• Published 26th Jun 2012
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Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale - Chessie



In the decaying metropolis of Detrot, 60 years and one war after Luna's return, Detective Hard Boiled and friends must solve the mystery behind a unicorn's death in a film noir-inspired tale of ponies, hard cider, conspiracy, and murder.

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Act 2 Chapter 51: Hanging By A Thread

Starlight Over Detrot
Act 2 Chapter 51: Hanging By A Thread

In the annals of history, there is no more feared horror from out the depths of space and time than the gormless, witless beast that eats and defecates but never digests. It is a monster that slinks through the gutters of cities, devouring all in its path and leaving behind a disgusting smear on the sidewalk.

We are, of course, referring to the press.

The Fourth Estate was a term first coined by neighbors of the late, great progenitor of journalism, Lord Ink Blotter. In B.L. 355 he was forced to fight a lawsuit trying to have his house - the fourth one down on the left from the Blue Blood family home - demolished to make way for the Blue Blood’s new bathhouse.

When - much to everyone’s surprise - he lost the lawsuit Ink Blotter found himself with a huge amount of spare time on his hooves. His response was to begin tracking the Blue Blood family’s every move, day in, day out.

In a matter of weeks he’d discovered such a raft of dirty dealings that he wasn’t even sure how to go about making them known to the public at large. Thankfully, Ink Blotter was a savvy pony and able to employ a local inventor, Johan Croupenburg to use his newest invention, the printing press, for something besides the distribution of slightly unsavory stories of Princess Celestia’s love life.

Due to the resulting scandal, even hundreds of years later, the Blue Blood Family remains blighted with jokes about the ‘cucumber incident’ and various amusing anecdotes regarding the peacock somewhere in their family tree. Ink Blotter also discovered in his investigations that the judge in his case had been paid off and managed to get his house back.

Since then, the Fourth Estate has ostensibly defended the weak against the powerful, though the reality is usually more like a collective of drunk kittens in a yarn factory.

-The Scholar

----

I spat my trigger and threw my free hoof in the air, clutching the girl chick to my chest with my other. Taxi had the sense not to go for her cannon. I think if she had, we’d both have been dead in seconds.

Shanks and Derida pulled up short in the doorway, standing side by side, gawking at the bodies piled around the edges of the room. Derida realized her talons were covered in blood and quickly hopped backwards a few inches. Slowly they both turned to face me. Both had their weapons out, but they hadn’t yet pointed them at us.

“I just want to be clear here, I did not do this,” I said. I cringed internally the moment it came out of my mouth. To my own ears, that sounded awfully guilty, hence, I decided some babbling was in order. “We were in the elevator on the way down and I had to make some kind of vow to Esmerelda downstairs before she’d let us up here and I just came in and there were all the bodies out there covered in blood and I-”

“Detective, do shut up,” Derida growled, snapping her sword back into the sheath. Shutting her eyes, she drew in a firm breath, then pointed at one of her warriors, a gangly fellow with a scruffy little beard. “Jonas... Secure the room and check our eggs.”

The guard named Jonas snapped out of his stupor, swallowed, and holstered his axe. Bracing himself, he started moving around the edge of the room towards the paneled section at the back, disturbing as little as possible. When he reached the back wall, he hopped over the three bodies defending it and pushed his way into the sectioned area.

Grimble Shanks had recovered from his shock enough to glance at the child. I became aware of her legs tightly around my neck as she hid her face in my mane.

“What... happened here, cobber?” he asked, reaching down to touch the mane of a dead griffin at his feet. “And where’d ye be foindin’ that chick?”

“I wish I knew. She survived this mess. I don’t know what she saw.” I patted the chick’s back, gently and she clung to me a bit more tightly. For some unhinged reason, I was starting to feel a tad protective. “Can we get her out of here?”

“Aye, we be-”

Jonas popped out of the door so fast he smacked his beak on the way.

“Lady Derida! We must clear the building!” he exclaimed. “There’s a bomb!”

After all that Zap, one would think I’d have been thinking slowly, but the adrenaline was still pumping. I’d been dropped. I’d lost a piece of my ear. I’d seen the shape of a conspiracy that could have led to the deaths of hundreds.

Quickly shifting the griffin girl attached to my neck up onto my back, I darted over the bodies and shoved my way out between the two leaders of the tribes. I glanced both ways down the empty hallway, then hopped around the corner to find Swift peering out from behind a potted plant with Edina just behind her. A couple of griffin warmakers had followed me, curiously.

“Kid! Get Edina and get downstairs!” I shouted.

She stepped out from behind the plant. “Sir? Are those friendlies?”

“Yes! Now listen to me. Get downstairs and start getting everyone you can out! Ponies need an equine face. They won’t listen to griffins!”

“B-but Sir, what are-”

“Swift, you need to move!” I snarled. “Take Edina and this...hey, kiddo, what’s your name?” I asked, glancing at the chick.

She said something so quietly I barely heard. “-...name is Mags…”

I turned back to Swift. “This is our survivor. Her name is Mags. Get the two of them and get out!”

“I...what about-”

“That’s an order! We’ll be out as quick as we can, but you’ve got to handle the non-coms! Now go!”

Swift was confused, but my tone of voice brooked no disagreement. Not for the first time, I was glad she was a good little soldier. Grabbing Mags off my back, I plunked her down across my partner’s. Mags squirmed and tried to reach for me, but before she could, Swift darted back through the door, vanishing into the darkness.

Grimble and Derida were moving just as quickly, issuing orders to their own troops to get downstairs and start clearing rooms, starting from the top down. The effect of having something to do tends to stave off panic and any decent leader learns the first thing you do in a situation where death is real close is give anyone standing around a directive.

“Downstairs, gents! Grab the war-makers and get every griff ye can out this posh pit! By the Egg, stop standin’ with yer gobs open and heave to!”

“The elevator has been damaged. Move our people out through the stairs. Keep low and sneak through the basement parking garage if possible. We don’t want to alarm the P.A.C.T. with a whole bunch of broken windows and shrieking, lest they do something rash. I do not want those fools tromping around in here,” Derida added, gesturing with her sword for emphasis.

