Disco Inferno

by McPoodle

Figure 7: Slide Projector

Figure 7: Slide Projector

---

“Hey Frankie Boy,” the rather insulting letter from the ringmaster’s brother began. It contained multiple allusions to the recipient’s sexual impotency, and found every opportunity to bring up the reasons why Frankie Scarpino’s group of performers were currently banned from participating in any activities of the larger Coragglio Syndicate. But buried within the put-downs was one last shot at redemption.

Frankie Scarpino didn’t mind the insults in the just-received letter too much. After all, they had a fair basis in recent events. From his seat inside a train caboose located at the far end of the fairground, Frankie frowned as he stared at the financial figures for the Pagliacci Brothers circus for at least the tenth time that hour. The problem wasn’t that the circus was losing money; in fact, it was making a steady profit.

The problem was that balance sheet looked suspiciously close to that of an honest circus.

Frankie had delivered a fierce lecture on this failing to the circus performers earlier that morning. They had taken it quietly enough, although Chuckles’ choice of what song to blare through the loudspeakers immediately afterward perhaps reflected their true opinion of him:

But my dreams
They aren't as empty,
As my conscience seems to be.

I have hours, only lonely.
My love is vengeance—
That's never free.

The bulb of a small desk lamp flicked, briefly plunging the shaded room into a twilight dimness. Frankie scowled and tapped the bulb with a fingernail, causing it to spring back to life with an oddly bluish glow.

Frankie looked up at the sole door of the train car, its window covered with light-blocking drapes. “Enter,” he announced coldly, a full second before his visitor was about to knock.

After a pause, the door slowly opened, allowing the music of The Who to pour into Frankie’s office. Looking calmly into Rarity’s nervous eyes, he beckoned her forward with one hand.

“The door, if you please,” he said, then watched with some interest as the pony displayed a level of dexterity at manipulating a round knob not usually associated with equines.

Now that she was out of the light, the ringmaster was able to get a better look at his star attraction. Rarity was wearing a piece of sheer yellow fabric that was wrapped around both her neck and her haunches, forming a sort of cross between a cape and a dress. The Pagliacci Brothers logo was emblazoned across its back. Its craftsmanship was impeccable. In strong contrast, the pink tasseled “princess hat” on her head (it most certainly didn’t deserve to be called a hennin) was constructed of scrap cardboard spray-painted Day-Glo Pink and secured around her head by an elastic band.

With a sweep of one hoof, Rarity removed the headgear and dropped it onto the lone circle of Frankie’s desk that was illuminated by the small lamp. At the same moment, the telephone on that desk started ringing.

Frankie picked up the telephone handset.

“What is the meaning of this?!” demanded the voice of Rarity from the phone, at a volume so loud that Frankie had to yank the handset away from his ear. He decided to rest it on the desk between him and the angry pony. The ringmaster leaned forward so that his face was illuminated, although sharp shadows cut into the sides of his sharp nose and sunken eyes.

Rarity, by contrast, was easily visible in the dim room, almost as if she shone with an inner light.

“It’s called merchandizing,” Frankie explained to Rarity. “You know how it is: You’re a unicorn. Unicorns are usually ridden by princesses. Little girls are paying premium prices to ride you. Therefore—”

“Yes, yes, I understand what you’re getting at,” Rarity’s voice interrupted. “But look at the quality! And you’re selling them in a shop called Rarity’s Boutique! What are people going to think?”

“You don’t like the name?” Frankie asked in an innocent tone. “I figured for one of your evident breeding that the French term would be preferable to the generic ‘Rarity’s Shop’. Perhaps I should have gone with ‘Shoppe’ with the double-P and an E, for that Old English feel.”

“The name is not the issue,” Rarity insisted. “Rather, the fact that a store exists in my name that I have no control over. Either give the shop to me, or change the name.”

“‘Give’?” Frankie asked with a raised eyebrow.

The voice on the phone sighed audibly, as the pony mimed the same action. “Very well...rent. I have some ideas for clothing designs that...”—the pony’s eyes swept over his shadowed form—“might work quite well on bipeds.”

Frankie said nothing.

