  “Worn out, can’t get a brand name on ‘em,” Phillip mused, studying the tracks with a magnifying glass. “Size eleven...gait makes him about four-foot-three. Hang on…” He looked closer at one of the tracks.  “Left hind leg’s twisted outward slightly,” he reported. “Gives him an odd gait. Looks like an old injury.” “Maybe we can check with some rehab places,” Red commented.  “By we, you mean you, right?” Daring smirked.  “Right. Because you two have more important things to do,” Red rolled his eyes, giving her a Flying Feather without turning around.  “Hmm,” Phillip mused, leaning closer to the tracks. “Brush marks on the metal.” He took out a flashlight and cast it at an angle upon a loose piece of cardboard that had a hoofprint upon it, noting the faint black glossy shine upon the corrugated surface. “Shoeshine. These definitely aren’t high-end shoes…” He was silent for a moment. “Ex-military, maybe.”  He and Red turned and walked over to the end of the alley, which opened into a narrow, pothole-covered road. The tracks led to and from a set of tire tracks that swerved slightly onto the broken, uneven sidewalk.  “Looks like a pickup truck,” Phillip theorized, noting that the killer’s tracks led around to the back of the vehicle before turning into the alley. “Tire’s definitely wide enough for it.”  “Yeah, Lug might be able to help more,” Red commented, frowning at the sea of overlapping tire tracks that covered the street before looking up and around. “Damn: no surveillance crystals nearby.”  Meanwhile, Daring was studying the corpse next to Doctor Mortis. “How are we going to find out who she was?” she asked Mortis.  “There’ll be trace evidence on the body, food in their stomach,” Mortis replied. “I for one welcome the challenge!”  “Hmm,” Daring murmured to herself. “Maybe we can ask Buzz.”  “Hey, detective!”  Daring looked up to see an officer waving at her from the other side of the crime scene tape. She trotted up to him.  “A pony said this is for you,” the officer said, handing her a folded note.  Daring looked up to see a golden-white unicorn mare standing several meters away at the end of a city block, blinking at her through her long, curly yellow and black mane. As soon as Daring made eye contact with her, the mare trotted around the corner and disappeared.  Daring unfolded the note and read the scrawled message.  “Her name was Sweet Tart, worked as a baker. She bought honey from me a few times, that’s how I knew her. She lived in a cottage on White Lily Avenue and owned a yellow pickup truck. I hope you find out who did this fast: this is gonna be bad for every changeling in the city. Buzz.” Daring looked up at the corner of the block where the figure had disappeared. In the back of her ears, she heard it: a low buzz like angered hornets emanating from the gathered crowd. Fear. Suspicion. Anger. All sounds that she was all too familiar with.  “Is it a changeling?”  “Maybe King Thorax sent a spy in.”  "But I thought the changelings were our allies now?" “Or maybe they were working for Chrysalis.”  “Chrysalis is dead, idiot. Emperor Armor cut her head off when she tried to impersonate Empress Cadenza at their wedding.”  “How can you be sure that was actually Chrysalis? They can change their shape, after all!”  “There could be more. Anypony we know could be a changeling!”  "Why would they hide if they're not the bad guys?" Daring felt the words slither down her spine like cold syrup and had to suppress a shiver. “We’ll find ‘em, Buzz,” she muttered, turning back to speak to Phil and Red. “I don’t know how, but we will.”  Flash pulled up the motorcycle to the side of the road and parked, the engine grumbling as he turned the key. He paused for a moment, standing up on the bike to take in the scene before them.  The vacant lot was littered in rubble surrounding the half-formed foundation of an abandoned construction site. Crime scene tape secured the entire perimeter, flapping in the southern wind that carried the scent and sounds of the river, a mere two hundred meters away.  A few officers guarded the crime scene’s boundaries against the small, floating crowds of creatures that milled about outside the tape, drawn to the scene by the spinning red and blue lights of the police cruisers parked around the block. Two figures were standing on the cracked concrete slab in the center of the weed-strewn block, crouching over a green tarp that was weighed down by random debris: Doctor Suunkii, pawing the ground with his gloved hooves, and Sergeant Prowl. Whatever they were looking at was blocked by a stack of loose cement blocks.  Flash slid off the bike seat and extended a hoof to help Twilight out of the sidecar.  “Thanks,” she smiled, her cheeks turning a touch redder. He smiled back and tried to suppress his own blush as he unbuckled his helmet, setting it in the sidecar.  “Twilight Sparkle, come quickly, please,” Doctor Suunkii called. “And bring the red kit from the truck.”  “Coming, Doctor,” Twilight called, hustling over to the blue pickup truck and grabbing a red fishing box from the bed. Flash hustled over, ducking beneath the tape after Twilight.  “Took you long enough,” Bumblebee snarked as they passed him. “Were you in the middle of something?”  “You and Arc would know, wouldn’t you?” Flash smirked back, turning to face the new pale face amongst the blue. The younger griffon looked back at him, shifting in place, reaching up to brush the blue feathers that stuck out from beneath his cap, the bill and badge still shimmering like new.  “Gallus?”  Gallus stood up straight and cleared his throat. “Yes, sir,” he answered.  Flash smiled. “So these two lunkheads took you on as a new partner?”  “We needed a new grunt after you got all high and mighty and got promoted to detective,” Bumblebee grinned, giving Gallus a hearty slap on the back that elicited a started squawk from the griffon. “You just wait, Gallus. We’ll make you into one of the best officers in the department soon.”  “Before or after you break my back?” Gallus muttered.  “You listen to these guys, Gallus,” Flash said. “They’ll watch your back just as well as they did mine.”  “Coming from the guy who got kidnapped twice, that really doesn’t make me feel better,” Gallus replied.  “Uh…” Flash muttered, his cheeks coloring as Bumblebee stuffed his hoof into his mouth to stifle his giggling.  “Hey!” Prowl called. “You can have the reunion later, Sentry. Dead body right now.”  “Right,” Flash nodded. He gave Gallus a brief pat on the shoulder and a warm smile. “Mavri would be proud of you,” he said.  Gallus blinked, then forced a half-smile onto his face for a moment before looking down at the ground. Flash winced a bit, then hustled over to where Prowl, Twilight, and Suunkii were waiting.  As he approached, he finally saw what had their attention. Laying beneath the tarp, which had been partially folded back to allow access, was the corpse of a blue stallion. He only realized that it had been a unicorn when he saw the broken stump of the horn that was protruding through the light purple bangs.  “A kid who was playing in the lot found it and called the police,” Prowl stated, nodding towards a young, dirt-streaked filly that was sitting, miserably plucking grass from the ground. “Poor kid,” Prowl said, shaking her head. “Her mom’s already on her way to pick her up.”  “Twilight Sparkle, I will take photographs of the surrounding area and debris before we uncover the body,” Suunkii instructed, watching as Twilight unpacked camera equipment from the toolbox. “I wish for you to search the nearby area for tracks and any other evidence.”  “Got it, doctor,” Twilight reported. “Filtering out our hoofprints…” Her horn lit up and waves of purple magic panned out over the surrounding ground. A faint line of small hoofprints appeared in lavender across the concrete pad.  “That’s the filly,” she murmured, continuing her scan. Another set of hoofprints appeared, these larger. They appeared on the ground and led up to where the body lay, wandering around the tarp, then vanished once more. Twilight frowned, then sent out a shower of small glittering purple stars that danced in the air for a moment before vanishing.  “No sign of teleportation magic,” she reported. “A pegasus must have dropped them off.”  Flash thought for a moment, then trotted over to the little filly, moving around the glowing tracks. The young girl was staring at Twilight with open-mouthed astonishment.  “Hi,” he smiled at her, sitting down next to her. The younger filly was blue in color, though her coat was mostly covered in mud and dirt. Her purple and white mane was equally scruffy, but her green eyes were fixed on Twilight’s horn in awe.  “Do you think I can make magic like that one day?” she asked Flash.  Flash chuckled. “If you work hard and stay in school, maybe you’ll get your cutie mark in it,” he said. “I’m Flash Sentry. That’s my friend Twilight Sparkle. What’s your name?”  “Glitter Dance,” the filly replied. “I’m six and a half!”  “Nice to meet you, Glitter,” Flash nodded. “Is your mom coming?”  “Yeah,” Glitter nodded.  “Glitter, is it okay if I ask you a few questions about what happened here?” Flash asked.  Glitter’s face fell and she looked back down at the ground, picking at the grass. After a few moments, she nodded.  “What were you doing here?” Flash asked.  “I was walking home after school and went to play in this lot,” Glitter said. “I knew mom probably wouldn’t be home by now because of her job on the docks, so I thought I could wait a little, and I play here quite a lot. But then I saw that pile of junk that wasn’t there before and thought there might be something cool under there.”  She shifted uncomfortably, grabbing a tuft of grass and yanking it out. “But then I pulled it aside and…” She swallowed and sniffled.  “You did the right thing, Glitter,” Flash soothed, gently extending a wing and patting her on the back. “You called the police right away and got us here so we can find the guy who did this.”  Glitter sniffled and nodded, managing to smile up at him. “Are you sure you’re gonna catch him?” she asked.  “We’re the police. That’s what we do,” Flash smiled. “Glitter, did you see anypony weird around here before you found the body? Maybe a weird pegasus?”  Glitter shook her head. “Okay. And was the tarp there this morning when you walked past it?” Flash pressed.  “No. I didn’t see it there,” Glitter replied. “That’s why I was curious, because that...tarp was new.”  “Do you recognize the pony there?” Flash asked.  Glitter looked back down at the ground again but shook her head mutely.  “Okay. Is it okay if we call you again if we have any other questions?” Flash asked.  Glitter shrugged. “I guess. You’ll have to talk to my mom.”  “Maybe next time, I’ll bring Twilight over,” Flash offered. “She can teach you some of her magic.”  Glitter Dance looked up again, her emerald irides shining. “Really?” she asked.  “I’ll ask her about it,” Flash said with a wink.  A taxi pulled up and a dark green mare wearing a set of grease-stained overalls and a grimy bandana over her mane jumped out, racing over to Glitter. “I gotta go. Bye, Mr. Sentry!” Glitter said, waving to Flash as she hurried over to her mom.  “Bye, Glitter,” Flash waved before walking back to Twilight and Suunkii, who were removing and bagging the junk weighing the tarp down. “You find anything else?” he asked, the smile vanishing from his face.  “Not much we can definitively link to the killer,” Twilight shook her head. “Most of this is just random junk.”  “The tarp might have something,” Flash said. “She said it’s new, so I’m guessing that they wrapped the body in it to dump it.”  “Good idea,” Twilight nodded.  “Twilight Sparkle, are you ready to lift the tarp off?” Suunkii asked, dropping a plank of wood into a paint bucket.  “Yes, doctor,” Twilight nodded. She lit up her horn and a purple aura gently lifted the tarp off the body, carefully folding it and setting it into a large paper bag that she then sealed.  The corpse was lying on its left side, dried blood staining his chest around a gunshot wound, the ragged hole lined with burn marks. Purple discoloration was spread across his left side, and darker bruises littered his torso and face. His cutie mark was a camera.  “He didn’t die long ago,” Flash commented, crouching down next to the body. “Lividity is pretty recent.” He bent down to take a closer look at the horn and winced at the jagged break. “Ugh...I think that was whacked off with a hammer.”  Suunkii shook his head. “I fear that this may get worse before it gets better, my friends,” he reported gravely.  “What do you mean, doctor?” Twilight asked, her face a couple of shades paler.  “Doctor Mortis is currently examining a body of a changeling discovered in the Everfree District,” Suunkii said. “That changeling also had their horn broken off in a similar manner and had similar wounds.”  Twilight and Flash stared at each other, eyes wide as saucers. “You don’t think…” Flash started to say.  Twilight shook her head. “We don’t know for sure,” she said. “Let’s just finish examining this scene first and then we can start figuring out what happened.”  And if there’s a serial killer in Ponyville, Flash thought grimly.  “Now what do we do? Our entire plan hinged on her!”  “There are other changelings in Ponyville. We’ll find them and get them to work for us. Somehow.”  “Yeah, and how are you gonna find a changeling?”  “There are ways. I’ll ask around, see what I can come up with.”  “You sure that’s a good idea?”  “We have come too far, and paid way too much money, to bail on the plan now. You want all this to be for nothing?  “Fuck...and what about the tunnel? This is gonna slow things down too much.”  “Don’t worry about that. We’ve still got the traps working, and the tunnel’s about finished anyway. And our friend will keep it safe for us; he's got a lot of money riding on this, too.”  “Okay. Okay...and how are we gonna get the changeling to work with us?”  “Money’s a good motivator. And if not...well, there are other ways.”