• 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 52: Rain, Rain, Go Away

Starlight Over Detrot Act 2, Chapter 52: Rain, Rain, Go Away

Equestria’s highway system is like every other aspect of equine society; it operates mostly on the dreams of the ambitious, at the behest of the dedicated, and at the whim of the insane.

Not long after her return from her famed inter-planetary hiatus, Princess Luna decided she wanted to leave her mark on Equestrian society in a more positive way than freezing all life in an eternal, icy darkness. After several doomed projects, including the Sub-terranean Chicken Run, Cheese-Power Development, and the ultimately fruitful but very messy Pineapple TurnOver Weaponization Project, she hit upon the idea of a national and international roadway network.

The Royal Road - as the paper’s called it - was a gigantic undertaking and while the train network might have been safer, Equestria’s population growth had outstripped the development of the railway network and ticket prices were rising. Adding to the normal challenges a country might face when implementing a nationwide transport system like financing, avoiding holy sites, and union dithering were the natural problems of Equestrian travel.

A special pony was needed and there was only one agency with sufficiently elite membership to manage the project who was familiar with the dangers inherent in crossing vast tracts of untameable Equestrian wilderness; The Royal Mail Service.

The individual they tapped was one D.Hooves, the daughter of the famous small town mail pony who kept the mail running even in the darkest days of the Crusades. Miss Hooves first act was the creation of a new organization : The Highway Patrol.

Mixing an extremely aggressive construction policy with the occasional aggressive use of light artillery, Miss Hooves managed to clear paths all across Equestria and set up a functional network of roads which link major and minor cities to one another via six shining lanes of asphalt. It was a fraught undertaking, but after five years, the project was finished and the Royal Road opened, kept safe by the wary guardians of the Patrol.

While the roads are a great improvement on the safety of extra-city travel, they have never been a perfectly secure option. Those who choose to take the side-roads and the long, empty stretches between Equestria and the Bad Lands might find themselves facing changeling bandits, marauding dragons, disgruntled buffalo, and angry manticores. The individuals who choose this path, the road of violence and fury, must be equal to the task or death is assured.

- The Scholar

----

I love a good puzzle, but the pieces I already had were forming a frightening picture of an organized, intelligent foe with vast resources and no particularly good reason not to slaughter us; the only one I could think of was that we knew the location of the helm of Nightmare Moon. I hoped that was their reason. Even with the protection of the Crusader, our opponents were eventually going to find me or someone they could leverage to get at me. It was just a matter of time.

I’d been inches from the griffin treasury and my cutie-mark felt like it was being seared into my rear end with a branding iron. Why did I not see it?

But then, I had seen it; there was that empty jewelry box.

Damn and blast.

----

Limerence pulled down the parking ramp into the underground garage. The lights were still out, and the whole area was entirely dark, save for a head lamp attached to a tiny pegasus sitting on the hood of the Night Trotter, right where Taxi’d left it when we arrived. There were no other cars in sight.

Swift was wearing the Hailstorm again and had Mags curled up in a heap of towels beside her; the chick looked to have finally succumbed to exhaustion. My partner didn’t seem much better. She was slumped over, resting her chin on one foreleg, staring at the pool of light made by her torch.

As soon as the ambulance turned onto the otherwise empty row of parking spaces, she looked up and shined her light across us. Pulling to a stop just in front of the cab, Limerence tugged on the parking brake and slid out of the ambulance in one smooth motion. Swift leapt off the Night Trotter and charged at me with all the credible threat of a raging hamster, smacking me in the chest with both front hooves.

“You...you total donkey butt!” she shouted, giving me an angry push. Slightly more worrying, the Hailstorm’s barrels were following my face and a bit of frost had formed around the tips. “There’s a bomb? Really?! You tell me there’s a bomb, then you throw me down a laundry chute?!” She stared up at me with tears in the corners of her bright blue eyes. “Sir, I thought you were dead!”

I snorted and gently pushed her back. “You and I both know you weren’t sitting here in the dark because you thought I was dead. Now come on. Where are Edina and the eggs?”

Swift frowned, then swatted me again. “Alright, I wasn’t, but...but it’s still the principal of the thing, Sir!” She turned to the Night Trotter and nodded at a big laundry basket shoved up against the wall of the garage. “That was under the chute. It’s full of stinky sheets, but it was pretty soft. The eggs are okay. None of them broke or anything. Miss Edina’s still in there with them.”

Trotting over to the laundry basket, I peered over the side. Edina was down there, curled up hugging herself, rocking back and forth in the corner. Reaching in, I gently stroked her crest, then turned back to Swift. “Good work, kid.”

Limerence sighed and patted the steaming front grill of the ambulance. “We should abandon this vehicle as soon as possible. It will be reported stolen soon and that P.A.C.T. trooper will undoubtedly be calling in to his superiors to let them know he let us into the building at some point.”

“We’re still going to need it. As a matter of fact, I have no idea how we’re going to get Grimble, Taxi, and Derida out of that elevator shaft,” I murmured. “I mean, unless you’ve got a rope or something, we may need to make another phone call...”

Tugging off his doctor’s coat, Limerence laid it across the hood along with his stethoscope. Patting the front pocket of his vest, he gave me a mysterious smile. “I have an ‘or something’, yes. I found a few interesting tidbits amongst the artifact stores at the Archive. Nothing too dangerous, but several useful items. If they are injured, we should move quickly.”

----

Leaving Mags asleep on the hood of the Night Trotter, Swift, Limerence and I crept back into the Moonwalk. The burn in my cutie-mark was at a low sizzle, so I figured we might have a few minutes of safety, but it’s not a precise system. Primarily, I was frightened I’d reach my friends and find one of them dead.

Limerence seemed stoic as ever, which meant he was either still half-mad with grief or so deep in denial that you’d need an industrial digger to find his actual emotions. I kinda hoped it was that latter since having him go to pieces on me suddenly in the middle of a firefight was more likely if the post traumatic stress had already settled in and unpacked its bags.

