Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale

by Chessie

Act 3 Chapter 16 : Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Two months in the deep frier and I was finally getting to tell somepony everything. How, though? Some part of me really wanted to edit for content, namely because there was a solid chance she’d think I was nuts if I didn’t, but so much of my story relied on those moments of mad intuition or crazed coincidence that I couldn’t really figure out how to pare the whole mess down.

So I did the worst thing a pony can when confronted with godlike forces demanding to know just what you’ve been up to that’s been shaking the fundament.

I told her the truth.

----

Twilight had her notepad and a glass of water ready. I wrapped my coat around myself like a blanket, watching the fire as I tried to think where to start.

“It was the day Swift and I first hooked up at the Detrot Police Department. As you can imagine, I wasn’t thrilled to have a partner who was half my size and fresh out of the Academy, but she’s just about the most persistent person I’ve ever met when she wants to be. My last partner...died...some years ago.”

The alicorn scratched her chin, and then a yellow file folder popped into being beside her and flicked open. “Juniper Shores during the Stained Glass case. I had some of my agents on that one, too.”

I scowled at her. “Much good they did.”

She shifted her weight and set the file down. “My resources are nothing like they were during the war, Detective. I’m just a pony, mostly. A teacher. But please, go on.”

As certain as I was that she was a whole lot more than just a teacher, I decided to let that slide for the moment.

“It was about to rain, but Swift and I arrived at the crime scene just in time. It was one of the stranger things I’d seen in my time on the force. Maybe not the strangest...in fact, probably not even in the top ten, but still pretty odd. The victim’s body was grey, the color of ashes. She was lying there in an alley outside a swanky hotel.”

“I’ve known a...well, one grey pony besides you. You’re more...dusky. What was special about her color?” Twilight asked.

I shook my head. “Her autopsy showed she was grey on the inside, too. Grey organs. Grey blood. We didn’t find out until a while later that somepony had practiced zebra necromancy on her. Stripped her soul right out of her body...”

She half rose from her seat, her wings flying open. “Necromancy?!”

I held out a hoof for her to sit down. “If you think that’s exciting, you’re not going to make it very far with this tale. Trust me. Necromancy is the least of what’s been going on. Ruby had been drugged with a ritual concoction that somehow pushed her soul into her horn, and then they cut it off with some kind of sharp blade. No idea how she still managed to get to the roof to throw herself off. That became a running theme of my next few weeks...”

----

“She really ate the meat?”

“Oh yeah. Wolfed it down. Speaking of wolfing, there’s something I want you to take a look at once Swift gets inside. It’s not worth describing right now. Better you actually get a look. Anyway, we searched the building. The girl was street pizza. Pretty easy to figure she jumped off the roof.”

----

“Swift recognized the medal. It was some kind of amulet the Vivarium gives to their employees. It’s a whorehouse...pardon, ‘escort service’, in the part of Detrot called The Heights. Stella is the name of the guy who runs the place. He’s a sea serpent. Would have been nice if my driver let me know that particular detail before our meeting.”

“I’m aware of Stella. He provided invaluable intelligence during the war,” Twilight affirmed.

“That dragon might like his lipstick thick and his stallions easy, but he plays the game better than anyone I know. He’s been running this brothel for the children of the children of his prostitutes since the founding of Detrot. Some of his customers were pretty high class characters in and around the city, but I was more surprised to discover Swift had relations there.”

“Relations...as in she was a customer?” she asked, casually plucking a loose feather from one wing and flicking it toward the fire.

“Ah! Hah, no. That’d be a sight. Relations, as in her mother and grandmare both worked there. Her grandmare, After Glow, is a real character. You’d like her.”

“I don’t doubt it. Mayfly keeps begging for a vacation in Detrot.”

“It’s her kind of place, no doubt. As things developed, the case and the Vivarium were fairly tightly intertwined. Somepony was stealing candid information about the customer base, but nopony could figure out how. They were fairly sure it was a mob boss by the name of King Cosmo trying to shove in on their territory.”

“I’ve heard of Cosmo. Real name ‘Jingle Jangle’,” she murmured. “His was one of several criminal organizations we were monitoring in Detrot over the last few months. Well...trying to monitor. It’s been getting harder and harder. I’ve lost contact with several ponies who’re...usually pretty reliable.”

“That’s a story I’ve heard before. We eventually discovered one of the Vivarium’s own employees snatching data straight from their security system and funneling it to King Cosmo. I got Ruby’s address from Stella, and there we went. It was deep in an area of Detrot called The Skids. Not a nice place.”

----

Twilight was sipping from a cup of tea that one of Mayfly’s drones had delivered a few minutes ago. The drone had brought a box of doughnuts along as well, and I was munching on one of those, covering my cushion in crumbs.

“So, these ‘Aroyos’ just let you through?” she wanted to know.

I shook my head, setting the doughnut to one side. “It took a bit of convincing. Juniper Shores and I had done them a favor some years back. They remember their debts. Once we reached Ruby’s apartment, I found this diary hidden in a special drawer inside her curio.” I laid a hoof on it. Her horn lit up, but I pinned the book down before she could lift it off the pillow. “Sorry, that stays with me.”

“I...just want to examine it, Detective,” she murmured.

“Your word.”

“What?”

“I want your word that this book comes back to my hooves. Even if you decide to put me in a hole in the ground once this story is over, you promise to give me back this book.”

She looked a bit hurt. “Do you still not trust me? I haven’t hurt you or anything.”

“And that’s a step. You’ve also given me no reason to trust you, yet, but I’m doing it. Some things require something more. So give me your word.”

“I...I promise. I’ll make sure that the book goes back to you no matter what.”

I removed my hoof from the diary, and she lifted it over, examining the cover. With a spark of magic, she popped open the lock. It would have taken Tome’s people days to get into that book, and it took her less than a minute. Alicorns, whatever else they might be, are scary customers.

“Hmmm...that’s some kind of spell on the pages. Layers and layers of masking spells, too. It looks like this was only meant to be read by one pony. A different pony than whoever laid the lock spells. How did you read it?” she asked.

“I was that one pony,” I replied with a helpless little shrug.

Twilight reached up with one wing and scratched a spot behind her ear. “Wait...I’m confused. Did you know Ruby Blue?”

“I hadn’t heard her name until I found her diary. Up to that point, she’d been using aliases. I couldn’t even get into it until I found Ruby’s sister who’d come to the city looking for her. That...that wasn’t until a while later.”

“That...errr...you’re saying this pony you’d never met and never heard of locked her diary with a magic that could only be broken by you?”

“That’s about the size of it, yeah. Me and her sister. We haven't figured out how she pulled this particular trick and trust me, that wasn’t the most irritating part of this mystery, either. We’ll get to that, though. We were at Ruby’s, and I was ambushed by the biggest, meanest bastard you ever saw. Thankfully, size is no matter to Swift.”

“Yeees, I read about your partner’s martial skills when I was digging through her file,” she mused. “She really beat a cockatrice with her bare hooves and wings?”

“Cross my heart, hope to fly. I saw the article. If you can believe it, she’s the least scary pony in her family. That does raise a question, though. What do your ‘files’ say about me?”

Her lips twitched into a smile made of pure, 100% cryptic bull-hockey.

“That you’re a better pony than you think you are,” she replied. “Go ahead, I’m still listening.”

----

“We caught Svelte in the act. She was a slippery bugger if ever there was one. Thankfully, most unicorns have some difficulty casting spells when they don’t have eardrums.”

Twilight rested her chin on the back of one foreleg. “You asked her who she was working for?”

“She was pretty cooperative, particularly when it came out that she wasn’t working of her own volition. We knew, by this point, that the King of Ace was behind the situation at the Vivarium. He wasn’t the puppet master, though. Our enemies have some type of high powered magical tracking spell called ‘The Scry’. They drug you with it, then can find you anywhere you go.”

“Hmmm...not one I’m familiar with, I’m afraid,” Twilight murmured. “There have been a million tracking spells. I made a few of them myself. We can look in the library later.”

I continued, “Svelte started off hunting for blackmail material, but somepony out there put a bounty on Ruby Blue, and King Cosmo was looking to collect. He redirected her attentions to that. Thankfully, after we caught her, she was able to point us at a ledger in a safe in Cosmo’s office that he used to collect blackmail material; lots of Detrot’s dirty secrets.”

The Princess started to open her muzzle, but I shut her down quickly.

“Sorry. That ledger is somewhere nopony is getting it. That includes nosey alicorns.”

She huffed and sat back down, giving me a well-practiced pouty face.

----

“I guess it wasn’t my best plan, but it was a plan. We showed up at Cosmo’s casino, basically threw ourselves at his hooves, gave him the diary, and begged for a bribe. The book was bugged, as were we.”

“That’s...that’s a really stupid plan. Still, it worked, right?” Twilight asked.

“For certain values of ‘worked’, yeah, it did. We didn’t die, and we managed to get a tracking bug into his safe and telephone. The diary was a buyoff not to kill us, and he immediately called whoever he was working for once we left. That’s how we found out about the existence of the Scry. He’d dosed me with it. Thankfully, the Scry doesn’t seem to trump my trump card. It was still a pretty spectacularly dumb way to go about things.”

“I’ve discovered, in my time, that that is sometimes the only sort of plan that works.” She squinted at me, blowing her flowing mane out of her eyes. “What is your ‘trump card’? And what sort of magic bug would survive a trip through the sort of wards a mob boss is likely to put around his office?”

“Eh...well, I guess this particular cat isn’t going back in his sack anytime soon. I’ll tell you how I’m dodging tracking spells in a minute, but this first.”

I fished out the bottle with the ladybug from one of my inside pockets, holding it up for her to examine. Twilight’s magic surrounded the container and its prisoner, and she pulled it close so she could peer at the trapped creature

“Oh! Is...is that a Ladybug, Detective?! Gosh, I’d...I’d almost forgotten about them!” she squealed, clapping her front hooves together as the creature tried to make itself as small as possible in the far corner of the bottle. “Did you know I made these?”

“No kidding? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised an alicorn would take an interest in creating life.”

Before I could stop her, she popped the cork. The tiny insect instantly zipped out and made for the door only to be snatched in mid-air by a magical glow. Realizing escape was unlikely, it slumped in her telekinetic grasp, sullenly floating back to hang in front of her, buzzing its wings now and then. “They’re so cute, aren’t they? Parasprite genetics mixed with a heap of other things. Too bad about the hivemind personality...”

I frowned, then offered the ladybug my hoof. The Princess released it, and the little creature flew over and set down on my toe, shivering fearfully as it cast what I took to be ugly looks at Twilight. “Clarify this for me. What does the Princess of Friendship need with an enchanted surveillance creature?”

“Oh, gosh...that’s hard to answer.” She hesitated, then stuck her pen in the side of her muzzle where she could chew on the tip. “I mean, it’s easy to answer, but you’re probably going to think less of me if I do...”

