Officer Swift, notes on dead body presented to us by Dogenes, Underdog Praetor:
Maybe pony? Probably pony? Whatever. He has had hooves.
Subject was male. The body is a little larger than Detective Hard Boiled, green mane, brown pelt, cutie mark of a soaring eagle flying over a river. I can’t say what his talent might be, but probably something related to flight.
I’m going to guess he was originally a pegasus, but only because he has wings. Three wings. One looks small and seems to be the wrong shape, like it grew backwards and upside down. Mister Dogenes says that might be the body rejecting transformation magics. Parts of him are still transforming, but very slowly now that he’s dead.
His condition reminds me of Mister Stone Shine, Taxi’s father. The Detective doesn’t think I can remember him, because I fainted, but I still have nightmares sometimes.
The scariest part of the body is definitely it’s face.
Scariest? Real professional, Swift. Why don’t you just write down every thought that enters your head so you don’t have to admit that you almost wet yourself when Dogenes pulled the curtain back?
Sorry.
I don’t know who I’m apologizing to, but it’s easier to write through the parts when I want to cry and hide behind the Detective. He just looks a little bit sad, but then, that’s how he always looks. Even when he’s smiling, I can see that he’s sad inside.
The dead pony’s face looks really terrible. The left half of his muzzle is slightly elongated, more like a wolf or a bear, than a pony. His teeth are even longer than mine. They’ve punched right through his lips and tongue.
That’s funny. My teeth fit together really tightly and cleanly. His look twisted, like somepony mashing up some silly putty into snakes.
Ewww!!! That description was super gross!
When did seeing a dead body stop making me queasy? Especially seeing a body in as bad a shape as this poor pony. He died in pain. Lots of pain. The bed he’s lying on smells really bad, too.
I missed a little bit here. The Detective and the diamond dog named Dogenes were talking and I didn’t write down whatever they were saying. It feels like I blacked out. I was seeing Grape Shot’s face, with the bullet hole where his eye used to be. I just realized I’m crying.
I wonder if this is what the Detective does when he looks like he’s staring off into space. His eyes go all distant and sometimes he starts to cry except he never acknowledges it. Maybe cry is the wrong word. His eyes start tearing up, but he just wipes the tears off and goes on doing whatever it is that he’s doing.
Am I going to be like him, one day? He’s so strong. Maybe the strongest pony I’ve ever met. He’s been threatened with death by a dozen people I can think of and he never flinches from it, like maybe he’s hoping one day that one of them will go ahead and make a move.
I better go back to listening. He doesn’t read my notes very often, but I want him to be able to use them if he does.
What were they saying?
----
“I know this pony,” I murmured, staring down into the horrific face of the dead stallion. There wasn’t much left to identify him, but then, I didn’t need much. His coloration was fairly distinctive.
“You know him, Sir?” Swift asked, her notepad in hoof.
“Yeah. Two months ago, on the day this all started. This dumb bastard was doing flight exercises with his platoon outside the Castle. He put a beanbag round into the side of the Night Trotter. He was PACT. His name is...was...Canyon. Right stupid prig, but he didn’t deserve this.” I turned to Dogenes. “You said he looks like that because his body rejected the magic?”
“I am simply an amateur pathologist, but one of our little unicorns offered her horn to figuring out exactly what happened to him,” Dogenes explained, prying one of his claws into the dead stallion’s mouth and peering at his throat. “She called it an ‘arcane conservancy’. Removing the magic from it failed to halt his transformation. The spell is written into his neurology and appears to draw from the ambient magic in the local environment. Only a constant spell disruption could stop it altogether, and he was too far gone.”
“Tourniquet...” Swift whispered, touching the crest on her chest. “Does this mean without a constant magical drain, I would have transformed?”
Dogenes frowned at her, then shrugged his broad shoulders. “Very probably. I’ve no idea how you managed to avoid it; however, this arcane conservancy seems to affect all of the victims differently. Mister...Canyon, did you say his name was? He was found with the bodies of these other individuals. He was able to tell us little, besides that he’d been ordered to carry the bodies into the basement and then to lie down and die alongside them. When he was lucid, he had no memories at all, and when he wasn’t...” Reaching over, Dogenes picked up a restraining cuff which had been lying beside the bed. “At first we had to keep him sedated. He didn’t remember when he’d been enchanted, or what triggered it. Later, the closer he came to death, his mind began to go entirely; he ranted and raved. Mad things, really, and not much of consequence.”
Leaning over the body, I gently touched Canyon’s forehead with my toe. An eye had begun to form just above his left brow. Strange.
“What about the others?” I asked, nodding towards the three tables by the wall.
Dogenes shook his great, shaggy head. “Our examinations seemed to indicate nothing but catastrophic organ failure similar to this pitiful creature. I would say as much as one percent of those who are infected with this spellwork are likely to die rather than transform. However, this—” Reaching into his toga, he produced a black wallet of some kind and tossed it to me. I caught it in my teeth, then flipped it open. “—may be of interest to you.”