Swift was a tough read. She wasn’t doing well. Every twenty steps or so a little tremor would shoot up her leg. I doubt she noticed it, but I’d seen the same thing before in myself many years ago. It’d taken a great cop to rebuild me during that mess. I wasn’t feeling much like a great cop just then; not with a whole room full of disintegrated griffins sitting on my conscience.

----

Stepping out of the stairwell on the floor above the elevator, I put my hoof down on the soggy carpet and winced as it squelched all between my shoe and my toe.

The building was making some awfully alarming noises of strained girders and cracked windows, though it’d been built Detrot tough and I wasn’t much worried about a total collapse. More precisely, there was nothing I could do if it decided to come down on top of us, so I did my best to put it out of my mind. Our friends still needed rescuing and then we had an escape worthy of Daring Do to accomplish.

Up ahead, I could see the elevator. Galloping over to it, I jammed my hooves into the crack and forced it open, then shone my light down into the shaft. At the angle I was at, I could just make out Grimble Shanks splayed across the elevator roof and a bit of one of Derida’s wings dangling into the shaft. Taxi was nowhere to be seen. We’d gone a couple of floors farther than necessary, just to make sure we got above the elevator.

“Sweets?” I called down, trying not to sound as worried as I felt.

There was a painfully long five seconds worth of silence before a weak voice called back, “I’m here, Hardy.”

“Hang on! We’ve...we’ve got something to get you out!” I turned to Limerence as he trotted up beside me and gave him a slight shake. “Tell me we’ve got a way to get them out!”

Limerence levitated the flashlight off my head, poking it into the shaft and turning it upwards, studying the interior. “Hrm...it looks like part of the superstructure of the top floors encompassed a number of walls and beams rated to survive enchanted fire.”

“Yes? And?” I asked, impatiently.

“It means, Detective, that I won’t be killing us by moving them,” he replied, plucking something out of his pocket. It looked like a strange cone made of thin, blue crystal and reminded me loosely of an inhibitor ring. Reaching up, he popped it onto his horn and gave his eyebrows a wiggle until it slid down to the base. “Sadly, this will almost certainly lead to complete magical burn out. It may also render me unconscious. Do you believe you and Swift are capable of hauling the four of us to the ambulance if we were on the first floor?”

I flexed one leg. “Earth pony. ‘Grunt Work’ is my middle name and I can...technically...drive. We might have to leave the Night Trotter here, though.”

Swift shook her head. “The P.A.C.T. will impound it in, like, ten seconds when they find some of those modifications to the drive train, Sir.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a bridge I want to cross after Taxi is out of this hole. Lim, do your thing,” I said, giving the Archivist a quick pat on the back.

Moving to the edge of the elevator shaft, he shut his eyes and squared his shoulders. His horn began to glow, shifting between the usual light blue aura and a sharply contrasting golden shine that seemed to spill in great waves off the tip. When he opened his eyes, they were gleaming like two fireballs set into his skull, casting strange unnatural looking shadows.

From down below, I heard a soft, pained whimper and I edged up close to see my driver dangling in mid-air about three meters down, descending towards the top of the elevator encased in a flickering field of magic. She’d been kindly understating the condition of her right legs, particularly the front knee; bits of bone jutted out from the muscle in disturbing fashion. I hated the idea of moving her, but even the finest emergency medical techs were going to have a beastly time getting her down from there. A moment later, Derida slid into view, wrapped in arcane energies, and began dropping alongside my driver towards the elevator car.

Limerence was by no means the strongest unicorn I’d ever met. He didn’t even register when held up beside powerhouses like Chief Jade and After Glow. I didn’t want to interrupt him long enough to ask what kind of demonic destroyer of worlds he’d made a deal with to get the sort of power he was wielding squeezed down into something he could wear on his head. Still, he didn’t seem to be in any pain. His shoulders were relaxed and he had an almost peaceful smile on his lips as he deftly manipulated the bodies of our friends and allies.

I expected him to lay my driver on the roof of the elevator, but instead, he lifted Grimble Shanks along with them, leaving them hanging there for a few seconds.

“Ah, my kingdom for a can opener...” he muttered.

Gritting his teeth, Limerence tugged at the air with the tip of his horn.

I couldn’t hold in a slightly girlish gasp as the top of the elevator let out a terrifying crunch. The space around the access panel began to deform, before suddenly bursting upwards like a fruit peeling open, tearing itself free and leaving a gaping hole down into the car. With great care, he lowered Taxi, Grimble, and Derida down into the box and laid them out, side by side, across the floor. My driver’s composure held until the magic released her and then she let out a loud sob that reached my ears, making my heart ache.

“So...they’re in the elevator. Now what?” I asked.

Limerence’s magic flared brighter and the entire elevator began to glimmer before, with an eardrum scarring shriek, the box slid down the shaft. I had to grab the edge of the door with one leg as the building shook under me, but Limerence just drew in a sharp breath as he forced the lift down floor after floor, fighting against the brakes and the weight of the car itself until, at last, it settled onto the spring at the bottom, many, many meters below.

I swallowed and stepped back from the precipitous drop and Lim’s horn blinked out, the tip still glowing like a hot coal. That strange cone artifact seemed blackened and cracked, like it’d sat in a furnace for a little too long. Giving his head a shake, he shattered it into a puffy little cloud of ash, then took a couple steps in my direction. I put a hoof on his chest, gently holding him.

“Now, Detective, you catch me...”

With that, Limerence slumped in my forelegs like a puppet with the strings cut, out cold.

----

“Sir, if I sleep for a year, do you think we could convince the bad guys to hold off on whatever awful thing they’re doing until I get up?” Swift asked as we trotted down the stairs.

“That’d be nice,” I chuckled, heaving Limerence’s unconscious body into a better position. “Maybe we can get them to pay for a vacation for us. Six months on a beach in exchange for allowing the city to descend into total chaos?”

Swift plucked a piece of rubble out of my mane with the tip of one toe. “Yeah...eesh. That should not sound so tempting,”

Holding up one hoof for silence, I cocked an ear.

I could distantly hear the sounds of rushing hoofsteps coming up the stairs.

