//------------------------------// // One // Story: On the Docks // by Mad Brochacho //------------------------------// Googledocs version here. ON THE DOCKS ONE The white unicorn stepped into my office at around eight o’clock in the morning. She shut the door nice and slow like a burglar would, tip-hoofed to my desk, and lowered herself onto the visitors’ chair, softly enough that the loose leg on it didn’t so much as squeak. She was light as a cloud, incognito, unseen. She wouldn’t be caught dead in this place and she wanted everypony to know it. She said: “Hello. You must be Ms. Bride.” That was the name on the door, I told her. She looked like fine china. Her coat had been groomed all over with brushes the size of thumbtacks and it shone pearl white around her blue diamond cutie mark. Her mane was royal purple. She wore a wide-brimmed, diamond-studded sun hat that matched her eyes and was just small enough to fit through a door frame. She was exactly the type who wouldn’t have looked out of place smoking from a black cigarette holder shaped like a harvestman’s leg. Trouble was, no one smoked in this town. I lit a cigarette and asked her what sort of job she needed. The unicorn shifted, crossing her front legs. “Well, I need you to spy on somepony. It’s a spy job.” “A spy job.” “Yes.” The faulty ceiling fan spun slow circles in the smoke behind her. Bars of sunlight shining from the window shades stretched low and wide along the office floor. I blinked. I needed a cup of coffee. “You want me to tail somepony,” I said. She nodded. I dropped my cigarette on the ash tray’s edge and tapped it once with my hoof. “I can do that.” I brought the cigarette back up for a drag. “I’ll need to know who the somepony is and have some idea of what I’m digging up.” The unicorn recoiled stiffly into the back of the visitors’ chair and drew one pearl white hoof up to her mouth. Her pupils shrank back into points. “Oh, my. It’s not quite like that. I’m not entirely sure there’s anything worth digging for. She is a friend of mine, you see.” Nine times out of ten it was a friend. It was a spouse, a relative, a buddy. Sometimes it seemed like everypony would rather dig up dirt on a friend than out and talk to them about anything at all. Work was work, though, and I wasn’t in the business of selling wise words. I’d see it through. I blew a puff of smoke at the unicorn across the desk. “Doesn’t much matter who she is. If there’s dirt to be found, I’ll find it.” The unicorn smiled at me like a worried nutcracker might smile. “Good, yes, but it’s important that no pony finds out I’ve hired you. It’s a delicate situation, you see, and I —” “You’re asking me to be quiet about it.” “Yes.” When you walked into a groomer’s shop, you typically didn’t ask the pony in black if she’d ever handled a pair of scissors. The unicorn was either that naïve or she was trying to pressure me. I studied her hat for a moment and decided on the former. “Quiet’s part of the job, ma’am,” I said. She relaxed, somewhat. “Thank you. And please, call me Rarity.” “Alright then, Ms. Rarity. Let’s get started. Who’s the job.” “Her name is Pinkamena Pie. Pinkie Pie, everyone calls her. She works at Sugarcube Corner. Have you heard of it?” “Bakery, up near the square.” Rarity nodded. “So you’re familiar.” “Never been.” “Oh. Well, you can find Pinkie Pie there during the week. She is, shall we say, difficult to miss.” “I’m guessing she’s pink.” Rarity’s smile was a shade more genuine, this time. “The pinkest thing you’ll ever see, darling, with a big, pink, puffy mane.” I had seen a lot of pink, living in this town, and I wasn’t feeling all that enthused. “I’m going to need a talent.” “Oh, right. That would be helpful. It’s three balloons: two blue, one yellow.” Rarity seemed to consider something for a moment. The way her face scrunched up during that moment told me she probably wasn’t paid to consider things. “Wait just a minute, dear,” she said. “Surely you’ve attended one of Pinkie Pie’s parties?” I never was one for parties. What few I had turned out at were all on the job. When you were on the job, you weren’t partying, though if you did it right it must have looked that way. I was no less a stranger to parties than a surgeon was to knife fighting. “Can’t say I have,” I said. Rarity’s mouth went wide like she’d seen Nightmare Moon