Noir learned at a very young age there was always a way to run.
He licked his lips and looked up at the sky and watched the stars swell, cresting and falling in the haze of his bleary drunken eyes. It was windy, and he hadn't had enough to drink. Somewhere on the opposite side of town, a siren sounded. Soon ponies would roll out of their beds to see the commotion and wonder what new disaster had struck their town. All according to plan. He tried to smile, but it didn’t stick.
It was the bar's fault for not serving him enough. Bars were supposed to serve him alcohol, mold his dead end into an escape. And it was those damn pegasi who messed with the weather patterns, and the griffons for holding Equestria back, and McTough for turning him in when he was trying to do his damn job. Always someone else to blame. Always another way to run.
As Noir wandered down the streets of Ponyville in the direction of the shady side of town, his life flashed before his eyes.
The alcohol made specifics slippery. When Noir looked around he could make out rows of huge vague shapes on both sides of him, like the silhouettes of mountains. A few of them still had tiny campfires burning away, illuminating a few odd potted plants and windowsills. An earth pony in some kind of uniform lounged against a cracked third floor window and read a book.
Lights flashed beyond the peaks--or were they rooftops? Noir wondered how Rarity would react to such a disturbance. Probably indignantly. She wasn't the kind of mare to curl up in the shadows and take an interruption of her art lying down. She was a real work of art herself. She knew the process.
Noir passed one of the main thoroughfares but forgot to check the street signs at the intersection. Before he knew it the landscape had shifted again. Tall buildings stared at him with their many eyes, some closed in contemplation or shuttered in shame, others thrown wide open to reveal silhouetted ponies inside, floating in the rich light . Clubs with their seedy smells and cigarette smoke sent screams of pain and music from their small windows. Lost? Nonsense--he was as lost as a musician who didn’t know his chords. Nonsense notes fulfilled him. Atonality sated him. Money sated him.
Where was he? Lost? In retreat?
The war was over--and yet!--here he was, running from the enemy again. The enemy was the pony in the visor, his old friend. He longed for the days when he could tell a bad guy by the fur on their back and the piss-colored beak on their face. Where? Where was he? Alone? Where was he--lost? The war was over, but a part of him was still in the mountains.
He craned his head upwards again. The stars shifted behind a patch of softly swaying branches. A breeze fell down his body and transported him back in time to his childhood, where he had once looked at the same stars and dreamed of a future beyond famine and war, a future in the great land of opportunity.
Noir looked at his home, his shady street. His land of opportunity.
He sighed and approached the door.
And one... and four and one... three and--and--one, two--
“Shit,” he grumbled. “It’s me. I forgot the stupid knock--would you just let me in?”
The peephole slid open. “I hate to sound rude, boss, but you’re the one who came up with the knock in the first place.”
“Open the door already.”
The peephole slid shut. The door’s insides clicked and rolled and squealed. “I really like the knock thing,” Snowball said. “I think it’s clever.”
Noir pushed him aside. “The bar wouldn’t serve me. Can you believe that?”
“I thought the bar was under our protection.”
“I can burn down a bar,” he replied sagely, “but you can’t burn down a pony’s morals.” Noir’s henchponies stood up from the couch as he walked by. “Don’t you do anything but sit there?” he snapped.
The duo gave each other a look, and nodded.
“On my couch,” he mumbled. “This world is truly insane.” When he reached his desk, he pulled a flask from one of the drawers and shook it. “Shutter the windows and lock all the doors down. Kill the outside lights, too. From this moment on this building is a tomb.”
“Is something wrong?” one of the henchponies asked.
“There will be a tremendous amount of police activity tonight, and I will take no chances.”
“Were you followed, sir?”
Moonlight spilled through the cracks between the curtains, like searchlights. Noir flinched.
The henchpony noticed Noir’s reaction and busied himself with shuttering the rest of the windows as quickly as he could. “I took a detour, stayed out of the way,” he said over his shoulder as he used a long pole to draw the shutters closed. “When you’re in the light there’s nothing to fear.”
The henchponies stole a glance outside anyway, just to be sure.
“If only we could steal the light,” Noir rambled. “Then there would be nothing to fear.” The thought of it gave him a strange feeling of comfort. Sanctuary. Unseen--and dark.
How big were those windows, anyway? Small--but small enough to keep a pony from fitting through them? A fit and agile police stallion might be able to squeeze through them in a few seconds, but they might as well have been sealed with steel bars for a fat old fart like Noir. Many ways in, but no ways out. Two doors that opened from the outside. Always a way to run.
