//------------------------------// // An Inebriated Heist // Story: Batmare Begins // by Batbrony //------------------------------// “Derpy, dinner’s almost ready!” Carrot called from downstairs. “OK, I’ll be down soon,” Derpy replied, not peeling her eyes away from the text before her. Since she’d gotten home, she’d cooped herself up in her room with the books she’d checked out, though so far all she’d looked at was The Annals. Twilight sure hadn’t been wrong, the work was chock-full of accounts of some of early Equestria’s most legendary figures. That said, despite coming across hero after hero so far, nothing had really stood out to Derpy for her purposes. Simply put, the inspiration she was looking for had not struck. Turning a page, her breath caught in her chest when she suddenly found herself confronted with a passage about the Order. Flipping through, she saw that Tacitrot had given them quite a few pages from the looks of things. Guess this Tacitrot fellow was even more thorough than I thought. I’m impressed. Still, that’s not the answer. I know what they are, at least today, and it’s sure as hay not what I want to be. But… it is on the right track. She continued to skim, going through page after page, and yet, still nothing. She was over halfway through by now, and was starting to fear that she wouldn’t find what she was looking for. Whatever that was, she still couldn’t say, but if she couldn’t find it in something this dense and thorough, who was to say she’d be able to find it in any of the other books she’d checked out? Nothing… nothing… nothing… no- wait. A small header was all that caught her eye, unassuming and easy to miss. But something about it seemed promising. She couldn’t put her hoof on it, but the second she spotted it, something about it latched onto her and wouldn’t let go. The Dark Knights. “Hmmm, now what do we have here?” she wondered aloud. A half hour later Carrot came storming into the room, red as a cayenne pepper. “Derpy,” she said, fuming, “I have been calling your name for the last twenty minutes. Your food is now cold, and I wanted you to try some of the new varieties of carrots I’ve been growing lately to get some good feedback on them. I really don’t appreciate being ignored, so if you would be so kind, please, tell me what is so important that you refuse to come down? Are you even listening to me?!” Derpy finally looked up from her text, glancing at Carrot with a half-surprised look as if she had only just now realized she was even standing there. Carrot was about to chide her some more when she noticed that her heart seemed to be beating out of her chest. Then she got a good look at her face. A bizarre combination of excitement, nervousness, terror, and euphoria seemed to dance upon her features, as though a million emotions were whirling through her at hurricane speeds. Her eyes, however, were another story; for lack of a better word, they looked alive, more alive than ever before. Something glimmered from within, and they seemed virtually radiant, glowing with a white-hot energy. Carrot took a step back, at a loss for words. “I found it. I found it Carrot,” Derpy uttered, breathless. “You… you found what?” Carrot asked, almost fearfully. Even after everything that had happened since Derpy’s return, she could honestly say she’d never seen her like this in all the years they’d known each other. “I found it. What I’ve been looking for. It kept slipping away, but I finally found it.” In a single bound she was at Carrot’s side, shoving the yellowed pages of the old book she’d been fixated upon in her friend’s face. “My destiny.” For a few moments Carrot just read in silence, starting with the passage Derpy seemed to be indicating titled ‘The Dark Knights.’ As she read, her initial bewilderment turned to confusion. “Uh… OK, what am I looking at here? What does this have to do with your ‘destiny’?” “Carrot, think about it,” Derpy began. “Things aren’t right in this town, our town. Don’t try to deny it. You know it, and I know it, everypony knows it. Some aren’t willing to say it, most don’t know what to do about it, but everypony knows it. The South Side, the thugs, crooks, organized crime. Organized crime, Carrot! In Ponyville, of all places! Something is terribly wrong here, and somepony needs to get to the bottom of it. I am in the unique position of having the skills to do just that, and even better most ponies don’t even know it! I’m nopony, Carrot, just another face in the crowd. Don’t you see? This is it. This is how I can make a difference.” “What are you even talking about?” Carrot asked in exasperation, clearly not on the same page as Derpy. “I’m going to be a Dark Knight.” Carrot dropped the book and threw her hooves into the air, doing a rather impressive double-take. “OK, you have officially lost me! You’re going to be what now?” “Come on Carrot, you know what I said, you were