Dodging out of the stairwell, we pushed into one of the open rooms and paused there, door cracked, waiting to see what was coming. A moment later, six fire ponies in full disaster suits - bright yellow fire-proof leggings and helmets - rushed up the steps carting a portable water pump in a levitation field.

As they passed, I held my breath, praying they’d keep going. We were just one floor above the actual lobby. If my completely half-arsed calculations were in the right ballpark, the elevator was further down, probably in the basement itself. When they dashed past, continuing on towards the disaster upstairs, I exhaled and pulled the door open.

Swift was looking over the walls and floor as she followed me back down the steps.

“Sir, the Hailstorm says there’s a whole bunch of targets under us. I’m pretty sure that’s where the lobby is. More of them are heading upstairs. I think they’re using the main stairwell on the other side.”

“Alright, keep me appraised. If anyone else heads up these stairs, I want to know,” I replied.

----

We made the garage without further incident, sneaking by the lobby towards the bottom floor. If they were following standard procedure, they’d have the magic sniffers outside the building, hunting anything potentially explosive floor to floor. Limerence’s little performance would have lit up their spell network like a flare in a fireworks factory, but sneaky means not having to explain yourself. Getting off the floor as quick as we did probably saved us a little chat with the bomb squad.

Pushing open the stairwell on the unlit car park, I tried to remember exactly where the elevator was in relation to us. A whimper in the dark answered the question quicker than my broken sense of direction did.

Trotting around the corner, we found our friends piled in the open elevator.

Taxi was propped against the wall, a Zap cigarette in her mouth, looking a bit dejected. Her black and white braid was undone, spilling down her chest and she had a belt of some kind wrapped around her back right leg. Grimble Shanks had a similar one wrapped around his thigh, with several feathers in it. Her front right leg hung limp, the fetlock twisted at a worrying angle.

“Took your time, Hardy,” she grumbled, plucking the cigarette from her muzzle and holding it up. “I need a l-light.”

I shifted Limerence off my back onto the floor and gave him a little shake. He didn’t move. “I’m afraid my unicorn is unconscious and my lighter is in my coat pocket which is full of griffin eggs. Come on. I’ve got to get you into the back of the ambulance and then-”

She shook her head and growled, “Night Trotter…”

“Sweets, you can’t drive with two broken legs,” I argued, though I knew it was probably pointless.

Taxi reached up and grabbed the edge of the door, gritting her teeth as she fought upright, holding her right legs off the ground and leaning on the wall. “I just need you to put me behind the wheel. I’m not leaving my hack here. End of discussion. I can still send all your blood to your eardrums if you want to argue.”

“Sir, I’ll ride with her. You have to drive the ambulance and I think there’s only room for Grimble Shanks in there.”

“Not helping, kid,” I snapped, then turned back to Taxi. “This is insane. We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

“Derida and th...the eggs are going in the Night Trotter,” my driver said, taking a stumbling step. I rushed to her side, mostly on instinct, and let her lean against me as she hobbled out of the elevator. “I trust myself with two busted legs more than I trust you behind the wheel. We’ll get Limerence and Grimble out in the ambulance. We might actually get somewhere if you’re following me.”

“That...does leave a question of where we should go,” I said, putting my leg around her shoulders and making our way towards the Night Trotter. “Grimble is a mess and I haven’t even had the chance to inspect Derida. The Vivarium is farther than I’d like. If this was a hit, I don’t want either of them in a public place, like a hospital.”

Swift moved around to Taxi’s other side and together, we nursed her over to the cab. “Um...My dad’s a doctor. At least, he was. He still does some work sometimes in the urgent care clinic. My house is only a couple miles from here.”

I felt a lump in my throat. The thought of seeing Swift’s parents filled me with a sort of terror that I’d thought only After Glow or Chief Jade could really pull off. My gaze involuntarily darted to that crescent shaped scar on her chest, then up to her jaw. Still, what other good options did I have? The Skids? Too far and no guarantee of medical treatment. The Detrot City Morgue? Maybe, but putting Taxi under the care of Slip Stitch was a recipe for violence, particularly after that kiss.

I knew it was coming eventually. Time to bite that bullet and hope it wasn’t a fifty cal.

“Alright, then. I suppose I didn’t really need to live long enough to start a garden or have foals. Swift, you’re riding shotgun with Taxi after you help me load the eggs and our dignitaries.”

----

Strength is about the only thing earth ponies have got going for us in a world where about half the intelligent species have some sort of horribly lethal magic that’ll turn your bones to goop. We persist where all others fail, and durability counts for a lot. Unfortunately, it only elevates some jobs into the realm of ‘doable’ rather than making them pleasant or easy.

Hauling a griffin twice my weight was doable, but it involved some finagling.

Grimble was breathing a little easier, but he was still unconscious. That worried me more than anything. Thankfully, there were some stretchers in the back of the ambulance. Swift and I managed, with difficulty, to roll Sykes’ brother onto the stretcher, then deploy the legs so we could get the wretched thing into the back of the ambulance.

----

“Ugh, kid, lift up your end!”

“I am lifting my end, Sir! I’m not as tall as you are!”

“Use your wings or something!”

“They’re not stilts, Sir!”

----

Taxi slumped behind the wheel of the Night Trotter as Swift and I - doing our best to be gentle - heaved Derida into the back seat. Mags was already in the passenger seat, curled up asleep in a nest made of my coat, and the eggs were loaded into the trunk, whilst Edina lay in the hoofwell beside her stepmother. It was the work of a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, my driver was taking long draws from her Zap and trying not to look like she was in absolute bloody agony. Her face was paler than usual and her broken leg had swollen alarmingly, but she was doing her best to ignore it.

I wasn’t doing much better. The light on my heart was on almost continuously, though if I leaned to the left a little I could make it shut off for a second. Every few minutes, my breath caught in my throat and I had to swallow a few times to get it back. Still, there was a job as needed doing and I wasn’t about to let a little heart attack stop me.

“Sweets, you do know he might be better off if I just went ahead and shot Limerence, rather than having me drive that thing with him in the passenger seat, right? At least with you in there, you can cold cock me and take over if I get like...you know...”