I ran a hoof through my disheveled mane, letting the ladybug hide itself in my fur as I exhaled a calming breath. “Look, Princess...You and I are probably the only two ponies in the world right now on the side of ‘good’ with an inkling of what is actually going on under the surface of Equestria. If your life has been anything like mine, you watched friends die while trying to save every life you possibly could. That meant doing some things that only let you salve your conscience with the knowledge that other people are still alive to hate you.”

Twilight’s eyes gradually unfocused, and she stared off into the distance. A lonely tear crept into the corner of her eye, then made its way down her cheek until it dripped off her chin. She caught it before it hit the pillow, levitating the tiny droplet on a thin, circular magical shield.

“You’re more right than you can possibly know, Detective,” she said, after a pause.

“If we’re going to work together, you might have to tell me.”

For a second, I thought she was going to, but then she flicked the tear away and picked up her pen again. “Lets finish with you first. You were telling me about King Cosmo.”

----

“Poor mad bastard was lying there beside his wife’s skeleton.”

Twilight gasped, dropping her pen. It clinked against the crystal floor, and she quickly snapped it up again.

“What...what was King Cosmo trying to do?!” she asked.

“So far as we can tell, he wanted to rebuild his family. Don’t ask me how he was going to go about that. His brother and mother were both dead, victims of an especially unscrupulous zebra shaman. That wasn’t the worst of what we found, though.”

“How can that possibly not be the worst?!” she exclaimed. I casually ran my hoof around the pouch on my chest. Her eyes were drawn to the spot, and she squinted at it. “Is that a zipper growing out of your skin?”

“It is.”

“And...and why is there a zipper growing out of your skin?”

“I suspect you’re not going to believe me, but...we found a heart in a box in a secret drawer the basement. A living, magic-powered heart, still beating. It was inside a velvet-lined case alongside King Cosmo’s ledger; it was his dead brother’s enchanted transplant heart, stolen from the boy’s grave.”

Twilight took a moment to put two and two together. When she did, her pupils shrank to dots, and her horn lit up. A flash of magic shot out, running over my body with a sensation like a warm spray of water. I winced at a tingle as her spell touched my chest.

“D-d-detective! Y-y-you have a c-changeling’s heart in your sternum!” she stammered, backing up to the edge of her pillow.

“Really? You’re kidding. I hadn’t noticed,” I replied in a dry monotone.

Her expression soured, and she tossed one of the nearby throw pillows in my general direction. I caught it in my teeth, then wrapped my forelegs around it and got comfortable again.

“You’ll be explaining how that happened, right?” she growled, with all the menace of a displeased bunny. For all I knew, she could blast me into orbit, but something about the Princess put me at ease. “That’s...that’s the heart from the box, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “We took Cosmo’s blackmail ledger, and I took the heart. I could never have told you why, but I’m glad I did.”

“I...hmmm. This...basement you found all of this in. What was it like?” Twilight asked.

“Strange. Not quite a serial killer lair, but definitely not your average office. King Cosmo had been doing some kind of…research into good things happening to bad ponies. This involved ponies who had somehow suddenly managed to fulfill their wildest dreams of power and excess. Once we’d escaped, Taxi and Swift were able to dig through the ledger. They discovered where exactly Cosmo was managing to get all of his Ace. He was also decoding all the information Svelte sent him in the same place.”

----

“The school was...a madhouse. Heavy magical contamination had animated all of the school supplies. They were prone to attacking anypony not wearing a school hall pass.”

Twilight blinked a couple of times, then burst out laughing. “Hah! Oh, Detective, that’s a good one! School hall passes! Teeheehee!” She let her giggles die down after a moment when I didn’t so much as crack a smile. “You’re...you were joking, right?”

“You asked for honest, so I’m giving you honest.”

“But...but that’s...that doesn’t make any sense!” she complained, throwing up her hooves.

“I didn’t say my story was going to make sense. There’s a part of me that thinks this whole mess is just a hallucination brought on by my own slow descent into madness. After all...” I picked up my teacup and took a little sip. It was delicious. “I’m sitting here having tea with a Princess in her magical crystal castle.”

Twilight’s brow wrinkled, and I had the feeling she was actually about to try to convince me she wasn’t a figment of my imagination.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” I chuckled, waving a hoof at her before steam could start pouring from her ears. “I’ve had plenty of hallucinations lately, and I’m getting pretty good at telling what’s real and what isn’t.”

“That’s not making me feel any better, Detective! It’s just making you sound crazy!”

“Oh, I’m crazy. No doubts there. Crazy has worked so far, though. Look at Stella’s people who volunteered to come with us. We had a maniacal griffin hen who barely came up to my knees, a pair of hyper-masochistic hoofball players, and a zebra so fast she might as well have teleported from place to place. All of them out of their minds, but...we walked out of there alive and finished all of our objectives.”

Twilight rubbed one of her slim eyebrows. “These were prostitutes?”

“S’right. Stella’s people are multi-talented.”

“And...this is...alongside Sweet Shine and Miss Cuddles?”

“Yeah. Cosmo had a bunch of chemists he was keeping down in the school auditorium. He’d turned the whole mess into a giant laboratory for churning out Ace and decrypting the information Svelte was pushing through to him from the Vivarium. Unlikely as it might sound, we managed to get through it with zero casualties.”

“Zero? How many guards were there?”

“More than a few. Back then, my driver was carting around this insane weapon called a P.E.A.C.E. cannon-”

“Oh! Ooh, ooh, ooh!” Twilight stomped her hooves on her pillow, excitedly, her former distress forgotten. “I remember those! Gosh, those were some of my favorite things in the whole war! A friend of mine made a round that could make a dragon breathe confetti instead of fire!”

“Con...confetti?”

“Yes! Nothing makes a dragon run away from a battle faster than breathing a mouthful of slightly ice-cream-flavored paper!”

I let out a loud snort. “Stella would kill me, but I’m tempted to slip one of those into his makeup. At any rate, we had a sleeping gas round that took out most of our opponents. The rest went down to a mixture of minor violence and luck, but in the end we had Cosmo’s drug lab and no dead bodies. We freed the chemists, and the magical contamination took care of the lab itself.”

“And...the information from the Vivarium?”

I mimed stepping on the information crystal. “Destroyed. After that, it was time to take on Cosmo himself.”

----

“I expected a fight or at least a disagreement. Cosmo was...drunk. His office was a mess, and the big bastard was lying there on the floor, crying like a foal. He was ranting, mostly incoherent garbage. Something about the people he was working for. We’d taken everything from him. His business. His brother’s heart. His family. I...don’t know. My memory is sort of vague. ”

“Your...your memory is vague?” Twilight’s lips dipped, and she pushed herself up. “How can your memory be vague? He might have told us who he was working for or had some sort of clue we could use!”

I shrugged, kicking my rear legs out as I turned my hips towards the warm fire. “Taxi’s memory is probably better than mine, but...I doubt it. She’d have told me before now if he said anything meaningful.”

“Why would she need to tell you? You were there!” the alicorn grumped, smacking her pillow. “This isn’t the kind of thing that usually just slips a pony’s mind!”

“Hey, two minutes after we walked in, I was on my way to the afterlife!” I snapped, half rising from my seat. “If the details are a tad vague, it’s because I had a severe shortage of blood to my brain! Do you want me to finish, or not?”

Twilight shrank down in her seat, and then her eyes hardened as she considered my words. “You’re saying you were injured?”

Sitting up, I tugged the zipper on my chest open, revealing the plug welded into my flesh. “I’m telling you what I know, alright Princess? There was a sniper sitting outside on a cloud. One of Cosmo’s lackies - a little scum sucker named Reginald Bari - was actually a plant by whoever was controlling the King of Ace. He was positioned to take over if Cosmo fell apart...and he told them we were coming. They sent a sniper. The sniper killed Cosmo...then he killed me. Blew my heart to bits!”

Her expression softened, and she crawled off her pillow. A pair of spectacles appeared, then dropped onto her nose as she inspected my chest. “B-but...recovery from a wound like this...even in a hospital with a hundred kinds of magic keeping you alive...it would take months! Where did they take you to heal?”

As she reached out to touch the plug, I pushed her hoof away. “Did you hear me? I was dead. D-E-A-D. I bled out in about twenty seconds.”

Twilight backed up a step and said, “That...that doesn’t make any sense! You’re sitting here, aren’t you?”

Finding myself suddenly restless, I rose from my cushion and trotted over to the fire, setting myself down in front of it to warm my hooves. I didn’t want to look at her just then. She was so pretty, and whatever my paranoia might be telling me I should be doing, I could tell she cared. She cared about me, just because I was alive and hurt. I couldn’t hide the hurt from her, either. Maybe there’s something in alicorns that just cares for those who’re in pain. Maybe part of what it takes to be an alicorn is that big, all-powerful caring.

Compassion like that doesn’t come along very often in this world.

“I’m...I’m sitting here, Princess. I shouldn’t be. That bullet hit me, and I lay down and I died. I saw the white light. I heard the singing of angels or whatever you want to call it. I expected…” My voice hitched, but I powered on. “I...I expected...I’d...I’d get to see Dad again. Mom. I thought I’d get to see everyone. So many dead ponies. I wanted to see all of them...”

Hot tears began to trickle down my cheeks as I watched the merry little fire sputter and flicker in its crystal hearth.

Damn those tears. Damn them for letting her see.

Where had they come from? I didn’t know. Maybe it was just some element of alicorn magic working on my mind, making me soft and stupid. For all I knew, she could have been behind everything that’d happened. That felt awfully weak, but I had to keep some walls up, didn’t I?

Something softer than anything I’d ever felt wrapped itself around my middle. I gasped, trying to back away, but there were warm, gentle legs around my neck, holding me in a vice like grip.

“No...no...no...I can’t...Celestia...I...” I stammered, trying to pull away. Maybe I tried. I think I wanted to, but Twilight was clutching me tightly. I was an insect to her, but she held me anyway.

Sweet skies, what would Juniper think if he could have seen me then? Crying against the chest of a Princess. Ugh. If anything, the jerk would probably tell me I could use it. It wasn’t a healthy or even a particularly satisfying cry; it was just the sobbing of a tired old stallion. Tired beyond words.

More than anything, I wanted her to lock me away so I could stop watching what’d become of Equestria. Maybe, if we were in the dungeon, I wouldn’t have to watch Swift or Taxi or Limerence die screaming on some battlefield in our not too distant future.

Time started to slip, and after awhile, I felt my eyes slide closed. Exhaustion had finally taken its toll.

My breathing slowed.

I fell into a dreamless sleep with my face in a mane that smelled of lavender and jasmine.

----

I woke feeling more rested than I could remember. Had I ever been so comfortable? Hard to say. Maybe when I was a colt, when I could still sleep without seeing the maddened eyes of my best friend’s father or the bloody splash of liquefied organs that used to be my partner haunting me through the nights.

It can best be said that rest hadn’t made me any less of a grumpy guts, but I was a happier misanthrope.

Slowly opening my eyes, I glanced around at my surroundings. I was in an oversized bedroom in a bed that might have doubled for an air-chariot landing pad. Crystal candle-fixtures hung from the ceiling, providing a gentle illumination. A dozen luxurious blankets were piled up at the bottom of the bed, while I was wrapped in a sheet. Whoever had put me in the bed hadn’t removed my coat or gun, but simply tucked me in and turned out the light. Ruby Blue’s diary was lying on the bedside table.