Outside the hideout, a police carriage veered around the street corner, lights flashing and sirens screaming. Red and blue lights painted the wall in streaks like wild gunfire.
Noir lept from his chair. He swung a bottle over his head, ready to bring it crashing down onto the desk, ready to stab, swing, crush, kill the light, kill the ponies in the light, kill the light, kill the safety, the safe--where was it?--lost?--behind him?--the awful realization you forgot where you placed something you had held just a moment ago--or how long had it been--had it been long enough?
The henchponies drew the last window shut. The light went away. The sirens fell into the distance to join a growing and unsettling background noise.
Noir stopped himself before the bottle in his hoof could shatter against the desk. “Ah--shoot,” he muttered, foreleg swinging like a rusty pendulum until he realized there was still liquid in the bottle. “Shoot,” he muttered again as he wiped the dripping stain on his chest. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he said to nopony in particular.
And yet--and yet!--it all seemed so very clear. Clarity--rationalization--that’s what Noir really needed. Four ribbons of light as thin and heavy as piano wire. He had to get his head out of his sweet-smelling bottle and look out the window. See? He was doing it! More lights. Red to blue to white, but not the same white as before. Whenever he bobbed his head the color smeared across the darkness, but whose fault was it but his for being tired, and tiredness for making him want to drink, and drunkenness that made his eyes bleary? The EQUIS wasn’t outside. Nopony was outside. It was one thirty in the morning. Nopony loitered outside the shady parts of backwater towns at one thirty in the morning. They were all inside in various states of sleep, some snoring and some sighing, some drinking up dreams and others slurping coffee from hot mugs and aiming their eyes at the door like nighthawks, waiting. More lights.
The dark all around these four slits of light, the empty blank black space between Noir and epiphany, brought him to his center. He liked the dark. You could steal light, in a way. You could change light, discolor it distort it warp it. But the dark--no. Nopony could steal the dark away. The absence of thought brought him to oneness. The blank plane towards which he drank gave him a way to run. From himself? From the police? From everypony else too, maybe? Who he ran from was never a concern--eventually, he would have to run from everything. So it all came down to the exit strategy.
All of a sudden the thought consumed Noir. He looked around at his palace. The place was empty, its occupants in various states of unrest. More lights.
Where was his liquor? Where was his way out? He eased himself out of the chair and, hooves planted firmly on the desk for support, waddled to the corner where the milk crates of cider were stacked.and trotted into the kitchen. Some of whatever he had spilled on himself earlier made his hooves sticky as he grabbed another bottle. The urgency of that time--where was it now? This new drink needed to be consumed like it was the last drop of pure alcohol left on earth. The window needed monitoring. Who knew? The EQUIS might be out there with firebombs.
The thrill was gone. Waiting for--what?--what an awful way to spend a life. There could be so much more waiting for him in the darkness. All he had to do was--look!
Noir turned his head up, as if in prayer. Four ribbons of light as thin and heavy as piano wire.
“Powder keg,” he said.
“Yes sir?” said the first henchpony anxiously.
“Do you know why I like the night more than the daytime?”
“Why’s that, sir?”
“Because no one can belittle us for living on the shady side of town--because when it’s night every part of town is the shady part of town.” he cracked a wide smile and let out a huge laugh.
Powder Keg joined in too, after a moment.
“Powder Keg,” Noir said once he finished laughing.
“Yes sir?”
“Open the shades facing the road.”
“Uh, sir, you just told us to close them,” said the second henchpony.
“I know what I said, Indigo, and I know what I’m saying now.” His old frown reappeared and banished the humor from his voice. “Do it.”
“Yes sir.”
Powder Keg and Indigo nodded in unison, walked over to the two front-facing windows on either side of the door, and threw the shutters open. The glass glowed a pearlescent white, and he couldn’t distinguish the sky from the moonlight. It all just glowed.
Another carriage shot light through the window. Every cop in Equestria had to be using this road. The contrast threw his vision into red. Hot knives flooded and faded, searing the background a shade above black. This time, the red didn’t fade--just pulsed and flooded the background with residual light. No more pearlescent white. So much for the pretty moon. The shades were drawn and shut, except for the windows facing the road. The town outside was asleep. It was--what, one thirty? one forty? Nopony was awake. Bullets could tear through windows and walls but not ideas.
“Uh, sir?” Indigo asked. “Are you sure these lights aren’t for us?”
But they still could kill the pony thinking it. Then what?
“There’s a standoff in town, or whatever was supposed to happen. It’s not for us.”
“Are you sure?”
“Do you not trust me?” Noir snapped.
“Of course I do, sir. But.” Indigo rose from the couch. “I just gotta check, to be safe.”