standing over my shoulder. “Oh, that’s simply awful! You mean to tell me you’ve never been to a single one of Pinkie Pie’s parties? How is that possible? I mean, she invites everypony in the entire town and —” “Can we please stick to the job, Ms. Rarity.” “Oh, yes, right. Sorry.” I leaned forward onto the desk. “So. What is it I’m looking into, exactly?” This made Rarity nervous. She started wringing her hooves together like a widow at a funeral, only empty-handed, no doubt because she couldn’t find a handkerchief to match her hat. “A couple of things,” she said. “It might be nothing. I’m not sure. It’s probably nothing.” She hesitated. I took this to mean it was probably something. “About one month ago, when Celestia visited Ponyville, I attended her welcoming party. You remember, right?” I didn’t. I nodded. “During the party, I found myself intrigued by a certain colt whom I had never seen before. He was quite handsome, and I couldn’t help but notice that he spent the entire night with Pinkie Pie. I must admit, I felt rather jealous. After the party, I asked Pinkie who this mysterious stallion was. To my surprise, she became very defensive. She told me he was no pony important. I must say I had never seen Pinkie react with such hostility before. I dropped the subject. “Anyway, about one week ago, myself and several of my friends, Pinkie Pie included, held a —” Rarity paused. “— friendly overnight social gathering at my boutique. The next morning, after everypony had left, I noticed a small leather-bound book lying on the floor. It was Pinkie’s diary. Curiosity overwhelmed me and I, well, looked inside. It was a terrible thing to do, I know.” I shrugged. “Find your answers?” Rarity’s expression fell. “On the contrary, Pinkie’s diary is precisely what convinced me to come to you. I would never hire someone to spy on one of my friends because of simple jealousy — that would be simply monstrous!” I had seated a good deal of monsters in my office over the years, were that the case. “Of course not,” I said. Rarity continued: “I’m not quite sure you’ll understand what I’m about to tell you, darling. You would have to know Pinkie Pie like I do. She’s happy, the happiest pony I’ve ever met. Always laughing, Pinkie Pie. I can’t even remember the last time I saw her frown. Imagine my surprise, then, when I read her diary. It was… not what I expected.” I sat and looked at her for a good, long while. “What are you suggesting?” Rarity avoided my eyes. She took a sudden interest in the ash tray. “I’m suggesting that I’m worried about her.” I almost told her to get out of my office. I had the cigarette out of my mouth, my elbow propped on the desk, and my other hoof all ready to point to the door. It was part of my job to work for bad ponies, gathering ammunition for their selfish wars. I was used to it. You could get used to the bad ponies. If I hated anything, it was running dirty work for the good ones. Somehow, I caught myself. Business was slow. I needed the money. I sucked on the cigarette some more. “Do you have the diary with you?” Rarity shook her head. “Oh no, darling, of course not. I returned it to Pinkie Pie. I told her I had read the first page, enough to know it was hers, nothing more.” I nodded. “What was in it?” “All sorts of things. There were a few pages addressed to the diary, and those were normal enough, I suppose. They, at least, sounded like Pinkie Pie.” Rarity brushed a purple curl of hair aside with her hoof. It fell back into the same position. “Others were more, well, odd. She had written a poem about a desert covered in rocks and skeletons, for instance. Another, about a river whose water had turned to sludge. Do you see what I mean?” “Sounds like your friend’s an artist.” Rarity glowered at me. “I wasn’t finished. There was one page describing a dead family of ponies laid out in a field, one about a world without happiness. Here and there she had scribbled entire pages in with black ink, or copied the same word over and over. There were also some, illustrations. Grotesque sketches of ponies with crosses in place of eyes, ponies screaming, sketches of knives, strange self-portraits, balloons with nooses tied at the end of the strings. I found one drawing that looked like a bleeding cake.” Rarity covered her eyes with her hooves. “Oh, it was simply awful!” I gave