Stepping over another body, Taxi grabbed Jonas by the front of his combat vest and yanked him out of the doorway into the secured room. He went to swat at her, but when Taxi wants your attention she has a certain way of getting it. She grabbed his head in both hooves and stared into his eyes with an intensity that left his back legs shaking.

“You. Jonas. I need you to listen. Sykes...you know Sykes?” He nodded, weakly, staring into her face. “Good. Go downstairs and get someone to get Sykes out of the elevator. He’s stuck between floors. The emergency brakes are holding him for now, but the cable was cut. I don’t care how you do it, but I need him clear! He’s the pony liaison and if this all goes south, you griffins will need him. You hear me?”

He had the presence of mind to peer over her shoulder and look to Derida for confirmation: she sighed and nodded. Relief washed over his face and he jogged out of the room, dodging over bodies and wiping his talons free of blood on the door-jam as he left.

Thirty seconds later and all orders issued, Shanks, Derida, Taxi and I were alone.

“I suppose I can’t convince the two of you to let me handle this, can I?” I asked as we stood in front of the secure room.

“Loike bloody rocks, ye can,” Grimble muttered, slinging his axe across his back.

“That is not how griffins operate, Detective. Our leaders lead the actions, or they die of inaction. Our eggs are in there,” Derida added, adjusting her dress away from her rear legs for better motion in the event we had to sprint. “If I walk away from them, I am not fit to call myself a member of my tribe, much less aspire to leadership. Besides, if there is evidence, I would know exactly who would dare attach a bomb to our children so I also know whose family I will one day vivisect before their very eyes after I remove their eyelids.”

“Fine. Horrifying imagery aside, a competent pair of claws might help.” I glanced at my driver. “Sweets...I guess asking you to go someplace safe-”

“You’ve got exactly zero bomb defusing experience, Hardy, and I’ve seen you with a pair of pliers. You’ll be more likely to kill all of us,” she replied, before I could finished that noble sentiment. “Come on. Lets see what we’ve got.”

The smell of blood was making me lightheaded, but the job had taken on a fresh layer of necessity with the introduction of a bomb in a nursery.

Grabbing the door handle of the sectioned off area, I pulled it cautiously open. The blast of air that hit me in the face was positively scorching. Sweat popped out on my forehead almost immediately. I took an involuntary step back, then swung the door wide. A rush of air very nearly took me off my hooves.

The area the griffins had set aside for their treasury and nursery reminded me considerably of a vacant chicken coop mixed with a dragon’s hoard. Both walls, one on each side, were lined with row upon row of eggs. It was easy to pick out which was the Tokan and which was the Hitlan. Hitlan eggs were sitting in tiny nests of stone and feathers that looked very much like the nests of cliff-dwelling eagles, while the Tokan eggs lay in plush, velvet slots, each orderly and precise, with nametags and a clipboard beside each.

Against the back wall on the Hitlan side, a weathered, wooden chest sat underneath a short awning that was propped up by a pair of poles as though someone was worried it might get rained on. Off to the right, on the Tokan side, stacks upon stacks of books were heaped up alongside a few smaller jewelry boxes. I noticed one of the jewelery boxes seemed to have been opened, but put it out of my mind since the dominating feature of the room was a pony-sized hole punched right through the outer wall.

Strange. There wasn’t any rubble or debris scattered around it. Whatever came through had done so in an alarmingly neat fashion, though considering the effect of whatever weapon they’d used on the poor nursemaids, it wasn’t much of a stretch that they might have something to rip very clean holes in walls.

Right down below the hole, sat the bomb.

There was no mistaking it for anything else. Four bright orange and yellow ovoids, standing on end against one another were wired together underneath a block of something that looked like clay. They were phoenix eggs. Dead phoenix eggs, primed with explosives. Whoever set that little package had a fairly capacious knowledge of magical combustibles. Dead phoenix eggs ranked just behind dragon breath and ahead of spell-fire for sheer destructive potential. They also had the benefit of burning right through most forms of magical shielding. That said, Detrot was built to survive dragon attacks, but taking chances is not how one adds years to one’s life.

“Sweets. This is your show,” I said. “Tell me what we’re looking at.”

Taxi edged forward, watching for anything which might indicate there was a motion switch on the bomb. It wasn’t unheard of to wire an explosive with some juicy little surprise for whoever might try to defuse it. Pulling out her magnifying goggles, she slipped them on.

There’s no especially good technique for approaching a bomb. On a good day, you have a really long stick. On a bad day, you’ve got a suit of nice, thick Kevlar. Our day thus far had long since surpassed ‘bad’ and was now into the realm of ‘purge from memory by any means possible’, so it was that Taxi only had her skin and competence to shield her.

Modern bomb-makers tend to build within three separate philosophies. The first is that the bomb shouldn’t be found before it goes off. In that case, they tend to obscure the weapon. A garbage can works pretty well and those are relatively cheap to produce.

The second is the booby-trap. Build your bomb, then put it where your victim is likely to be and have them set it off themselves. While this is a solid plan, an especially cautious individual can sometimes avoid the trap.

The third and perhaps most dangerous variety is that which expects to be found. You build the bomb, put it somewhere, leave it on a timer and rely on a series of fail safes to keep it from being defused before it’s meant to explode.

In the cinema, the good guys tend to defuse that third type by cutting a wire or removing a timer.

Real bombs don’t work like that; certainly not the kind that someone wires up to four dead phoenix eggs. In real life, if you cut a wire, the bomb explodes immediately, killing you and anyone foolish enough to be nearby. In this case, it also kills a whole room full of unborn griffins.

Taxi paused, watching the four eggs on their stand. They’d started to glow slightly as she approached. She took a step back. The glow receded a little, but it still hadn’t disappeared entirely.

“Oh, that’s an adorable little trick…” she muttered, turning away from the bomb and trotting back to my side and addressing Derida. “I think I’ve got this figured. Are those eggs being fed magic of some kind?”

“They are held in a suspension field, yes,” Derida replied, tapping her chin. “It is wired into the nests. We had to build this room when we arrived. I do not sit on my own eggs, nor do most griffins in this day and age. The incubators simply charge them with energies to insure proper growth and prevent miscarriage.”

