Case Thirteen, Chapter Three: The Mighty Fall
The three-floor turreted apartment building was nestled cozily in the shade of rows of tall pines and oaks that were planted along Rich Avenue, the polished cobblestone street marking the boundary between the Financial District and the northern farmlands. The windows in the pale red frames were all dimmed, curtains drawn to block the light.
There was a flicker of motion in the window of the turret’s top floor and a black muzzle poked out, the earth pony tugging her dark purple mane out of her haggard eyes. Black Licorice watched a few cars passing by in the street; no ponies were out on the sidewalks, the threat of the unforeseen overhanging gray clouds seemingly enough to chase everypony back inside. She sighed and pulled the curtain back over the window, looking back over the room.
The small circular room was mostly bare, save for a crate and the bejeweled mirror in the corner. Red Licorice was currently sitting in front of the crate, staring at the assortment of shotguns and shells inside.
“She’s been gone quite a while,” Red commented, glancing up at the mirror.
“You don’t think she got caught, do you?” Black mumbled, shuddering at the thought.
“If she did, we’d know about it,” Red said, sitting down.
Black Licorice trotted over to her brother and sat down beside him, laying her head on his shoulder. “Red...do you even remember why we’re doing this?” she asked quietly.
Red was silent for several seconds, then glanced up at the slightly cracked door to make sure that they were alone. “I thought we’d be getting payback on the mobs that took our store, took our lives away,” he admitted. “But now...now I don’t know what we’re doing.”
“I want mom,” Black sniffled, bowing her head. “She’d know what to do.”
“If she were still alive. And was still willing to talk to us after everything we did,” Red muttered, staring balefully at their reflection in the mirror in the corner.
He saw motion in the reflection, a shadow passing through the cracked door. Red whirled around with a hiss of breath, both siblings freezing for a moment. Nothing happened.
“We should be more careful,” Red hissed. “You remember Gear Shift?”
Black swallowed and nodded numbly.
The mirror’s gems suddenly started glowing and the reflection in the glass swirled, dissolving into the image of Bright Sparks standing in the boulevard hideout, carrying her bag of groceries.
“You’re back,” Black smiled in relief as Sparks stepped through the mirror.
“What took you so long?” Red asked.
“Line was terrible,” Sparks replied, crossing the room. “But I got what I needed.”
She started to open the door, then paused, shrugging to adjust her jacket’s loose fit over her shoulders. “You two tired?” she asked.
Red and Black stared at each other for a few moments, then numbly nodded.
Sparks hesitated at the threshold, her hoof on the doorjamb, then quietly said, “It’ll be over soon.” She proceeded through the door, leaving the two siblings staring at each other in confusion.
Sparks continued down the winding stairs to the bottom floor. The rest of the crew were all gathered around the living room, sitting in idle contemplation. A radio was quietly playing a news broadcast in the corner. Sledgehammer and Dusty Tail were leading a game of poker around the coffee table. Everypony playing looked up as Sparks entered.
“You’ve been gone a while,” Dusty Tail drawled.
“Too long,” Sledgehammer grunted. “How long does it take to get some damn baby food?”
“As long as it takes, Sledge,” Sparks replied with an eye roll, proceeding into the next room.
This makeshift nursery featured a cot loaded with blue blankets and a few toys, a changing table well-stocked with diapers and other materials, and a cot where Sparks herself slept. Scarlet Letter was sitting on the cot, cradling a softly gurgling Endeavor in gentle forelegs as she crooned a Crystalline lullaby.
“Fa la ninna, fa la nanna,
Nella braccia della zia.
Fa la ninna bel bambin,
Fa la ninna bambin bel…”
Scarlet looked up as Sparks entered. “You are lucky, mon cher,” Scarlet said, standing and gently carrying the sleeping baby to the crib. “A child is a great blessing, especially one as beautiful as this.”
Sparks had to repress a shudder at the sight of the murderer carrying her son. “Yeah,” she admitted with a soft smile. “Yeah, he’s a blessing.” She bent down and kissed the little pale gold forehead, stroking the tussled blue mane. Endeavor smiled and cooed in his sleep, a little gold spark blossoming from his little horn.