just reading about them,” Derpy insisted, her face dead serious. “Yeah, and that’s why you’ve lost me, or did I imagine the part where these guys haven’t been around for over a thousand years? Unless of course you’ve suddenly stumbled upon another ancient, super-secret order that seemingly went extinct but really has just been in hiding all these centuries… oh please tell me that’s not what happened!” “Oh don’t be ridiculous,” Derpy scoffed. “These guys aren’t around anymore. Well… I’m pretty sure they aren’t. Like, ninety-nine percent sure.” “So what in Celestia’s name do you have anything to do with these Black Guards or whatever they are?” Carrot demanded, her voice rising by the second. “Dark Knights,” Derpy corrected her, raising her own voice in turn. “And to answer your question, well… nothing. Yet.” “So why are we even having this conversation?” “Because, Carrot, I could! This is what I can be, this is what I can do. The Dark Knights are exactly how I can help our town, the home you and I love. I need you to follow me, please.” Taking a few deep breaths, Derpy steadily calmed herself down. If she was going to have any chance of convincing Carrot to go along with this, she needed to be as cool and collected as possible; the last thing she could do was come off as hysterical. “So I was at Midnight’s earlier, alright? There’s whispers going on there of some mare who just went missing, like a lot of ponies it seems lately. And I’m just sitting there feeling like a useless turd for not doing anything, when I… OK, I know how this is gonna sound, but hear me out. I… spotted one of Silver’s comic books. That’s when it hit me.” She gave Carrot a minute to process that, unsure whether or not doing so was a good idea. But she figured that maybe if Carrot figured it out on her own rather than hearing it from her it might not sound so crazy. It didn’t take long for Carrot to connect the dots. When she did, she took a few calming breaths of her own and shut her eyes before responding. “I really hope I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think I am. Are you telling me, in all seriousness, that you want to be a… a superhero?” Biting her lower lip, Derpy leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling before finally giving a resounding nod. “Yes.” Without another word, Carrot turned and left. Blinking in surprise, Derpy called after her, “Wait, Carrot, c’mon let’s talk about this!” Carrot, however, didn’t even glance behind her shoulder. “Nope, I’m done. It’s late, I’m tired, I had a long day, and I am not having a conversation this insane right now. Eat your food downstairs and go to bed, or don’t, whatever, I don’t care. But this? This is not happening right now. I know you’re feeling pretty crappy about not doing more, and yeah, things are different around here, but you have no proof that it’s as bad as you’re saying. Just trust me, sleep it off and you’ll be thinking straight in the morning. Now goodnight.” Turning into her own bedroom, Carrot slammed the door shut behind her. Derpy knew her well enough to know when she was simply in no mood to talk, and now was definitely one of those times. However, that didn’t mean she wasn’t upset by her reaction. On the contrary, she was just as angry as Carrot was; it was one thing for her to think her idea was crazy, but to not even give her the time of day to explain it truly hurt. They were friends, best friends, and best friends didn’t just write one another off like they weren’t worth the time. After the day she’d had, now capped off with this last bit of unpleasantness, it was finally about to turn into one of those nights; the kind nopony wanted but sometimes needed, or at least thought they did at the time. Heading downstairs, Derpy bypassed Carrot’s now-cold dinner sitting atop the stove and headed straight for the fridge. Grabbing a bottle of Sweet Apple Acres cider, she twisted the bottle cap off and in one swift move began guzzling it down. She continued like this for some time, but in what seemed like no time at all one bottle turned into four, emptied of all their contents. Likewise, in that same indeterminate span of time, one sober, angry pegasus turned into one drunken, even angrier pegasus. A drunken, angry pegasus now liable to do something rather stupid. Naturally, that’s just what she decided to do. Grabbing an old, black hoodie from her closet, she threw it on before heading out the door into the crisp night air, determined to either do something useful for a change or get into a world of trouble for her efforts. Let’s see what we’ve got tonight. Oh great, another missing pony report, fantastic. Suppose I should be thankful there’s a report at all. Hunched over his paperwork-cluttered desk, Time took a sip of coffee as he read through the report. With a force this small everypony had to work graveyard shifts once in a while, and tonight was