Rarity sighed a second time. “And I suppose I could include some...more economically priced items for the would-be ‘princess’ market. Which you would share in the profits thereof.”

“That’s more like it,” said Frankie. “I’ll draw up a contract this afternoon, as a basis for negotiation.”

“That would be quite acceptable,” said Rarity’s voice, as a polite smile formed on her face. “May I say that you have handled this whole situation with me remarkably better than I might have expected.”

“The talking unicorn thing?” Frankie asked with an amused grin.

“Yes. You all seem to have accepted the truth without any resistance. Even the adults in the town—to whom, I must note, I have never demonstrated my intelligence to them or their children—by and large seem to treat me the same as they would any other adult human, for which I am most grateful.”

“Yes,” Frankie said with a chuckle, “we live in a credulous age. Unlike me, the masses will believe practically anything fantastic that comes their way, without even a shred of proof.”

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “While you...” she prompted.

“While I don’t need to believe. I know.”

Rarity waited for the man to elaborate. When he refused, she shook her head and turned to leave, with a muttered “if you say so” barely audible from the phone handset.

“Of course, there is something you could do that would substantially improve the terms of that shop contract.”

Rarity turned, a wary look upon her muzzle. “Yes?”

Frankie sat back in his chair, the shadows seeming to swallow him entirely—with the exception of the whites of his eyes. He tapped his fingertips together for a few seconds before answering. “You could join the Family.”

Rarity tried to step back, but was stopped by the door of the caboose. “You mean the Mob.”

Frankie chuckled. “You make it sound so dramatic. You do know that both of your owners are members.”

“Well yes, yes I do know that. I presume they have their reasons. But I have no wish to become a criminal.”

“A ‘criminal’?” Frankie asked with a laugh. “Don’t be so naive! We are not criminals—we are free men and women!”

Rarity frowned. “But what of justice? You break the law.”

“What of it?” Frankie answered. “I know not what fairytale land you come from, Rarity, but in this world, all governments are corrupt, and all forms of law and order are used to oppress the weak, by order of the strong.” He reached out to pick up one of two small flags on stands that sat just outside the circle of light: a flag of the United States. “Even here in America, the ‘Land of Liberty’,” he continued with a contemptuous snarl, “the taxes never seem to apply to the top 1%, petty crimes like theft and graffiti are punished more severely than the so-called ‘white collar crimes’, and whenever one of them suffers a misfortune, it’s always one of us who gets the blame—the Blacks, the Puerto Ricans, the Asians...or anybody with an accent. There is no recourse, even at the top of the system: in this decade we’ve had a president who was a thief and a liar, and he was followed by two spineless weaklings, one from each political party, that tacitly allowed their underlings to commit any crime in the name of ‘national security’.”

Frankie put the American flag back next to an unfamiliar flag that was divided diagonally between triangles of red and yellow, with a triskelion of three human legs in the middle accompanied by three ears of wheat and the head of Medusa. “We in the Family stand for our own. We defend the weak from the strong. And we bring fairness to a world where it is utterly lacking. It may not be your idea of justice, but I think it’s the closest that anybody like me is ever going to see on this Earth.”

Rarity took a moment to consider her response. “I respect your views, but I still must most regretfully decline. You...won’t expel me from the circus if I do not wish to join, will you?”

Frankie shook his head. “Not at all,” he replied coolly. “After all, Chuckles is not a member.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised,” said Rarity’s voice. “Chuckles does not strike me as a member of any organization whatsoever.”

“Indeed,” agreed Frankie. “He nearly got himself arrested for starting a riot at the last Fourth of July Picnic when the mayor asked us all to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Now then, did you have any other business with me?” He picked up the telephone receiver and waggled it a bit.

“No,” the voice from it replied.

“Very well,” said Frankie, hanging up the phone. “Oh, and I hope you don’t mind if I borrow the Martins tonight. We’re having a bit of a Family meeting, and since you’re not a member...” He got up to open the door for Rarity.

Rarity looked up at him, nodded her head in acquiescence, and made her way back out into the sunlight.

“Shiftless, shady, jealous kind of people,” were the lyrics of the latest song to come out of Chuckles’ sound system, “Watch out! Watch out!”

