Act 2, Chapter 47: Unauthorized Psychiatric Experimentation Test #1
Starlight Over Detrot
Act 2, Chapter 47 : Unauthorized Psychiatric Experimentation Test #1
While many of these pages have been devoted to Equestrian mental instability, very few have been given over to psychiatry, and how to handle mad ponies became a more important consideration at the turn of the Solar Millennium. After the madness of her own sister and the unfortunate banishment that followed, Celestia wanted some alternative to sending dangerous lunatics to the moon for a thousand years.
Celestia had thus commissioned Sigmund Pferd, one of the finest minds at the time, with all the resources and assistance he could require for an inquiry into the equine psyche. In her grief over Luna, however, she had failed to account for the fact that he was also quite insane; a fact that she discovered upon finding him sniffing her bedsheets.
She managed to keep this relatively under-wraps until a council meeting at which he announced his finding that he believes that all ponies subconsciously want to have sex with Princess Celestia, an announcement that heralded the third longest awkward silence in all of equine political history.
Despite this, Pferd was onto something with his theories - the idea that there existed treatments for equine mental illnesses. After all, once Pferd was caught sneaking into her room and trying to lick her horn, it was Celestia herself who pioneered electroshock therapy. Pferd went on to lead quite an illustrious career, having been cured of his unfortunate obsessions, as well as his unnatural affinity for stilton cheese; he is now largely regarded as the sire of modern psychoanalysis.
Science has since greatly advanced its understanding of the mind. Ivan Palomino discovered conditioning behavior, training a manticore to salivate at the sound of a bell; an achievement only slightly mitigated by a grisly public demonstration in which Palomino rang the bell, then discovered somewhat belatedly that he was out of manticore treats.
Psychology and psychiatry still have a long ways to go, though: It has not managed to resolve a few lingering questions, such as: "What constitutes madness in a society where animal hoarding, ballistic pastries, and gravitic inversion are considered within a standard deviation of reasonable behavior?" and "How can we apply our lessons to other species?"
--The Scholar
The airlock door sealed, then the other side opened with the sound of screeching hydraulics. A thick dust billowed into my face, momentarily blinding me. I wiped at the glass front of my gas mask with the edge of one bootie, trying to clear it.
"Prisoners! Bring yourselves to attention! The Warden of Supermax has returned!”
Tourniquet’s voice ringing over the loudspeakers sent a few dozen shivers crawling in circles up my back as my vision cleared.
We stood in the long hallway of the prison’s primary level. Three levels worth of cells rose above us on either side. The dust flowed around our ankles like a slow river and a steady flow of air moved through the room. Two floors up a couple of ponies in hazmat suits were moving along the hall, distributing trays of something into slots on each of the cell doors. As they passed the trays through the slot, something like a magic field crackled over the entire front of the cell.
“Tourniquet! I don’t need all the prisoners to get up! Sheesh!” Swift called out. “Most of them aren’t even prisoners! We’re just keeping them here until we figure out what to do with them!”
“I know,” the construct replied in a much softer voice that came from somewhere nearby. “I just couldn’t resist! By the way, these Aroyos are amazing! They talk to me like I’m an actual pony!”
“You are an actual pony!” Swift declared, jabbing her hoof at the ceiling. “If anypony says any different, they’ll have to answer to me!” She turned and grinned at me. “Right, sir?”
“It’s your prison, kid. Ask her for a status update. What’s been going on? Why the monkey suits?”
“I can hear you, ya know. You can just ask me directly, Detective. Update! Lemme think. Well, we’re still in the process of clearing the Sleeping Willow dust from the top floor. It’s going to take another day or so for it to filter out completely.”
"I noticed,” I grunted, tapping my gas mask. “How are your power levels doing?”
“Better than they were. The Aroyos are crazy good with wiring things up! I’ve got restored power to nearly every system and we’ve almost got the tap ready to drop into the city power lines near here! I’ll be on the grid in no-time!”
“Why am I not surprised the Aroyos are clandestine electrical experts?" Taxi commented. "Though… I guess they’d have to be. The city doesn’t exactly prioritize the Skids when it comes to repairing...well...anything,” Taxi commented.
“What did you guys come down to see me for, anyway? I mean, I’m glad to see you, but aren’t you busy?”
“We need to get into the Temple,” Swift explained. “It’s super complicated, but we need some stuff down there. Is...is it still full of...um...of bodies?”
“Nope! Once we got the prisoners fed, that was the second thing I had the Aroyos do. The dead are buried across the street. We’re still working on figuring out how to clear the daevas, basilisk eyes, and toxic dart launchers out of the sewers so my new friends can come and go whenever they want to, but I’ll have that problem licked in no time!”
“Oh, thank Celestia,” Swift made to wipe her forehead and I caught her leg before she could dislodge her gas mask. “Right, I keep forgetting…”
“You mind if I ask what the fields over the cell doors are?” I asked, releasing her knee.
“Those are filtration shields. They keep the cells protected from the dust, but they let sound and food through. Most of the cult is still in their cells, but we’ve been giving them buckets, books, and whatever else we can to keep them comfortable. Once the dust is gone, I’ll open the doors and let them move around a bit.”
Trotting over to the nearest cell, I peered in. A very young mare sat on her cot, her head bowed in prayer. After a moment, she glanced up at me with soft, sad eyes.
“The Moon forgive you,” she whispered, then lowered her head again.
I shook my head and returned to my friends. Geranium was behind us a good ten feet, maintaining a grumpy silence, but she seemed content to sit back there glowering at things while we proceeded into the depths. At the end of the next hallway, Tourniquet directed us into another air-lock about a tenth the size of the one at the front gate.
Swift smacked a button on the wall as the door sealed shut behind us and streams of hot blue liquid blasted out of the floors, the ceilings, and every which way on either side. After about five seconds, the liquid drained away through the floor and a second door let us through into another changing area.
****
“Ahhh…” I moaned, tearing off the gas mask and pulling my hat out of my coat pocket. “Can we just leave by the sewers next time? I’d rather fight a heart seeker.”
“If you like, Detective, I can let one into the lower levels to chase you around,” Tourniquet snickered. “Truth be, I’m glad to see you all. I was really worried. What’s been going on?”
“I’m going to let Swift give you the full run down. Meantime, can I ask...did the Aroyos clear out all the cult’s drugs?” I asked.
“No. Why do you ask?” Tourniquet inquired. “I’m still finding stashes all over the High Security Level. They didn’t even get into the Mechanical room other than to move bodies and store things.”
“We need enough Beam to send an Ursa Major into delirium.”
“Who pissed you off enough that you want to make them insane before you kill them?” Geranium asked.
“Surprisingly enough, I’m doing this for a friend. Err...Friend might be a strong word. Someone who isn’t an enemy. Anyway, Tourniquet?”
“I’ve been storing the drug caches inside the Temple until we can dispose of them. I just need the Warden’s authorization to release discovered contraband,” she chirped, cheerfully.
“Fantastic. Swift?”
“Oh...uh...sure! Contraband transfer authorized, right?”
“Awesome!” There was a pregnant pause, then Tourniquet added, “Are you going to come see me before you leave?”
My partner gave me one of those ‘Can I?’ looks that six year olds master quick and which have ruined countless dinners.
I waved her off towards one of the adjacent hallways. “Fiiine...go on. We’ll meet you in Tourniquet’s chamber.”
****
“Geranium, I’m wondering something. So far as I know, one of your private fantasies involves feeding me into an industrial blender, ankles first. Why are you still following us around?” I asked as Taxi and I strolled down the hallways of the Secure Wing with the lawyer in tow. There were a few Aroyos out distributing meals to the prisoners still behind the closed doors who constituted the Cult of Nightmare Moon itself, but for the most part it was quiet in the passages beneath Supermax.
She shrugged and pulled at her rumpled tie with one toe. “I’d feed you into a blender nose first, Detective, just so I don’t have to listen to your stupid voice. I’m bored and you’re more interesting than kibitzing with my former clients or washing my suit. I can’t leave and the Aroyos don’t like me enough to give me any real responsibilities.”
“The last time they gave you something to do, you tried to hot-wire one of the radios to call yourself a cab to drive you to Zebrica,” Tourniquet chimed in.
“That was a desperate call for help from a depressed mare who should be climbing the corporate ladder, not squatting in a hole in the ground,” Geranium moaned, dramatically throwing one hoof across her forehead.
“You’re just hoping to save your own skin from whatever the Detective is trying to protect everypony from.”