It was a badge, a PACT badge. The crest of a shield surrounded by a laurel was unmistakable, but something about it was very strange. Somepony had painted the shield with something that looked like dripping blood.
Turning, I held it up for Swift. “This familiar, kid?”
Swift glanced up from her notepad, then blinked at the badge. “Oh! Yes, Sir! That’s a Shadow Squad badge!”
“I’m going to assume that’s a PACT thing?”
She nodded, twirling her pencil in a little circle with her hoof. “It’s one of the smaller PACT squads. They used to be mostly anti-changeling, but nowadays they fight rogue essies, enchanted ponies, and pretty much anything that is too small and too magical to use heavy weapons against. They’re crazy good in hoof-to-hoof combat. I was going for Heavy Squad, because they get all the cool guns, but...I’d have taken Shadow in a heartbeat.” Her ears drooped a little. “You know, if...if I’d managed to get in…”
“I think we’re going to chalk up the fact that you didn’t as a win. If you had, you might be in the same condition as our friend here,” I said, nudging Canyon’s leg. Setting the badge on the bed, I asked, “Dogenes, which of these ponies did you find this on?”
He gestured, vaguely, in the direction of the sheet-covered bodies. “The mare. She had it hidden in her mane.”
“That means she was PACT, too. We can probably assume the rest of them were as well. So...this is what happens when Biters go wrong,” I mused. “I hate to think what happens when the magic is completely successful.”
“Based on this model, we can make a few postulations,” Dogenes observed. “They are fast and capable of incredible feats in hoof-to-hoof combat. They eat meat. The corpses of the police officers we’ve found in our territory were those traveling in small, lightly armed groups. I would say that, given the near perfect intelligence they are able to maintain, they have magically marked a significant section of the city populace in some manner.”
Swift tapped her pencil against her chin. “Sir, I’ve been thinking about that. The intel thing, I mean.”
“Go on, kid?”
“What about the city water supply? I mean, if I wanted to know where everypony was at all times, I’d dump whatever it is in a couple of the water treatment plants. It’s called ‘The Scry’ right? It might have been detected before the Darkening, but afterwards? Tourniquet’s kept clean water flowing, mostly, but she doesn’t have the same resources the city does.”
“Mmm...probably. It makes our enemies that much more dangerous. We need to get up to the Castle. That message from Gypsy worries me.” I sucked in a breath. “Do you have any idea what’s going on up at the police department? We got a note from a friend saying they were under attack.”
Dogenes drew the sheet back over Canyon’s face and smacked his lips. “We have heard and smelled Biters, but we don’t see well above ground and the creatures avoid us. The Castle is a fortress of paranoia, and the maniacal bitch queen who rules it is has never been particularly tolerant of diamond dogs. She sits atop a pile of corpses buried down through her illustrious career, and she does not like competition. The Underdogs survive because they hide.”
“On an ordinary day, I’d agree with you,” I said, crossing my forelegs and leaning against the bed. “Their food and water supplies have been poisoned. We need a way to get them out. Right now, you have the strong negotiating position.”
“Mmm...and you are offering to negotiate on our behalf?” Dogenes asked, quirking an eye at me.
I opened my mouth to agree, then slowly shut it.
----
Officer Swift - Further notes on the Detective, Note 196:
The Detective has a bunch of personal flaws, but none are quite so impressive as his temper when he knows he’s been manipulated. He likes to think he’s in charge of himself. I think he knows he’s not the smartest being in the room most of the time, but he still resents it when people feel the need to play with his motivations to get him to do the thing he’d have probably done if they just asked him nicely.
I’ve heard him kicking a wall and cursing Stella’s name when he thinks nopony is watching. Even when Cerise, the Chief’s daughter, kissed him and then we had to take her to the Aroyos, he was furious. Speaking of that, I should ask him what we’re going to do about convincing Chief Jade not to kill us on the spot for stealing her.
My stomach is fluttering at the thought of all these bodies around me, but the Detective is solid as a rock. These would have been my fellow PACT members if I’d managed to join up. They’d have been my friends and colleagues. I might have found a marefriend or a coltfriend, and that might be them over there on the table, with crazy teeth like me. Maybe, if I’d stayed, it might be me on the table and the Detective might be dead and the armor of Nightmare Moon might be in the hooves of whoever is behind all this killing.
I can’t get bogged down in all the mights and maybes, but it’s so hard.
I don’t want to tell him, but I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what Chief Jade will do when she sees us. I’m afraid of finding out Mom and Gran are dead the next time we go to the Vivarium. I’m afraid of watching Tourniquet slowly freeze alongside all of the Aroyos. I’m afraid of not being there if the Detective is in trouble.
I think more than anything that I’m afraid of failing him. If there’s one pony in all of this who deserves a win, it’s Detective Hard Boiled.
Reminder to self: tear this page out and put it with the others.