one of his. Unfortunately neither Officers Frost nor Flowers were in tonight, and Time didn’t know or trust any of the other officers well enough to go out this late on patrol with them, especially in the South Side. So he’d opted instead to manage the police station and its skeleton crew for the night. In spite of the lamentably late hours, it was at least a good time usually to catch up on some paperwork, especially any interesting reports which had initially slipped past his notice such as the one he was now reading. Miss Star Drop, eh? Interesting. Got a bit of a connection to Foggy with this one. It’s not much, but rare enough that I’ll take it. Might definitely be some actual leads to pursue on this one, imagine that. Just out of the corner of his eye, something suddenly caught his attention. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he could’ve sworn something had just sped past him, concealed by the shadows. This late at night it was very hard to tell, as the station was only partially lit in a number of areas. Oftentimes walking through the dark halls could feel rather eerie, especially if one was walking alone. One never knew when they might suddenly get that inexplicable, foreboding feeling that they were not alone, even if there was no merit to such unfounded dread. Peering around the corner of his cubicle, Time scanned the hall left and right, just to be sure. He was hardly the jumpy, excitable sort, but for some strange reason which he couldn’t explain he had a hunch that this was more than his mind or senses playing tricks on him. Still, it was late at night and he was hardly at his most alert, so for all he knew maybe he had made an honest mistake. At any rate, after giving the office a thorough onceover, he’d spied neither hide nor hair of anything amiss. With a shrug, he sat back down at his desk and returned to reviewing the latest missing pony report. A short time later after he’d read through it and downed a couple more cups of coffee in the process, he got up and headed toward the commissioner’s office upstairs. He figured it couldn’t hurt to review some incidents from the past year and compare them to this latest one, and thankfully the commissioner had discretely entrusted him with a spare key to his office in case he ever needed to fetch any materials from it when he wasn’t around. However, he found himself on the receiving end of a rather nasty shock when he discovered the door to the commissioner’s office was already unlocked. For a moment he didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, just listened as intently as he could for anything, anything at all. Maybe… maybe he just forgot to lock it. Yeah, maybe… maybe… oh who am I kidding? Him forget? No way. Not in a million years. Just as he resolved to storm in there in the next five seconds, a crash came from inside and without a second’s hesitation he burst in. It was hard to see in the darkened space, but his eyes were immediately drawn to the office window; it appeared that the commissioner’s chair had been thrown against it, but to his bewilderment the glass was only cracked. Right, reinforced glass, tough stuff. But who the buck threw it? That’s when he realized his mistake. Spinning around, he felt a rush of something zipping over his head and just caught a glimpse of a tail pealing around the corner of the door. Acting on instinct he set off in pursuit, cursing himself for failing to take into account that the intruder might be a pegasus. Stupid! Yes Time, there are ponies who have wings, hadn’t you heard? Just what the hay is going on? “Stop in the name of the law!” he called out, though the way this guy was running he already knew that old line wouldn’t work. At that moment a couple of the other officers on duty came up from the first floor, apparently drawn by the commotion being made. “We’ve got an intruder!” Time called. “Come on, he’s heading for the roof.” They looked even more surprised by this news than he was, but hastily scrambled after him, intent on catching whoever was crazy enough to break into a police station. Charging up the stairs, they saw that their intrepid intruder had opted to fly up the stairwell instead and had already exited onto the roof. A few seconds later the group of officers followed, but they were already too late. The intruder was already flying off into the night sky, albeit somewhat unsteadily. Time even figured another pegasus might be able to catch him if they were quick enough. “He’s not going too fast, we might be able to catch him!” he said. “Uh sir?” “What?” “In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t exactly have wings.” Glancing behind his shoulder, Time realized that, indeed, the other two ponies with him were an earth pony and unicorn. “Are you kidding me? We’re supposed to have at least one of each race on staff at all times, where the hay’s our pegasus?!” “Oh