Act 3 Chapter 8 : Weathervane of Doom
A Cinepony Studios Production!
Starring!
Coroner Slip Stitch - Played by - Himself
Juniper Shores - Played by - Himself
Chief Iris Jade - Played by - Herself
Radiophonic Telegraphica - Played by - Herself
The Stained Glass Killer - Played by - *Uncredited*
With Detective Hard Boiled Jr
in:
The Weathervane of Doom
A story of mayhem and murder in the streets of fair Detrot!
Produced and directed by Hard Boiled Jr.
Such evils this city hath wrought! Who will stand against them?
Truth and Justice!
This week, Detectives Hard Boiled and Juniper Shores confront...the Stained Glass Killer...at the Weathervane of Doom!
----
Set: The bogie-wagon, rushing through the dark along a secluded road. Shadowy figures dart along beside it, dashing through the trees and somehow managing to keep pace with the vehicle.
Behind the wheel, Detective Juniper Shores, and in the passenger seat - snoozing like a babe - Detective Hard Boiled. Above the tree-line, a faint red glow pierces the pounding rain.
----
It could have been five minutes or twenty; Hardy wasn’t sure, but when he felt a hoof shaking him awake he sat bolt upright in his seat, his hat tumbling off into the hoofwell.
“I’m up! I’m up!”
“Sorry to interrupt nap-time, but I think we’ve got some company,” Juniper murmured, flicking his toe towards the window as the car sped along. At some point they’d turned off the road onto a dirt track.
Hardy peered out, holding up a leg to block out the glare of the cabin’s interior lights as he squinted into the darkness. For a moment, he saw nothing, but as his eyes adjusted he began to make out flashes off between the trees. They were quite handily keeping pace with the bogie-wagon, which it didn’t seem to be moving quite as fast as it had been.
A howl, like the shifting of timbers in a burning house, seemed to spill out of the woods, followed closely by a second one much closer. Hardy’s legs locked up and he clutched at the door-handle as a rush of instinct driven adrenaline left him momentarily paralyzed with age-old fear.
“Celestia’s flank…” Hardy muttered, shaking both front legs to try to get some blood flow into them. They’d gone suddenly very cold. “Well, you wanted timberwolves. What now?”
“Now? I don’t know. I was just kinda playing this by ear. What I am really curious about is that.” Juniper dipped his nose towards the road ahead.
Hardy glanced above the treeline at a slowly strobing red light that seemed to be rising out of the woods.
“It’s a...radio tower or something,” he conjectured.
“It’s not on any of the maps,” his partner replied. “The P.A.C.T. survey only goes another mile in that direction, but I didn’t see anything about a tower hidden in the deep woods. Granted, they were mostly looking at local life forms.”
“Yeah, but...this road is here, right?” Hardy asked, trying to make out some details of the structure the light was attached to. “It must go somewhere and somepony must maintain it.”
“Eh, I think the road is probably from sometime during the war,” Juniper commented, shaking his head.
“What makes you say that?” Hardy asked.
“They used to use a kind of gravel they’d enchant in big batches to keep grass and animal life away from certain paths. It turns the rocks a funny color and I’m pretty sure that’s what we’re driving on. Nasty magical pollution, but it worked in a pinch,” he said. “I doubt it’s going to shoo off those wolves, though.”
Hardy couldn’t take his gaze off the woods. For a moment, he’d have sworn a pair of flashing, green eyes paused to watch the car before leaping into another shadow between the trees.
“I don’t remember any mention of timberwolves being that fast,” Hard Boiled murmured, almost to himself.
“Or as tall as a bogie-wagon. Must be almost two meters,” Juniper added, tugging at his goatee, lightly. “That picnic with P.A.C.T. escort looking good now, kiddo?”
“Yeah, if I’m completely honest, it kinda is,” Hardy chuckled, feeling his shoulders relax a little. “Still, bogie-wagon is designed for bigger things than timberwolves, right? Can’t say I’m particularly familiar with these things.”
“They’re rated to take a direct hit from dragon fire for a full half second before cooking whoever is inside, so yeah, some doggies who’re all bark don’t really worry me.”
“Yeah, but...is it just me or were a few of those timberwolves...shiny?”
“It’s not just you. One of them jumped across in front of the car a minute ago before I woke you. It looked like the time my uncle bought my kid sister a giant bag of golden glitter for Hearth’s Warming Eve,” Juniper answered, with a little smile. “Mother almost killed him. They still find it in the carpets.”
Hardy rolled his eyes. “So...what, then? We call backup? Sweep the woods with a P.A.C.T. team?”
Juniper snorted. “Overeager much? What’re we going to tell them?”
“We tell them that…there are shiny timberwolves and at some unknown location deep in the Wilds there’s a crime scene that we’ll need them to stomp all over with their gigantic combat boots or, alternatively, incinerate with their gigantic guns. Right. Point made,” Hardy muttered, feeling a bit silly. He cocked his head, staring up at the blinking light through the pouring rain. “You know, I don’t remember there being a forecast for rain outside the city. At least, not this far. I checked before we left.”
“There wasn’t,” Juniper replied, wiping a bit of steam off the windshield with his hoof. “Must be a wild storm. I think it’s getting worse the closer we get to whatever that is.”
“Huh...weird.” Hardy glanced at the clock. “It’s getting awful late. You want to head back? Pick this up in the morning?”
“I guess we could. Granted, we’ve got the bogie-wagon. You want to pay for gas for the return trip?”
“Eh...on second thought…”
“Tell you what, kiddo. We go find out where the light is coming from and then I’ll buy us enchiladas from that place on twenty second street,” Juniper said, offering his hoof.
Hardy bumped his partner’s toe with his own. “Works for me. I’m starved. Kinda wish we’d gotten that picnic basket, now you mention it.” He cocked an ear towards the forest. After a second, he rolled the window down an inch and listened again. The spray off the road was enough to cool him a little, but it still felt like a sauna inside the enclosed cruiser. “Huh. Were we...outrunning those wolves?”
Juniper shook his head, tapping the speedometer just above the wheel. “Naw, I haven’t been able to get above forty kilometers an hour. This road is a mess. Might as well get out and gallop.”
“If you don’t mind, I don’t think I’ll do that. Still, sorta strange. Never heard of timberwolves giving up that easily. They found the body close to the city, right?”
“Closer, sure,” Juniper affirmed. “It was in one of those nature parks just outside of town, but based on the file it looks like there were tire treads. Some kind of heavy farm truck. It was dumped in a ditch and left there.”
“Hence why you and I weren’t down there this morning. Could have been worse. Rooting around in those mines was no fun. I wonder why, if he was just dumping her, he didn’t leave her for the timberwolves to get...”
“Because timberwolves kill things. They don’t eat them. They drag the corpses back to their home trees to fertilize the soil. Still, out here, might have been worthwhile,” Juniper paused, a contemplative look on his face. “I don’t know. You get a funny feeling about the other bodies? We know he likes his little art projects. What if this creepy S.O.B. thinks he’s giving us something?”
“You mean like he was somehow gifting them to us? Or returning them, maybe?”
“Yeeeah, exactly. Even this girl. If she’s a canvas he didn’t approve of, it’s not like a bucket of lye is expensive. I can think of fifty ways to dispose of a body that don’t involve leaving her somewhere she’ll be found within a matter of hours.”
Hardy’s brow furrowed. “You think it’s some sort of weird respect thing? Crossing her forelegs over her chest is a pony thing. Griffins bury their dead with a weapon in their claws.”
“Could be. Serial killers come in all stripes and every one we’ve found is different.”
With a little grin, Hard Boiled poked his partner in the side. “Heh… You watch that ‘stripes’ talk around Sweet Shine when she gets back. She’s a mite sensitive these days about anything that can be taken to disparage her zebra friends. I almost lost an ear last time I casually referred to a ‘pin-stripe suit’ in conversation.”
“Your best friend is insane, Hardy. You know that, right?”
“I’ve known her for something like twenty years, Juni. I think I picked up on it. That doesn’t mean she’s not the pony you want backing you up when the day is done.”
More details were starting to resolve out of the distance as Hardy leaned forward again, trying to figure out what he was seeing. It appeared to be some kind of gigantic sculpture; an origami cockrel of monumental pipe-cleaners and monstrous marshmallows perched on a system of wires hung between four massive metal towers that reached up from the ground like skeletal fingers. The whole thing seemed flimsy, somehow, but it still stood despite the storm. At the very peak of the strange construct, the red light strobed in a slow circle, lighting up the surrounding wires on every pass.
Below, there was a small hill of some kind that jutted straight up from the earth in defiance of the local geography, which was uniformly flat.
“What do you make of that?” Juniper asked. “I think we’re almost there…”
“I don’t know. Plenty of strange stuff built out in the Wilds,” Hardy replied.
All at once, the rain stopped.
It didn’t fade, or weaken; one moment they were in a torrential downpour which was making it difficult to see out of the windscreen and the next, there wasn’t so much as a drizzle. The transition happened so fast Hardy’s ears pinned back against his head.