----
“Hate...dogs...hate...ponies...hate...gravity…hate...everything...forever…”
I punctuated each word with the soft thump of my skull against the wall of the barrel.
Played. I’d just been played. Again.
Chief Iris Jade was already going to wring my neck for snatching Cerise. Now, I was expected to negotiate what might be the only means of helping the department resupply and get an anti-megafauna vehicle and break the siege on the Castle.
“Filly, is this a common response to frustration for this pony?” Dogenes asked.
“Yes. He’s not crazy. He’s just stressed out. You know, you could have just asked him to do that, right?”
“I find asking is ever so much less fun since I was dropped into this unfortunate leadership position with an army of simpletons hanging on my every word. Is he aware he is bleeding?”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Oh...yes, he is. He’s got a magical heart that makes him heal really quickly. He’ll be okay soon. He’s been friends with the pony you put in the trunk of our car for his whole life. I think they have a weird relationship.”
“The Underdogs have heard mention of that one alongside his name. How has he survived?”
“I have no idea,” Swift murmured. “He never quits, though.”
I pulled my head away from the wall, staring at the red spot I’d left on the wood. Blood was running down my muzzle and matting the fur on my cheeks, but I could already feel the itch of the wound just below my hairline closing. I turned around and held out my hoof. Dogenes slapped a bright blue towel across it, and I wiped my face off.
“Dogenes. You let me come down here. You know enough to know I’m dangerous to whoever has set Equestria on this path. I suspect you also know some of what’s going on in the city. Maybe less than I do, but enough to know that the sun didn’t go dark on a whim and that the center of the disturbance is here.”
Dogenes hooked a wide, shovellike paw into his toga. “The magical resonance originated here, in the Shield pylons. They are gigantic spell cores. You, the fool in the trenchcoat, are the individual who the enemies of this city have dedicated the greatest quantity of resources to the capturing of. It was a logical deduction that you must have something they need, or know something that can prevent their plans from coming to fruition. Therefore, the greatest moral imperative is keeping you alive.”
“And getting me to drop all of the resources of the police department into your claws is just a benefit...” I growled.
“Not my claws, Mister Hard Boiled,” Dogenes replied, “You are delivering them into the claws of the Underdogs. As imbecilic as they may be, they are uncorrupted. Can you say the same for your police department?”
My teeth ground against one another as I tossed the bloody towel at him. He caught it and threw it onto Canyon’s head.
“Tell Commander Max to give us back our bullets,” I said. “We need to get the car to the police station and preferably avoid the Biters. Any ideas on how to do that?”
Dogenes licked his chops and pointed to the stairs. “Bella will hold your hoof, and I’m sure the Underdogs will gleefully volunteer themselves as pack animals to move your vehicle, though once you are above ground they cannot follow, leastways until I have some guarantees from the Castle’s queen not to riddle them with holes on sight. There is a garage one street down from the Castle with a sub-basement I’m certain the diggers can burrow into.”
“That leaves actually getting to the Castle itself. There’s a secret entrance through one of the nearby sewers that we should be able to get into. Once we’ve got an armed guard, we’ll get the car and put it in the garage.”
“Sir, you’re assuming Chief Jade doesn’t just kill you immediately,” Swift reminded me.
“Yes, but I have been assuming that for years, and it’s paid off so far.”
“You never took her daughter before now! The last thing she saw was Cerise kissing you!”
“Kid, the odds were never in our favor to begin with.”
Dogenes hauled himself up with his cane and began trundling back to the stairs. “Then, Mister Hard Boiled, do visit again when you’ve saved the world. Or don’t, and I will while away my final hours fantasizing about some hideous death befalling you. Either way, get your bag of young griffin, your toothy protégé, and your damn fool unicorn out of my home. I think we’ve learned enough from Mister Canyon and his friends. I must find a hole to drop them down before they begin to stink any more than they already do.”
----
Forty-five minutes later, we were back in the tunnels. The air was full of dust, and Swift and I had been reduced to trudging along behind the cloud of flying paws and dirt that was our escorts. They could dig almost as fast as a pony could walk, and with the cab being hauled along behind, that meant we could take some time to enjoy the journey. That would have been easier if everything didn’t smell like sweaty diamond dog.
Swift had been trying to work up the courage to ask me something for several minutes, but every time she’d come up with a good way to phrase it and opened her muzzle, her brain had vetoed the question a second later.
“Swift, spit it out,” I grunted, wiping my forehead with the back of my leg. “Really, you’re giving me the willies here.”
“Sorry, Sir. I was just curious. If the Chief does kill you, how does your heart work? I mean, if it’s anything worse than making you bleed out or something, I might have to have Doctor Slip Stitch sew parts of you back on. Would they heal? What if I have to attach your heart to a generator or something? Do you know what voltage it—”
“Kid, if Jade is angry enough to try, I don’t think she’ll leave enough for you and Taxi to put in a basket, much less plug into a wall.”