“What’ve you got, Sweets?” I asked.

“I’m not entirely sure. The bomb seems to have a proximity detector hooked up to some sort of battery which uses the innate powers of the phoenix eggs to figure out when someone is getting close to them. Move too near, they go boom. Brilliantly simple, actually...and damn near foolproof. I’d say it probably detects ambient life energy above a certain threshold, since the eggs eat magic to start the cycle of rebirth. Without a living phoenix inside, they’re just building to a reaction. Removing the griffin eggs might slow it down a little, but at this point, I don’t think we can stop it from going off. Not with the incubator nest spells in here, and...I don't know how we'd remove them quickly without damaging the eggs or setting the bomb off.”

“You said it’s eating life energies?” I cocked an eyebrow and touched my heart plug. “My heart is a pretty juicy bundle of those. Should I be in here?”

“No idea, really, but I do have a...well, half a plan. I don’t know what kind of time-frame this thing is meant to explode on. I’m going to assume it’s ‘short’.”

“Then...then we must move our eggs and the treasury!” Derida snapped, starting forward. I grabbed her tail in my teeth as the phoenix eggs burst to life as she crossed some invisible line. A lick of flame seemed to curl up the inside of one, before vanishing as I hauled her backwards towards the door.

“We’re leaving the treasury,” I growled. “You want your eggs, fine, but I am not dying hauling your friggin’ gold out of here.”

“That is not gold, you fool!” she barked, swatting at me with one wing. “That is our ledgers that bomb is sitting beside! That is the entire regional griffin economy!”

“And if you’ve got ten extra griffins to carry them, fine, go get’em. Otherwise, I’m prioritizing lives. Specifically the lives of your children.”

Derida dropped her claw from her sword, still looking deeply conflicted. She shot a longing glance at the heap of books piled in neat stacks against the wall, but there was no good way of getting them out quickly.

Pulling her cannon off, Taxi tossed it on the floor in front of us, then tugged off her saddlebags. Unzipping one of the outer pockets, she scrunched up her face, dumping out the various rounds from her cannon in a pile on the thick carpet.

“I...I think I can buy us maybe ten minutes. I’ve got a C-E-S number six in here,” she explained, picking up a particular round with a pink tip. “I...um...I suppose I should also add that it’s almost guaranteed to set the bomb off. If there’s a dead-pony switch, it’ll probably trip the second the system defrosts a little.”

“Then what good is it, lass?” Shanks growled, shifting from one back paw to the other as he stared at his eggs.

Taxi tapped the cannon with her toe. “If I’m right, it’ll give us maybe ten minutes where the bomb isn’t going to go off, even if we’re near it. That’s an upper limit, though. It could be much less.”

“What exactly is a C-E-S number six?” I asked, squinting at the tiny writing on the side of the container.

“Crystal Empire Special Six,” she replied.

“Wait...cold rounds? Why didn’t we have those when we were in Supermax?” I huffed.

“The contact who has been supplying these things didn’t have any! You want reliable sources of ammunition for your unregistered weapons, you buy what’s available!” she bit back. “Anyway, this will go off, but the second the temperature around the bomb goes back to normal, it’s probably going to go pop…”

“Which means we’ve got ten minutes to move the bomb. You think four of us can do it?”

Taxi coughed. “Once I fire this, there won’t be any moving that bomb. It’s going to be attached to the wall and floor. This might give us time to move the eggs, though.”

Derida flicked her eyes down the rows of eggs nestled in their racks. “It...will be extremely tight. Whereabouts are we going to put them?”

“I’ve got magic pockets. I can probably fit ten or fifteen in each. They look about the size of a grapefruit.” I point at my driver. “Taxi, empty your saddlebags. We can probably get fifteen or twenty in there.”

Hauling her bags up in her teeth, Taxi undid both clasps and began shaking out the wildest array of crap I’d ever see. The pile was up to her knees.

“Griffin eggs be pretty durable. Erm...Oi moight have...oh blast it! Me dignity will be dead enough as it is iffen Oi lets these eggs die,” Shanks reached back and snatched at the buckle on his kilt, ripping it off and laying it out on the carpet. Turning his axe around, he flicked a pin out of the head and tore the heavy blade off, tossing it back amongst the bodies in the other room. Picking up his kilt, he began fashioning a makeshift basket. “Oi don’t suppose we’ve time to give them what died defendin’ em a proper pyre.”

“I think the explosion of several phoenix eggs will do that job, nicely,” Derida answered, already halfway to pulling off her own clothing. All of that lady-like propriety was gone as she undressed, tossing away her sword as she began tying both ends of the embroidered dress to her scabbard.

We were all aware the bomb could go off at any time and those phoenix eggs did seem a tad more lively than when we’d first stepped into the nursery. I would have sworn I could see shapes moving behind their thin, fiery shells.

A soft voice from the next room brought my head up.

“Sir?”

Turning, I stepped out of the secured room followed closely by Derida, Grimble and Taxi, galloping across the field of bodies. It was a macabre scene, but one I could do nothing about. Frequently, putting the awful things out of your mind is your best hope for not losing it.

My partner was just reaching for the door handle when I slammed it open and pushed her to one side, out of view of the bodies. Mags was still clinging to her back by a couple of claw-fulls of her brilliantly orange mane and peered up at me over Swift’s shoulder.

“Swift...on what world did you think it was a good idea to come back here?!” I snarled, poking her in the chest.

“S-sir...we’re in trouble,” she stammered, her lower lip quivering.

“Yes, I know that! We were about to try to get these eggs out of here! I was hoping you’d have us a path cleared to an open window by now!”

“I...I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sir. T-there’s a P.A.C.T. air interdiction f-field around the building. Nobody...can fly around the Moonwalk. The only way out is on...on hoof.”

Derida spread her wings and gave them a beat, barely lifting herself an inch off the ground.

“She’s right. We’re not flying out of here, Justice.”

My mind went blank for a moment.

Well, that’s not good,’ Juniper whispered.

