> Fallout Equestria: Silver Nocturne
>  by Gamma Deekay
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter One - An atypical night.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	This town was disgusting.  Nothing but two bit dames and average joes trying to scrape up what little they can and call it a life.  This ain't living, it's stagnation, and I'm gettin out of here before I sink six feet under with the whole damn place.  Time was, I enjoyed doing my thankless job in this rusting dump of a town.  Running lookout along the walls took a strong will and good eyes.  I had the eyes, and lucky for the town, the whiskey helped with the rest.

“The usual, Sunsoft?”  Last Call asked me in the same tone he’d used every night.  I’d never liked the guy, and I knew he felt the same about me.  He was the type of pony who’d sell his mother at the chance to make an extra cap or two.  As sleazy as he was, I didn’t blame him.  Life in the wastes was cruel and you had to fight to keep on top.  It was a losing battle, and not everypony made it as far as they wanted.  Even without an answer, he poured me a drink.  I took the glass in my fetlock as I had almost every night and brought it to my lips.  It burned all the way down, numbing my broken soul like water on the flames of a dying fire.

I set the glass down and stepped back from the bar.  Hoofing out a few caps, I’d tossed them on the counter and left.  I’d helped to protect the future of this place, and the ponies here were content to squander it.  Rusty over at the landfill didn’t sell to traders, instead he’d hoarded all the junk for himself.  Lady Luscious and her working mares could’ve been pulling in a heap of caps, instead they pushed dash onto their clientele.  Doc Chips was the only honest pony left in this place, but I couldn’t even visit without her telling me all about my troubles with the drink.

None of it mattered to me.  At the end of the week, I wasn’t even going to give a second look back.  The only things that mattered in the world anymore was a stiff drink, and the comfort of another pony.

The skies were stormy, the same as they’d been the last two nights.  The relentless rain filled the streets with the entrancement of a beautiful mare.  The flashing lights from the bar made the night air sparkle, while the wind and distant thunder played like the slow tune of an old world jazz band.  Nopony appreciated a rainy night’s beauty like I could.  Then again, nopony here even understood how the rain was made.  Not like she used to.

“Whisper…”  Her name slipped past my lips and rolled off into the cool wind that brushed against me.  It had been ten years ago this month I’d lost my wife to that pegasus disease, and still… every time it rained I thought of her.

The lonely streets were all the company I’d needed on my walk home.  Sure, I could have shared tonight with somepony else.  I’d done it plenty of times, but I couldn’t stomach it anymore.  The rot and filth that filled their lives here were a disease I didn’t want to catch.  They’d sooner drag me down with kind words and intimate actions, then see me leave this place alive.  I didn’t need them anyway, not when I had the promise of a shared bed down the road.

My home was my only anchor in these rough and changing seas.  From the outside, it had been nothing more than four rusting walls with the number 9 scrawled on it in fading white paint.  Inside, the soft bed, smutty magazines, and my collection of junk were all I had left.  At least, that’s what I’d come to expect would always greet me inside.  Unknown to me, that wasn’t the only thing that waited for me when I opened the door.

“Hey there.”  His voice floated through the air and greeted me like a warm touch across my skin.  “I’ve been waitin for yah all week ta walk through that door.”  Those silver blue eyes of his shone, even in the darkness of the shack.  Slowly, he turned up the small lantern next to my bed, and I finally felt my spirits lift.

“You’re back early.”  I stepped inside from the rain and shut the door behind me.

Had you asked me ten years ago if I could ever love a stallion, I’d have hit you straight across the muzzle.  Now, here I was finding myself drawn to him.  Maybe it had been because he was the striking image of my wife.  He had her palette, and he had her eyes, but it was more than just that.  Caltrop made me feel good in ways that I had never known could exist.  Yeah, he was quite a few years younger than me, and still seemed ignorant of life in the wastelands, but that didn’t matter.  Not when I held him in my hooves.

“Is that a problem?”  He gave me a frown and pouted his lips.  “Here I was, hopin we could spend a night in, just the two of us.”  He ran his hoof along his side, slowly drawing it back to his cutie mark.  His body was a weapon that always brought my mind to it’s haunches, and he knew how to use it.

I took the moldy towel I’d had hanging by the door and dried myself off with it.  To me, the prospect of a romp with him was a hard one to turn down.  In truth, the only thing I’d planned on doing until morning was drinking, getting myself off, and laying in bed.  Of course, it was going to be harder to find the time for sex once we’d left this place.  Manehatten was more than a few days walk south, and even then, it would be hard to find a safe enough place to rest.  

Tonight, I could afford to just let myself go.  Amid all the vices I could’ve lost myself in, the drink, cheap mares, and the drugs.  He was the one I’d spend my life lost with if I could.  Come the end of the week, that wish might finally come true.  Maybe for once in my rotten life, I’d finally caught a lucky break in meeting him.

There was a knock at the door shortly before Wire Spike let himself in.  Like the fabled grim reaper, the look across his muzzle telegraphed that he wasn’t here to join in the fun.  No, it looked like he’d come ask me to bail him out of trouble again.  It was a bad habit of his, but tonight especially I wasn’t in the mood for it.

“Sunsoft, something's happened.”  His whole body shook as he spoke.  When his eyes met mine, I could tell that he was in shock.  The little bit of blood that was splattered under his chin and on his forehooves ment it was most likely another bar brawl.  A shame I wasn’t there to participate this time.  “Out past the gates, there was a wastelander or something, and…”

“Goddesses, Spike. It's my fucking day off.”  I lost my cool.  This was my last night off before I left, and now that Caltrop’s back, the town can go fuck itself.  “Can't you get Silver Platter to take over?  He’s normally good at cleaning up your messes.”

"Silver's fucking dead," He spoke as he dropped his tone and tears started to drop down his cheeks.  For the moment, I set aside the fact that I’d generally hated the guy to hear what he had to say.  "Doc sent me to get you.  If she asked, you’d better believe I don't care if you're in the middle of getting fucked by some stallion whore.  Now grab your gear and let's go."

Before I could get off a half thought out insult, he stepped back out into the rain and disappeared into the night like a ghost.  Right then, I’d just wanted to tell Caltrop ‘fuck this joint, let’s scram’.  This town wasn’t worth the trouble it gave, and I hoped it burned to ashes the minute I was gone.

I couldn’t leave tonight, not with Silver dead.  He was a good stallion, and second only to me in the towns guard ranks.  He’d covered enough of my own fuckups that I at least owed it to him to find out what happened.

“Yah aren’t really gonna leave, are yah?”  Caltrop pined from my bed.

“Sorry, love.”  I sighed out and waded through my junk to where I’d thrown my security barding.  “Though, I’ll see what I can do to make it up to you when I get back.”  With a kick, I slid a box of old wingboner magazines off my musty barding.  From the moment it’s smell met my nose, I knew I was too sober to be heading out for duty.  To his credit, Caltrop didn’t try to beckon me into bed.  I guess he could show a bit of restraint when he needed to after all.

“Just stay safe out there.”  He offered as I could hear more than a hint of disappointment in his voice.

Safe.  That was a laugh out here.  Between the Raiders, the wildlife, and more of those damn alicorn monsters appearing every day, we should all be dead.  I don’t really understand how any of ponykind could have lasted this long.  Then again, that’s what ponies were good at.  We survived.  Blew up the whole damn world and we just kept on ticking anyway.

I slipped the old, pre-war business outfit I had on over it and buttoned myself up as I’d done almost every night for years.  However, I felt conflicted about it tonight.  Not just for having to go out so suddenly, but because this was one of the last times I’d ever wear it.  The only things that I’d be bringing with me when I left were my gun, my caps, and enough food to make it to Manehatten.  The barding belonged to the town, even if it was just going to rot with the rest of this place.

My revolver on the other hoof, was something I’d rather leave, but couldn’t.  I’ve never been too keen about keeping a gun.  Sure, it’s been reliable the hoof full of times I’d had to use it.  Hell, it’s even saved my life once or twice.  As much as it’s been a blessing, it’s also been a curse.  I’d cornered a daft drunk at the bar once a few years back.  He thought he could draw faster than me.  He couldn’t have been older than sixteen when I’d shot him dead on the spot.  Still, I kept the old .38 loaded and strapped to my barding.  I’d choose a lifetime of regret, over laying six feet under.


-----


By the time I’d gotten outside the gates, the rain had tapered off into a misty haze.  The light from a few lanterns cast eerie shadows out into the darkness of the wastes.  The sheen they gave to the crumbling old paved road outside of town, was stained with crimson lines.  It was a scene straight out of the old mystery novels before the war.

Wire Spike stood next to Doc Chips, who hovered like a vulture over the bloody mess that used to be Silver.  The sight of his corpse was so damned unnerving, that I almost missed the fact that Jerry Can and Lady Luscious stood on the other side of it.  They’d been two more pages of bad news that I could add to tonight.  Like a raider with a smile, nothing good ever came after you saw it.

“A damn shame to lose a stallion like Silver to such reckless actions.”  Jerry Can said with his normal propension to mention the obvious.  “He shouldn’t have gone outside the wall alone.  He didn’t deserve a death like this.”

“Shut your mug, Jerry.  You don’t give two shits about your own town’s guard.  How about you scram and let me do my thankless job.”  As I spoke, I nearly spat at the rotund bastard.  He’s another on the list of ponies I won’t miss.  A mayor who spends more time at the brothel than I do at the bar is a sign of a weak town.  Besides, there was only one pony here I trusted.  “Give me the news Doc, what happened?”

“Well from what I can tell, somepony went to town on him with something heavy.”  She spoke as she magically levitated a small rod around his body.  She used it to illustrate the finer points of blunt force trauma.  “A fractured shoulder, broken ribs, and a plenty of internal bleeding are all pretty terrible, but that’s not what killed him.”  She lifted the rod and used it to turn his head.  We all cringed as she exposed the other side of his face.  The pulpy mass of flesh and bone had an inward curve to it.  It looked like nothing I’d ever seen before.  “I’ve never seen this kind of wound before, but it takes a large amount of force to do that to a pony’s skull.”

“By the goddesses, what could do that to a pony?”  Jerry Can gasped before turning away from the sight.  

I looked up to Luscious and caught her glance.  She quickly averted her eyes before turning back to town.  I still wasn’t quite sure why she’d been out here in the first place.  A mare with legs that almost went on for days, she’d never been the kind to spend her time in the mud.  Then again, tonight was a slow night in town, and the gruesome entertainment of the wasteland was always a free show.

“Go home, Jerry.”  I said in as stern a tone as I could.  The fat bastard finally got the message and casually strolled back to town.  “Wire, you said that there was an incident.  Tell me, what exactly happened?”

“Well, Silver and I were on guard just like usual.”  He said as he looked up to me.  The poor stallion was doing everything he could not to look at Silver.  “Until he said he thought he saw something making it’s way around the wall on this side of town.  I told him it was probably just some bloatsprite, cause that’s what it usually is, you know?  But he said he still wanted to check it out just in case.”

“Go on.”  I muttered and swung my gaze across the dark landscape around town.  Somepony scouting the walls maybe?  Why attack Silver when the rain and darkness could give you the clean sneak?

“A few minutes after he left, I heard him shout something.  The rain was still coming down enough that I couldn’t hear what he’d said, but I came down from my post and ran to him.”  He paused for a moment as a small whimper slipped through his lips.  “And… I found him laying here like this.”  He started to sob.

“And that’s all that happened?”  I turned my eyes to the dimly lit wall and looked along it.  A few feet from the entrance, something at the base of it caught my eye.

“What do you mean?”  Wire shouted through his anguish.  “Something just murdered my best friend.  If I knew something else, I’d have fucking told you.”

“Hey, he and I drank from the same bottle some nights.  I didn’t mean any offence.”  I cast my own glare at his angry eyes.  “I just want to know why this had to happen at all.”  Wire needed his space and some time to deal with his loss.  Deaths in this community were few and far between. The cases of a pony being bumped off by an outside attack had been as rare as unfiltered sunshine.  Something smelled funny about all this, and I planned on finding all the dirt I could on it before the rains came again.

The rain had already taken care of most of the evidence at the scene of the crime. The rest was trampled under the hooves of the boobs who showed up out here to gawk.  As I looked around, I found one set of hoofprints that lead back toward the town wall.  I followed them back to the curious spot I’d seen.  It was met by another pair of tracks that came seemingly from the wall itself.  Their gaits were almost matched to a galloping pace.  Silver must have been chasing somepony, which meant that they tried to ditch him after all.

Shortly along the trail of hoofprints, I found myself at the wall.  After a rain like tonight’s, the jagged collection of concrete slabs that formed the wall were normally fairly clean of the elements.  However, a curiously canted slab had a splash of mud along the top of it.  A quick inspection of behind it revealed a small hole in the dirt.  No more than a foot wide or so, a shallow puddle resided in it.  I reached in and pressed my hoof against the muddy bottom.  My hoof gave a soft click as it tapped something metal.  I tried to scrap it out, but I couldn’t get it to budge in the mud.  Could be important, could be a piece of scrap from Rusty’s yard on the other side.

A dead guard, a shallow hole, and a mysterious intruder.  Three things that made my gut churn with anxiety.  This whole situation sat wrong in my mind.  I knew that this puzzle would be not only tough, but most likely a dangerous one to solve.  There were too many unanswered questions, and too many oddities in the investigation already.  But Silver had seen something, and that something had given him the big sleep.

There wasn’t much I could’ve done now.  It was too dark to search the area, and taking a lantern out by myself would just be asking for trouble to come looking for me.  I’m sure that whoever had been out there, would be back again.

“I’ll take a look at him, Sunsoft.  You can come by in the morning for what I find.”  The Doc called as she headed for the town gate.  She had Silver’s body being carried by Wire, who kept his eyes glued to the dirt and his muzzle in a frown.  Those two had shared shifts for a long time, and I knew that they were pals.  It was a shame that things had to go down the way they had.  At least the Doc might have a few more answers for me when I got up.