Geranium didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. “Is that so wrong?”
“You were lawyer to a murderous cult leader. I might like you because you brought me comic books, but I am totally not letting you wander around until you’re not evil anymore.”
“Hmmph,” she sniffed. “Well, why did you guys come back so soon?”
“A friend of mine has an apparent need for enough Beam to drive a dragon out of its head. Thankfully, your former clients left us with plenty. Speaking of that, how are they doing?” I asked, moving over to the broad metal door of one of the high security cells. Two very pretty mares in streaky make-up were sitting inside, still wearing tattered bits of their robes. They seemed to be in the midst of a game of checkers.
“Well, they spent the first day shouting for their lawyers an awful lot. I got tired of that, so I sent Miss Geranium around with copies of the ‘rights and privileges’ book we had in storage from just after the war. She was really drunk, so I think a couple of them might think they have a right to eat...um...she used an impolite word for ‘poop’.”
I glanced at Geranium and grinned. She rolled her eyes.
“Things quieted down after that?” Taxi asked.
“Mostly. Oh! Swift is here! Thank you, Detective!”
“Do we need to let you go?”
“Nope! I can talk to lots of ponies at once. Anyway, once they were fed and weren’t worried I was going to set fire to them or anything, the cult of Nightmare Moon mellowed out. I even got to talk to a few of them. Most didn’t actually know somepony was being killed at the ceremonies. They thought it was all illusions and special effects.”
“I doubt that’ll save them from prosecution. These ponies were funding the cult and using the members in orgies. They might dodge necromancy charges, but it’ll be a lengthy stay in Tartarus, either way.”
Tourniquet was silent for a minute, then asked, “Can’t they stay in me?”
“Aw, sweetie…” I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. “That’s a question I don’t know where to begin to answer. We’ve got to finish making this mess before we start looking to clean it up. I’ve got no idea what’s likely to happen in the next couple of days, much less when this is all over.”
“Oh.”
For several minutes after that she was quiet as we moved through the tunnels. Turning a corner, the security door down into the Temple of Nightmare Moon came into sight, already open and waiting.
“Detective?” Tourniquet murmured, just loud enough for me to hear.
“Yes?”
“If you can’t fix it so I can have ponies come spend time with me, could you just make them turn me off for good?”
“No-one...no-one is shutting you off,” I growled. “They’ll have to go through me before that happens.”
Tourniquet swallowed loudly through the P.A. system. “I’m so glad you’re my friend. Considering the kinds of ponies who tried to go through you, it’s kinda scary when you say things like that.”
****
“Hardy, if we want to retire, I know a guy who can get us a street price for this that would let us live like the Princesses,” Taxi said quietly, staring at the heaping mountain of drugs piled in the center of the Temple of Nightmare Moon.
The mechanical room had been cleared of corpses, although nothing could get rid of the stink of death. Geranium couldn’t be convinced to join us down below, but she was content to wait on the stairs. The pews were gone along with the remains of the broken statue and altar, but nopony had tried to clean up the mess of spilt powders littering the haz-mat closet and, as they’d found fresh supplies of drugs, the Aroyos simply dumped them in the middle of the room.
Taxi’s estimate of their worth wasn’t far off. The pile was boxes, bottles, and tins right up to my chest in every shape and color imaginable. There were enough drugs there to supply a decent sized cartel for several weeks.
“Much as retiring sounds better day by day, we’ve still got a job.”
Slipping on a pair of rubber socks from Taxi’s saddlebags, we began sorting through the boxes.
After about five minutes, my driver went “Aha!” and held up a two liter bottle full of swirling, multi-colored liquid. “Here we go! Raw Beam concentrate! No tabs for our rich friends. They must put it in the capsules right here in house.”
I dropped a box of pills and took one of the containers, turning it over in my hooves. It looked like somepony had somehow captured a rainbow and stuffed it into a bottle.
“Is this enough?” I asked.
Taxi nodded. “A half cup of that is about twenty doses of Beam once you dilute it. How much did we actually need?”
“Nine hundred CC’s of liquid Beam was what Edina’s chart said.”
My driver’s jaw sagged.
“I thought you were kidding when you said that thing about driving an Ursa Major crazy. Do we need Edina to be stoned for a month?”
I chewed at my lip a little. “Err...That’s...per day, actually.”
“What?!”
****
There were only three bottles of the concentrate, but that was theoretically plenty for the period of time we were likely to need Edina’s help. I packed them into Taxi’s saddlebags, stripped out of the socks, and grabbed a box of expensive healing talismans labeled ‘extra strong’ I’d noticed in amongst the rest of the stash. One never knows when they’ll need to be high as a kite whilst their body is knit back together.
****
“Whose birthday are you planning, Detective?” Geranium asked, following us back through the secure wing. “I saw what you put in those bags. If you dumped that crap in the water supply, this end of the city would party like it’s B.R. 999...”
“The less information you have, the safer I’ll be,” I replied.
“Don’t you mean the safer I’ll be?”
“No.”
Geranium sniffed and sped up to walk along beside me.
“Right, so you just toddle off and leave me stuck here for however long,” she whined, swatting me in the hip with her toe. “You could use a lawyer, right? I mean, if you let me leave, I can help! You’re the only one who can beat the Scry, so shouldn’t I have a big incentive to stay with you? My old bosses will just kill me, but I can’t stay here any longer. I’m going to lose my mind.”
“I need you like I need another hole in my chest, sweetheart,” I snapped, shooting her a look. “Help Tourniquet. She’s the one holding your leash, not me. You want to convince her you’re worth trusting with anything, stop sulking in this pit and try to do something worthwhile. We’ve got an awful lot of innocent ponies upstairs who are going to need convincing that the head of their religion was feeding them piecemeal into a meat-grinder and I’m sure, if you ask nicely, the Aroyos will bring you a book on cult deprogramming.”
Geranium silently ground her teeth, but I thought there might have been a glimmer of thoughtfulness.
****
With typical disregard for appearances, the Aroyos had torn out the entire electronic facade of the ‘control room’ in front of Tourniquet’s chamber and replaced it with a lounge. There were four of them sitting there, including Wisteria’s daughter, Jambalaya. She glanced up from her game of cards as the door opened.
“Crusada! Ye here! De construct say ye come!” she exclaimed, hopping off the couch. “We welcome ye to de Hole!”
“I see you guys have made yourselves at home,” I chuckled, gesturing to the beer bottles and the cards.
“Aye! De finest fortress de Aroyos might ever be ownin’,” Jambalaya replied, trotting over and snatching up my hoof, shaking it with both of hers. “I and I had worries about ye, but...but dis be de best place we ever have and ye gives it to us!”
I noticed, for the first time, that she was sporting a juju bag similar to her mother’s; she hadn’t been when I saw her last. I gestured at it. “Well, tell the Ancestors I apologize for ditching on our last meeting, but I’ll come see them soon. A friend of mine is in bad trouble and there’s blood looking for a knife to spill it.”
Jambalaya gave me a squint, then cocked her head towards the back of the room. “Ye little demon wid mad teeth come through. Did I and I hear correctly dat she be de Warden of de Hole?”
“That you did,” I replied, snatching up an unopened beer and wrenching the top off with my teeth. Earth ponies are awesome like that. “It’s complicated.”
She snorted derisively, and picked up her own beer with her horn, clinking it against mine. “Dat be de song ye always sing, Crusada.”
“Are you taking good care of our ‘friends’ downstairs?” Taxi asked. “I don’t want to see them get loose…”
“De bigshots? Dey be a laugh!” she giggled, sloshing a bit of beer onto her hooves. “Howlin’ about laws and rights! Dey want warm towels and dey want calls. Where be dey when de chil’run of de Skids die of magick’ poisons de richies sell? Where be de howlin’ den, eh?”
“Well, keep them alive and don’t do anything that’ll look too awful in a tabloid. I want that lot able to stand trial and still look indignant when they do, right up to the moment I tell them they’re being done for accessory to multiple murders and necromancy,” I replied.
“Aye, I and I do wish I could be dere to see dat! Now go an’ have ye fun wid de construct. She be waitin’.” With that, Jambalaya swept her leg towards the secret wall at the back, whilst the other Aroyos looked on. The panel hissed, then rose on its hinge, exposing the brightly lit interior of Tourniquet’s chamber.
I was momentarily taken aback by the change.