Juniper slammed on the brakes hard enough to make them squeal, slewing the rear end of the car around, ending with the bogie-wagon stopped sideways across the dirt track. Hardy was thrown against his seat-belt and gasped as the air rushed out of his lungs.
They sat there in a silence disturbed only by the guttural rumble of the engine and the distant patter of raindrops on leaves.
“You know...I’m feeling that whole ‘going back’ thing, now,” Hardy muttered.
Rolling down his window, Juniper stuck his hoof out, then turned back to look at the road the way they’d come. About twenty meters that direction, a solid wall of water seemed to hang like a curtain across the track.
“That’s new,” Juniper said, under his breath.
“So, we’ve seen exactly what is up there. I admit, my curiosity is feeling a tad less severe than it was a minute before whatever just happened to the rain.”
“Spooked, kiddo?” Hardy’s partner chuckled. “It’s some weird weather patterns, but we’re not on fire and if it has something to do with our perp, we’re still on mission, right?”
Hard Boiled rolled his window down entirely and leaned out, looking up at the giant structure with the red light on top. It was still hard to tell how far up it was, but he estimated maybe a quarter mile. “This is where I try to get us to do the smart thing and you say something cocky, then we go do the stupid thing and end up filling out paperwork until our hooves fall off, isn’t it?”
Pulling the bogie-wagon off the road, Juniper slid out from behind the wheel. “How many years did it take you to figure that out?”
“Actually it was about two days after we started working together. Eh...I guess there are worse ways to end up with a suspension. Fine, let’s go see whatever this is and then I’m going to stuff myself with enchiladas until I can’t move.”
With some trepidation, Hardy re-settled himself in his seat as Juniper pulled the bogie-wagon back around and put it in gear.
----
Scene change: All that can be heard is the mighty engine of the armored cruiser and the far-off rain as the car makes for the blinking light. Hardy goes about checking his revolver while a slow smile of anticipation steals over Juniper’s features.
----
‘Big,’ Hardy thought as the bogie-wagon approached the tree-line. ‘Big, big, big!’
Distance didn’t do justice to the structure and up close, it was more than a little intimidating. The four towers holding up the enormous system of wires and pulleys that had inexplicably shaped themselves into an impressionist’s version of a rooster were some kind of metal so polished it seemed to glow.
He couldn’t tell what the spider’s web of wires were meant to do, but they seemed too complex for any equine hoof to have wound together like that.
What he’d first taken for a hill turned out to be a building. It was a strange looking building, seeming to have shoved its way out of the ground. The walls were coated in ivy and grasses that disguised most of the details, but he estimated it to be roughly rectangular and a fifty meters on a side, with sloping walls that spilled out on either side, almost to the trees.
A clearing surrounded the facility on all sides, where rutted tire tracks lead to another, smaller building that looked like a shed or garage of some sort. It, too, was covered in thick ivy.
Juniper shut off the headlights as they approached, keeping the wagon on the unlit road mostly by intuition and luck. Just as they were about to pull into the lot, he turned off into the underbrush. Hardy winced as old tree branches crunched under the front tires, but he was fairly sure the blowing storm was still close enough to mask their approach.
Something about the place had the fur on the back of Hardy’s neck standing to attention.
“So, do we knock?” Hardy asked, opening the door and checking the forest floor before stepping out. He unconsciously turned up his collar, even though it wasn’t raining.
Juniper picked up the radio and held the ‘call’ button.
“This is car one-three-three-seven calling the Castle, come in Castle.”
After a moment, the speaker crackled and Telly’s familiar voice came through.
“Castle speaking, car one-three-three-seven. You and Hardy having a nice date?”
“Lovely. The birds are singing, the bees are buzzing, and we’re sitting out here underneath some kind of giant...something or other. Coordinates are...” Juniper paused to glance down at the map, reading off the coordinates. “Could you check the records and maybe give us some idea of what we’re looking at? It’s not on the P.A.C.T. survey, but it’s massive, like an electrical station. There’s a chicken or rooster made out of wires hanging above a building. Must be...twenty, thirty meters high at least.”
Telly took a minute to reply. “Did you say a giant chicken? Are you having me on?”
Juniper smacked his forehead against the steering wheel. “No, I’m not. Telly, just check the damn records.”
“It’s five minutes to shift change, Juniper. I swear to Celestia, I am going to make you suffer if this is a joke, …”
“Duly noted. Records search. I need anything in this area bigger than a telephone box.”
“Alright, give me a second and I’ll see what we’ve got.”
Telly whistled a soft tune down the mic as she turned dials and clicked buttons. A moment later there was a loud ‘ding’ like a toaster going off.
“Huh...you weren’t kidding,” Telly murmured, laying something heavy on the table beside the mic with a loud thump.
“Of course I wasn’t! When I have I ever kidded anyone?” Juniper laughed, pushing his door open and swinging his legs out, sitting there on the edge of his seat as he looked up at the strange building. “What can you tell me about this thing?”
“Weeell, it was an experimental meteorological station. There’s not a lot of information here on the project itself, but I’ve got a fair bit on the aftermath.”
“Meteorological station? You mean something for monitoring weather?”
“Nope! That thing is for making weather. They called it a ‘weathervane’. There were supposed to be lots of them spread all across Equestria and on down into the griffin lands. It was an experiment in controlling weather using high powered sound waves. Flat-pack weather manipulation in an easy to build package.”
Hardy frowned a little and asked, “It used sound waves?”
Telly made an affirmative noise. “Mmhmm. Funny thing, really. It was shut down about thirty years ago after a huge heap of injuries. It’s been derelict that whole time.”
“What’s the background?”
Some paper moved about and Telly whistled. “Oooh...very not good. It started as a big interspecies love fest to give the griffins more arable land. It ended with five deaths and a dozen maimings when one of the experiments went wrong. The ‘Weathervane Project’ was mothballed. Kinda sad, because it looks like the underlying technology was solid.”
Hardy narrowed his eyes at the slowly spinning light atop the weathervane, then leaned over and grabbed Juniper’s hoof so he could speak into the mic. “Telly, is there anything in there about the system being reactivated for any reason?”
“Not that I can see. The whole thing is meant to fold down into the ground with the push of a button when it’s not being used, so it doesn’t ruin the skyline. Why? Somepony messing with old tech out there? You need backup?”
Juniper cocked an ear at Hardy.
“Eh...yeah, send a couple cars. We might need them, we might not,” Hardy replied. “We’re going to go take a look around. We’ll call you back if we’re all clear. It might be nothing. You have our location?”
“Yeah... There’s nobody in your area. You mind sitting for a bit?”
“Like I said, we’ll just take a look around. This is still a recon mission as far as we’re concerned.”
“Ten-four. Officers Sight, Coriolis, Sand Dollar, and Chip will be there soon.”
Telly broke the connection and Hardy set the mic back on the stand. Juniper wiped a bit of mud off his toe on the edge of his door, then hopped out and pulled his trigger bit free of his sleeve, giving it a few experimental kicks.
“So, we playing it friendly until we find out what’s going on, then?” Hardy asked. “If some guy in a set of pink fuzzy slippers comes to the door, I’m going to feel real stupid.”
Juniper smirked, ratcheting his pistol and checking the chamber to make sure it was loaded. “Am I ever not friendly? Besides, I think somebody messing with the local weather patterns is probably worth at least a citation.”
Hardy looked up at the crackling, boiling mass of clouds above the weathervane that were somehow only raining a couple meters down the road. “Huh. Yeah, probably.”
Side-by-side, Hard Boiled and Juniper strolled down the dark, empty road towards the weathervane. Overhead, the wires comprising the strange web screeched and wailed against one another like a strange orchestral arrangement. Wind whipped at their clothing, but they plowed on, watching for danger.
As they crossed some invisible line in the dirt, a sudden, stabbing pain shot down Hardy’s back legs. He slapped a hoof
over his muzzle, almost falling to his knees as he tried not to scream like a little filly.
“What?! What is it?!” Juniper demanded, swinging his pistol up and sweeping it towards the building.
“Celestia save me...” Hardy moaned, rubbing his cutie-mark with one hoof as tingles of agony crept right down to the tips of his toes. “I guess that answers that question.”
Juniper grabbed his foreleg, throwing it around his shoulders as he hauled his partner back towards the trees. “Your talent just give you a ring?” he asked, worriedly.
“Yeah. Four alarms worth. Feels like somepony just stuck me in the ass with a hot knife...” Swallowing, Hardy pushed himself to his hooves and freed his trigger bit. The sensation in his hip faded somewhat as they got farther from the weathervane, but it sat in the background; a persistent feeling of wrongness, like an oil-slick on a duck pond.
“So, we wait for backup?” Juniper asked.
Hardy glanced back at the golden scales on his flank, then slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s never that strong unless something is about to happen. We've got minutes.”