Interdiction magic is used only for instances where someone suspects an extremely dangerous perp is going to attempt to flee: terrorists, extra-dimensional horrors, serial killers and so on. If you’re going to interdict an area, you need a good reason. It requires considerable magical resources, it inconveniences first responders, it grounds your own forces, and it has the unfortunate addendum that it’s a beast to target properly. The spells involved weren’t the sort you could control with great care.

Interdiction is the magical equivalent of a howitzer; you point it at an area and anything in that area that uses a particular brand of magic might as well be shooting blanks. Hence, magically powered flight was out of the question.

That said, the shape of the trap we were in was finally coming together.

Flight interdiction meant nopony leaving via the rooftops. Leaving out the front doors was either heading into a police cordon or past whatever monsters had put us in this situation in the first place.

Derida was a little faster on the uptake. “If we cannot leave out the windows and the elevators are blocked, then ten minutes is an extremely short period to accomplish this.”

“You’re telling me. Alright, before this blows up because we’re dithering, Swift, go find a laundry chute and grab all the towels you can. Start shoving them down the chute. You hear us clearing out of here, you start shouting until we find you. We need to get these eggs off this floor as quickly as possible.”

Swift only hesitated for a moment before she took off down the hallway with Mags holding on tight for the ride.

Grimble Shanks gave me a curious look that shook me out of my thoughts, “Why the laundry, cobber?”

“You say these eggs are durable?” I asked as we trotted back to the nursery. Reaching into one of the nests, I gently removed one of the eggs and turned it over. The bottom was stamped with a complex system of symbols and the names of two griffins: Jeanette and Bosko. Probably the parents.

“Very. They must be survoivin’ a griffin sittin on ’em,” he replied, with a little shrug.

“Then, with any luck, they’ll survive dropping on top of an irate pegasus. We’re putting them down the linen chute.”

“Ahem...Hardy, if we’re doing this...well, those phoenix eggs are starting to look real active,” Taxi said, quietly, pointing at the bomb. She was right. The eggs were starting to glow more energetically. With her free hoof, she popped the shell out of the P.E.A.C.E. and loaded the CES6.

"When we ice this puppy, we need to get out quick. Grim, you and Derida take the section nearest the exit. Pack as many eggs in as you can, but...if it looks like things are going south, your priority is to leave. If this doesn’t work, being close might buy you enough time to get out. Run for Swift, toss the eggs down the chute, and then head for the elevator. That’s our exit. Pry the doors and slide down the ladder. I think there’s only enough explosives here to take out the top few floors and...and hopefully that won’t mean they fall on us. Get ready.”

I didn’t know how true that bit about there only being enough explosives to kill the top floors was, but bringing an entire building down in Detrot requires a fair bit more effort than most people are willing to put in. That said, I was speaking from a place of hope rather than foreknowledge.

I suppose it didn’t matter; I was right or we were all dead.

Taxi rose up on her back hooves and parked her cannon on her fetlock. I reached out and gently lowered the barrel a couple inches, holding it there as she took aim at the bomb. Taking a deep breath, she shut her eyes for a moment, trigger clutched between her teeth as we all prepared for life to get loud.

----

If anyone happens to claim, at some point, that they’d like a life of adventure I just want to let them know my experience of ‘adventure’ was mostly that of a mongoose facing down a whole pit full of cobras.

I’m just saying.

----

The P.E.A.C.E. cannon kicked, coughing like a polite host at a dinner party. I braced for the sensation of my bones being scoured clean by the magical flames of four sterile phoenix eggs.

The round arced across the room and hit the base of the bomb almost dead on, followed immediately by a burst of white light that blinded us, briefly. When the flash cleared, the entirety of the bomb was encased in a flash-frozen block of ice that crept up the wall, crackling and sparkling in the dim illumination of my torch.

We all took a good five-second pause to see what was going to happen. I fully expected instantaneous, burning death. I can’t say I was at peace with the notion, but it didn’t frighten me near so much as you’d think. Certainly nothing like that first moment when we’d come up the stairs and that poor dead hen spilled across my legs. What does it say when I’m facing my own death and I’m fine, but facing another day as witness to the deaths of others sends me into a gutless panic?

Still, the bomb sat there, and I slowly exhaled.

“We’re...we’re alive. Good. Phew. Alright, move! Come on, move!” I barked, snatching my coat off and rushing towards the other end of the room. If the bomb was going to pop at that point, nothing I could do would stop it and moving slowly was only costing lives. I had another bad moment as I approached and the frozen eggs seemed to glitter, but as I passed the threshold and found myself still un-incinerated, I forced myself to switch focus. There was a tiny stepladder beside the heap of books on the Tokan side of the room.

My pulse was thumping like a full drum solo in my ears as I leaped onto the ladder and started with the top shelf, scooping the first egg out with both hooves. Turning, I peeled open my pocket and shoved it into the miniature dimensional hole. I hoped a bit of cosmic displacement wouldn’t do anything terrible to them. Those pockets were ridiculously expensive and having yolk all over the inside would be a beast to clean. At worst, they’d probably be in company with a few ancient chocolate bars.

All these thoughts were mostly to keep my mind off the bomb less than a meter from me. I’d have sworn I could feel the damn thing leering over my shoulder like an especially demanding school teacher.

Behind me, my compatriots were similarly rushing up the rows, plucking up eggs and dropping them into whatever receptacles they had available. Derida’s dress-sack was surprisingly effective, but filling up quickly and when I spared a glance towards Grimble, he’d already grabbed a bloody sheet from a pile in the previous room and was laying eggs on it quick as he could.

We worked in silence, with only the sound of clicking eggs and our own heavy breathing to keep us company. You wouldn’t think it, but it was work and those eggs weren’t near as light as I was hoping they’d be. The creeping panic wasn’t helping and my cutie-mark had been on fire for what felt like hours.

I wished, desperately, that I’d thought to bring a watch. Ten minutes can seem like hours, but when every second is filled with desperate activity, there’s plenty of time to watch your life flashing before your eyes.

I grabbed another egg on the bottom row and shoved it into my pockets which, despite the magic on them, were now bulging slightly then went to reach for another only to find the next nest empty.

