10
It had been Park Row once, bordering Benison Park.
Almost fifty years after Stygius Belfry and Judge Strapper’s failed attempt to turn Gotham into a city state sized church, resulting in miles of odd angled and spikey urban sprawl, an eccentric artist arrived in the City of Secrets. Such figures weren’t unusual even back then, Gotham’s elite sponsoring them from all over Equestria and even abroad, but few would have as equal an impact upon the city as Gallivanting Gladstone, more commonly known by his insisted sobriquet ‘Gallivanti!’
Apparently this was because he thought it sounded like “Avanti!”
Born to Italstallion artificer parents, educated at one of the finest non Equius-Magi helmed magical arts schools in the still then kingdom of Groomhemia, and even rumoured to be a distant descendant of Pegasus sky-pirate Dire ‘Fortune’ Potence, Gallivanti compounded his lineage by being one of the most unconventional playwrights and sculptors of his century’s Equestria.
The (somewhat) more open-minded ponies of his time ate it up. Gallivanti’s ‘Changeling Caught Unawares Mid-Centaur’ has been one of the most popular statues in Canterlot’s national gallery for two centuries and his plays are still part of the Equestrian syllabus. His comedy Apparent Apprentice to a Master of Disguise later enjoyed a slight vouge over his other works when newly crowned Princess Cadence listed it as her favourite for a Derby Planet interview in the mid-90s.
For all his success, what Gallivanti really wanted to try his hoof at was architecture. While almost every public park in Equestria sported at least one of his sculptures, clients were hesitant to pony up the seeds (predecessor to Equestrian bits) needed for his dream buildings. Something to stick in the gardens of their ancestral homes was one thing, but this…
“Dashed nice sketches though, old boy, gads yes! Very nice…mmmm, you know? Quite.”
Gallivanti’s other problem was that even though he loved his city, it was Canterlot, capital of Equestria. This was a few decades before its New Town would be built, and in the meantime nopony dared tamper with the general look of what would eventually become known as the Old Town. Bricks in various shades of white, maybe a few spires here and there but…listen, it’s Canterlot, alright? Embodiment of pony civilization, jewel in Princess Celestia’s crown? So we don’t want to mess with a good thing. White stone, green grass, steady pulse rates.
Celestia didn’t quite agree or disagree, but after becoming aware of Gallivanti’s sketches she commissioned him to design a diorama of his ideal metropolis. She was very taken by what she saw, and it remained a treasured part of her personal holdings before being bequeathed to Gallivanti’s family following his death.
At the time, while she didn’t see this dynamic, detailed miniature as a new Canterlot, Celestia did know quite a few younger members of Gotham City’s upper echelons who always confided, sometimes even directly to her, how glad they were to be invited into the “sensible” cosmopolitan atmosphere of the capital. It was a relief from Gotham’s strange streets and the perpetually looming Belfry districts.
Subtle introductions were made in front of the commissioned diorama at that year’s Grand Galloping Gala, and just like that Gallivanti had a new project and ample funding from three of Gotham’s richest families.
Yes, Celestia could’ve easily had them all to tea. But using actors, deliberately misleading rumours, specific orders to certain waiters, even her own telekinesis to cover one of Bruce’s great-great-etc grandmothers in sherry so she’d have to make for the washroom and happen to be passing the diorama at the exact right moment…well, it was something to do.
***
Equestrian history books are full of Gallivanti’s exploits, both in Gotham and all over the kingdom, but most of his stories that ponies still talk about inevitably tie back to the Big Gargoyle. Gallivanti is said to have wept at his own welcoming reception at the mainland’s Renfew Hall, because even from here he could see that the city was, “perfect, just perfect!”
For what nopony was quite prepared to ask.
Whatever he’d meant, the Great Gallivanti went to his work with the zeal of Princess Celestia in a Brabançonian cake factory. When not making audiences across Equestria burst out in scandalised laughter with his plays or solving trifling matters, such as locked room assassinations or blood diamond mysteries, Gallivanti was designing his new Gotham.
His opening move was two acts designed to endear him to the city as well as enthuse it, hosting his latest sculpture exhibition in Kelvingrove and…finishing the Corolla building.
The Corolla? What, the Corolla? That huge thing that whatshisface, Belfry, that thing he said was supposed to unify all of Gotham or something weird like that? The one they never finished, just left the foundations up like with that pit in Cathedral Square? Hay, said Pony Q. Public, I’d lay down some serious seeds to see that!
One of Stygius Belfry’s more optimistic designs and named after an experimental, flowing construction style he developed from studying natural formations, the Corolla building is a pistil shaped glass observation tower, seated upon a sturdy base of winding steel beams and ringed by stamen like ledges. Legend has it these upper features were shaped as such to host more of Belfry’s gargoyles (or, some kinder observers point out, his virtuous statues) but along with the rest of his later projects they were never even constructed. In fact, the skeletal iron beams for its foundations had become a city landmark in their own right.
Gallivanti didn’t see a need for that to change. He surrounded the sort-of-panopticon formed by the beams with four large steel and stone pillars, carved to resemble the four pony breeds leaping over wildflowers. (The Alicorn one was out back, by the bins! But then it wouldn’t be a Gallivanti production if it wasn’t as cheeky as it was sincere.)
This allowed the space to retain that outdoor feeling, the front pillars now supporting a see-through glass roof while the two sets at the back would now take the weight of the tower proper. While that was under construction Gotham began to buzz, drawn to the site by these exciting new additions to the familiar. There was even a café, set up so builders and curious onlookers could intermingle over mediocre coffee and decent bread with vegetables on their lunch breaks.
Those ponies who became regulars were surprised to receive invitations a week before the grand opening. How Gallivanti tracked them down is a mystery, though some suspect he may have been disguised as one of the caricaturist old mares who served behind the counter. It wouldn’t be the first time he walked the streets of Gotham dressed as a member of the opposite sex. Sometimes there was even a reason.
***
The opening party technically took place on a roof terrace opposite the Corolla, everypony in their glad rags wondering what was taking so long as the temperature began to drop, sunset drawing closer and closer. Some of them even grumbled it was a wind up as apart from the Skien family there weren’t any toffs. What sort of party didn’t have toffs?
Then as Celestia lowered the sun and raised the moon, they saw. The Corolla Building slowly lighting up in soft pinks, golds and blues, a luminescent flower blooming in the Gotham evening. Where Gotham’s most infamous architect had planned to place gargoyles, her newest had lined it with coloured glass and strategically placed lamps. Discarding his disguise of a doddering butler, the Great Gallivanti invited his guests inside for the real show.