Juniper picked up his trigger, getting it settled in his teeth. “Damn. I was half hoping for pink fuzzy slippers...”
“You and me both.”
----
Scene change: The Detectives split off in opposite directions, approaching the building cautiously, their weapons drawn.
----
The air was sharp with the scent of oncoming rain and Hardy’s teeth dug into his trigger bit as he carefully edged up to one wall of the weathervane. His natural instincts kept screaming that he was exposed, but there were no good paths to the structure without passing through open ground.
Conventional wisdom would have a pony make a run for it when changing positions, but his instructors had hammered the dynamics of night-fighting into his brain; slow, methodical movement and using the darkness for cover. Nothing could leave a pony helpless quicker than a turned ankle in a gunfight.
His eyes followed Juniper as his partner disappeared around the opposite end of the building.
‘Recon mission, he said. Perfectly safe, he said. Why do I keep following that stallion around?’ Hardy thought to himself. After a second contemplating all the possible answers to that question, he sighed. ‘Oh, right. Bagels and affection. Ugh, I really need a marefriend...’
Thunder crashed from far off, shaking him from his thoughts as, against his better judgement, he darted across the last five meters to the wall. Shoving his shoulders into the ivy, he did his best to blend in. The creeping plant was like a tightly wound blanket so thick he couldn’t see what lay underneath, but it made for excellent camouflage, which might have explained how the P.A.C.T. managed to miss a gigantic building in the middle of the woods.
His flank was still burning and the pain was joined with a sense of terrible urgency.
‘Alright, move your ass, Hard Boiled.’
He began making his way along the side of the weathervane, trailing his hooves through the ivy.
‘Door, door, door...who’s got the door?’
Hardy was just starting to get a bit nervous that he’d missed it when his toe bumped lightly against something buried in amongst the greenery. Dropping his bit, he hopped back a couple of steps, digging at foliage until his hoof hit the strange protrusion again. Hooking his leg over the hidden handle, he gave it an experimental tug.
A section of the wall just tall enough for a pony to duck into slid silently open a couple of inches and warm, orange light poured out, momentarily blinding him. He bounced away from it, sinking into a crouch with his gun leveled and ready.
His listened for movement, heart racing. After a solid thirty seconds without gunfire or magical lasers or any one of a thousand other horrible fates blasting him into oblivion, Hardy took a deep breath and his nose wrinkled; the air coming through the door had a foul scent about it, like a mix of urine and bad cheese.
Still on the alert for any sound from inside, Hardy began working the door open far enough to poke his muzzle through. The rails were smooth and seemed to have been oiled recently, but nothing ruined a stealth mission quite like an inconvenient squeak.
Wedging his nose in, he peered in both directions, trying to get a sense of the interior. The smell was enough to choke a hyena, but he covered his muzzle with the edge of his collar and fought down the urge to gag as he inspected the floor - which was composed of some kind of metal grate - looking for trip-wires or anything that might indicate a boobie-trap. Walking face-first into a load of buckshot had also been known to ruin a stealth mission.
The air inside was thick with some kind of fog that limited vision to a few meters, lit by incandescent bulbs. All he could make out was the far side of what seemed to be a narrow hallway or maintenance tube of some kind, stretching left and right into the distance. Thick pipes ran in either direction underneath the floor and across the walls, labeled things like ‘Outflow’ and ‘Super-Intercooler’.
Stepping carefully, Hardy crept over the low lip of the door, lowering each hoof as lightly as he could. The soft click of his shoes on the metal was muffled by some effect of the fog, though he thought he could hear machinery running somewhere. It was hard to get a bearing.
Watching the ground and moving slowly, he crept down the hall, trying not to breath. Whatever the fog was, it seemed to cling to his coat, condensing and leaving a chill despite the warm air. He hoped he wasn’t taking lungfuls of cancer.
‘Still, can’t be any worse for me than a few years’ worth of Juniper’s morning breath,’ he thought.
His bit was starting to taste like whatever was in the air and he desperately wanted to close his mouth, but that would have meant dropping his trigger and there was absolutely no cover in the hall, aside maybe the hope that whoever might shoot at him couldn’t see any farther in the fog than he could. In all his years as an officer of the law, he’d found hope to be a pretty poor replacement for body-armor.
‘There’s another thing I wish I’d thought to bring on this ‘recon’ mission.’
A sound reached him through the dense fog, barely louder than the rush of blood in his ears. He leaned forward a little, wondering whether or not his imagination was playing tricks on him; it had sounded a bit like somepony singing, if they’d chosen to sing down a metal pipe while backed up by a band full of howler monkeys.
Hardy picked up his pace, still trying to tread lightly as he attempted to figure out which direction the sounds were coming from.
‘There! Down there!’
At the next junction, he swung right and almost toppled down a curving spiral staircase that descended straight down into the bowels of the facility. Throwing his leg over the railing, he managed to right himself before the fall could become a neck-breaking tumble, but it was still enough to send his heart leaping into his throat. The fog seemed a little thinner, though for all he could tell the stairs went right down to the center of the world.
Experimentally settling his weight on the top step, he gulped and sent a silent prayer to the sky as it let out an ominous creak.
The singing stopped.
Hardy shut his eyes and held his breath.
A moment later, the voice returned along with the strange background sound. Thinking as many light thoughts as he could, Hardy continued down the spiral staircase, taking each step like it might be his last. The staircase groaned under him, but it was quiet enough he didn’t think he’d been overheard; at least, that was what he told himself.
Around and around, deeper into the weathervane, he followed the stairs down into the fog. It was several more minutes before he could mentally confirm that it was thinning out. A diffuse yellow light filtered up from below and he almost missed a step as the singing paused again and a voice rang out, echoing up the tunnel.
“Now, then! My chick, we must make sure of your skin before we proceed! Yeees, that’s excellent! Your family must have thought to marry you off one day. Perfect!”
It was a male voice, but Hardy couldn’t tell what species. The fog was still distorting the sound in some way. Picking up his pace as much as he could without making the whole assembly he was standing on rattle like a bell, Hardy descended.
“Next, tail in the air, beak on the ground! Good, that’s it. Truly, truly, there is nothing more beautiful than a hen in that position! So sad I must shut down the control spells when I begin. I would love to see you like that while I work!”
Hardy hesitated a moment, trying to parse what he’d just heard.
‘Control spells?’ he thought.
Direct mind control wasn’t entirely unheard of, but it was illegal on a scale most ponies didn’t consider worth whatever benefit one might get; it was one of a short list of activities that warranted life-long incarceration in Equestria, however long life might turn out to be. Celestia was always inclined towards rehabilitation wherever possible, but since the war, certain activities tended to warrant a more vigorous approach.
The bottom of the staircase came into sight and Hardy paused again, gulping for air. It seemed like there was a doorway down there, but his vision was blurry; the stink was overpowering, leaving him short of breath and with watering eyes.
Resting his hoof on the wall, he wiped at his muzzle, trying to get the cloying smell out of his nose. His toe came away covered in some kind of oily grease. Snatching a kerchief out of his pocket, he quickly wiped it off. The grease was a strange color that reminded him of something, but it took him a moment to place it.
‘Uh...that’s...dried blood, isn’t it? Oh, Juni, enchiladas are not going to pay for this one…’
Stepping off the bottom of the stairs, Hardy made sure his safety was off. The floor was slick and he could feel the remains of the fog soaking into his fur.
There was a short hall and, at the end, an open door.
Through the door, he could see a griffin girl.
She was sprawled on her side in some kind of crude box made of chicken-wire and two-by-fours, a soft, brown lump of misery wedged up against the wall. The box wasn’t big enough for her to stand or sit completely upright, so she was relegated to laying on her belly. He couldn’t place her age, but she seemed fairly young.
One golden eye rolled listlessly up to look at him and she let out a surprised squawk. She tried to sit up, smacking her head on the roof of her cage. Hardy jumped back into the tunnel, holding his hoof to his lips and shaking his head.
From another room, that voice called out, ‘My sweet little henny hen...if you don’t stop banging about, I’ll turn the current on again!’
For all its cheery warmth, the voice was sending icy tingles right to the base of Hardy’s tail. His cutie-marks ached like they’d been whipped.
The girl was staring at him with a mixture of fear and hope. He shook his badge free from the top of his coat and flashed it at her, then gestured for her to settle back down and keep quiet. She brightened, then forced her wings down against her sides and waited.
Hardy indicated left, then right, giving the girl a questioning look. The hen jerked her head to the right.
Creeping along the wall, he slowly peered out into the room the griffin girl was trapped in. It seemed to be some kind of workshop. A table full of tools sat beside the cage, each one hung from a nail and not a scrap of debris to be a seen. Beside it, a bucket of some kind was drawing a cloud of flies. A second door across the room had another set of stairs heading back up into the facility.
Hardy moved a little further into the space and his mouth fell open. He slapped his knee into his muzzle, dropping his trigger and biting down hard to hold back the scream that was building in his gut.