With my prospects for the night down to the one thing I’d been torn away from, I left the wall and headed back into town.  The walk home was about as comforting as my shift in the guard tower.  I couldn’t shake this hanging feeling that this wasn’t a random attack.  The only hope I had, was that the weather held out until morning.  If I could get another look around, I might be able to find some clue as to who’d done this.

As I reached home, I pushed the door to my shack open.  Caltrop was right where I’d left him.  The moment I walked in his eyes lit up like a candle in a crystal ball.  He shifted himself into the same position I’d seen him in earlier and wore a lustful gaze.  As the door shut behind me, all I could do was stare.  He cocked his eyebrow and ran his hoof along himself slowly.  He was a slice of heaven incarnate, just waiting to be taken.

“Well, aren’t yah goin ta say somethin?”  Caltrop batted his eyes at me. Then, as if I needed any more convincing, he rolled onto his back and gave me a clear look at the goods.  That was just like him.  Always so eager to get whatever made him happy.  What he lacked in patience, he made up for in more... intimate ways.  In just a few moment’s, I’d stripped my barding off and was standing over him next to the bed.

“Sorry, sweetheart.  Just admiring the view.”  I said as placed myself over him.  The dim lighting, the smell of the rain, and just how perfect his body was.  Everything hit me at once.  It was either the lack of alcohol, or the fact that I hadn’t been laid in a week that made me feel this lust-filled.  Even if I wanted to say no, my body wasn’t about to let the rest of this night go to waste.

I was in heaven.  The smell of sex and sweat filled the humid night air.  For what felt like hours we rode the rough waves of passion and ecstasy.  In the end, he'd collapsed on top of me.  He pressed into the mess we’d made all over each other.  I savored the warmth that radiated out from him and did my best to remember this single moment.  Together we lay in a panting heap, hooves around each other.  

Only when it was over did the sound of the rain return to my ears.  With it came the disappointed knowledge that for now, we were still in this dump of a town.  I didn’t care.  Being here with him was all that mattered to me.

“Dat…”  Caltrop whispered and panted heavily, “was a hell of a ride.”

“And you are a hell of a stallion.”  I whispered back through my own.  My mind and body both called out for sleep, and I was ready to oblige.  “There isn’t anypony else I’d rather fall asleep next to, than you.”

“I know, I am pretty amazin, aren’t I?”  He gave me a soft laugh and wiggled his all too perfect hips.  “I’m just glad we’ll be leavin this place soon.  I want ta spend the rest of my life with yah.”

“As do I.”  I sighed.  My heavy eyelids crashed shut, and his warm embrace carried me off into the most restful sleep I’d gotten in days.  Even with the promise of slumber, Silver’s death sat in the back of my mind.  That would be my goal for this week.  I’d find out what happened to him before I left this place for good.  The town might not care to know, but I think his memory deserved the justice I could bring.


-----


As it mostly did, the time to wake up came far sooner than it should.  The light raps on my shack door roused me from my comfortable slumbers.  The only comfort I had as I woke up, was the warmth that Caltrop gave off against me.

“Just… one minute.”  I grumbled.  It took a few seconds for me to remember how to use my legs.  The only thing worse than waking up with a hangover, was waking up sober.  The fact that when I opened my eyes everything was brighter than all hell didn’t help either.  With less grace than an out of control freight train, I stumbled over to my shack door.  I opened it a crack and looked out wearily.  Wire Spike stood outside same as he had last night.  Written across his face was every shade of regret and remorse you could get.  “Oh, Wire. What do you want?”

“I came by to apologize for last night.”  He said.  His voice was tired, and the bags under his eyes looked like they weighed a ton each.  “I know you and Silver worked well enough together to consider each other more than just acquaintances.  He was just the only friend I had.”  He trailed off to a silence that I’d known all too well.  Whisper’s death fluttered into my mind like a moth seeking the light of day.  It was a feeling that I’d buried deep inside, and I needed to strike down quickly.

“Look, I’ll tell you what.”  I grumbled.  “Let me see what I can find today, and we can discuss it over a drink tonight.”  I stopped to let out a long yawn.  One which he was patient enough to wait through before he gave me an answer.

“Sure thing.”  He forced a smile and gave me a soft nod.  While his expression might have said the offered hadn’t meant much, the tone of his voice he used said he was hopeful.  “Sorry for waking you up.  I’ll let you get back to bed.”

I shut the door on him with another yawn.  My neck and legs gave stiff pops as I turned myself around.  When I did, I found Caltrop gazing groggily up at me.  The thoughts of Whisper receded back into the depths it crawled out from.

“Mornin, hun.”  He whined out as he stretched his legs.  As he did, I caught a glimpse of what pressed against his underbelly.  Somepony had a nice dream while they’d slept at least.  “Mind givin me a hoof with somethin.”  He said as a smile spread across his muzzle.  “I think dat part of me’s a bit more awake than the rest.”

“Sorry, love.”  I gave out with a sincere sigh.  It felt like a crime to turn something like that down, but penance for it could wait until later.  “No time for a quicky this morning.  I have to run to see the Doc.”  With a quick look, I found my discarded barding and hoofed it on.  “I promise that I’ll make it up to you tonight, alright?”

“Yah better.”  He said with a note of disappointment that stung at my soul.  After only a moment, he gave me a sly smirk and waggled his eyebrows.  “If not, yah gonna have ta let me be top for the rest of this week.”

“Sounds like a deal.”  I chuckled while I checked myself over.  I had my gear, my gun, and my wits about me.  All I needed, were some answers about last night.  “Feel free to make yourself at home while I’m away.”  I said and raised my forehoof to my muzzle.  I blew him a kiss before I turned and hoofed open the door.

“Take care!”  He shouted as I walked out.

Even with the cloud cover, on a day like today I should have brought my hat.  I’d already gone too far though.  If I went back in, I knew Caltrop’s calls would be too much to resist.  Instead, I sucked it up and started to squint.  I walked the narrow corridors towards the center strip of town in a daze as I was forced to wake up by the obnoxious daylight.  For being a town named Shady Pines, this place was always a whole lot brighter than I’d like it to be.

Still, the walk wasn’t as brutal as some of the mornings after a bender.  I knew the excess was bad, but in the wasteland, you can’t help but want to feel that good.  The hustle and bustle of the other hundred ponies who lived in this shithole was the only thing I could’ve rather done without.  That’s why I’d chosen to take solace on the nightshift.

Actually, that was a lie.  The truth is, getting a few drinks to start the night always seemed to make the night look a little brighter, and the town a little less in the shitter.  If Last Call opened up earlier than noon, I just might have considered the evening shift back then.  Even now when I think about it, a stiff whisky could go a long way to keep today bearable.

Regardless, I didn’t have time for a drink.  I had to make my way over to the Doc to get the dirt on what happened.  The more she could find out, the closer I get to being rid of this junkheap of a community.  Still, it might have just been the fact I’d just woken up, but Silver biting the big one still seemed like it was part of a bad dream.  Something told me that the gurgle I had in my gut wasn’t entirely about wanting breakfast.  No, something bigger was at play, and I was going to get to the bottom of it.

I trotted out into main street.  Even without a drink to temper my vision, I caught a glimpse of something ugly at the clinic.  Two bricks in Grifter Gang combat armor did their best to look imposing.  Not that I cared in the least, they looked like jokers anyway.  Missing various sections of their armor, the two looked more like the local junkies than guards.  Being paid to look that way was probably about the only good they could ever do.  They knew who I was and just how many shits I’d given when they came through before.  They didn’t even budge when I stepped past them and barged through the door.

For a clinic, this place wasn't much less of a dump than my joint.  At the very least the ceiling and walls kept the daylight from me.  The fluorescent lights were a gift from the goddesses to my weary eyes.  Even so, the smell of wallpaper adhesive was thick enough it threatened to strangle the life out of the ceiling fan.  Each slow whining rotation wafted more of the rank stench at me and fluttered the peeling floral wallpaper like a hundred ribbons.  It made the room almost feel as if it were alive, which isn't something you should have to say for a place of healing.

The Doc’s overly happy muzzle was nowhere to be found amongst the decrepit papers and files on the reception desk.  She was most likely somewhere in the back room still figuring out just what had put Silver on ice.  I took the closest seat in the wasteland’s most depressing clinic, and perked my ears.  Nothing but the soft squeak from the cruddy bearing in the fan could be heard.

I folded my hooves across my chest and got down to the frustrating job of waiting.  I had no idea how long she’d be back there, but I’d hope she’d make the time for me when she came out.  Being the only mare who ran this place, free time wasn’t exactly something she had an abundance of.

I don’t know how long I’d sat there for.  It seemed like a small slice of forever before I heard noises trickle in from the back.  A soft murmur grew louder as it approached the door to the lobby.  I straightened myself up and got to my hooves, all while I prayed for a clue that could seal this case for good.


“-ly, I’m sorry for the discomfort.”  Doc Chips spoke with a smile as she opened the door.  When she stepped through, her gaze crossed mine.  Her expression soured like I was the worst wine she’d ever tasted.  From behind her, out stepped Dutch.  The frontman for the Grifter’s, he was an ugly bastard to find yourself looking at.  Covered from head to hoof in scars, he gave me a glare that could only be read as ‘fuck you’.  That brought a smile to my muzzle and gave my head the kick it needed to get back on straight.

“Thank you again, Doc.”  He spoke.  “I shall be more careful next time.  I suppose I have enough scars for one lifetime.”  He raised a hoof and blew her a kiss.  She returned it with a nervous smile before she turned her attentions elsewhere.  He turned and made it to the door before he stopped.  With a cocked eyebrow, he looked over me like he was ready to throw down right here and now.

“If you’re looking to rent yourself out, try applying at Luscious’s place down the street.”  I grumbled just low enough to where he had to cant his head to hear it.  That lit a fire in his eye and brought a sadistic grin to his face.  “That’s where all the two bit whores work.”

“You sure?”  He retorted and scrunched up his muzzle to hide the embarrassment my words had caused.  “I was sure somepony told me you kept one at home.”  He gave a jittering giggle as he turned to face me.

You can mess with me all you want, but nopony got to bring the one I loved into it.  I was tense, far too tense for either of our good.  He’d hit a nerve, and he knew it.  The smug look on his ugly mug showed that he relished the fact that I couldn’t fight back.  It’s not that I wouldn’t have given his chin a good once over, but because none of us guards could touch him.  Jerry Can’s rule kept in the way of Dutch and the justice he deserved.

“Boys!”  Doc Chips shouted.  If it hadn’t been for her, I’m not sure if I could’ve held myself back much longer.  “You want to take this outside town, or do I have to call somepony in here to restrain the two of you?”  She raised a hoof and grimaced at the two of us.  Dutch giggled and pushed open the door.  Within moments, he was gone.  With a sigh, the Doc and I both relaxed.  “I'm no head doc, but you've got a deathwish if I've ever seen one.”

“Sorry.”  I simply replied.  “What was the goon squad doing in town anyhow?”

“Same as always.”  She rolled her eyes.  “Dutch got himself fucked up again, and of course, I had to fix it.”  She adjusted the small, round glasses on her muzzle with her magic.  For some reason, I always had the impression that she hid herself behind them.  For a mare with a coat as clean as hers, and blue eyes the color of the uncovered sky, she didn’t let ponies get too close to her.  “I’m guessing you aren’t here for another lecture about your drinking habits?”

“Sorry, Doc.  I’ve got work to do.”  I lifted my hoof and pointed toward the back room.  “You find anything I should see?”

“Stayed up late to see what I could find.”  She shook her head and levitated a small cloth to her lenses.  “Sorry, but there’s nothing else to what I said last night.  Some sort of trauma to the head.”  She paused and looked down at the front counter before looking like she was lost in a labyrinth of thought.  She rolled her hoof and rubbed at it softly.  “No, there was this one odd thing…”

A shimmering silvery line rose up in her magic from under the counter.  With a clue to move the case forward, I held my hoof out to her.  At half an inch long, and maybe a quarter inch wide, it was a discolored jagged scrap of sheet metal.  Something just like Rusty would have in his yard.  Unless Rusty became a murderer overnight, I had my doubts that this could be anything but useless.  I looked up to Doc for the relevance in hopes that she had something more.

“I found that lodged in Silver’s rear left hoof.”  As she spoke, I looked back down to the shiny metal.  The dark discoloration had the trademark tinge of blood to it.  It probably would have been something that my old friend Wild Pegasus would have helped me notice were today like any other day.  “It’s a real nasty shard if you ask me, must have been painful.  It couldn’t have been in him any longer than just before his death.”

“Was this all?”  I asked as I slipped the shard into the pocket of my barding.  This wasn’t much to ride on, but I had a feeling in my gut.  I had to dig deeper into this, especially if I wanted to be ready for whoever killed Silver to return.  They always go back to the scene after the deed is done.  Murder is a dirty job, and it’s too much trouble to clean up after if you asked me.

“Yeah, I can take another look over him again, but I couldn’t do it until tonight.”  She grumbled in the way I did with Wire last night.  “Came downstairs first thing this morning to find my services required by Dutch.”  With another roll of her eyes, she turned to head to the back room.  “I’m not sure if it will, but I hope that shard helps.”

“Thanks for your time, Doc.”  I called out as she disappeared into the back.  She’d done more than her fair share to help on this so far with as busy as she always was.  Doc Chips deserved a medal and a vacation for the shit she put up with in this town, and I owed it to more than just her to get this solved quick.


-----


The night trudged on with the expediency of a stallion in concrete shoes.  It was standard protocol for the senior guard to pick up the first shift of another deceased guards pony.  Silver liked to pull alternating shifts, and today I was stuck with his shitty afternoon shift.  Seeing as by the time I’d finished up at the Docs I was already late, I planned to stay late as well.  The whole six hours I’d been up in the guard tower, I couldn’t help but draw out that useless metal shard and look at it.

How had it gotten jammed in, and why was it on the wrong side of the wall?  Why didn’t Silver call out for help earlier?  I had one piece of the puzzle here in my hoof, but it wasn’t enough for the big picture.  Cross Knot came to relieve me early, and I jumped on the chance to use the time for another look outside the wall.  With the sun already heading down for what seemed an early night, I kept my mind as sharp as that shard for clues.