I don’t know why I thought Tourniquet’s chamber was always a dank, gloomy place, but with the power going full tilt it more closely resembled midday in an especially large and messy play-room. Toys dating back to my youth were spread everywhere, piled in chests and on short shelving units that littered the enormous carpet.
“You need to get this girl a maid,” Geranium grunted, trotting into the playroom ahead of me.
Tourniquet and Swift were sitting together over a table that’d been set up in the middle of the room. A half dozen Aroyo foals, some with blank flanks, some with their cutie-marks, were huddled around the table. I recognized Shadow Walk, Goofball’s part-time caretaker, amongst their number.
Somepony had sacked the regional tarp and perfume supply store to cover up the corpse of Girthtranx. He was still there, curled up against the wall, but covered from end to end and with the blowers going, I could barely detect the scent of dead dragon.
Swift seemed to be halfway through explaining her ridiculous card game not just to Tourniquet, but also to the kids.
“-on your next turn, so you need to be aware I could play ‘Wrath of Celestia’ right now. If somepony is going to do that, though, they’re probably going to want plenty of gem power to rebuild the turn after. Okay? So, what should I do next?”
A tiny unicorn colt with a zipper for a cutie-mark piped up, “Ye s-should do de stuff wid de ‘Counter spell’ in ye hand, cause dat means no bad magic. Right?”
“That’s right!” Swift ruffled his scruffy red mane. “Alright, your turn!” she said, gesturing at Tourniquet.
The construct seemed somehow even livelier than she had last I’d seen her. Lights like tiny stars danced behind her crystalline eyes and her mane pulsed with light, the fiber optics shifting through a range of colors. A small cloud of ladybugs hovered overhead, spinning in lazy circles.
As we approached, Tourniquet glanced up and smiled, then set her cards down. In a blur, the cords attaching her to the ceiling pulled her out of her seat and she practically flew into my open forelegs, throwing her front knees around me.
“Air! Air!” I wheezed as she squeezed about five good years worth of wear and tear out of my ribcage.
She released her grip just enough so I could feel all the places she’d cracked my spine and grinned.
“I...I just wanted to thank you, Detective! Oh, I’ve never been so happy! I’ve got friends!” she squeaked, gesturing towards the Aroyos. “Shadow Walk said she might even bring Goofball down here so he’d be safe!”
I nodded towards Swift. “He’s my partner’s dog, but if you think you can get him down here…”
Swift dropped her cards, carefully setting her hand face down as she got up.
“Sir, I actually kinda like the idea of having a guard dog in my own prison. Besides, he’s basically bullet proof, poison proof, and fireproof. Now that the prison is clear and we won’t have to foal-sit him, I totally wanna know what he’d think of all those daevas!”
“The words ‘invisible chew toys’ just drifted through my brain and that disturbs me,” I murmured, then decided we needed a change of topic before the image of Goofball bringing home a daeva to gnaw on could form properly. “Speaking of foal-sitting, why are this bunch here?” I jerked my chin at all the kids sitting around, listening.
“We be here cuz mom’s and pops here!” Shadow Walk replied, wiggling her nose at me. “We be helpin’ dem wid de’z big shot stompas and de dumb prayin’ ponies!”
“That’s...um...that’s my fault, actually,” Tourniquet said, her fiber-optic mane flashing into a range of pinks that I interpreted as a blush. “When some of the Aroyos said they missed their children, I said they could totally bring them and I’d make sure they were all safe. I...I missed other kids. Being a prison is hard...”
“I can imagine and I get it. How are you and Queenie getting along?” I asked.
The swarm of buzzing ladybugs let out an especially loud hum and Tourniquet nodded.
“They say they’ve been looking around the city and something funny is going on in Uptown.” She frowned as one particular ladybug detached itself from the crowd and dropped onto her muzzle. “There are these...these places where the ladybugs don’t feel safe going. They can’t describe it more than that they don’t want to go into them. It’s like something makes their connection waiver.”
That was worrying.
“I thought there was nothing that could make ladybugs lose the connection to the hive mind. What could cause that?” Taxi asked, worriedly. “Magic nullification of some sort?”
“I don’t know, but Queenie is scared,” Tourniquet replied, gently petting the insect sitting on her nose. “It’s withdrawing big parts of the ladybug swarm to safe spots, like Supermax. One of the places they’re feeling danger is near the Essy office, but nopony on the street seems to be bothered. Queenie has other Essy friends, though, and they feel the danger, too.”
“Dammit. Too many things to investigate at once,” I groaned, rubbing my face with both front hooves. “I’ve got to handle a situation with the griffins before it gets out of hoof.”
“The...the griffins at The Moonwalk Hotel, in Uptown?” Tourniquet asked.
I paused, then glanced at Swift. “You’ve been keeping her up to date?”
Tourniquet shook her head. “Queenie was watching them until something drove the swarm away from there the day before yesterday. They won’t go within three blocks of that hotel right now,” she answered.
If ever there were something to make my stomach squirm, it was the most curious creatures in all of Equestria saying they didn’t want to stick their little insectoid noses into something.
“You remember that thing I said about leaving here and going with you, Detective?” Geranium asked, nudging me with her tail.
“Yeah?”
“Forget I said anything.”
My throat felt like I’d swallowed a pool ball. I took a quick sip of the beer I realized I was still clutching in the crook of my leg and gathered my resolve. Geranium, Tourniquet, the Aroyos, Swift, and Taxi were all staring at me, waiting.
“I...think we need to go get Edina right now, resolve this mess at the Moonwalk, and pray to whoever might be listening that my cutie-mark is malfunctioning.”
****
My flank felt like somepony had applied a burning brand in the shape of a pair of scales. Twenty odd years of ignoring the pain in all but the worst circumstances had inured me somewhat to it, but I couldn’t remember the last time it’d been so bad. Supermax was a drop in a very deep bucket by comparison.
Still, there was work and there was the beer. I couldn’t afford to get as drunk as was required to make the pain go away entirely, but the alcohol took enough of the edge off that I could start to consider the situation with a slightly clearer head. I’d taken a second one from Supermax as a precaution, but Taxi stole it the moment we were outside, cracked it open, and set it in the Night Trotter’s cup holder as we drove back towards the Vivarium.
****
“Your friend, your love, your Gypsy of the morning. How many ways can I say I love thee, my dear audience? Let me count the ways.
Now, before we get on to some fresh tunes from the Tinder Boxes, the Sweet Beats, and even a golden oldy or two, we need to lay down some news!
Warrants have been put out for the arrest of various members of the Church of the Lunar Passage who are accused of fraud and possible magical manipulation. The leadership of the cult, Astral Skylark, couldn’t be reached for comment, but it’s assumed she’s also on ‘sabbatical’ along with the rest of the cult’s bank accounts. Nopony has any information at this point and the response from the Church itself has been surprisingly subdued.
Usually they’d be rioting in the streets!
Even weirder, several dozen cult members turned up in Sunny Days Psychiatric Care Hospital complaining that they were having trouble remembering things and, wonder of wonders, it turned out they’d been under the effects of some type of magic that had badly affected their metabolisms. The police issued a warrant for the examination of several cult owned sites and, upon entry, they discovered that the meeting rooms the cult was using had runes underneath the paint on the walls.
Now, nopony knows the exact purpose of these magics, but until we can find the leadership of the Church, this is being treated as a local matter. The Academy is investigating, but they haven’t yet released any reports on what might be going on. The Princesses are going to have one heck of an interesting report to read as soon as that storm out of the Everfree clears!
Speaking of the storm, several dozen teams of pegasi from different cities have been dispatched to attempt to bring the wild squall under control, but it’s developing into a veritable in-land hurricane! Being a magical storm, you can imagine nopony has been inclined to get too close. Reports of mutation are sparse, so far, but there have been a few mentions of strange events. White Tail Woods, a small farming community near the borders of the Everfree, was pelted with handkerchiefs and dice-cut spinach.
Communications around the capitol are spotty at best, but the Princesses have managed to get out a message that we should keep calm. The guard have erected weather shields around Canterlot and the surrounding villages, so nopony needs to worry about their loved ones...”
****
The Vivarium was thumping and the two stores on either side of the facade seemed to be doing a healthy business as well, as we tooled up to the front door. Minox stood at the red ropes leading inside, his tux freshly pressed and a big smile on his bovine face. As soon as he caught sight of the Night Trotter, he waved us towards the back of the building.
Pulling around the side, I peered out the window at a strange vision.