‘Why ’o why didn’t we wait for backup?’ he thought.
His chest tightened and tried to shut his eyes, but they just wouldn’t close. The sight was too awful and demanded to be seen.
It was the artist’s gallery.
A gallery of blood and bone.
His knees shook until he sank onto his haunches, quaking with a combination of fear and horror.
The walls were lined with paintings, each one a frame of bone with a skinned pelt stretched across it for a canvas. Whatever had been used for paint on some of the pictures was attracting insects that gave them a living, pulsating effect.
The subjects were various, but every one of them was fit to turn a manticore’s stomach.
There was a potted plant with severed tongues instead of leaves, a smiling filly whose intestines had been spilled, and a bath-tub overflowing over, the tap dripping blood; images of terror and perversity all painted with murder.
The pictures were hung side by side, each tagged and annotated with a little plaque.
A detached part of him noted that the frames and canvases weren’t all made from griffins. There were a few pony pelts mixed into the collection - even a zebra or two - but the number of victims was so far beyond the nine they’d already found that he wasn’t ready to count them. He felt certain an accurate accounting might fracture his already tenuous hold on sanity. He needed not to be crazy for a little while.
After a minute or two, the shock had worn off enough for him to force his eyes to the ground. Getting back to his hooves, he stumbled across to the cage with the griffin girl inside. It was locked with a half dozen padlocks.
She was cleaner than he’d expected for having been stuck in the foul box for however long. Her feathers were ragged, but she wasn’t covered in excrement or anything of the sort. He glanced to one side, catching sight of a fire-hose that’d been rolled up beside her cage.
Her eyes were bright as he leaned down and whispered, “I’m here to help. Are you okay?”
She shook her head and replied, just barely loud enough for him to hear, “I’ll never be okay. Y-you wouldn’t...you wouldn’t believe what he does…”
He had to adjust his estimate of her age back a few years. She was barely halfway through her teens. Griffins were known to be resilient, but he was wondering how she wasn’t out of her mind with fear.
“I think I can guess,” he murmured. “How long have you been here?”
“H-how should I k-know? I slept a few times, but th-there’s no clock!” She snapped, then covered her mouth, glancing at the door to see if she’d been heard. After a second she added, “Y-you have to go g-get him. He’s g-got my sister in there!”
She pointed over his shoulder with one shaking claw. There was another hall off to his right, with a swinging, saloon style door at the end marked ‘Lower Maintenance’.
“What is he?” Hardy asked.
The hen shook her head. “I don’t...I don’t even know. He’s like a p-pegasus, but he’s fast! So...so fast! He g-got b-both of us and I didn’t even s-see him! He got us a-almost as soon as we g-got off the train. He...he keeps sh-shocking me.” She glanced, fearfully at a padlocked box beside her cage. It was nailed to the ground and emblazoned with a lightning bolt.
Tilting his head to one side, Hardy saw a set of wires leading out of the back into the cage. The construction seemed pretty solid and he couldn’t figure a way to disable it without letting the killer in the next room know he was there. He gave one of the padlocks holding her box shut an experiment tug, but it was just as sturdy as it looked.
“I’ll be back. My partner is in here somewhere and there’s backup on the way. Keep still, alright?”
The girl nodded, dropping back onto her stomach. Hardy picked up his trigger and snuck down the short hall towards the swinging door. The voice was humming again, this time a jaunty little tune Hardy recognized from his childhood. It was a war time shanty his father used to sing after a few drinks over Hearth’s Warming Eve.
Dropping to his front knees, Hardy tried to peer underneath the door. All he could see was a mix of machinery and metal protrusions sticking up from the floor at regular intervals. Shaking his head, he picked up his trigger and took three deep breaths.
‘Time for violence, then. Juni, you are buying the rounds for a month…’
Bracing himself, Hardy rested his shoulder against the door.
Try to kill someone or let a child die. That’s a crap position to find oneself in.
Slamming through the door, Hardy was hit in the face by a wave of stench that almost blinded him. Then he was hit by something that felt like a flying train, followed very quickly by three more.
Then everything went dark.
----
Set Change: The camera fades to black.
Scene: A faint sound of rain trickles in from the wings. In a flash of lighting, a shadowy figure appears, crouched under the eves outside of the weathervane. His green mane blends perfectly with the ivy draping the building and it would be difficult to see him were it not for his beaten leather jacket, the shining badge hanging from his neck, and the police issue pistol strapped to his leg.
----
Juniper Shores was feeling his age. It wasn’t a terrible age, but it was definitely not the age he’d been that let him drink and eat whatever he liked without consequences.
Mostly he was feeling that he shouldn’t have spent all night with his head wedged against Hardy’s collarbone. His neck was still pretty sore and it hadn’t done wonders for his back, either. Still, better than sleeping alone. Better than lots of things, really. Certainly better than being stuck in the middle of nowhere, sneaking into what might very well be the lair of a serial killer.
‘Could be worse, honestly. Could still be stuck with that idiot from back when, whatever his name was. At least Hard Boiled managed to get out of the dumb-ass rookie phase without shooting himself in the testicle,’ he thought, using some of the ivy on the building to clean his hooves.
The weathervane was a pretty intimidating structure and, truth be told, he was a bit worried about leaving his partner on his own; Hardy had the sense of direction of a drunken marmot after a trip in a tumble drier. Still, despite initial skepticism, Hardy’s talent tended to work like a charm. It’d certainly pulled them out of the fire during the case with the snake handlers.
Lightning crackled across the sky again and Juniper cringed closer to the wall.
“Kiddo, you’re gonna owe me all the drinks for dragging us in there without waiting for back-up,” he muttered, glancing up at the wall of unnatural stormclouds ringing the weathervane.
He started off at a hobble, dragging his hoof along the wall and moving along on the other three legs.
They were a little off book, particularly where a breaching action was concerned. In an ideal world, there would have been twenty officers with rams and shotguns. He’d have a unicorn or two with shields around him and pegasi watching the skies for runners. In the real world, it was almost never like that. In the real world, you weren’t even sure what you were walking into and the ten percent of the time when there was actually a dangerous situation never happened with body-armor and shotguns readily available.
Two thirds of the way down the building, his front leg came down on something that let out a soft ‘clank’. Stepping back, he examined the ground, then fished a flashlight out of his jacket pocket and nosed the button. Holding the light in his teeth, he cleared a bit of debris off what appeared to be some kind of maintenance hatch.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tuft of color stuck in the thick vines draping the weathervane . Sliding onto his knees, he reached down and felt around. Pulling his hoof back, he peered at what he’d found; it was a soft, reddish brown feather with a white tip.
He gave it a quick sniff.
Griffin, with a hint of sweet perfume.
Damn.
“A griffin hen in pink fuzzy slippers. Please let it be that,” he said to himself.
He went back to his examination of the hatch. It seemed to have been recently used. A few drag marks led off in the direction of the road. He ran his hoof over them and sighed.
“Maybe a hen in pink fuzzy slippers...who likes dragging around heavy things in her spare time that just happen to be the same general weight and shape as an unconscious griffin in a bag...”
Grabbing the hatch’s handle in his teeth, he shoved with all his might. The hatch sank an inch, then slid back on well oiled rails into the ground, revealing a set of sharply angled stairs leading down into the darkness.
The odor that boiled out of the hole rocked him back onto his flank as a blast of hot air blew his mane back from his face. His stomach lurched and he coughed violently, jamming his muzzle into the lining of his jacket. It needed a wash, but it didn’t smell like rotting bodies. Very little in the world smelled like rotting bodies.
As the nausea passed, he dug around in his pockets until he found some mint cough drops, quickly popping two in his mouth. Once they were good and wet, he spat them on his hoof and wiped the residue under his nose. It wasn’t menthol cream, but it would do.
Shining his light into the dark hole, he tried to get a gauge on the space. There weren’t any obvious traps that he could see, though magic always left plenty of less visible options. It seemed to be a small air-lock or chamber of some kind. It looked like somepony had been living in there. A cheap cot and kitchen stove were stacked atop a pile of milk crates. Tiny, empty pots of paint were heaped alongside a bunch of of ready-to-eat meals and an easel, which was folded in a corner.
Hefting a rock off the ground, he tossed it into the pit and jumped back, waiting to see what would happen. When nothing did, he carefully set his hoof on the top step. After a count of ten, he started down into the little room.
It has the flavor of a temporary hovel that’d taken on a long term occupancy. A small writing desk was pushed up against one of the three metal doors that went deeper into the facility and a dozen sketchbooks were piled, haphazardly atop one another. From far off, he could hear the thrum of machinery, but he couldn’t get a good sense of where it was coming from.
He tiptoed over to the desk, watching for wires or landmines or runes carved into the floor. The scent of rotting blood was enough to make his nose burn, but he’d smelled worse. He couldn’t think when, but he was sure it must have happened.
Gently flipping open the cover of the top-most note-pad, he felt a shiver make its way up his back.
