//------------------------------// // Act 3 Chapter 24 : I Love My Computer, You Make Me Feel Alright // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale // by Chessie //------------------------------// “The ways to kill are almost endless: burning, dropping, gutting, poisoning, beheading, drowning, starving, dehydrating, and a million others. Dealing death can be artful or clumsy, quick or slow, careful or messy. It is ironic, then, that there are only two ways to die. Awake, alone, and with your final breath your only comfort, or in your sleep, dreaming a dream that soon becomes your new reality.” General Feather Strike in “Memoirs of a Griffinstone Warlord”. Tea. Cookies. Three old ladies. One grungy cop. There was a universal agreement to take a break. Breaks are good. Breaks keep a pony centered, and as we sat there munching on chocolate chips and sipping chamomile it was almost like being normal for fifteen minutes. Of course, normal doesn’t usually come with a yarn monstrosity dedicated to predicting all the hideous ways you might die literally dangling over your head. It didn’t help that I couldn’t shake a strange feeling that that thing was somehow watching me. Unfortunately, like everything, delicious snacks must end one day. Apple Bloom was hunched over in her rocker, her pencil dancing across one of the pages of notes. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were reclining, sipping their tea and studying the shape above us. I wiped the last bits of tasty, slightly stale apple fritter off my nose and cleared my throat. They all looked over. “Yes, Detective?” Sweetie prompted. “There are still some pieces we need to put together here. This ‘universal spell’. That’s what you called it, right?” I asked. “Yes…” “How does it work?” “Ehm...Like it sounds, I suppose. We used the Web of Dark Wishes to design our modeling system, before the war began. It was in a restricted part of the Canterlot Library, but...well, we’d worn out our welcome in most of the libraries in Equestria by then, and books that covered probabilistic systems were in short supply. Knowing Princess Twilight helped. Project Sixty-Six was a modification of that, but rather than mapping fields of probability, it alters them, dragging them off their given courses to create entirely new outcomes. In theory, if you had enough power to force through the system, it could grant...oh…” Sweetie’s ears lay back. “Oh my. That...oh...that’s bad.” “You were about to say ‘it could grant wishes’, weren’t you?” Apple Bloom tugged a strand of her red mane down and sucked on the end of it, then said, “Ah mean...iffen these ponies managed to build the web, it could explain lots of the funny stuff we saw down the years. They wouldn’t need half so much of it as they got to start messin’ with the world in little ways. Still, Ah mean...the more unlikely something is, the more they’d need.” “So, if they needed to wish for something pretty unlikely, like, say...Canterlot being teleported to the moon?” I asked. “Lots of power. A whole city’s worth or more. That and they’d need some kinda interface thingy to make it work.” “An interface? Pardon the dumb cop, but…” “It’s like this. You want to control something that big, yah need some kinda smart machine that’ll do it. One pony, or even a whole bunch of ponies, couldn’t pull all the different magical levers they’d have to to make it work. So, ya need an interface to make stuff simpler.” “And what form might that take?” Apple Bloom shrugged. “Beats the stuffin’ out of me. Ah just had the idea. Don’t mean Ah ever made it happen. The most Project Sixty-Six was ever able to do was turn black olives green.” “You said King Cosmo was researching this ‘wish fulfillment’ stuff, right, Detective?” Scootaloo asked. “Something about looking into good things happening to bad ponies?” “Yeah. Crazy events over a number of years,” I replied, tapping the side of my head as I tried to recall some of the news articles in the basement of Cosmo’s house. “Even down to ponies coming back from the dead, or at least, appearing to.” “So, what if whoever built the Shield was trading wishes for power and political favors?” “Umbra, Animas, and Armature,” Sweetie whispered. “We tried to model them. At least, I think we did. I don’t think it went well, and we haven’t tried since. No amount of compression makes it safe to look into certain things directly. We might have taken a look from orbit, but then there wouldn’t be any useful information.” “You think you did?” I asked, peering back and forth between the three of them. “Why did you try to model that bunch?” “They represented the city against us in several of the property cases. It was in the log,” Scootaloo replied, pointing to a notebook dangling beside the weaving room’s door. “We keep a log of all the models we intend to do, but the spells around the room monitor our brain activity.” “If our heads get too weird, the magic zaps us to sleep and erases an hour or two,” Apple Bloom added, reaching over and tapping a metal strip attached to one of the legs of her rocking chair. “We had to compress a whole bunch of the baddest of the bad of what could happen in Detrot just to get this.” She pointed up at the yarn model overhead. “That thing we thought was a glitch...well, if that’s what the Shield looks like with all the magic of Nightmare Moon’s grimoire in it, Ah wouldn’t wanna see it without that compression algorithm. Probably cook our brains!” “But...it’s just yarn, right?” I stammered. “What is this ‘compression’ thing you keep talking about?” “Yer brain is just a lump of meat, ain’t it? Still, you put enough energy and magic into that lump of meat and ya get a pony who can think and do all sorts of things, don’tcha? Yarn ain’t so different, and this room has a whole heap of energy and magic in it,” Apple Bloom replied, with a bit of a grin. “Compression just means lookin’ at something from farther away. You look at the city from up above, it doesn’t look half so bad. ‘cept the Skids o’course. When we’re doin’ the math, we write in a bit of magic so’s certain things get mashed together or pushed farther away. The spell we had to do for you looked like somepony peering through some drunk binoculars.” Scootaloo, meanwhile, was on her hooves and poking at the glitch with the tip of one wing. Some part of me desperately wanted her to stop, but I couldn’t have told you exactly why. Pulling it down a few inches, she followed a thickly interwoven line sprouting from the top off towards the ceiling. “Hey...guys? I think I found something.” “Uh...what kinda pony is that supposed to represent?” Apple Bloom asked, rising from her chair. “Ah don’t remember no ponies with that shade of white...” “Look at the fraying of the central string structure. It’s almost like the bandwidth of information flowing down that one piece of yarn is enough to break the model,” Sweetie murmured, grabbing the line with a burst of levitation and tugging it down to a place we could see it more clearly. “Well, that sort of explains it. This isn’t a pony. It has all the same signatures as a pony otherwise, but...there’s no cutie mark magic. No destiny.” I took a couple of reluctant steps towards the yarn model. “So, somepony without a cutie mark?” “No, Detective. Even ponies without cutie marks have the magic inside them. This? Nothing,” she murmured, twirling the yarn around her hoof a moment before releasing it.  “Strange,” Scootaloo mused, her small wings folding and unfolding restlessly against her prominent spine. “Destiny doesn’t just dodge somepony completely. If you’re alive, you have a destiny. I mean...hrm…” “What?” I prompted. “I sense a big, fat ‘unless’ in there somewhere.” The pegasus picked up the notepad nearest her rocking chair and flipped through it. “Unless our system just won’t model what this person’s destiny is. I mean, it’s possible. There are a ton of limiters built in so destinies that are just too unlikely don’t show up. Still, the fact that the system would model you means it’d take something pretty crazy for that to be the case...” “Thanks for the reminder that my life is impossible. I really needed that,” I grunted. “Lookie here!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, pointing at a spot up near the ceiling where the white string vanished into another tangle. “There’s somethin’ up there! Sweetie, can ya shift the field so we can see that bit?” Edging around the side of the structure, Sweetie pulled a pair of spectacles from somewhere in her dress and popped them on the end of her nose. “Ah! I think I see what you mean.” “Yahknow, if we’re gonna be fightin’ again, Ah should probably whip ya up some eyes—” “You’ve been offering for ten years, A.B. and I’ve told you every time that I like my own eyes plenty,” Sweetie huffed, pushing her glasses up. “Now...hrm...I have to move points three and thirty six closer to each other. That might cause some instability.” “Well, at worst you trip the safeties and we end up wondering why we’re digging ourselves out of a pile of yarn again,” Scootaloo chuckled. “It’s better than trying to get down from a tree covered in sap and pine needles, right?” The unicorn’s horn glowed, and I felt as though my stomach had shifted in my barrel as the entire heap of woven yarn seemed to slide sideways and down in a way that was altogether nauseating. A dozen pieces of yarn snapped, then re-tied themselves in different locations, binding to entirely new spots. The ‘glitch’ seemed to shrink, and the white strand grew in length, splitting into three separate strands, each one a different colour. “Yikes...warn a pony before you do that,” I muttered. Sweetie’s horn didn’t go out as she sat down heavily in her rocker. “Oooh...goodness. Yes, this is incredibly unstable. Scoots, get what you need! The safeties will go in twenty seconds! It’s already coming apart!” Apple Bloom reached behind her rocker and yanked a self-developing camera off a peg hidden on the back. “Jus’ hold it still! Ah’ll get the picture!” “Detective! Run!” Scootaloo cried, wings driving a breeze into my face as she shot down the catwalk and into the hallway faster than a mare her age ought to be able to move. Adrenaline started pumping, and my hooves were moving before my brain was. My hoof caught on the lintel of the door, and I barely caught myself before I would have plowed face-first into Scootaloo. Apple Bloom came after five seconds later, galloping into my open forelegs with the camera around her neck. She wasn’t near so light as she looked, but I managed to keep both of us from tumbling to the floor. “Sweetie! Get out of there!” Scootaloo shouted, her voice cracking. The unicorn, casting all decorum aside, bolted for the door, sprinting like a filly half her age or less. Running in a floor length dress was enough of a feat, but doing it while maintaining a complex magic spell was even harder. Light started to build around the door, and dozens of runes lit up along the catwalk. She skidded over the threshold a second before the security door slammed shut and a deep, vibrating thrum filled the hallway. Apple Bloom raised the camera triumphantly, her breathing a little heavier than mine, but not by much. Sweetie Belle was panting, but a big smile was plastered across her wrinkled features as Scootaloo patted her on the back with her wing. “Wow! Awesome! I wondered if we’d have to explain this whole mess to you again!” Scootaloo cackled. “Darling, I’m not slowing down that much,” Sweetie replied, sweeping at her dress to clear the wrinkles around her hips. “Besides, if nothing else, my cardiovascular augmentations still work.” “Ah still say ya shoulda let me mess with yer joints.” “And if I ever lose one, I might very well take you up on that,” she retorted, trotting off ahead of us with an extra sway to her hips just to show she was fine. “What’s the picture look like?” Apple Bloom snatched the piece of self-developing film off the end of the camera and gave it a good shake in her mouth, then held it up. Sweetie and Scootaloo crowded in close. “Huh. No wonder that’s unstable,” Scootaloo murmured. “There’s contradictory information in the system.” I tried to get a look at the image, but it just looked like a piece of particularly unpleasant modern art. “Contradictory?” I asked. “Yeah...look,” she said, putting a hoof on the image. “See this sorta blueish line coming off of the white line? The white line is whoever is actually behind everything. The blue line is—or at least was—Astral Skylark. She’s dead here. No big deal. We knew that, right? Well, this other line that’s bright red? That’s somepony in authority in the city. They’re responsible for a ton of deaths. We had to completely compress the numbers, but...it’s more than anyone else in the city right now.” “Any idea who they might be?” “I would imagine that’s whoever controls the Biters,” Sweetie Belle answered, teasing a lock of her mane with the tip of a toe. “They’ve set gang after gang against one another and spilt a sea of blood. There is still more blood to come, of