----
Office Swift, notes on Chief Jade:
The Detective would never admit it, but I think he likes Chief Jade more than anyone he’s ever worked for. Two months ago, I would never have gotten this, but she gives him what he wants more than anything: pain and someone in authority to fight.
I used to believe ponies like Chief Jade were almost mythical, like windigoes. She’s completely crazy, and she’s the most powerful unicorn I know besides my grandmare and Princess Twilight Sparkle. I hope if those three ever decide to find out who is the strongest, I’m not in the same province.
I don’t know how the Detective managed to work for her for so long. I know, now, that I’d have probably resigned if he hadn’t kept tweaking me. He made me mad enough to fight through my fear and immaturity. She probably did the same for him.
If I ever get the chance to write a book, I’m going to include Chief Jade as a character. I’ll probably change her name, but anypony who meets her will know who it’s about.
When I think about her, I can’t help but remember that my police badge is still in my pocket. It feels funny carrying it nowadays, since it used to mean something so different. It used to be like a shield, like I was a knight and I could defend the public with nothing but my will and my gun. Now, it’s a symbol of everything we’ve done to try to save everypony. Shouldn’t that be special?
Why do I sometimes wish I’d never earned it in the first place?
----
The diamond dogs hit the interior wall of the parking sublevel with a noise like an explosion in a china shop. Bits of concrete and rebar were turned to pulp under their powerful claws as Swift and I stood well back with the mutts pulling the cab, waiting for the flying bits of detritus to settle.
After a few seconds, Max strolled out of the cloud, shaking his paws. His claws were glowing bright red, most likely from the friction of digging through all that rock. I don’t know exactly how the magic that diamond dogs use to burrow actually works, but it seems to make them fairly heat resistant as an added bonus.
“We in, pony. We smell Biters nearby,” he murmured. “They might heard that, so move quick. Elevator not working. Take stairs.”
“For future reference, what exactly do Biters smell like?” I asked.
Max shook himself, and the bandoliers of ammo around his chest rattled. “They smell of meat gone bad, pony. Now, we leave car here and seal up hole. You go on. When you get car, we know you alive. Leave note saying we can burrow into Castle.”
“Will do. You mind pulling the car into a parking spot? We’ll get Limerence and Mags out of the back seat. Then we’ll let Taxi out of the trunk.”
Max nodded and went back to his fellows to finish passing orders.
Now that I could finally get a look at it, the parking garage was one I was familiar with. It brought back a few memories of Juniper and I sitting down in the basement, sharing a drink while lying on the hood of the cruiser. It’d recently been home to a group of squatters who must have cleared out when they heard us coming. A barrel fire was still burning in a nearby corner, surrounded by ratty sleeping bags and empty food tins. A ramp and stairwell led up into the building itself. Thankfully, I couldn’t hear any footsteps or anything that might indicate we were in immediate danger.
The hole we’d just come through was about twice my height, and plenty big enough to clear the roof of the Night Trotter. Unhitching themselves from the cab, the dogs filed back into the hole they’d left and, with one last wave, began to fill it in. In a matter of moments, the only sign they’d been there at all was an almost perfectly circular spot of raw dirt that could pass for a filthy wall if one didn’t look too closely.
Once we were alone, Swift and I had to stand there in amazement for a minute or two.
It was no wonder Taxi had tried to massacre the diamond dogs; the once proud Night Trotter had a broken windshield, was scraped in a dozen places, and had a badly dented hood. Both front tires were flat, the entire passenger side door was caved in, most of the front grill had melted, and the right headlight was hanging from its housing by a frayed wire. That was entirely discounting the innumerable bumps, bruises, scuffs, and scratches that left the paint job looking like a patchwork quilt.
“Oh, boy...Sir, are you sure we should let her out?” Swift whispered, putting a hoof over her muzzle as she stared at the totaled cab. “Maybe if you pounce on her, I can poke her with the Ace needle and give her a half dose and then we use the rest on Limerence when he-”
“Kid, you know how well that’s likely to work. If she’s feeling murderous, she’ll get it out of her system beating me to death a couple times. Then you can drag my corpse to Iris Jade and let her get her rage out of her system. Then...and only then...are you to find me a wall socket.”
“Right, sir.”
I reluctantly strolled around to the back of the cab and rested a hoof on the trunk. All was extremely quiet inside.
“Taxi?”
There was no reply.
I quickly popped the catch and lifted the boot-lid. A part of me expected her to explode out of there and commence with the beatings.
Taxi was lying there alongside an empty bag of potato crisps, curled up in a ball, glaring at me out of one eye. Slowly, and with as much dignity as she could muster, she sat up and smoothed her disheveled braid.
“Hardy...you left me...in the trunk...of my own car.”
“Yes, Sweets, I did,” I agreed. “Incidentally, the car is wrecked. You probably saw that earlier. On the upside, we’re one street from the police garage. You remember our deal?”
Her pink eyes flickered for a moment as the fiery, barely contained rage behind them was replaced with a twinge of confusion. “Our...deal?”