The elegance of the new Corolla, even just the staircases, blew the little ponies away. Gotham by sunset through the observation deck’s windows would transform them.
It was a gradual process, but it was impossible to take in the spread of the city and not begin to feel something. You have to understand, even the Pegasus-ponies among them were normal workers, factory hooves and cart pullers. They’d never had something like this before.
Gotham didn’t look half bad by starlight from twenty stories up, even the creepy Belfry districts taking on a certain kind of splendour. The stunned ponies began to think about that as they took in the opulent towers…and the parts of the city that weren’t lighting up like they were, and were only going to get darker.
They began to think about the ponies who lived in those parts of the city, ponies just like them. And they began to think about the kind of person who had a view like this almost all their life, to the point they probably didn’t even really see it anymore. Or saw those parts of the city and just didn’t care.
And they began to form opinions about those people. And, slowly but surely, to get angry.
The toffs did eventually arrive, grumbling about conflicting directions on their invitations, and were confused to pass a contemplative group coming down the stairs they were ascending, talking quietly amongst themselves in their unsophisticated voices. They even started talking to the two Unicorns who worked the elevator, in these days just before the advent of hydraulics. Who were these ponies? Staff, just leaving?
In coming years, the elite of Gotham City would become very familiar with the faces of Gallivanti’s first guests but, tellingly, never remember where they’d first seen them even if they did seem familiar. Those ponies would be the ones that began asking impertinent questions about labour conditions and finish with leading protests against those conditions, the amount of real estate they owned, and just their very existence in general.
Even had they eyes to appreciate the view, Gotham after 6-o’clock in the dark wasn’t quite the same as watching those oranges and reds fade to delicious darkness, sliding between buildings and pooling in the streets, a patch of dark navy filling the middle of the sky, heralding the eventual Red Sky District. “Too ruddy dark now!”, as one mutton chopped ex-brigadier put it.
As far as the rich, non-Skien clan guests were concerned the appeal of the Corolla, next to their expected status of being there exclusively, was its lavish interior. In addition to the observation deck the new tower housed a restaurant, a lounge, an indoor theatre, indoor garden, and indoor thermae. And behind each were suites of sumptuous rooms, heads and shoulders above the fading ones in their aging mansions.
How much did the Great Gallivanti want for them?
What did he mean they weren’t for sale?
…what did he mean they were for the staff?!
With the Skiens behind him trying and not entirely succeeding to keep straight faces, Gallivanti pantomimed polite confusion to their rivals (and even some of their close friends.) “Well, m’lords, if somepony asked me to look after all this I’d expect somewhere nice to put my hooves up. But then, I have most sensitive hooves.”
***
Princess Celestia was told about this line a few weeks later and smiled to herself. She thought back to when she’d asked about Gallivanti’s diorama, where the normal ponies would be sleeping. Genuinely confused, the artist had indicated the same near-palaces he’d just finished showing off, opening up miniature roofs to better convey what he meant.
To Celestia’s delight Gallivanti’s dream city would look like a city of palaces but it would be the ponies who cleaned and kept them who would live like kings. The rich would only inhabit the luxuries of places like the Corolla Building for a few hours every day. By late afternoon, early evening at the latest, they would become the private playgrounds and essentially the property of the ordinary residents of those suites. They would own them in a way the holders of mere property deeds never would.
That was the sort of city the Great Gallivanti wanted to make.
***
Historians are still arguing over whether or not the Gotham City of Gallivanti’s dreams ever really came to be. One school of thought argues he only achieved a mere aesthetic presence. Another insists he was vital to Gotham’s eventual pushing back against the stagnant elements of its nobility, a stretch of history resulting in such legendary activists as Waxen Wings, Sturdy Steed, Shadow Sanctuary and Heavens Henceforth, though others argue they perhaps didn’t achieve as much as they could have either. Gotham City likes to tie itself in knots like that.
Gallivanti’s aesthetic presence is inarguably one of the most enduring parts of his legacy, still a must-see recommended by most guidebooks for the region. Including the Corolla Building only nine of his envisioned structures were completed, though that’s going by Gallivanti’s definition of what constituted his own creations. In his eyes, simply attaching statues to pre-existing structures didn’t count.
He was far prouder of his public squares, designed to act as both rest stops and throughfares for ponies trying to make their way through Gotham’s convoluted streets. The city in turn prides itself on many famous frescos he created for these, incorporating many elements from them into its iconography and advertising.
Artists always question the exact intention behind these frescos, which often depict Equestrian mythological characters either having secretive meetings or in the act of running. Some poses are clearly meant to be action orientated, heroes lunging towards opponents or bravely towards a symbolic new horizon or so on, even just a joyful racing about between friends, but it’s difficult not to view these scenes through that context once you’re aware of it. Motion and the feeling of being caught at something are also consistent themes of Gallivanti’s sculptures, adding to that sense. Even figures giving you come-hither gestures in the act of dancing feel like they’re dancing away from the viewer.
Gallivanti was the exact opposite of repressed and revelled in it, so Equestria’s art community will always be curious just what exactly he may have been running from.
The one arguable exception to the question is the imposing, rearing statue of the Heliograph tower, which combines both Gallivanti’s artistic and engineering genius. Its certainly in motion but definitely isn’t attempting to hide.
Commissioned to design an iconic front for what was originally home to the Gotham branch of the Equestrian royal guard, Gallivanti first designed and implemented an elaborate support structure to house the finished ten story product. His intention was not only to totally secure the statue for the safety of ponies on the streets below but to allow for its removal, “in the happy event somepony comes to their senses about the ridiculous thing.”
The concept of sculptures that could be easily removed and repurposed greatly intrigued the city and would go on to be implemented throughout Equestria in many interesting ways over subsequent decades, which was of course what Gallivanti had wanted. Why should any one pony’s work define a space just because it had ‘Always Been There?’
His Heliograph statue would, ironically, be the only one of such transient works to never be removed, continuing to loom over Gotham to this day. Its eyes were originally complex crystals, carved and lit like the variety Gallivanti used for the Corolla building so it would reflect light into two stain glass windows he personally commissioned to install in two of Stygius Belfry’s original towers. This strategic lighting effect, which gave those districts a wonderful night time ambience (but were hard on the eyes during especially bright summers, it must be said), features often in Gallivanti’s more ambitious architectural work.
And was completely ruined when they built the first tower block of New Town, blocking what he regarded as the Heliograph’s one redeeming feature forever.
Gotham’s New Town is one of its most favoured districts, close enough to Old Town’s Kingston financial district and the combined theatre and fashion district of Schumacher for residents (and tourists) to reach anything important without leaving the safety of it’s art deco confines.