“Just get in the ambulance, Hardy,” she growled, punching the ignition key. Sparks spat all over my hooves. “Oh, and if you hit my rear bumper while we’re out there, I will march back there and beat you to death.”

----

This was it. My greatest challenge yet.

I squeezed in behind the wheel of the ambulance, letting myself settle into the unfamiliar surroundings. The seat under my rear end squeaked as I inhaled a breath of the sanitized air inside the cab. It smelled of menthol and alcohol.

Every surface was covered in stickers, warning of dire and horrible fates that must surely befall he who dared to disregard proper sun visor safety. I ran my hoof over the wheel, trying to get a feel for it. Granted, I’d never had a feel for a car. Cars are entirely too clever and wily for something that’s supposedly mechanical.

In truth, I was stalling; I could feel the other guy wanted his turn behind the wheel. I felt him straining at his chains, begging me to turn the ignition on and let the engine roar.

Heavens to Kibitz, I’m about to die screaming and go to my reward with half my flesh burned off,’ I thought, reaching under the steering column and pressing the ‘Start’ button. The engine let out a rich burble of life, then settled into a low hum. I gently set my back hoof on the accelerator pedal and the other on the clutch. The position felt like some form of disturbing gymnastics, even years on.

Limerence was strapped into the passenger seat, still unconscious, with a bit of drool running down his chin. Minus his painfully stoic demeanor, he looked like a colt who’d gotten into daddy’s vodka. I reached over and gently brushed a hoof through his blonde mane.

“Lim, if we don’t live through this, I’ll owe you a free punch when I see you next. You can just lay me out,” I promised him, then sat back and glanced in my side view mirror at Taxi in the Night Trotter. She was pulling out of her parking spot, still chewing on the end of her cigarette as she clutched her broken leg to her chest while the other handled the business of steering. I don’t know how she was working the clutch with only one leg, but knowing Sweets she had some secret zebra technique. She gave me a slight nod, then lined up with the exit and pulled out of the parking garage at speed.

Easing my hoof onto the accelerator, I gave the ambulance a little gas.

Time slowed and the world seemed to drop away.

----

The only explanation I can give for what came next is that somewhere, deep in my genetic history, somepony must have had relations with some demented, carnivorous demon of speed. Old instincts came rushing back from some cerebral cavern where they huddled around a fire, draped in the bloody skins of their most recent kills. They were not the instincts of a prey species. I was the hunter and everyone else on the road was a rabbit who had best get out of the way if they knew what was good for them.

Detective Hard Boiled, noble officer of the law, vanished into the depths of my psyche under a wave of testosterone and high-powered mania. My blood began to surge with long buried feelings of power and lust. The fire grew into a conflagration in my belly as I became, once more: Rage Cop, the Thundering Hoof of Vehicular Justice.

----

Three PACT troopers were sitting just outside the car park, smoking and talking when Rage Cop exploded out of the garage at speeds the ambulance hadn’t known it could achieve. Fire shot from the tailpipe and all three of them would later swear they’d seen a grinning monster driving it, covered in blood, his eyes wild as he wrestled the wheel of the ambulance like it was a rabid animal.

Rage Cop blasted down towards the PACT cordon, slamming through a tiny gap between the troopers and the open road, following the distant yellow splotch that was the cab like a hound on point.

The city flowed by, a distant backdrop to his race track, his hunting ground. A mare who was crossing the street with her foal just barely got out of the way in time, though it might have been the tiny voice of mercy which still remained in the psychopathic driver’s mind that twitched the wheel such that his back-draft merely knocked them both on their flanks, rather than pasting them across his hood like a grisly bonnet ornament.

‘I should get a bonnet ornament,’ he thought. “Maybe the skull of a god. I’m sure the griffins have some god I could chase down and slaughter and mount. I’ll do that right after I get some axes. The chariot of my fury requires more axes.

That was the last coherent thought he had for awhile.

In a world of fiery storms and burning rubber, Rage Cop was lord and master.

----

Time returned to a more normal speed.

My memories were a tad blurry as my rear hoof came off the gas pedal, but I knew I’d done a bad thing. Several bad things, actually. There was a cabbage caught in my windshield wipers and a squirrel that looked very surprised to still be alive was clinging tightly to the side view mirror. He shot me a frightened look before he scrambled off to parts unknown as fast as his fuzzy little legs could take him.

We’d stopped. That much I knew. Everything else from the moment I pulled out of the garage was a hazy vision of acceleration and a deranged adrenaline attack which left me feeling even more exhausted.

I carefully removed my hooves from the wheel and peered out the windshield.

The Night Trotter was ahead of me, parked curbside in front of a lovely little house with a garden, a long veranda with a pair of matching rocking chairs, and wild flowers in too many varieties to name potted and planted over every inch of the building. The eves were hung with great bouquets and the walk up to the bright blue front door, lined with tulips and daffodils. It reminded me of what I’d once fantasized might be my home one day, when I met a nice mare and settled down.

The suburbs, then. I couldn’t tell which suburbs and I hadn’t been paying much attention to where I went other than keeping up with Taxi. In the middle distance, I could hear sirens. They didn’t seem to be getting any closer, and that was a relaxing change of pace, at least.

Limerence was still unconscious, though one of his front legs had somehow gotten thrown behind his head and he was sagging sideways in the passenger seat.

Reaching over, I gently untangled the seatbelt and pulled him upright, then half turned and opened the little viewing port over my shoulder which was meant to separate the front of the cab from the miniature hospital room in the back. By some unlikely miracle, Grimble Shanks was still on his stretcher and looked none-the-worse for having been driven by the most incompetent ambulance service in all of the Equestrian history. Granted, to look any worse, he’d have had to be missing a few limbs.

“Alright. You’re alive. Your friends are alive. We’re going to count this one a win,” I muttered to myself.

Unsnapping the safety belt, I opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

‘Hmmm...parked on the sidewalk,” I thought. “Close enough. The back tires are still in the road. Better than my last attempt.”

Smiling at a job well done, I took two steps towards the Night Trotter, then felt a gentle rush of air as the pavement flew up and hit me in the cheek. I had a moment to wonder how I’d gotten there, sprawled on my side, before I felt the pitiful thump of my heart in my ears. It beat again, then skipped a more than comfortable number, before giving one final sputter and going still.