Sparks placed her bag of groceries on the table, shrugging to adjust her jacket. “What’s the plan now?” she asked Scarlet.
“Come. I’ll tell everypony,” Scarlet stated, nodding to the door.
The two mares went back into the living room to see that the Licorice twins had entered the living room. Every eye turned to face the leader.
“Mes amis, I know we are in difficult times,” she announced. “We’ve had to run and hide for far too long. The city has seemingly changed overnight, with many old faces being replaced. The good news is, Zugzwang and Whitestone are both dead now, and we are posed to take the throne, as we always intended.
“However, one thing is very clear now: the two detectives cannot be allowed to interfere anymore. As long as they live, they are a threat to us, to our goal of establishing true order.”
There was a rumbling of agreement from most of the others in the room, ponies exchanging bitter scowls and hissing curses.
“So,” Scarlet asked, looking around the room. “Who here will do the deed? Who will kill Phillip Finder and Daring Do for us?”
“I’ll do it myself,” Sledgehammer stated, standing up. “It’s long past time those two got out of our way. I’ll go into the hospital room and slit Finder's fucking throat myself.”
“Mon ami, your enthusiasm is appreciated, but I think this requires a more delicate touch,” Scarlet smiled.
“Then Sparks should do it,” Sledgehammer grunted, turning to glare at her.
Sparks blinked and stepped back a bit, tugging at the collar of her jacket. Outside, the storm finally broke: rain began to hammer against the windows of the apartment, providing a quiet, percussive soundtrack to the scene.
“I think you’ve gone a bit soft recently,” Sledgehammer snarled, stepping forward imposingly. “Trying to let Daring off, making nice with her.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Dusty Tail scowled from the couch. “If Daring Do is such a distraction, maybe it’d be best if you got rid of her.”
“Do I need to remind you which one of us is in charge?” Sparks stated coldly to Sledgehammer, refusing to back down even as he got in her face.
“Enough, both of you,” Scarlet cut in, firmly pushing Sledgehammer away. The bald unicorn scowled venomously but did not protest.
Scarlet turned to face Sparks. “Sparks, I trust you. You know I do,” she said slowly. “But you have made some...questionable decisions regarding Madame Do and Monsieur Finder. I need to know your loyalty is absolute.”
“It is,” Sparks stated.
“Then you need to prove it,” Scarlet said patiently. “Daring Do needs to die; she and Finder can no longer interfere with our work if we are going to finally take control. And since you know her the best out of all of us, and considering your skills and experience, you—”
She suddenly paused, her eyes going down to Sparks’ collar. She paused for a moment, then lunged forward and seized the strange object that she’d spotted tucked inside the coat.
Every eye fell upon the strange device: a small black box marked with runes with a thin cable snaking out of it. At the end of the cable was the carved blue crystal that Scarlet had spotted nestled within the collar of Sparks’ jacket.
“No,” Scarlet breathed.
That was when the door crashed open and a tide of blue rushed in, covering the room. “Everypony down on the floor! Nopony move!” Cold Case barked at the head of the rush, aiming her pistol at Sledgehammer’s face.
Scarlet stared open-mouthed at the mare at the back of the tide, blocking the doorway: Daring Do, grinning at her in smug victory over the sights of the .38 Filly Detective Special strapped to her foreleg.
“Just surrender,” Sparks said, already sitting down and placing her hooves atop her head. “No one else needs to—”
“TRAITOR!” Sledgehammer bellowed and charged right at her. Sparks dove out of the way as Sledgehammer barreled past where she’d been and tackled an earth pony police officer. The little body flailed helplessly beneath him as he brought his hooves down like his namesake, battering at the figure’s forelegs.
Chaos erupted. Some of the guerrillas dove at the officers, forcing them into hoof to hoof with the symphony of impacting bones that clashed with the growing percussion of the rain, interspersed with occasional gunshots. Sledgehammer seized the dazed officer’s revolver and charged out a nearby door, telekinetically placing the weapon upon his own foreleg as he ran.
Dusty Tail pounced upon Bumblebee, the earth pony grunting in fury as he was sent tumbling to the floor. Climbing on top of his foe, Dusty attempted to seize the officer’s revolver in his magic, but Bumblebee grasped his weapon with his free hoof and tugged against him.