I offered her my hoof, and she unconsciously took it, stepping out of the trunk. Her fur was in need of a good brushing, but she looked none the worse for wear for having spent a few hours in time-out. “Yeah, our deal. If I am not dead in an hour, Iris Jade will give you the entire police department garage to fix and modify the Night Trotter. You can do whatever you want with it. Weapons. Armor. Speed.”
Taxi’s lips curled into a smile, and she started strolling around the side of the car. “I can live with that. I may punch you later for this one, mind you...”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t. Just make sure I’m good and surprised when you do it. Concussions don’t give me the same buzz if I can see them coming,” I replied, hauling open the back door of the cab. “Anyway, get armed and be ready to move. The Underdog’s leader said they smell Biters nearby.”
In the back, Mags was lying there with just her head poking out of the canvas sack, gently chewing at the strings. Limerence was still unconscious, which was probably for the best.
“Egg Pony! Let me out of the bag!” she demanded, trying to wiggle free of her confines.
“There are some dangerous creatures out here. I need to be able to carry you. You mind staying in there another little while?”
Mags let out a low hiss. “I minds. I need to go to bathroom!”
I reached in and tugged open the drawstring. “There’s a toilet in the stairwell.” I pointed to a door in the wall a short distance away. “Swift, go with her. If you smell rotten flesh, you get back here quick as you can.”
----
With the comforting weight of my shotgun back on my leg alongside my fully loaded revolver, my friends and I snuck up the stairs to street level.
Mags—much to her chagrin—was trying to keep her balance on Swift’s back, though I had let her carry her little pistol. It was a unilateral command decision to have her ride my partner, but I needed to be able to shoot and Swift could fly if the odds turned against us. Taxi was carrying Limerence, since her weapons tended towards close range. One of his forelegs was hanging off each of her front shoulders, and his rear legs were draped over her flanks; the position would have been comically inappropriate if she wasn’t so much bigger than he was.
The parking garage sub-basement was two stories down from the road, and the drainage ditch with the hidden entrance was across and down half a block. As we emerged onto the ground floor, I could hear sporadic pops and cracks of gunfire coming from somewhere along with shouts of alarm, but the acoustics were distorting the source.
“Mags, you’ve got a better nose than I do. You smell anything nasty?” I asked.
My ward poked her head up over Swift’s shoulder and shook her head. “Don’t smell nothing but Swifty pony’s mane. She need a bath!”
Swift gave her a little jostle. “Yeah, well, I’m going to preen you for a week when we’re somewhere safe! You look like you’ve been rolling in lint!”
Mags was about to reply—probably loudly—but I reached back and grabbed her beak.
“Stow it. Kid, is the Hailstorm working?” I asked.
As though it could understand me, the Hailstorm’s turrets lifted from their housings. It could have been my imagination, but they seemed a bit sluggish.
“It works right now,” Swift murmured. “I can see a few targets, but most of them are at extreme range. I haven’t gotten to go for a flight for a while so...maybe the power is a little low? I think I’ve got one or two shots at most.”
“Save them. If it comes to a firefight, use your pistol.”
Her ears flattened like they’d had the air let out of them. “But...but why, Sir? I like the Hailstorm...”
“You were with me when Jade let us out of the Castle, remember? Our entrance is unicorns only,” I explained. “Our resident horn-waver is currently suffering the aftereffects of a magic bender, so we’re going to have to blast our way in.”
“Hardy, are you telling me the entrance is sealed?” Taxi moaned.
I nodded. “Hence the saving the freeze ray for it, yes.”
“And...if...if we can’t get in that way?”
I gave her an indifferent shrug. “Then I’ll go round the front and wave my hooves until someone either kills me or lets me in.”
“Right. Good. Excellent. Death at the hooves of our own people or death at the hooves of the Biters. Why do I keep letting you come up with the ideas, again?”
----
I caught my first whiff of tear gas as I pushed open the street-level door of the parking garage and stuck my head out. The building was about three stories tall, and I could see one of the Castle’s stone walls from where we were. Nopony seemed to be on top keeping watch, but that didn’t mean anything. There were plenty of interior defenses and cameras which obviated the need to keep vulnerable bodies up there.
Glancing both ways, I waved my friends forward. The entire street down to a t-junction a quarter of a mile in either direction was deserted, yet something still felt very off.
It didn’t help that my cutie mark was starting to burn.
“Hardy,” Taxi breathed. Something in the way she said it made me look back. Her eyes were clenched tightly shut. “I can hear them. The Biters are out there.”
“You can hear their thoughts?” I asked, softly.
She shook her head. “Not like that. Just...impressions. They’re hungry. They’re angry. They know we’re here somewhere, but they can’t find us...” Suddenly, her breath caught in her throat and her pupils shrank. “Hide!” she hissed.
I shut the door as quickly and quietly as I could. There was a bit of red light coming through under it, but not enough to really see by.