Damn, what a day.

----

I wish dying was a slightly more difficult and unpleasant experience. It would certainly simplify things if I could just hate it.

True, I was no longer dying in the traditional sense of the word, but death had always been a thing to avoid. I was always told in police training that it’s the fear of death that keeps you sharp. Being as my deaths were mostly quietly personal affairs where I drifted off into unconsciousness on a wave of wistfulness mixed with inner peace, it was tough to claim I was as sharp as I ought to be.

----

Rain. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over how much it rains in this city. Sure, sometimes it’s nice, but most of the time it just leaves you waiting for some sunshine. True, you learn to love those sunny times, rare as they might be.

This rain was worse than most. It was familiar rain. I’d sat in that rain before, another time, and listened to it hitting the windows of the police cruiser, on a day we got a call and something terrible happened.

It was old rain.

We were driving through the storm to a place I hoped I’d never go again.

I turned to Juniper and gave him a hard glare. He was smiling as he held out a cup of coffee, steam rising off it. His face always reminded me of old black and white cinema pictures. I’d always envied that square jaw, even on the days I wanted to break it, but then, his eyebrows were bushy enough that I could always get a rise out of him with a comment about how he ought to get them plucked.

He looked good and I wanted more than anything to put my legs around him, hide my face in his mane and get this vicious mess out of my system, but business comes always before everything else. If everything else comes at all, I’m usually having a good day.

These had not been good days.

“So that’s it then? More bagels and coffee from that wretched corner joint that closed down two years ago?” I grumbled, turning to stare out the window into the darkness of the deep forest road. “More cryptic crap about the powers that be?”

Juniper lowered his ears, contritely, putting the coffee in the cup holder. “I’m putting dynamite under all kinds of rules just showing my face. Granted, the rules might as well be written by pissing in the snow. Still, I attract too much attention or start screwing with outcomes, this could all go wrong in a big way. Like just now.”

“Just now? You mean this business with the griffins?” I asked, scratching my mane where the old patrol uniform always itched.

“You were supposed to get the damn horseshoes, Hardy,” he sighed, sounding more tired than disappointed.

I rolled the window down and reached out, feeling the cool drops of rain pitter-pattering against my foreleg. It felt good. Soothing. “It wasn’t exactly a clear cut situation, now was it? You could have told me the Tokan had them,” I groused.

“Well, I didn’t know that, now did I?” he replied, throwing his hooves in the air and slumping back in his seat, one leg on the wheel to keep us on the road. The top button of his white shirt had come undone, which was the closest I usually ever saw to Juniper getting ruffled by something. “You’ve got to understand, kiddo, we’re way off book here. This is not how things are supposed to go.”

“I take it you’ve had a peek in this ‘book’, then?” I snarked, giving him a crooked smile. Outside, the rain was getting harder. I could hear it thumping on the hood of the car. We were minutes from where it’d all happened and I wasn’t much inclined to reach that place again. I was praying Swift would go ahead and plug me in already.

“I wish. That would make this less complicated. Something is making the movers and shakers nervous, and even they don’t know exactly what it is. The last few weeks, it’s like someone has raised a wall over Detrot. A wall of...mmm…” He trailed off and shook his head. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but these things are sometimes metaphors so-”

“It’s teeth, isn’t it?” I said, quietly. “A wall of teeth and fire and in the distance, dangerous lights…”

Juniper’s jaw dropped open and he jerked the wheel before we could spin off into the trees. “Now how in tarnation do you know that, kiddo?”

“It’s something keeping me up nights. I don’t know. Probably won’t remember it when I wake up. I never seem to, for some reason,” I replied, picking up the coffee and taking a sip. It was as tasteless as ever, but it was something to do with my hooves. The anxiety was building, but knowing it was all in my head didn’t seem to help.

“Keeping you up, huh? You didn’t think to bring that up the last time we talked?” he grumbled.

I shifted in my seat, listening to the wind whipping through the trees outside. “I didn’t, because it’s just as insane as the fact that I’m having this conversation. So, if you’ve got any advice, now is the time, oh wise and powerful dead guy.”

In the distance, I could see a bright red light slowly blinking on and off in the darkness, filling me with familiar foreboding.

He shook his head and slapped the steering wheel. “Right now, I’m just as clueless as you are. Nobody said this was how things were meant to go.”

I gave him a sideways look. “You said I didn’t have a destiny in this whole mess and now here you are, telling me ‘how things are meant to be’. Is it too much to ask for a little consistency in my vaguely prophetic hallucinations?”

“You’re acting like I’m some sort of ouija board. Death doesn’t grant you universal knowledge. Heck, I’m not any smarter than I was when I was alive, and the fact that I’m still around to tell you that scares the fur off my backside.”

I squinted at him. That red light in the distance was getting closer, but I pushed it to the back of my mind as best I could.

“Why? I figured ‘dead’ meant there wasn’t much left worth being scared of.”

Juniper leaned forward over the wheel and gave the cruiser a bit more speed.

“You’d be surprised. Dammit, there are rules here and we are not playing by them! I’m just waiting for the ref to notice, but he or she or whatever seems to be having a coffee break mid-game! Whoever was directing the sad bastard that put a slug through your chest is pulling strings on a plane they’ve got no business messing with!”

“And that means exactly what?” I groaned.

Shutting his eyes, my partner sank down in the seat, staring out at the road ahead. “We’re almost there, you know.”

“We’re not anywhere! This is a moon blasted dream! You can’t just bail on me right now!” I snapped at him.

Juniper turned and smiled sadly at me, letting go of the steering wheel. The car stayed unerringly on the road, even as he reached across and put his forelegs around my neck. I shut my eyes and tried to hold in the pitiful tears, but they weren’t listening.

“Sometimes, Hardy, we’ve got places we have to go. Sometimes, now and then, we get to go back to those places, to see the people we love, but the suffering is always there. We can only go back if we’re willing to accept it...and to see you, I’ll happily reach the end of this road again,” he whispered, putting his hoof on the back of my neck so my forehead rested on his shoulder.