you’re thinking of Star Hunter, yeah, he’s on the can,” the unicorn officer explained. Time didn’t even dignify that with a response, afraid he’d say something he’d immediately regret if he did. Instead, he prowled over to the edge of the roof, fuming all the way as the trespasser disappeared into the night. He now found himself in the unfortunate position of having to explain to his boss that under his watch, somepony had somehow broken into their station and the commissioner’s own office and presumably stolen… something. It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t even know what’d been taken, if anything at all. Rushing back downstairs, he hurried back to the commissioner’s office. A quick survey of the room revealed that something indeed had been taken, and when he realized what it was, Time gulped and uttered beneath his breath, “Oh buck me.” The next morning found Derpy unable to move. Or rather, she refused to move on account of the fact that her body currently hated her for the abuse she’d just put it through. Her head was throbbing with easily the worst hangover she’d ever had, and what’s more, there were some things from the previous night she couldn’t even remember. She recalled going out and to the police station with some sort of idea in mind, and she knew she’d broken in and nearly gotten herself caught, but everything after that was a blur. She figured she must’ve passed out on her bed as soon as she’d gotten home. Never… never drinking that much again. After lying in bed for what felt like hours, not moving but unable to sleep either, she decided that maybe some aspirin was just what the doctor ordered. Turning onto her side, she suddenly felt something beside her which was most definitely not bedsheets. Glancing down, her eyes nearly popped out of her skull when she saw that the object in question were files. Police files, to be exact. She’d broken into a police station and stolen some of their own files. OK, never drinking again period. Note to self: drinking does not mix well with ninjutsu or attempting to employ it. Side effects may include acting like a total bucking idiot. Way to go Team Derpy. You rule, woohoo. She briefly considered looking through them right then but quickly dismissed that notion when her still-throbbing head demanded otherwise. Groggily climbing out of bed, she slowly made her way downstairs to the kitchen. Carrot was already there (unsurprising given that she had not gotten hammered and done something very much illegal the previous night) and was busy cleaning some dishes. Looking behind her shoulder, she gave Derpy a small nod. “Morning,” she said quietly. Derpy didn’t return the greeting, heading straight for the cabinet instead where they kept the painkillers. After getting herself a much-needed aspirin and washing it down with some water, she finally replied, “Morning.” “Need some coffee?” Carrot offered, indicating a half-full pot that was still hot by the looks of it. Derpy nodded gratefully and poured herself a mug, pulling up a chair at the kitchen table. “Thanks. This should hit the spot,” she remarked, gingerly taking sips as it cooled. “So… about last night…,” Carrot began, fiddling with her forehooves. “Yeah.” Derpy looked down at the table guiltily. “Look, Derpy… I shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that. Sure I was tired after a long day, but that’s not any excuse. So for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” Derpy blinked in surprise. “Well… thanks Carrot. I guess. Sorry, just wasn’t expecting that is all.” Carrot waved a hoof. “Nah it’s alright, I don’t blame ya. Look, I know you’re serious about what you said, but you have to admit to me at the very least that what you proposed is without a doubt some grade A insanity, right?” Derpy hesitantly nodded, taking a few more sips of coffee as she contemplated where to go from here. She might have been able to carry on a somewhat normal conversation with Carrot now that she seemed calmer, but there was the small matter now of the pilfered police files up in her room. She couldn’t risk Carrot stumbling upon those on her own, no matter how much she’d prefer to simply not tell her about them. Regaining and maintaining Carrot’s trust started with telling the truth, including the hard ones. She knew what she had to do. “I know it is. Definitely one of the nuttiest things I’ve ever heard, and from my own mouth no less. But I wouldn’t have brought it up if I didn’t think I could pull it off, or if I thought for one moment it wasn’t a worthwhile thing to do. It is, I know it is. I just need some help to get it off the ground; ponies I can trust, and who can supply me with what I need to do this.” Carrot snorted. “Well you can certainly trust me, but I can’t exactly help you out in the whole supplies department. Seriously, who do you stand a chance to get… whatever it is you’d need for