course, but their death should be a priority.” “What’s contradictory about that?” I wanted to know. “Nothing, but that’s where this comes in,” she murmured, indicating a purple string with her hooftip that looked like it was coming apart everywhere along its length. “The information you gave us fit into the system poorly, hence the instability. According to what we have, this individual, whoever they may be, is both alive and dead simultaneously.” I narrowed my gaze at the purple line on the photograph. “Alright, so the other guy is whoever is behind the Biters and the white line is our actual mastermind...who is this?” “Detective, this...is the murderer of Ruby Blue.” My ears shot straight up. “Are you sure?!” “Yes, we’re sure...but I don’t think we can tell you all that much about them,” she replied, with a sad sigh. “The system may present information, but it is frequently up to us to interpret. I don’t know what most of this means. I didn’t have long enough to get into specifics before the safeties went off.” There was a disappointed silence, until Apple Bloom spoke up. “Detective, we had ta ignore most of what ya told us about that poor mare because it falls so far outside of our system that we’d have popped the safeties in seconds if we put it in. Ruby Blue’s story is just too improbable! Ah’m not even mentionin’ what’s in that diary of hers. Ya gotta know how crazy all of this stuff sounds, even with us knowin’ it’s true!” Throwing up my hooves, I shoved my forehead against the wall. I was so tired I could barely see straight and it was starting to mess with my judgement, but I was that special kind of exhausted which makes everything slide into focus. A strong foreleg slid across my shoulders, and a lock of red hair fell into my vision. “Ah know this is frustratin’, but yer gonna hafta calm down. We ain’t gonna send ya back out there empty hooved. There is somethin’ in all this...and on the path ya’ll are on right now, there’s a chance to get the Princesses back. Ya know ya gotta destroy the Shield. Well, Ah think we can help with that.” I raised one eartip. “Howso? The resources of the entire police department weren’t enough to crack that magic. It’s powered by chaos and suffering, and there’s a lot of chaos and suffering in the city right now!” “Heh, well, ya’ll have a trump card, don’tcha? Ya said there’s that pylon waaay out in the Wilds, right? If ya can get inside that one and there’s no shield on it, take some pictures of the runes runnin’ the spells around the doors. If we can get inside a bunch of’em closer to the city center, we can rig’em to blow! No more spell pattern, no more Web!” I considered this for a long time, then shook my head. “That doesn’t fix the big shield around Uptown. You want to get into city center, we’ve got to deal with that.” “The construct at Supermax is already on it, darling,” Sweetie said with a comforting smile that turned quickly into a huge yawn. “Mmmph...Now, Detective, you need to get to the Detrot Police Department, and we need to get back to being wizened old crones pretending to be demigods. I think I need a nap soon.” “You’re right. I need to go get Mags, too. Wait, wait! My gun!” I held up the Crusader. “How does it work? How do I fire the crystal shells?” Apple Bloom tugged my sleeve back and pointed at the switch on the side. “Ah’d love to give ya the six week course, but...the Crusader’s dangerous. The ammunition makes a connection with yer brain when ya pull the trigger. What yer feelin’ becomes what ya fire. Make sure the switch is on this symbol.” She tapped the shape that looked like Celestia’s cutie mark. “Then...try to think calm, friendly thoughts. At worst, ya prolly lose consciousness and maybe have a lil’brain hemorrhage. Never hurt nopony. Well, except Sonnet, but she decided she wanted to go on a mission after a bad breakup...” “Anytime I’m pulling my trigger, I’m generally not feeling very calm or friendly!” “Well, ya don’t have time to spend three hours a day meditatin’ like we used to, so yer gonna hafta make do, arent’cha?” she replied, sharply, giving me a poke in the chest. “It’s another safety measure so the Crusaders don’t go kill crazy...and considerin’ what yer friends are like, Ah don’t see as how Ah’d want ya firin’ that thing without some thought put in beforehoof.” Scootaloo snorted, putting a hoof across my shoulders. “Detective, I know she’s making it sound really dangerous, but she wrote the safety manual. I fired ‘Wrecking Ball’ while I was mad a whole load of times and I’m—” “—losin’ things constantly. Like that pair of thigh socks ya left in the bathtub last week.” Apple Bloom sniggered as her friend gave her an indignant glare. “Yer lucky ya have me to patch ya up, Scoots, or ya would spend more of yer days droolin’ than ya do.” “I do not drool!” “Ya so do! Ah do yer laundry and yah leave a puddle on yer pillow every night!” “So do you!” “Girls!” Sweetie snapped, bringing both of the ‘Ancestors’’ attentions back around. “Please, a semblance of dignity?” “She started it…” “Ah did not—” “Alright, alright!” I interrupted, putting my hooves up. “Don’t fire the Crusader when I’m pissed off. Got it. Any other tips?” I asked. “Erm...about twenty, but they all come down to ‘make sure you want to kill what you fire at’. There’s no ‘wound’ setting on a Crusader,” Sweetie said as Scootaloo discretely swatted Apple Bloom’s flank with a wingtip and her friend responded with a firm hip bump. “Sweet mercy. The Ancestors of the Aroyos,” I chuckled. “I admit, you three are not what I expected.” “Darling, we never expected to end up like this either,” the unicorn replied, then tapped her chin, pensively. “There...hrm...there is one piece of information we have that might help you at some point. Hard to say, really. I mean, it’s surely meaningless by now, but...well, you did ask us about your grandfather.” I tilted my head and asked, “What about my grandfather?” Scootaloo stepped forward, putting a hoof on my foreleg. “He was a great stallion, Detective. Hard Boiled was the best of the Crusaders. He kept us going even when it looked like we might actually lose the war. I spent a year in a draconic P.O.W. camp, and if your grandfather hadn’t busted me out, I’d have died there.” “Ah loved him like a brother. He was stronger than me. Stronger than anypony. He wouldn’t give up even when we was trapped in a collapsed mine with nothin’ to eat but mushrooms for two weeks straight,” Apple Bloom murmured, picking up where the pegasus left off. “He was a friend like no