We sat in tense silence for a long minute. A strange sensation prickled at the back of my neck. Somehow, though I couldn’t hear anything, I knew there was a presence just outside.
A familiar scent began to tickle at my nose: death. Something dead and mouldering.
The light was briefly interrupted, and a fresh wave of stink almost sent me backing into Swift. Lifting my revolver, I gently pressed the barrel against the door.
After a moment, a voice began to whisper. It was impossible to tell if it was male or female, and it said just one word, again and again.
“...fleshy fleshy fleshy…”
I took up the slack on my trigger and slowly inhaled, ready to put a bullet through the door. If the thing on the other side had friends, I’d be calling them down on our position.
There was a gentle pressure on my flank, and I looked back to see Taxi shaking her head. Carefully, I let the pressure off my gun.
“...fleshy, fleshy, fleshy…”
The doorknob rattled.
Breathe. Tense your neck to absorb the recoil. Get ready for the kill.
Taxi’s hoof pressed a little harder on my flank.
Outside, something clattered. There was the sound of a trashcan overturning, then a frightened, animal yelp, followed by a scrabble of feet or paws across pavement. A rush of air against my fetlocks ruffled the edges of my coat, and I felt the presence retreat.
I exhaled a raspy breath and dropped onto my haunches, putting my forehead against the cold door hinge as my hat slid back on my neck.
“Swift, did the Hailstorm see that thing coming?” I asked, quietly
“Um...I...I had it turned off, Sir,” she whispered, lifting her wing to show me a tiny blue light on the side of one of the gun’s boxy saddlebags. “I thought I should save power, like you said.”
“It’s fine, kid. Not your fault.” I glanced at Taxi. “Are we good now?”
She shuddered, but bobbed her head. “They’re still out there, somewhere, but I think we can move. Hardy, you cannot imagine what is inside these things. They don’t even have thoughts like ponies. Just...fury...and obedience.”
----
Officer Swift, notes on Taxi/Miss Sweet Shine:
Miss Taxi is probably the only pony I know who is more dangerous than my grandmare or Chief Jade or Princess Twilight Sparkle. She’s almost impossible to predict, too. That makes it worse.
I would never want her to be angry with me.
Knowing that, she’s probably one of the best friends a pony could ever have. She loves the Detective, too. At first, I didn’t really understand why, but later on I started to get it: she thinks she’s a bad pony. Maybe she is. I heard what she did to those gangsters.
So long as she’s with the Detective, though, she can’t ever act like a bad pony.
The Detective thinks I don’t know she’s ‘different’ from most ponies, but he thinks I don’t notice lots of things that I actually do. She has a power of some kind that has to do with her talent. It gives her insights and impressions of what is going on in the future or around her.
She thinks that so long as it’s focused on what the Detective needs, she can’t hurt anyone.
When her power is focused on her own needs, especially when she’s in danger, other people die or get hurt. She’s worried if she doesn’t stay close to him, she’ll become a monster, only focused on her own desires. I don’t think she’s realized that desires are different from needs. She hides from her talent. If she didn’t hide from it, I bet it would get stronger, until she could start to give everyone around her the things they didn’t even know they needed.
She’d have to focus on herself sometimes to do that, though, and Taxi would never let that happen.
When nothing exciting is going on and she’s just brushing her mane, meditating, or reading a book, you can almost see the pony she might have been if everything hadn’t gone so wrong in her life.
I’m not brave enough to tell her that I think she could still be that person. I don’t know if she’d believe me, even if I did.
----
We darted across the street into the deep ditch on the far side where the secret entrance to the Castle lay. Swift and I slid down the side, while Mags opted to fly down and Taxi landed, light as a feather, beside us with barely a jostle or grunt from Limerence. The librarian hadn’t made so much as a peep the whole journey, and I prayed he stayed unconscious, at least long enough for us to get somewhere safe.
The sewer grate opened with an earsplitting shriek, and I quickly filed everyone through into the darkness behind it, then stood, waiting breathlessly for the smell of a dead body or the sound of rushing wings as a prelude to bloodletting.
When, after a full minute, nothing had come for us, I backed into the dim corridor.
“Alright, kid...turn the Hailstorm on. We’re going to need it in a second,” I murmured. I held out a foreleg, and Mags scrambled across from Swift’s shoulders onto my back.
There was a faint hum, and the turrets of her weapon jostled in their housings, then sluggishly lifted into the air.
“Ready, Sir.”
Trailing my hoof down the slightly damp wall for a moment, I guided us back until we found the weather-beaten door leading to the secret passage and the rusting spiral staircase behind it. The staircase protested at having so many hooves on it, but I could feel myself starting to relax. We’d done it. We’d escaped the Biter blockade.
As we descended, the thick air became stifling and the dark closed in until I had to pull out a flashlight for the last few meters.
“Egg Pony...I not like it in here,” Mags muttered into my ear.
“Yeah...me either,” I replied, softly.