“Goodie. Psycho-Nouveau. My favorite,” Juniper muttered, staring down at a picture of a dead pony impaled through with a giant fork that was twirling up his intestines like spaghetti. He turned to another page, finding a list of supplies. “Stun spells suspended in gemstones, blood thinner, butcher knife, bone saw, jeweler’s wire, car batteries, electrodes, paint brushes, enzymatic cleaning agents...sweet Celestia, this guy needs some new hobbies.”
Sitting down, he pulled open the desk and found a thin journal and pen. Setting it on the desk, he opened it to the first entry and quickly read:
----
Day Nine Thousand Seventy Six
Ah, well. Sad as it sounds, I simply couldn’t bring myself to use that wretched mess, even for spares. My own fault, really, for not checking the origin before I processed her. Her flesh was a tapestry written upon by unskilled claws. Disposal was a bit of a hassle, but I doubt she’ll be found anytime soon. I suppose I might have left her in the bottom of one of the mines, but her death did remind me that art mustn’t bow to convenience.
I must be getting old and sentimental. I suppose simply old, since I began sentimental.
Truly, I must switch styles again soon. No wish to become stagnant! The performance pieces from early last year were lovely, but not as well received as a few of the older ones. Griffin is still an excellent medium and I feel my inspiration flow when I have a beautiful hen beneath my brush.
I still feel I haven’t fully explored the potential of the sonic emission chamber. Since my father so graciously left me the land, I feel it only right his legacy make a greater impression on the artistic community in death than it did in life. That ridiculous rooster he wove into the suspension matrix for the weather control system still gives me a fright, but it does speak to the kind of stallion he was and this incredible technological wonder remains one of endless possibilities. So sad he hadn’t the sense to use it for something meaningful nor the fortitude to see it finished.
Note to self: Make certain sure generators are adequately powered. Add fuel oil to list.
As soon as I figure out the modulation parameters so the bones don’t turn to dust quite so quickly, I’ll be able to keep my subjects alive with almost complete impunity! I will bear witness to the instant of life leaving their eyes and dance with them upon that knife edge!
The patterns produced on their flesh are very interesting, if applied with precision. The news has christened my latest incarnation ‘The Stained Glass Killer’ because of it; a name I find myself smiling at again and again. Cellular breakdown makes the shapes a bit unpredictable, but I’ll figure that out eventually and then I shall paint my thoughts into their living skin! I do wonder what they’ll call me then.
----
Juniper swallowed and shut the book.
Nine thousand days.
He did some quick mental math and it came out to something like twenty five years. Twenty five years. He was in the home of a murderer who’d been active when he was still hunting his cutie-mark on the streets of Baltimare.
How many dead? If the nine they’d found were even the smallest fraction, that put him into the realm of dozens upon dozens; a death toll on par with dragon attacks and mass poisonings.
It boggled the mind.
As he was having these thoughts, a tiny speaker set beside the nearest door let out blast of static. Juniper kicked his trigger into his mouth, dropping into a defensive posture, backing against the nearest wall and looking for a target.
“Ahem! ‘A fly buzzing in my soup’ said the epicure to the waiter! ‘Can I have another?’ Oh, the waiter says,’a moment and I shall deliver’! Is that Detective Juniper Shores, knock, knocking at my door?”
The voice was male, accented and cheery. It was difficult to place his age.
“I’m Detective Shores. Who is asking?”
“My name is...well, my true name is meaningless to our circumstances and I rather like the most recent one. You may call me Stained Glass,” the voice replied.
Juniper’s stomach twisted into a knot as he glanced towards the hatch at the stop of the stairs. It was still open. He had a path of retreat.
“I take it you have a camera somewhere that I’m not seeing?”
There was a quiet chuckle from the speaker. “No, no, nothing of the sort. The employee tracking system makes for a lovely early alert if one knows a bit about electrical engineering. I am pleased to say I know quite a lot. I also have your partner, Detective Hard Boiled. He is alive, for the moment. He carries a picture of the two of you tucked into his badge. Am I right in presuming that additional officers are on their way?”
Juniper hesitated, chewing his bit. He desperately wanted something to shoot. His talent hadn’t given him any indication the bastard was lying about having Hardy.
‘Keep him talking,’ he thought.
“More will be coming, yes. We’ve got back up on the way. They’ll be here soon. There’s no walking away from this. You come quietly, you don’t have to die today.”
Stained Glass laughed, long and loud, setting Juniper’s teeth on edge. “Au contraire, mon ami! Today is a fantastic day for death! I do agree, however, that there is no walking away. I must admit...this is the closest I’ve ever been to caught. That tells a pony something, no? Oh, to be sure, I have escape plans upon escape plans, and I could leave quite easily, yet you would dog my heels and I am a very old dog,” Pausing, he did something in the background and somepony let out a soft moan. He continued. “One day, sooner rather than later, I suspect I will be too old to run. I would rather not reach such a day.”
Putting a hoof up on the door, Juniper shoved it open.
“So, give yourself up,” Juniper said, peering down the fog-filled hall. “We’ll find you a nice cell with a view. You could cop an insanity plea in about ten seconds flat. Tartarus Correctional is nice enough. You and Warden will get along real well.”
Stained Glass snickered, the sound coming from another speaker set further down the hall. “My, my, my! You are a pill, Detective Shores! My favorite kind of pony! No, of course, I don’t intend that. Do, please, make your way downstairs. The hall door you just opened takes a somewhat roundabout way down, but you will arrive in due time.”
“And if I don’t?” Juniper asked, shrugging his coat up on his shoulders. The thick fog was settling on his body and it stank with a fury.
“This is the cordial invitation, Detective Shores. The other invitation involves you listening to the screams of various persons as I mutilate them. Don’t worry. There are no traps. Well, there is one...but you are already in it. If I wish to kill you, I will use a more hooves-on methodology.”
“I suppose I can’t argue with that,” Juniper replied, trying to sound casual as he trotted down the hall, making no further effort to be stealthy. His thoughts were racing, however. Something about the situation was strangely familiar. Had he been here before? Maybe.
A strange feeling stole over him as he moved. It was one of acceptance, mixed with a certain awareness and appreciation of the world around him. His hooves ached, but it was a good ache. He was covered in sweat, but it was cool and the air was disgusting, but he could smell it.
‘Hardy doesn’t die today.’
He picked up the pace, cantering down the foggy hallway until he reached a junction, skidding around the corner. An old and barely functional fan set into the ceiling was making an effort to clear the fog, but had succeeded only in providing a few feet of clear space. He saw a set of steps spiraling down into the mist a couple meters beyond it.
Taking them two at a time, he charged down the steps, leaning his shoulder against the rail as he barreled towards into the lower level. He almost missed the final step and stumbled off the end of the stairs into the short hall. Ahead, he could see a wall covered in paintings of the most gruesome variety. Another door over there and stairs lead back up.
Steeling himself, he swiped a hoof across his face, trying to ignore the cloying scent digging at his nostrils. Death in all its forms, like a rose, but never sweet.
Climbing back to his hooves, he loped along the hallway to the door of the workshop.
Even though he had some concept of what he was going to see, the gallery still reduced him to horror-stricken silence. He stopped as he stepped out into the space, staring up at the walls—walls covered in a long and detailed record of murder.
How many missing pony, zebra, and griffin cases were up on those walls? How many had met their ends, sawn and hewn and woven into frames for the Stained Glass Killer?
Twenty five years worth, at least. So many butchered for the mad-ponies art. How had he done it? How does someone kill with such impunity?
“Hey, pony.”
Juniper jammed a hoof into his own mouth, forcing himself not to scream as he stumbled to one side. He jerked his eyes down and found himself muzzle-to-beak with a griffin. She was barely more than a child, more of a late teenager, with frightened eyes.
Slowly he pulled his hoof from his muzzle.
The young griffin’s eyes were sad as she set her head on her crossed forelegs. “H-he’s g-got your partner.”
“Where is he?” Juniper asked.
Before she could reply, that cheerful, terrible voice called from down another tunnel that lead to a pair of swinging doors, “I’m in here, Detective Shores! Do stop speaking to the furniture and bring yourself along!”
Giving the poor griffin one last look, Juniper picked up his trigger in his teeth and tried to keep calm as he trotted down the hall, away from the gallery. Resting a hoof on the swinging door, he closed his eyes and pushed it open.
“Ah! Welcome, Juniper Shores! Welcome!”
Juniper opened his eyes on a scene from a nightmare. The first thing he saw was Hardy. Partner. Friend.
Hard Boiled was naked, face down over a board with his legs hanging off either side. The board was supported by several cinder-blocks, keeping his hooves from quite touching the ground. His gun, shirt, badge, and trenchcoat coat were piled nearby in a heap.