other,” Sweetie added, shutting her eyes. “That is why when we heard of us his death, we were all heartbroken. We went to his wake...Detective, he was not ‘in attendance’.” My ears lay back. “Buh? Say again? I mean, the dead don’t generally attend—” “They buried an empty box...sheesh!” Apple Bloom barked, poking at Sweetie. “Come on, ya gotta say what ya mean with him. He’s as literal minded as ol’Egg Head was.” “Ugh, no sense of decorum, at all,” Sweetie sighed, then turned back to me. “If your grandfather died in the fire that consumed his home, they never found his body. While dragonfire could render somepony down to ash, it is...unlikely.” “Are you saying he could still be alive?!” I gasped. “If he’s alive, he’s very old,” Scootaloo answered, softly. “He wouldn’t abandon this city. Not willingly. The last we heard from him before the fire, he was investigating some strange goings on in the Wilds. Once a Crusader, always a Crusader, they say.” “You don’t think he was looking into that Shield pylon—” Sweetie waved her hoof to forestall any more questions. “I wish we had more to give you, Crusader, but you need to go back to your friends and continue your investigation. I realize this is a bit of a shock, but keep in mind, this was thirty years ago. Wisteria will be waiting for you, and there are arrangements to be made for increasing our patrols so no other dragons encroach on our territory. When you need us, the Aroyos will be ready.” ---- The door of the little home closed behind me, and I stood there, staring up at the darkened sky and gently stroking the radio juju bag that Apple Bloom had pressed into my hoof as I was leaving. It hung against my neck alongside the Emblem of Harmony. Funny to contemplate how much I’d accumulated in just a couple of months when my life actually meant something. I think the most valuable thing I’d acquired in the last eight years leading up to that fateful day I picked up Ruby’s diary was an especially nice tie and shirt combination. They’d burned with my apartment. A gentle breeze blew through my mane with the scent of rain on it, natural rain. It was blowing in from the bay with actual clouds, rather than the mass-produced variety I was used to. City life really does lose some of the beauty of nature when you’re hemmed in on all sides by controls and measures. Still, a bit of natural rain wasn’t worth watching everybody I love die. The streets were quiet, but that was to be expected. There was no need for the Aroyos to defend the Skids aggressively when no gang dared move beyond their own territories without a significant force to ward off the Biters. It was certainly a great way of encouraging large-scale battles between the gangs, and thus more blood to power the Shield. The beating of wings reached my ears as Wisteria came in for a landing, trotting a few steps and stopping alongside me as I turned to look up at the apartment building. “So, Crusada...what ye t’ink of de Ancestors?” she asked, glancing down at the juju bag hanging around my throat. “Dey be somet’ing, yes?” “They’re something, all right; demented, far too many stories in their heads, and I think they’re probably a danger to themselves and everyone around them. I do believe I finally understand why you follow them, though. In dark times, ponies who keep their promises are rare.” “And who does dat remind ye of, eh Crusada?” she snickered, poking me in the chest. “By de by, we found de dragon and a smaller one dat were wid her.” “Wait...two dragons?” “Aye. De smaller one be blue and cryin’ like a child, but he be not leavin’ when we come for de one what calls herself ‘Vexis’. Dey surrendered to us. I and I still says we should have been skinnin’ dem and usin’ dey scales for armor, but ye promises dat dey be safe, and so dey be.” “Oog. Draconic prisoners. I have draconic prisoners. How did a simple murder investigation turn into this? One dead girl in an alleyway later and it’s the apocalypse.” Turning to the sewer grate we’d emerged from earlier, Wisteria stretched her wings and gave herself a shake. “Well, I and I gots to get back and find dem food. Dey be dragons, so only eatin’ once a week, but...dat be a lot of meat and crystal.” ”You’ve been feeding Goofball, haven’t you?” Wisteria’s cheeks puffed up, and she whistled like a kettle for a second before letting the breath go. “Eh...to be fair, de demon dog eats old sofas and tires. It be a different t’ing to feed two dragons.” “Of course. And now we get to walk back through the sewers. Skies above, I miss those times when I could go all week without wading through some other creature’s feces.” “As dey say, Crusada…same shit, different day.” ---- The ‘secret’ door into Supermax had become something of a highway since the last time my friends and I used it during our assault on the prison. The tunnels nearest that entrance were largely cleared of the various neurotoxin launchers and basilisk eyes, though most of the side passages were still extremely lethal. Thankfully, somepony had deigned to put up a few warning signs that all said some variation of ‘horrible death this way’. As we rounded the final corner, Wisteria grinned and picked up speed. There was actually a line of ponies waiting to get into Supermax. Some were scavengers with carts of electronics or supplies probably taken from nearby warehouses while others seemed to be scouts. Two guards stood on either side of the open door, a card table set up by them, waving the ponies through one at a time after checking their faces and cutie marks against some kind of list. The chattering crowd went silent as we moved past, several bowing or nodding their heads. It was yet another of those changes to my station in life that I could have done without. For her part, Wisteria ignored them as she stopped in front of the guards. “Wisteria and Crusada,” she said, formally. The mare beside the door cocked her head sideways, peering at Wisteria’s cutie mark. For as much time as I’d spent with her, I hadn’t actually thought to look at her flank. It took me a second to identify exactly what I was looking at, but when I did I couldn’t help but smile; it was a DJ-style black microphone with a juju bag hanging around the neck. “Ye be expected, Wisteria,” the guardsmare replied. She was a petite thing with half her mane shaved back. “De Puppet Lady say, ye goes down to de Chamber. Crusada’s people be dere.” ---- Jambalaya’s little crash space in what had once been the fake control room in front of Tourniquet’s chambers was still in comfortable