A quick trot from the guard tower, I found myself headed through old wrought iron town gate.  The dirt out here had some give under my hooves, but had mostly dried in the midday sun.  The lull in bad weather was a gift from above, and I could still clearly make out my own tracks from last night.  I followed them back to the oddly canted section of wall and gave it a good tug.  With some insistence from my forehooves and a few kicks from my rear, I finally managed to move it.  My work had paid off, and I could see the hole that had been dug in the mud.

The dark ring of earth gave away the remanence of the muddy puddle that had filled it last night.  With a quick scrape of my hoof, I smeared the still sticky mud from whatever metal I’d felt before.  The click of it against my hoof brought a smile to my face and renewed my hope in the case.  Now that I could get a good go at it, I didn’t mind if my hooves got a bit dirty.  As an earth pony, nothing felt better than when I scooped it and the dirt around it out.  With a flick of my hoof, I scattered it all to the dirt beside me.  The silver glint of metal caught my eye in the form of a rolling cap.  As it flopped down, I walked over and hoofed my prize up to my face.

With the dirt on it, at first glance it was just an ordinary cap.  Under the mud however, the pristine surface, crimped ribs, and sharp sides of the cap gave it away.  It was a forgery.  The tilted section of the wall, the metal in Silver’s foot, and where he’d been killed.  It all made sense now.

Unfortunately, now I knew I was in it deep.  My gut was right on the mark this time, and this would be a lot harder than I’d first thought.  Silver might have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but somepony had been running counterfeit caps through the town.  My first stop tomorrow morning would be Rusty’s place.  If somepony has been stealing his scrap metal, he had to know.  If he’d been selling however, than he better have one hell of a story to tell me.

“What the hell did you stumble into, Silver?”  I mumbled to myself.

> Chapter Two - Trips for biscuits
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I’d stopped by home to check on Caltrop before I went to meet Wire for those drinks I’d offered.  Funny, I never made it back out.  When I walked through that door and saw him laying there for me, I knew I wouldn’t be leaving.  Caltrop had waited for hours to keep up his end of the deal we’d made, and he’d delivered.  He’d bought a bottle of bourbon and brought it back home for us to share.  Last night was perfect. That is, what little I now remembered of it.

For the second day in a row, a pound on the door had woken me up.  I didn’t know when I’d fallen asleep, but the smell of sex and booze still clung desperately to the early morning air.  If it meant an end to the egregious, heavy knocks, then the walk to the door would be worth it.  With my mind still in a haze, I somehow managed to have made it there without kicking over too many things.  I wrapped my hoof around the handle and pulled it open slowly.  Even through just a cracked door, the outside felt brighter than a thousand suns.

“Sorry to wake you, but I need you to come with me.”  Doc Chips spoke with heavy words that I could just feel drag me down to earth.  Just by the way she was standing, I could tell something else had gone wrong.  She’d caught a thousand yard stare, and she wore it like she’d never let it go.

I nodded and shut the door.  Dread built in my gut like a rotten meal’s reward.  I looked over to Caltrop as he slept without a care to the mysteries unfolding around him.  That was a sight I’d never wanted to forget, and soon, I wouldn’t have to.  Just five days, then I could spend the rest of my nights around him.  With Silver’s untimely death, Wire would be the next in line for head of the guard.  So long as he could pick himself up from what happened, this town might have a few more years in it.

With the little coordination I could muster, I threw my clothes on.  Somehow when I did, my gun gave it’s holster the slip and clattered across the floor like a chorus of hammers.  I winced as the racket made Caltrop stir in his sleep.  He mumbled for a moment before he turned over, still muzzle-deep in dreamland.  The sight was a small miracle to me, and a smile grew across my own, normally grim muzzle.

I reached down for my gun.  Between the long night and the abrupt wake up call, my hooves were about as accurate as a stallion pissin in the wind. Instead of my piece, I knocked my hoof on the near empty bourbon bottle that layed next to it.   The last bit of golden liquid looked like a small slice of heaven to me.  I took the bottle in my hoof and brought it to my lips.  I bit down on the musty cork and pulled it out with as much thought to it as you’d give to letting a raider live.  Within moments, the last of the booze was gone.  A line of fire traced down my throat before it sank to the empty pit of my stomach.  

As I looked for somewhere to put the bottle down, my eyes fell upon something else I needed.  The wide brimmed, leather hat was literally a sight for sore eyes.  It’s something I’d forgotten yesterday, but I’d since learned my lesson.  Quickly, I swapped the hat for the bottle in my hooves.  As always, it fit around my head as well as the day I’d first laid eyes on it.  Finally ready to go, I turned for the door and headed out.  With the taste fresh in my muzzle, my heart ached to drop in on Last Call for my wake up special.  

The second I walked out, Doc Chips caught my attention.  She sat against the shack next door wearing seven shades of regret.  Like the harbinger of death, she was a cold reminder that even in this community we weren’t safe.  She sat there nervously rubbing at her hoof, her eyes glued down the alleyway.  Everything about her looked like the wastes had swallowed her whole. All of her that is, except her mane.

Her strawberry blond mane looked like an oasis in a sea of rust and decay.  I could never quite figure out how she kept as clean as the day she’d been born.  The sandbags under her eyes however were far from the oasis.  They’d been more commonly on her than the drunks at the bar who couldn’t understand the meaning of ‘no’.  I myself knew, since before Caltrop even I’d had a few passes at her.  The difference between me and the others, was that I’d been a quick learner.

“You know, Doc.”  I started to say as I walked over.  “That metal you gave me turned out…”  I let the words trail off as she put her hoof up with a frown.  That grim look came back across her muzzle with the force of a wagon.  It stopped me dead in my tracks.

“We’re going to the shacks down the alleyway.”  She said as she got back to her hooves.  “Jerry found him about an hour ago.  I thought you’d want to see him first.”

“Who is it?”  I asked.  This wasn’t a long alley, and I knew who lived in this half of the block.  Once again, that nagging feeling in my gut just hadn’t wanted to quit.  The longer we walked, the more it felt like a bad itch that you just can’t scratch.  That is, until we stopped right in front of Wire Spike’s door.

I knew what I’d find inside wouldn’t be pretty, but I hoofed open the door anyway.  Not unlike my shack, Wire lived among a few unsorted piles of junk.  In the corner was his bed, and an old refrigerator stood off alone in the far corner.  A soft creek from beside me pulled my attention.

There he was.

A black rope that ran down from the roof was coiled around Wire’s discolored neck.  His body hung limply in the air, his guard barding smelled rank with booze.  His half lidded eyes looked down at me with enough regret to fill ten lifetimes.  I stood there for a moment to take it in. A sight like this would haunt me for the rest of my days, so I might as well have taken a good, long look.

Wire was always a dick, sure.  He’d been understandably distraught over the death of his best friend.  The question I had to ask was, did that make him suicidal?  Even though I’d missed him at the bar, I didn’t think that would have been enough to drive him to take the jump.  Even so, he’d been packing heat.  Why hadn’t he taken the easy way out and offed himself with a slug to the head?

“You should read the note.”  Doc Chips said as she stood behind me.  “Jerry didn’t want me to touch anything before you surveyed the place.”  As she continued, I looked around for a moment.  Next to the chair he’d stood on, was the white sheet of parchment that supposedly spelled out Wire’s last moments.  “Between you and I, I’d like to get him down from there.”  She sighed.

“Go ahead.”  I said as I reached for the normally bland and unimportant paper.  Funny how a ponies last word could change it into something heavier than a ton of bricks.  “Do me a favor and give him a look over anyway.”  The worse than usual mouth writing on the paper was a bit hard to read, but I thought I might’ve been able to make it out.  “I just want to be sure.”  After a few rough passes, I think I’d gotten the gist of the suicide note.


---

Dear fuckers,

Now that my only friend in the world is gone, I have no reason to go on living.  You can burn in hell for all I care.  I’m sorry momma, I wasn’t strong enough.  I’ll see you and Silver soon.

---


It wasn’t nearly as dark as I’d expected, but I couldn’t blame the stallion because he kept a suicide note short.  Still, something about this didn’t share its shoes with the rest of the case.  I had another question that burned like a hot coal in my mind.  Why was it that Jerry had showed up here in the first place?  He’d never cared enough to even give you so much as a hello on the street.  Why show up here?

The crash of Wire’s body as it fell startled me.  I jumped right into one of his junk piles and scattered it across the floor like pieces of a puzzle.  The fact that I’d jumped like a jackrabbit was testament to how bad this case had me.  With two guards down, could somepony really have their chips down on me for next in line?    Doc Chips stood in the doorway with a raised eyebrow and a stare that burned deep into my soul.

“Before this becomes another of your lectures,”  I began abruptly.  “Do you have any idea why Jerry would come to see Wire?”  His bullshit had been piled too high for him to clear these past two days.  Even if I had to get rough, that fat bastard was going to sing me the answers to my questions.

“I don’t know.”  She shrugged and used her levitation to lift Wire’s body again.  “Guard business?  I heard you were leaving at the end of the week.  With Silver dead, that would’ve made him the next head guard, wouldn’t it?”  She eyed me curiously for a moment.  Again, her eyes had been brought down on me in a look of divine judgement.

“I don’t think he would have come down here for that.”  I simply stated.  She turned her gaze away, and I could practically feel the sweat roll down my forehead.  She was a mean mare and had more than just that look in her arsenal.  I’d found out that night I’d made a pass on her, she also had one hell of a right hook.  Even though we weren’t ever on the best of terms, I respected the way that she did things.  Now, my eyes were fixed on Wire’s corpse as she pulled it to the door.  “I’m going to have a talk with Jerry.  Something’s going down in this town, and I’m going to figure out what it is.”

“Well, if that’s what you think’s going on.”  She muttered and stepped into the Alley.  “If you ask me, I’d say that it’s just a bad case of depression that made him do it.  Feel free to swing by later to get what I find out about Wire if you’d like.”

“Will do, Doc.”  I nodded and dropped the note to the floor.  “Actually, can you do me a favor?”  Carefully, I made sure not to knock anything else over as I made my way back outside.  “Can you keep my hunch between us?”  That request got an annoyed look to flush over her face.  “I don’t want to cause a panic if I turn out to be wrong.”

“Sure, whatever.”  She rolled her eyes and trotted back up the Alley.


-----


Two guards dead in two days.  One a deliberate murder, the other an apparent suicide.  As much of an asshole as Wire used to be, coward wasn’t something that fit his bill.  I was convinced that Wire’s death meant something more, and that Jerry Can had at least some of the answers to it.

I trotted past Lady Luscious’s brothel on my way through town.  I had the odd thought about where Luscious had been all yesterday.  She hadn’t made the rounds in the streets when I’d been on guard.  She ran that joint like a clock, and no rounds were bad for business.  As odd as her behavior had been, she still sat at the bottom rung of the investigation.  A brass rung was interesting, but I’d rather look out for the gold one at the top.

The house that Jerry called the town center sat oppressively before me.  The crumbling stone columns to the estate looked worse every time I’d seen them.  Off-white flaking paint that barely clung to the estate was just as bad as presenting an organized town as Jerry himself was.  The only thing that gave this place any semblance of respect, was the fact that a single white daisy had sprouted by the front steps.  With no other plants for seemingly miles around, this was a small miracle to behold.  Suddenly a shitty house didn’t make much of a difference to most ponies.

I wasn’t most ponies.  I hadn’t shown up to discuss the miracle of life, and it was time to put the screws on Jerry.  He knew something, I was at least convinced of that.  If anypony had any use for running counterfeit caps through town, it was him.  Anypony who spends that much of their time with Luscious’s mares would have to have dug themselves into a trench worth of debt.

As I approached the front door, the sound of hooves from the other side carried through the air.  I stepped aside and waited for whoever it was to exit first.  The door swung open, and a fairly well dressed mare sauntered out like she was royalty.  Her light silver palette and teal mane were almost completely hidden behind a emerald gown and hat.  Delicate puffs of smoke drifted from the ivory cigarette holder that stuck out from her muzzle.

“Ah, how are joo, Mr. Sunsoft?”  She smiled and looked at me from behind her large round sunglasses.  “It haz been too long, my friend.”  Her expression was softer than even her name. She used that look like a weapon, but I knew what would happen if I slipped up.  You get comfortable around her, and you’re her’s for good.

“Not long enough, High Pillow.”  I could only grumble in return.  While Dutch was the front of the Grifter gang, High Pillow was both his marefriend and really the mare in charge.  The stories I’d heard of the ponies who crossed her would make a grown stallion cry.  Drugs, slaves, and highway robbery, you name it and we’d been told to turn a blind eye to it.  She was the worst kind of monster you could ever find in the wasteland.  Sure, it was her gang that kept our town safe from the horrors of the wastes, but she was no friend of mine.

“It iz too bad dat joo feel dat vay.”  She made a pouty face.  “Ve could be ze best of friends if joo vere just villing to try.”  She tisk-tisked and shook her head.  “Ah, vell.  If joo ever change jor mind…”

“Goodbye, High Pillow.”  I finished for her.  Two deaths in two days, and now two visits from the Grifters.  The word of the day was already bad news, and the longer she’s around the worse off we’d all be for it.  She simply smiled and trotted down from the porch like she was too good for this town.  Who knows, maybe she was better than this dump.  Still, as bad as this place was, she deserved nothing less than a dusty roadside grave.

Grilling her about Silver would have been a waste of my time.  She’d never gab about the dirt she had, and I could scare up more from the highbinder upstairs anyhow.  High Pillow could have her walk into the sunset today, but come tomorrow, her silver coated kisser wouldn’t save her.

I decided it was time to get down to business and turned around.  I pushed the door to the manor in and let the force of it slam against the wall.  Jerry had to know it was judgement day, and that I wouldn’t be satisfied with the simple trivialities that he’d no doubt try to distract me with.  My slow and deliberate hoofsteps took the pace of an old clock, ticking away at the time Jerry had to prepare.