Looking up, I found Grimble Shanks with a full sack over one shoulder.

“That be it, boyo!” he chuckled, then jerked his head at Derida who was just placing her last egg in her bag while Taxi stood with enormously full saddlebags and her P.E.A.C.E. cannon dangling from its strap. The best speed she could manage with that load was going to be a quick waddle.

“Sweets, I know you love that thing, but-” I started and she held up her hoof, looking towards the bomb.

All at once, the ice covering it let out a resounding ‘Crack!’ that echoed around the room. I stared at the four phoenix eggs sitting under the big load of high explosive. All manner of interesting colors were roiling around inside them. I didn’t need my driver’s expertise to tell me they were moments from detonation.

Taxi reluctantly unhitched her gigantic weapon. Holding it in her hooves for a moment, she leaned down and gave the P.E.A.C.E. a quick kiss on the barrel before moving over to the heap of books constituting the Tokan ledgers. Heaving it up on top, she sat there for a few seconds, her lips moving in what I assumed to be a prayer of some kind. It was a touching little ritual and any other time, I’d have been inclined to take her out for tacos afterwards, but our schedule was a bit tight.

“I’m...I’m ready,” she muttered, at last. I swear I saw a tear creep out of the corner of her eye and run down her cheek.

Turning to the door, I waited as Grimble Shanks pulled it open, then trotted through. It was nerve-wracking. We couldn’t have had more than a minute left, but we couldn’t afford to run lest the eggs get damaged.

For some bizarre reason, I expected the bodies would be gone. It was strange, after the tension of shifting all those eggs. Jumping around corpses like some infernal game of hop-scotch, we moved to the other end of the room as quickly equinely possible. Grimble gave the dead one last look and touched his forehead in a quiet salute, then slammed open the conference room doors.

Taking a deep breath, I shouted, “Mareco!”

From off to our left, my partner’s voice echoed down the hall.

“Polo!”

Praying the eggs were solid enough to survive a quick jog, I trotted around the corner to find my partner standing beside a slot on the wall with a heap of towels. I thanked Celestia, quietly, that the slot was big enough for what I had in mind. Mags was beside her, passing the towels to Swift one after another as she stuffed them down the chute in great wads. Edina lay against a potted plant, still staring off into space.

“Kid!” I called, charging over to Swift and yanking off my coat.

“Sir, I sent a whole linen closet down quick as I could!” she exclaimed. “You think it’ll be enough to cushion the eggs? Why aren’t we carrying them down?”

I opened the chute and peered inside. About twenty meters down, the tunnel turned into a slow bend to the left.

“It’ll be enough. Besides, it wasn’t the eggs I was worried about,” I replied. “By the way, I’m preemptively sorry about this. There’s a bomb in the building. Try to cover your head on the way down.”

Swift gave me a puzzled look, then yelped as I snapped a hoof out and spun her around, pushing her up against the wall. Grabbing the back of her flak jacket with my teeth, I hauled her up to the laundry chute. Her powerful wings tried to open, but I forced them shut with my forelegs before she could get good leverage.

Sliding one of my forelegs under her back leg, I hefted my partner up and shoved her nose-first into the laundry drop. She kicked at me a little, but earth pony trumps pegasus any day of the week when it comes to sheer physical strength. She barely had time to let out a distressed squeak before she slid face first into the darkness. I watched until she disappeared down the bend.

“No faaaiiir!” echoed up the chute at me, followed by a soft ‘whump’.

After a moment, I yelled down to her, “Kid? You alright?”

“I’m going to get you for this, Sir!” she snarled from below, kicking something so the whole assembly rattled.

“Incoming! Catch’em if you can!” I warned her.

Turning to Mags, I gently picked her up in my forelegs. “Honey, you’re going for a little ride. You okay with that?”

The little griffin’s eyes were round with fear, but she looked up into my face with the trust of a child. I patted her head, then picked up a towel from the remaining pile and wrapped it around her body before gently setting her on the edge of the chute.

“Keep your wings in and your legs against your stomach. You’ll be safe and Swift will be down there.”

“W-what’s ye name, p-pony?” she asked.

“I’m Hardy, honey. I’m going to take care of you. You’ll be safe,” I replied, with a smile that bordered on genuine before carefully letting her slide. Despite the preparation, she still let out a frightened whistle as she fell.

Edina was next, and she put up no fight whatsoever as I heaved her to the edge and dumped her over like a limp rag-doll, flopping beak-first down the hole. Lifting my coat, I tossed it down after her.

“What about us? Can we fit down there?” Taxi asked, from my side.

“Not a chance,” I replied, shaking my head.

A tiny vibration seemed to rattle through the floor right up my spine. Taxi cocked one ear.

“Hardy, that’s a magical resonance…”

“Oh crap. Derida! Eggs in!” I barked, hopping back so the griffin tribe-lady could stuff her dress down. Grimble Shanks followed, hefting his full kilt over along with the sheet loaded with eggs, gently lowering both until they started to slide.

“Now what, boyo?” Grimble ask.

I ignored him and shouted down to my partner, “Swift! Hold position! We’ll meet you downstairs!”

“I hope you get mange, Sir!” she called back.

The ringing in my ears was getting steadily worse as the phoenix eggs built to final detonation.

Swinging around, I sprinted for the elevator. “Lets get out of here!”

----

Two words you never want to hear side by side: magical resonance.

A magical resonance is when two or more enchanted objects start vibrating in a similar frequency to one another, gradually building up to a cascade or an explosion. There’s no especially good way of stopping one once it’s started except maybe with a sledgehammer.

Sledgehammers also have the unfortunate side effect of frequently causing explosions. There’s no ‘winning play’ with magical resonance.

----

The sound reminded me of that awful noise in the depths of Supermax, amplified about thirty times over. It might have been my imagination, but I’d have laid my hoof on a whole stack of whatever religious text you liked and said my spine was crackling with the wild energies raging around inside the griffin treasury.

Something tickled my upper lip as we charged down the hall to the elevator shaft. The hallway was empty, but I still felt chased.