disarray, though somepony had hoofpainted ‘Royal Guard Barracks’ in messy red ink above the door. “Ah! De Puppet Lady is waitin’ for ye,” Wisteria said cheerfully. “Go on, Crusada. I and I must go and be feedin’ my foal. De world may end, but de job never does!” “You said it, sister…” With a parting smirk, she trotted towards the stairwell. I felt the beginnings of a yawn, but I buried it. How long had I been awake since that nap in Twilight’s castle? Each hour felt like it was getting longer, and my brain was already howling for rest. “Hard Boiled, would you stop lurking out there?” Tourniquet’s voice whispered from an invisible spot beside my head. For once, I only flinched rather than very nearly ruining the carpet with terrified piss. “Lurking is what I do, Tourniquet,” I grunted, plodding through Jambalaya’s pad. Somepony had added a couple cots to one corner, though nobody was hanging around in there just then. I could still smell Zap smoke on the air. “If I don’t lurk, I might explode.” “Yes, well, Swift is waiting for you along with Mags. Oops! Mags decided not to wait—” I barely had time to cover my eyes before a flying, feathery missile tried to take me off my hooves. She latched on as I gave my head a good shake, refusing to let go of my hat. “Grrr! Where you be, egg pony?” Mags demanded. “I know they told you I’d be coming back in a few hours!” I barked. “Now, are you going to get on my back and sit there without mauling my ears, or am I going to buck you off and stuff you in that gym bag over there under the coffee table?” Mags’s beak clicked as she crawled sulkily down onto my shoulders, wrapping her tail around my barrel for balance. She kneaded my coat a couple times, then curled up like a grumpy kitten. Satisfied, I trotted through the open hydraulic security door into Tourniquet’s chamber. Tourniquet’s magical lights were down low, and a small round card table was positioned in the center of the room where her bed usually was. Taxi was sitting there alongside Limerence with some piece of the car propped between their hooves. Lim’s horn glowed with power as he waved it over the component while my driver slowly turned a screw with a screwdriver held in her teeth. “Evening. I’m back,” I called, strolling over to the table and settling myself on a short bench underneath. My friends looked up, and Taxi spat out the screwdriver. “You find anything interesting with these ‘Ancestors’?” Taxi asked, wiping a bit of grease off her muzzle with a towel. “A few interesting things, actually. The situation is more complicated than we thought. Where’s Swift? If I’m going to fill everypony in, I don’t want to repeat myself. For that matter, where’s Tourniquet?” “They’re...mmm…” Limerence looked up at the ceiling where I could see only darkness, then shook his head. “They’re ‘interfacing’.” If you’ve ever been a pedestrian on the receiving end of a bucket of wet cabbage, lingerie, and live mice thrown off the top floor of a skyscraper, then you’re probably aware of just how I was feeling at that moment. “I have many questions and don’t want answers to any of them,” I muttered. Shrugging Mags off my back onto the table, I squirmed out of my coat, balling it up along with my hat and leaving the heap on the table. Lifting my head, I shouted, “Swift! Tourniquet! I know you can hear me! I want to see some eyes down here in thirty seconds, or I go upstairs and start stuffing toilets with paper towels!” There was a long pause, and then a flash of light traveled from the ground around the perimeter of the room, creeping up the interwoven wires and cords comprising the walls until surging through the gigantic electrical rat’s nest on the ceiling. Gradually, like a bundle of snakes unwinding, cords started to tumble from the roof of the chamber in great coils until a waterfall of cable landed beside the table. My companions all danced back, but I was rooted in place as the tangle slowly split open like the pod of some bizarre plant, revealing Swift lying inside. Tourniquet was huddled up against her chest, and both had their eyes closed and their breathing even, as though in a deep sleep. Hundreds of wires wound around my partner’s body, creeping into her nostrils, her mouth, and ears, whilst others wrapped lightly around her chest in intricate patterns. Her throat was bulging in the most disconcerting fashion, which suggested that the invasion was more complete than I really wanted to consider. I swallowed as the shiny metal fibers began to withdraw from her various cavities, spilling out of her like a slow liquid to rejoin the central cable network. Something about the whole business reminded me of a short movie I’d seen at one point about an octopus eating a starfish. ‘Say something,’ I thought. ‘What on Equis do you want me to say?!’ ‘I don’t know! Anything! This silence is so awkward you could weaponize it!’ ‘If you can’t come up with anything, what makes you think I’m going to be able to?’ I glanced at my friends for their reactions, but they were just as dumbfounded as I was. Swift shifted on her bed of cable, then smacked her lips as the last wire pulled itself free from her nose. Wrapping her forelegs around Tourniquet, she hugged the mechanical filly to herself for a second and yawned. “Mmm...did we do it?” she asked in a cracking voice. “Mrrmph. I think I need a glass of water.” Tourniquet’s crystalline eyes opened and danced in the soft light as she pulled herself up, then offered a hoof to Swift. “I used the part of your brain that lets you feel weather patterns to boost my throughput on the electrical grid by nineteen percent! There’s a meat warehouse with a working freezer that didn’t go out during the Darkening down on Neighara street! It’s fully stocked with all the meat we’ll need to feed our draconic guests for a year if we need to!” My partner flared her wings out and stretched like a cat, shoulders down, back humped, and tail in the air. “Mmm, alright, send a scout team. Phew!” Turning, she smiled, her eyes still shut. “Hello, Sir! You just got back, right? I saw you coming through the sewers.” “I’m feeling like I missed something...and open your damn eyes, kid. I have limits, and you being able to watch me like that is too bizarre. What’ve you two been doing while I was gone?” Mags began casually preening herself whilst talking through her feathers. “Egg pony, I thought all adults knew this stuff? Daddy used to call it ‘humping’, and he and Miss Esmerelda spent hours when I wasn’t allowed in the—” I reached up and grabbed