Dusty began to punch at every inch of Bumblebee’s flesh that he could reach, hooves hammering against his bulletproof vest and bare head. Bumblebee tucked his head against the blows, then jerked his body up. His forehead rammed into Dusty’s jaw with a crack, sending him reeling and breaking his concentration.
The momentary lapse in the telekinetic pulling was enough. Bumblebee pressed his weapon against the criminal’s side, the barrel stabbing up at his ribs, and pressed down on the trigger. The gunshot let out a single statement, loud and sharp amidst the chaos.
Dusty gasped in shock: he felt as though a hot knife had cleaved right into his body, the heat quickly settling into a terrible cold that spread across his entire body. All the strength left his muscles and he fell to the floor like a rag doll. He tried to breathe, but his lungs just didn’t seem to be working anymore; he could feel a strange pressure building in his chest, and every noise he tried to make came out as a gurgle.
The last thing that he noticed before the lights went out was the crimson aura of Scarlet teleporting away, followed by the familiar orange light of Bright Sparks.
Sledgehammer sprinted down the hallway, firing spells over his shoulder as he ran. The chief was right behind him, throwing up shields to block his attacks.
“Stop!” a brown pegasus officer yelled, half-running, half-gliding towards him.
Snarling, Sledgehammer pushed himself harder. The door was mere feet away now: once he got out of here, he was going to finally teach himself how to teleport--
A jet of icy wind raced past him. The white-blue beam hit the door in front of him and ice spread across it with a great crackling, sealing it shut.
“Fucking bitch!” Sledgehammer snarled, skidding to a halt and turning around. The pegasus officer closed in on him, forelegs wide as if ironically attempting an embrace despite the look of focused rage on his face.
But all he met was a wall of magic, crashing comically into Sledgehammer’s shield. Sledgehammer pounced, crushing the officer in his forelegs and dodging into a side room.
Shit. He’d picked the basement stairs landing, a small side room of solid wood paneling featuring only the basement stairs and a few brooms and other cleaning materials stuffed into the corner. There was nowhere he could go from here, not even a window he could dive out of. He pressed his back up against the wall, jamming his pistol up against the officer’s jaw. The smaller pegasus went completely still: he even started to hold his breath.
He heard Cold Case stop at the hallway, the thump of her pressing her body against the wall and metal clicking as she drew her sidearm. “I’m getting out of here, bitch!” Sledgehammer yelled. “And you’re going to let me, or I’ll blow your pig’s head off!”
“No. You’re not,” Cold Case said in a perfectly calm tone.
“I’ll kill him, you hear me?!” Sledgehammer bellowed at the doorway, clinging to the trembling ragdoll, shoving the gun so forcefully up under the officer’s sweaty chin that it forced his teeth together with a click. “I’ll fucking kill—!”
Cold reached into a pocket and extracted a small plastic vial filled with a frosty blue liquid that bubbled and frothed gently within its container. As she magically plucked out the stopper with a pop, the liquid began to immediately evaporate into a cloud of white gas that hung in the air; icy wind emanated from the gas like the breath of a frost dragon.
Cold lit up her horn and the gas swirled forward, rushing around the corner like a guided missile. The gas flew up Sledgehammer’s mouth and nose. He choked and gasped, releasing his hostage, who dived out of the way. Sledgehammer fell to his knees, coughing and gasping: scarlet blood dribbled from his mouth and nose, spraying with every wheezing exhalation.
Cold Case quickly entered, yanking her foe’s pistol away with her magic as she checked on the officer. “What…” Sledgehammer coughed out more blood and wheezed in breathless pain. “What did you do to me?”
“I killed you,” Cold Case said icily, keeping her weapon on him as he gasped for what little air he could gather. “Your body’s just starting to figure that out. That potion you inhaled: it flash-froze all of the water in your lungs and throat. Your body heat’s melting it, but the damage is already done: all those ice crystals are like thousands of tiny knives, carving up your blood vessels, your alveoli, your cells. Every time you take in a breath, you’re sucking more blood into your lungs. You’ll die choking and hurting. Unless you surrender.”