Hoof-cuffs bound Hardy’s knees together and about two dozen tiny wires were attached to fishhooks in the flesh of his back, all leading down to a sturdy wooden box covered in yellow lightning bolt stickers. His dark fur was matted with blood. Whoever had set up the structure obviously had a frightening amount of experience immobilizing someone. Hardy’s eyes were open, however; he held his partner’s gaze for a full ten seconds, then twisted his head, nodding weakly toward something off to the right.
Juniper wrenched his attention away from his partner’s face, composing his expression into one of calm detachment as he turned to look at the enormous room he’d found himself in.
The chamber walls were smooth, with a sheen like obsidian that’d been shaped into a gigantic tube. Far above, the distant ceiling was open to the sky. Juniper could just make out the general shape of the rooster made of wire and beyond that, the simmering storm.
In the center of it all, a clear glass or plastic bulb of some kind - several times the height of a pony - squatted in the middle of a circle of yellow and black zebra-stripes surrounded with warning stickers. It was perfectly spherical and set into the ground a few inches. A similarly clear air-lock with two sealable doors lead into the bulb from just beyond the range of the danger zone.
At last, his eyes were drawn to the figures inside the bulb.
On the floor of the glass chamber, a griffin girl lay. The light coming from several overhead lamps was a bit distorted, but from what Juniper could see, she was uninjured. She was simply sitting there, vacantly staring at him. She looked almost identical to the hen he’d just me in the ante-room, save that her feathers were badly ruffled and she wore a collar of glittering gemstones.
Beside her, smiling beatifically, stood the Stained Glass Killer.
Some part of Juniper had wanted him to look like a monster. He’d hoped for leering, skinless lips and sharp teeth. Maybe throw in a few extra legs and some twisted horns.
The stallion was almost disappointingly normal, standing there propped against the wall of the bulb as Juniper studied him.
He was a pegasus, well muscled and extremely athletic, but his close-cropped mane was almost entirely grey; not a natural shade either. Whatever color he’d been originally, his pelt had the look of a hundred dye jobs, the most recent of which had been allowed to lapse leaving him a dirty, badly bleached blonde. His wings were preened to an obsessive degree, not one single feather out of place.
Juniper’s first estimate of his age pegged the stallion at something like forty, but as he traced the wrinkles around his lips and forehead he had to adjust that number north a few degrees; Stained Glass might have been fifty, maybe even sixty. He had a sharp, angular face, with slightly sunken eyes, but in his prime he must have been the kind of stallion to melt mare’s hearts.
It was his eyes that were wrong.
Nopony should have eyes like that. They weren’t empty or cold. They weren’t even the eyes of a monster. Juniper had met plenty of monsters; monsters saw no beauty in the world.
Those were the eyes of an artist, who worked in lymph, leather, and agony.
Stained Glass was an artist and the look he was giving Juniper was the same one a sculptor gives his newest block of clay. He was just standing there, a tiny black box or remote of some sort balanced on his upturned hoof.
“Mister Shores. Most excellent to finally meet you. I admit, I expected our first meeting to involve more chains, but alas, it is not to be,” Stained Glass murmured, with a little bow. His voice came through the bulb in a slightly strange way, like several people were saying the same words at once. “I wouldn’t bother with the gun. The glass, or whatever remarkable substance the builders of this magnificent artifice found, is completely bullet-proof. Same with the walls.”
Juniper quietly lowered his pistol, letting his bit drop.
“What’s the score? You know what I want, here,” Juniper said. “If we’re negotiating—”
Stained Glass chuckled, trotting forward and putting his hoof on the inside of the glass ball. “Negotiating? Dear boy, we are not negotiating. Negotiation implies you have something I want, but cannot simply take. No, right now we are having a conversation. Rare, but I feel in these final moments that this...this is a conversation worth having.”
Sweeping his tail under himself, Juniper sat down and picked at his teeth with one toe.
“Well, if that’s what you want. I didn’t feel much like negotiating anyway. That’s usually his job,” he replied, jabbing a toe at his bound partner. “I guess the obvious question is ‘What’s with the remote?’.”
The stallion behind the glass frowned slightly, setting the box on the floor at his hooves. “A mechanism. One with which I can gleefully cook your partner or these other creatures alive if I so choose. Now, do stop wasting my time. That isn’t the question you want an answer to.”
‘Breathe, Juniper. Breathe. This isn’t a dream. You’re not in another world and this is really happening. What does he want you to ask?’
“I know Hard Boiled,” he said, flicking his eyes at his partner’s prone form. “He wouldn’t have gone down easy. Not unless he was outclassed in a big way. If you took him down, you knew I was coming. You could have killed the both of us at any time and walked away, scot-free. Why haven’t you?”
“Excellent! Truly, you have an incisive mind, Detective Shores.” Stained Glass picked up the remote, trotting over to his captive griffin and gently raising her chin so he could examine her closely. “Before I answer you...do you know, I followed the careers of both of you with some considerable interest when I learned you’d been assigned to my case? I considered taking both of you much sooner, but I simply didn’t have a project in mind. Some of your predecessors are still out there in the workshop, after all.”
Hardy tried to move his lips, but Stained Glass raised his toe, waggling it warningly over the remote and the detective’s teeth snapped shut around whatever he’d been about to ask.
“Now, now, now! You haven’t been given permission to speak. This is between Mister Shores and I,” Stained Glass scolded.
“Some of our...predecessors?” Juniper asked.
“Yeees...the piece with the posed griffins was only the latest! ‘Fly Away’ took months of planning to properly execute,” Stained Glass replied, twirling a hoof in a circle over the griffin girl’s head. “You are familiar with the Pink Slasher?”
Juniper’s brow furrowed, then as comprehension set in his teeth ground against one another. “I remember Officer Cornrow. She was assigned to that one. We found her skin in a basket outside to Castle, tattooed with the faces of the Slasher’s other five victims.”
“Ah! An excellent memory as well!” Stained Glass nickered, settling on his rump. “I kept her in a cage for almost four months, teaching her the little ins and outs of my art. We conversed at length. She told me about her dreams. There were even a few times she smiled. I waited and I waited. Creative work requires, above all, patience. Oh, she’d accepted her death early...but one day, I saw in her eyes the belief she might live. That was the perfect day. Such a day! I am quite proud of that particular piece. In a moment, I captured hope!”
It was impossible to hide the tremor of fury in his knees, but Juniper managed to keep his voice cool and neutral, even adding a quiet smirk. “Some idiot in the office sold pictures to the media. We wondered why the Slasher disappeared after that. I assume the ‘work’ was finished?”
Stained Glass nodded, grinning ear to ear. He gestured towards where Hard Boiled was restrained. “You assumed correctly. Now, we have another work that must be finished. This one I have pondered on for many, many years and today, finding the two of you at my home an inspiration I’ve not felt in almost a decade struck me.”
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?” Juniper asked, tilting his head to one side to try to get a look at his opponent’s cutie-mark. The light twisted through the glass in such a way as he couldn’t quite make it out.
The killer dismissed his comment with a flick of his thready, grey tail. “Like it or not, you will take my little deal, else I kill you, and the other three souls here and tomorrow, a new work begins. Mayhap not so beautiful as this one, but...I will make do and await inspiration once more. This is, as they say, a ‘one time offer’.”
Juniper squinted, willing his talent to tell him the bastard was lying. He needed him to lie. A lie would have let that part of his mind that came up with plans start working, but every word had the ring of gospel to it. Even the parts about how easily Stained Glass could slaughter the lot of them.
Through clenched teeth, he said, “Tell me about this...offer…”
“Juni, no!” Hard Boiled managed to choke out. The murderer’s toe brushed over one of the buttons on his remote and Juniper’s partner went stiff as a board, every muscle simultaneously seizing. After a moment, he slumped, gasping for breath, his rear legs still twitching spasmodically.
Every impulse in Juniper’s body was screaming at him to blow Stained Glass into the afterlife in a hail of lead. He wanted to rush to his partner, wrench those cuffs off and take him home, to their shared bed. A wiser part held him there, his trigger rocking against his knee as he stared down the butcher.
“The offer, dammit…” Juniper growled, taking a few steps closer to the clear chamber.
Stained Glass’s smile never so much as wavered as he tapped a few buttons on the remote. The griffin girl stood in one smooth motion, like a puppet whose strings have been taken up.
“A simple deal, though you may not understand the beauty of it. You will leave your gun there. You come into this chamber with me. I will send this hen out. Once she is in the airlock, I will activate the chamber.”
Juniper’s eyes narrowed, suspiciously. “And...that will do what, exactly?”
Sweeping his hooves and wings up at the sky, the Stained Glass Killer drew in a deep breath, his broad chest swelling with emotion. He shut his eyes, a blissful expression on his face, as though he could taste the tang in the air from the crackling storm high above.
“I shall capture the perfect death, my boy!”
As though for punctuation, a crash of lightning landed somewhere in the forest nearby, followed immediately by the howl of timberwolves.
“It will be a death so beautiful the stars will weep! My own, with my pursuer, dying together...and I will paint it in a medium more magnificent than any meat or muscle I have ever worked with before! I will etch this into a living mind!” He jabbed his hoof at Hardy, whose cutie-mark was burning like a house-fire.