I’d just stepped off the bottom step when my hoof slipped in something wet. Playing my light across my toe, I found a streak of brownish red liquid. Bringing it to my nose, I gave it a sniff.
Blood. At least a day old, but still relatively fresh.
“Sir?” Swift whispered. I looked up. She had her own light strapped to her knee and was pointing it ahead. “Look.”
Mags let out curious chirp. “Egg Pony, is that a dead turkey?”
I swallowed and shook my head. “No, it’s not.”
Whoever she’d been, the body lying against the wall was barely recognizable. There were a few tufts of orange and pink fur, some strands of bloody blue hair, but little to give an identity to the mass of stripped bones and torn organs resting against the stone wall where I knew the secret passage to be. A predator had cracked her chest cavity like a tin of tomatoes and gone straight for the juiciest parts. There wasn’t much left.
I heard Swift’s throat seize, but she didn’t vomit. Merely put a hoof across her belly as Taxi gently laid Limerence on the bottom steps, then moved ahead to examine the dead pony.
“This was Officer Gem Sing,” my driver said, matter-of-factly, poking through the remains.
“How can you tell?” I asked.
Taxi held up a white feather with a bit of hair wrapped around it. “She used to weave her mane with her marefriend’s plumage.” Lowering her head, she began whispering something that sounded like a zebra prayer.
I turned to Swift, who was still shining her flashlight over the mutilated corpse. A few tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes, but her expression was surprisingly neutral.
‘Give her a task, dumbass. Before she starts thinking. If she starts thinking, she’s going to end up sobbing in a corner, and you won’t get inside.’
“Kid? Kid, we need to get out of here. More of them could be coming. The secret passage is right there,” I said, pointing to the wall. Swift wasn’t moving, barely even blinking as she stared at Officer Gem Sing. I stepped in front of her, shielding her gaze with my body.
She jerked, as though coming out of a trance, and backed up a step. “S-Sir? Sorry! W-where am I? I feel like I just b-blacked out for a second...”
I shut my eyes and drew her in close, wrapping her in my forelegs. I’d seen ponies lose time before. It was one of the more pleasant symptoms of extreme emotional trauma, but it always came with a price. Unfortunately, it was a price we didn’t have time to consider just then.
“You’re in the underbelly of the Castle, kid We’re all relying on you right now. Focus. I need you to fire the Hailstorm at the wall, just here, understood? Keep your light up. Do not look down. Fire the gun, then close your eyes.”
“B-but why can’t I look down, S-sir?” she stammered.
“Because if you look down, we all die. Get ready. Taxi, back up and give her some room.”
----
Officer Swift, notes on shell-shock/Post Traumatic Stress Disorder:
When I first started my police training, I thought I was going to be able to walk away from anything. I’d seen all kinds of strange things at the Vivarium, and Gran told me all sorts of stories of the war. I once saw Scarlett swallow an entire cucumber without chewing, and even the best soundproofing magics won’t stop the walls from shaking when Mom and Dad are ‘involved’ with each other after a stressful week at work.
I thought everypony who was damaged would have trouble sleeping, have anxiety all the time, or shake constantly.
Above all, I never thought it would happen to me.
I know, now, that I am broken inside. I have nightmares. I catch myself crying about nothing and don’t remember what I was thinking that caused it. Loud noises make me jump sometimes and not others. I lose time and wake up a little while later with no memory of what was just going on.
As bad as it is for me, the Detective is something else. He’s told me stories of the things that happened to him in the past, and no one should be able to function with that kind of history behind them.
He has almost every single symptom of post traumatic stress. He hallucinates. He cries in his sleep. He’s hypervigilant.
Why does he keep going like this? How? If I ask him, maybe he can tell me how to cope. I don’t want to ask him, though. I don’t want to seem weak. Maybe I can ask Taxi. She might be kinda frightening sometimes, but she’s got a motherly streak in her like nopony’s business.
I only feel completely safe when Tourniquet is nearby or inside my head. I think that, once everything is over, I’m going to stay in Supermax for as long as it takes for me to feel okay again.
I wonder what Hardy intends to do? I hope it’s nothing stupid, like throw himself on Juniper’s grave and pine away until he starves to death. That would be so like him, and I’d have to have Miss Taxi give him a good smack. So long as I’m alive, he doesn’t get to die.
And now I think I finally understand Taxi a little bit better than I did, too.
----
The Hailstorm made a sound like a hundred hives of bees having an explosive orgasm, and white light filled the corridor. The temperature dropped about sixty degrees in two seconds, until my teeth were chattering in my head. Gem Sing’s body was in the line of fire and froze solid, but the job was done; the stone wall let out out a frightful cracking sound.
“Eee! Cold pony magic is cold!” Mags squeaked, burrowing under my coat.