Granny After Glow and Mistress Zeta were standing side by side with a giant silver platter sitting on a tray like a dinner service. The platter was tied shut with about six dozen ropes and, even then, Granny Glow had the top pinned down with her brightly glowing horn.
We stopped beside them and I slid out of the back seat.
“Aw, how sweet, you brought us lunch!” I chuckled, trotting over and lightly flicking the covered plate with my toe. Something underneath screeched at me, claws scraping the inside of the metal top.
“Hey Gran!” Swift beat her wings a couple of times, leaping over to hug her grandmare. She glanced at the platter, curiously. “Is...is that Edina?”
“Birdy, ye better have the bee’s knees kinda explanation fer this,” Granny Glow growled, a knife clutched in her magic, twirling in lazy circles around her head. “Ye got no idea what we hadda do ta get this little bitch packaged!”
A glimmer of mischief flashed through Swift’s expression.
“We need to give her a bunch of psychadelic drugs to see what happens!”
Way to get your partner killed, you evil little fluffball.
“Kid, there will be bloody vengeance for that...” I grumbled.
She stuck her tongue out at me. “Serves you right for making me dig through that smelly griffin’s pockets.”
Mistress Zeta and After Glow looked back and forth between the two of us.
“This is a ‘pony thing’?” Zeta asked, quietly tightening one of the ropes comprising her dress a little tighter.
“Ah reckon it’s a stupid, nutty, gonna-git-yerselves-killed-by-a-whacko cop thing,” Glow replied. “Edina’s already crazier’n a whole box of ferrets on fire. Ah assume ye’ve got some purpose to this lil’ experiment?”
“Honestly?” I sighed and idly pushed the cart back and forth, eliciting a few more snarls from under the lid. “This is probably a mistake that’ll end with somepony losing an eye. Edina, as it turns out, is griffin royalty. We need her to help us deal with the griffins up town at the Moonwalk as part of our investigation. That said, I talked to Scarlet and someone tried to treat Edina a few years back. The only treatment that worked was a dose of Beam that’d be nine kinds of lethal to a pony. Griffins apparently have titanium kidneys.”
Glow was silent for several seconds then pointed at Swift. “Normally, ye best know Ah would protest somethin’ like this, but Ah’m a mite curious meself. Ye be damn sure to keep yer head down when he does this dumb thing, though, and Ah want pictures whether it works or not.” She turned to the other domme. “Zeta, ye go with’em. These idjits’re gonna need ya to catch this hen if she gets loose.”
Mistress Zeta bowed her head, flicking one striped ear back against her skull. It was a zebra version of a salute. “As you wish, Mistress After Glow.”
****
We had to make sure Edina could breathe, which involved loosening the ropes holding the platter down just enough for her to stick a claw out and attempt to gore me with it, but once that was done I asked if anypony had any objections to her riding in the trunk. None were raised.
Unfortunately, moving her into the Nest attracted a crowd of foals who really wanted to know why we seemed to be ordering in dinner that was still alive.
****
“No! Out! Out, out, out! For the last time...You too, dammit! Our bunker! Not yours! Everypony shorter than Swift get out!...okay, everypony shorter than me! No, Swift, you stay! Ugh! I’m going to count to three and if every Aroyo isn’t out, I’m going to have Taxi start shutting off heart valves!”
I slammed the door of the Nest, almost taking off the tail of one of the stragglers. Shutting my eyes, I forced myself to breathe.
‘Be calm, Hardy. Be calm. It’s just part of the job. You can do the job without killing anyone who doesn’t deserve it. Phew.’
Trotting over to the table, I turned sideways and tipped the platter full of furious griffin off my back.
“I find your choice of accommodations very interesting, Detective,” Zeta murmured, glancing up at the clock. Princess Celestia quietly smoked her ever-present joint and smiled benignly down at us.
“Believe me, his apartment was worse,” Taxi commented, heading for the kitchenette. “It was a blessing to the city zoning commission when somepony set fire to it.”
“Thank you for that, Sweets. Trust me, it wasn’t my first choice, but it’s as secure as anywhere else in the city,” I grumbled.
“That’s what worries me, Sir,” Swift muttered, pulling a blanket from a stack beside one of the beanbag chairs and throwing it around her shoulders.
“How do you mean, kid?”
“We’re about to feed Edina lots of Beam, in a very enclosed space that we can’t open or else she might get loose.”
I raised one eyebrow. “What’s your point?”
“Sir, we’re inside the enclosed space.”
“Ah. Yes. Well, try to keep your eyes covered and don’t let her peck anything essential.”
“Sir, I consider my whole body pretty essential!”
“Then you’ll have an extra incentive to be quick on your hooves, won’t you?” I replied, grinning. Truth be, despite the madness of what we were about to attempt, I was looking forward to it for reasons I can’t properly explain.
Taxi returned a moment later with a funnel draped over the top of one of our bottles of Beam. “Limerence left us a note. He’s back at the Archive, doing some research. Are we ready?”
“Theoretically, yes,” I replied, tugging at the ropes holding the platter shut. The knots were of a variety I wasn’t familiar with and seemed to only get tighter the more I messed about with them. “Mmmnph...If the doctors were wrong, our best bet is to get her back under that platter and see if one of your drug contacts sells lithium and thorazine in bulk quantities.”
Zeta moved to one side of the platter, unclasping several lengths of rope from her dress and swirling them around her foreleg as she went to work on the lines holding the platter shut. After a few seconds, they were free.
“Are we standing back, Sir?” Swift asked, quietly.
“Sweets, be ready on that funnel,” I murmured, holding the top of the suddenly quiet platter down with one hoof.
Taxi lifted the bottle. I took a deep breath. Mistress Zeta tensed, moving around to the other side of the table.
I tore the silver top off and all Tartarus broke loose.
****
Picture the worst slapstick ever put to celluloid and then add a dose of actual danger.
A tiny white griffin explodes out from under the platter and Mistress Zeta, the quickest thing you’ve ever seen, goes for her with a loop of rope whilst Taxi, the second most nimble being I’ve ever met next to Zeta, dives in with the funnel. Their heads collide from opposite sides of the plate. Both fall back on their rear ends, clutching their skulls. Zeta might be all invincibility and ‘feel no pain’, but nopony catches someone else’s face with their crown and maintains their composure.
Swift panics as Edina locks eyes on her and screeches, “Meeeat!”
I make a grab for the little beast, but I am nothing like fast enough to snatch a crazed griffin out of mid-air. She bursts off of the plate and snaps up one of the ropes that’d been keeping her makeshift prison tied shut, corkscrewing in mid-air and almost taking off one of my ears with the end of it.
My partner’s wings come out with a gust that almost sweeps me off my hooves. The ceilings were of decent height, made for letting pegasi maneuver inside, but not so high that either of them could get any real space. Edina shrieks at her, her beady, mad eyes following as Swift takes to the air. The griffin bolts after her. They fly in a wild circle around the room, taking off my hat, knocking the clock off the wall, and generating a miniature indoor tornado that blows my mane into my eyes, leaving me blind and stumbling about in a powerful headwind.
It was Goofball who finally came to our rescue.
He jerked awake with an alarmed yelp and saw his best friend being chased around the room by a deranged cat-bird with a whip fetish, over bean-bag chairs, end tables, and the odd pony. The great mutt flopped over onto his side and got to his paws, watching the melee for a moment more before, on the next pass around the room, he suddenly snapped his jaws faster than my eyes could follow.
Swift zoomed round and round a few more times before realizing she wasn’t being pursued any more. She flared her wings, dropping back onto the carpet and turning in a slow circle, looking for Edina. I pushed myself back to my hooves.
“Um...okay?” Swift muttered, confused.
Something squeaked. We all glanced at Goofball, whose right and left heads were both staring at the middle one which was looking distinctly guilty, particularly with his cheeks all puffed out and a few feathers poking out of his lips.
I gestured at the dog with one hoof. “Swift, could you please get this stupid mutt to spit out our mark?”
Zeta got shakily to her hooves, still rubbing a knot on her forehead. “I do suppose that went better than it could have.”
“What definition of ‘better’ are we using here?” Taxi asked.
“The one where none of those gathered has lost any essential sensory organs, no?”
My partner trotted over to Goofball and gave him a stern look, then pointed at her hooves. Shamefacedly lowering his middle head, the big puppy let his muzzle fall open and a sodden ball of white feathers plopped at Swift’s fetlocks. Edina seemed none the worse for wear, but being inside someone’s mouth has a way of taking the fight out of a person.