It’s even far enough away from the Red Sky District’s signature effect that it can pretend the crimson clouds slashing into its borders like dragon claws are a feature, a charming view of the Old Town skyline with the reassurance that you’re living on the right side of the Gotham River. The safe one.
This intention hasn’t stopped Gotham’s supervillains from using the district for their deranged purposes, especially since, as mentioned, the largest financial and theatre districts are practically right next door to it. Even the presence of G.E.U.P. central on Steward Street a few blocks away doesn’t overly concern them, not with the number of sharp curves and sudden inclines any response will have to navigate.
Throw in waves of party ponies trying to get into or out of New Town and onto Grand Avenue, especially on weekends, and all you really have to worry about is how conducive to roof-running New Town buildings are.
Y’know. Because that’s how the Batpony will come for you.
Designed during the post-World Storm boom, a period of magi-political stability and technological/cultural development following the war for the 19th century Storm King’s staff, New Town was Gotham’s attempt to convince Equestria that it could swing dance with the best of them, providing a slick, classy alternative to the gothic/Jugendstil stagnation surrounding it.
A Schumacher worthy show was made of how it would use ingenuity of Gotham’s past for the innovations of today: to one up newly popular neon-chanted signs they used the Great Gallivanti’s Heliograph construction system to create elaborate and, most importantly, replaceable neon billboards.
Thankfully New Town has been the site of enough genuine works of art, mostly music, to have redeemed itself in the long dead Gallivanti’s eyes, but its complicated, almost insectile lengths of metal signage are still there. They are considered wonderful to look at by night and unsettling to see weaving around, sometimes even between buildings during daylight.
Not nearly enough Equestrian companies make use of that kind of advertising these days to pay for the cost of enchanting the signs, leaving an embarrassing amount of them blank even at night, and the entire network ironically echoes Stygius Belfry’s districts by being too elaborate and expensive to simply pull down.
Still, combined with genuinely charming art deco architecture and an energizing atmosphere, these signs nowadays conjure nostalgic feelings even in ponies far too young to have seen the period New Town embodies anywhere but in old movies, rerun during slumps in pre-summer sun celebration matinees. It is that almost unidentifiable “Those were the days” feeling New Town and city hall are constantly trying to recapture, with mixed results.
And it was that energy the Gotham real estate business of forty-plus years ago was trying to tap into when it decided to build a whole new neighbourhood next to the city’s then most recent park. New Town isn’t even on the same side of the river as Park Row but is responsible for its creation. Perhaps even, however indirectly, for what it became.
While far from the root of all evil in the City of Secrets it was hard, working your hooves to the bone for just enough to eat, remembering the taunts of other foals about your ma working up in Jezebel Plaza just because of how close your tenement was to it, not to look across the river at all those glowing signs and sparkling windows and think about all the ponies behind them, who could enjoy themselves. Like that. Every night.
It was hard not to think about it. All day. All night. And, slowly but surely, to get angry.
***
Benison Park was founded by one of Gotham’s most prestigious goat families, the Baaramewevilles, as a memorial for those working class Gothamites lost during a terrible accident that tore the city’s own weather factory out of its magical orbit.
The image of all that green gradually replacing scorched cobbles and piles of rubble genuinely helped aid the city’s recovery, resulting in the creation of Benisonville, a prosperous district built between the park and a hospital the Baaramewevilles founded to give beleaguered residents more immediate access to care. With an industry boom as companies rushed to stake a claim in what would become the Charnel industrial district, Gotham recovered, even gradually adjusting to its strange new red sky left behind in the weather factory’s wake.
Survivors were initially moved to Miagani Island’s east end, redeveloped by the Baaramewevilles, the Skien clan and likeminded philanthropists into one of the largest residential neighbourhoods in the city. While well intentioned, Gotham’s constant space shortage meant compromises had to be made, which is why so many East End apartments are above storefronts and most of its civic offices were crammed together...before they inevitably fled to richer parts of Old Town.
Lack of immediate jobs left many of the new East Enders with little choice but to venture into the already crowded markets of the city, or make hard, early commutes all the way across Miagani and Narrowbrough for assembly line work in flourishing Charnel plants.
Despite this, the situation settled. So much so that in a few decades Gotham enjoyed yet another period of economic growth (which required another period of civil rights campaigning, because ponies who’d been raised in the East End and worked at Charnel weren’t about to be caught off guard again), bringing with it a longing for the black tie, jazz band, neon lit glory of New Town’s heyday.
A pair of entrepreneurs who would become known as the Monarch Brothers attempted to seize on this when they realised their comedic misadventures, which they later used as the basis for a beloved series of movies, had left them with failed properties stretching almost in a straight line to the East End…and effectively in a row across the eastern border of Gotham’s most popular new park.
With nostalgia in the air, opportunity almost literally on their doorsteps, and bills from their previous adventures piling up, the Monarch bros. called in every possible favour to turn their failed storefronts into trendy new, Stallifornia-esque masterpieces, just like the then popular kind east coast Equestrian cities were looking for.
Businesses flocked to these but the Monarch’s didn’t stop there, buying and converting more properties until they got city hall’s attention. The rest is history and the Monarchs went on to become legends, even having a district in modern Gotham fondly named after them.
Park Row’s construction took almost longer than Benison Park itself but the result, a ten mile stretch of sunny Applewood-ian glamour nestled comfortably in Gotham’s damp concrete grotesqueness, was a near instant success. While most of the focus on its glory days is largely commercial or the pedigree of its residents, its less prestigious bookending neighbourhoods, Infantino to the west and the East End at…well, y’know, treasured the neighbourhood for a different reason: the Gotham City Free Clinic.
Founded by two doctors and a lawyer who couldn’t help noticing the, uh, dragon sized economic disparity between those that flourished after Gotham’s misfortunes and those that didn’t, the Free Clinic saved hundreds of the latter a long journey into the city for aid they might not have been able to afford. More than that, it often offered sanctuary and, with the lawyer’s help, sometimes justice.
Because of adventures like those one of the doctors fell in love with her, and she with his endless compassion for others, the equal of her own. Within the clinic’s first year they solved a conspiracy framing one Monarch brother for the attempted murder of the other, an elaborate scheme to turn Park Row from a neighbourhood into something more exclusive and lucrative.
By its third they were engaged. The second doctor, who’d always had a thing for the lawyer herself, wished her friends well and was even the lawyer’s mare of honour.
Shortly after this the lawyer and her new husband moved into a perfectly respectable house in Park Row itself, cementing residents’ view of them as a vital institution, fighting to keep their former class from preying on their new neighbours. Two years following this happy new status quo they announced that their first child was on the way.