her a minute to calm down. She didn’t calm down much. “Was there anything in the diary that might be of use to me?” “There were a few entries about myself, the rest of my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Cake, that sort of thing. I didn’t recognize most of the names, though I suppose Pinkie Pie knows almost everypony in Ponyville. There were a few recent entries about a colt named Skives. Pinkie Pie seemed to be quite angry with him, but didn’t say why.” I wrote the name down. “Do you know this Skives?” “No,” Rarity said. I sat and thought for a moment, weighing the cigarette on my hoof. It was an ugly job. I’d be using her if I took it, playing her like you would a foal. I didn’t like that. I should have told her to get lost, to talk to people up front before phoning in somepony like me. That would have been the decent thing to do. The decent and the free thing. I really needed the money. “Alright. I’ll take it.” I stomped out my cigarette in the ash tray, removed a quill pen and paper from the drawer, set them on the desk, and dipped the quill tip into the ink pot. “You got an address for her?” Rarity told me. “And she works at Sugarcube.” Rarity nodded. I stared at her across the desk. She was one big lip quiver beneath her hat. “Relax,” I said, the quill pen flapping from the corner of my mouth. “If there’s anything to find, I’ll find it. Like you said, it’s probably nothing.” “It’s probably nothing,” she said. I tore the piece of paper in half and folded it. “Alright, first things first. This is a cluttered town and a close job. You say this Pinkie Pie’s your friend, so you’ll probably be seeing me around. In that case, you don’t know me. You’ve never even met me. You only know me in this office, or on the phone. If I tell you my name’s Clarice, it’s Clarice. We clear on that?” “Crystal,” Rarity said. “Right then, let’s talk price. Since you’re not a firm, I charge flat. Four hundred up front, expense included, three hundred after it’s cleared. The end number’s liable to change, depending on how things play out.” I relaxed into my chair, let the words sit. She’d be expecting a steeper price, but I couldn’t risk losing her to a firm. They’d have eaten up a job like this one. Rarity raised a hoof to her mouth, eyes widening. “Oh. Oh. Well then, your price seems, agreeable.” She smiled at me, happy with herself. “We have a deal, then?” “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll get started on it today.” “Wonderful!” Rarity clapped her hooves together. She took this opportunity to glance down at her left foreleg. There was no watch on her wrist, but there didn’t need to be one, either. “Oh, dear,” she said, “would you look at the time. I really should be heading back to my boutique.” “Just give Font your work and home number on the way out.” Rarity stood up, adjusted her hat. “It has been a pleasure, Ms. Bride. I have the utmost confidence in your abilities.” She tried to smile but settled on a worried frown. “Do find out what’s bothering poor Pinkie Pie, will you?” I nodded. “I’ll phone you if anything turns up.” Rarity trotted out into the adjoining room and the door swung shut behind her, like magic. I heard her exchange a few words with Font, then she and her hat were gone. For a while I sat in silence and smoked and looked about the room. It was as if she’d never stepped inside. My office had never seemed so immaculate. Something foreign had left and what had gone was by now farther away than it had been before. Everything was in its proper place. I rose and went over to the window and stood watching the daylight congeal beyond the windowpanes, gray and half-chilled. I had landed my first job in four days. Four days was a long time to pass without work. You could get awful restless in that time, find yourself smoking a pack a day. You could find yourself checking beneath the tables and bookshelves for murder weapons. You could even find yourself walking down dark alleyways on your way to work, hoping to see a hoof crooked out from under the mounded trash. You might think that after four days of no work any job would seem like a good one, but you’d be wrong. I stomped my cigarette into the ash tray and left. Special thanks to: Abacus, for his glorious vector and grammar nazi services. EQD Steam group chat, for putting up with all my bullshit.