My last thoughts before I’d passed out - of Princess Twilight holding me as I wept - came boiling back to the surface.

Had I really let her see me like that?

Ah, well. At worst, there were still some explanations owed and maybe an apology or two.

A note on expensive stationary was pinned underneath the diary.

‘Detective,

You’ve been asleep for about twelve hours, subjective time. It’s really only been three or four, but I gave your personal timescale a bit of a nudge so you could get a good nap. I hope you don’t mind. It should have worn off by now. There’s a drone outside who knows where I am. Come out when you’re ready. Oh...and don’t shoot the drone. You may be sorely tempted.’

My personal timescale, huh? Cute. Could be worse, I supposed. Taxi’s definition of a ‘nudge’ would have been cutting off the flow of blood to my brain until I lost consciousness, then cuffing me to a bed until she judged I’d slept enough.

Much as I might have liked to lie there a little while longer, I still had a fair bit of my story that needed relating and too few hours before I’d be breaking a promise to Mags. Sliding out of the bed, I picked up the diary and slipped it back into my pocket, then headed for the door.

----

I poked my head out and found a tiny changeling that barely came up to my chest sitting against the far wall. She was wearing a bright yellow beanie with a spinning propeller, and playing with a yo-yo, the string hooked around one of her fangs.

Glancing up from her toy, she grinned and flipped the yo-yo into her muzzle, then tucked it under one of her wings. “You Mister Boiled?”

“Eh...phew. This is going to take some getting used to,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead. “What’s your designation?”

“Ain’t got no designation, daddy-oh!” she chirped, offering me a black hoof to shake. “I’m Maxine! Mom might like her numbers, but the boss calls the shots, and she likes me! You can call me Maxi.”

I chuckled, reaching out to give the propeller on her hat a flick with my toe. “Maxi, eh? Alright, Maxi. You know where Twilight is?”

The little drone spun in a circle, then pointed down the left hallway. “This way, daddy-oh! We’ll take the scenic route!” Her wings opened, and she zipped into the air, landing on my back and sliding down so her legs dangled off either side. Thankfully, she wasn’t very heavy. “Oooh, you’re comfortable. Like a rug, but with bones! I could get used to this.”

“Twilight said I wasn’t supposed to shoot you. Are you going to give me a reason to disappoint her?” I grumbled, giving my barrel a shake. She clung on a little tighter, refusing to be dislodged.

“You shoot me, you don’t get where you’re going! Besides, I got the hot gossip! Coppers like gossip, right? You should hear what the hivemind is saying about you guys! The whole honeycomb is buzzing...hee! Get it? Buzzing? Anyway...Giddyup! Haven’t got all day. Places to be!”

Much as I’d gotten used to my role as ‘mount’—since Mags was only about ten percent legs and making her walk meant taking on an irritatingly leisurely pace—I was still heavily considering giving the little scamp a good buck into the ceiling. Instead, I set off in the direction she’d indicated, making no attempt to keep my steps gentle.

After walking in silence for a few minutes, Maxi piped up. “Copper, tell me a thing. You showed up on that freaky train Mom’s got six ling’s watching, right?”

“Yes...and?”

“Sooo, what’s the boss got on you?”

I took a step to one side to let a changeling in a maid outfit dash by, a heap of plates levitating along behind her. “Sorry? What’s she got on me? She’s got nothing. I just met her.”

“No, no, no...that ain’t how this works,” Maxi scoffed, scooting up so she could set her chin between my ears. “The boss has stuff on everyone. Mom works for her because of all the free food and the nice hive and everything, but it ain’t like we can leave Ponyville. Half the cities in Equestria have some kind of magical changeling zapper somewhere. The shadows work for the boss cuz she lets them have those suits of armor and hog the T.V. room. Every single weirdo I’ve ever met owes her some kind of crazy debt or she’s blackmailed them so hard they can’t even see straight. So which are you?”

“I’m...neither,” I replied. “I think she’s a really sweet girl with a heart of solid piss and iron. She doesn’t own me though. Still sort of wonder where that ‘quiet librarian’ shtick she keeps playing at comes from. ”

Maxi snickered, giving one of my ears a playful nip which almost earned her a kick into the nearest wall. “Awww, baby-doll...that ‘quiet librarian’ thing is what the boss is actually like. She ain’t playing at being a nerd.”

I considered that in silence for a minute or two, then asked, “Tell me, do you like working for Twilight?”

“Oh, heh, yeah! Beats working for one of the other queens who’re hoping Princess Celestia just forgets grandma tried to invade Equestria during the famine fifty something years back. They want us all sneakin’ around like a bunch of mice. I dig havin’ coltfriends without wearing a pony suit all day!”

I leaned sideways so I could look up at her. “You have coltfriends who know you’re a changeling?”

“Awww, heck yeah!” she replied, wiggling her backside, “Ponyville boys can’t get enough of my fine little thorax!”

“How exactly does that work? I never heard of a town where ponies and changelings lived side by side in the open.”

Maxi rolled onto her back, crossing her back legs and using her forelegs for a pillow as she rode along. “You gotta understand...this is Twilight Sparkle’s town. Or at least, it was. She saved these ponies from stuff you’ll never hear about and fought things you can’t even imagine before the dragons came. She says ‘make nice with the changelings’, these ponies show up at your door with cake and ice cream. We keep ’em safe, they keep us fed, yeah? It works out nice!”

“Alright, fine, that explains how you stick around...but how is she keeping it a secret?”

Maxi shrugged and wriggled against my back until the propeller of her beanie buzzed against my neck. “Would you believe a secret alicorn has a secret hive of changelings and secret shadow monsters wandering around a little hick town this close to the capital? Reporters don’t come through here but once in awhile. They write a story about us, then they forgets they wrote it. Twilight burns it before it hits the presses. No harm, no foul.”

I stepped around a pair of Umbrum chatting to one another outside a door labeled ‘Sauna’ and replied, “You talk about her like she’s...somehow all knowing or something.”

The changeling let out a bark of laughter, sprawling bonelessly on my back. “She’d sure like everypony to think so. When I was a nymph, I sure believed it. Don’t nopony get me wrong here, I love that crazy bookworm. Best friend the changelings ever had, but...she’s a scary pony sometimes, too. You never saw a dragon quiver in his scales until he’s been on the receiving end of a lecture from the Princess of Hyper-Rainbow Death-Spankings. Speakin’ ‘o scary ponies...where’d you find that freak with the teeth, yo? She practically soaked her tail when Markovich offered her a B.L.T. I thought you ponies didn’t do meat.”

“Watch who you’re calling a freak, bug,” I growled, giving her warning shake. “That’s my partner you’re talking about.”

“Hey, makes no never mind to me, daddy-o!” she replied. “You got plenty of odd peeps anywho. The pretty colt’s been locked in the archive with Macy, the librarian, and a whole stack of pizza since you started your little nap. Macy is off the hivemind, too. She only does that when she’s boning or doing some super heavy research. Then there’s that crazy mare with the braid...”

“Wait...What’s Taxi been doing while I was out?” I asked nervously.

Maxi opened her mouth to reply, then coughed awkwardly into her hoof. “Ooof. Mom says if I tell you, she’ll bury me up to my neck in an anthill. We’re here, by the way.”

I’d mostly tuned out our surroundings as we walked. We were standing just outside a double-wide door that had a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the handle and one of Mayfly’s other drones—this one in guard armor—standing beside it. He was a little larger than I, with bright blue eyes and a couple of shiny metal piercings in one of his feelers.

Wings buzzed, and Maxi leapt off my back, trotting up to the guard. “Sup, Mordicai?”

Mordicai studied me a long moment before glancing down at the much smaller changeling with a disdainful look. “You could have let me know you were coming, Maxine.”

“Yeah, but then you’d totally have found an excuse not to be here,” she replied, sticking her forked tongue out at him. “I brought the pony, by the way. What’s the boss up to?”

The guard flicked his wickedly curved horn towards the door. “The Princess is in there with that pegasus. Was I going crazy, or did that little mare’s breath smell like bacon?”

“You’ll probably be happier thinking you’ve gone nuts,” I said.

“No doubt.” Turning, Mordicai tapped on the door and waited. I didn’t hear an answer, but after a few seconds, he turned back to us. “Go on in.”

Maxine started to reach for the door, only to be stopped by the guard’s leg. “She didn’t say you, Maxi. You’re on garbage duty for painting this on all of Section Ten’s armor,” he growled, turning sideways to show off a very detailed picture of a male phallus on his crupper plate.

The little changeling drooped, and the propeller on her hat slowed to a dejected crawl. “Awww…I thought no one saw me...”

“Hivemind, dummy! If you’re going to pull pranks, you better make sure you can hide your mental giggle fits. Now scoot!” the guard snapped, then picked her up in a burst of green magic, turned her about, and all but flung her towards the opposite end of the hall. She managed to catch herself with her wings and buzzed to a landing. Throwing a dirty look over her shoulder, she darted around the corner when his horn let off a threatening squirt of sparks.

Mordicai let out a loud sigh, shaking his head as he watched her go. “I swear, I don’t know why Mom hasn’t had that little mosquito stuffed and mounted by now...” He turned back to me, and the Do Not Disturb sign floated off the door. “Go ahead, Detective. She’s waiting for you.”

I touched my forehead with one hoof, respectfully, then pushed through into what turned out to be a sizeable study. All four walls were lined with bookshelves that reached right up to the ceiling, and a table piled high with enough books to build a small fort sat in the middle. Overhead, a few bulbs cleverly disguised to look like candles provided a comforting glow to a scene of intense concentration.

Twilight sat on one side of the table while Swift sat on the other, both of them glaring daggers at one another. My partner was minus her armor and weapons, and a third of a sandwich sat on a small saucer beside her next to a tall glass of milk.

Between them was an elaborate arrangement of cards that had taken over half the table. Neither pony seemed to have noticed me as Swift slowly pulled a card from a stack beside her hooves.

“Hah! Judgement Finale!” she exclaimed, tossing it onto the battlefield.

Twilight’s lips twitched into a small smile as she plucked a card from the stack in front of her and laid it across Swift’s. “Magical Riposte.”

My partner’s eyes went wide, then she moaned and dropped her remaining cards in a heap in the center of the table. “Ooog…Couldn’t you have at least pretended to lose? Beating a Princess would be the best bragging rights ever.”

The alicorn began gathering up her collection, sorting it from Swift’s and carefully stacking them in two separate piles. “After what you asked me in the limo? Never.” My partner’s cheeks flushed, and she ducked her head. Twilight must have been feeling merciful, because she added, “Maybe if you want to play again when everything is over, I wouldn’t mind showing you some neat tricks.” Setting aside her deck, she smiled up at me. “Did you have a good nap, Detective?”

“Pretty good, thanks. This is what you spent the last three hours doing?” I asked, gesturing at the table.