all this from?” “That’s where the Dark Knights come in,” Derpy explained. “The Dark Knights operated very much independently in the field, but they did answer to somepony, the same pony who knighted them in the first place.” “You don’t mean–” “You better believe it. I’m going to ask Princess Luna for help.” “Oh Celestia’s teat,” Carrot bemoaned, shaking her head in disbelief. “OK, even assuming she’d one, be willing to hear you out, and two, be willing to consider doing something like this (in secret, I assume), there’s still that little matter of proving to her that anything’s wrong. I know things aren’t great, trust me, but I only know that because I live here, and you still haven’t produced any hard evidence of what exactly is going on. Until you’ve got that, I’m sorry but I don’t see how you’d be able to make your case to anypony, much less a princess you don’t really even know.” “Well… what if hypothetically I did have something?” Derpy suggested, shifting uneasily in her seat, unbeknownst to Carrot. “Like what? I don’t have a clue what a princess would even need to see to take what you’re proposing seriously.” Finished with her dishes, Carrot turned to face Derpy, only now noticing her apparent unease. Still fidgeting where she sat, she rubbed a hoof behind her neck, and her eyes refused to meet Carrot’s, darting over every inch of the kitchen instead. After a moment of regarding Derpy with odd bemusement, Carrot’s eyes widened. “Wait… what did you do?” she asked anxiously. Derpy stared at the ceiling, bobbing her head from side to side before finally replying, “I didn’t say I have something, just that hypothetically I cou–” “What. Did. You. Do?” Carrot demanded. “OK, it’s not as bad as you think,” Derpy assured her, sitting straight up in her seat. “That doesn’t exactly make me feel any better!” Carrot exclaimed. “How bad is ‘not as bad as I think’?” “Well… OK, yeah, it’s still pretty bad,” Derpy conceded. “But before I tell you, please, please, please promise me you won’t freak out.” “Uh-uh, no way am I promising that. Come on Derpy, you have to meet me halfway here; if I’m expected to keep whatever it is you’ve been up to a secret from everypony else, you have to at least let me reserve the right to panic.” Derpy waffled but hesitantly nodded. “Alright, fine, that’s fair enough. Wait here.” Derpy left and went upstairs, returning shortly thereafter with the stack of police files. She set them on the table in front of Carrot and waited for the inevitable. It took but a few seconds of flipping through the files for Carrot to realize what they were. When she did, her reaction was more than understandable. “Tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.” “Believe me, I wish I could,” Derpy said dryly. “In my defense, I had been drinking copiously before I went out after our little spat.” That remark prompted Carrot to rub her brow with a hoof. “So on top of stealing police files, you were drunk when you did it as well?” “Yep,” Derpy flatly confirmed. Carrot got up and started furiously pacing about the kitchen, her face turning beet red. Derpy was sure that if she got any madder than she already was, smoke would start spouting from her ears. “That’s great, that’s just great. Sun, moon, and stars, you really did it this time, didn’t you? You, you, you…,” she suddenly came to a halt, her barely restrained fury giving way to a look of bewilderment. “What are you still doing here?” “Huh?” That certainly hadn’t been a question Derpy had expected, but her ears deflated when she figured she knew Carrot’s meaning. “OK, I get it. You’ve put up with enough from me as it is already, more than you should have. If you want me to go, I’ll go, find a new place to stay. I don’t want you getting into any sort of trouble because of me.” Much to her surprise, Carrot waved a dismissive hoof. “No, no, that’s not what I mean,” she insisted. “I mean, why hasn’t anypony shown up by now to arrest you? You broke into a police station, while you were drunk, and stole files from them. Last time I checked, that was pretty illegal. Are you telling me nopony spotted you?” “Well, actually I kinda did get caught in the act,” Derpy admitted, rubbing her neck sheepishly. “But I got away, and I guess they didn’t see me since I had a disguise on.” “A disguise?” “OK, it was a hoodie, but it was dark enough that they couldn’t tell it was me! At least, I think they couldn’t. I mean, like you said, nopony’s shown up yet, so I’m guessing they didn’t recognize me.” “Huh.” Carrot pondered upon that for some time, seemingly far calmer now than she had been but a moment ago. “So you broke into a police station, while hammered, stole police files, got spotted, and managed to escape without anypony recognizing you?” “I guess so, yeah,” Derpy said, unsure where she was going with this. Sitting down as though to steady herself, Carrot stared at her friend with a mixture of awe and disbelief. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… OK, you’ve got me. I’m convinced.” Derpy tilted her head in confusion. “Convinced of what?” “That you could make a difference,” Carrot said. “It’s not that I didn’t believe what you’d told me or anything, just, I don’t know… you really did this. You weren’t even close to being at your best, and you still pulled off something as insane as breaking into and stealing from a police station! And you did it without anything, anything at all except your own inebriated wits. How in the world… normal ponies can’t do that!” “Well… thanks Carrot. I guess. Is that a vote of confidence from you then?” Derpy asked with the slightest bit of hope. “I… I don’t know. Maybe? First things first, you’re going to return these as soon as possible, right? You may not have gotten caught, but I’m not exactly comfortable having stolen police files in our home.” “No can do, at least not yet,” Derpy said resolutely. “But why? You proved your point! You clearly have special ‘talents’ that you might be able to put to good use, I believe that now. What more do you need these for?” “That’s what I was trying to explain before you flipped out. Last night, you told me I had no proof, hard proof, about the troubles that have been going on in Ponyville. Well, I realized you were right, and after I got good and drunk I decided to fix that. That’s why I took them. Crazy as it might sound, if anything’s going to have the hard proof I need about what’s been going on, the kind of proof that might even convince a princess that something’s up around here and needs to be done about it, it’d be these files.” “Oh sweet Celestia, you’re going to share these with a bucking princess!?” Carrot exclaimed. “Only if they have what I need, but I’m sure they do. They’re all about the South Side and some of the creeps making trouble there, like Foggy Trotter. I just need to go through them to be sure, but I wouldn’t have taken them if I didn’t think I could use them. If they don’t, you have my word that I’ll return them to the police, same way I took them in the first place. Horsefeathers, I’ll even be sober this time while I do it,” she said, chuckling. “And if you do find the kind of evidence you’re looking for in them, what then?” Carrot asked warily. “Then… then I’ll show it to her. I’ll show it to Princess Luna herself, some way, somehow,” Derpy declared as strongly as she could. “If it works out the way I hope, she might just be convinced that something really does need to be done, and that I might just be the one to do it.” “Are you forgetting the part where you’d be basically telling a princess herself, ‘Hey there, I stole some police files, want to see ‘em?’ Or is that suddenly something that royalty’s just OK with?” Carrot sarcastically asked. “I’m well aware what risk I’d be taking. And before you ask, don’t worry, I wouldn’t implicate you in the slightest. This is my responsibility alone, and I’ll own the consequences whatever they may be. But I’d rather risk getting in trouble with the law than do nothing at all; I couldn’t live with myself if I kept doing nothing at all. You’ve seen what I can do with nothing at all, Carrot; if you could do what I can, could you just sit on the sidelines? Would you really do nothing to help our home? Now imagine, just for one minute, what I could do with the support of a princess, and all the resources she could command! If I can make that a reality, then, well… suddenly I’m thinking I could be a real game changer in all this. For that, even the mere possibility of it, I’m willing to risk everything, put it all on the line.” Carrot still seemed to be a bundle of nerves, but staring hard at her friend with both sympathy and admiration said, “You really mean that, don’t you?” Derpy nodded. “You bet your tail I do.” Breathing a heavy sigh, Carrot answered, “You know, every fiber of my being says this is a bad idea. But there’s that one, tiny spot that can’t help but wonder what if. What if you could pull it all off? What if you really can make a difference? And I don’t know what to make of that, but you’re so damned confident that you can and, well… aw buck it, if you’re willing to risk all that for all of us, I guess the least I can do is help you find what you’re looking for.” Derpy blinked in surprise. “Are you serious?” “Sure, why the hay not,” Carrot said, shrugging but shooting her a shaky grin. “Come on, I figure two ponies can get through these files quicker than one, eh?” Derpy didn’t know what else to do but grin back. “I figure you’d be right. Let’s get to it.” “Right behind ya, you crazy mare.” “And Carrot.” “Hmmm?” “Thank you.” “Don’t mention it,” she insisted. “What are friends for, right?” Without another word, both mares started leafing through file after file, taking their first brave steps together onto the uncertain road that lay ahead.