“Yes, yes,” Frankie said dryly as he closed the door. “I get it.”

---

“I hold in my hand our last chance at redemption with the Coragglios,” Frankie informed the rest of his Family that night. The group comprised practically all of the long-term circus personnel, minus Chuckles and Rarity. The object in question was the letter from that morning, carefully held so that nobody he was addressing could read any of its actual language.

“We have been offered a job,” Frankie continued, “a job nobody else in the Coragglio’s would dare to undertake, a job uniquely fitted to our skills. We are being asked to commit a heist, ladies and gentlemen, a heist to correct a heinous affront to Sicilian pride.” He picked up a small wired remote from the small table beside him and pressed a button, activating a nearby Kodak Carousel 760H slide projector.

Projected on the wall of the tent behind him was the crude figure of an eagle, carved out of solid metal. The image came in blurred, but then with an audible whirr the image snapped into focus. (This ability to auto-focus each individual slide was one of the most valued features of the Kodak Carousel 760H model of slide projector, the mid-level choice in the Carousel line in 1978, and one of Kodak’s bigger sellers.) “This is the Bronze Bonelli,” Frankie Scarpino explained. “It was carved in 1118 and was the symbol of the Sicilian monarchy for centuries, until it was lost during the chaos of the Vespers.” Frankie pressed a button, and a black and white photograph of some deep sea divers posing next to the Bronze Bonelli like it was some sort of fishing trophy appeared. The projector attempted to focus this image, but unfortunately the original photograph was not completely in focus. As a result, the machine focused in, then a second later focused out, and repeated this routine endlessly. Frankie tried and failed to get the machine to stop, but found to his frustration that the projector had no means of turning off the auto-focus feature or of manually focusing a slide. (This was the reason that a significant portion of Kodak Carousel 760H units over the years ended up getting traded in for the more expensive 860H model, which could both auto-focus and manually focus.) Finally deciding to ignore the struggling piece of equipment, Frankie continued with his set speech. “A year ago [whirr!], a group of Amer—[whirr!]—I said, a group [WHIRR!!] of American [WHIRRRRRRRR!!] treasure hun—[RRR-RRR-RRR-RRR-RRR]—ters discovered the Bonelli in a shipwreck off the coast of...” Frankie realized that the machine had gone silent, and the light level in the tent had dropped. He looked around to see Rarity sticking her muzzle into the body of the unplugged slide projector, a screwdriver held daintily in her teeth and the light of her horn pounding out the rhythm of what appeared to be a rumba. “Do you mind?!” Frankie asked her indignantly.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Rarity’s voice answered from a small strapped-on speaker that had replaced the cape-dress on her back. “I’ll have this little problem fixed in no time at all. By the way, you may wish in future to project your top-secret images on surfaces that are not the wall of a circus tent, as those do not do a very good job of blocking those images from being seen by anypony walking by.”

Frankie face-palmed, and looked down at his watch. A curious William Martin leaned over to see exactly how she was doing what she was doing with nothing more than hooves and her teeth. He could have sworn he saw the wires and everything they touched moving of their own accord.

Less than two minutes later, Rarity slapped the lid back onto the projector, plugged the unit back in, covered the “760H” on the projector’s name plate with a piece of masking tape, and with a permanent marker held in her mouth wrote “860HR” on top, the “R” in particular being in a quite stylized font. “Done!” she pronounced with satisfaction. With a quick tap, she turned the projector back on before she quickly let herself out.

After the few seconds it took for the bulb to warm back up, the auto-focus motor began to once again try unsuccessfully to bring the trophy photograph into crystal clarity. Frankie reached over to the newly-installed manual focus knob on the machine to turn the function off. He then swung the projector around a right angle, so it was now pointing at an interior wall of the tent.

This resulted in two dozen folding chairs being adjusted at once, and the sound of a loud sigh to be emitted by Frankie. “Now then,” he said wearily a few seconds later, “the Bronze Bonelli was found by a pair of American treasure hunters a couple of years ago. Rather than doing the right thing and sell the treasure to the highest bidder—which was the Coragglio Syndicate—they instead handed it over to the Bergen Museum in Hackensack.”