“Well, not just this,” Twilight replied, pointing at the tip of her horn that was still letting out a weak glow. “I’ve been examining your partner’s transformation while we played. She told me a little of what happened after you were shot, particularly with regards to her friend, Grapeshot.” The magical aura around her horn died. “I’m...I’m afraid I can’t change her back into a normal pony, nor anyone similarly afflicted. Not without a few months or years of research, anyway.”

“Why not? I thought alicorn magic-”

She quickly cut me off with a sweep of her hoof. “Alicorn magic is the problem. I could change her back right now, but I’d cook every cell in her head doing it. This kind of transformation is incredibly subtle. Without the spell that was used to do it, reversing it is...is like trying to get a broken egg back together with the end of a bulldozer.”

Swift brushed a hoof through her spiked mane. “Sir, can I register that I don’t ever want to be the egg in that metaphor? Really, I don’t mind being like this. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with extra mayonnaise!”

Twilight gave her a queasy look, then swept the various books off the table into a heap on the floor before teleporting in a fresh sheaf of paper and a whole stack of pens.

“I’d like to get down to business if you don’t mind, Detective. Now, where were we? Oh! Yes! You were just telling me how you ended up with the changeling heart in your chest.”

----

“Well, waking up inside a morgue is about the...eh...maybe the fifth most unpleasant thing that’s happened to me since this particular case started.”

Twilight’s pen paused over her paper, and she looked up. “The fifth?”

“Yeah, thereabouts.”

“Sir, was that higher or lower than the swim through the sewer?” Swift asked, wrinkling her nose at the memory.

“Oh, definitely nicer than that,” I replied, tapping my chin. “Truth be, I mostly just remember needing to pee. The coroner’s assistant got me on my hooves and filled me in. Turned out Taxi made a deal with Don Tome for some spells that would let her install a new heart. They put me on fluids, stuck me in a drawer...and Gale did the rest.”

Twilight squinted at me. “Gale?”

“Eh...sorry. That’s what I call Jingle Jangle’s little brother. He’s the previous owner of this heart,” I answered, tapping my plug. “His own failed...and a zebra shaman gave him a changeling heart that fed off of love. Sadly, it fed off his parent’s love so completely that they stopped loving each other. When his father killed his mother, the colt died, too.”

“That’s...that’s so sad,” the Princess murmured. “Does...does that mean you need love to survive?”

“Thankfully not. I’m wired for regular old grid power, or maybe unicorn juice. Little Cosmo, though...” I shut my eyes and concentrated on the part of my chest I generally associated with my heart. A flood of warm affection rose up, and I couldn’t help but smile. “He’s in here. Maybe an imprint, or a spirit, or something. I can still feel him. Sometimes I get flashes of his memories in my sleep. There aren’t many.”

“Hmmm...there’s some precedent for similar things with a normal transplant,” Twilight mused, scratching at her paper with her pen. “Ponies having sudden talents develop and so on. I don’t know that anypony has ever managed to come back from the grave with a transplant, though.”

“Well, this talent...I don’t even know how to describe it. I heal like a beast. I’ve gone from heavy concussion to just fine in a matter of minutes. Then there’s the endurance and who knows what else? Still discovering the limits,” I continued. “As I was saying, Taxi left me a note assuming I’d wake up. It took a month for the heart to do...whatever it did. When I got up, I had batteries, no job, no transport, no money, and somepony burned my apartment to the ground.”

Pausing, Twilight pointed at my pocket. “I assume they were searching for that diary?”

“That, or they were searching for me. After Monte Cheval, I guess they assumed I was in hiding. Hard to say. Doesn’t really matter. A million case files, a few ties, and a package of old ravioli were about the only things I lost that meant anything to me.”

“And...what did you do then?”

I rubbed my jaw, trying to think about how to tell her what’d happened next. “I picked up Taxi from a hotel she’d been hiding in...and I went down to police headquarters.”

Swift giggled, putting her hooves over her mouth for a second. “He hung his badge on the Chief of Police’s horn!”

The ballpoint pen hit the floor and rolled under my hooves. “You...you did what to Iris Jade?!” Twilight stammered.

“I...eh...it...erm...she and I have a...um...complex relationship,” I replied, trying to look anywhere but at the Princess.

“Just the crimes I know she committed could fill a book! She...she just let you go?”

“Oh, no...I ran like a scared rabbit the second the door was closed,” I chuckled, wheeling my hooves in the air like I was running. “We called up a friend of mine who’d been watching out for Swift and ‘acquired’ her from a little dive she’d been staying at in a place called Sky Town. She was...half out of her mind. Whatever magic was transforming her had done something ugly to her brain. Thought I was a hallucination. I don’t blame her. Last she’d seen me, I had a three inch hole in my chest.”

Swift gave me a conflicted look, then turned to the Princess. “Ma’am...I tried to attack him. With my teeth. I don’t know if he told you, but...I’ve been attacking Sentient Constructs, too.”

“It’s a compulsion of some sort,” I clarified at Twilight’s wary glance. “We took her down to the Vivarium. They have a number of competent enchanters working there, and they removed the worst of the spell. I say ‘the worst of’, mind you. We had to find...other means of removing the drive to attack Essies.”

“And these ‘other means’ would be?” Twilight asked intently.

Swift and I exchanged a look, and I settled a bit deeper into my seat. “There’s a whole heap of badness that comes before that mess will make any sense…”

----

“Taxi was...well, I don’t know if I can explain Taxi…”

Twilight flicked a folder out of midair and set it on the floor in front of me. “I think we’ll both be wanting an explanation from her at a point.”

Picking up the folder, I scanned down the first page. It was an incident report. There was a picture that looked like somepony had splatter painted with blood and bits of skin paperclipped to the top.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“My agent’s report of her partner’s death. I was about to bury Skinner, but your driver did the work for me. Skinner was working for the griffins, smuggling...amongst other things, illegal hides and narcotics. We suspected his activities might have been funded by elements within the griffin government. Normally, I’d have swept it all under the rug and counted my lucky stars nopony started a war, but there are some big holes in both this report and the one that was submitted to the police. For instance, the police report indicated some kind of internal dispute that allowed Miss Sweet Shine and Mister Fox Glove to escape after they’d been captured.”

“I’ve read the report,” I grunted.

“Yes, and that report didn’t include the fact that Skinner was killed with his own knife and it was covered in your driver’s blood. So was the weapon that killed Mister Fox Glove...”

I slapped the folder down like it was a snake and put a hoof up to forestall whatever she’d been about to say. “Sorry, not playing this game.”

“What game, Detective?” she asked, bemused.

“I made a promise to Taxi that I’d listen, but not here and not now. You’re here for my story. Not hers. She wants to tell you, she’ll tell you. Otherwise, you might as well squeeze blood from a stone as get answers when she doesn’t want to give them.”

“I...o-okay,” Twilight murmured, and the file vanished.

I resumed my story.

“As I was saying...Taxi is complicated. She made a deal with Don Tome for the spells and magics necessary to bring me back from death. Not real necromancy, but something close enough I doubt a judge would care. The heart keeps me alive and has a few side benefits, but it came with a price.”

“A...price?”

“Tome and I were friends for an awful lot of years. My former partner, Juniper, introduced us. I don’t know what you know about Tome, but—”

“He was on the side of good,” Twilight said, softly. “He didn’t kill if he didn’t have to, and his ‘profits’ were made making certain Equestria survived. I wish...I wish he’d tried to operate inside some legal channels, but I...I understand why he didn’t.”

I tilted my head. “You sound like you knew him.”

“I…” She hesitated, wiggling her hoof as she hunted for a particular word. “I... admired him. Some way or another, I’ve met thousands of ponies. I have to use spells to keep all their names and histories straight in my head. Tome was a master of politicking and keeping ponies from killing each other. He...searched for me for years, and I shared a cup of tea with him several times.”

“You...you met him? As in, in person?” Swift asked.

She nodded, a profound sadness in her eyes. “He...he wouldn’t remember. We shared tea last about three years ago. I told him everything about me. He tried to record everything, but I erased it...along with his memory. I needed someone to talk to back when one of my friends...moved on.”

I swallowed audibly. “Is that what’s going to happen to me when this is over? Cook my noodle, then drop me in a hole somewhere with nothing but a vague sense of disquiet?”

“Oh, Detective! No!” she exclaimed, seeming genuinely shocked at the suggestion. “I need your memory intact!”

It took me a moment to wrap my head around the implications of that reply.

“So...We’re not going in the dungeon?”

“Not if I can help it! Gosh, you really do have trust issues!”

“Says Miss Erased-Herself-From-History!”

“...Fair point...well made…”

----

“Tome, you may or may not be aware, always extracts a price for his services. In this case, he wanted us to find some fairly specialized artifacts. Weapons prototypes. Somepony had been stealing from several of his caches, and he thought we might be able to help. These particular prototypes used the magic of the Moon and were said to have been built by Princess Luna herself. They were being held—”

Twilight suddenly leaped from her seat. “Wait, wait, wait...the Lunar Dispersion Ray Mark Zeros?! Somepony found them?!”

“Huh...we’d just been calling them ‘Moon Guns’. Funny laser looking things? Cut a pony like a hot knife through butter?”

“That’s them! Oh my gosh, I thought those had been lost forever!” she squeaked, bouncing up onto the tips of her hooves. “Where are they?”

“Right now? After we found them, I gave eleven of them to a dragon. They’re in his private hoard. Though one of them’s in bits,” I replied. “The last one? No clue.”

Three single hairs separated themselves from Twilight’s mane and began to slowly uncurl. “You...you...g-gave them to...a dragon?!”

“He’s a pretty trustworthy dragon,” I answered, casually.

“No, no, no! A dragon? You put anti-dragon weaponry in the hooves of a dragon! Even having that stuff exist is a violation of the treaty and you gave it—”

I cut her off with a tap of my back hoof on the floor. “I gave them to Stella.”

Twilight’s lip twitched, and she shut her eyes. “Why is that better?”

“Because Stella is about as hated as any dragon can be. He sided with us during the war, right? He’s been a protector of ponykind for decades. Giving those guns to that dragon may as well have been tossing them down the deepest pit in the world. Nobody...nobody...will find out, and if the dragons really are invading us, then we might need them. Got me?”

She didn’t look happy about it, but she nodded stiffly.

“May I continue?”

“Yes...please.”

“Alright. Tome suspected someone in his organization was working against him. He was right...but we haven’t figured out who it was. He said he’d try to help us find whatever they’d been hunting Ruby for. At the time, nopony knew it was the Nightmare’s Helm. In exchange we had to take his son with us and keep him safe. There was something of an issue of succession in the Archivists, but I think that might have just been an excuse to send Limerence along.”

“And...how did this end with you standing on stage beside Astral Skylark outside the History Museum?” Twilight asked, tugging her spectacles down to rest against her chest. “That was when you started to show up on our radar as an involved party.”

“You’re aware of Professor Fizzle?” I asked.

She nodded. “I...I’ll just say ‘very’.”

“Are you aware he’s dead?”