Skidding to a halt in front of the lifts, I touched my upper lip with one toe. It came away bloody.

‘Resonance is messing with your heart,’ Juniper whispered. ‘Feel that beat in your ears? You need to get out soon, or it’ll be another trip to the meat locker.’

“Shut up, Juni!” I snapped, grabbing the edge of the elevator door with the sharp edge of my shoe and hauling violently back. “I’ve got no time to be crazy right now!”

Grimble Shanks cocked a curious eye at me as he dug his sharp claws into the crack. His gigantic muscles bulged in all sorts of disturbing ways as he forced the door open until the counterweight took the slack and the panel slid open on darkness.

“Why we takin’ the lift again, boyo?” Grimble asked, peering over the edge.

“You want to argue this now?” I snapped. “The stairs are slow! Derida, you and Taxi get in there first!”

Derida wasn’t wasting any time. She swung around the edge, grabbing the ladder in both claws. Taxi dipped in behind her, sliding onto the ledge as quick as she could and hopping onto the ladder. They started descending quick as they could. I could just see a bit of light from the door we’d left open several floors below.

A violent shock seemed to rock the very air; death, oncoming. My back legs wobbled, threatening to go out from under me as the building shook.

Thankfully,Grimble Shanks was moving with a little more urgency. He snatched me off the floor around the middle and dove into the shaft, grabbing the broken elevator cable in one claw. I had the sensation of acceleration and the light strapped to my head came loose, tumbling end over end into the darkness.

There was a blast of heat and something caught me across the back of the head. I shut my eyes, hanging on to Grimble’s chest. Twisting my neck, I looked up in time to see a gigantic fire-ball swell through the open doors of the elevator shaft and, with inexorable fury, down onto my face. I barely had time to duck my head against Grimble’s chest. If I hadn’t still been wearing my hat, I would probably have lost every inch of fur on my head.

Grimble grunted in pain and his claws slipped. Our drop accelerated, then after a moment became a free fall that lasted only a blessed half second before I landed atop his chest. I felt something crack, though whether it was my bones or his, I couldn’t tell. The thick scent of smoke billowed down from above, but the air in my lungs felt like lead. Then the lights went out. My lights, in particular.

----

Contrary to popular belief, being knocked out isn’t like it is in the cinema. You knock someone out and they stay knocked out for awhile, you’ve given them a concussion and possibly brain damage. The brain is pretty resilient and, to that end, tends to want to be awake to see what’s happening.

----

I blinked crusted eyes. Oof. I must have slept funny. My neck felt like I’d just come from a session on the rack. Still, at least my mattress was nice and soft, if a tad bit...lumpy. Feathery and lumpy. Make that feathery and lumpy and breathing.

I tried to pull myself off to one side, but blood was dripping my eyes, making it difficult to see, and my legs wouldn’t work properly. The fire was gone, leaving us in darkness again. My flashlight lay nearby along with a couple of pieces of broken scaffolding across it. It was a miracle none of them had hit us. But then, one had, hadn’t it? I touched the back of my head and winced at the knot that was growing there.

‘You’re still in the shaft. Okay, orient yourself. How long have you been out?’ I thought.

Since my light was still on, it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. My body hurt. Oh how it hurt.

Somewhere above me, someone was moaning.

Where had we landed? I stuck my head out a few inches, trying to get a look.

Oh...top of the elevator,’ I thought. I rubbed at my eyes with one hoof, trying to clear my vision again.

I sniffed at the air. Something was burning.

Glancing around, I gasped as I saw the tips of Grimble’s wings. A lick of flame clung to them. Reaching out, I quickly stomped the fire out with my toe. Hooves are good for that. Worryingly, Grimble Shanks didn’t so much as twitch when I stepped on his wingtip. He just sprawled there, one claw across his chest, wings spread like a fallen angel. His wing was a mess, but that’s what hospitals and magic are for. I hoped we weren’t beyond the place that’d help.

A fair bit of the fur on his neck and face was gone, and the flesh underneath was reddened, though it lacked any of the puckering or boiling that suggests deep nerve damage or permanent scarring. His breathing was a little shallow, but there was nothing I could do about that just then. He was alive, and that was what mattered.

Getting unsteadily to my hooves, I picked up my light. Spitting out a muzzle full of dust, I winced as the adrenaline that’d been powering me along backed off just enough to let me feel a sharp burn in my upper back. I hadn’t gotten off completely unscathed, either.

Tilting my head down, I touched my heart plug. The light on it was blinking furiously.

Stumbling to the access panel through the top of the lift, I peered inside. The door to the floor below was cracked just wide enough to allow one plus-sized griffin to wiggle through, propped open with the edge of a table. Sykes was gone.

Up above, the moaning was getting louder.

“Sweets!” I called out, then collapsed in a fit of violent coughing.

“M’here, Hardy,” my driver called back, weakly. “Derida hit the wall when she fell. She’s not moving. There’s some sort of...ledge or something up here across from the ladder. We landed on that.”

“How long was I out?”

“I don’t know. Longer than me. Maybe ten minutes,” she answered.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, picking myself up. A small breeze blowing down the shaft brought the smell of fire.

It was a long moment before she responded.

“I...Hardy, I’m pretty sure my right legs are both broken. My ribs feel okay, but I don’t think I can get out of here...”

A soothing trickle of water spilled from overhead, which quickly became a drenching torrent. My addled brain wanted to know, for a moment, how it could be raining inside. A moment later, the fire alarms started ringing like mad.

“I’ll get help. I pretty sure I can get downstairs.”

“Don’t be long,” she answered. “I’ll be here.” Her voice was strained, like she was speaking through clenched teeth.

I reached for my pocket to pull out the walkie-talkie to call M6 and have them come get us, then realized it’d been in my coat-pockets. No Ladybugs, no walkie-talkie, no ammo for my gun. My revolver was still on my leg, but that was the only good news. Even my hat was looking a bit crispy.

Picking up my light, I went to check Grimble’s pulse. Finding it strong, I made a snap decision. I desperately wanted to stay with my companions, but the building had likely been evacuated and help was either not coming or would come in a form I really didn’t want. The top floors were burning or gone and if the creaking of the beams above me were any indication, the structural integrity of the place was probably in question. Getting out and finding my own brand of help was my best bet.