Sledgehammer glared defiantly up at her, then his horn ignited and his pistol flew to his hoof, snapping up towards her head.
She was faster. The Filly M1912 passed its judgement with a loud, final bark and Sledgehammer fell to the floor, laying facedown in a puddle of his own blood. Cold sighed and closed her eyes, holstering her gun.
“You all right, Clay?” she asked the young officer laying on the ground.
“Y-yes, ma’am,” Clay nodded, wiping his sweat-stained red mane as he stood up.
Cold followed the sound of a wailing infant to the living room, where the other officers were tending to the wounded. To her great relief, none of her officers were critically injured. A unicorn was attempting to revive Dusty Tail, but he gave Cold a hopeless shake of his head as she approached.
Cold glanced over at the Licorice twins: the two siblings were sitting cuffed in the corner, heads lowered, shooting brief glances at one another.
Turning, she saw Prowl gently bouncing the baby colt, who was crying in distress at the noise. As Prowl softly stroked the infant’s back and mane, his wails slowly subsided into soft whimpers. “Shh, shh, it’s okay now,” Prowl whispered.
“Where are Daring and Sparks?” Cold asked.
“They chased after Scarlet!” Bumblebee reported, pointing. “They teleported away before we had a chance to catch them.”
Cold Case dashed to a window and caught a single glimpse of a red light in the distance. “You, you, and you, after them!” she pointed to three pegasi officers, who immediately soared out the door. Cold watched them take off in pursuit, her teeth clenched tightly.
Scarlet vanished in a burst of crimson light, like a small firework, then reappeared in another flash over the roof across the street. She sprinted across the rooftop, tiles falling from her path like the wake of a ship, rain pelting down on her coat.
She caught a glimpse of orange light out of the corner of her eye, felt a rush of wind on the back of her neck. A glance back confirmed that Bright Sparks had teleported up onto the roof and was chasing after her, with Daring Do swooping down like an eagle diving at a field mouse.
“Merde!” Scarlet cried, charging up her horn to teleport again as she leaped off the edge of the roof. Sparks and Daring slammed into Scarlet at the height of her jump, an orange bubble forming around them as they fell towards the third-floor window before them. The three tumbled through the window like wild lovers, the glass shattering into shards in a cacophony but failing to penetrate Sparks’ shield. They rolled across the barewood floor of the empty study, managing to disentangle themselves from each other as the shield faded away; rain began to pelt at them through the shattered window.
Daring sprang back to her hooves. Snapping her .38 up to her eyes, she placed the sights over Scarlet’s forehead as her target scrambled up, shoving Sparks away with a magical wave. The mare’s eyes widened in shock and her horn lit up in preparation to cast.
“Shoot her!” Sparks yelled from the floor.
Daring pressed down on the trigger, but a red aura seeped into her weapon’s mechanism and the gun clicked uselessly. “Fuck,” Daring snarled, tossing the hexed weapon aside and drawing her kusarifundo as Sparks climbed back to her hooves.
Suddenly, the other three officers dove in through the broken window, piling atop of Scarlet before anypony could react. “Get her forelegs!” one of them shouted, grabbing at his cuffs.
Before Daring and Sparks could jump in, Scarlet's pulled off one of her earrings and crushed it in her hoof. Crimson mist suddenly began to spread from the crushed stones, spreading through the pony pile. The three officers all froze as the mist seeped into their eyes and nostrils. Their pupils widened to cover their irises, the sclera beginning to take on a reddish tint.
The mist spread towards Daring and Scarlet, surrounding them like a mouth, pinning them in. An orange shield appeared before the two mares, but the mist just seeped right through it, like water through a screen, barely slowed. The option of retreat flickered through Daring's mind, but she dismissed it, knowing that whatever spell this was would merely chase them.
The hardwood floor creaked beneath her. A desperate idea flashed through her mind.
"Circle!" she shouted to Sparks, plucking some feathers from her wing with a small wince and clutching them tightly in her hoof. Sparks hesitated for only half a second, then her horn lit up and burned a circle into the hardwood floor around them, just wide enough to encompass them both.