Almost a decade after that they were murdered, right there in Park Row.
All because somepony who’d grown up seeing the distant lights of New Town, watched its successor take shape and the glossiness of its residents’ coats, their fine clothes and jewellery, the smiles on their damn faces, had looked at the squalor surrounding them…and gotten angry.
***
The transformation of Park Row into Crime Alley wasn’t instantaneous but took less time than the neighbourhood’s construction, with the deaths of Thomas Thane and Aurora Flame at its epicentre. Enough ponies deserted the area that by the time Gotham recovered from her subsequent periods of economic upheaval, funds were in no way considered to resuscitate it.
As one public intellectual put it at the time, Gotham had taken everything from the ponies of Crime Alley but hope. Did they mean, The Gotham Gazette asked, that they thought something could still be done?
“Sir, you misunderstand me: I mean that there is no hope in Crime Alley.”
This neglect and several gang wars during the Destrier’s rise to power contributed to the squalor that earned the name change, although street historians are still arguing if the ‘Crime’ part derives from Gotham’s new kingpin taking full advantage of ten miles of fresh battleground, with a direct line into the East End from his native Infantino, or the first murder ever committed in Park Row.
With hardly anypony living in ‘The Alley’ and its body count already the stuff of urban mythology it wasn’t long until even sanitation workers refused to enter it, leaving the East End to fend for itself. The only advantage of being next to Crime Alley it enjoyed was reliable subway services as drivers raced straight past the deteriorating Park Row station, but they were still now stuck taking long rides into the city centre to look for work that wouldn’t come to them. Not if it had to take Crime Alley.
Why does Princess Celestia or Bruce Rein not simply buy up the area? Because putting aside the question of whether you want anypony to have that kind of power, so much of Crime Alley went for cheap prices you never saw in a city Gotham’s size, even adjusting for inflation, that hundreds of different factions soon owned entire stretches of it.
That was over twenty years ago. So many claims have switched hooves by now that you’d have an easier time deducing why a raven is like a writing desk than who actually owns what in Crime Alley. A few years ago, local business pony Almond Agate tried to solve this problem…by blowing up the entire street. Fortunately, this was prevented when local vigilante the Batpony stopped the renegade demolitions experts who just happened to come from Agate’s own construction company.
Unfortunately, just because Agate’s plan to build a New Town clone never happened didn’t mean Gotham City paid that much more attention to the Alley. The most that came of it was Bruce Rein buying demolished buildings to make a new homeless shelter, meaning that now at least a mile and a half of Crime Alley is actually occupied. In addition to the new shelter, this includes a warren of tenements bordering the East End, unflatteringly dubbed ‘Alley Town’, and the still operating Free Clinic.
The clinic’s doors are always open, recognized as neutral ground by residents and gangsters alike. Even running on fumes, surviving founder Dr. Pumpkin Lily has done everything she can to prove that pretentious quote wrong. An old joke goes that half of Gotham is walking around with at least one of her stitches somewhere under their coats.
Once the best Lily could offer (you know, besides the free lifesaving health care) was a bowl of cereal and a lukewarm shower, with a golf club upside the head for those few Gotham hoods desperate enough to try raiding her pharmaceuticals. With Bruce Rein’s return to Gotham her resources were vastly expanded.
New equipment, first class facilities, constant supplies from Rein Enterprises’ own medical offshoots, magi-tech locks courtesy of Lupinus Flax’s R&D division, and even an entirely new wing made from a redeveloped workshop next door to the clinic. Its extra bed space is a miracle, a stable allowing the clinic to host two mobile hospital wagons, with enough floor space left over to serve as an honest to sun operating theatre, borders on absurd decadence.
Something like hope has slowly grown, or at least congealed, in Crime Alley since the Free Clinic opened its doors, and Dr. Pumpkin intends to keep them that way whatever the circumstances, whoever needs its help.
Which doesn’t mean she hasn’t had second thoughts about this policy now and then. Case in point—
12
Dr. Pumpkin Lily resisted an urge to drag her hooves down her face.
“Say that again please, dear,” she said patiently to the younger mare in front of her.
A pair of large blue eyes blinked at her. Lily got the impression it wasn’t so much that the Earth Pony was off in her own little world, it was that she thought the logic of the various non sequiturs she’d said over the course of this interview was so self-evident that it must be the world outside hers that was strange.
“Uh, alrighty,” the mare said in what sounded like a kind of Manehattan drawl and cleared her throat. When she spoke, it was indeed in the exact same way as when she’d first delivered the statement. “We don’t want any head meds…wink!”
And she did, beaming.
Dr. Pumpkin looked to the mare’s companion, which wasn’t much help since they were bundled in so much winterwear, even a surgical mask like stretch of fabric across their muzzle, that she couldn’t discern anything about them. Not even if they actually needed a pair of eye obscuring glasses protruding from the darkness of their hood. Dr. Pumpkin elected instead to glare at the other mare leaning against the corner of her office.
Savanah Style glared back, forelegs folded and one of two cat-like stripes on her coat changing shape to match her furrowing brow. She was an East Ender, for starters, but prior to repairing damage from Gotham’s decade spanning war zones Lily had been born in Possilpark. It was going to take a lot more than a full-grown mare wearing a black leather jacket in their late 20s to intimidate her. It helped that she’d known Savanah since she was a filly, which meant she should expect things like foisting two weirdos on her.
“Are you asking me for tranquilisers?” Lily asked outright. She needed to start making a point.
“Huh? No!” The blonde mare’s blue eyes crossed for a second. Lily noticed a white streak at the corner of her right eye. Makeup? “That is, we’re not not askin’! If ya catch my drift. Wink!”
She craned sideways to take in an array of doctorates on Dr. Pumpkin’s office wall. “Ma’am. Doctor ma’am. Wink?”
“Good.”
“Sweet!”
“Because then I don’t have to tell you I can’t give you any.”
“Say what?”
“What about potions?” Savanah asked.
“Same difference,” Dr. Pumpkin said firmly. “Not without telling me why you may need them at any rate.”
“I thought this place was free,” the other mare half whined, making a pouting expression her face seemed genuinely built for. She clutched her hooves placatingly, one sleeve of her blue University of Gotham hoodie sliding down her foreleg a little. Lily, having met a larger number of runaways in the course of her career, one of whom was still trying to look cool in the corner of her office all these years later, wondered if the hoodie was too big for the Earth Pony, how quickly and where it may have been salvaged from.
“Yes, but we’re also a hospital,” she said firmly. “We can’t hoof over any kind of medication just like that, especially when we don’t know what it’s for. Neither of you has even assented to an examination.”