“I...I really, really wish you h-had my back here, Juni,” I moaned, like a silly little filly, clutching at him as I felt him start to slip away into the blackness of that awful night.

“I do. I’ll be watching, and if I figure anything out, I’ll be in touch.”

He vanished, along with the cruiser and the forest, leaving behind only that distant red light, winking on and off. After a moment, even that disappeared and I was left in darkness once more.

----

“...strangest thing I’ve ever seen…”

“...is the pony gonna be a’right?”

“...not certain…”

----

I blearily opened my eyes. It was an effort, and I had to close them a moment later when the light from the early morning spilling through some tasteful, floral blinds covered in little pansies and daffodils played across my face. I wanted nothing more than to slip back into that dream and hold my partner all night long, but there was nothing for it.

A new day had come and, inevitably, there was work to be done.

I became aware of a warm weight on my chest and looked down to find a sleeping ball of fluffy feathers covered in a tea-cosy snoozing on my chest with her white brown tail wrapped around my heart plug. The light was off and I was feeling...better. Not dead, for a start, but better on the whole. I felt like I’d had a full night’s rest.

Carefully turning my head so as not to wake the tiny beasty using me for a mattress, I surveyed the room. I seemed to be alone, aside the sleeping chick on my breast, but I could hear low voices somewhere in another room.

How long had I been gone?

The rustic, wooden clock on the wall said it was early morning, though whether that was the next day or the day after was impossible to say. Somepony had wiped most of the grime out of my leg fur, but my face still felt a bit crusty.

Gently shifting Mags off my chest, I set her on the sofa and pulled the tea cozy back up to her chin. She wiggled about in her sleep, getting into a more comfortable position with her tail pulled up so she could chew on the end.

The couch was the same print as the blinds, a bit care-worn, but comfortable and I didn’t especially want to get off of it. Needs must, though.

Heaving myself up, I took a quick personal inventory. Four legs, one head, one chest, no unusual protrusions or mutations. Good. I could work with that.

Reaching up, I experimentally touched the back of my head where I’d taken a hit in the elevator and discovered a sticking plaster, but that seemed to be the only sign of injury. Unplugging myself from the wall, I coiled up the cord and tied it into my mane with a few stray hairs.

My revolver was still on my leg, right where she belonged, and I discovered my hat laying atop my coat on the end table, pressed and laundered. Lifting my hat, I smiled and I ran my hoof around the brim. That hat survived more than it had any right to. It was a little stiff, but that was probably the fire. A bit of oil and some time on my head and it’d be good as new. I set it in place, and pulled my coat on, re-buttoning the pockets. I’d forgotten to shut them when I stuffed the last of the eggs in, which was probably a good thing; I’d no clue how griffin eggs would handle a whole night in another dimension if nopony else could get them out.

The voices were going back and forth and I picked out Swift’s among them, sounding a bit peeved. It was hard to say who else was there.

Turning to the window, I pushed the blinds open a crack and peered out. The ambulance was gone, but a shape I recognized as the Night Trotter still sat out there, covered in a bright blue tarp.

Glancing back at the door where the voices seemed to be coming from, I noticed a picture sitting on a mantel-piece beside it. It was that same picture I’d seen of Swift and her parents in the locket she kept around her neck, except blown up to a normal size. Beside it, there were other pictures: Granny Glow, Swift’s mother and father, Stella, Swift at various ages, and a couple of a very young and awkward little colt with red fur and braces that took me a moment to peg as Scarlet Petals.

Trotting over, I picked up a picture of Swift with a baseball bat slung over one shoulder and a cocky little grin on her face. She might have been ten, or it might have been taken last week; it was tough to tell.

I set the picture back in place and took a breath to center myself.

The discussion with Juniper was still fresh in my mind, and strangely lucid for something that’d happened during a period where my heart was stopped. I hoped Gale wouldn’t hold letting him run out of power against me. He deserved better.

As I was having these thoughts, a flood of comforting feelings centered around my chest washed over me. I chuckled to myself and patted my plug, before turning back to Mags.

The girl had had the blood cleaned off her and looked freshly preened, which suggested I’d been out for some time. I was still a bit of a mess and strongly suspected my shower was going to have to be lava with a splash of boiling acid to get the stench of all those poor griffin dead out of my skin. I could smell their blood all over me.

Time, then, to face the symphony of horrors I’d brought to the doorstep of my partner’s parents.

I trotted down the hall in the direction of the conversation.

----

“...not like that!” Swift was saying as I strolled into the cosy little kitchen to find my partner, her parents, and Limerence sitting around a paisley dining table with hot coffee and a stack of untouched cookies sitting between them.

They all looked up.

Swift’s father, whose dark green face seemed to have been carved from emerald, quickly set his coffee down on the table. His expression might as well have been painted on, for all it revealed, though I thought I detected a slight quirking of the brows as his eyes darted down to the plug on my chest. His mane was brushed straight back, in a manner I’d seen Slip Stitch tame his wild hair when he had to perform surgery. His wings were so obsessively clean and straight one might have thought he’d just come from the salon.

Swift’s mother’s reaction was a bit less reserved. She was a tiny thing, only a little bigger than Swift herself, and as I came in she let out a frightened yelp and her coffee went flying, splashing across the floor by her hooves. She reminded me of Granny Glow in some way, though only superficially. What she put me in mind of most was an especially nervous rabbit, with soft yellow fur and a mane only a couple of shades lighter than my partner’s. A cute-as-punch unicorn horn poked up between two locks of her mane.

The four of them sat there, staring at me, for a long moment.

I casually trotted over to the table and picked up a cookie from the platter, stuffing it into my muzzle as their eyes followed me. The cookies were oatmeal and raisins, but it didn’t matter. I hadn’t realized it until just then, but I was ravenous. Snatching another, I polished it off, then plucked a spare coffee cup from the rack beside the sink. Finding the cheerfully painted pot on the stove half full, I poured myself some and took a deep drought.

Ahhh...nothing like bad coffee in the morning. Really, really bad coffee.