Twilight jerked her head up so hard she almost pitched over backwards. “What?! My information only said he’d disappeared! He’s gone no-contact before plenty of times! Wh-what happened?! The armor was in his care, but with all the spells on the case it couldn’t have moved—”

“The armor moved,” I said, curtly. “Fizzle was one of Tome’s ‘vault holders’. He had the Moon Guns. While we were there, Limerence noticed the armor in the case was a forgery. A very good forgery, but one by a forger he’d run into before. We found Fizzle’s body behind a few magical wards inside his office. His...remains...were in the same condition as Ruby Blue’s. Grey organs. No horn. No soul.”

Twilight stood there for a good half minute, her lower jaw hanging around her hooves, staring at me with wide, teary eyes. “He...he’s...d-dead?” she repeated.

“Associates of ours covered it up,” I added. “They’re...idiots, but they do the job. We’ll get to them later.”

Shutting her eyes, the Princess pushed her chair back, then trotted around the table to the door. Poking her head out, she said something to the guard.

Swift leaned over to me. “Sir, are we going to tell her about those bat ponies?” she asked.

“I figure we can tell her most everything. Nopony could fake being as earnest as this mare,” I replied. “I’ve been watching her. I think she’s smart enough to be incredibly, incredibly dangerous...but she’s about as subtle as you are.”

“I can be subtle!” Swift bit back.

I jabbed at her foreleg. She wasn’t wearing Masamane, but I think the point was made. “Kid, you carry a gun that inspires penis envy in hump-back whales. Name one time you have ever been subtle, ever.”

Swift scowled and, instead of answering, swatted at me with one of her wings. I was ready for it and grabbed the edge in my teeth, giving her a little poke under the joint. She let out a ticklish squeal and clapped her wings to her sides. “I’m going to put bubblegum in your plug while you sleep, Sir.”

“I’ll put peanut butter under your upper lip, then take pictures for your grandmare, Scarlet, and Stella.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Try me.”

Twilight returned from her conversation with the guard holding three pints of ice cream in her levitation field. She set one down in front of herself, then two more in front of Swift and me. I picked up mine and read the label: ‘Tequila Flavor’. Swift’s was Mint Julep.

“Alcoholic ice cream?” I asked, peeling the top off. She hadn’t provided a spoon, so I just used the tip of my hoof. It was delicious.

“Small blessings of being an alicorn,” she sighed. “I don’t have to watch my figure near so much as I used to, and the drones like to experiment in the kitchen. There’s one who would have a cutie mark in culinary chemistry if changelings got cutie marks. I thought we might all want something a little bit stronger than tea.”

“Mmm, that’s really tasty…” Swift murmured. She had a bit of her Mint Julep on the end of her nose and was trying to reach it with her tongue.

“Thank you.” Twilight turned back to me with her full attention and a spoon levitating beside her head. “Now...Detective. Professor Fizzle. Who are these ‘friends’ of yours who moved his body?”

“I’m fairly sure you’re aware of them. A pair of dimwitted bat ponies, name of Night Bloom and Cereus?”

A single drop of ice cream slid down her spoon and landed on the carpet. “Buh...they…”

“Reported everything was ‘all clear’, then tried to cover their own flanks? Yes, yes they did.”

“No, no, no! They’re my agents! They should have reported back to us if anything happened! I sent them out there to get Night Bloom away from Canterlot and get Cereus away from Princess Luna so she’d stop sending him dirty notes as classified government communiques!”

I scratched at my nose, then took another muzzlefull of my ice cream as I considered a response. “So...you’re the head of M6. Why am I not surprised?”

Twilight’s lips twitched, and she took a moment to mentally reboot. “You...met my agents, and they told you the name of the agency?! Are you sure you didn’t...I don’t know...torture them or something? Please tell me you tortured them for that information…”

“Nope. They took me round to one of their lovely hideouts. Fed me hayfries. Pretty good ones, too. Nice guy, that Cereus. Bit of an idiot on the surface, but I think there’re some hidden depths there. Feel bad for Night Bloom. She’s about as much a secret agent as I am. If we all survive this, get that filly back behind a desk...stat.”

Ever seen a depressed alicorn? Saddest thing in the world. I wanted to give her a hug but got the feeling that that might not be welcome just then.

“Ugh...I knew I should have been looking at the training program for non-field agents more closely,” she groaned, putting a hoof against her forehead. “How did this happen? I sent them out there to guard the armor while it was in transition. We had some indications it might not be safe in Canterlot, and nopony knew the helm had been stolen all those years ago.”

“What sort of ‘indications’?” I asked.

Twilight tapped her spoon on the table, then pointed out the window. “One of my ponies in Canterlot found that there had been magical scans done in the area of the vault, targeting the location of the armor. Princess Luna and I decided to use one of our contingency plans for somepony stealing the armor: the grand tour.”

“Yes, but why would you even rebuild something like that? Wasn’t the armor in pieces?” Swift wanted to know.

“It...it was the war,” she answered, miserably jamming another mouthful of ice cream into her muzzle. “We didn’t know if...if we might be able to use it or something if everything got really bad. It turned out to be for nothing, or at least, we could never make it do anything.”

“That’s one of those ideas where the person in the committee who came up with it should have been slapped and sent to stand in the corner,” I commented.

“I agree,” she muttered as her cheeks turned a slightly darker shade of purple. “Particularly since I was the one who suggested it.”

“Ah…”

Swift gave me a little tap on the shoulder with her wingtip. “Sir, your hoof is not tasty. You should stop trying to swallow it.”

“You’re one to talk, kid.” Pulling myself up, I got to my hooves, pacing back and forth in front of the table. “So, you sent the two most woefully unprepared ponies to guard a set of armor that didn’t do anything, to your knowledge?”

“Well...they were ordered to ‘guard’ it, but really...our risk assessments on the ‘grand tour’ were that it would be statistically impossible at any given location to actually steal the armor, and there were many more ponies guarding it during the moves from place to pace,” Twilight explained. “They just weren’t needed when it was stationary. Those wards—”

“Were still in place,” I interrupted. “The wards hadn’t moved an inch. Somepony opened the case with full and complete knowledge, removed the armor, then shut it again and replaced the wards.”

“B-but...but that’s not… Nopony b-besides Professor Fizzle and myself knew what wards were in place!”

“When you have an explanation, I’d love to hear it,” I replied, switching tracks. “Until then...we chased off after the pony who forged the armor. They were...fairly cooperative once we let them know what had happened to the Professor. They’d been contracted by a small time criminal fixer calling himself ‘The Drum Beat’.”

“Wait, who was the forger?” Twilight asked, snatching a piece of paper from her pile and holding her pen poised above it.

I took a moment to consider my next words. Did I really owe the Great Ghoulini and Patter anything? Theoretically, no. They were criminals, or rather, she was a criminal. Still, she wasn’t a murderer, and she’d done me a favor she didn’t really have to do. That, and the most any jury would give her would be a bit of time in a mental hospital. Who knew? I might need an expert counterfeiter one day before all was said and done.

“Sorry. Privileged information,” I said, finally.

“Is...is this one of those ponies you’re protecting, Detective? A...a professional counterfeiter?”

“They are. Drum Beat was the real prize. He was the pony who’d been working for Cosmo, who’d set up the hit on both of us. He pointed us at Astral Skylark and the Church of the Lunar Passage.”

----

“Your agents managed to get me out of The Drum Beat’s hole, but not before the Detrot Police Department captured Swift.”

“Night Bloom and Cereus were watching you?” Twilight asked, scraping out the bottom of her pint of ice cream, then tipping it up to get the last dribbles out.

“Yeah. Somepony sent them out to Detrot with a list of names that’d all retired from the scene and a pile of garbage contact information.”

The Princess’s lip curled, and she wiped a bit of her dessert off her muzzle with one fetlock. “No I didn’t! My information on Detrot might not have been perfect, but I had at least half a dozen agents in that city, all of whom sent me regular reports! My head of the Pan-Wester Equestria Liaison Office in Clydesville is very diligent! There’s nopony more thorough than Shadow Courser! She’s been with my agency for years, and she wouldn’t send agents to the borderlands without support!”

I squinted at her, setting my pint back on the table. “Mmm...so, where is she?”

Twilight, whose dander was well and truly up, paused for a moment. “What?”

“Where is this Shadow Courser? She’s who Night Bloom and Cereus would have been reporting to, right?”

“Um...yes. Yes, she is.”

“They seemed to think there was some kind of ‘mole hunt’ on, and they’d been cut off from Canterlot. Somepony told them that that was the case, and that their head of operations had disappeared. So...where is she?”

“Um...I...oh...erm...Let me see.” Twilight’s horn lit, and her eyes flicked from left to right a few times, as though she were reading something. Her expression gradually fell into one of quiet distress. “I...I have a report from a week before the Darkening that says she should have been in Canterlot during the Summer Sun Celebration. She requested a leave of absence to spend time with family in Canterlot several weeks before the event, bought tickets, and arranged luggage shipment before the storms began...but there’s another set of tickets for Manehattan for the same dates with one of her aliases on them...Oh my...”

“Let me guess. You just found another set of tickets for somewhere outside of Equestria, booked using a different alias, about three hours after she’d have arrived in Manehattan, didn’t you?”

Twilight’s magical aura faded, and she slumped over the table, burying her head in her crossed forelegs. “Yes. Two one way tickets to the Southern Badlands. It was Shadow Courser’s aide-de-camp who discovered the tampering in the vault, too. She went along to meet Shadow’s family. Nothing suspicious there, except...oh, I feel like a fool. Courser didn’t have any family in Canterlot. She had an estranged ex-wife. They hated each other.”

“And...nopony noticed this, Ma’am?” Swift asked, unable to hide her disquiet. “That’s an awful lot of loose ends.”

“We can’t be everywhere at once!” the princess replied defensively. “I mean, we would probably have caught the discrepancy eventually. It’s been very busy around here lately!”

“Then I think I’m starting to see the shape of this particular disaster,” I began, rising from my chair and facing the door. “Miss Courser cuts off Nightbloom and Cereus with an apparent mole hunt, feeds you garbage about the situation in Detrot, fakes reports from your agents in the city…” I wrinkled my brow as a thought struck me. “Did this pony know who was going to be warding the armor?”

Twilight nodded, glumly. “Of course she knew. She was involved in almost every aspect except the guard conditions during transition. Ugh...I’ve been stupid. I trusted her!”

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned lately, Princess, it’s that anypony can be blackmailed,” I replied. “She might well have served you faithfully, but nopony’s loyalties sit comfortably when someone has a gun to their head or the head of one of their loved ones. I suspect, though, that if we were to chase them down right now, we’d find a pair of anonymous corpses in a dumpster somewhere in the Badlands.”

“Princesses help me, she designed some of our security measures. She must have known exactly how to get by them,” she whispered, lower lip quivering with emotion. “I...I was there at her daughter’s cuteceanara.”

”Ma’am...if her daughter was on the line, maybe you can find it in yourself to forgive her one day,” Swift said, reaching out to lay a consoling hoof on top of Twilight’s. The Princess made no move to push her away and seemed to take a bit of comfort from the friendly contact. “We...I mean, after Chief Iris Jade captured me, Hardy had to go to Headquarters to get me back. We found out that the Chief’s daughter had ended up a member of the church and left her mother...and they’d been blackmailing her the whole time. She almost gave us to them.”