“Yeah, c-cold. Sheesh! I n-never fired it in an en-enclosed space before,” Swift murmured, folding her wings against her sides. The Hailstorm’s turrets let out a sad little ‘whirr’, then clicked back into their housings as the light on the side went out. “It...it didn’t destroy the wall…”
I rolled my eyes and turned to face away from the wall, bracing my forelegs. “Kid, that’s what you have the earth ponies for. Sweets? Feel like working out some pent up frustration?”
“Gladly,” she replied, then stepped up beside me. On my nod, we both snapped our legs back, and the sound of shattering stone echoed up the stairwell as the deep-frozen wall exploded inward in a shower of rocks and dust.
Stepping away from the fresh hole, I worked my back left leg, trying to get a twinge out of the hip joint.
“Oof, been awhile since I bucked something that hard,” I muttered.
“Hooves up! Nopony move or I blow a big hole in you!”
Very slowly, I turned around to find myself staring into the frightened eyes of a mare almost half my age and wearing the uniform of a street officer. It was a comfortingly familiar look, but the twenty gauge shotgun leveled at my face was certainly not something to bring about a sense of peace and nostalgia. Her pink mane was cut short, almost buzzed, and she reminded me of Swift on her first day.
Behind her, a half dozen other ponies with the look of civilians were standing in stunned, wide-eyed silence as they watched the little drama unfold. One had a piece of an MRE biscuit hanging out of one side of his muzzle. I didn’t recognize the mare with the gun, but in a department the size of Detrot’s, that didn’t exactly mean anything.
I cocked my head to one side, then exhaled and stepped forward. She took a quick step back, and her jaw tightened up as she yanked on her trigger as hard as she could, shutting her eyes like a foal on her first day at the gun range.
Nothing happened.
“You know, it does help if you’ve actually hooked the trigger up to your harness, honey,” I said, gently pushing the shotgun out of my face. She let out a terrified whimper and slowly dropped her bit from her teeth, backing up against the bars of one of the Castle’s holding cells.
I peered around the insides of the dungeon, which looked like it’d been converted to temporary barracks of some kind. There were sleeping mats laid out side by side, covering every inch of the floor, and stack upon stack of crates labeled ‘ammunition’.
Taxi nosed her way in beside me, stepping over Gem Sing’s frozen corpse like it had ‘Welcome’ painted on it. “Huh. Looks like a housing shortage.”
“You think they’re about to scream and run away, Sweets?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Well, I mean, if three strange ponies and a tiny griffin had just blown their way through a wall where I’d been sleeping for a week or two, I would—”
With a thunderous boom that almost deafened me and a flash of light that dazzled my vision, Chief Iris Jade appeared just behind the young officer. Smoke rose from her green fur and she was blackened around the ears, but her horn was glowing brilliantly and six police issue shotguns hung in a dangerous crown around her head. It was a ten for style, but a negative twenty for subtlety guaranteed to calm a nervous crowd.
The shrieking started at the back, followed quickly by a rush of hooves as the herd did the smart thing and panicked like a group of chickens when a grenade goes off in the coop. They stampeded for the stairs, and ten seconds later, we were alone with Chief Jade in the musty, damp air of the dungeon.
I studied Iris Jade’s expression. It was definitely murderous, but it was hard to gauge exactly which flavor. Jade’s killing moods come in all the colors of the rainbow, and the current one was somewhere between so-glad-to-see-you-she-accidentally-tears-your-head-off and a thoughtful, slow-torture-followed-by-dismemberment-and-then-death-if-she-feels-like-it-maybe.
I opened my mouth, but before I could get a word out, one of the flying shotguns rammed itself between my teeth and stuck there. Swift moved to raise her revolver only to find herself staring down two more shotguns while Taxi was covered by the remaining three. I lightly tongued at the end of the barrel. It tasted recently used. Mags had wisely decided the teleporting unicorn of death was reason enough to hide under my coat again.
“Ooouuuooo?” I asked, trying not to swallow lest I accidentally bump the trigger.
“No! No, Hard Boiled! I swear to Celestia and Luna, not this time! Where is she?!” Jade demanded, advancing dangerously until she stood beside the weapon holding my jaw open.
“Eoeuuueoau,” I replied, a bit of drool running down my chin as I tried to keep very, very still. She pulled the gun an inch out of my mouth, still poising it against my jaw.
“Speak,” she growled.
I worked a bit of saliva onto my tongue, then replied, “Your daughter is in the safest place in Equestria, surrounded by an army with advanced military hardware that will die before they see harm come to her.”
Her gaze hardened slightly. “Where?”
I reached up and put my hoof over the barrel of the shotgun. “I will let you talk to her.”
“The telephones are out,” she snarled, pressing the gun hard enough to my forehead that I could feel it leaving an indent in my fur.
“I have a way. I can also get the police department to safety and get you food and water. I know you’ve been running low. Now, are you going to listen, or are you going to shoot me?”
----
Officer Swift - Further notes on the Detective, Note 197:
Sometimes, once in a while, I suspect the Detective might just be nuts.
Not mentally ill.
Not fearless.
Not suicidal.
Just completely nuts.