The mist touched the edge of the burned circle. As one, Sparks and Daring pressed their hooves against the still-smoking mark, the tips of Daring's feathers right on the perimeter, and commanded the circle to close.
There was a brief snap in the air, a flicker that Daring felt in her wings, and the mist halted, slithering up the invisible walls of the circle like mist pressing against a window, demanding to be let in. A moment later, it faded away into nothing. Daring sighed in relief.
Her relief evaporated when she saw the officers, their eyes still tinted red, clambering off of Scarlet, who got up with a grunt. All four of them faced the other mares, eyes narrowing.
“Not good,” Sparks muttered, taking a step back.
“Take Scarlet!” Daring growled, and launched herself at the largest officer, sending him bowling into one of his partners.
A pair of Neighretta Modello 1935s appeared in Scarlet’s hooves and she opened fire at Sparks, crimson bullets shrieking at her. Sparks threw up a shield, the magical shots reflecting back at Scarlet with musical pings. Scarlet tucked and rolled beneath her own shots and the two mares clashed like opposing storm fronts.
Sparks slammed her hoof down once, twice, like the beats of a drum, and both pistols tumbled from Scarlet’s hooves. “Sous-merde traîtresse!” Scarlet snarled, clinching the other mare and driving her knee into her gut.
They pounded at each other like rams, stumbling and grunting as they both fought for balance. Gritting her teeth as she felt her ribs cracking beneath the sledgehammer blows, Sparks rammed her head into Scarlet’s jaw. Teeth cracked and flew from Scarlet’s mouth and she spat out a curse through a mouthful of blood.
Like a snake, Scarlet slithered down out of Sparks’ grasp and Sparks gasped in shock as she felt a vise clench around her hind knees. The world spun and she just managed to lock her hooves about her enemy’s neck as she fell. She caught a glimpse of Daring parrying two officers’ batons, blood running from her nostrils.
Fall relaxed, breathe out, just like she’d trained. Sparks hit the floor hard, the impact shuddering across her bones, and she rolled with it. Except that Scarlet rolled with her, towards the open door. They tumbled across the floor, and Sparks didn’t see the stairs until it was too late.
Both mares cried out as gravity seized them. Sparks tucked herself into a ball as she fell down the stairs, every step rattling her organs like dice inside her bones as she slid downwards.
She hit the floor and rolled away, wincing as every movement sent pain across her entire body. Her head darted around, searching for her target.
She spotted Scarlet sprawled across the bottom steps, glaring and grimacing in pain.
Unfortunately, she did not see the sphere of red magic rushing right at her.
Scarlet’s spell hit her like a cannonball, sending Sparks flying into the wall, the impact knocking all the wind from her lungs. Her vision whited out for a moment; when it cleared, she squinted through the pain to see Scarlet approaching her, horn alight with red. Sparks tried to get up, but the weight of Scarlet’s magic kept her pinned like a great boulder.
“Je suis desole, mon cher,” Scarlet whispered.
She punctuated her sentence by tightening her grasp around her former lieutenant’s throat. Sparks choked, flailing helplessly in her magical imprisonment. She tried to scream; she could feel a crackling in her neck like splitting wood as the metal vise tightened. Darkness began to creep up the edges of her vision; the last thing she saw was Scarlet staring down at her, a few tears leaking from her eyes.
Scarlet took a slow breath as she watched Sparks’ struggling slow, then stop as her head sagged. With a swallow, she tightened the grip around Sparks' neck, blinking away the tears as she felt her throbbing pulse in her grasp.
And then she felt a gust of wind from behind her and knew it was too late. Daring Do pounced upon her back, pinning Scarlet to the ground. The spell broken, Sparks slid to the floor, unconscious.
“Pompe à chiasse!” Scarlet shouted, flinging Daring off of her with her magic. Daring tumbled through the air, flipping over to land on her hooves in the living room, ducking under a scythe of red magic. Daring turned around to face her, her heartbeat pounding in her chest as fast as the rain pattering against the picture window behind her. Blood dripped from the nostrils of her broken nose, bruises covered her forelegs, and her right wing was bent at an awkward angle, but she still stood strong, glaring at Scarlet.