The bundled-up figure shuddered, or at least some kind of motion took place under their overlapping fabrics. The blonde mare jumped to all fours, balancing perfectly on her chair, and patted the closest of several lumps protruding from her companion’s hood. (Or possibly multiple hoods stuffed inside each other like Stalliongrad nesting dolls.)
“Hey, hey,” the mare soothed, “it’s okay Mistah V…uuuuuuh…” Her eyes darted back to Dr. Pumpkin. “Veeeeee are not beingk vheeeeerry interesting, ja? So is no need for examination!”
“Where did you say you were from again?” Dr. Pumpkin asked in a deadpan. It wasn’t a nice thing to do but she’d put up with a lot in a very short amount of time, a fake accent felt like an acceptable place to stop being nice.
“Uh…”
“They’ve been crashing at my place,” Savanah supplied.
“I see. For how long?”
“Three days,” the blonde and the East Ender said in sync, one far less enthusiastically than the other.
“And you just now decided you needed medication?”
The bundled figure hung their head, though this may have been from the weight of their hood(s).
“Nah, but since we wuz in the neighbourhood…” The blonde shrugged.
“They’re looking for a new place to stay,” Savanah said, a bit too quickly.
“Ah.” Dr. Pumpkin rubbed the space between her eyes, squeezing them shut from visions of this pair in her clinic for three minutes, never mind three days. “We do have some cots available, yes, but…”
But they were clumsily trying to solicit medication which she suspected was meant to supplement, very probably substitute, a pre-existing prescription. The term ‘head meds’ was new to her but felt self-explanatory and could mean anything from a careful-now-potion to antipsychotics.
“Well, is there anypony you’d like us to contact?” she stalled.
“Nope,” Savanah said firmly before either of the two, one of whom had yet to say anything at all, could respond.
There was a rattling at the door and a stack of folders walked into the room, like the universe reminding Lily she had oh so much more to worry about.
“I’m with somepony right now, Cloud,” Dr. Pumpkin said with attempted politeness.
“Sorry Doc, it’s a twofer, came in just this second: grant stuff and pharmacy stuff.”
“Both stuff we very much need,” Pumpkin allowed wearily, gesturing to her desk even though she wasn’t sure the boy could see it.
She was startled by the blonde mare leaping up onto her seat with almost in-equine agility, balancing on the seat with only her hindlegs while she enthusiastically rubbed the hooves of her forelegs together. “Pharmacy, ya say?” she announced. “Whatta coinkidink, let’s have us a lil’ pharma-looksie!”
“Honey!” Savanah snapped, finally straightening out of her slouch. The hooded figure moaned softly.
Savanah’s snap startled the blonde, making her rock and her chair sway with her. The volunteer turned, drawn by the noise the two younger mares were making, managing to lower their paperwork just as ‘Honey’ loomed towards them. As Dr. Pumpkin sat up to try and take some kind of control of the situation, the poor lad yelped at the sight, reflexively hurling the papers into the air. This made the hooded figure moan even louder, clasping their mitten covered hooves(?) to the sides of their hood.
Lily instinctively threw her own hooves up first to deflect and then, mercifully, to catch one stack of paperwork. Simultaneously, Honey yelped back hard enough to send her and her chair toppling backwards. Lily would swear there was the briefest moment when the poor creature was in mid-air, but just as that registered there was an impossible blur of limbs, and she was balanced on the legs of the now upside-down chair. Just as impossibly, the remaining paperwork dropped in a perfect stack into Dr. Pumpkin’s in-tray.
“HA!” Honey cried triumphantly.
It wasn’t clear if that had anything to do with the entire chair snapping under her weight, sending her faceplanting into the floor, but timing is the most important part of any good joke. As a perfect complement the impact caused the new stack to topple sideways, smacking into the one in Dr. Pumpkin’s hooves and sending all of it billowing.
“Savanah,” Lily said, calmly but loudly.
The volunteer was pointing at both of her guests, trembling almost as much as Honey’s bundled up companion. “Wh…wh…wh—?”
“They were just leaving, Cloud,” Dr. Pumpkin assured, glaring at Savanah, who was still frozen in the act of reaching for Honey. “We were attempting to arrange alternative accommodation.”
Cloud blinked. “For real? Oh. Uh…I…could…help?”
The moaner, who’d fallen silent, looked up slowly. Honey pulled a sheet of paper off her head to look up at the volunteer. “Really?”
“Cloud…” Dr. Pumpkin began, worrying what she might be responsible for.
She was cut off by Cloud finding himself grabbed by the most attractive mare he’d ever been close to outside of certain private dreams. She was even wearing leather, kinda! If he wasn’t still slightly stunned he would have gulped.
“Really,” Savanah Style said with a grin that showed almost as much teeth as desperate hope. It wasn’t a question.
When Montoya and Bulwark ushered them through G.E.U.P.’s front doors Rainbow Dash whispered, “They got nothing so don’t give nothing away!”
Rarity assumed this meant keeping mum about why they’d come to the Big Gargoyle. No problem.
In fact, part of her was hoping the local guard would drop some kind of clue, preferably with an itinerary and directions, so they could get this over with and get out of here without him showing up. She wouldn’t be surprised though; even if Salford wasn’t having a discreet word in his employer’s ear G.E.U.P. central had the giant spotlight they used to tell him things mounted on its roof.
The new G.E.U.P. central, rather. Rarity was impressed. She’d wound up in the…what term to use? Classic? The classic guard HQ once or twice back in the day, sometimes in similar circumstances. It was a traditional Gotham building with a lovely, intricate circular window, and she’d been surprised when their escorts led them past it, into New Town, then onto Stewart Street where the new building rose over everything.
If she had to guess she’d say the E.U.P. had commandeered then overhauled that old airship factory. Even from here she could see an open shutter on one of the higher levels, a few zeppelin noses poking lazily out into the sunlight. No sign of the signal, but she did note a large steel landing pad like thing jutting out of the side of a structure shaped like an observatory. Hmm.
She was trying to remember if this factory had been the one built by one of the more paranoid boom-time magnates. She knew there was one who’d been obsessed with building small cities into the top floors of all his buildings, because —yes, Zesty had told her, hadn’t she?— because he’d been a sailor or something, anyway he’d had this mad idea the sea was out to get him, so he lived like a hermit (although a hermit with room service) at the top of his businesses. If this was who she was thinking of, an airship factory made sense: should whatever his delusion be come to pass he could just fly away.
Rarity was reserving sympathy until she could look up how he’d treated his employees, but it must have been a real boon to Commander Autumn when the old boy…retired or became a supervillain or even just passed in his sleep, whichever it was. She could count on Sweetie Belle’s horn fluting how many Gotham aristocrats would willingly bequeath property to the city, especially a beauty like this.