Frankie advanced the slide to a photograph of the bronze eagle in a glass display case. “The Syndicate planned to donate the Bonelli to the people of Sicily, to whom it rightfully belongs. The Italian government has requested numerous times that the sculpture be handed over to them, or purchased for a reasonable sum, but both the museum and the American government have refused all offers. This is an insult to the Sicilian people, and it must be avenged.”

The next slide showed the layout of the Bergen Museum. “This Sunday, we’re going to steal the Bonelli, right out from under the noses of those who have insulted our people, and then send it back to where it belongs. And I have been assured that if we pull this off, we will be allowed back into the Coragglios, with all sins forgiven. Now before I delve into the details of this job, are there any questions? Any...objections?”

“Yes, I have a question,” said William Martin, his arm raised high in the air. When he saw the contemptuous looks given to that arm by the others, he sheepishly lowered it.

“Yes?”

“What have you done to militate against the risks of this operation?”

The others glared at him once more.

“I...I don’t mean to suggest that I have a problem with an act of risk such as this, far from it in fact, but, well...we have to get in there before we can commit this valiant deed, and there’s a security system, and we’re not bringing Rarity...”

Frankie smiled. “Ah, now we are getting to the real objection. Believe it or not, Mr. Martin, we are capable of committing crimes more serious than petty theft without the assistance of a miniature monoceros. After all, she’s not the only one with knowledge of the supernatural...” And as he said this, a light with no source began to grow around his head.

William backed away, a shaking finger pointed at the ringmaster. “You...”

“Come now,” Frankie said, floating slowly towards him. “You’re one of us now, and deserving to know some of our secrets. Like the fact that I am exceptionally well-traveled. I have been places on this world that no living soul has seen, and I have been places not on this world at all. And the things I have learned in those places...Under my leadership, you have nothing to fear regarding risk.” With a light “thump”, Frankie’s feet touched ground, and his halo went out. “Also, I bought out Harry Gloomfeld.”

Signaled by a snap of Frankie’s fingers, the police officer stepped into view.

William responded to this last revelation with a blink. “What? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Gloomfeld said with a grin. “Finally, after all this time!” There seemed to be something...empty...at the back of his eyes.

“But you were trying to arrest him!” William protested.

“Yes, yes,” Gloomfeld said glibly, “so I’d make Captain. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching all the cops in the movies and from working the beat up and down this lousy state, is that working the law is for chumps. You’re nobody in the police force, until you’ve been bought by the Mob.”

William looked from the plastered on smile on the policeman, to the supreme look of ownership on the face of the ringmaster, and then threw up his arms. “Alright, sure, why not! You’ve got no more objections from me.”

“Last call for any objections,” Frankie said, “and then I’ll just have to assume you’re all in and we can get started.”

Julia almost opened her mouth then, to ask who precisely had offered this job to her family and why. But she thought the question might be seen as challenging her brother’s authority, and after her latest humiliation, she wasn’t about to attempt that.

She was soon to have abundant reason to regret keeping her mouth shut.

Comments

[McPoodle]

I've been holding this chapter back for quite awhile, hoping I could make the ending less...cringe-worthy. Alas, I couldn't think of anything better, so here it is.

[Prime 2.0]

Rarity branded electronics? Heh, nice.

Glad to see this is still being worked on.

[Fana Farouche]

Curiouser and curiouser!

First off, thanks for posting this chapter.

Also, I think you're being too hard on yourself regarding the quality of this chapter. I can well understand that a story plot can grow unwieldy and the writer may find themselves wondering if they wish to continue with it, but there's so many interesting aspects to this story!

All six ponies scattered through time and space by Discord...
Buttercup II...
Chuckles...
The Mob...
Frankie...

So many tasty ingredients! If it turns out the cake is not perfectly round or some of the icing is uneven, well, no matter. Good cake is always welcome.

I really hope you decide to pick this up again, there's a lot of fun to be had with this story.

[Forderz]

This story is so wierd, and I love it.

Rarity's unique, uh, "situation," Sicilian mobsters, 70s funk... Brilliant.

[Cerolas]

The image garnishing the top of the chapter is just icing on the cake, as it were.

[totallynotabrony]

I remember how much I enjoy this story every time we get a new chapter.