Prologue
Manehatten. A bustling, wonderful place for all ponies of all backgrounds and tastes to come and find whatever it was they were looking for. Luxury, work or even just some sightseeing were all things the expansive metropolis had to spare.
But that was just the surface and anypony who listened to their parents when they were foals would know that appearances can be deceiving. Manehatten may look like some utopian city and a paradise for anypony with the money to enjoy what it had to offer but that wasn’t all there was to it.
Those same cobblestones that line it’s streets actually give a pretty good picture of what Manehatten is like; all perfect and beautiful on the surface but pull it up and look underneath and what you see is filth, crime and way too many bugs all scrambling to hide now that they’ve been uncovered.
Trust me I’m one of those bugs. I know.
But anyway you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this anyway. I mean hay might even know it anyway and you just have me telling you stuff you already know like I suddenly became a school teacher, so I suppose I should get to the story I came here to tell. I’ve got to be honest, I knew I’d have a hell of a story to tell when I arrived here, if I ever had anyone to tell it to that is, but if I’d known exactly what I’d get involved in I’d probably have turned and ran all the way back to Ponyville.
So where to start, where to start? Well I guess it only makes sense to tell you why I was in Manehatten to begin with; everypony knows that a cutie mark is part of growing up, you get yours when you discover your true talent, it defines you, shows that you’re an adult and blah blah blah all that wonderful jazz.
Well, I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited… seeing where I’m going with this?
Yeah. Try being the one foal who didn’t get their cutie mark before you start saying you know what that feels like. Trust me you don’t.
It wasn’t like I just sat around and expected it to come to me. I tried everything I could think of and it worked for my friends but not for me, while they got their cutie marks and got to show off their brand spanking new talents I was just the odd one who couldn’t even get a cutie mark nevermind make anything of myself.
After a while I couldn’t go anywhere without the odd looks and weird questions, they already thought I was some kind of cripple or screw up because I couldn’t fly and now that I couldn’t get a cutie mark no one really knew what to do about me, especially not the ones who were supposed to look after me though it’s not like they ever cared anyway.
But what really made me leave was when my own sister stopped caring.
So, I came here. To manehatten. Spent a while floundering a bit but after a few weeks I managed to get a small rathole to call my own in exchange for working for this stallion named Patched Cap who I swear to Celestia was renting out his coat to fleas.
Wasn’t too hard really. I’d been training with my sister to be in athletic shape for when my wings finally developed. Turns out that kind of training does wonders for being applied to putting pressure on ponies who don’t pay their rent in exchange for not having to pay your own.
I’d been doing that for a few weeks before an old familiar face came to find me.
I was passed out on the couch in the living room, which you could tell wasn’t the bedroom only because I didn’t bother to clean it. I can’t even tell you what I was doing the night before that made me pass out on the couch, the days started to blur together not long after I started working for Cap.
I just wanted to ignore it until I heard her voice.
“Scoots. Scoots! I swear I will knock this door down if you don’ open this door and explain to me what the hay you’re doin’ here!” In a city of Manehatten accents that one was the only one I cared about.
My legs felt like they’d been broken when I got up to go and answer the door. Was usually me that did the injuring so I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case.
Babs had changed a lot from the last time I’d seen her. We’d still been fillies playing on the Apples’ farm then and trying to get our cutie marks together whenever Babs could make it down.
The police uniform didn’t suit Babs if you ask me, maybe filly-hood bullies don’t look so threatening when you’ve grown bigger than them or maybe it was just that I knew how much she’d softened up from learning not to be a bully when she was still young.
“Oh hey Babs. Wanna come in?” Before you ask no I’m absolutely certain I wasn’t on anything. I didn’t plan to fall into that no matter how bad things got.
“You mind telling me why you’re so far from your home in this shit hole?” Babs asked when she came into the room and stood in the corner like she was afraid she’d catch something.
“You’re standing in my home Babs. Doesn’t look like I’m far away from it to be honest with you.” Me I’d just slumped back onto the couch, not like this was that important anyway.
“You know what I mean Scoots. Do you have any idea what it’s been like trying to find you, it’s like you don’t even want to be found? Where are Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, why didn’t you send me a letter so you could stay at my place?” Babs carried on asking me all these questions that I could’ve predicted before she said any of them, eventually it got to the point I just had to stop her.
“Babs just drop it. I’m nineteen, I can make my own damned decisions and I don’t need a foalsitter.” I was snarling by this point, not even sure why anymore. “Look it’s nice to have a friendly face in this hell hole of a city but right now is really not the time for you to be giving me the whole twenty questions thing.”