“M-meat?” the griffin cried, plaintively. “We needs...m-meat!”
She started to rise, reaching for the scrap of rope she’d been using as a whip.
Taxi was on her in a second, jamming the funnel into her beak and upending the bottle of purified Beam straight down her gullet. The rainbow liquid gushed over the side of the funnel and Swift shied away, lest she get any of it on her hooves. For a moment, it looked like Edina might struggle, then her eyes went wide and she gradually relaxed, staring up at the ceiling.
I snatched my hat and mashed it over my ears. It’s a good thing griffins are used to eating whole prey, else she might have choked as my driver poured the drug into her throat. She’d stopped struggling as soon as the first beak-full hit her, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Zeta edged over to get some rope around her ankles.
For several minutes there was just the sound of pouring liquid, but, at last, the bottle was empty.
Edina’s eyes slid closed at some point during the procedure and she was breathing normally, which was a good sign. Beam overdose tends to cause some heavy respiration and she might as well have been napping after a heavy meal.
The four of us stood there for an indescribably awkward minute and a half, just waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Edina just lay there, her feathers twitching like she was having an especially exciting dream.
“Huh. Alright, that’s...not how most anyone I’ve ever met responds to Beam,” I mused, giving her a light nudge with one toe.
Her eyes snapped open and she glanced at me, then let out a frightened squawk. Scrambling over onto all fours, Edina dragged at the carpet with her claws, trying frantically to crawl away. Unfortunately, Goofball was the only ‘away’ there was to crawl towards. He sniffed at her and gave her a wet lick. Edina let out a mewl of terror and rolled sideways, flailing her wings pathetically at the hound’s nose.
“Goof! Sit!” Swift snapped.
The big lunk gave her a questioning look, then slowly lowered himself to the carpet.
Edina was breathing hard and, for a moment, I was worried we’d hit her with too much.
“Where am I? Please, please don’t hurt me!” she pleaded, peering down at the rope around her ankles then back up at us. Her voice was strange. Softer. Calmer, too, despite the worry in her face. Her eyes darted around, taking in the room until they fixed on the zebra standing beside me. She relaxed slightly. “Mistress Zeta?”
“Edina,” the zebra said, cooly, tugging at the rope around her ankles a little.
“Oh my, are you okay? It looks like someone punched you!” She paused, then looked a bit nervous. “Did...did I do that? How long have I been gone?”
****
“Five years,” Edina whimpered, clutching a bagel in both front talons. First priority with a trauma victim is always a blanket and the second Taxi handed her one, she wrapped it around herself as tight as she could. Soon, with snacks and a few drinks, we all gathered around the table. After I’d told her what year it was, she’d seemed to sink in on herself, sitting there with her bread, holding it like a stuffed animal.
“Five years with those two deranged idiots running my brain…” She sighed and dropped the bagel back on her plate, her beak quivering. “Even now, I want live meat. I don’t suppose you have any rats around, do you?”
“I’m afraid not. Run this by me again. Are you saying-”
“-that those two psychotics aren’t me?” Edina gave me a savage glare, then pulled the blanket higher over her tiny shoulders. “I guess I can’t say they’re not,” she said with a bit of resignation, “I’m in there, but...they started talking when puberty rolled around.” She shivered a little and Mistress Zeta lay a black hoof on her back. “Eventually, they started shouting. I just did what my father always taught me to do when someone is shouting at you.”
“Sit quietly...and wait,” Taxi murmured.
Edina gave her a curious look. “Yes. Your father was a bad creature, then?”
“You’ve no idea.”
“My father is cold, ruthless, and addicted to power. I suppose I can’t blame him, though. To survive in the tribe is often to be cold. He is pragmatic in his way. A peacemaker, if ever a highland griffin can be called that. He was the one who insisted we learned proper Equestrian and open banking relations with you, despite how much I’m sure he’d like to lay open every equine jugular he can get his talons on. Speaking of that...” Reaching to her throat, Edina felt around at her neck. Her expression turned to sudden alarm. “Wait...my blood...where’s my blood?!”
I shook my head. “I’d assume it’s in your veins, right where it belongs, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation.” I amended, "Probably."
She huffed and threw off the blanket, searching furiously around the bean-bag chairs, underneath the couch, and even going so far as to pry open Goofball’s mouth. “Not that blood. My blood! Ugh! It wouldn’t make sense to you!”
I shrugged and sank into one of the chairs, waving a leg at her. “You’re Tokan. Highland griffins. You people think blood is some kind of currency and have an honor system that only works if you can protect it, right?”
Edina stopped mid-stride and her head twisted around on her neck until she was staring at me. “H-how did you know that? Who are you?”
“You think we just force fed you an entire bottle of Beam concentrate for fun? My name is Hard Boiled. I am or...at least, I was… a member of the Detrot Police Department. We’re investigating some things for your employer, Stella. You didn’t have anything on you when you came in or since the last time I saw you, which was several weeks ago.”
Her eyebrows, such as they were, drew together and she lashed her tufted tail around herself, sitting like a particularly attentive cat. “Miss Stella. The sea serpent. I know her. Mistress Zeta, too. I am a...mmm...a Stiletto.” Reaching over, she picked up a piece of loose rope, giving it a little flick with her wrist. The end made a soft pop as it cracked the air. “I don’t remember a whip feeling quite so natural in my claws.”
“Your two friends upstairs reeeally liked the work,” I replied. “That said, we need your assistance.”
She blinked and let the rope drop. “My...my assistance? I have to find my blood and find out what has been going on for the last five years. The cat and the bird have been screaming back and forth this entire time. I can still hear them sitting in the back of my head, bickering like an old married couple. I...Egg preserve us all, I just let them take over for just a moment and they simply wouldn’t stop! I have to go pick up the pieces of my life! Last time I was functioning at all, I was in a hospital full of other crazies!”
Her face was drawn with inner tension. Swift looked thoughtful, then trotted out of the room for a moment and returned with part of a chicken wing. I don’t know where she’d been keeping it, but the second Edina laid eyes on it, her beak started to water. My partner passed it to her.
“Where...where did you get real griffin-made fried chicken?” she asked, looking up at my partner with an expression like a pony dying of thirst who’d just found an oasis.
Swift smiled one of her pointy smiles. As any sane being would, Edina took a couple of unconscious steps back.
“Bad magic,” Swift said, shrugging her wings. “It has upsides. I get to eat whatever I want now and the local griffin butcher shops are getting used to seeing a pegasus come in without offering pamphlets for suicide hotlines.”
The tiny griffin let out a faint purr, then tore into the meat with that razor-sharp beak. I don’t know why I expected she’d eat daintily. We sat for a few minutes, letting Edina rip the chicken into small pieces and swallow it before Taxi drew in a preparatory breath.
“Edina?”
“Yesh? Oh, sowwy.” She wiped at her beak with one claw and blushed. “I haven’t tasted my own food in so long.”
“I’m afraid the news we’ve got to give you doesn’t get better from this point on,” Taxi murmured.
Edina frowned and set the bones from the fried chicken aside. “I’m...I’m not going to get to piece my life back together, am I?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, “We’ve...we’ve only got a small amount of Beam to give you, at least, compared to what you need. If you were a pony with this condition, our supply would last weeks. Certainly, long enough for us to get more. Unfortunately, griffin anatomy deals with drugs quickly. Short of something like sitting you in the middle of a Beam explosion, I don’t know of any way to increase the effect.” Reaching over, I tugged open Taxi’s saddlebags and hefted out the two remaining bottles, setting them on the table. “We’ve got, at most, three...maybe five days worth on the dosage you’re under now. Nobody in the world makes enough to give you a permanent high and...there’s no research to speak of on what this could do to you in the long run.”
Her expression sank.
“I knew it was too good to be true,” she whispered, walking in a little circle and slumping down with her chin on a pillow. “So, what? You bring me back from madness just to toss me right back? Was this another experiment?”
Oh good, more of my old friend: guilt. Part of me wished she’d turned out to be even crazier. She sounded like a wounded little girl. There wasn’t even a hint of that creature I’d seen almost clip a stallion’s meat and two veg last month. If it wasn’t so sad, I might have been laughing; laughing at the cruel way a life can be crushed under the heel of necessity.
“I don’t...really know how to say this other than to lay it on the table. You’re the Tokan ‘Egg’ right?” I asked.