Each step up to the second floor sent a crack through the air.  If he had anything to do with this, I wanted Jerry to be sweating buckets by the time I laid eyes on him.  In a turn of events that surprised nopony, his office door was closed.  Jerry was a tough son-of-a-bitch to get the truth out of, so I had to go all in.  As I rounded the banister into the upper hallway, I whistled a tune that kept to my pace.  With a swift kick, I made sure the hardwood door to Jerry’s office opened with another slam.

“Could you please not destroy my house?”  Jerry sighed and reclined in his plush office chair.  It took me all of a few seconds to realize that with him still seeming relaxed, everything had already gone sideways, and now I was somehow the mark in the room.  “Good to see you, Sunsoft.  Why don’t you have a seat?”  His calm demeanor was an affront to his character.  He motioned for me to take a seat, but I wasn’t that daft.

“What were you doing at Wire’s shack this morning?”  I asked with as much blunt force as I could apply to my words.  If there was still a chance I could jimmy anything useful out of him, I’d have to give it to him on the level.  “As it stands, you’ve shown up at both deaths after they’ve happened.  I want to know why.”  Sure, he could claim coincidence, but that’s the one thing this dump of a town never seemed in short supply of.

“I was simply there to discuss his promotion.  I’d come to collect the binding contract every head of the town’s guard signs.  Or did you forget?”  His words slithered through the air with the intent to poison the conversation.  “Which is why I’m glad you stopped by.”  The air took a dark turn, and I had the suspicion that it was me now under the gun.  “With both suitable replacement candidates now… out of the running, I’m afraid you’re resignation has been denied.”  

That lit a fire under me and I slammed my hooves down on his desk to stop myself from the beating he deserved.

“You don’t get to decide if I leave, Jerry.”  It was hard to use my words when it would have been so much easier to convince him with my hooves.  “Come the end of the week, I’ll be dusting out, even if you got down on your knees and begged for me to stay.”

“Ah, yes.”  The fucking bastard kicked back and enjoyed his day as he strung me along like some palooka.  “While there isn’t anything I could do about that, five days certainly is quite a bit of a wait.  With all the accidents lately, who knows what could happen before your contract expires.”

His gaze was as sold as the dirt the town was built on.  Jerry had never been the kind of lug I’d expected would’ve tried to have given me the two-step run around.  This went deeper than just his hatred of me, I could see it plastered all over his rigid expression.  He’d tipped his mitt with a threat like that, and now I’d nail him to the wall.

“You have no power over me, Jerry.  I know you have something to do with the counterfeit caps that are running through this shithole.”  I slammed my hooves down onto his desk.  Like a twig underhoof, his expression cracked.  If lady luck were on my side, he’d confess to this whole mess and come with me quietly.  “What was it that was so worth it to you that you can justify the deaths of Silver and Wire?”

“By all means, Sunsoft.  If you have evidence to back up these claims, go ahead and arrest me.”  He snarled and got to his hooves.  I could almost feel the heat of his anger as it radiated across his desk.  “But if you try to arrest me without it, I’ll bring my town’s guard down on you faster than you can scream your coltfriend’s name.”

In a move that I’d probably regret, I gave his chin the good news and he went down hard.  I shook my sore left hoof and relished in how good it felt to do that.  Sure, I’d gone off the track, but it had been a long time coming.

“And on that note, you’d be wise to remember something before you ever do that again.”  He whined and pulled himself up with the ease of a drunk.  “Not everypony in town knows about or is supportive of your ‘alternative lifestyle’.  It would be a shame if the few who weren’t were to find out.”

A rock and a hard place didn’t even have a chance against the jam I’d gotten caught up in.  Even though he was lousy for double murder, and obviously deep into it with High Pillow, somehow I’d become the sap.  The moment he’d brought Caltrop into it, my hooves were tied.  He’d hit one nail on the head, and that is that I needed evidence.  I took his remarks on the heel and decided to leave before either one of us did something we’d regret.

“Oh, and Sunsoft?”  His voice was the bane of my willpower, and sapped more of it away with every syllable.  “I hope you haven’t forgotten, but with Wire dead, you’ve inherited both his shift and the one for Silver he was scheduled to cover.  Hope you don’t mind pulling a double.”


-----


The daylight hours crawled by at the pace of a decaying corpse.  It didn’t help that by noon the skies had all darkened.  With as much warning as you’d get for a gunshot to the chest, a crack of thunder split the air.  Then, the rains started. Like a bad hangover, they didn’t let up, only falling like they wanted to wash the world clean.  Maybe it should, and just take this whole goddess forsaken town with it.

Eventually the sun dipped down below the horizon.  The dark of night won out over the rain and flooded the town in darkness.  With the early shift now over, Hollow Point gave her farewell and left the guard tower for home.  Because I’d been scheduled tonight with Wire, I was up here for the remainder of my shift, alone.  It was something that I hated, mostly because I tended to dwell too much on the past.

After Whisper had passed, I spent the better part of four years alone.  It hadn’t taken long for me to acquire the taste of scotch then, only a few months.  Until I learned to live with myself again, every moment I hadn’t been in this tower I’d spent over with Last Call.  Those first few days were hard, but I got tough fast.  Had to with all the brawls I’d get in.  I’d never been much of a fighter before then either, but I was still young and stupid back then.

Only after that did I figure out that there were other ways for me to let off some steam.  It had been the case of just another long night when I’d finally given in.  The rounds Luscious’s mares would make always ended at the bar, and that night I’d gotten swept up in them like ash in the wind.  I lost myself in the smell and feel of raw sex, and I never wanted to come back out.  I’d kept it up for years, almost every night I’d spend my caps away on enough booze and sex to have bought this town by now.

However, those times are long gone.  The time I spent with all those mares danced through my memories with a lucidity I felt guilty to have.  As much as I’d missed those nights, they couldn’t compare to what I had now.

Visits to the brothel all came to a stop back when he’d walked into the bar.  When I’d met Caltrop, he was a skid rogue out for an easy night of pickpocketing.  A young stallion out to make a name for himself, standing in that doorway like fate had driven him to find me.  I remembered that I dropped my drink when I saw him.  He was the ghost of Whisper, and when I looked into his eyes, I knew that he was something special.  I needed to see him, to remember what it felt like to look at my wife.  It helped that I’d arrested him for theft and kept him overnight in the tower lockup.

“Evening Sunsoft.”  Last Call grunted out as he climbed the steep stairs into the tower.  I’d been ripped from the sweet clutches of nostalgia, greedily aching for more than I’d been given.  Lucky for me, I could just swap one bad habit for another.  “Haven’t seen you around lately, so I brought you the usual.”  He hoofed a small bottle of whiskey out from his soaked saddlebags and tossed it across the room to me.  I caught it in my forehooves, wondering what game he played at.  “It’s on your tab.”

“Thanks.”  I said with every bit as much suspicion as there was dark in the night.  This was uncharacteristically nice of him, but then again, Caltrop had stolen me from the bar the last few days.  Funny how in the last few months, I’d been Last Call’s only reliable source of caps.  With Rusty’s attitude to turn everypony away, the traders in town don’t hang around more than a few hours anymore.  

“I’ll be by after my shift.”  I nodded in thanks to him.  “I wouldn’t want you to go an find somepony else to fill my seat.”  That, and the fact that he might’ve known something about what’s happened behind the scenes.  He’d always kept his gums from flapping every other time I’d pry, but if there was a chance, I needed to take it.

“Yeah, like anypony’ll stay long enough for that to happen.”  He rolled his eyes and brushed the comment off like a spot of dirt on his striped sweater.  I could tell though that behind the annoyance in his voice was the real fear of having to close the bar.  Who knows what’ll happen after I put this town behind me.  Moreover, what do I care?

Jerry’s threat came to mind again.  Somewhere inside, I knew I was going to have to do something I’d hate.  This side of Jerry wasn’t one I’d seen before, and it chilled me to the bone.  Caltrop would be safest if I’d just let him go on ahead to Manehatten.  Five days would be enough to find something to bring Jerry down, and after that, I could quietly leave this place in the dust.  Unfortunately, the hardest part of that plan would be to get Caltrop to agree to it.  With heavy steps and deep in thought, Last Call turned and left me.

Once again, I was alone in the tower.

Without any thought to it, I grabbed the bottle in my fetlock.  I stared a moment at the amber liquid inside and thought about saving it.  While it would make the rest of my shift go by in a flash, I could share it with Caltrop.  What I could remember of last night was amazing, and if I could get him to go, I would have to make it a night to remember.

With a sigh, I set the bottle back down.  I’d spent years worth of nights alone, and a few more hours was a small feat I could overcome.  The wind whistled through the sheetmetal around me with a somber tone, and the relentless taps of rain against the roof kept me company.  I told myself that it would be enough, but that golden liquid did it’s best to tempt me.

Funny thing about addiction is that you don’t get to ignore it.  I’d made it all of a half hour before I lost myself and gave in.  Hadn’t even realized that I had until I was already on my second sip.  Just like Caltrop’s offering, once you had a taste, there’s no way you’d ever stop yourself.  I felt disgusting that I’d broken so easily, but lucky for me, the booze ushered those thoughts away.

In the span of another half hour, the bottle was empty, and I was cruising along through a foggy haze.  Jerry’s words ran through my head over and over again, but they didn’t matter.  For the first time all day, things had finally started to go my way.  All I would need to do tomorrow is find the one puzzle piece to bring that palooka down for good.

In fact, as I leaned back in my chair, I started to laugh.  This whole case had been a bad joke, and I was the sucker who just waited for the punchline.  He wouldn’t make it easy, but that bastard would get what he deserved.  I let that soak in as my shift continued, but I knew it would never have been enough to keep me focused.

At some point in the night between sobering up and taking the long walk down the roads of my past, the rain had moved on to somewhere else.  Probably wasn’t worth the effort and saw that this town was done for anyhow.  Pin Cushion soon arrived as my relief, and I headed out to make good on my promise to Last Call.  It had felt like I’d been up there all night, and I needed a stiff drink to take my mind off everything.

Just like in the calm before the storm, I was on edge.  I’d run out of good moments to reminisce about, and now all I had were the facts of the case.  I had Jerry pegged as the culprit.  Being town mayor, he had the perfect setup to get in easy and bump off anyone.  He’d also been at both scenes after the fact, which made him par for the course.  The more I thought about it, two things still seemed out of place.  He didn’t have any motive, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Wire wouldn’t have fought back.

A sharp pain shot through my head and made sure I knew that I was leaning too far towards sobriety.  I shook it off and trudged through the muddied street.  My salvation was in sight, and I could almost taste the sweet nectar on my needy lips.

Unfortunately, it was something I wouldn’t receive tonight.

Like a spectre, the hit came out of the night itself.  They’d pasted me right in the head and I went down for the count.  My head spun faster than a carriage wheel, and I felt the cold drip of blood ooze down across my muzzle.  Hoofsteps danced all around me with the crack of a whip.  For me, it seemed as if my number had finally come up.

“Hey!”  Last Call shouted in what could have been the last moments of my consciousness.  Everything went blacker than the lonely night for me.  If this really was the end, I guess my only regret would be that I never got to say goodbye.

> Chapter Three - Behind the eight ball
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The darkness in my mind was a cruel mistress, tempting me to bask in her serenity for all eternity.  But, like all the mares in my life, the darkness moved faster than my mind could keep up with.  With all the tenacious ferocity of a tumble in the midnight sheets, Shady Pines pulled me back into its festering grasp once more.  

The pleasant numbing of a painkiller kept me higher than one of Luscious’ regular junkies, and the warm hooves around my side were a gift from the heavens.  With a groan that I normally reserved for bad hangovers, I decided that I’d had enough of my dark mistress for one evening.

I couldn’t recall anything from when I’d blacked out, and I never got a look at who’d jumped me.  Best guess, was that Jerry had sent somepony to make sure I’d taken his threat seriously.  I couldn’t prove it, but that wouldn’t stop me from trying my damnest to pin him for attempted murder.  The evidence against him had to be out there somewhere, and I’d be damned if I didn’t find it.

The rank smell of the clinic greeted me like an old friend, and the fluorescent lighting was less of a comfort than when I’d still been boozed up.  The lumpy medical cot that I’d been laid in groaned out even more than I did as I tried my damndest to sit up.  The meds took their toll and reminded me forcefully that I wasn’t exactly hitting on all eight at the moment.  I resigned myself to laying my head back down, instead focusing on the warmth of the hooves tenderly grasped around me.

“Sunsoft, yah okay!”  Caltrop gasped and hugged me as if I was the only thing he had left in the world.  His voice carried a sweet sorrow through the air like a sad song, and his warm tears doused my neck.  In truth, waking up in his hooves was more a blessing than ever, one that I wished I could return in kind.

“He's been here since dawn.”  The voice of Doc Chips was as jarring to me as a lone gunshot on a calm night.  “Sat outside like a wet blanket until I let him in.  Never seen a stallion bawl for anypony as much as he did over you.”  She walked closer, and I could feel as she worked her magic across the top of my head.  As she did, a spike of pain hit me like a bolt of lightning.  “However, what I have seen before, is injuries like this.”

“So,”  With as much coordination as I could muster, I attempted to pry Caltrop’s hooves from around me.  As much as I loved how he held me, I had questions I needed answered.  “Three questions.  What hit me?  What's wrong with my head?  And how long will I be down for?”

Doc Chips sighed and did her best to pry Caltrop from me, finally getting him to relent.  The release of his grasp left me feeling cold and naked, and his whimper felt like a needle in my already fragile heart.  

“Well, far as I can tell, and from the description that Last Call gave when he brought you in, you got clocked pretty good by a powerhoof.”  The way she spoke as she gave me the lay made it sound like she were bored with me already.  “Saw plenty of wounds like it during my short stay with the Steel Rangers.  But hell, at least you pay me for my work, even if it isn’t nearly enough.”

“Yah used ta live with those toasters?”  Caltrop spoke up out of turn, drawing a look from Chips that could have dropped him dead were her eyes a pair of lethal weapons.