“How...how did you convince them not to?” Twilight asked, her eyes still dark and a bit listless as she picked up her notepad and pen again.

“Mostly by offering Jade the one thing she wanted more than my head,” I answered, picking a napkin up off Twilight’s table to wipe my hooves with, then tossing it in the wastepaper basket. “I offered to find her daughter. We knew they were likely keeping the Moon Guns in a secure location and figured, if they had a kidnap victim, there was a decent chance they’d be in the same place. Thankfully, their ‘safehouse’ was in a place that was a known quantity.”

“Safehouses are supposed to be hard to find. Where was it?”

“You’re aware of Supermax?”

Twilight’s pen stopped for a minute, then took up its scribbling again. She didn’t look up at me as she continued writing. “I...I guess I should have guessed that. We heard about the purchase, and I hadn’t been able to get any of my ponies inside. I helped shut down the...the…” Her jaw clenched tightly. “—the monstrosity, that the former warden committed there.”

“Tourniquet isn’t a monstrosity!” Swift burst out, jumping up and planting her hooves on the table. “She’s my friend!” Both the alicorn and I stared at her as the reality of what she’d just done found purchase. When it finally occurred to Swift what she’d just said, she covered her mouth and sat down heavily. “I mean...I...there’s...um…oooh, gosh…C-could you just forget I said anything, please?”

“Did...did you just say that the...the construct...is a-awake?” Twilight sputtered, hopping up so fast her chair pitched over backwards. When her language centers caught up to her shocked mind she asked, “How is that possible?! Is it...is it feeding?!”

“We...took a little journey to Tartarus. Saussurea was willing to cooperate with us on the condition we shut Supermax down. She gave us blueprints that let us find a passage through the sewers. Once we were inside, we met Tourniquet.”

“Yes, but how?!”

“You want me to explain while you put out the fire and get another pen?”

Twilight looked down to find her paper smoldering in her magical aura and her ballpoint pen slowly melting. She released her spell, and they both hit the table with a wet splash of ink and scattered ashes.

“Oh...sorry. Just...just give me a minute,” she muttered, drawing in a deep breath and pushing her hoof away from her chest. I’d seen Taxi do that precise thing a few times when she was warding off a panic attack. As she finished the little exercise, she shut her eyes and crawled down from her chair to sit on her haunches beside the table, using it to hold herself up. “Just...let me ask this. The construct. How did Skylark wake it up?”

“You’re going to have to give me another promise to keep your head until after I explain the situation entirely.” I gestured at the melted pen. “I don’t need that happening to me.”

She gulped and tapped her horn with one hoof. “I promise. I’ll do my best. Please, tell me?”

I nodded. “We found a number of Skylark’s former followers in Tourniquet’s chamber, tied to the corpse of a dragon. All seven had their souls burned, probably to fuel the spell to awaken her. Skylark learned some pretty ugly necromancy from somepony... No idea who. She’d wired Supermax to let her channel the spell that fed off magic into the robes of her followers. She was...trying to turn herself into an alicorn using some kind of spell core.”

“A-ascension?” Twilight blinked a few times. “That’s not possible. Only a few ponies have ascended! It takes enormous magic or a genetic predisposition that exists in only one in a billion ponies to ascend! She couldn’t do it with a spell! That’s crazy!”

“The spell core was wired to kill her, Ma’am,” Swift said, making a motion like something exploding. “Somepony gave her a spell in exchange for...um...in exchange for…um…” She looked at me for permission, and I bobbed my head. “—parts.”

Twilight cocked her ears to one side. “What...what kind of parts?”

“Body parts,” I said, affirming what I suspected she already knew. “Horns charged with magic and the souls of ponies. Wings. Hooves. She was using them in her ascension spell but was also giving them to somepony else in exchange for various favors. We haven’t found out who yet, but our break-in at Supermax was timed such that we found ourselves in the middle of some kind of secret ceremony. Cultists. I don’t know what changed, but...somepony twigged that Jade wasn’t in their pocket anymore. They were going to kill her daughter, Cerise. They’d loaded the kid up with enough energy to cook her alive using some version of that spell woven into the robes of her followers. A whole heap of the richest, most influential ponies in Detrot were there. Skylark...died...after trying to set off the spell core. The rest are being held in Supermax.”

It was a long minute or two before the Princess said anything, and when she did, she looked almost woozy. “Oooh...I think I’m going to need a nap myself, soon…”

“You want to take a break?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No...No, I think...I think I should hear everything. If I need to stop, I’ll let you know. So, you somehow subdued a whole building full of...what? Cultists, you called them?”

“Nightmare Moon worshipers.” I smirked. “They were mostly Idiots. Rich, bored idiots looking for the next big high. I think Skylark might have been the real deal, though.”

“I’m not surprised that silly cult popped up again,” Twilight mused, thoughtfully. “I suppose if her associates had a pony in my office, that would explain why we had so much trouble infiltrating the group,”

“Probably not her, but definitely whoever she was working for. Same as the King of Ace, she was just a puppet. Her strings were just a little longer.” I stopped briefly as something occurred to me. “Skylark had a lawyer...silly girl who got tied up in the wrong crowd. Name of Geranium. She was some sort of go-between who delivered messages for this law firm called ‘Umbra, Animus, and Armature’. They’ve been the thread tying this whole beast together.”

“I...I know of them,” the alicorn replied, shuffling her wings closer to her sides. “I’ve tried to get three agents into their office in the last five years. They’ve all failed to get in. They had perfect backstories, but...but none of them got hired. I suppose I can hang blame for that on Shadow Courser, too.”

“They were Cosmo’s lawyers, too. Same for the cult of Nightmare Moon.”

Twilight looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “I...I...can’t say I know much about them, which should be alarming all by itself. I know an awful lot about most major institutions all across Equestria. I do know that they date back to before Princess Luna’s return and have had some hoof in...almost everything that’s happened since the war. There’re a few pieces of information that’ve filtered out. Properties they own. Known customers. Their rate of success in court is extremely high. Significantly above the curve, but not outside the realm of plausibility.”

“I haven’t been able to find out much about them, either. A little bit here and there, but nothing meaningful. Geranium said they took over her old law firm and gutted it. Tourniquet was very grateful that we removed Skylark. She...didn’t much care for the cult.”

Swift thrust her chest forward, proudly displaying the crescent moon scar on her breast. “She made me the Warden!”

Twilight stared at the scar for a minute, then put a hoof to her forehead. “So...she’s awake, still, then. And feeding. Whose magic is she eating? The prisoners from the cult?”

I snorted. “You think I’m stupid? We jacked her into the mains. She’s running on pure, unfiltered electricity. No soul munching involved.”

“But...but how did you do that? I mean, you seem like a very capable pony, but...hijacking municipal electrical systems doesn’t sound like one of your talents.”

“Oh...it isn’t,” I replied, feeling a grin building. “It is within the talents of the Aroyos, though.”

It took a while for Twilight to work through that in her mind, but when she did, her wings bounced open like they were on springs. “Now wait a second here! You you gave...Supermax—the most dangerous prison in all of Equestria controlled by an emotionally unstable sentient construct of a dead filly—to a street gang?!”

“Not gave,” I assured her, waving towards my partner. “Swift is still the Warden, whatever that means. She doesn’t like how they run it, she can shut the whole thing down. That said, Tourniquet is the only reason the city still has power after recent events.”

Twilight’s voice rose to a volume loud and shrill enough that my ears started to ring.

“Her control matrix tapped into the city electrical grid!?”

I cringed, pawing at one of my ears with one toe. “Eh, yeah. Sheesh, keep it down. It was necessary. The alternative was shutting her down again.”

“That’s what should have been done, Detective! That’s what we’ve got to do—”

Swift leaned forward aggressively over the table, glaring at the alicorn with an intensity that would have been downright terrifying on anypony bigger. Even Twilight was momentarily taken aback.

“Over my dead body, Ma’am,” she hissed.

“B-but...you don’t understand! She’s dangerous!” the princess insisted.

My partner ran her tongue over her teeth and nodded at a picture on the wall behind Twilight’s head. It was that same image of six mares together, five others surrounding the purple alicorn. “Ma’am...you have friends, right?”

Twilight nodded, nervously. Her horn was gleaming, but she hadn’t cast any spells that I could see.

“Would you let somepony kill them, even if they were dangerous?” Swift asked.

“N...no...No, I wouldn’t,” she answered, warily. “Never…”

Swift pushed herself up to her full, not-at-all-intimidating height. The fire in her voice was still enough to set the Princess of Friendship back a step.

“Do you think somepony who has been through all the stuff you heard today would ever let you do that to one of theirs?”

“I...I...Ugh! You ponies are impossible! Right, fine, okay...we’ll leave the construct alone for now. There are bigger things going on, anyway.” Twilight sagged as my partner retreated to her seat, hopping up and curling her hooves underneath her chest like a cat. “As though this month couldn’t be enough of a disaster. Alright, so...what happened next? You somehow escaped Skylark’s convent. Did you find the chestpiece of the armor?”

“Eh...unfortunately, no. Ruby Blue had a lockbox that could only be opened with a secret key hidden in her diary that we could only get at Supermax. Don’t ask. It’s as mad as it sounds. She was apparently imprisoned there and managed to snatch the helmet when it was stored there. I don’t know what happened to the chestplate. We managed to save Cerise and get her out after Skylark’s death.”

She mouthed out the words ‘secret key’, then shook her head. “If I didn’t have at least some evidence that you’re not actually insane, I think I’d be putting you somewhere for your own safety, Detective.”

I held out my forelegs as though waiting for cuffs. “You want to do it, I doubt I can stop you...but that means you have to find somepony dumber than I am to go fix this mess.”

“Considering what you’ve already managed, I don’t think a pony like that exists,” Twilight mumbled, folding her broad wings against her hips. “I’ll see what information we have on this lawfirm once we’re done here. Maybe there’s something in the archives. So, you escaped Skylark’s convent. Go on?”

“We got ourselves out of the prison and retrieved the helmet. We didn’t know that was what we were retrieving at this point, mind you, but the second I discovered it I knew we needed somewhere safe to stash the damn thing. To that end, we took the Moon Guns and headed for Don Tome.”

----

“His body was cold. Somepony tried to pull that necromancy garbage on him, but it hadn’t worked. Later on, we found out he’d been guaranteed ‘final death’ by some group of Zebra shamans. Don’t know much about that, but Limerence...well, he was about like you’d expect. We found his brother, too. He...I know he looks fine, but I hear him crying sometimes when he thinks nopony is watching...”

A few tears were trickling down Twilight’s cheeks, and my own weren’t completely dry, either. She kept her expression calm, and I did my best to mirror it as I went on. Swift was making no bones about crying, but she managed to keep her weeping to a few quiet sniffles and a short bout of the hiccups.

“Tome had a magical construct of himself that he’d been using to help chase you around. It reminded him of your name and so on, but the most he’d ever discovered was that picture I gave you. After that, I called the city coroner to help me dispose of the bodies, then rang Cereus. He agreed to take the helm and hide it.”