G.E.U.P. central gave the impression of two buildings in one, a New Town deco style for the base, an Escutcheon Island style glass and steel beams complex rising out of the top. To bridge the two, a series of metal gantries had been embedded just where the art deco portion of the tower block began to run out, supporting a giant metal reproduction of the E.U.P.’s phoenix symbol.
It seemed appropriate, as once inside the building’s large, high walled courtyard they could see most types of E.U.P. operatives in full uniform. Guards were obvious, traditionally armoured ponies mixing with ones in E.U.P. plainclothes fits like Montoya. Some of the Pegasi looked like either weather workers or a bomber jacket and cap wearing sky patrol. Paramedics and firefighters rounded the roster out, sticking close to renovated stables housing all sorts of carts and automobiles, even an impressive mechanical fire engine, fed by a hose connected to one of two large water towers.
Apparently Commander Autumn had decided to combine the city’s rescue forces rather than simply trying to coordinate things with an haggard, understaffed stable of detectives and some mildly (but still) corrupt guards. Rarity wondered how that was working out.
And how much longer they were going to have to sit in his also impressive lobby, waiting to find out what he was even going to do with them.
***
“Seriously,” Rainbow Dash hissed, “noth-ing.”
“Quite,” Rarity murmured, wondering which nothing this third or fourth entreaties was referring to.
Bulwark and Montoya hadn’t been gone that long but Rainbow kept doing this so much Rarity was starting to feel time stretch. It was a mix of annoyance and uncertainty born of their surroundings: the detectives hadn’t placed them in a cell but a sort of corral past the front desk, marked by a large yellow circle of flooring and fenced in by tough looking slats that came up to average pony neck height. There were benches, painted the same yellow as the floor, all of it topped by elaborate gabbles to prevent a Pegasus or other flyers leaving that way.
So, Rarity mused, they hadn’t been arrested exactly. This wasn’t a processing cell but nothing in here said ‘waiting room’, which she was pretty sure was what was on the other side of a series of saloon style doors she could see across the foyer. G.E.U.P. wasn’t sure what to make of them, which meant they could still be here a while even if they weren’t under arrest.
Despite the seats she and Rainbow felt compelled to stand, listening to the bustle of Gotham’s finest. It added to the mild disconcertion of the corral, which felt like it should be cutting them off from all the voices, scratching of quills and clanking armour but was so open they still felt like they were in the middle of it. Eventually Rarity sat in one of the seats, which prompted Dash to start doing push ups rather than impotently flutter around the ceiling.
“They might have nothing,” she grunted from the floor, “but you’d think they could give us something to pass the time.”
“I used to bring my own newspaper,” Rarity concurred, staring pointlessly up at the ceiling. “Gads, I have gotten rusty.”
Dash turned to look at her without breaking her routine. “For real?”
“Oh yes, the Gazette, the Planet, Showcase, Kingdom Come...well, those’re magazines, but you know what I mean.”
“Nah, I mean you’ve done time?”
“Only if you mean time in their lobby, darling.” Rarity winked at her. “Ask nicely and I may tell you about it.”
“Another couple centuries and I just might,” Dash muttered, changing to wing-ups. “They’re taking forever!”
“Thereabouts.” Rarity shifted irritably on her seat. “Actually, forget passing the time, a magazine or some such would give these things some much needed padding. Say what you will about those old G.E.U.P. benches but at least they had some form of lumbar support. In fact, last time I was waiting this long they…Oh Great Pony in the Sky.”
“What?” Dash froze mid-up, whirling to look at her. “Didja sit on something? Is it a body?!”
“What?! No!” Rarity sprang off her seat then hesitated, instinctively turning to check because it was Gotham, then shook her head. “No, I mean last time I was here it took so long because Commander Autumn wasn’t even in the building. Just had a thought, what if he’s not now?”
Dash blinked at her, still balanced on her wings. “What, Autumn Winds? The big noise himself? You think he’d get in on something like this? Whatever this even is.”
“He will when they tell him it’s us, darling,” Rarity smiled wryly.
“Point.” Dash resumed her exercises. “Your butler was talking about bail?”
“Salford’s not my butler,” Rarity corrected, “more’s the pity. Spike’s a lamb, but if I—we had a Salford…”
“Yeah-yeah, whatever, he bailin’ us out or not?”
“Depends on whether or not we need to be bailed out, I suppose.”
“Did I hear him say his boss is Bruce Rein or was that just the concussion?”
“…yes,” Rarity admitted.
“Huh. Well, that’s a shame.”
Rarity almost reared up from shock. “What?!”
Did Rainbow know? How? Was that why they were always bantering during those team ups? Had she been one of his sidekicks?!
The sheer incongruity of that thought was like a bucket of water to the face, startling her out of her panic more than actually calming her. The logic, how much she knew the two individuals concerned and how both of them would make most versions of that scenario utterly impossible, did help steady her somewhat.
“Guy’s a goofball,” Dash continued causally, “but he’s a loaded goofball. Could use that kind of money in our corner.”
“I meant you’re not concussed,” Rarity clarified, immediately wondering if that was accurate.
“Oh, sweet. Hope he gets a move on then.”
“I’d rather we kept a low profile,” Rarity said hurriedly.
“Rarity, we’re in jail.”
“Not technically!”
Dash was looking up at her while keeping her rhythm this time. She paused only long enough for comprehension to dawn on her face, followed by a smirk.
“Don’t you dare,” Rarity warned.
“How am I supposed to resist?” Dash shot back, smirk still rising and falling. “You and him? That’s big!”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh c’mon! He can’t be worse than Blueblood!”
“How did this become about my taste in men, exactly?” Rarity demanded, feeling her temper rising with the Pegasus’ shoulders, and not falling.
“Gotta pass the time somehow.”
“Well I don’t want to pass it this way because I don’t want to talk about it.” She pointed an accusatory hoof as Dash began to protest. “Up-bup-bup! Pinkie-Promise me!”
“Awww, cheap shot!” Dash moaned but stopped to balance on her wings and go through the motions. “Ugh, fine. Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupca--”
“And while you’re at it,” Rarity snapped, knowing Dash would eventually default to her new catchphrase and knowing she’d be even less in the mood, “promise you’ll stop saying that over and over!”
Dash blinked an eye, the other still covered by her hoof. “Saying what now?”
“They don’t have anythiiiing!” Rarity mimicked, more of a whine than a rasp. “Honestly, yes, I wish there was a magazine or something in here, so I could gag you!”