“I...I am, yes. At least, I believe I am.” She scratched her mane, thinking. “Father’s loins are as soured as ever after I was born and no other egg of his has borne fruit, at least that I can remember. Five years is a long time to be gone from the Eyrie. Things change.”
“Well, a friend of mine, name of ‘Sykes’, seemed to think you were still first in line. Are you aware of the situation at the Moonwalk?”
Edina shook her head, flaring her wings out and preening, self-consciously. “Could you just assume I’m a bit behind on current events? The voices are quiet now, but...imagine being in a room with hundreds upon hundreds of people and on one side, they’re all shouting one thing and on the other, something else. You’ve got to sit there and listen and you can’t shut them out. I just slowly sank in on myself and let them shout. Eventually, they started to take the reins. Try to think of it as having been asleep for five years.”
I felt an involuntary shiver start in my rear leg and quickly clamped down on it.
“Alright, if I don’t ask, I’m going to spend the rest of my life feeling guilty. Zeta said you’ve got an aversion to doctors. I’m assuming delivering you someplace for treatment is not on the menu?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, because I want a bunch of headshrinkers fumbling about in my mind like cliff-rats fighting over scraps.” Sarcasm practically dripped from every word. Getting up, she picked up her rope again and coiled it around her neck in one smooth, practiced motion before moving around the table and prodding me in the chest with one claw.
“Look, medicine has advanced in the last-” I started to say, but she cut me off.
“They know what will fix my condition! If there were an alternative, it would have been used already!” she growled, clicking her beak together as anger got the better of her sadness. “The only empathy booster on Equis strong enough to affect the part of my brain that needs it is an industrial byproduct that’s liable to kill me over a long enough period of time. Let the cat and bird have their fun until a day comes when one of you ponies comes up with something better. I’d rather die mad than be some fool’s pathetic project.”
Dropping my chin onto my chest, I shut my eyes for a minute and let that settle into my consciousness. It should have been a foreign notion, but there it was. Truth be, if Grapeshot’s sniper round had rendered me insane, I’d rather they killed me outright than locking me away with pills, potions, and doctors shaking their heads at clipboards as my only comfort.
Nothing I can imagine is worse than being an object of pity. Zeta was right. Edina understood that. She was willing to leave two psychotics in charge of her body, rather than be a burden or a curiosity.
“Then we need your help,” I said, at last. “You’re the Tokan Egg. Right now, the Tokan and the Hitlan have been forced to move their treasuries, their weak, and their young into the city of Detrot. I...honestly, don’t totally understand it, but something bad happened while they were staying here. Somebody attacked the Hitlan Egg.”
Edina shifted her weight, nervously glancing at Goofball who was trying to put his nose in her tailfeathers. She gave him a light tap on the muzzle with one wing and he backed off. “Attacked? Not even the most foolhardy of souls would dare attack Grimble Shanks. Only his father is a greater warrior...”
“Yeah, I’ve met him and I’m inclined to agree. Even so, he was drunk. Someone coldcocked him. He thinks they might have stolen his blood.”
Edina’s eyes popped wide. “Oh great sky! They’ll...they’ll blame the Tokan!” she exclaimed.
“Eh...about that…” I coughed, rubbing the back of my neck. “It gets worse.”
“Detective, my family is no match for the Hitlan!” She got to her footpaws pacing back and forth in front of the table. “We may not be close, but if the Hitlan call in their blood debts, it would...it could mean war between the tribes. Dozens of financial battles! My family doesn’t have the combat skills to survive something like that! The accrued interest alone would lead to an untold number of deaths in the Arena of Finance! What kind of worse could there be?”
I really wished people would stop asking me things like that.
“For reasons unknown, the Tokan have closed...’The Blood’. As I understand it, that’s some kind of monetary exchange or ledger?”
Her eyes were as big as saucers as she tipped over onto her backside. “Y-yes, it is. But that’s...that’s impossible. Suicidal. My father might be cold, but he would never do such a thing! The Blood bank is our...our livelihood.”
“Your father is still in the plateaus fighting dragons,” Taxi pointed out. “A griffin named ‘Derida’ is heading the Tokan in Detrot.”
Edina’s beak clacked at the air and her hackles rose. “That is...worse.”
“What is this ‘Derida’ character like?” I asked.
“She is the Hitlan chieftan’s sister. My father’s second wife. I am the Egg, but...she would dearly love to have a child to take succession in the event of my death. She makes my father look positively cheery.”
“Ah. So...tell me. How popular is that going to make us when we show up demanding to investigate the situation with both of the heirs to the tribes and a bunch of guns?” I asked.
Edina gulped. “As popular as a flock of yearling chicks in a den of razor-lizards.”
I gave her a look of non-comprehension.
“Very unpopular and, soon thereafter, very dead,” Zeta clarified.
“Ah. I’m glad I cleared that up early on. So, alternatives, then?”
“You have none,” Edina said, quietly. “You must be appointed as the High Justice if you wish to enter the Tokan embassy.”
“So I’m clear...what exactly does mean to be ‘High Justice’?” I asked. “Is it something like being a police pony?”
She considered this for a moment, then shook her head. “No. No, nothing like that. At the same time, yes, very much. The High Justice is only appointed as a trusted individual in times of strife between tribes. It’s their duty to find justice and mete it out. If they do it well, their will is honored by both tribes.”
“And...if they do it badly?”
“It...is not done badly,” Edina replied, shutting her eyes and looking like she was trying to describe a concept in a language she didn’t speak. “You search until you die. If you die before your search is complete, your next of kin is named Justice. If no next of kin is available, your closest friend.”
Taxi swallowed, nervously. “I seriously don’t think I’m ‘High Justice’ material.”
“If no High Justice is named...the tribes will go to war. What it does mean is nobody can kill you for asking questions. To kill the Justice, one must challenge their judgement. That means...erm...ritual combat.”
A chill crept up my back. “Ritual combat...with a griffin. Right.”
“That is only if the tribe votes to allow the challenge!” Edina added, quickly. “If they vote to accept your judgement, it is the new law. To my knowledge, there has never been a pony Justice before, but no law speaks against it. The last High Justice was named over ten years ago. None would dare hurt you openly. So long as you eat no food, do not bleed, do not attack anyone, accept no other challenges, and respect the office of the High Justice, you will probably only be assassinated if you are alone or in a private space.”
“And...that’s good, then?” Swift asked. “We’ll only be killed if we’re alone?”
I picked up Edina’s discarded bagel and munched on it, thoughtfully. It was a completely hopeless situation to walk into, and yet we’d recently found ourselves in situations I would deem even worse. Hubris got me killed once, and that had put a damper on my desire to see how far my luck would carry me, but equally, I couldn’t really leave Sykes alone in the midst of his family fighting one another. He was a fellow cop. More than that, he was a mate. A stupid, overbearing, oafish lout of a mate who was about to drag me into an ocean of cow shit up to my ears, but you can’t pick your mates.
“Could be worse. I’ve been in a bar brawl with a griffin. I’d rather one griffin tried to kill me than a whole bunch of them. I’m down.”
I turned to Taxi, expectantly. She sat there, staring at me.
“We’re doing this again, aren’t we? I can tell already. Sykes is going to get his stupid, witless hind end turned into a griffin flambe if we don’t and then you’ll make me feel all guilty as you mope around and drink until you can’t find your own hooves,” Taxi moaned, smacking her forehead against her hoof. After a moment, she lifted her head. “Yeah, yeah, fine. Whatever. I’m in. I’ll have to get some fresh rounds for my cannon.”
Swift glanced at the Hailstorm which was laying in a heap on the floor by the door. “It might let me use my new gun, finally. I really do want to try it out.”
Edina glanced up at Mistress Zeta. The zebra cocked her head to one side.
“Mistress Zeta...can I trust this pony?” the little griffin asked, stroking the rope around her neck.
“I do not know if the word ‘trust’ can be applied to Detective Hard Boiled,” Zeta answered, rising to her hooves in one smooth motion. “He is curious in a way I can only describe as suicidal. He plays at games whose rules are opaque to him and I suspect he will be bathed in blood many more times before his goals are met. He will tear down the very civil order of this city if it means finding justice for those who have been wronged.” She pursed her lips. “And he is stubborn. He may succeed or he may die, but I do not believe he will quit until he is dead.”
“Not even then, if my friends have anything to say about it,” I commented.
Edina fluffed her wings and chirped a soft tune.
“Then give me some more Beam. We’ve got to go see my stepmother."
