It beginsss!

And now we begin with the crime drama portion of the story

Welcome back.

Granted, I did that back in Fillydelphia, but it never hurts to double- or even triple-check everything.

Delete - in front of the word 'double'.

I rolled my eyes. I guess they hadn’t forgotten that I entertained the thought of stealing an asset from them the last time I was here.

I hope you didn't think they were just going to let that slide! Watch your back, Lumi.

I looked at the earth pony pulling the vehicle, feeling no emotion coming from her—another changeling, I guessed.

That seems like a drawback in the anti-emotion countermeasures system when other changelings can detect the fact that you're using active countermeasures against emotions.

I could recognize the small amount of traces the Putrefaction Potion left,

Redundant: small amounts are traces. I think 'traces' looks better, personally.

____

The plot thickens! Can't wait to read more.

All of my

What a nice surprise!

I admit to doubting your skills before starting the new chapters. Years ago when I first read, favorited, and admired your stories, was it just because I was newer to the site---still enamored with the novelty of it all? Surely after reading countless stories on here, many of them great, my opinion of your writing would diminish, right?

NOPE! WRONG!

Fantastically efficient. Great pacing. Excellent dialogue. I think AJA said it best,

Good to have you back, Fleet Admiral Laharl!

Picture me standing tall with a proud salute.

Welcome back!

Welcome back, Overlord Laharl! My compliments on a strong pair of reintroductory chapters.

Huzzah! Chaptersesesssesses!

The former Den Mother was killed and then moved, huh? I'm going to have to go back and read the other chapters to see if the other changeling deaths were similar in terms of scene. I know the killing blow apparently was, but the rest...?

Hmmmm.

So Shaun, being a writer about these things, is either going to be the key to figuring them out, or the culprit himself. Well, Peanut Gallery, what do you all think?

Now this presents a conundrum. We're talking about a foe canny enough to kill a highly-skilled changeling without leaving any immediately-visible trace of how on the body, and also able to transport the body unseen to dump it in a populated city... but not in the streets where it could be found easily; instead, in an alleyway, where it would need to be disposed of quickly to avoid accidental discovery.

It's a message. What the message is, I can't say yet, but you don't go to that sort of trouble unless you want your target to know you went to that sort of trouble.

6561147

[tinfoilhat] Shaun will find out about changelings through an accidental revealing but after some hasty drama, and appealing to his merciful side through the use of little starving bugponies with big watery eyes back at the hive, elect to keep their secret from the rest of Equestria and even remain a feedbag for Firefly (hot changeling snu-snu is the deal clincher). As the cloak and dagger business gets a little too real, mainly with the dagger part, the clues will invariably lead to humans as the unknown killers. What first starts out as a single person leads to a potential cabal, a shadowy group that operates unseen until now. The morally worst part is that the Equestrian government knows of them in the higher ranks, while keeping that knowledge from the Princesses, who turns a blind eye and in effect condones the actions of the cabal through their own inaction against them.[/tinfoilhat]

It's beautiful
So nice to be able to read this again!

I hope it's not some sort of CIA hit squad or something.

Is there not a single human who wouldn't care if he found a changeling? There's actually a good portion of us who would adore such a creature, especially if they were intelligent....

6562766 [more tinfoilhats]
privat asset was human operator (cloven war and stuff), former den mom dropped her disguise, triggerd ptsd, accidents happend. [/tinfoilhat]
6565162 not after fighting in the war against the clovens right ?
6564743 they would have taken the bodies with them ... for research reasons

great chapters ! i hope we get more soon

6569525
If their purpose was research then yes they would have.

6569931 what else would they do ??! i mean really ...

6570148
It's a story, it doesn't have to make sense. Perhaps they are covering up evidence of some sort of operation.

That being said, I hypothesised that it might be the CIA because of what type of books the human guy writes; stories rarely contain extraneous details.

UPDATE!

It was batman

[Insert jazzy crime drama music]

Commence read.

Just like in any CSI or crime show, tampering with something.

6564743 That would really depend. Was the ling in dodge important? Just killing random lings and dumping them seems to be pointless from an intelligence agency. They would either want those specific lings dead or out to generate some reaction. I would expect some 'witnesses' saying that the ling tried to kidnap them or something. That would drum up more fear and action than just a dead body found would be.

6814579
Long?

Or they want to test something/find a victim to experiment on, in which case going for someone less important makes more sense.

Awesome story!!! :)

I Hope you update this soon I really have become fond of this story.

Why do I get the slight feeling in chapter 5 that you watched Castle? :3

Damn, ran out of chapters

I hope I get to see this updated soon. It's a very good story and I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of it.

Part of me can't help but find that Shaun has only been to TWO other Equestrian cities too much of a coincidence... It seems a might be interesting that the human author Lumi meets has only been in the same number of Cities that there have been changeling murders. Still I'm very curious to see how this turns out. Who knows... maybe i've just read to many mystery romance novels for my own good *giggles*

Keep up the good work!

7247618 Chapters do not make for a realistic measure, their are some 100k stories where a week has passed. Same thing here, their is much info where it is just from her perspective. They talked once and that was the first date they had.

love the way it close out

whens the next chapter out?

7460456

Indeed! I hope everything is alright in the Netherworld and Laharl can take a break from Overlording to give us another chapter soon. ^_^

7418888

Thanks. I'm still busy with stuff, and hopefully, I can get back to correcting and writing new chapters.

7460922 7460456

Real life things have kept me busy, and trying to improve on my writing and creativity kept me even busier. I didn't want to come back yet unless I finally get over this stumbling block and put out more chapters. Sorry, guys.

This still updating?

8122045
hope dies last...

7532417
It seems like it will be worth it though. Heck. I saw a story update for the first time in four years this morning like it never skipped a beat.

I think there is still potential here.

8393596
An exception isn't the rule; 105 weeks is an awfully long time...

Is this story still alive?

Do anyone know if the author will be coming back?

10015457
Doubtful. Last I checked he's writing Harry Potter fiction over on fanfiction.net.

I really hope this continues, I enjoyed this story so far.

10567580
Our only hope of seeing this or any of his incomplete stories finished is to somehow get a hold of DEL and have him pass the stories over to someone else who's active, highly skilled, and passionate about the material. Firesight fits the bill, I think.

Dammit, knew I shouldn't have started reading this. Yet another good story to go to the ever increasing pile of tales not fully told. Originally just wanted to check a chapter or 2, get a feel for where he was going with it. Now I'm here like WTF bruh