“…I didn’t say that!”
“…yes you di—!”
“I said,” Dash retorted with almost Twilightian primness, “they don’t have nothing.”
Rarity spun on her heels, rammed her head into the yellow, musty smelling seat material, and roared into it. She hoped this foul stuff muffled it enough not to have the guards burst in on them but also didn’t really care.
“Hello there, ladies!” announced a voice oozing with…no, enough to say it oozed.
Rarity raised her head, blinking, as did Dash, still on the floor and with a hoof over one eye. A stallion had approached them from one side of the corral, smiling in at them from a neck level opening. He was having to stand on tippy-hooves to make it work as an interview window. His smile was attempting to be charming but there was a slight wobble at its corners which suggested strain, either from maintaining his affectation, his position, or both.
At first Rarity wondered if she was looking at a foal’s face, so close that it distorted, but realised he was probably around their age, just with an adolescent air. That might have something to do with a black leather coat and matching wide brim fedora he was wearing. Matching as in both were black, that is. You’d need to stick bamboo under her pony-pedi to get her to admit they went with whoever this was and whatever kind of image they were trying to project.
“I…happened to be passing,” their guest said when enough seconds had gone by to indicate neither Element was sure what to say to him, “and thought we shouldn’t…pass up this…opportunity.”
He held out a hoof towards Rarity, his jacket sleeve slipping back along his wrist from how much he had to lean further into the coral, which didn’t go with how casual he was trying to make the gesture.
“I see,” Rarity said noncommittally.
“Hah,” breathed the Unicorn, actually (over) pronouncing the sound instead of making it and sliding into what he probably thought was a deep, significance laden voice, “I bet you see more…than people would…like to hear about.”
He was still holding out a hoof. Rarity wasn’t sure if he’d try to turn shaking hers into kissing it but had a vision of him inadvertently dragging her face into the slats (or, not a wholly unpleasant thought, her horn into his eye), and threw a foreleg around Rainbow’s shoulders. The Pegasus cottoned on immediately and mirrored the move. It was a tactic Rarity had learned from models, a way to ward off overly obsequious fans or other types of personal space intruders.
“Well, this is my friend,” she beamed, initiating the other part of the strategy: not giving this weirdo their names and making it clear there were more of them than him.
“And you are?” Dash asked pointedly.
The stallion in black held his proffered hoof out for a few seconds, smile wobbling slightly from the strain of reaching into the coral. It allowed Rarity to observe that there was indeed a slight youthfulness to his face, a cherubic quality. If he’d approached them in a pair of suit lapels or a sweater vest, even just a t-shirt, that would’ve been perfectly fine, but his choice of black accoutrements turned that youthfulness into...not so much a cry for help as ‘Look-how-much-effort-I’m-putting-into-looking-effortless’.
The stallion turned finally having to pull his foreleg back into casually sweeping his fedora off, managing to catch it before it toppled to the floor. Rarity realised part of the cherub association came from the curls of his mane. “Hah,” he said again with a sweep of his hat, “how…uncharacteristic of me. I’m Garth Meringue. Author. Dreamweaver. Visionary. Plus--”
“Garth?” Rainbow Dash asked incredulously, trying to pronounce the name.
Meringue didn’t miss a beat or drop his affected cadence. “It’s a grassy quadrangle. Surrounded by…cloisters.”
Rarity rubbed her temple with a free hoof. Talking to somepony in a police station can be awkward enough. Talking to somepony when they’re unconsciously showing you exactly who they were in high school and how far they probably haven’t come? That can make you grateful for wooden slats between you and them.
Unfortunately, she and Dash were the ones inside the corral, meaning they had nowhere to go. Could they stonewall him until he took the hint and just went away? She didn’t have high hopes, somepony this unaware of the dissonance of their wardrobe choices on themselves (or worse, aware and trying to force it to work anyway) probably wasn’t going to be able to tell when they weren’t wanted. And there was always the risk of whatever their reaction would be if you actually said something…
“I thought we might…tet the old—” Meringue flipped his fedora back on, managing to follow up the admittedly impressive move with catching it by the brim before it slipped off. “—a-tay-tay.”
The polylingual part of Rarity was too offended by this use of her favourite language to form words. Rainbow Dash, who’s first language was Istallion, could get by in Spanish and knew the meanings of a few Latin words (only ones she found cool, of course), just thought he was even more of a poser than she’d first guessed. “Cool. And your badge number would be…?”
A pause as Meringue hesitated and Rarity recovered, grateful for the tactic.
“Come now,” Meringue tried, with what someone who’d only ever read the word ‘a chuckle’ thought it would sound like, “do ponies of our calibre really need to play that kind of Monopoly game? We’re all…top hats here.”
He adjusted his glasses as he looked contemplatively off to the side.
“Or wheelbarrows, I suppose, if they were made of actual silver, since they’re pretty bloody big.”
“What?” both Elements made the mistake of asking incredulously.
Meringue pounced. “Alright, it’s a—A-heh!—fair cop. I’m not an officer of the law, if such a thing as law even exists in Gotham. If I applied, I’d…probably fail the eyesight exam because I…see too much. And…too hard. I write about the truth which is why you could also call me a horror writer. Been to Cathedral Square lately?”
“I don’t see how it would be your business if we had,” Rarity said, increasingly fed up.
It wasn’t just Meringue’s silly, breathy affectations, his voice in general was getting on her nerves. She’d place his accent from one of the southern Canterlot broughs. It wasn’t unpleasant by any means, but in addition to his annoying over emphasis of certain buzzwords Meringue’s adolescent persona leached into his voice, making it puerile and cloying when it it should’ve been cheerful.
“Come now,” Meringue insisted, smiling and placing his hooves on his hips. “Word travels fast in Gotham and somepony like me always travels…first class. Every good book needs sources.”
Rarity and Rainbow exchanged looks. Somepony writing about them appealed to both of them a lot, and Twilight was still hemming and hawing over whether to eventually publish their journal, but if Garth Meringue wrote as well as he dressed himself what would that make them sound like by association?
“Do you, ah, often interview prospective ‘sources’ while they’re in the middle of an E.U.P. station?” Rarity asked.
“Oh,” Meringue said, dropping the affectation and replacing it with a casual tone that made the following somehow worse, “normally I just send someone out to learn all about it.” He adjusted his hat, as if the motion somehow clicked him between personalities. “But sometimes when the going’s getting good on some…bad mojo, the only thing to do is to call yerself a spade and…dig.”
Rainbow Dash put her head on one side, probably considering the best angle to hit this person. “You sure are digging something right now.”