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I like sane Edina. Then again It sounds like her brains chemical processors are damaged to where it wont accept normal amounts of the chemicals she needs to keep sane due to resistance or damage. Poor thing. Anyway A good chapter, Im curious as to what is making the ladybugs avoid certain areas of the city.
Good to see Tourniquet having a nice few scenes here. Is very cute.
Amused at Germanium.
"Let me out, let me out, let me out!"
*hears what Hardy and co. will face*
"Nevermind."
Something in my gut tells me that those voices either weren't in Edina's head originally, or have been amplified in a way to override her true personality. Assuming there will be more experiments in the queue.
Also amused at how Zeta describes Hardy here. Similar to another pony in another tale, whose future was seen as blood and stars.
Damn, sane Edina only made me sad. Poor thing's trapped in her own mind with no permanent way out anytime soon, and she's completely out of touch with what's happened around her.
Still, I'm hoping for some kind of twist to happen.
Wrong "waver". A waiver is a written form. "Waver" is when things go wibbly-wobbly.
Fkn hilarious.
This is my favorite story on this website! I already can just barely stand waiting for the next chapter! You guys, keep it up.
Makes one wonder what the first and second longest awkward silences were.
Hmm. Beam works on violent schizophrenics.
Aside from the Hard Reset trilogy and Past Sins, this by far is the best story i've ever read on this website. i am always excited when a new chapter comes out and readily read it within minutes, just as it seems like all is done, more trouble stirs around the corner waiting to pounce upon Hard Boiled and company, however part of me fears the whole story will end in a horrendous ending leaving many saddened and dead, but nonetheless im thrilled to have found this story, keep calm and write on amigo.
Hey! Nice to see you two back! I was starting to get worried since the usual update period came and went. You two always deliver on a fun read.
And I must say that I found this quote from Tourniquet quite endearing right here. Nice to see that, even as the soul of a prison, she keeps most of her little fillies innocence.
And I thought the Beam would do something like that, but even then I failed to forsee out to that extent. I mean, I embrace my own craziness since it makes that world more entertaining; but to be trapped in your own head while others run the show is one of the deepest Hells I can imagine. Swift better live up to her name and cuddle Edina so much before the Beam runs out, the poor thing deserves some comfort before she goes under again.
5895009 I will, at the very least, promise not to bullshit an ending. No big 'everybody dies' tragedy crap. You will get a worthwhile ending, and at least one epilogue.
-Chessie
5895218 i cn assure i was not trying to foreshadow an ending where everyone dies which seems to be prevalent in alot of works of novels and movies nowadays, but more of the lines of that one character of several that is merely the tipping point to so many things to occur, overall im jus glued to this series
Okay, so this is a list of all the Suspicious Bad Shit going on in the world right now:
- Mysterious Everfree chaos storm
- Dragons pushing into Griffin lands despite a treaty, pushing Griffins into Detrot
- Weird magic zones that SCs feel compelled to not enter
- The continued influence of UAA
- Possible Griffin Civil War on Equestrian soil
- The radio is talking to us
- Swift is teaching Enchantment: the Convergence to small children (they will never escape the pull of cardboard)
Did I miss anything? Knowing you two, I fully expect all of this to tie together amazingly.
I really hope this is foreshadowing, minus the "kill everybody and no one comes back" thing. Although with a Counterspell being threatened, a Supreme Verdict might be a better play. C'mon Hardy, you can do this! (@authors: Who among you plays Magic?)
Im sorta wondering, why they dont get torniquet to apply the mark to keep her sane?
Poor Edina
Well, at least she accquired some combat skill in these five years - muscle memory being muscle memory, the beam should not have much influence on that, unless it slows down her neural processes. Something tells me she will need these skills.
It's nice to see Tourinquet and the Ayoros getting along so well. Aside from Stella's cave and the Archive, theirs might be the savest place in Detrot when things do down.
5895254 im fairly certain it doesn't work the same way, and as Edina said herself, she'd rather die mad then be somepony's project. showing the amount of tribulations throughout her life that she has been thru, even with all the possible alternatives she could try
Reading an update to this while also rereading it is a slightly trippy experience....
Also, when all is said and done - assuming he's not dead - Hardy is going to have enough assets and contacts to carve out a very nice chunk of the Detrot underworld if he wished...
5895315 She wouldn't be someone elses project. She would be someone that would have a guardian angel looking after her. Though I can understand the distinction here. Its enough so that she may see it as something of a chance, but why I asked. its all in how its looked at.
You might see it as someone elses project, and it could be true. But I figure it might not be at the same time, and neither is right, or wrong.
Oh god, the feels.
5895236
You forgot fanged assassins, an attack on the Archivists where we still don't know what was taken, and all the weirdness involving PACT.
It's never often I get the feeling of a chill down my spine. But more then once trough this tale have I felt that rare chill.
Being able to truly potray the fear of the unkown is a rare gift indeed and most tales that do only manage to capture it once.
5895824 It's actually not that hard. You set up a horrifying situation, then don't explain the entire mechanics of it. There is a surprising amount of this story left to the imagination and so long as you can draw a logical chain of events once parts of the mystery are revealed, it still makes proper sense...and it leaves the reader to actually fill in the details. The human mind doesn't like unknowns, and it finds them awful scary, so I leave as much of the really grisly shit to people's imagination as I can.
Nobody wants to think about how Girthranx died, or how long Cosmo's father lay beside his wife's bones, or how many ponies were sacrificed by Astral Skylark. Even Hardy can't afford to. His sanity is hanging by threads as it is.
-Chessie
5895544 but i can agree 100% in your assumptions to this
5895873
Oh I do know the mechanics behind it and also the psychological part of it (probably why I'm jaded towards it or im just to hard headed :P).
It's just that most mediums today (movies is a good example) just seem never really capture it. Either overplaying it or more then often being obvious even from the start how things will play out tous removing the element of the unknown.
However this is not the feeling I get from Starlight where the unkown is ever present.
Its refreshing since its not something I come across all to often and I'm eagarly looking foward to the next chapter ^^
Another awesome chapter, especially since the essy building is added to our looming collection of puzzle pieces.
But as I was reading, a thought struck me: Would taking Edina to Supermax be of help? I mean Tourniquet can suppress Swift's urges to go on an essy murder spree, so wouldn't she be able to help keep our favorite crazy griffin alittle less crazy? She'd make a great prison guard.
Poor Edina. I hope they find some solution to her problem. She's so cute I just want to hug her.
5896726
Swift's problem comes from magically adjustment to her personality. Edina's is biological. I don't think she could adjust it in the same way she can for Swift.
I'm kinda seeing Edina as Susanna from The Dark Tower; were you guys trying to go for that vibe?
5899715 Edina's a griffin. She's got a list of personality issues, atop being crazy about half the time. I've never read the Dark Tower, so I couldn't say. What is Suzanna like?
-Chessie
5898615
That is a good point, though I thought they had no problem with keeping the original prisoners compliant in the old days. Dunno if it would require her getting a brand or clothes, but I wouldn't count it as impossible 'til the dynamic writing duo say so.
5900131
Yeah, but keeping a prisoner compliant could just as easily mean shutting them mostly down. Vs trying to allow them to think clearly, while only shutting down part of the noise in their head.
The way I look at is think of a stream of water. You want to hold the stream back, and let about a 3rd of it through. But you want a very specific part of that volume. How do you seperate the good part from the bad when it is all intermingled and rushing along?
But I agree, this is all just speculation at this point.
5900216 Sadly, the ultimate problem of writing any universe with magic in it is 'Why can't you just do it with magic?'
I've done my best to answer most of those questions with at least some modicum of elegance. Mind-control magic is terribly illegal in Equestria, different magics don't play well together, and other things that all boil down to 'bullshit to make things consistent'. Magic is both the cause and solution to itself, so I just let these questions resolve themselves through character interaction rather than the pure mechanics of the universe.
-Chessie
5900539 And you've done a great job at it. Your explanation for why they can't magically solve crimes due was especially good.
My former complaints stand, but the story is moving. I still want to see strides being made towards the ending, rather than tiptoes. It feels as if moving into the finale right now would come as a knee-jerk, so it'll take time to get where we're going.
At least the trip is enjoyable. Your writing is still masterful, and I'm glad to see the same style and nuances have remained the same throughout the long trip it's been.
As ever, a good chapter. It just feels like another step towards an end that's as far away as it was when Hardy and Co stepped into the Supermax.