The persistent blinking of my heart’s power light wasn’t helping matters.

Crawling over Grimble, I backed into the hole in the top of the elevator, letting my weight settle on my forelegs before dropping to the floor. It would have been a fairly nimble maneuver, if not for my legs going out from under me, sending me crashing onto my stomach. I laid there, gasping for breath as the entire box shuddered under the weight of my impact. The brakes seemed to be holding.

Dragging myself to the door, I stretched out on my stomach. The space between the floor below and the elevator was wide enough that I didn’t have to squeeze through, but I didn’t fancy another drop so soon.

Easing out of the hole, I landed on the carpet, looking both ways before setting off in what I hoped was the direction of the stairwell. Damn. Why’d the pony with no sense of direction have to be the one still standing?

----

Hallway after hallway of empty, open doors and discarded luggage greeted me on the floors below. I’ve got to give it to the griffins; they move quick. The fourth floor was completely evacuated.

I finally managed to stumble my way to a sign that said ‘Stairwell Exit’ and pushed out onto the stairs. My heart was beating a tad erratically, but that could have been the fear and exhaustion. I sincerely hoped it was fear and exhaustion.

Trotting down floor after floor, I kept an ear in the air for oncoming danger. Where were the fire ponies? If nothing else, where was the P.A.C.T.? The detonation of a bunch of phoenix eggs should have brought them down like a hammer.

I couldn’t help but glance back at the charred end of my tail. I’d lost a good three inches of hair in the explosion. There was no telling what my back looked like.

At last, after what felt like hours of stumbling around in the dark, I hit the bottom floor, breathing hard. The lobby was just ahead, but I could hear a commotion out there. The power was still out and the posh hallways were lit only by my flashlight. How the griffins had managed to get everyone out was nothing short of miraculous with only fifteen or twenty minutes, but that military mindset can work wonders when it’s applied to a problem.

Reaching up, I pressed the button on my light, shutting it off.

Creeping up to the door just off the lobby, I gently cracked it and peered through.

The lobby itself was empty, but I could see a cordon set up just outside the door. A P.A.C.T. cordon, no less. A half dozen of those ridiculous trooper suits were lined up behind it, massive weapons at the ready. I counted three heavy machine guns and one big guy toting a full-on Cloud Hammer strapped to his back. Swift would have drooled at the giant electrical coil hooked to a whole heap of super-capacitors.

Swift.

Please let Celestia be kind to the kid. I hoped she and Mags were getting on alright.

There was rubble lying on the ground, but less than I’d have thought considering the amount of explosive that’d been strapped to the eggs.

Sirens were ringing in the distance, but much closer I could see an ambulance just pulling into the front of the cordon. That trooper with the Cloud Hammer starting to march around to the driver side door and I noticed he was wearing a set of sergeant stripes on his shoulder. The low light kept the driver’s face in shadow, until the door opened and he stepped out.

“Limerence?!”

I slapped a hoof over my mouth and ducked back through the door, glad there was nobody in the lobby to hear me.

Limerence was out there, wearing a ridiculous nurse’s getup and driving what I strongly suspected was a stolen ambulance.

What’s his play?’ I thought.

‘It’s got to be better than yours if your plan is to stand here and leave him to face the P.A.C.T.,” Juniper whispered.

‘I haven’t come up with anything yet, blast it! Give me a minute!’

Turning in a little circle, I jumped back in surprise as I found myself nose to nose with a haggard, broken down mess of a pony staring at me just inches away, covered in blood. My heart felt like a train in my chest as I gulped for air and fought the urge to faint.

I’d come muzzle to muzzle with my own reflection in a body-length mirror that some fool had left propped beside the door. It was a surprisingly awful look.

‘As a matter of fact, if I ditch the hat and maybe smear a little more blood into my fur so it sticks up everywhere…”

I quickly wiped the swiftly coagulating blood from my head-wound into my face fur, then tossed my hat in the corner behind the door. Plucking my revolver out of the harness, I dropped it beside my head wear.

Time for the greatest theater in all of Equestrian history.

----

Bursting out of the revolving door of the Moonwalk, I staggered into the P.A.C.T. cordon, limping like a champ. I stumbled forward, moaning at the top of my lungs. As I’d hoped, the press couldn’t resist a good photo-op. I threw a leg across my face, almost tumbling onto my side as dozens upon dozens of cameras blanketed me in blinding flashes.

The P.A.C.T. troopers were so shocked they fell back from me, several reaching for their weapons. They couldn’t have figured out who I was that quick, but it did give me pause. Still, all in or nothing.

“Help! We need an ambulance!” I shouted over the crowd. “Some of my friends are hurt! I think my marefriend might die!”

Shoving forward, I pushed passed the cordon and grabbed Limerence by the lapels of his emergency medical responder uniform, clutching him to my chest.

“Oh thank goodness! Come on, my friends are inside! I have to take you to them!” I sobbed, giving him a little shake.

I grabbed Limerence by the shoulders and began dragging him towards the door of the Moonwalk, hoping the press and the various agencies surrounding us wouldn’t have time to get mentally organized before I could get him someplace we could make a plan.

The P.A.C.T. sergeant stepped in front of me. He was a huge bastard, with one of those insane short cut manes that made his head look like a minotaur’s thumb and no neck to speak of,

“We will sweep the building for civilians once we’ve made certain there are no more bombs,” he growled. The electrical coil strapped to his back crackled for emphasis, little sparks dancing along the metal rails that controlled the build up of power.

“B-but my friends might die!” I moaned, making sure the press could hear every word. “There was so much blood and I’m so tired and please, please just let us through-”

“We cannot take the risk, civilian. We will see to you wounds-”

Limerence was a credit to bad actors everywhere. He took two steps forward and shoved his muzzle right up against the big soldier’s. “You, sir, will get out of my way. I’m a doctor, not a battering ram, but I need to see to my patients! I’ll take whatever risks are necessary under section thirty nine double D of the Detrot First Responder Code Of Conduct!”