Scarlet charged at her like a runaway train, firing more spells at her as she ran. “Wandjina!” Daring cried, bracing herself for the impact. The spells hit her shield harmlessly like snowballs, but Scarlet closed the distance, a pair of red crystal knives appearing in her hooves.
Daring whipped her kusarifundo out with a whistle and the weight narrowly missed Scarlet’s foreleg. One blade darted at Daring’s torso, the edge slicing through the fabric of her vest to expose a swatch of dragonscale armor; the other blade slashed at her head, knocking her pith helmet to the floor with a clatter.
The two mares twisted and danced around one another in a deadly tango, snarling and spitting curses, a melody of hatred punctuated by grunts of pain and the crunch of landing blows. Drops of blood painted the hardwood floor.
Sidestepping a double-slash, Daring drove her elbow into Scarlet’s side, grinning at the sound of her foe wheezing in pain. Snapping her kusarifundo out, she ensnared Scarlet’s hind leg and braced, preparing to pull.
But Scarlet’s telekinetic shove hit her like a bowling ball to the chest. Daring was sent flying back with a grunt, slamming into the wall. The picture window that she slammed into was cold to the touch, the light filtered through the rain that ran in streaks down the glass.
A flash of red raced at her. Daring ducked, but a searing pain rocketed up her arm as one of the knives dug hilt-deep into her foreleg, the agony momentarily blinding her. When her head cleared, she was greeted with the barrel of a Modello 1935 aimed directly at her face, Scarlet’s hoof curling around the trigger.
Daring tucked and rolled, one hoof flying towards her pocket as a shot screamed over her head. The window shattered, rain and glass pelting down upon her as she rolled, snatching her boomerang from her pocket and threw it out with a snap of the wrist. The weapon struck home, Scarlet’s wrist bone snapping like a dead tree limb and sending the gun skittering across the floor.
Returning to her hooves, Daring fired off a punch to the stumbling mare, her hoof crashing against Scarlet’s forelegs. Scarlet charged forward like a bull, plowing into Daring’s hips. “Get off!” Daring snarled, pivoting around and pushing Scarlet past her. Her own momentum carried Scarlet into a stumble and she fell, right on top of the sea of glass shards.
A terrible shriek of agony and rage split the air as Scarlet flailed on the floor, clutching her face as blood poured through her hooves. Daring pounced and pinned her down to the floor, bringing her hooves down twice like jackhammers. Scarlet shrieked again, writhing helplessly beneath her.
Daring paused to catch her breath and stared down at her foe, placing her bloodstained hooves around the fragile neck. Scarlet’s face was coated in a layer of red, glass shards embedded into her flesh. She trembled, panting and half-sobbing as hot tears ran rivulets across the blood.
Scarlet glared up at her, drawing in pained breaths. “Do it, then!” she snarled. “Kill me!”
Daring glared down at her in silence, the rage curdling in her stomach beneath the aching pain, hissing at her to push down harder, to give her what she deserved so thoroughly, to crush and break and kill…
“No,” she said. “Much as I want to, I’m not that mare anymore.”
Scarlet tried to sit up, only to receive another punch to the face. “You’re going to go to court,” Daring snarled, punching her again. “You’re going to be punished for what you did. And when you sit in your cell at Clovenworth—when you look in the scratched-up mirror at your ugly, mangled face—you’re going to think about what you did. To all of us!”
Scarlet drew in a slow, wheezing breath and made one last bid to fight back, only to be knocked back down with another blow. “And you’re going to remember this moment,” Daring growled, leaning in closer to hiss into her ear. “Me, my hooves on your neck. You’re going to remember that I beat you!”
And with a final roar, she brought both her hooves down onto Scarlet’s face. Scarlet grunted once and was still, blood bubbling from her open mouth. Daring remained sitting atop her foe, panting as adrenaline gave way to exhaustion and pain. She grimaced and clutched her bleeding foreleg, the muscles inside screaming at her with every movement.
The door crashed open and Cold Case entered, followed by the rest of the officers. Cold gave Sparks a glance, then trotted over to Daring, scanning her wounds. “Hold still,” she commanded, gently pulling her off of Scarlet and casting healing spells over her injuries. The cold spread over her body, numbing the pain.