my ward’s beak, but the damage was done. Swift had turned hot pink, and if Tourniquet could have blushed, I’m pretty sure she would have been red right down to her diodes. “W-we weren’t having sex, Sir,” she stammered, stepping closer to the construct, who pressed against her side. They were only a few inches shy of one another and might have been mistaken for a couple. Come to think of it, Tourniquet actually looked a little older than she had when we’d first met her. Her legs were a bit longer, if nothing else. “I was just letting Tourniquet use p-part of my brain and sensory system to see if we could find some m-meat for the dragons. It helped the fidelity to have her inside me. Wait...no, that’s not what I meant! I meant it was better to have her penetrate my—”          I slapped my hooves over my ears. “Oh my sweet Celestia, I do not care and don’t want to know! Sit down and never speak of this again!” Yanking a chair out from the table, I slapped the seat, and Swift sheepishly crawled into it. The cords attached to Tournquet’s back tugged her into the air, and she dangled at the side of the table beside my partner. Pushing Mags out of the way so I could sit, I crossed my forelegs on the table in front of me and swept my shaggy mane back out of my eyes. I’d needed a cut before I died that first time, and the intervening weeks hadn’t helped the situation much. Still, a barber was going to have to wait until after the world was no longer ending. “My friends...it’s worse than any of us imagined.” ---- I quickly filled them in on everything I’d gotten from the Ancestors right up until a tray of drinks arrived and we all spent a few minutes wetting our whistles. Finally, the splash and dash done, we got back to business. ---- “So,” Taxi said, “there are three individuals who are behind our current misery, if we don’t include Astral Skylark. One of them is Ruby Blue’s killer who’s evaded you for two months straight without so much as a sniff and now that you have that sniff it is ‘that they’re both dead and alive’. The entire magical framework of the city across multiple timelines is being warped by the Shield. You now know how to use your gun, but if you pull the trigger it could give you a stroke. Is that about the shape of it?” She drained her mimosa and slapped the glass back down on the table. “More or less. Also, we should all have been dead or imprisoned years ago and you probably would have tried to assassinate the Princesses at some point,” I said, stroking Mags’s belly as she lay on her back, using one of my forelegs as a pillow. “If it makes you feel any better, their model said you had a better than twenty percent chance of actually pulling it off.” “It doesn’t, but thanks anyway. What else? Might as well hear everything.” “That’s it, really,” I replied, sitting back and shaking my head. “Our next stop is that Shield Pylon out in the Wilds. The P.A.C.T. had almost all of the anti-megafauna vehicles, but I know there’s a couple left at the Castle. At least, there was before this all started. That means pushing through Biter territory to get there. That little filly who was helping you fix the cab said there was a decent way through if we don’t mind some diamond dogs? Speaking of that, how is the cab?” Taxi sighed and rubbed her eyes, then held out a leg to Limerence who was still fiddling with the component they’d been messing with when I arrived. “Do you mind telling him?” Limerence looked up, then set down his screwdriver. “We need at least twelve to twenty hours with a fully stocked garage to fix both the spell core and the severe structural damage caused by the dragonfire. The Aroyos are excellent electricians and mechanics, but many of the components we require are modifications of police issue parts whose serial numbers have somehow gone missing.” I turned to my driver. “If I were to check the police garage inventory records for the last couple of years, how accurate would they be?” She cleared her throat, noisily. “They’re probably very accurate...” “Then if I were to check with the procurement officer’s spouse, would I find them pleased or displeased with the amount of time you’d spent alone with their special somepony?” Taxi is nominally a pretty good liar, but I wouldn’t have bought my next breath off of her with the look on her face just then. “Hardy, you know me—” “Right. Displeased. I just wanted to make sure I’m on the same page, here,” I interjected, putting a hoof over her mouth and glancing toward Limerence. “So, what you’re saying then is that we can’t repair the car without getting to the Castle, is that it? Can we get the car there?” “Purely under its own power? No,” he replied. “However, I can keep the spell core stabilized with my own magical abilities. It is a difficult process, but one that should be entirely doable.” Tourniquet’s ears flipped back against her head with the sound of grinding gears. “You’ll pop your horn if you do that! That’s an unclassed spell core with dozens of illegal modifications! There’s enough power going through it to give me the hiccups!” Limerence pulled his tail under himself and frowned. “I am aware of the dangers. There are precautions we can take.” “It’s going to hurt like a bastard, though,” Taxi murmured, reaching out and covering his hoof with her own. “Even with grounding wires and capacitors to soak up anything above a safe thaumic voltage, you’re still going to be drowning in energy. The area around the Castle is dangerous, even if we take this route through the diamond dogs. If Chief Jade followed standard procedures, the sewers are blocked. If I have to put the hammer down, can you stabilize a spell core while somepony is driving nails into your head?” “My horn will invert most of the energy into something the engine can use and...should not shatter, even if I lose consciousness,” he said, unable to disguise the fear in his voice as he gazed evenly into my eyes. “I can alter a restrictor ring to close off my leylines if they begin to overload. The worst possibility is that the engine will cut out.” I leaned towards him slightly. “Are you sure that’s the worst that can happen?” “I have no desire to die or permanently lose my ability to cast spells. Believe that I will be taking every precaution. I can get us there,” he replied, though the look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. “Sir, couldn’t we just take...I don’t know...another car?” Swift asked, quietly. “The Aroyos have a few others.” “We could, sure,” I said wrapping Mags’s tail around my foreleg and fiddling with the tuft on the end. “What do you want to drive when we’re being chased by the P.A.C.T. or these ‘Biters’ at some point in the future? An unholy demon of speed modified to outrun cop cars and pegasi, or a gas powered sedan with a moonroof and two hundred thousand miles on the clock?” She considered this for a moment, and then her ears flopped against her head. “Speed demon, Sir...” I held out my hoof to the unicorn. “Then Lim, it’s your decision. We’ll probably need full power at some point.”         “I know,” he murmured, rising from his seat and trotting around the table towards the chamber door. “I’m going to go meditate and prepare. Somepony has recently checked the Archivist network spell system. I left a message on it that, should they have survived, they can safely make contact with me.” “Good news, then. Go on. We’ll be done here, soon.” With that, he peered down at his pocket watch, then shoved it back into his pocket and left to go do whatever a pony does when they’ve got some mortal torture to look forward to within the next few hours. As soon as he was gone, the security door swung shut of its own accord. “That leaves us with a couple of ugly problems we haven’t solved yet,” I said, bringing everyone’s attention back to me. “You mean whatever is keeping everypony out of Uptown, right?” Tourniquet asked, tilting her head against Swift’s chest. “I’ve been trying to analyze that field at a distance. It’s not a standard shield at all. More like some kind of...powerful repulsion magic. There’s nothing solid about it. It’s like a bunch of unicorns are pushing everything away.” “We’re headed to the Wilds. If the Shield is the source of the magic around Uptown, we’ve got a pretty solid lead on figuring out how it works. Once we get out there...we’ll get inside that pylon one way—” I reached over and touched my revolver. “—or another.” I heard a soft snore and found my ward had finally fallen asleep in my forelegs, so I felt it was safe enough to broach one particular issue I hadn’t been much inclined to with her awake. “Do we yet have any idea what the ‘Biters’ are?” Taxi shook her head. “Yes and no. We know what they do. They’re ponies, or were. Swift’s transformation seems to point in that direction, and that’s the best our reports say. We’ve never killed one and only caught glimpses when they’re leaving a scene. They’re incredibly fast, never leave survivors, mutilate bodies, kill indiscriminately without regard to age or gender. They never attack a defended position and they’ve got almost perfect intelligence on the movements of anyone they target. They can seemingly strike from anywhere in the city within fifteen to twenty minutes.” I nodded. “What about what they did to the griffins in the hotel? That strange gun that killed without leaving any holes in the walls?” Reaching back to her saddlebags, Taxi undid the buckle and plucked out one of her clipboards which was stuffed with scraps of paper and a few grainy photographs. “Well, not a lot…” I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could, Tourniquet cautiously stuck a leg in the air. “Um...I...I know something about them,” she said, quietly. Dragging Taxi’s heap of papers over, I looked down at them, then up at the mechanical filly. “Alright, explain. You’re not going omniscient on us, are you?” “Oh! No, no. I mean...not yet,” she replied, her fiber optic mane falling across one side of her face. “The Ladybugs let me look at the last place where the Biters killed. The gun that makes holes in flesh has the same magical signature as the Moon Guns you took away from Astral Skylark. It’s got to be some kind of prototype, too. All the attacks were from one location, not multiple, and none of them more than ten meters away. It’s really short range.” “Prototype. So, you’re saying there might only be one of them?” I asked. She bobbed her head. “One or two, at most. It has a ballistic profile and, unless it’s totally identical across all the guns, I’m pretty sure there’s only one weapon. It shoots right through bodies, but it’s in perfectly straight lines. I just traced back the distance to one point using triangula—” “I’ll take your word for it,” I said, cutting her off. “Can you work out some kind of defense against this thing?” Tourniquet’s ears drooped. “I’m just a prison. I can’t do everything.” “Then we’ll figure something out. That said, we’ve got to get moving, while the gettin’ is good. Whoever is hunting us will probably be informed that I’m back in the city as soon as we make contact at the Castle.” I patted Tourniquet between the ears, then grabbed Mags by the scruff and flicked her onto my back. She rolled onto her stomach with her legs draped off my sides and snuggled her beak into my mane with a soft snort, but showed no signs of waking. I picked up my coat and hat, throwing the coat over her and putting the hat back on my head. “Taxi? Go help Limerence prep the car. Swift? Come with me. I want to get some provisions for this trip into the Wilds. Mags? Sleep right there, for about two weeks if possible.” ---- I rounded the corner into what Tourniquet called a ‘storage area’ to the sound of cracking bones, chewing noises that would have made my mother faint at the table, and loud moans of pleasure. At the end of the hall, three tall rooms with bars across the front—which seemed to be unconverted dragon-sized cells—were stacked to the ceiling with all manner of goods. A fourth, the barred gate lying open, was empty save for two bona-fide dragons. One I recognized: Vexis. Her yellow muzzle was dripping with blood and what might have been glitter as she ripped at the carcass of some unfortunate animal that was in enough pieces I couldn’t identify what it might have been originally. Her injured wing was splinted, and somepony had applied a whole bucket of some sort of brown, glutinous ointment to the frostbite down her side. On the whole, she looked none the worse for wear. Beside her, a much smaller dragon with baby-blue scales was curled up as close as he could be beneath her good wing, pecking at the meat from time to time. His tail was wrapped in enough bandages to carpet a room, and his belly bulged with a good gorge. If I remembered correctly, his name was ‘Ambrock’. Ambrock caught sight of me first, jerking his head up. His eyes centered on Swift, and he tried to glare at her in an intimidating fashion, but she just smiled and strutted ahead of me, adding an extra smug swagger to the sway of her hips. Seeing that, the smaller