“She doesn’t talk about it.”  I owed Doc Chips for saving my keister plenty of times before this, so the least I could do was take some of the heat off a question as loaded as that one.  “Moving on, Doc. What’s wrong with my head?”  I blinked a few times as the room became hazier than after a fifth of scotch.

“Well, one day you picked up a bottle and never put it down.”  She spat with all the ire that a stallion like me could have ever deserved.  “But the fifth you nearly drowned yourself in last night is neither here nor there.  To be honest, it's not as bad as it could have been.  The damage is a gash across your skull and the light fracture that came with it.”  With a grumble, she lifted her hoof up.  As delicately as a leaf on the wind, she used her magic to levitate a blue hoof covering over and stretch it over her raised hoof.  As soon as it was on, she brought her hoof close to her chest with a wince, and favored it like she’d been doing for days.  “I did what I could, but I'm not a miracle worker.”  With a light touch, she got to inspecting the wound with her hoof.  “You’ll need a week before it’s healed up well enough not to cause a problem.”

“Ya sure he’ll be alright?”  Caltrop, the angel that we was, was like an inquizitive colt.  Sure, the questions he always asked might’ve been harmless, but sooner or later they’d end up tooting the wrong ringer if somepony wasn’t there to stop him.

“So long as he doesn’t tear these stitches open and keep the bandages clean, it shouldn’t get infected.”  Doc Chips turned her gaze down at me.  The expression she wore felt like it held the anger of a thousand exploding suns.  “And no alcohol.  Period.”

“Not this again.”  I groaned out and sought refuge again in Caltrop’s waiting hooves.  Just having him here at my side did more for my pain than any drug ever would.  I didn’t need this lecture now, not when there was still too much to be nailed down in this case.  My demons could wait for another day, one where Jerry is safely locked up and this whole mess is behind us.

“Moron.”  The Doc grumbled and pointed to my head.  “Alcohol is a blood thinner.  If you bleed anymore into your brain, there isn’t anything I can do for you but grab a shovel and start digging.”  Her voice sent icy shivers through my coat, and chilled me to the core.  “Got that?”

“Can’t ya just give him a healin’ potion?”  Caltrop pinned, sounding even more the fragile stallion that I knew him to be than ever.

“Unless you have one lying around, the Clinic is out.  I used the last one on Dutch.”  With a snap, she used her magic to pull the blood splotched glove off her hoof and toss it toward the bin in the corner.  At the same time, she wrapped a long cloth bandage around my head tightly.  Turning away, she paused and held onto the silence in the room like it was more precious to her than caps.  “Look, I know what Jerry said to you yesterday.”  She looked back with a pleading look.  It was less genuine than it appeared from behind her small glasses, but she only held it for a moment.  “Maybe you should look into getting out of town early.  Whoever did that probably won't stop until you're head is another smear on the dirt.”

“Thanks for the patch job and advice, Doc.”  I groaned, forcing myself to sit up.  My head spun more than a weather vane in a hurricane, but Caltrop’s steady hooves helped to keep me as straight as a door.

“I’m serious, Sunsoft.”  She muttered again as she walked towards the door.  “For the sake of both you and your Coltfriend there.  You should save yourselves from this place before it swallows you whole.”  With a sigh, she opened the door.  “For now though, go home and get some rest.  I don’t want to see you in here again this week, do you understand?”

“Sure thin’.”  Caltrop answered for me, helping to prop me up as I found a way to get my tired hooves under me.  “Come on, hun.  Let’s get yah home.”


-----


The heavy patter of rain drummed at the roof of my shack like a thousand hooves telling me to take Caltrop and run.  Each wave of thunder that rolled above reminded me of the deafening crack of last night.  Over and over again it played through my mind.  Everything in my head was as hazy as the end of a long night at the bar, and I quickly found myself getting nowhere in the case from the comfort of my bed.

“Yah okay, Sunsoft?”  Caltrop whispered into my ear.  His voice was like silk, and I felt a shiver of pleasure run down my spine from his breath on my neck.  I wanted to give him the answer he wanted, but I found the Doc’s words running through my mind.

“No.”  I’d missed something in the case.  I’d gotten sloppy and nearly ended up in a muddy hole as my reward.  This case had become too dangerous to lose my focus again, not when I had everything left to lose.  “I want you out of town before sundown.”

“What?!”  Caltrop was understandably outraged.  The fact that he shot up to his hooves as fast as he did only proved how much he’d grown to love me.  Something I should have seen coming was the heavy slap that impacted against my muzzle.  “I ain’t leavin’ yah, Sunsoft.”

My heart ached worse than it had in years as I watched his expression crumble.  It hurt knowing what I was asking him to do, but it didn’t matter.  I could take the pain so long as I knew he was safe, and the cruel reality of it was that out in the wastes was safer than Shady Pines was now.

He raised his forehoof again to slap me, but I stopped him short.  “Look, I owe it to Silver and Wire to figure this mess out, but I can’t do that if I’m stuck worrying about you.”

“Is dat what yah think?”  Caltrop spat at me like I’d just stabbed him in the heart.  “Like I ain’t got feelins about this too?  What happens when yah get jumped again?”  The thump he made as he sat down next to me resonated with me far more than the thunder that crashed above.  “What happens when I wake up a week from today and realize yah ain’t comin’ back ta me?”

“I’ll never leave you, you know that.”  I reached my hoof up, caressing along his cheek for only a moment before he took my hoof into his own.  With a whimper, he nuzzled against it and whined.  “But I need to know that you’re safe.”

“Don’t ask me ta leave…  I don’t want ta.”  He whispered softly, each word boring into my very being like the nails to a coffin built just for me.  “Promise me yah will come back to me?”

“I promise.”  My own words slipped out of my lips more hollow than the ruins of the old world.  I couldn’t make a promise like that, not when I’ve been always one hoofprint behind what’s been going down.  However small that promise had been, my beautiful stallion collapsed onto me in a sobbing heap of needy warmth.  

I didn’t deserve to spend my time simply holding him like I did, but this investigation wasn’t only about what I wanted anymore.  If this was the last chance I ever got to hold him in my hooves, then not even Jerry would be able to stop me.  Jerry had made this personal, and it was about time I got myself a new set of cards to play with.  With Caltrop safely out of town, there wouldn’t be anything that stood in my way from getting dug in as deep as I could get in all this.

With a soft kiss on his lips, Caltrop melted into my hold, and for the next however long it was, I simply let time slip by.  With as bad as things might get for him, he needed this more than me.  He’d need to weather the storm of the wasteland alone until I was done here, and for that, he’d need all the time he could get to unwind.  But for now, in my grasp, not a damn bit of that worry mattered to him, or me.  Not even when I closed my eyes for a single moment, and drifted off into a warm nothingness.

As had become a bad custom in my life, an all too loud knocking came from my door and roused me back to the waking world.  However, this time, I hadn’t even had the courtesy of a moment to get up before it opened.  With heavily lidded eyes, I looked around me to find that Caltrop had gone, and that as had been my only companion for so many days, the emptiness around me was the only thing left in my life.

“Mister Sunsoft?”  Luscious’ soft emerald eyes peered through the dim evening light that still hung outside.  “I am sorry to wake you, however I have something here that you need to see.”  In her delicate unicorn magic, she lofted a small cloth sack through the door toward me.  “One of High Pillow’s associates attempted to pay me with that.”

My vision hazed as I attempted to get myself to my hooves, and my head stung like a thousand tiny needles were pushing into it.  As soon as I’d found my hoofing, Luscious set the soft velvet sack down against my forehoof.  The familiar clink of caps caught my attention, and my focus returned with the ferocity of an addict chasing their next hit.  Carefully, I kicked the sack over with my hoof, watching as the bright silver disks inside spilled across my messy floor.

“I hope you understand that I have nothing to do with what’s been going on.”  Luscious spoke up as I picked up one of the counterfeit caps in my hoof.  Wether she said it as the truth or just to garner sympathy when this whole thing came crumbling down had yet to be seen.  “If you come back to my office, I’ll allow you to speak with the girl who brought those to me.”

“I appreciate your help, Luscious.”  As they once said in the old world, it wasn’t wise to look a gift horse in the mouth, and she knew I couldn’t afford to turn this away.  She was too smart to try to buy me off with any favors or girls to try, but this was too nice, even for the likes of her.  “I’ll swing by later this evening and take you up on that offer.  You can count on that.”

“You won’t be returning with me now?”  Her worried tone underscored the fact that there was more to this than she was letting on, but I couldn’t worry about it just yet.

“This isn’t the first I’ve seen of these pass through this town, and I’ve got myself a good idea where they’re coming from.”  Carefully scooping the fake caps back into the bag, I looked up to find Luscious hiding behind her black mane like it were a veil.  “But I will come see you as soon as I pay Rusty a visit.”  With a soft nod, she turned and left, shutting the door and leaving me sitting alone in my shack.

Hoisting the small bag up to my muzzle, I stared at it as if waiting for it to reveal it’s secrets to me all on it’s own.  I’d been right to suspect that High Pillow had something to do with the counterfeiting, and I could be damn sure that Jerry was in bed with her on it as well.  But even a gift bag filled with guilt like the one in my hoof still wasn’t enough.  

I wanted to nail Jerry to the wall for what he’d done so completely that they’d have to leave him up there as an example to the rest of the filth in this town as to what happens when you try to cheat the system.  For that, I needed the source of the caps.  Finding the mint would be that hammer I need, and I’d be hard pressed to find out that Rusty didn’t have anything to give me on where I could find it.

After searching my junk piles for my lead slinger for damn near on twenty minutes, I gave up.  Maybe it was from the knock in the head, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I’d left it.  With the heat I’ve been drawing in this shitty town, for once, I actually felt like I’d needed the damned thing to feel safe.  Without it, I’d just have to be light on my hooves until I could work out how to get something to use in the little time I had left.  

Then, for the second time today, a knocking at my door stirred my attentions.  Whoever they were had been impatient that they didn’t even wait for me to greet them before opening it.

“Ah, Mr. Sunsoft.”  High Pillow’s voice drifted into my ears like the hiss of a venomous snake.  Turning to look, I found the vile mare all dolled up like the last time she was in town.  Her mane was nearly sparkling, the teal locks all tied in a bun and secured with a string of white pearls more spotless than her soul would ever be.  Instead of the emerald dress she’d come in before, she wore a puffy gold overcoat that was slung casually over a blue satin shirt.  She smiled at me from behind the large sunglasses she wore, trying in vain to hide the disgust she felt from being in a dump like this place.  “It is good to see that joo are doing vell after jor… accident, as I hear it?”

“Could be better.”  I grunted.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”  High Pillow never dealt in ‘private’ engagements outside of work, which meant the mare didn’t make this trip for biscuits.  She wanted something.

“Maybe I just vanted to vish joo goodbye.  Joo vere leaving tomorrow, yes?”  She smiled, slipping inside and closing the door behind her.  As she did, I could barely make out the two dumb bricks she’d brought along for protection standing outside.  “Joo have protected dis place for so long vithout so much as a simple thanks.  Ve have been very grateful for jor verk, and vish joo vell down ze road.  It vould be a pitty should joo leave vithout something to show for it.  Don’t joo agree?”  With the care of a mother holding a newborn foal, she pulled a sack of caps out from her overcoat, holding them out to me.

“Yeah, well I ain’t finished with my work yet.”  I snorted.  She was most certainly trying to drum me up so she could play off something else.  If I had to guess, it was something to do with the counterfeit caps running through town.  “I’m on to something big.  Pay me now and you might find you’ll be needing those caps in short order.”

That roused a soft chuckle from the mare, as well as a deep sigh.  “Joo are certainly a stallion of conviction, Mr. Sunsoft.”  She tossed the sack of caps at my hooves.  “Keep zem as a thanks from ze Grifters for all jor hard verk over the years.  Should be more zen enough zat joo could leave anytime.”  Reaching back into her pocket, again she drew out the long cigarette holder she prized, pulling it up to her muzzle.

“Payoff’s won’t work, High Pillow.”  I deadpanned, giving her the brunt of my thoughts in one go.  “What are you trying to hide in this place that will make you hold up this little charade to get me to leave?”  Even from behind those glasses, I could see the steam boiling in her veins.  Nopony spoke to her like that and saw daylight again, but I didn’t have much light left to lose now that Caltrop was outta town.  So, I took a shot in the dark.  “Before you say anything, I know it isn’t you who’s been knocking off guards in this town.  I’m sure it’s Jerry, and with the investment you have in this town, I know you have an interest in seeing it survive.”

High Pillow looked stiffer than most of my drinks after a long shift.  I’d put her on the spot and she didn’t like the pressure.  Her expression had cracked, and she knew it. Reaching up to her glasses, she pulled them down so I could see her Maroon eyes fill with a sort of uncertainty that painted her in a light of unease that I don’t think anypony has ever lived to see.

“Joo certainly are as perceptive as Dutch makes joo out to be.  Had I believed it, zere would have been no charade.”  Carefully, she hoofed a cigarette into her holder and lit it up.  After a long drag, she relaxed a bit as I simply sat and waited for a response to my question.  “Jerry iz up to zomething,”  She nodded, peering over at me with a steeled look.  “Zis town iz stagnant.  Yet, it continues to thrive.  Vhy, I must ask?  He haz become difficult to control, gone rogue in fact.”  She poured more mirth into that word than I could care to accept, but for once the two of us found ourselves in agreement.  “He thinks zat he can just take zis place from us? Ha! Ve vill take hiz life for zat mistake.”

“No.”  As much as I wanted to see him fall, there were rules for a reason.  If Jerry was up to something, then leaving it to High Pillow and her cronies was just as bad as turning a blind eye.  I didn’t need her ‘gift’ to come around and bite me in the ass later as something to hold over my head.  I’m not so dense as to miss the fact that keeping this money at all was just as much of a payoff to the other guards if she happened to bring it up.  If somepony doesn’t keep the rules intact, then none of what us guards do even matters.  “Keep your lousy money.”  I picked the heavy sack of caps up and held them out to her.  “You get the hell out of my home and let me do my job.  Jerry is my investigation, and he’ll be dealt with properly when I find the evidence that condemns him.  Not by your goons, not by your rules.”