“Wait...the same...the same coroner who installed your heart? That’s who you called?” Twilight asked, levitating her pen over to gently tap against my breastbone.

“That’s him. Same pony who gave me the anti-magic armor, too. He’s...strange. One of those people you end up either loving or hating. My driver can’t stand him, but if I needed to bury a body, he’d let me borrow his shovel.” I considered that for a minute, then let out a sharp, humorless laugh, wiping at my eyes. “I don’t even know how many bodies he’s hiding for me right now. More than a few. Scary thing to think, really. There’s a freezer back home full of ponies whose lives I either touched or...or ended.”

I expected Twilight to be shocked, but she wasn’t. Her face was still that cool mask she’d been wearing the last few minutes as she picked up her cup of tea and pretended to take a sip. When she realized it was empty, she quietly set it down and turned to face the fire.

“You can’t stand on the fulcrum of history without watching ponies die on one end or the other,” she said quietly.

“Who said that?” Swift asked, raising her eyebrows. “That sounds like something a supervillain in one of my comics would say…”

Twilight giggled weakly. A kerchief popped into existence beside her, and she quickly blew her nose. “That was Princess Celestia. When the first of my friends...moved on...I asked her if this is what it’s like to be an alicorn. I was a real mess. That’s what she told me.”

My partner’s ears flopped against the sides of her head. “Oh…I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well...it could be worse,” She turned back to me and clicked the end of her pen a few times, then gave it a shake and picked up a fresh one. “Earlier you mentioned the griffin embassy in Detrot? Something about an attack?”

“Oh...yeah. This is where everything gets messy, I’m afraid,” I replied.

“Things...weren’t messy before?!”

“Not this kind of messy. A friend of mine is a griffin. He’s a cop and, it turns out, some kind of ‘prince’ amongst the plateau tribe called the ‘Hitlan’. I’m sure you’re aware the dragons apparently drove the Hitlan and the Tokan out of their homes?”

Twilight dipped her head. “Very. Diplomatic issues are sort of my thing. The dragons...I don’t even know. The attack on the Highlands was more aggressive and more powerful than any they’d launched since the war. Your mayor really saved us considerable trouble, despite his...questionable history of political maneuvering.”

I almost choked on that particular statement, and Swift had to quickly pat me on the back with one of her wings. “Yeah, trouble. The mayor has his own little place in this story...but as I was saying about my friend…”

----

“Prancing into the Tokan Embassy with guns drawn wasn’t my best idea, but it worked well enough. Most of them were too stoned to stop us. Derida wasn’t pleased, though. I’m not sure, but there might be a standing blood debt of some sort there. She certainly threatened to kill me a few times.”

The Princess rolled her eyes. “Detective, if everyone who’d ever threatened to kill me got to try, I’d have gotten bored with murder attempts a really long time ago. As it is, they’re still pretty scary. Some griffins use death threats as terms of personal affection. This...little griffin you said helped you get the status of ‘High Justice’. She was the same one you took with you to the school?”

“Yeah. Edina. Mercy, what a piece of work she is.”

“I...thought you said she was severely mentally ill,” she said, a bit confused.

“She is. We managed to dig out her psychiatric records. They contained a side-note about doping her with Beam as a means of ‘stabilizing’ her personality.” At her surprised look, I quickly added, “We had enough Beam at the convent from the cult’s personal stash and nothing to lose. Believe me, I was as shocked as you are that it actually worked. She was eager to help when she found out that the Tokan were facing annihilation.”

“Annihilation?!” Twilight exclaimed. “The Tokan and Hitlan has been allies for decades! I mean, they aren’t on perfectly friendly terms, but—”

“It was the Blood Bank, Ma’am,” Swift chimed in. “Their magic...all that blood magic that they used to keep all their debts straight was suddenly gone.”

“Mmm...that...oof. That does explain some of the reports of movement amongst the other tribes that I got in the days leading up to the Darkening. Tell me you managed to fix that situation, at least.”

I rocked my chair back onto two legs, using one rear hoof to prop myself up. “Eh...I wish. It was the day of the Darkening, keep in mind. We were…’in negotiations’, when the attack came…”

----

“The bomb was wired into the treasury, and it was going to blow. There was no defusing it. Taxi had a ‘freeze’ shot for her P.E.A.C.E. cannon, though. It bought us the time we needed to get both eyries’ eggs to safety.”

“That’s...that’s good news, at least.” Twilight shuddered, putting her hooves over her eyes and dragging them down her cheeks. “All those poor griffins…”

“We saved their children. I’m playing that as a win in my mind. The bomb went off. We escaped in the ensuing ruckus. After that...we retreated to a safe place. Her parent’s house,” I said, jerking my head at Swift. She grimaced but said nothing. “A little while later...well, the Darkening happened. I was watching it on television. Right before whatever magic took Canterlot...there was a magical resonance loud enough to hear.”

One of the alicorn’s ears perked up. “Hear? Magical resonance doesn’t produce a sound…”

“I know that. I’m telling you what it felt like. It was loud enough to give you a headache. A huge section of the unicorns in Detrot passed out and haven’t awoken. They’re suffering some kind of severe magical burnout. Lim was amongst them, but...Slip Stitch found us a cure, but we’ve only been able to deploy it in small numbers. After Limerence was back on his hooves…well, things got worse.”

----

“The whole center of the city?!”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to work up the last of my saliva. My throat was feeling a bit dry after such a long story. “Nopony knows what it is, but Chief Jade couldn’t bring it down. The Anti-Mega Fauna Shield is down, too and the Shield Pylons are in a kind of 'lockdown' mode. There are a bunch of dragons are sitting on the outskirts, just...waiting. They’re not even attacking anyone except those who try to leave. The P.A.C.T. are patrolling the streets in the craziest way you can imagine. These ‘Biters’, as people are calling them now, are attacking anypony who is outside one of the protected zones. We're pretty sure they're using the Scry to track and attack anyone who might stabilize things The Jewelers have retreated into Uptown. Gangs control most of the city and have divided it up to survive. I...I guess...I guess that’s it, really.”

I fell silent as the enormity of our situation gradually settled on my shoulders.

Twilight Sparkle just sat there for a long time, digesting the whole tale. Her horn flashed, and a glass of water appeared beside my hoof. I sipped it and gave her a relieved smile, but I couldn’t think of anything I hadn’t already said which might help her reach a course of action.

“So, you came here, hoping somepony could fix all of this,” she said, finally.

“That’s about the shape of things, yeah.”

Rising from her chair, she walked over to one wall of the study. Reaching up, she pressed a spot on the wall, and a crack appeared that quickly swept down to the floor, spilling the eerie red light of the eclipse into the room. On whisper-quiet rails, two panels opened, revealing one of the crystal castle’s numerous balconies.

“Join me, Detective?” she invited. “You can come, too, Swift.”

I hesitated only a moment before getting up, stretching my aching back as I pushed the chair in. My partner flapped a couple times to work the kinks out of her flight muscles. I’d no idea how long we’d been sitting there, but I didn’t figure it could have been more than an hour or two. Looking back on the last few months, I guess I wouldn’t have blamed anypony for needing a bit to think before presenting a solution of some sort.

Of course, there was always the possibility that there just weren’t any solutions. Not a nice thought, but one worth being aware of.

Twilight hooked her legs over the railing and spread her wings wide, letting the gentle breeze blow through them as she raised her eyes to look out at the vast expanse of grey dust that’d once been the most vibrant, living city in all of Equestria. Maybe all the world.

Above it all, the eclipse carved a glowing black hole in the sky. I wanted, more than anything—more than drink, more than food, rest, or even my own freedom—to see the sky as it should have been.

Stepping out beside her, Swift and I joined the princess’ quiet vigil.

The silence was so unnatural, so perfect, that when she finally spoke it was enough to make me jump.

“Detective...Canterlot is gone,” she said, ignoring my startled jerk. “The Court and all of the nobles are gone. The army is gone. I can’t help with whatever demons you will have to fight your way through, but...maybe I can offer you some solace in the knowledge that they may not be dead. We might be able to get them back.”

I shuffled sideways so I could see her face. “How can you possibly know that?”

“Because I think I know where they’ve gone.”

Leaning forward over the rail, she raised one hoof. I followed where she was pointing with my eyes.

“What am I not seeing?” I asked, uncertainly. “That’s just the moon, right?”

“Exactly.”

Author's Note:

BLARGLEFLARGLE! Alright. Recap finished! Sweet Merciful...

I'm worn out. This took way more out of me than I thought it would. I hope you guys enjoy it! The editors did incredible work making this readable.

Comments

[Saxopi]

Absolutely worth the wait, I feel inspired already! :3

[Chessie]

7208688 I have a sneaking suspicion you might like Maxine.

-Chessie

[Alexander Crestfallen]

Twilight still doesn't know he's a crusader yet? Or was that information some of the "Omitted" bits?

Either way, gooood stuff. Worth the wait if only for alcoholic ice cream.

[Iron Sides]

A long winded recap... just reminds me of how much stuff has happened... mind boggling.

[TheStratovarian]

7208691 YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!

And this is an amazing recap, of revenge, drama, breakdowns, history, and everyone spot on.

This was an amazing recap, and i'm sad to have finished it for now.

[Reese]

Hm. We now appear to have two Chapter 13s in Act 3...

[TheMWord]

Holy shit, that was a wild ride.

[hanatoro]

With the new Intel provided it seems the plane has been in the works for a lot longer then I had initially anticipated. This puts a lot of data that we've gathered in a much different light.

Let's hope that it doesn't take the Princesses quite as long as to make the return trip as it did last time.

[Chessie]

7208843 Right...yes...yes, we do, because I am thick.

-Chessie

[Chessie]

7208787 He hasn't shown her the gun yet.

-Chessie

[Reese]

7208918
Eh, no pro--
...
Ummm.
Well, now we don't have two Chapter 13s, no...
Two Chapter 14s, however...
(Sorry. :))
edit: Ah, and fixed.

[AuDragon]

Woah. If I'm right...dang. That's one way to get rid of Canterlot.

[AlouetteSK]

Well, that is just bananas.
Also, how in the world did Maxine come about? That character is just grating to my internal vocalization attempts.
Shame on Twi for not considering Tourniquet a pony, just because she is Supermax.

[meerkat8472]

Oh come on! It was bleedingly obvious that Canterlot went to the Moon, I'm surprised Lim didn't realize that. Also, how have they not realized that the Shild is still working perfectly yet. Well, I say working perfectly, except that Dragons are no longer it's target.

Also, gotta love Swifty, cute one minute, intimidating the next. And so much passion, what a beautiful mare.

[lordofmyth]

New it was the moon, the moment that the dust wzs mentioned. And maybe a bit before that.

While this might indicate nightmare moon's involvement, ultimately ALL of this doesn't seem her mo. She is a part of luna's consciousness, and has disdain for celestia. She would want to overpower her personally.
Also allll the killing going on here. Each pony dead is a pony she can no longer posses.