dragon drew back a little, smoke billowing from his nose and up into a vent hood overhead. Vexis—enthralled by her meal—took a moment to realize her brother wasn’t eating anymore. When she did, she flicked her eyes in our direction, then carefully wiped her muzzle with the back of one claw on a bath towel that’d been laid beside the bars. “Detective. You kept your promise,” she said cheerfully as she blotted off her face. “I expected death within an hour, and yet the vehicle you sent had a heap of delicious gemstones and crystals for my brother and I. I’d made my peace with death, you know. Of course, that magical rock I was forced to eat along with the gemstones has me slightly worried. None of your ponies will tell me precisely what it does.” “That’s our ‘insurance’ in case you and your brother decide to get feisty,” I replied, coming to a stop in front of the open cage. “It’s also the reason your ‘room’ isn’t locked up tight. The long and short of it is that if you try to hurt anypony, you’ll be unconscious before your next breath.” Vexis splayed out the neck fluke on one side of her head in something that might have been a draconic smirk. “Oh? Our breaths can take quite a long time and do much damage before we must inhale.” “It’s on you. To be completely honest, I don’t want or need prisoners. Killing you isn’t on the table for me, so if you don’t annoy anypony too much, I’ll probably let you go.” Swift put a hoof over the moon-shaped scar on her chest. “Sir, Tourniquet wants to know if she’s allowed to suck all of the magic out of them if they misbehave. She hasn’t had dragon magic in forever and it’s...um...it’s ‘tasty’. Her words.” Ambrock meeped and ducked his head under Vexis’s wing. “Don’t want my magic sucked out, sister!” he whimpered, in a muffled voice. “The monster pony with the evil teeth is scary enough. Can’t we stay outside, where I can see the sky? Why are we obeying these ponies?” My partner’s ears lay back, and she took a couple of steps closer. Vexis bared her teeth protectively and let out a fearful hiss, bringing Swift to a halt. “Nopony is going to hurt you,” my partner said, softly. “You froze my tail!” the smaller dragon moaned. “Well, you tried to burn my everything, so I think we’re even!” Swift bit back, then quickly calmed herself. “Anyway, I’m the Warden here, and if I say nopony will hurt you, you’ll be okay. Um...can I get you anything? I know you were just hungry and weren’t going to hurt us, so if you have to stay here, I don’t want it to be unpleasant.” Ambrock slowly pulled his head out from behind his sister and studied the little pegasus that’d brought him to ground and then filled his stomach, as though she was some sort of elaborate puzzle that might explode in his face at any given moment. “You are a weird pony,” he concluded, then set his head between his forelegs and closed his eyes, seemingly dozing off. “I get that a lot,” she muttered, then turned to the supply room, grabbing a bag from a pile beside the door. Vexis poked at the dead animal she’d been ripping apart one last time, then nosed the remains to one side of her cage. “We are done with that, by the way. If not to harm us, why have you come? I don’t have any new information for you.” “Oh, we’re not here for an interrogation. We actually just came for some supplies,” I replied, waving towards one of the closed cells. The door of that particular cell clanked, then slid open of its own accord. “You and your brother are free to move around, so long as you don’t make a ruckus. Also...you may hear the creepy, disembodied voice of a little girl. If you do, listen to it. She’s controlling your dinners. Other than that, it might be worthwhile to make friends with the ponies upstairs. They’re going to be the ones defending your scaly backsides in the event this place is attacked.” “Hrmph...Friends,” Vexis murmured, with a disparaging sneer. “You ponies do love that word. Having overhead some of what you intend, I suspect you are in far more danger out there than Ambrock and I are in here. Still, considering we may be upon your graces for some time, I will...contemplate this ‘friends’ idea. If it provides us with more days of full stomachs and comfortable caves such as this one, it may be worthwhile, even if it means a polity with tiny horses.” ---- I heaved my rucksack full of supplies from around my neck into the trunk of the Night Trotter, then reached back to pull Mags off my shoulders where she was attached like a limpet. Thankfully, her claws weren’t quite strong enough to penetrate my pelt, but it was a close thing. Opening the back seat, I set her in the hoofwell. Limerence was sitting in the front seat, his eyes closed, deep in meditation. He wasn’t wearing his trademark vest or knives, and a spaghetti-like mess of wires was draped haphazardly around his upper body, leading underneath the glovebox into what I assumed was the engine compartment. Most ended at a tiny ring of metal on the base of his horn. Out front, Taxi was still tinkering under the hood, but she looked to be wrapping up. Not wanting to interrupt either of them, I turned to Swift, who pushed her own heaping sack into the trunk, then slid in beside me. “Sir, do you really think Chief Jade will give us one of the anti-megafauna vehicles?” she asked. “If they’re the ones I’m thinking of, they’re not going to work against full-sized dragons.” “I don’t intend to use it to fight dragons,” I replied, sticking a hoof into my pocket and feeling around to make sure I had a few extra shotgun shells. “We’re going to load it down with every trick Jade can afford to give us for avoiding them, though. If it comes to a fight, we have the Crusader.” Swift’s ears twitched as she laid her head on the seat, looking at me out of one eye. “So, we’re going to go to our nutty boss, beg for one of the most useful tools in her arsenal during a worldwide crisis, then drive into a deadly forest while trying to avoid dragons, with our only weapon being the gun that could turn your brain into goop if you fire it?” “You got it, kid.” Swift frowned, her thin eyebrows drawing together. “This plan makes my stomach hurt.” “You’re staying here with your cuddle-buddy, then?” I chuckled. She snapped a wing out to knock my hat off, but I had already ducked and it whiffed right over top. She settled for growling, “I’m coming, but if my mom and my grandmare are awake by the time we get back, you get to tell them the story!” “Now you’re trying to kill me too, huh?” “No, Sir. I’d get bored waiting in line.”