High Pillow smirked at that, pulling her glasses out and slipping them back over her muzzle.  Again, she was hidden behind her gaudy glass mask, but now I could still make out the cracks behind it.  Both our ear’s perked as a heavy hooffalls came down the alleyway outside.  The labored breath of a pony outside made me tense up.  Today had already been one hell of a doozy, and about the only thing I hadn’t been looking for was more bad news.

With more force than was probably necessary, Dutch nearly threw himself through the doorway and down at High Pillows hooves.

“Love, I just came from…”  The scared up lug of an earth pony nearly groveled at the mare’s hooves before he looked up at me.  He fell silent, and a scowl that fit him to a T fell across his no good muzzle.

“Vat are joo doing here, Dutch?”  She snapped when he just left us all in a quiet suspense.  Like an old world lapdog told to heel, he tore his gaze from me and went back to paying attention to his master.

“It’s Jerry. He’s dead.”  Dutch spoke with an unnatural conviction for somepony of his character.

“What?”  I snapped, immediately pointing my hoof up to High Pillow.  “Tell me what’s going on.  Now.”  Had she only come here to keep me from interfering with what went down?  No, she wasn’t the type to be that lousy with a setup.  I don’t think that was the way she would have it go down at all.

“He was at the brothel, like you’d...”  Dutch spoke up sharply, being silenced when High Pillow daintily pressed her hoof to his muzzle.  It was amazing to watch such a violent and untamable beast like Dutch put into his place with so little effort.  In fact, High Pillow’s remarkable control over those in her gang was probably the only thing I could truly respect about the mare.

“No stories, zis must be seen.”  She spoke softly to him.  “Joo must get ze doktor.  Tell her to come immediately.”  He was puddy under her hoof, softly nodding before getting up off the ground.  High Pillow only turned her head to me slightly with a smile.  “Please, accompany me, Mr. Sunsoft.  I’m sure joo vill vant to see ze crime scene, yes?”

“You should leave.”  I gave her the only thing I had to say and tried to beat it into her as best I could.  But it’s hard for somepony’s words to stick to something so poisonous that one touch could get you killed. “There’s no reason for you to even set one hoof in there, and I’ll have you escorted out of town for trespassing if you or any of your cronies do.”  Something must have been funny about the way I said it, because she wore a smile like I’d just given her the world.  “I’m still the head guard of this town, and I say scram.”

“Joo said it Jorself.  I have a big investment in zis town.”  She laughed in a way that both made my blood boil and freeze at the same time.  “If Joo think I don’t already own it, Joo may be less perceptive zan I once thought.  Now, Joo will accompany us, Mr. Sunsoft, or it is Joo who will be escorted avay.”

“Fine.”  Even if I wanted to try to hold up against her, she had the leg up on me in every scenario.  For now, I had to fold under her.  She’d get her way, sure, but only if she played by the rules.  My rules.  “Nopony touches anything around there, and only you will escort me to the body.  Got it?”

“Mmmm,”  She smiled her devilish smile again, sucking on her lower lip as she nodded.  Satisfied that she’d at least play fair for the time being, I held my hoof out to the door.  She gave out a sly giggle as she cupped her hoof around Dutch’s face, trailing around it as she walked past him. “Good.  Now, ve go!”


-----


The scene in the luxurious brothel suite was just about as depraved and green-lable as a stallion like Jerry could have ever sunk into.  Velvet curtains, gold wrap ropes, and all sorts of ornate chests and dressers filled to the brim with any manner of toys to pleasure a pony for a whole week.  Those made this place Lady Luscious’s most expensive and highest demanded room in the whole damn brothel.  And Jerry always had his fun in it.

Thick leather ties held his body to the ornately carved wooden bedposts, and the lavender bedsheets around him were soaked in what I could only assume was half the afternoon’s worth of pleasure.  The leather blinder and gag in his face probably would have suited him more had he worn them around town, but I couldn’t revel in the fact that the pervert was dead.  This was another murder, and I had to do my job.

“Where’s the mare he was with?”  I asked, stepping lightly around the various whips and paddles around the bed as I looked around the room.

“In my office.  She’s one of my new girls, just a month new infact.  This was her first appointment with Jerry, and you know he loves the new hires.”  Lady Luscious spoke up softly from the doorway.  “I could retrieve her if you’d like to question her.”  She did her best to keep her eyes averted from the deceased, but I knew she couldn’t resist.  That bastard soaked up quite a few of her caps as part of his ‘arrangement’ with keeping Luscious’s dash pushers out of the town’s jail.  Really what it meant was that she’d have every want to see him dead as the rest of us.

“No, leave her be.”  I sighed as I stepped close to one of the heavy knots tying Jerry’s forehooves up.  “The poor girl needs some time to collect herself, and I have even more pressing questions to answer right now.”  Looking around it, I took a closer look along Jerry’s neck and side.  Nothing was out of place. No signs of trauma, or even injection sites for poison.

“Vat do joo think happened?”  High Pillow put her mouth in with as much recklessness as the elephant in the room she was.

“I won’t know for sure until I get Doc Chips on this, but from here I can’t find a damn reason he’d be dead.”  I took a step back, trying to get a bigger picture on all this.  “Did the mare with him explain anything to you, Luscious? What he was doing, anything she may have done?”

“Not anything too specific, mind you.”  Luscious glowed like a joy-girl before her first roll in the hay.  I knew it wasn’t usual to discuss particular goings-ons in the business, but she was willing to stick her neck out to talk earlier, and she was the only angle I had on Jerry right now.  ”She said that she had just gotten done whipping him before he started to shake and groan.  Then she said he went quiet.”

“Vat if his heart couldn’t take ze strain?”  High offered in what looked to be one of the only viable explanations from on the surface of this mess.  “Joo have seen his poor physical health.  Vas it not something zat could be possible?”

“No, I don’t think it would be.”  I simply replied, casting my gaze over to the half glass of water sitting on the dresser across the room.  From all my nights in this joint, no girl ever brought me water.  “Half of this town wanting to see Jerry dead isn’t exactly front page news.  However…”  I paused as I moved over to it, finding that it indeed sat alone over on the top of the dresses.  Diluted poison perhaps?  Only Doc Chips would be able to tell me for sure.  “Three ponies are dead in as many days, so I’m telling you that I’m sure that this was foul play.”

“Okay.”  Doc Chips sighed as she pushed her way past Lady Luscious with an agitated look across her muzzle.  From behind her, Dutch tried to push his way in, but Luscious moved to stop him and shot him a scowl that could freeze a stallion’s heart.  “Looks like I have another long night ahead of me I guess.  Just like last time, Sunsoft, I’ll have some results in the morning for you.”  With another long sigh, she turned her attention back to Luscious as her magic began to untie the bindings from around Jerry.  “Let him in, Luscious.  I’m not going to carry Jerry back all by myself.”

Luscious threw me an expectant look, but for once, Dutch looked to make himself useful to our little town.  I hated to refuse the mare I owed so many of my older nights too, however, this was bigger than either of us.  Whoever had set this all up was about to make their move, and with all of us focused on Jerry, I was sure it would be tonight.  Three deaths in three days makes a pattern, and whoever had strung this out would be getting desperate to finish it off quick.

“I’ve got to stop by Rusty’s for a while.”  I spoke up, hoofing at my old suit barding and buttoning it up. “I’ll stop by in a bit to see if you’ve found anything, Doc.”  Hoofing my hat forward, I wiggled it down firmly against my head.  Intimidation was my next play, I was done playing the soft game, and now it was time for hardball.  I was left with nothing to go off of with Jerry dead, and I need answers quick.  I had no idea how Rusty fit into this crazy puzzle, if at all. But even if he wasn’t a major player, he might just be next on the list to find himself in a shallow grave.

“Rusty?”  The Doc spun around in an instant.  “You think he had something do with this?”  She giggled in her feigned amusement.  “Why, that hermit hardly even comes out of his shack.  Even when he does, that simpleton’s never been the most mentally stable of ponies.  Probably the only one to ignore more advice from me than you do.”  With a cocked eyebrow, she shifted her stance and looked back over to Jerry.  “I know I told you I was no head doc, but I don’t think he has the forethought to put something like this together.”  The cockyness she put forth was as sharp as ever.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out what he knows, because he know’s something.  That, I’m sure of.”  I shrugged off her doubt and pushed on.  Still, her words sat with me as I left the room.  She was right.  In the last few years I’d seen him out, he was more liable to use angry yelling and profanities to get you to leave him be before resorting to any sort of rational discussion.  He’d seemingly destabilized to the point of near madness, and so long as he never actually hurt anypony, even the town's guards left him to himself.

As I stood in the hallway outside Jerry’s room, I hoofed out the small piece of metal taken from Silver’s hoof. Unfortunately, Rusty had at least one of the answers I’d needed.  Between the deaths, the caps, and those left to look at, I was close to having all the pieces of this puzzle.  I just hoped that when I found the last piece, I wasn’t too late to stop whatever insanity that was about to start in this town…

> Chapter Four - Lead slugs and silver plated nippers
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Standing outside of Rusty’s gates, the dimming, stormy horizon rumbled with the promise of another night's worth of rain headed our way.  The scrap yard was as much of a chaotic mess as ever.  Halves of old sky carriages sat rusting and stacked up on top of each other.  The whole place was one skywagon explosion away from being a crater, and to me, that would be a step in the right direction for this town.

Bins overflowing with metal scrap and steel girders sat clustered around the sheet metal shack that adorned the center of the yard.  The small archano-generator that sat outside it hummed and rattled as it always had, feeding enough juice to whatever sat inside Rusty’s home to keep him occupied most of his days.

“Rusty, it’s Sunsoft.  Head of the towns guard.”  I called out thought the cold evening air, only finding myself answered with another burst of thunder.  “I need to speak with you urgently.  It’s a matter of your personal safety.”

I’d never once stepped a single hoof into Rusty’s yard.  Never even had a need to.  This place was more liable to get you killed by accident than on purpose any given sunday.  I for one didn’t have the fantasy of dying from an infection caught here anyhow.  No, of course I couldn’t have ever been bothered to go past these gates.  I was too busy catching a worse case of soulrot from living in this heap of a town in the first place to even care.

Still, no answer from the old loner.  Just like the Doc had laid down, the stallion was a hermit and had no real reason to step out of his place.  If it weren’t for the uncertainty of what I’d find in there, along the lack of my gun to protect me, I’d have kicked in his door and pressed him for any filler on just what the hell was going on in this town.  But that was a more confident me, one with about half a bottle of whiskey in him and his gun in his hoof.  At the very least, I could remedy half of that.

Turning back from the gate, I trotted myself over toward Last Call’s place.  Without Caltrop around, I could finally sit back and let the whiskey help to turn the freed up gears in my mind.  I reached up and pulled my hat off for a moment, adjusting its brim as the cool night air pressed against the old bandages wrapped around my head.  

Except, I couldn’t take a single sip. The Doc had told me to lay off the booze, hadn’t she.  I could thank the mare a thousand times for her work, but as right as she was, I needed a stiff drink.  With my hopes for a glass of the good stuff dashed, I figured that at the very least my seat at the bar could help me get my head on straight.  It was a long shot, but I could use any help I could find.

The rest of the walk toward the bar was quiet.  Not the normal kind of quiet, but more like the whole of this rotten town was holding it’s stale breath.  Just waiting for the storm to finally hit and blow down the rest of the walls and put this place in the dirt for good.  The thing is, I hope it does.  Even without Jerry running the place, if High Pillow had anything to say about it, nothing is going to change.

Pushing open the door to the bar, I found it completely empty.  However, Last Call’s face lit up like he was Celestia’s bright sun itself at the sight of me. When he’s looking at me like an old friend, then I knew that these were damn desperate times for him.  Without even an ounce of hesitation, he pulled out my brand of scotch and poured us each a drink as I walked over to my normal spot.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not having any tonight.”  I said, pulling out my normal stool and pointing up to the wraps keeping my skull together.  “Doctor’s orders.”

“Guess I could’ve seen that coming.  Speaking of, is she busy with dealing with Jerry?”  Last Call didn’t even try to hide the annoyance in his voice, setting the bottle of scotch down on the bartop with a heavy thud.  “Good riddance that he’s finally gone, might have a chance to turn this place around finally.”  He huffed, taking one of the glasses he’d poured and putting it up to his lips.  With a swift tip of his hoof, he downed the whole thing.  “So,”  He gasped, looking at the empty glass in his hoof.  “Just came for the atmosphere then?”  With a glance down at the glass in front of me, I felt a pull to it that I was sure only Caltrop could have broken.

Before I could stop myself, I put the glass to my own lips and downed the fiery liquid.  I did my best to savor the taste of it, but like always, it was gone before I knew it.  Just like Caltrop had been today.  With a shudder, I looked up to find a smirk pull across Last Call’s mug.

“Let’s not tell the Doc about that one.”  I muttered, using my forehoof to slide the empty glass back to him.  “And you’re right, I did come for the atmosphere.”  I sighed, looking down at the same section of bartop that it felt like I’d spent a good portion of my life sitting at.  “I’m missing something still.  A piece of this that doesn’t shimmy with the rest of the facts, you know?”

“No, not really.”  Last Call shrugged, being about just as useful as he’d ever been for getting the low down around town.  He leaned against the bartop as he pulled out his cleaning rag, running it along the smooth surface as he normally did.

The door behind me swung open slowly, and the soft expression of a young mare glanced into the dark bar.  She looked about as strung out as a junkie could get.  A dame like her was a sore sight to see, but I wouldn't give her two bits any day of the week, even if she asked nicely.  I’ve seen too many of her kind in town to care about why she was here.  However, the running mascara along her cheeks, along with how she looked at me with her lost little eyes said that she was looking to get something off her chest.  She had the whips and jingles alright, and not the normal kind for a dame in her line of work.