Meringue made the mistake of smiling. “Well, when my man told me about the two lovely ladies up in--”
“I’m counting from five and then I shall scream for a guard,” Rarity said simply.
Rainbow Dash tapped a space between slats. “Me, I just want you to know I can 100% pull somepony your size through here. Nose first.”
“Come now--” Meringue began.
“Five,” Rarity snapped. “Four.”
The alleged author threw his hooves up as if at crossbow point. “Alright, alright! You two just sounded…interesting. I figure whatever your deal is, maybe there’s a book in it.”
Rainbow growled.
“Look,” Meringue said, even as he took a slight step back and almost tripped over the hem of his coat. “We could help each other out, know what I mean? I might have a, uh, a little tip something big is going down in old Gotham soon. Charging by the word when there’s three of us is a lotta bits.”
Rarity shared an uncertain look with Dash’s utterly unconvinced expression. This lummox was trying so hard to be…something that he’d dressed himself up in its clothes without making sure they fit, but they’d been in the city for hours now with no clear reason why the map had sent them here.
“Something like what?” she finally decided. “A tip from who?”
Meringue leaned forward conspiratorially, then back to stop his glasses sliding off. This sudden motion made his hat fall off instead. It landed in the pad of Detective Rubí Montoya’s hoof.
“This pony bothering you fillies?” she asked, her stare reflected in the writer’s now steady specs as he registered her.
Dash was at the slats, hovering off the floor and gripping the edge of the top row in lieu of bars. “Listen, if he’s some kinda enhanced interrogation tactic it might be a Gneighva Convention violation, but it’s working. I will confess to an-y-th-ing as long as I don’t gotta hear this guy speak! The purpose of aglets. Area 52 is real. Princess Celestia is just three lizards in an Alicorn costume. Seriously, sky’s the limit.”
Meringue looked as if he wished he had his hat back for something to hide behind. “Ah, Detective, I’m--”
“I remember you, Meringue,” Montoya said, not sounding happy about it. “Do you remember the part about having an officer present if you’re going to try this with suspects?”
“Come now--” Meringue began.
“Because even if you did these two aren’t suspects.”
“Ah,” Rarity said carefully. She wasn’t sure if she should feel annoyed about the E.U.P. Unicorn interrupting a potential avenue of investigation before it even had construction permits, although on reflection she was probably just annoyed at Garth Meringue. And she suspected she knew why the detective had come to their rescue.
“Commander Autumn would like to talk to you two,” Montoya said, passing Meringue his hat back in a way that forced him to step to the side, allowing her to hold her badge up to a small phoenix icon on one of the coral’s front gates. Both shimmered with matching magical frequencies and a row of slats at the back, which Dash and Rarity hadn’t realised were a rear gate, swung open.
“The big noise himself,” Dash said as she swooped out, revelling in being able to finally hover above the ground, “makes sense.”
“He knows it’s us,” Rarity concurred. “Goodbye, Mr. Meringue.”
Their would-be interviewer began to say something (probably a hasty “Come now.”) but was drowned out by the coral gates swinging shut.
***
Rarity and Dash made their way down a wide corridor since it was the only direction they could go in and, praise Celestia, it was away from Meringue. Rarity began to wonder what he’d been getting at about something going down, if he’d just been talking up some Gazette Square doomsayer’s ravings or outright making up a conspiracy to hit on them. She lost that train of thought when they rounded the corridor and she realised they didn’t know where to go.
The floor of this new hall was covered in different coloured lines, the kind you sometimes followed in hospitals, municipal buildings, or clandestine research labs the Elements had found themselves in over the last four years. The one leading out of the corridor they’d just come from was the same yellow as the corral floor, notable because while it led to certain spaces it was the only line that didn’t cross or align with red, blue, green and purple ones. Guards and first responders strode along these, entering and exiting different offices.
Rarity’s theory that this had once been that dilapidated Stewart Street airship factory was confirmed for her when she looked up. Those circular steel beams in the roof were good old fashioned Equestrian industrial. The room went on for what felt like miles and an array of catwalks stretched from the upper levels, crisscrossing each other. With the number of staircases climbing the walls it was like being inside some kind of life-sized diorama, which was very Gotham approach to architecture.
The hall and the rooms beyond it echoed with the bustle of hundreds of E.U.P. workers, moving between workshops converted into offices. As the Elements watched a team of paramedics raced by, and Rarity felt a sudden terror for Spike when she realised the poor figure on their gurney was a dragon. Probably teenaged at most and their scales were teal on olive, but the species was enough to bring the drake to the forefront of her mind. Their eyes were closed and some kind of oxygen mask was over their muzzle.
Being penned out front and clumsily badgered by somepony like whathisface had made Rarity feel impotent. Seeing someone like Spike hurt, thinking of him and how many miles from home she was with no clue why and surrounded by creatures of purpose, who could help the hurt and were now having to waste an afternoon trying to account for her…that made her feel helpless.
Montoya emerged from a pair of gates further along the wall, where every line except the yellow ones started from. The Elements’ yellow variety came from only two corridors and formed into little yellow boxes along the walls, probably designated civilian areas since they were occupied by nervous looking un-uniformed ponies. Rainbow Dash was the only Pegasus in one of these boxes who was hovering above the floor.
“Yeah, you’re a ’Bolt alright,” Montoya said as she reached them…no, Rarity realised, passing them and flicking her tail to indicate they should follow.
Dash flapped after her, forelegs folded. “That why you took forever? Looking up how awesome I am? ’Cause that I’d understand.”
“And here I was about to apologize for the real reason,” Montoya drawled as she led them past a semaphore message office, its open door letting out endless clickings and dingings. “Looking up both your records did take a while, yeah, but we had the Ratcaster in here last night. He tried to bust out and his pets got into the walls, messed up the elevator wiring. We’re still waiting on repairs.”
Rarity glanced up as the detective led them into a space beyond the hall. The roof opened up into an even higher space, with even more stairwells and catwalks. “Ah. Well. Any cardio one can squeeze in and all that.”
“That’s the spirit,” Montoya said, turning towards the least crowded of the stairwells. All three hesitated when they realised this was because a troupe of guards was trying to haul a set of giant dice up to the third floor.
Rainbow Dash sighed, then popped her neck. “Hey, the Commander’s office is still up top, that big foreman’s box, right?”
“Yeah?” Montoya said warily, then yelped as the Pegasus looped a foreleg around her waist.
Rarity went limp with the resignation that came from knowing somepony like Rainbow Dash for as long as she had, making sure to tuck her legs in as Rainbow soared up between the catwalks, carrying both mares up to Commander Autumn’s office.
On the 27th floor.
To be Continued and possibly updated. Notes below.