“Phew, can I have some sugar?” I asked, smiling at Swift’s mother. She stood there, frozen in place for about ten seconds before picking up the sugar pot from the table with a flicker of magic and spooning out a couple of lumps.

The second sip was better, but it still tasted like moose piss.

I leaned on the counter and grinned. “Mmm...thanks. So, what’d I miss?”

Swift hesitated for just a second before she leaped up from her seat and flew into my legs, hugging me to her chest with all of her little filly strength. “Oh, Sir...I didn’t know if you’d wake up this time!”

I caught her and held her to me, ruffling her bright red mane as she looked up at me with teary eyes. “I couldn’t leave you here to handle this stuff on your own, now could I?”

She held me tightly for another minute, then stepped back and turned to her parents, who were watching us expectantly.

“Um...Mom? Dad? This is Detective Hard Boiled. He’s my partner. He kept me alive and he kept me...he kept me safe.” She gave her father a hard glare, which had all the impact of a breeze on a brick wall. Raising her ears, she smiled and held her hoof out for me. “Sir, this is my Mom and Dad. Mom’s name is Quickie Cuddles, and Dad is-”

“You may call me Suture,” her father said, stepping forward and sizing me up. He was a few inches taller than I was, but leaner, with the look of somepony who spent most of his time on his hooves.

“It’s good to meet you, Mister Suture,” I replied, taking another sip then setting my mug down. “I wish it were in better circumstances.”

“Indeed. My daughter and this individual who claimed to be a ‘librarian’-” he gestured at Limerence who raised his cup in acknowledgement, “-have been explaining, in somewhat fractured terms, why she seems to be associating with a rogue police pony and why, exactly, my wife and I have two griffin tribe-lords and a cab driver with broken legs - who I strongly suspect is mentally unstable - occupying my upstairs bedroom.”

I flicked my eyes towards Swift, questioningly.

“Taxi said Dad would have to break her other legs to get anywhere near her if he didn’t plug you in first,” my partner murmured.

I grinned and held my hoof out to Swift’s mother. “Missus Cuddles, I do want to apologize for bringing our troubles into your home.”

Swift’s mother swallowed a couple of times before she found her voice, moving over to stand beside her husband. When she did, it was mousey and sweet, like a bird.

“Detective, my daughter says that you’ve gotten her out of several dangerous situations and she helped you bring down some of the deadliest threats to this city. Is that true?”

Shaking my head, I chuckled, “She’s exaggerating. On a couple of occasions she was the reasons I’m still kicking. It’s been a tough couple of months, though-”

I didn’t get the number on the train that hit me before a whole choir of church bells started ringing in my head.

----

How’d I gotten on my back on the floor?

Why was Swift holding an ice-pack to my forehead?

Why was her mother sitting at the dining room table with an ice-pack on her hoof?

Suture seemed to be elsewhere. Funny thing, that.

Oh...right. She decked me. Sweet mercy, the whole Cuddles family needs to be classed as lethal weapons,’ I thought, slowly propping myself on my knees. My vision blurred, then refocused on my partner’s worried face.

“Sorry, Sir,” Swift muttered, pulling the ice pack away. “I should have warned you...”

“I think I probably deserved that one, actually,” I said, wryly, pushing myself into a sitting position against the kitchen cabinets.

Limerence had moved to my side sometime after Mrs. Cuddles delivered her knockout punch. He inspected my head, pushing his glasses up his muzzle. “Seems like nothing is any more cracked than it usually is, Detective, though; if you’re going to try for any more cheerful banalities, I recommend a helmet.”

“Where’s Suture?” I asked.

“He’s upstairs checking on the patients,” Mrs.Cuddles said, softly, getting down off her chair. I cringed a little as she approached, expecting another few hours on the wall socket. “I’m...I’m sorry I hit you, Mister Boiled.”

I blinked a little and my ears shot up. “Say again?”

“That was uncouth of me. My daughter’s life is...is her own and I shouldn’t take these things out on you. I admit, I was…errr…” Her eyes slid shut and she clenched her jaw tightly. Swift reached out and gently laid a hoof across her mother’s back, though whether to comfort or restrain I couldn’t tell. She seemed to relax, anyway. “I was a bit shocked at the changes…”

“Mom, I told you those weren’t his fault-” Swift objected, but her mother cut her off, holding up her leg to forestall anything further.

“I know that, little bird,” Quickie replied, pulling her pink mane back in a bun and tying it off with a hair tie. “Since the day your father and I met at the Vivarium, he made love to me such that I knew a child of ours would be cared for without fail. I didn’t have the heart to ask him for bits, either. He didn’t even know I was a prostitute, but when I told him, he said he didn’t mind. He came back again, night after night, but he didn’t try to stop me from doing what I loved, and when I chose to retire, he was there with open hooves. You were the apple of our eyes. The thought that anyone, anywhere, would dare threaten you is-” She took a calming breath, un-clenching her right leg. “-is unbearable.”

Swift blushed, her tail sweeping around her side as she tugged at the hem of her combat jacket. “Mom, I know I made things sound really rough, but it hasn’t been all bad.”

“Don’t lie to me, Swift!” Quickie snapped, grabbing her daughter in her forelegs and smooshing her face between her hooves. Tears started to leak down her chin in a steady stream. “Please...please whatever you do, tell me the truth. You come here, with teeth like a wolf...and I watch my child eat chicken right in front of me, and you’ve got that scar on your chest-”

My partner’s ears laid back against her head. “It’s not a scar, it’s a-”

“I don’t care! It’s your skin, and it’s different, and you’re different…”

I saw the tears coming before they hit, but Quickie was the kind of pony who goes from one mood directly into another with no transitional period. One moment she was holding her daughter, then next she was sobbing loudly, hugging Swift to her so tightly that she let out a little squeak of protest as all the air rushed out of her lungs. Wrapping her wings around her mother, my partner ran a comforting hoof through her mane.

“It’s still me, Mom. I promise! I’m not that different. Maybe I eat funny things, but I’m still me,” Swift whispered.

“I...I k-know...oh honey, I know… I was just h-hoping growing up m-meant you’d get a filly-friend with t-too many piercings or s-something,” Quickie sobbed.