“Mr… Sunsoft?”  She spoke on the quiet, hiding behind her voice as she shivered from the cold or the withdrawal. Didn’t matter which as I gave her a nod and a wave to come over to me.  Hesitantly, she looked up at Last Call, pausing before stepping inside.

“What can I do for you?”  I asked as she walked across the floor.  “Miss...?”

“Quartz Vase.”  She squeaked, stopping a few feet from me. She hesitated as she sat down, holding her hooves out to me in shame.  “I’m… I’m turning myself in.”

“There are plenty of other guards on duty, Quartz.”  I sighed, looking back over to Last with a smirk.  “You’re lucky I’m working on something bigger right now.  Either find another guard, or…”

“I did it.”  She cut me off, hanging her head as she started caught a bad case of the weeps.  “I killed him.”

That perked my curiosity.  “Who, Jerry?”  Now why in the wasteland would a mare like her make a claim like that?  Regardless of her reasons, she looked up with tear filled eyes and nodded.  “Now why would you say it’s your fault?”

“I… I don’t know.”  She whimpered, pulling her hooves back around herself tightly.  With a shrug, she looked back down at the floor.  “I was with him when it happened.  I had to have done something wrong.”

“In the room, there was a glass of water left out.” I turned around and studied her, wondering if this too was just some sort of play to keep me distracted.  “I know hydration is important for physical activities, but why the drink in the bedroom?”

“Because he needed me to give him his medication.”  She looked up to me again, this time with more confusion written across her face than anything.  “He said that he had a long running heart condition, and because he was tied up, I had to give it to him halfway through our session.”

So it could have been poison after all.  “Who had access to his medication before you gave it to him?”

“What?”  Again, she looked even more confused than before.  “Nopony did.  He set the pill out before we started.”  She shook her head and looked to relax a little.  “Are… aren’t you going to arrest me?”

“No, his death wasn’t your fault.”  I sighed.  Anypony who wanted him dead could have switched out his medication if they had deft enough hooves.  I’d hoped that I could find out more, but yet again it looked like it was just another dead end in the case.  The young mare gasped and smiled.  “Go home, get some rest, and try to forget that you ever had the unfortunate pleasure of that fat bastard’s company.”

“Thank you, sir.”  She whimpered as she wiped away her tears with a smile.  Getting to her hooves quickly, she was out the door and heading back towards the brothel without another word.  Without her in here, it dropped the bar back into an uneasy silence that reminded me that I was still one step behind everything.

“Can I ask you something?”  I said, breaking the awkward silence between us like a brahmin in a pottery shop.  “What can you tell me about what you saw last night?”  My question brought a quizzical look across his face, but his quick shrug spoke to me that he knew more than he was letting on.  “Come on, Last, you had to see something.  I know I owe you my life, calling out whoever jumped me in the alley last night, so I know you’re willing to stick your neck out for me at least a little bit.”

His expression grew stiffer, and I knew that look.  He didn’t care if I was his only customer, he wanted me to beat hooves out of here and to drop the whole subject.  With an angry glare, he put his forehooves on the bar top and leaned in.

“You know how I work, Sunsoft.”  He offered his words through a guttural growl.  “You don’t ask those sort of questions in here, and I haven’t kicked you out yet because even though you’re leaving, I’d like to see you come back in here some time.”

“Then cut me a break, Last.  This isn’t a shake down.  If this goes sideways on me, I may not be coming back at all.”  I didn’t want to squeeze him, but the truth of the matter was I wasn’t coming back to this dump of a town anyway.  What did I care if one more bridge to this place burned to ash.

He sat back, pulling his rag up again in silence.  For a good minute, I thought that he was going to blow steam out of his ears as he was all but burned up at me.  However, when he finally spoke up, he gave it to me on the level.

“Look, I heard a weird zap and ran outside to find you on the ground.  I didn’t even see the pony who did it, they were gone so fast.”  Even though it ripped his morals to shreds and stomped on them, the bastard finally dropped the veil.  “I know I’m normally tight lipped with the gossip, but trust me, if I knew anything at all about what happened, I’d tell you who it was in a heartbeat.  I’d love to get my hooves around the neck of whoever almost killed my best customer, you know what I mean?”

“Hit the brakes for a moment.”  It might have been the booze running through me, or the fact that I still didn’t have my head on straight, but something didn’t sit pretty with me about all that.  “If you couldn’t even see them, then how could you tell it was a power hoof that hit me?”

“A what now?  Power Hoof?”  He scrunched up his muzzle in genuine confusion.  “You sure that knock to the head didn’t scramble your brains a little?”  He chuckled.  “Ain’t that one of those steel ranger type techs?  Ain’t a single pony in town with the know how to use one of those.”

“Well now, that’s not true.  You see…”  I froze as the realization hit me like a balefire bomb.

“Now that I think of it,”  Last Call said with a scratch of his chin.  “Doc Chips used to be one of them toasters, didn’t she?”

How could I have missed it?  Every single victim had one thing in common.  One pony who was always there to make sure the facts fit the agenda.  The power hoof, the metal shard, the involvement with the grifters, and Jerry’s swapped medication.  Even the counterfeit caps and why Wire Spike never fought back all boiled down to the one pony I never would have even considered...


-----


With heavy hoofsteps, I raced up the wooden steps and slammed against the clinic door hard enough that I nearly tore it off it’s hinges.  The peeling wallpaper fluttered wildly as the wind outside filtered into the room through the now open doorway.  The stench of the adhesive didn’t greet my nose tonight, instead, the smell of iron was thick in the air.  The sound of medical tools clattering to the floor from the open door to the back room told me that I’d caught Doc Chips off guard.

“It’s all over, Doc.”  I called out, stepping forward inside.  Watching as she quickly walked up to the open backroom door.  She was disheveled, looking like a nervous wreck as the gore that coated her surgical apron slid down onto the old floor.  Her mane was no longer the soft strawberry blond oasis I’d seen before, rather frazzled and hastily done up.  She’d had us all pegged for suckers, and without the lacquered mask to hide behind, she looked to me just like every other lowlife floozy in the wasteland did.

“S-Sunsoft, what brings you in?”  She forced a smile that felt more out of place than this whole night had been.  I made sure to watch her horn, just waiting for her to try something.  I was stupid to have run in here without my piece, but I couldn’t risk her killing another pony tonight.

“I know it was you.”  I called her out, taking a step forward and dropping her fake smile back to her worried look.  “You killed them all, didn’t you, Doc?”  My accusation again changed her expression, but now it became one of pride.  ”Why?”

“No, I won’t say a thing.”  She spoke with a tone daring me to make the first move.  I wouldn’t play the fool, not tonight.  If she wanted to make this difficult, it’d be on her to explain herself if she managed to take me down.  “I want you to tell me why, Sunsoft.”

Stepping forward, I tread lightly.  She wasn't some corner bimbo.  She was smart enough to button her lip and play coy,and confident enough to call me out to boot.  Still, I was the one who’d been a step ahead this time, and if she wanted to dance, then I’d be the one leading.

“You’d said it yourself this morning.  You get paid here in this town, but no where near enough.  Clinic work isn’t exactly a carriage trade.”  In starting to give her the third degree, I reached out, pulling over one of the waiting room chairs and took a seat in it.  “My guess was that Silver caught one of the grifters running supplies for your counterfeit cap operation.  You knew that some of the guards might patrol out that night, and you kept an eye out for any problem.  You lied when you said you didn’t know what had killed him that night, because when he came along, you brained him with the same power hoof you tried to end me with.”

That got her crooked smile to widen, begging on all fours for me to continue.  

“Of course, Jerry is easy to explain.  He knew I was asking too many questions, and that if I’d keep looking I’d eventually discover what was really going on.  Once that happened, you were worried he’d sing like a canary about how you were in on it too.”  As I continued, her smirk left her muzzle. She looked less rich, a sour note spreading like a bad taste in her muzzle.  “It was easy for you to swap the medication on him.  You knew that over time his heart condition would kill him, and any autopsy you performed would be moot as you’d just fake that his heart failed regardless of what actually happened.”  I gave a pause to study her, watching as she passed me a sore look.  “What I can’t figure out, is why you killed Spike.”  

“Sunsoft, you’ve got it all gummed up.”  She shook her head, looking more than disappointed with my words.  “It was never just me killing them.”

Her words put the skids on my train of thought just long enough that the creak of the floorboard behind the front counter met my ears too late.  I pushed myself to my hooves as Dutch threw himself over the counter at me, slamming into my side and sending us both tumbling to the floor.

I kicked at him hard, but Dutch was a mean fighter. He could well have been a brick wall for that mattered when it came to feeling pain.  Reaching up, he swung down and slugged me hard against my cheek.  It sent my vision spinning and I knew I was on the sour end of this tangle.  I swung up with my own wild jab, connecting to what felt like his nose.  He let out a yelp when my hit rewarded me with a soft pop in his flesh.  Stumbling back, I did my best to shake out the cobwebs from my mind and get back on the up and up .

“Whoa there, easy Sunsoft.”  Doc Chips whispering voice and warm breath tickled my neck before the soft prick of needle took that feeling away altogether.  “Why don’t you just… relax for a while.”

Just like it had last night, my dark mistress flooded my vision.  She was a fast curtain to the cold numbness and bitter loneliness of unconsciousness.  I’d made the mistake of counting my cards too early and hashed this whole bet up.  I should have skipped out on this whole mess and gone on the lam with Caltrop.  Mercifully, he was somewhere out there in the wastes, safe from this place.  At least I still had that.


-----


“You know, you were almost right.”  Doc Chip’s squawked at me with more mirth than anypony I’d ever heard.  “I’d loaned Dutch my power hoof so he could discreetly take care of any issues we might have.  He was the one to put down Silver.”  As she gabbed, I did my best to force my eyes open, finding the dim lighting and an unfamiliar roof above me.  The humming of an Arcano-generator outside however gave me a good enough hint however.  Quick on the heels of that revelation, I found I’d been strapped down on a cold table where I couldn’t even turn my head.   “It’s why he was at the clinic in the morning as well.  Had to make it look convincing for why he’d stopped by.”

“Not to mention, the sex that night…”  Dutch chimed in from the other side of whatever room we were in.

“You two…?”  I forced myself to speak. Whatever they needled me up with had done a number on me, but it was on the way out of my system.  Just needed to grill them until it wore off.  “What about… High Pillow?”

“Goddesses, don’t even bring her up.”  Dutch groaned.  “She doesn’t put out, she doesn’t like to have fun.  What good is the fucking bitch when all she does is spend our caps on clothes and beauty products?”  He gave a snort.  “She was going to have a little ‘Accident’ tomorrow, but I’m thinking we’ll just kill her while they’re busy wondering what happened between you and Rusty here.”  He chuckled.  “Chips here has been far more… rewarding of a mare than High has ever been.”

With a heavy thump, something was tossed down onto the table next to me.  Just out of the corner of my eye, I could barely make out the stump of Rusty’s severed head.  I’d been too late to stop them from killing him, and now I was in one doozy of a bind.  With enough time on my side, I just might figure out a way to get out of this fine jam I’m in.

“What else?  Tell me, why’d you leave the Rangers and come here, Doc?”  I grunted, finally feeling as the fog of grogginess lifted from my mind.  I only got a brutish grunt from Dutch, and the Doc seemed more buttoned than usual.  I had to keep her talking.  “Come on, you’ve already made me your mark. You don’t have to sing, but don’t let this be a flop after all the work I’ve done.  At least give it to me flat.”

“Oh?”  Doc Chips asked as she leaned over, her sadistic smile was worn like it belonged on her.  “Well, every day I would treat ponies who came into the infirmary, and every day I fixed them up good as new without so much as a simple 'thanks'.”  Leaning over me, she wore a look like she was about to go off her nut and twist my neck right here and now.  “It wasn't like it is out here, where you at least get paid.  So when I learned just how much some gangs would pay for just a little bit of the tech we had, I took what I could hold in my saddlebags and ran.”

“However, once again, I found myself barely getting by these days, so something had to change.  I organized the counterfeit system with Jerry, Rusty, and Dutch.”  Her own voice kept her entertained and the lamp off of me.  Little by little as she talked, I could start to move my hooves again.  “Jerry threatened to sell me out once silver died and you started snooping around.  He wanted to keep his and Dutch's quarter of the profits to himself because he was the one who slipped up. So I had to do something to keep him quiet.”  She let a soft chuckle escape her lips before she stepped away from the table.  “Rusty however, was pre-emptive. He’d have become a problem sooner or later, so I slipped in here and dosed him up with sedatives before Dutch here finished the job.”

“Don't you see, Sunsoft?“  She said as she parked herself over me, running her hoof along my cheek like some trick looking for a darb.  “Silver's death wasn't something big until you made it that way.  I never held any quarrel with you, Sunsoft. But I really am sorry it's come to the fact that you've forced me to do this.”

The strap that pinned my head down against the table I was on became apparent, but I could feel the ropes twist around my hooves as I tested my boundaries.  That is, right until the legs of the table were knocked out, and I was dropped down to the floor.

From my new, lower vantage point, I could see Dutch holding a sledge hammer in his muzzle, and the Doc rummaging around in her saddlebags.  Along the walls, sack after potato sack sat lined up, filled to the brim with freshly minted silver caps.  I didn’t know what the cock-eyed pair’s plan was for me and the body of Rusty.  I was taking a flutter at it, but it didn’t look like they’d planned to ice me here.  Somewhere in the scrapyard then, probably to paint it up for the town as some sort of accident.

“Ah, here we are.”  The Doc gleefully murmured as she drew out an odd, cobbled together device.  From where I was parked, it looked to be a few old frag grenades wired and glued up to a wind up alarm clock.  “The elder would have had me beaten for work this shoddy, but fuck the elder, it’ll still get the job done.”

Like the rough customer he was, Dutch wasted no time in tearing down the sheet metal door, frame and all, right off the old shack.  The cold air washed over us, and the dark night sky greeted me without a single speck of rain.  I had to wonder, had I been out long enough that the storm already passed?  Or had it been smarter than me and simply decided this town wasn’t worth it’s time?