I got up and pulled the door open, smacked it against the wall again. “Look. I promise I’ll catch up with you at some point but not until I’ve dealt with some things first, ‘kay?”
She didn’t look convinced but she’d gone far enough out the door that I could shut it on her. I checked through the peephole to make sure she was gone before I smashed my head on the door; every single time I turned help away like that it felt like I’d driven another point home about how pathetic I was.
Still though I had work to do, so I shoved any thoughts of Babs aside and got dressed properly in my best ‘thug clothes’ before I headed out to see Cap in the office.
“Ah Feathers, jus’ the filly I needed to see.” That disgusting smirk of his always made me want to take the nearest thing and smash his teeth out. I knew where this guy’s eyes were at all times whenever he talked to any mare and it was sure good motivation to keep wearing baggy clothes. “Now Feathers, remember that door you pounded down a few weeks back?”
I nodded. Apartment 12. Single father and his twin foals. Week late on the rent.
“Well, it seems that the dear occupant didn’t get the message last time… do be a dear and perhaps break something a little closer to him this time. The man clearly doesn’t value possessions, maybe a broken foals arm will bring him more clarity?”
Right then. That was the instant that I knew what I had come to do in this city, this underworld of liars, thugs and cowards. I hadn’t come to just fade away, I didn’t come to join in their gathering in the filth and become lost in the mess.
Oh no… I came to make them hurt.
****
That same night was my first tagging job; I would have paid good Bits to see the look on Patched Cap’s face when he walked into that office of his. Babs had been kind enough to lend me the paint needed to tag his office wall to wall with the names of everyone he’d ever swindled or had me threaten, and exactly how much I’d given them from the safes and storage boxes I managed to crack open.
Babs and her partner were waiting for him not five minutes later for an “unscheduled” inspection; took a little while but soon enough they managed to coax enough out of him and his former tenants to put him away for a good long while.
I didn’t know the names of half the ponies in that building yet I’d wager I threatened all of them at least once and probably physically beat a couple of them more than that. The fact that nobody gave my name, even though it wasn’t my real one, that no one described me…
Guess that’s the closest I can expect to forgiveness.
Now yeah, I know it wasn’t exactly smart to throw away the thing I had going for me even if it would’ve given old Granny Smith a heart attack to know what I’d reduced myself to doing but there were upsides; living with Babs was a lot better than the dung heap of an apartment I’d had before and Babs and I quickly managed to come to an arrangement regarding my ‘urges’.
Oh yeah, I didn’t get to that yet.
Well the tagging in Patched Cap’s was just that little personal bit from me, salt in the old bastard’s wound on behalf of me and everyone else who knew what a loathsome little rat he was.
Thing is though… well you can probably guess, it was a hell of a lot of fun.
So, I decided hey why not carry on. Turns out that you can do a lot to brighten up an old rathole with a little colour so that became my little hobby; a wonderbolts symbol here, a police badge in gang territory right on the walls of their tenements, my own little amusement to see them all scramble in confusion.
Sometimes more meaningful things… wonder if anyone’s pieced together what the yellow filly on a blue shield means yet?
This had been going a few weeks of Babs ignoring this when the next little bump in the road came.
Did I say bump in the road? I’m sorry, let me rephrase that, the next ‘holy shit who the hell tore the road out from under my hooves and let me drop into Tartarus itself’ moment.
Exaggeration? Perhaps but it sure didn’t feel like it at the time.
***
I’d just finished up a new tag in the Red Suns territory and I needed some more. Plus my old hoodie was getting a bit battered, even by Manehatten slum standards; I had a place at Babs’ but while I was out and about looking like that on those streets screamed ‘I’m homeless, come rape and rope me!’.
So I decided to go and see if I could get some new clothes while I picked up some more paint. I had big designs for my next tag and I’d need a LOT of colour for it.
Well someone decided to poke their head in at the wrong time. I do still feel bad that somepony ended up with a crater in the side of their head from my baseball bat but I just reacted in a panic when they poked their head through the alleyway door like that, I’m not used to being walked on like that, the guards and the police both yell first.
I wasn’t in the mood to have things look this bad to anyone else who happened to be strolling by so I ran for it, collided right into the dustbins on my way out of that alleyway.
I was pulling myself together when I heard the groaning. Thought it was me at first but unless I’ve been very mistaken these last nineteen years I’m not a deep voiced stallion.
So obviously I looked to the side. Right there I wished I hadn’t.
Right there I knew I’d probably not be lucky enough to not see this again.
In Manehatten stumbling onto a pony covered in knife wounds can’t be a sign of anything but trouble...