My partner was starting to tear up and I felt a ‘family moment’ oncoming. Limerence gave me a little jerk of the head that said ‘exeunt stage left’ in big neon letters. Crawling over onto all fours, I crept towards the door to the living room, leaving mother and daughter to sort things out, while the stallions went and cowered someplace away from the flying hooves.

Limerence seemed a bit scruffy around the edges and his mane could have used a brush, but he seemed alright. I couldn’t smell whether or not he needed a shower, considering how badly I needed one.

Trotting into the living room, I sank onto the couch while he settled on an ottoman.

There was a comfortable silence for a minute, before he finally spoke.

“I thought mares were unsettling before I started working with you, Detective. I can’t say this opinion is much changed, except now there is an added layer of implied bodily harm.”

I laughed, pulling my coat up so I didn’t get dried whatever-was-on-my-legs on the couch. “Believe me, most are nothing like Taxi or Swift or the rest of the Cuddles family. Lily Blue actually reminds me of most of the mares I went to school with. That said, these days I don’t need ponies like Lily Blue. I needs ponies like Taxi and Swift. They will have my back, under any and all circumstances. They’d take a bullet for me, even if it means I’ll get a swat on the flank later for letting them get shot.” Putting my hooves under my chin, I rested my head on them. “So, what’s the news?”

“The news, Detective?” Limerence asked, shifting in his seat.

I rolled my eyes. “What happened while I was having a lovely conversation with my dead partner in what I’m quickly coming to think of as the ‘afterlife’? Incidentally, Juniper says ‘hello’ and that cosmic forces are working against us.”

The librarian’s lower lip twitched as he processed this, then he slowly shook his head. “Just when I believe I have some fraction of your madness comprehended.” Taking off his glasses, he pinched the bridge of his nose and reordered his thoughts. “News, then. I suppose there is some. I called the Vivarium and they disposed of the ambulance for us, along with taking Edina back into their custody. The eggs of the Tokan and Hitlan are being stored there until we can get in touch with someone from one of the tribes.”

“What about Derida and Grimble Shanks?” I asked.

Limerence shrugged, drawing a circle with one toe beside his head. “Both have concussions, though they don’t seem in any danger of long term damage. Grimble had second degree burns and a few third degree on his extremities, along with some cracked ribs. Derida had three broken ribs and a fractured wrist. It took more than a small amount of explanation to convince Swift’s parents that we shouldn’t take them to a hospital, but Suture is a stallion after my own heart. A rational explanation was adequate.”

I picked a bit of oatmeal raisin cookie out of my teeth and asked, “What about me and Taxi?”

“Ah...yes. Well, I fear the news is both good and bad. Miss Taxi landed...poorly,” he replied. “Suture used a couple of enchanted tools I’m fairly certain nopony outside of a major hospital should have. How a pegasus became a doctor of such competence is beyond me, but he is an artist with an arcane probe. We set and healed the bones, but she needs bed rest or her knees will snap like twigs; at least a week. The drive here did not help.”

I shut my eyes and muttered, “Awww, Sweets...why’d you have to be so damn brave?”

Limerence shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “As to you, Detective? I find myself once again at a logical impasse. You’ve lost fur on your backside and a bit of your tail. When you arrived, you had third degree burns on your lower back and what Suture said was likely to be permanent nerve damage which should have rendered you crippled for life. Your heart had also stopped.”

Turning my head, I examined the damage. There was a distinct bald spot from just above my tail down to an inch or so over my cutie-mark. Thankfully, having a naturally dark pelt helped, but I was still unlikely to win any modeling contests until it grew back.

“Huh. I thought I felt a draft,” I murmured. “Burns, you say?”

“Quite severe,” he added.

“I couldn’t feel it,” I said, quietly running my hoof over the patch of bare, untouched skin on my flank. “My talent tends to come with a painful sensation in my hind end when I’m around injustice. That hotel felt like walking through a house-fire.”

“Well, whether or not you are aware, earth ponies are a much hardier race than the griffins, despite the difference in size. Grimble and Derida took the worst of it and whatever magic your heart contains healed the damage to your brain and hindquarters in a time frame that is nothing short of miraculous.” He gave me a glib little smile. “The only unfortunate side effect being a mild case of death, of course.”

“Hmmm...thanks, Gale,” I said to myself, then lifted my head and asked, “Any idea where the rest of the griffins have gone? They were already out of the Moonwalk by the time the P.A.C.T. started coming in with the fire ponies.”

Limerence got to his hooves and trotted over to the old television set in the corner. It had a layer of dust, but seemed to be in working order. “I was listening to the radio in the other room. It seems a significant number of griffins have appeared around the city from different tribes, staking claim to hotels and bars where their kin have sway. Some inter-tribal violence has already broken out and the Police Department have their hooves full. The Hitlan and Tokan were, last I heard, somewhere in Sky Town, but they seem to have gone to ground.”

Flicking on the television, he fiddled with the dial and the rabbit ears until the face of a smiling mare in a crisp business jumpsuit popped on screen with a microphone floating in front of her muzzle. She seemed to be in some kind of arboretum where a significant crowd had gathered in the background. A giant pink wall flashed and flickered in the air overhead like some kind of light show. I couldn’t tell what was behind that. It looked like a nasty thunderhead, full of strange colors; the crowd didn’t appear much bothered.

----

Thank you, Spindle! This is Whisper Chaser, your mare on the street! I’m here at the Canterlot Royal Garden! As you might have heard, we’ve had quite a bit of trouble getting our signal out, but we’ve finally got it fixed just for this broadcast! This video is being sent on a three minute delay so we can bounce it through some relays to our Ponyville broadcast station, then on to Equestria at large!

The magical storm raging over Canterlot is predicted to play itself out in the next day or two and has unfortunately kept the Princesses in town, helping to maintain the shields over the mountain and various other local settlements. Thanks to our friends in the Royal Guard and the Weather Bureau we should all be safe and sound for the Summer Sun Celebration which will be starting soon! Let nopony say Canterlot ever let a little rain of frogs put a damper on our partying mood!

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