The killer’s voice had taken on something of the preacher at his pulpit as he smacked the glass bulb, making it ring like a bell.
“He will witness...and he will remember!”
In the silence that followed, the two detectives exchanged a slow look. Hard Boiled could smell his own terrified sweat and his partner’s cologne. He could see the fine details of Juniper’s scruffy little beard and eyes that had smiled, comforted, and bucked some sense into him all through those early days on the force when he was sure he’d never live up to his father’s name.
For some reason, a memory flitted through Hardy’s mind of the first moment he’d understood what it meant to be a cop.
It was the day he’d finished his third major case. The perp had put a gun in his own mouth rather than be taken alive. That might have been fine if he hadn’t also shot his kids, dog, and the post-mare.
Hardy’s talent had been giving him fits. Juniper dragged him out to a nice bar, bought him a drink, then hauled him into one of the booths off in the back and held him while he cried like a foal for a half hour before telling him to stop feeling sorry for himself.
The memory drifted away in a flash and Hardy was left with a distant, frightened ache. He had some notion of what was about to happen, because he knew Juniper. He tried to shake his head, but he couldn’t do much more than shift his chin side to side a few millimeters on the board he was cuffed over.
Juniper, for his part, was feeling oddly calm.
He wasn’t really afraid of dying. Dying was a always a possibility; it was part of being a cop. You were allowed to accept your own death. It was Hardy’s death he could never have accepted and he had no doubt that Stained Glass would kill his partner if he waited too long or tried to make some grand gesture. He’d kill his partner, and those poor girls, too. Then there would be three dead bodies.
Selfish, really, to choose to die first...but he’d done the math and there just wasn’t any way out of their predicament. Maybe with a few hours to think, he might have come up with something, but that was the beauty of the trap.
Turning back to Stained Glass, Juniper tugged his brown coat off his shoulders and dropped it in a pile. Pulling a knife out of one of the pockets with his teeth, he carefully shoved it under the straps of his gun harness, sawing at it for a moment until it snapped. Letting his pistol clatter on the stone-work, he stepped out of the remains.
He started to remove his badge off, Stained Glass shook his head.
“No! Leave it on, Detective Shores. You quite like the notion of dying with it and I find it...thematically appropriate.”
Hardy was starting to struggle in earnest, heaving against the cuffs, grunting in agony as the hooks in his back began to tear at his skin. He tried to speak again, but he still hadn’t quite got control of all of his muscles and it came out as a desperate whimper.
“Can I say goodbye?” Juniper asked, glancing meaningfully at his bound partner. His own voice sounded strange in his ears. Peaceful. Very peaceful.
“Oh, I insist!” Stained Glass replied. “Do be aware, I am watching your motions. If I see you do anything untoward, I can send enough voltage through his body to cook him in an instant. That would be very sad. We would have to see if the next couplet of officers who pursue me are more cooperative.”
His first step was stumbling, but as he moved over to his partner and sat down in front of him, Juniper felt his shoulders begin to relax. He looked down into Hardy’s upturned, pleading eyes.
“Well, kiddo,” he began, trying a smile. It was easier than he’d thought it would be. “This is where I get off. You make for damn sure whoever your next partner is treats you right. I don’t want somepony gutless watching your back.”
“J-Juni…” Hardy whispered as best he could.
Juniper leaned down and pressed his lips against Hard Boiled’s forehead for a moment, then lifted his head and murmured into his ear, “I’ll see you around, alright, kiddo? We ain’t done, you and me. Not by a long shot." He made to stand, then seemed to think better of it. "Oh, and while I’m thinking about it...make sure to bust the damn golden watch before they bury me with it. I don’t need something ticking in my coffin for the next fifty years or however long those enchantments last.”
With that, Juniper got back to his hooves and trotted off towards the glass ball, casting one last look over his shoulder at his partner. Hardy watched him go, his heart aching as he tried to gather breath to call out, to beg him to stop, but he couldn’t find the words. He knew, too, that Juniper wouldn’t stop.
Stained Glass was grinning with anticipation fit to burst. The killer tapped his captive hen on the flank and pointed towards the airlock on the side of the glass bulb, then took a few steps back. She moved mechanically towards the door, lifting each leg one at a time. It was a laborious process, but she made it within a minute or so.
Glass pressed a button on his remote and the airlock hissed open, swinging outward on a mechanized hinge.
Hardy began to struggle in earnest, rocking back and forth on the cinder blocks as he fought against his bonds with all his might. The hooks in his back were tearing at him, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but preventing his partner from entering that chamber.
Taking a moment to inspect the hen as she moved past him, Juniper blew out a breath and entered the airlock. The hen kept moving until she met the wall, pressing her cheek against it. One of her rear legs continued to lift, then drop, lift, then drop, like a child’s toy that hasn’t the sense to stop when it hits the skirting board.
Juniper stepped into the chamber, studying his opponent as the door slid shut behind him. The airlock hissed again and he had the oddest sensation of standing inside a soap bubble. Sounds from outside were, if anything, even louder than they had been. He fancied he could hear Hard Boiled’s labored breathing as he tried to free himself.
Rearing back, Juniper stepped into a hoof-boxing stance from his academy days. He wished, not for the first time, that he’d kept up with that, but as he called on them he found the old instincts were still there. They roared up out of memory, tightening his knees and loosening his shoulders.
“Are we doing this, or not?” he growled.
“We are most assuredly doing this, Detective,” Stained Glass purred, dropping his remote at his hooves and calmly stomping on it. “The program is already set. The storm will end soon and our little concert will begin. As a matter of fact, it began the moment the door was closed.”
Outside, Hardy could hear some piece of equipment begin to spool up with a sound like a roaring lion. A portion of the shaft they were in slid back, revealing a gigantic black concave; it took him a moment to identify it as a speaker. He gritted his teeth, expecting to find himself deafened, but instead, all he felt was a low thrum, deep in his chest.
Inside the cage, Stained Glass rose into a fighting pose, wings spread, forelegs readied. It was some kind of pegasus combat style Juniper wasn’t familiar with, but in an enclosed space, he knew an Earth pony had the advantage.
Launching himself across the tiny room, he slammed into Stained Glass, driving him back a step. Despite his age, the killer was in fantastic shape; it was like hitting a brick wall. That didn’t much matter to Juniper, though. He’d broken down walls before.
A blonde wing snapped across his vision, battering his jaw, sending him stumbling back, then his enemy was on him. As he grappled with the killer, driving his rear hooves into the bastard's soft belly, he began to feel a strange sensation in his legs; he could feel the bones in his knee - bones that had no right to be moving on their own - beginning to shake.
Hard Boiled had managed to heave the board he was tied to off the cinder-blocks, collapsing onto the floor. Getting his hooves under him, he started to rise, only to feel the hooks dig in more deeply on one side. He squirmed, crying out as he felt one of the barbs dig into a muscle. His legs went out from under him and he fell again, landing with his muzzle facing the chamber in the middle of the room.
Inside, his partner seemed to be floating as he wrestled with Stained Glass, the two of them hanging in mid-air, their bodies suspended by something unseen.
All at once, something pulsed, shaking the very air. It tore the two combatants away from one another. Hardy couldn’t tell which scream was Juniper’s, but their twin howls of mortal agony were loud enough that he wanted to cover his ears and close his eyes. He couldn’t, however. He could only watch as his partner’s body seemed gradually to stretch out, like putty. His legs grew longer and longer, and the screaming just wouldn’t stop.
After a few seconds, there was a spurt of blood against the chamber’s interior as the vibrations in the air built and built, though there was nothing to actually hear. He was left with only the endless drumbeat of his aching heart in the resulting silence.
----
Scene-change: The screen fades to white, then back to black. A few twinkling stars can be picked out in the distance.
Set: A panting, terrified young mare in a police uniform dashes out of the Weathervane, stumbling headlong to her patrol vehicle. Wrenching the door open, she snatches up her radio.
----
“Car twelve calling all stations! We need back-up to the location dispatch will be giving you! We’ve got two officers down, one unidentified subject down and...and so many dead! We need an ambulance! No, two ambulances! Oh Celestia, you won’t believe...send Slip Stitch! Send him right now! Send everypony! I’ve never seen anything...anything like it…”
----
In Memory of Detective Juniper Shores, who died in the line of duty.
Beloved friend and partner.
You were taken too soon.
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6713183 Is...that...good? *nervous whimpers*
-Chessie
Definitely an intense chapter. And its sad to see his fate.
though honestly, something suddenly seems off about this. STain glass was cruel, murdered so many. They were full of fear and hatred when they die.....
Mlp is a world where strong emotions hold sway. Jealousy can turn angels into devils, and anger can empower great evil. And at the same time, positive emotions and bonds creates a force far beyond either of them.