Other than that........ Ultimately, i have a hard time imagining that Celestia would put the bulk of her army in canterlot. A fair bit but she is not someone who would risk the greater security of her nation for the secruity of herself.

[BradtheBrony]

Wow, just so many events and you found a way to not only recap it in a fun way, but were able to incorporate some character growth (Harvey's much needed cry) and new info (Shadow Chaser) as well! So congrats on getting this done!

I'm just surprised Harvey or Swift didn't mention the fact that they are sorta dog-sitting Goofball lol

[Themaskedferret]

Excellently done recap, now let's see what happens next.

[BookeCypher]

This is one of those 'when you put it like that, it sounds crazy' situations...

some things I noticed though:
1 - No epigraph?

2 -

Once we’d escaped, Limerence was able to dig through the ledger.

- it was Swift and Taxi he went through the ledger at that point.

3 - the Bat ponies gave Hardy hayfries, not pancakes, at their first meeting.

4 - I want to say the bit about Umbras, Anima and Armature's history/origin is off compared to earlier, but I'll have to recheck.

[RoboRed]

This was a great recap.

[TheStratovarian]

7209556 That's for when you need an exit line to throw her for another loop.

7209774 I'd recall the pancakes, given we already have the golden hayfries vendor elsewhere.

[marmelmm]

"TO THE MOON, ALICE!"

[General Grant]

“Kid, you carry a gun that inspires penis envy in hump-back whales. Name one time you have ever been subtle, ever.”

I have no comment.
Also good for catching up. Why do I feel like Luna is up on the moon going through some sort of Vietnam flashback?

[Chessie]

7209774 Yeeeah, I couldn't do the epigraph this week. This recap just murdered me. Seriously, it was the hardest chapter I've written in forever.

I fixed the stuff you mentioned, incidentally.

-Chessie

[BookeCypher]

7211032 16,000 word chapter? I don't blame you.

[kooarbiter]

this was an excellant chapter, though recapping the whole story and watching twilight run the cycle of normal conversation, heightened question, complete surprise, then hardy telling her something dissmissively to calm down, and twilight edging him on repeats a bit, like four or five times

besides that, I couldn't decide to give maxi a bostonian or cockney accent, so I settled on Daxter

I am pleased with the results

[Chessie]

7211051 I know, but I hated this chapter. It's rare that writing makes me annoyed, but it really did. I only wrote it because I think everyone needed a recap and Twilight needed to know what'd happened.

We'll get back on our regularly scheduled awesomeness next chapter.

-Chessie

[StormyVenture]

Interesting. So someone sent Canterlot to the moon? Not too hard to imagine that the mere residual energy from that would do a number on ponies, not to mention the air displacement that it would cause. Assuming the small chance that it wasn't their enemies that did it, the eclipse must have something to with it. I mean, it's kinda cold on the moon without sunlight...

[Chessie]

873018 I feel the need to respond to your comment. It's been four years since you made it.

The novel is now almost a million words in length.

Fuck.

That is all.

-Chessie

[Chessie]

7211528 It certainly futzed with local space/time when the train was going for re-entry.

On the upside, we've actually seen the Equestrian moon in the comic books. It's a fairly nice place.

-Chessie

[yobbin2000]

I'm not surprised you didn't enjoy writing this chapter. Flashbacks are always terrible both for the writer and especially the reader, Making us reread things that we've already read once only with all the context and excitement stripped out is quite the chore. Watching Twilight be shocked & amazed every time there's a break is a bit repetitive as well.

The bit about Twilight still wanting to kill Tourniquet was the only bit I felt was interesting about this chapter on the surface it looks like a good example of making hard choices to protect the ponies. But add it to her comments about destroying a company for helping to rehabilitate that minitour by turning him into The Bull and she comes off excessive against constructs.
The conformation that Canterlot has been sent to the moon is nice but not a huge surprise since they were wading around in moon dust a few chapters ago.
I was hoping to get more revaluations about Umbra, Animus and Armature or as I translate them Shadowy, (subconscious)hostile, protective cover(armor). Which btw sounds a lot like a certain mcguffin that Hardy had been chasing for the last arc. It is interesting that they predate the return of Luna and it begs the question of did they start the war just so the armor would be assembled?

In the previous chapter it was interesting that a force was powerful enough to stop Twilight from getting within 20km of Detrot it sounds like The Shield isn't inactive, Starlight Industry has just redirected it to stop Alicorns instead of dragons, as well as keeping downtown locked up.
Less 'The Stars will aid in her escape' and more they will act to keep you caged.

[Team AngelFang]

So Twilight Sparkle has essentially become Spymaster of Equestria. Not a very good one but hey it's only been half a century or so, give her a millenia. :P

-Angel of Team Angelfang

[Chaosreverent]

7212011

I'm not surprised you didn't enjoy writing this chapter. Flashbacks are always terrible both for the writer and especially the reader, Making us reread things that we've already read once only with all the context and excitement stripped out is quite the chore. Watching Twilight be shocked & amazed every time there's a break is a bit repetitive as well.

It depends, for people like me recaps serve as a great jumping on point for incredibly long story's that people would ether have no time for or find too intimidating. Likewise it would serve as a good way to remind people of important plot points and significant events that people lost track of.

[Chessie]

7212011 Armature is actually a term that refers to the metal/wood internal structure of a puppet or sculpture.

-Chessie

[StormyVenture]

7213268
True, so " Umbra, Animus and Armature" practically screams some kind of shadowy thing that's alive and embodied or at least pulling a lot of strings as it were. Makes you wonder if maybe they're connected to something NMM was cooking up before she was banished. Like, idk, a army of shadows. Come to think of it, that sounds like the Umbrum... and those moon guns sound like pretty effective short range weapons.

[Ardwolf]

Well done, and now he knows more than he did--and Twilight knows what he knows. That may very well put a serious spanner in somebody's spokes. Alicorn cavalry, anyone?

Of course that means Hard Boiled still needs to crack this nut, but now at least he knows where to find a big hammer...

And as recaps go, you have my admiration, Chessie. Exhausting it may have been, but superb it absolutely is.

Good show. Very, very, good show.

[Ravencrofte]

What!? No "the scholar" notes and introduction. ..I feel betrayed...almost. what happened?

[yobbin2000]

7213268

Thank you for the clarification. So the internal structure of the thing as apposed to the external covering. Latin sure is a tricky language these days.

[Hundashter]

Didn't think this story could get any more amazing then it already was. Should have realized by now how silly that mindset was. You keep delivering excellence atop what is already splendor, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for you and your editors. Easily one of the best written stories I've ever read in my 24 years of life. Bravo, and I eagerly await the next chapter.

[Lord Legion]

Thanks for the recap. It was beginning to get difficult trying to remember what was going on after a while every time this updated.

[VNilla]

Hardy promised to tell Twilight how he's been dodging the Scry and did not mention the Crusader at all.

[Chessie]

7219640 Next chapter

-Chessie

[Winged Cat]

7216873 Like Chessie said, this chapter was so big and exhausting to write that she couldn't fit in a Scholar bit this time. As with the two-chapter play, she gets a pass.

[enderchangling]

Why isn't this the highest rates story ever? It needs to be. We should get on that.

[SIGAWESOME]

“Did you know I made these?”
<...>
"the monstrosity, that the former warden committed there."

Gee Twilight...hypocrisy much?

Y-y-you have a c-changeling’s heart in your sternum!

I can just imagine Mayfly entering and coming to the realisation that "Gale" is somebuggy she knew.

"Detective? Did I hear Princess Twilight correctly? You actually have a changeling heart inside you?"

"Errr...yes?"

"I though I recognised that hive-voice. It is my long-lost twin sister Ichneumon. We though her dead and lost after that zebra raid on our hive all those years ago. Imagine how I feel when I realised she had been vivisected for spare parts"

"I am so sorry. I did not–"

"HA! You were always mum's favourite, weren't you Icky? Well now look who's talking! I am queen of my very own hive and what have you got? Nothing! That's right Princess Icky! You are nothing but a powered pony paperweight now! SUCK IT! Who's da mare? Who's da mare?"

"..."

“Ponyville boys can’t get enough of my fine little thorax!”

I like big bugs and I cannot lie!

Shadow Courser

I guess we now know who the "U" of UAA is now...

[Boott]

>New chapter out

Shit! Now im behind two!
Iv just been putting this one off for so long because of the size of it!

Now I just need to get to the next one...

There are a bunch of dragons are sitting on the outskirts, just...waiting.

>There are a bunch of dragons are sitting

[treadyster]

7212868

Yeah, I quite enjoy a rehashing of the basic plot details of this insane, sometimes terrifying, sometimes hilarious journey.

It reminds me of a clip show episode for a TV series, except actually entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-z-puGaImE

[supersoulspark]

all those jokes about sending ponies up to the moon... and it ended up being a crucial plot point...

[BlueNinja]

That ledger is somewhere nopony is getting it. That includes nosey alicorns.

I'm not sure I want Twi with a ledger full of blackmail information ... but she might be a safer pony to have it than Stella.

it’s easy to answer, but you’re probably going to think less of me if I do...

Well, you haven't quite gotten up to "destroy the whole of the world in magical balefire in a war against the zebras," but you're getting there.

I had the feeling she was actually about to try to convince me she wasn’t a figment of my imagination.

Yeah, like that's going to work.

For all I knew, she could have been behind everything that’d happened.

No, I can see it. Get the Princess duo out of the way, get all the most evil ponies to reveal themselves, then bring back Canterlot and drop the hammer on them. Though really, it'd be easier if Twi just got herself a Death Note ...

Every single weirdo I’ve ever met owes her some kind of crazy debt or she’s blackmailed them so hard they can’t even see straight.

So, Hardy's been asleep for four hours ... that blackmail ledger is already on its way to Twi by now, isn't it?

She doesn’t own me though.

Hah! Shows what you know!

Would you believe a secret alicorn has a secret hive of changelings and secret shadow monsters wandering around a little hick town this close to the capital?

If only Equestria had an internet, conspiracy theories would be flocking to Ponyville.

“Wait...What’s Taxi been doing while I was out?”

Hardy ... I think you mean, who has Taxi been "doing" while you were out. (Everybug. Possibly everyshadow, if it's physically possible.)

“I...eh...it...erm...she and I have a...um...complex relationship,”

"And that doesn't include her daughter wanting to hump me senseless."

“Is that what’s going to happen to me when this is over? Cook my noodle, then drop me in a hole somewhere with nothing but a vague sense of disquiet?”

She doesn't need to drop you in a hole, she could just hit you with a "Love-Me" spell and you'd never leave the crystal castle.

and get Cereus away from Princess Luna so she’d stop sending him dirty notes as classified government communiques!

... What was Cereus' cutie mark again?

“Sir, your hoof is not tasty. You should stop trying to swallow it.”

"It is too tasty when it's covered with tequila ice cream!"

Also, might I say, I'm quite disappointed that Twi is head of M6. I can work with it, just disappointed.

[dshadow14]

I'm still fifty chapters behind! And I thought Fallout Equestria was long!

[TheGrandNil]

9877146
FOE is considered a large novel, while this is more of an 'Epic'