Before the pain vanished entirely, Daring noted that there was one part of her that did not hurt. Her brand was completely painless; for the first time in so long, she had almost forgotten it was there.
As Cold wrapped gauze around the knife still stuck in her foreleg, the three pegasus officers stumbled down the steps, groaning and holding their wounds as they blinked away the last traces of the red dust. “What happened?” Cold asked, continuing her work.
“Scarlet tried to teleport in here, but we grabbed her,” Daring narrated in a monotone as Cold carefully repaired her broken nose. “Those—ow—three came in, but Scarlet hypnotized them and had them attack me. I fought them off while Sparks took on Scarlet, then finished her off here. Sorry about the bruises, guys,” she added to the three officers.
“That’s what happened, chief,” one of the pegasi nodded, rubbing his jaw. “Sorry about the wing. And the nose.”
A fit of raspy coughing announced that Sparks was waking up, just in time for officers to put cuffs on her and the still-unconscious Scarlet.
Sparks’ eyes met Daring’s through the crowd of other ponies. There was no light in those green eyes anymore, only the cold dimness of defeat. Sparks hung her head as an officer checked her throat, then allowed herself to be hauled up and marched outside. Daring watched out the window as she was tucked into the back of a cruiser.
“Come on,” Cold said, finishing up her bandages and gently guiding her up. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
Daring just numbly nodded as she allowed Cold to carry her outside into the rain. The soft, wet wind embraced her like a hug, soothing the remnants of the pain as Cold carried her over to her black Chevroneigh Fleetracer and put her in the passenger seat. A glance out the window gave her the sight of Scarlet, her face wrapped in gauze, being carried out on a hospital stretcher.
Cold spoke to a few of the surrounding officers, including Prowl, who was carrying the now-sleeping baby colt, before returning to the car and starting up the engine. “Prowl’s going to take the baby home,” she told Daring as she pulled away. “She’ll take care of him until we can find him a good home.”
Daring just nodded, watching the gray-streaked city pass by outside the window. Exhaustion made her slump down in the pleather seat, eyelids flickering as she struggled to keep them open.
The next thing Daring knew, she was laying on a hospital bed with a cast around her wing and her foreleg and the doctor was informing her that she’d need to spend a day to make sure that the muscles repaired properly. And then she was alone again, staring out the window as the rain ran slowly down the glass.
She could feel something twisting and churning inside her, the motion traveling through her bones, but it couldn’t quite reach the surface. Dim faces—Scarlet, Sparks, Zugzwang, Trace, Phil—flickered past the window like a projection, fast enough that she only barely registered the images.
A knock sounded at the door. Daring turned to see Rain and Bobby entering, Rain wheeling herself around to Daring’s side. Bobby sat down on the mattress with a groan.
“You okay?” he asked, reaching out to take her hoof.
The twisting thing inside Daring suddenly rushed up to the surface, breaking through the walls. Daring tried to draw in air, but her head spun, eyes blurring with tears, and she felt herself falling.
Rain and Bobby caught her, pulled her into their arms, Rain tucking Daring’s head against her chest. Daring clung to them both and started bawling, every ounce of pain and fear and grief and loss that had been hiding below spilling out of her at once. Her family just held her close, gently stroking her mane as she sobbed until her throat ached and her eyes were red and puffy.
It took several minutes for Daring's sobs to fade away, and she became still, resting in the comfort of Rain and Bobby's arms. She sniffled and blinked, swallowing. “Thank you,” she managed to croak out.
“One step at a time, honey,” Rain whispered, kissing her on the head. “That’s the only trick to this. We’ll all get through it.”
There was another knock at the door and all three of them looked up to see a smiling doctor at the threshold.
“Daring?” the white-haired unicorn asked. “Phillip woke up. He’s going to be fine. He’s asking for you.”
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Now this is a sudden change Nice job getting two chapters out this time instead of one per week.
Jesus, that was a climax!
Oh, thank god. Small miracles.
Damn Scarlet got one tartarus of a beating.
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Well, I was actually going for a Punisher vibe there, but I guess that's a similar notion.