It seems that a murderer would be destroyed by his own actions. That he would have so much hatred, and fear, directed at him that eventually, a reaction will occur. And we all know what happens when hate and fear is directed at something.
6713239 I would say so. That's what brought me into reading this and the spinoff
I certainly hope Swift appreciates all this. Hardy has to relive the worst (thus far) night of his life and Gale has to deal with all the heartbreak and anguish.
I wonder if she is going to get up in Hardy's face for not dealing with these issues earlier and instead slipping into borderline suicidal self-pity alcoholism. ("You think you are the only pony who ever lost some one close to them Sir?!")
And we never got to see Mr. Glass' CM...
Oh god, by Hardy telling Swift this story he's given the Stained Glass Killer exactly what he wanted. That really sucks.
6713239 yes it's very good, so many think psychopaths are all rage and stab and slice, they can be cold calculating and appear very plain, you did it justice, I'm a huge fan of detective noir in story and film, and this just continues to deliver
Damn... Im actually gonna have to have a drink after reading this. You captured the... Insanity of the Stained Glass killer... remarkably well. And this explains a lot about why Hardy didn't want to have a partner at the start of the story. To see something like that... Damn... I need the next chapter now please lol
That guy...was several shades of seriously fucked up. Jeeeezus christ.
So, that's how Juniper went. What a horrible way to go.
There was a bit of a formatting error around here.
6713865 Thaaanks. Phew.
6713862
I can't describe to you what a beast this thing was to write. It wore ME out. I got drunk twice while writing it. That's an awful lot for me.
-Chessie
No effence but that was like something out of criminal minds. Plus Juni probably had no idea how true his last words to hardy were.
That was a good chapter but I'm not sure if I'll be sleeping tonight.
6713955 I dunno if you read the comments section through the first two thirds of this story, but there was a fairly constant refrain of 'You think that was fucked up? Baby, we haven't even started!'
We have now started.
-Chessie
6713966
Well, shit.
6713966 no I did but I had just caught up recently and had read some messed up thing from fallout equestria stories that have now been miffed on the psycho-level story wise.
'most horrible way possible' indeed...
Holy shit that was long!
And horribly sad.... and graphic.
And all beautiful.
Fuuuuuuck Juni nooooo
6714326 I hope it was enjoyable. The length really does worry me. I don't want people to get bored.
6714435 Yeah, that was my response. Now and then this story is kinda horrible.
-Chessie
6713862 mmm only issue i have is that....... well to do this requires killing mutiple beings with supernatural abilities inborn into their very blood.
aka, it seems more plasubile one would kill him rather than being able to continue.
"and than ten percent of the time when it was actually a dangerous situation never happened with body-armor and shotguns at the ready"
I think that something may have gotten confused in there; I'm afraid that I'm having trouble parsing it.
Well. That... sure was a thing. Not as if we were expecting the story of how Juniper Shores died to end happily, of course...
6713966
It's the "started" that scares me.
And this is why you never split the party. That was a terrible death, but at least in this case Juni got the satisfaction of knowing that Hardy got out alive, as opposed to so many others that sacrifice themselves, never knowing if they made a difference. What's worse is that the damned artist wasn't looking for global recognition that could be denied by burying the information. He got exactly what he wanted, and for the one pony that he wants to remember to never forget. To be made to forget would be a gift and a curse that I believe Hardy would never take.
*exhales*
Now that I've given my two cents on the more serious part of the story, I've got to wonder. The WeatherVane device used sound waves and had unexplained consequences that resulted in the thing shutting down. Would there be a possibility that Juniper was rent from his body, turned into sound, and got inserted, as the artist stated, into Hardy's brain? That would of course also imply that there is a chance that the artist is also roaming around in his head. Such a hypothesis does indeed sound impossible, but then again we're looking at a pony that can communicate with his heart.
Well, that gave me the shivers somethin' fierce. *shudders* You should've done the Saw movies. At least then the murder would have been semi-tasteful and interesting.
But seriously, this is a great installment. A thriller all the way around, and I'm honestly glad you went that extra length on the chapter to wrap up the flash-back. Enough to put real light on Hardy's mindset, and I hope Swift relaxes alittle on her aggravation with him. Still smacks him when he tries leaving her behind, but at least understands his mindset alittle better.
But there's one thing that's prickling my mind now: What did Ruby mean when she brought up Juni's death in her note? How did she know? Was there more to it, and everything we've seen here, then we realize? GAH! (Don't) Stop taunting us with your awesome writing, you mad fiend!
Headcanon most emphatically acquired. Of course they do…
Okay, that last scene requires musical accompaniment. and perhaps I found something that works, I dunno this is probably going to be playing in my brain now that I've paired it up with the last moments of Juniper Shores. And yes I'm rather aware of the title. - Angel of Team Angelfang
Well, that was all relatively... horrible. I could see most of that coming once SG started taking to Juni, but it's still hard to get through.
At least now we can get back to our lovable band of misfits and miscreants, right? I think Swift owes Hardy a hug.
6715779 I think so too.
-Chessie
Given Mr. Glass' predeliction for griffin "canvasses" and the griffins' blood-based economy, I think he missed an opportunity for some social commentary wrt money, greed, and materialism...
Blood-filled bathtub → "The Miser's Horde"
Jackson Pollock style blood splatters → "Spendthrift Living"
Exsanguinated griffin → "Generosity and Charity"
I guess it is a good thing Mr. Glass did not experiment with electricity...
6714936
It would appear so. I noticed a few things that would hint at the possibility that things are not entirely what they seem.
Of course I could be completely missing it...
Some ponies deserve to be brought back from the dead and used for something dreadful themselves. Griffin scratching post perhaps while kept on this side of Death?
6713865
Exploded with sound is probably less painful in the long term than being carved up into little pieces.
Anyone think Slip Stitch is a little too like this one in certain ways?
Ponies seeking immortality tend to make monsters of themselves in due time.
Considering later details/intimations about Hardy's gun I wonder if that glass bubble would really have stood a chance...
Wow, this is how you write a gratuitous serial killer, although the choose who to live scenario was too cliched, the circumstances sorrounding his death is pretty fookin gruesome. And for once juni was the one with the smart idea, if only they waited for backup.
6717981 now that you mention it...
6719311 Eh, I thought the whole 'We die together' thing was pretty good.
-Chessie
I want to get off Hard Boiled's wild ride.
But not really though.
Officer down, sweet Celestia, officer down......
6719600
I bet whoever made arsenic tooth pills thought the same thing
6722463 I will admit this was the hardest chapter to write so far.
-Chessie
6723356 Well, your hard work payed off. Because, at least in my honest opinion, this is probably one of the best chapters thus far.
Day-umn.
Just...Day-um.
This has taken over my life
6717981 Either die the hero, or live long enough to become the villain?
6748599 That was the sound of 'shit getting bad'.
-Chessie
6747270 There will be more chapters soon! I promise, I'm not trying to take over your life/soul. This isn't the first time I've gotten that accusation lately...
-Chessie
6749149 it's too late m8
Holy crap, Chessie. Just... Holy crap.
I think... I think I've just been traumatized by a story. That was utterly, perfectly, diabolically horrible. I've a strong stomach, and I took everything you and Kasen could throw at me in stride, but this... goddamn. I'm so emotionally invested now, I... I kinda wanted to throw up after reading this.
Promise me Hardy's getting cuddles after this? Like, weeks and weeks upon weeks of cuddles? From everypony. He needs it. He needs to be cuddled every day for the rest of his life, and it's still never gonna be enough.
Holy crap.
6752018 There will be some cuddles, yes.
-Chessie
That's it? I'm caught up now? Oh. Wow. What do I do now, then? What can I possibly say to summarise this story so far? Outstanding? Amazing? Heart-wrenching? Terrifying? No words can quite describe this story and the dynamics behind it. If there is a word, well, it'll be like pornography or the perfect turd. Can't quite describe it, but I'll know it when I see it.
Chessie, you are a mad fool with an artistic talent and too much time on your hands, and I commend you to the highest degree for it. Keep it up.
Definitely a bizarre story in many respects, but a good one.
Overall, very much enjoying it. All its nonsense and chaos and emotions and such.
Really enjoy the character you've got on display. Each one feels very unique.
Though i have some criticisms here and there. One being the reason why Hardy can't be tracked being his gun. His gun being an artifact of considerable power is a nice twist. But it being the reason he is avoiding magical detection is... Well kinda anti-climatic. Also kinda makes no sense considering he outright ingested a tracker and did not have the gun on his person at all times.
6759331 My guess would be that the gun neutralized the Scry, if we assume that it's an active enchantment.
Chess, we all love you.
In fact, if you made a patreon, I bet enough of us would support you to the point that you could live off it and
STOP TEMPTING ME WITH CLIFFHANGERS AND THEN DISAPPEARING.
Happy holidays!
P.S.: your psychopath was deliciously creepy. Did you research anyone to create him?
6766368 Just lots of thriller fiction, really.
-Chessie