The sergeant squinted at him, which caused a couple muscles in his forehead to flex in a very disturbing manner.

“I’m not familiar with that section,” he grunted.

Limerence pushed his chest out, assuming his lecturing pose. “Thirty nine double D subsection twelve, bullet points four through twelve: Insofar as preventative measures becoming impossible individuals claiming respondent status take all risks associated with responding to a situation requiring response upon-”

The sack of meat with the Cloud Hammer’s eyes glazed over almost immediately. One of the major checks on military power has always been the ability to heap a great deal of regulatory manure on some mid-level functionary knowing they’re never going to crack a manual and find out you were lying through your teeth. Limerence, whatever his failings as an actor, was a master of this.

Shooting a slightly nervous look towards the press, sergeant Fat-Head stepped to one side and held up his hoof to stop the stream of meaningless jargon.

“Fine. You want to go in, you go in, but it’s on your head to play hero. The staff and what few equine guests there were have already evacuated along with a whole heap of griffins. Don’t know where they went, seeing as this is their embassy. They dashed off the minute they came out,” he growled, jabbing a hoof over the heads of the crowd. As he said, there wasn’t a griffin in sight. “Still, this is their embassy and we still aren’t sure what’s happened up there. You get in there and find a griffin who wants to use your skull to grind his axe, you’re acting as a civilian. Got me?”

An embassy?’ I thought. ‘Ah...that’s why they haven’t entered yet. Even letting an ambulance in without permission was probably an edge case, but if he doesn’t he looks like he’s keeping first responders from getting to the wounded. Broadside would skin him for that, particularly with the press around.’

That did leave the question of where the griffins had gone. What were their points of retreat? I’d have to ask Derida or Grimble as soon as that became an option.

Limerence gave him a smug smile and flicked the stethoscope dangling from his neck. “I’ve got you. Now kindly tell your thugs to clear out of my way so I can perform my medical duties!”

I cringed at the amount of ham and eggs he put into those two sentences. He must have gotten his ‘doctor’ act from late night television. Still, the sergeant waved the P.A.C.T. ponies back and pulled the cordon open just enough to admit the ambulance. I went around to the passenger’s side and hopped into the seat, shutting the door on them. The sergeant gave me a curious look. It must have looked a tad strange that Limerence wasn’t fussing over me and getting me an emergency blanket or some such thing, but he had his hooves full keeping the press out and couldn’t devote much thought to the matter. Letting two idiots on a mission of mercy die heroically would make for less press than one idiot standing in their way.

I tilted my head back to look up at the damage to the Moonwalk. Several spotlights were trained on the building and I could just make out the shimmer of the interdiction field a few dozen meters above the building.

The top three floors were effectively gone. The phoenix fire was so hot it’d simply liquified the girders, spilling molten steel and glass over the sides of the building. Whatever explosive they’d used was pretty spectacular, but the heat of the magical fire, at least up close, must have very nearly vaporized most of the debris. One of the major advantages of enchanted fire is that when you get a certain distance from the point of origin, it turns right back into normal fire and that tends to be a tad less lethal.

“Lim, we’ve got to go through the basement. We need to pick up Swift,” I murmured.

“I’m aware,” he replied out of the corner of his muzzle, turning the ambulance towards the underground parking area. “She’s with the Night Trotter and...I assume her babbling about ‘eggs’ was not entirely unhinged?”

“I wish. Taxi and the griffin tribe lords are injured and they’re stuck in the elevator shaft.”

“Stuck in the elevator, you say? How did you-” he started to ask something and I shut my eyes, putting my hoof on his shoulder, leaving a smear of blood on the clean, white doctor’s coat.

“The shaft. They’re above the elevator in the shaft. Lets just say this entire day has not gone to plan and move on. We’ve got to get them out and then get out of here before the P.A.C.T. realizes the griffins have abandoned the building. Incidentally, I didn’t know you could drive...”

Limerence adjusted his stethoscope and ran his toe around the wheel. “I have had some basic lessons, but an ambulance is the perfect vehicle for a pony with no driving skills. Everyone gets out of your way and you needn’t stop for red lights. Stealing it from the local hospital parking lot was almost comically simple after your partner called the Archive from a corner phone on the next block. The P.A.C.T. is still in the process of locking off the adjoining streets.”

“Wait, she called you? How?”

“I gave her the direct phone line to my father’s desk. It is much less secure than our communication rituals, but it does have the advantage of being fast.”

“What about me?” I grumbled. “Do I not rate a direct line?”

“Of course, but I did expect her to be with you and she is more frequently in possession of something to write with. How much of this blood is yours? Your heart is flashing.”

I touched my face. Most of the blood had dried to a thick crust, but a bit was still damp. “Most of it, I think. A little might be from a stupid great lout who decided he’d protect me when we fell down the elevator shaft. What inspired you to snatch an ambulance of all things?”

Limerence shrugged, his thin, blue face framed by the snapping of flash bulbs in the crowd outside. “I could not think of another way they would let me through on short notice that didn’t involve massive civilian casualties…”

“I get the feeling it would be bad for me to ask what plans B through F were…”

“B through F? You wound me, Detective. My plans for your rescue in such a situation as it becomes necessary require no less than three alphabets and G through L involve unleashing a twenty four hour city-wide magical plague my father kept in his study which causes uncontrollable lust for peanut butter.”

“Huh. I’m glad it didn’t come to that.”

“I calculated the death toll of that one at around five percent of the population and decided against it. Stealing an ambulance and driving up to the front door required me to get into the zebra lettering system to find an entirely non-lethal solution. Speaking of that, what has happened here?”

“Debriefing later. Right now, we need to get our friends and their eggs out of here before this becomes one giant omelet. How did your information search go? Anything useful?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid nothing we didn’t already know. As I mentioned briefly during my presentation for entry into Supermax, as recompense for their service during the Crusades, the horse-shoes of Nightmare Moon were given into the protection of an anonymous tribe… of… of...” He trailed off for a moment, exchanging a quiet look with me before turning to stare up at the flaming remains of the top floors of the Moonwalk. “...ah...”

“Griffins,” I finished.

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