Being the only muscle around, Dutch moved around to the far end of my table and hoofed me up.  If it weren’t for the fact that they could probably end me at any time, I’d make myself as difficult as I could with them.  However, as that helped nopony, I decided the best course of action was to hold the line and see what they had instore for me.  I didn’t have to wait long, as Doc Chips practically pranced over me and out the newly made hole with an elated giggle.

Then she sharply whined, throwing a wrench in my line of thought.

“Hey, hey, hey, Doc.  Simmer down, and keep dat horn dim now, yah hear me?.”  Caltrop’s voice came out of the night through the hole in the shack. “Hey, tough guy!  How abouts yah untie Sunsoft slowly, or the Doc here is going to have another hole to sing outta.”

I loved the hard stallion front he put up, but this wasn’t him.  Caltrop wasn’t anything more than a queer cream puff who turned out to be a sap for a busted flush like me. If they saw through his one-legged flim-flam, then they’d cut him down like I slugged a fresh shot of scotch. Why oh why did he have to come back for me?

Everything tilted as Dutch did as he’d been asked.  He set me down on the floor, but the lug didn’t go for my ropes.  Instead, he stepped over me and put his hoof on my throat.

“Hey! I said untie him!”  Caltrop snapped, making a delicious whimper slip from the Doctor’s lips.”

“No, you let her go.”  Dutch spat back at him, stiffly pressing down and choking the life out of me.  Dutch laughed as he got a rear out of trying to call Caltrop’s bluff.  “Go ahead, see if I’m willing to wait.”  He pressed down harder and I couldn’t help but let out a strangled whine.”

“Nah, cause I’ve been eavesdroppin’ for a while.”  Caltrop was sitting on dynamite, and just as smooth to keep up this haywire act.  I’d underestimated the lovable son of a gun, but that was just par for the case.  I’d miscounted the trumps this whole time, so at least this one played to my favor.    “I know dat the Doc here loves yah, and if yah kill him, I’ll take her from yah as well.”  His tone grew louder, and another pained whine filled the air from the Doc.  “I said untie him. NOW.”

“Just, do it, Dutch!”  The Doc nearly shouted at him.

I gasped for sweet, cold air as Dutch removed his hoof from me.  He’d bought into the play, but we weren’t out of hot water yet.  Just like me at the clinic, they’d been knocked for a loop, but I was sure they were far from packing up their operation and slipping town.   With each hoof that Dutch freed, I should have been more relaxed.  Instead, I felt even more tuned up.  They were going to make a move against us, and I had to be ready for it.

Getting back to my hooves, I brushed myself off and contemplated laying on right across Dutch’s chin.  However, I had more important priorities to consider over the sweet feeling of a little well earned stress relief.  Spinning toward the door, I found the love of my life on his hind legs.  He was holding the Doc Tightly around the neck with one hoof, while a sheet metal shiv in his other fetlock was pressed perilously close to her jugular.

“You came back for me.”  I grunted at him, making his already ear to ear grin shine even brighter.  “You’re a dumb onion for having risked your neck like this.  You promised you wouldn’t.”

“Says the guy who came at these two all alone.”  He fired back like the joker I’d always known him to be.  Then, just as I’d expected, things went topsy-turvy.  “Sorry I took yah gun earlier, I brought it back for yah.”

The moment he gabbed that info, Dutch gave me a hard shove forward.  I stumbled and bowled into the Doc and Caltrop, the three of us tumbling to the ground in a pile.  Before I’d even had a chance to get my hooves under me, Dutch drilled me in the side with a kick and knocked me into the dirt.  As I did, I heard the Doc give a whine as she was nearly thrown away from Caltrop as well.

Not one to spend any more time out of this rumble, I pushed myself up and stood fast.  Doc Chips was already fumbling my gun out of Caltrop’s saddle bags as Dutch socked him so hard in the chest that I heard a crack.  With another growl, he hung a hard hit straight across my love’s muzzle.  To his credit, Caltrop took the hit like a champ, and responded with a swing of his own straight to Dutches neck.

Funny enough, I think Dutch had seen so much red from Caltrop threatening the Doc, that he’d forgotten about the makeshift knife he still held in his fetlock.  The scared stallion gave an odd gurgle as blood burbled out of his neck like a river.  As the mudhead of a stallion’s eyes rolled back, and he collapsed down onto Caltrop. The no good grifter having finally bought the big one.

“Dutch, no!”  Doc Chips Screamed as she brought up the gun.  Blind rage moved her magic, hastily squeezing off shot after shot.  For as quick as I’d gotten up, I was slow on my hooves.  I might as well have been made of molasses for as fast as everything had gone down.  My revolver gave out click after click as the hammer fell on an empty chamber, and as my hoof came down and dropped her to the dirt.  She was out like a light, and my still smoking heater clattered to the ground.

For good measure, I’d thought about crowning the Doc over the head again, but decided against it.  I wouldn’t stoop to her level, not when I still needed her mentally intact to sing her story to the town with everything she’d done.  The case may have been closed, and I was done being this town’s law.  However, I was still not above it, just like everypony else.

Instead, I spun on my heels to make sure Caltrop hadn’t been cut down by the hail of lead from my own pistol.  Thankfully, he only let out a groan as he shoved Dutch’s body off of him.  The six holes in the Grifter frontman was a beautiful sight to see, even if I knew he’d already been put down.  From underneath however, a disconcerting sight befel me.

“Oh, dat’s goin’ ta hurt tomorrow…”  Caltrop whined as he pulled himself up, the crimson hole in his shoulder dripping blood down into the dirt under his hooves.  Along with it, the discolored and deformed bruise along his side filled me with worry that one of his ribs had cracked from the hit he took.

“You goof,”  I muttered as I trotted over to him, helping him take a few steps back so he could catch his breath.  I sat him down on the edge of an old, open refrigerator that sat on it’s back next to the arcano-generator.  Once he was down, I planted a long and well deserved kiss upon his muzzle, and sent my own heart aflutter.  With a sigh, tore away from his lips.  “What the hell were you thinking coming back after me?  That was reckless and irresponsible.”

“Yah, well you told me once that I saved yah life when I came inta town.”  He winced through the pain, his tender voice still as silky smooth as ever.  “Figured I’d wear the pants for once in this relationship and do it again.”

“Of all the gin joints in the wastes…”  I sighed, feeling too ripe with joy to care about mulling over his normal ribbing seriously. Taking his hoof in mine, I rubbed at it softly and looked into his big, ice blue eyes.  “I swear, from this day forward, I’ll…”

“Fuck you… Sunsoft.  I would have finally had it all if it weren’t for you!”  Doc Chips weak voice struck out from behind me with wrathful undertones unparalleled by anypony I’d ever met.  Quick on the spin, I gazed as Doc Chips barely twisted the winder for the clock bomb with her horn, letting out a deranged laugh as the insane mare tossed it across the yard.  “If I can’t have what I want, none of us will!”  She cackled as it fell below a pile of old skywagons with a clatter.

With so little time to act, we had no chance at hoofing it out of here in time with Caltrop’s injuries.  I’d done what I’d set out to do for Silver, and I’d done my best to do right by the others who fell in the Doc and Dutch’s schemes.  Having it end like this was just a bad draw of the cards while we were already all in. The other horseshoe dropped in my mind, and I made a judgement call.

“Sunsoft, what do we...!”  Caltrop called out as I twisted around.  I shoved him hard, pushing him into the old metal box he’d been sitting on, and quickly hoofed the lid down.  I threw myself upon the lid as he pressed up from the inside, his muffled and panicked whines lost to me as I accepted that he was the only one who needed to make it out of this close shave no matter what.  

I’d seen the contents of fridges like these in the heart of Manehatten that made it through the balefire blast from the war perfectly intact.  He’d survive this too.  He’d just have to do it without me.  He’d been my second chance at a life after Whisper.  Now it was his turn to go and find his own second chance.

“Forgive me.”  I whined out softly, using the same last words that Whisper had given me so long ago.

The end thankfully wasn’t like I’d feared it be.  The blast was nothing more than a quick flash and a deafening roar.  Then like the flick of a light switch, that was all she wrote.  Over and done with, just like that.

Curtains, now and forever.

> Epilogue - Took the back window
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	For the fourth day in a row, a heavy knocking roused me from my sleep.  Almost immediately, I hurt all over.  I gave out a sputtering gasp like I hadn’t breathed in days, and a groan that made me feel it right down to my sore bones.

“Goddesses, I need a drink.”  I coughed out, reaching my hoof up to wipe my eyes in the darkness around me.  With a solid thunk, my hoof struck something wooden only inches above my muzzle.  “What the…”  I paused as yet another heavy thump shook the small box I now found myself to be in.  My mind scrambled to fit the pieces together on how I got here, or how I was even alive in the first place.  The world was upside down in my mind, running in circles until I remembered the old refrigerator in Rusty’s yard.  “Caltrop.”  I gasped.

With a loud creak along with a plume of dirt and dust, the top of the box swung open.  A light brighter than the sun stung my eyes worse than any hangover I’d ever had.  A dark figure obscured it slightly, holding a hoof down to me.  I took the stranger’s hoof, feeling stuck with awe as my senses kicked back in all at once.  As he pulled me to my hooves, nothing felt like it stacked up anymore.   The air smelled dry and filled with rot, and the warm breeze pressed upon my skin like the velvet touch of an affectionate mare.  The wood under my hooves was slightly damp, and the dirt on me stung in several places.

“Eeyup, thought that might be the case.”  The raspy voice of a stallion strained to sound less gravely than a rolling barrel full of rocks.  I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, but that sort of luck I’d always been short on.  The palooka who’d helped me up was an orange coated ghoul in an old M.A.S. lab coat.  The green glow behind his eyes pierce through his broken glasses frames as he sized me up.

“What’s going on?  Where am I?”  Taking a look around, I scoped out the terrain around us.  The light that had blinded me moments ago was infact the normal, cloudy midday sun.  For some reason, I was in the middle of the Shady Pines graveyard on the edge of town.  Looking down, I found I was still standing one hoof deep in my own grave.  I looked over the quickly cobbled together wooden gravemarker that sat at the head of my rickety wooden coffin.  The white paint on it spelled out my name, but like the boob I was, I still couldn’t put it all together.

“Hear on the radio that somepony out this way got caught in a sky wagon blast a few days back.”  The orange ghoul regarded with the attitude that this wasn’t something unheard of.  “Sometimes the townsfolk, they don’t really give the victims the time they need to sit and recuperate before burying them.”  He sighed and looked at me with a dimwitted smile across his rotting muzzle.  “Don’t see many late bloomers these days compared to after the war, but just to be sure, I try to sneak in and do a double check.  It’s a bad fate to be left in your own grave to go feral.”

His confusing words sent my mind into a tumble that I almost lost myself in.  Looking over myself, my legs almost gave out in sheer terror.  My coat was all but burned away underneath my charred and nearly shredded old world suit, and shards of burnt metal were fused into my body.  Part of a pipe still pierced through my hind leg, and I could see the bone on my right forehoof through the gouged out rotting flesh.  I… I was…

The orange ghoul laughed.  “Eeyup.  I see that you finally noticed your peculiar affliction.”  Part of my mind cried out that he was just trying to make a gag at me, but I had all the evidence I needed to know he wasn’t trying to spin anything but the truth.  “don’t need to eat, much.  Don’t really need to sleep, but you can.”  He continued absent mindedly almost.  “So long as you don’t think about things too much and limit your radiation intake, you’ve got another century or two to do whatever you want.  Stay here, finally go where you’ve always wanted, you can do it now that you’re effectually dead.”  He beamed a smile too wide for the heavy talk he’d just laid on me.

“So!”  He pressed, almost feeling like he tried to put the screws on me.  “What will you do now?”  

I don’t know why he wanted an answer when this whole situation made my head spin like an old world ballet dancer.  I wanted to tell him to nix on the questions and scram, but he had a fair point.  Looking at the graveyard around me, I found only a few fresh graves, each one next to my own.  The gravemarkers read that Dutch and Jerry sat in a line next to me, while Rusty and Doc chips sat to the other side.  The one marker that was thankfully absent, was one that spelled out ‘Caltrop’ on it.

“How long have I been out?”  I asked, heeling around on the old lunger.

“Oh…”  He wheezed, rubbing his hoof along his chin in a way that made his exposed muscles move unnaturally.  It was almost enough to make me vomit, but for one reason or another, I couldn’t manage to dredge up the drive to actually do it.  I was all clammed up, just waiting for an answer.  “About five days now?  Took me a few to get all the way here after I’d heard the news.”  He finally barbered up.  “Why?  Have an appointment you still need to make?”

“Yeah.”  I nodded looking down to find my half burnt hat, giving it a good dusting off before tipping it up onto my head.  “I’m late for an important meeting with somepony in Manehattan.”  I was dead to this rotting town.  It had taken more from me than I had to give, and that red light it’d hung on me was finally somepony else’s job to deal with.  I was my own pony once again, free of the rigged system of the life I’d been penned up in.

Stepping out of my grave, it was finally time to dust out of this scrap pile of a town for good.  I’d just as lief spend my days searching every single ruin in Manehatten for Caltrop rather than spend another moment letting his trail run cold.  Even if it took me five, ten, or fifty years, I won’t give up in looking for him.  Even if he’s moved on, or if he won’t take me back now that I’m a ghoul, I need to find him.  I needed to give him the second chance he once gave me.

“Thank you kindly for the assistance.”  I said with a tip of my hat to the old ghoul.  “Maybe somewhere down the road we’ll meet again and I can buy you a drink.”

“Perhaps.  Anything is possible.”  He smiled and gave a wave of his glowing hoof.  “Best be going now.  There’s a big world out there, and it’s not getting any smaller.”  He offered as I turned away from town.  “Oh, and one last thing, friend.  Remember this on your journey, above all else!”  He called, rousing me to look back.  “Friendship is magic.”

“Will do.”  I nodded with a smile, headed off south on what was going to be the beginning of the longest and most difficult missing pony case that’ll ever have been worked in the wasteland.