Act 2, Chapter 47 : "Unauthorized Psychiatric Experimentation Test #1"- Potato
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5894745
Flyaway Hysteresis, legendary polymath, inventor, and technomancer precipitated the second most awkward silence in all of equine political history in the year 683 after Luna's banishment. Commissioned by the royal Canterlot court to create a special gift for Celestia's 5000th jubilee, Hysteresis, spent 10 years with a "dream-team" of top, hoof-picked artificers, craftsponies, mages, astronomers, historians, and artists (including the (in)famous tailor and fashion guru Fluff 'n Stuff who introduced Equestria to the idea of socks) to create a "unique, one of a kind national treasure fit for a goddess".
During the Unveiling, tens of thousands of ponies from across Equestria, as well as delegates from the neighbouring Seven Sapient Species watched in breathless anticipation as Flyaway dramatically threw back the crushed velvet curtain to reveal... a disturbingly realistic, life-size dakimakura of Celestia.
The design suggested strong influences from either ancient Peloponyian tribal fertility cults or modern teenage stallion hormonal fantasies with proportions that, had they existed in real life, would simultaneously make billionaires of Celestia's personal chiropractors and bankrupt Equestria's dairy industry. Flyaway proudly pointed that, yes indeed, the stylised, anatomically correct design did draw inspiration from historical sources (and more modern "exotic glamour modelling" trends), that the waving, billowing main and tail hair were in fact Celestia's own, painstakingly gathered from her currycomb and bathtub drain, and that it even smelled like Celestia herself thanks to precise spectrographic analysis of Celestia's pillow, bed sheets, bath towels, cushions, and dirty laundry (her socks and saddles were especially invaluable in this regard). Flyaway also detailed the painstaking effort to develop and adapt new golem spells to animate the dakimakura, the careful caloric cake calculations used to determine how warm to enchant it to match Celestia's own body temperature, and the fastidious rotoscoping and deformation analysis of thaumaturgical recordings of Celestia's tush in order to calculate the correct amount of "fluffy plumpness" for a "realistic experience as possible".
The resulting awkward silence was so deep and profound that the Geneighva Bureau of Weights and Measures used it as their baseline standard for measurements of embarrassment and social awkwardness. The scale, measured in units of fH (backronymed to "face-hooves"), is curiously inversely logarithmic, ranging from a maximum of 1fH for the aforementioned "unveiling sexually provocative fetish gear modelled after your ruling demigoddess before said demigoddess and an international audience", down to 7fH for "describing in juicy detail aloud your plans for your significant other on Hearts and Hooves evening, unaware that his parents are standing right behind you", and ending on 14fH, "smiling in public with a sprig of alfalfa in between your front teeth".
In lieu of adding a new addition to her statuary garden, Celestia opted to send Flyaway Hysteresis north on a 20 year survey of the lichens of the northern winter reaches of Equestria, the cold air of which promised to "cool his head and both his horns". As a side note, historians and biologists have commented that as a result of Celestia's (and later Twilight's) practice of exiling troublemakers north to "study lichens", the common crystal harmony lichen is now the most thoroughly documented, studied, and researched species of all Equestria's flora and fauna, much to the puzzled bemusement of Equestria's northern, cervid neighbours.
The first longest awkward silence is a closely-guarded state secret. Popular Royal Guard scuttlebutt hinted at possibilities involving a weathervane and a Minotaur chippendale named Peanut.
Those poor daevas will be begging Nightbloom to put them in safe containment cells back at M6 once Goofball is finished with them.
Did Tourniquet ever receive her cutie-mark before she became Supermax? If not, the Arroyos should organise a cute-ceañera for her to reassure her that she is still a pony (albeit one who is more metallic than the norm). Airbrush something big and colourful on Tourniquet's exterior walls and celebrate with cake and sarsaparilla for the meatbags and batteries and a new UPS for Tourniquet.
5895236
Do not forget Hardy's reoccuring nightmare city dream, the betrayal of the Archivists, and all of PACT's super-soldier pony augmentation shenanigans...
5895839 I think this sums up how most of the story has been.
5919220 I actually drew some inspiration from Shadowrun whilst writing it. It was one of the darker comic chapters in this book up to that point. Granted, that was before things started to get ugly.
-Chessie
5923423 I do love every time someone goes back through the story and gives me a fresh vision on older chapters. I wish I had time to go back and edit the fucker, chapter by chapter. I might find someone to do it for me one day. My writing style has improved enormously in recent years. That first chapter is painful to read.
-Chessie
5925847 Surprisingly enough, I don't watch Law and Order. That said, this story has a tendency to go from 'Giggles and fun' to 'ridiculously grimdark as fuck' all of a sudden.
-Chessie
I did read David Simon's "Homicide" front to back a few times, which informed some of the early stuff on police procedure, but we've largely abandoned that in favor of seat of the pants ponies don't wear.
--CEO Kasen
5933017 That might have been neat.
-Chessie
5937776
Ah, thanks.
5899945 Susanna is a crippled, albeit wealthy, lady with at least three different personalities in her head.
*looks at FimFiction* Subconsciously?
What were the first two?
You want to teach other species to treat gravitic inversion as reasonable behavior, cool. Ballistic pastries might be a step too far.
I will find this more worrying when Tourniquet hits her teenage years and decides she wants to go light-cycle racing.
Hot blue the color, or temperature hot and blue?
An acquaintence, perhaps.
"Because the blender is two floors down and around the corner." "Ah, that's nice."
All hail Hardy, Alicorn of Justice?
So, if curiosity kills the cat, do they only have to deal with Edina's avian side?
Um ... yes?
And then he'll get back up and keep going, possibly with a sudden taste for brains and/or the ability to walk through everything.
teehee
... considering my bodys reaction to medication, it would not surprise me if my reaction to beam was much like the crazy little griffin
Ah, untested experiments using massive doses of illegal drugs in the name of saving the world! Or at least the part of it where you keep all your stuff. Good Times!
"They smell like mommy issues"
The silence was everypony but him and Celestia staring at him thinking "Dude! WTF!? We know that, but why would you tell her that!?"
Oh come on! you can't just not give us the other two bigger ones!!!
Also aversion therapy. So, the sure for creepy stalker ponies is a lighting bolt to the soft pallet... seems legit.
To sum it up, when the baseline for Pony behavior is already so erratic, those who are seen as outright crazy are crazy! This is world where Pinkie Pie exists and is allowed to roam free..... granted that is in part because no force in Equestria could stop her from doing so... but still!
Damn right, Swift getting the respect she deserves!
You can't say no to the cuteness!
Hey, she's inventive at least! And knows that getting out of here puts a target on her back big enough that her plan is to just GTFO, not try and betray the group.
Because Hardy is awesome like that. Seriously, team up him, Sam Vimes, and Harry Dresden for the ultimate trio of Justice!
Also true. You don't hurt his friends!
Retirement isn't much fun if the world ends before the beach boy shows up with your paper umbrella laden drinks.
Those will be useful, and gone within like, a day.
Useful, and a good idea,stay close to the kid but give her privacy, nice idea!
Pretty sure that wording is used every time she first shows up for a seen, reaching "Dick Greyson, age 12" levels.
Hell yeah! Fuck the rich! Great choice to guard these assholes!
D'awwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, yes I like this, yes!
Pfffffffffttttttt
Interesting.... would any of these be around that new tower? And, so it's not a ward it seems, not some magic to keep them out or barrier but more, something powerful is going on around these places that generates interference with whatever magic the Ladybugs use to stay linked to each other as a side effect... I am sure this is nothing suspicious at all....
And the Super Soldier programing has instinctual hatred towards Essy's built into it.....
I mean, she's not wrong, and besides, who doesn't want to see what happens after doing that?
Case in point.
What else can I say, I love this story's sense of humor and being able to take time for this comedy in between the more serious stuff to help cool down and unwind.
And Swift spots a key flaw in the plan.
Oh I am..... I am!
Pupper was just trying to help! He's a good boy!
And holy shit it works! Impressive!
"From the GFC down the street!"
That is simultaneously hilarious, so damn dark, and also kind of touching, all at the same time.... good job!
So, the same as every other place Hardy has walked into for the past month or so, got it!
Gotta play with the new toy! But also, really should have found time to go somewhere secure and at least work out how to fire that thing. And what happens when you fir it.
Hell. Yeah. Again, he's a great guy and a character that has the best qualities of both Sam Vimes and Harry Dresden.
So, now to find out just how screwed things really are and then run for their lives after yet another simple thing gets even more complicated then ever.