“There is no need for any of that. You’ll only attract attention to us, gawking out the window like that.”
“PK, help me up.”
Powder Keg followed Indigo to the window.
“Don’t look out that window,” Noir snarled.
Powder Keg crouched low so Indigo could stand on his back and get his eyes over the window sill. If he stood on his tip-hooves he could see the whole street, as well as most of the closest sidewalk. If somepony stood at the door and looked up, they could see a dark purple snout fogging up the window--but Indigo would not see them. More lights! Disjointed melodies of car horns! Red light bruising Indigo’s face!
“Get down from there!” Noir ordered.
“Gods above,” Indigo whimpered.
“What is it? What do you see?” Noir stood up from his desk. The bottle returned to his hoof, his faithful defense.
“There’s a carriage, sir. Parked along the other side of the road.”
“It might not be for us.”
“There’s only one officer though. He’s--secret police sir. He’s EQUIS.” He gave a confused grunt before getting off Powder Keg’s shoulders. “I don’t get it. Just one?”
Noir’s eyes went to the desk, the many myriad of papers that no longer mattered scattered around him. He ran his hoof across them. A few rustled. Mostly they stayed exactly where they were.
In a way, Noir felt cheated. Every previous escape had led up to this one. Every bullet he dodged in the Borderlands, every filthy griffon he killed for his country, every moral compromise he accepted without question, every criminal he let live in the name of McTough’s parody of justice, every soul he killed including his own, every filthy griffon he killed for his business--and where was it? Where was the path--the way out! The front door? Did the path end here?
The sound of a rifle being loaded drew his attention. The two henchponies had summoned Snowball, and together they were ripping the cushions off the couch.
“That’s my couch,” Noir pleaded.
In reply, Powder Keg pulled a machine gun from the couch, bandoliers and all. “This is the biggest one we’ve got?”
“But it won’t matter if it’s just one cop,” Snowball said.
“Yeah, but there’s more than just one cop in this town.”
“Regardless,” Indigo interjected, “You’d have to carry it wherever we go. It’ll weigh you down.”
“Right.” Powder Keg threw it to the floor. “We’ll need to make a quick exit out the back, then. Inky, check the fire escape. It’ll activate the alarm, but the building will probably be all shot up anyway, so who cares?”
“Why does my home have an industrial fire escape?” asked Noir.
Indigo shrugged as he moved towards the back. “It is a place of business, isn’t it?”
The corners of Noir’s vision blurred. For the first time in a long while he had no idea where to go. "Run,” he finally said.
“We picked a good night to be had,” Indigo continued obliviously from around the corner. “Fire escape’s clear, PK. Grab the go-bags and make sure the boss has all the documents he can carry.”
“Leave. Run,” Noir repeated.
Indigo heard Noir but could not understand. “I’ve got the white phosphorus. Once we’re all out the place gets torched, so make sure the boss has his documents. If he’s not carrying them, they’re gone.”
"Leave!” he roared.
The henchponies halted in the middle of the room. Indigo took an uncertain step towards the door before turning on his hooves and giving Noir an uncertain look. “Sir--”
“Take the fire escape--and turn the damn thing off before you go. The noise would kill me."
"Sir, this isn’t the time for honor. Battle is never the time for honor--"
"Any minute now, that agent is going to come through that door. He’s going to blow it down and get in here, no matter how many locks we put on it. It was never about the locks. You can stay here and get arrested, or try and fight your way out for me. And I guarantee, you will be shot to death. I should know how terrible being shot to death is. You are all going to leave me now. I’m giving you the chance to save yourselves, so you better wise up and recognize a good opportunity when you see it.”
"Sir--"
"I give you my blessing. Go do whatever faggots do these days, I don’t care."
Indigo paused. “Sir,” he finally said, “I’m not paid to understand your motives, but if you stay here, you’ll be thrown in prison forever. They’ll put you in shackles and chain you to the wall until you rot, then drill holes in your bones and chain the bones to the wall.”
“All my life,” Noir said, “I’ve been running from something. There’s always a way to run.”
“Sir--Mister Noir, sir, staying here is suicide.”
“Don’t presume you know what’s best for me,” he snarled through clenched teeth. “I will survive this confrontation. I do not intend to die tonight, Indigo. There are many ways to run away.”
Indigo glanced at his accomplices, then back to Noir. Anger flashed behind his steely eyes. They reminded Noir of a younger version of himself. “Listen, sir,” he spoke. “Don’t make us die for you.”
Noir grabbed a hooffull of papers from his desk and threw it at them. They burst apart like a flock of graceless white birds before they could reach Indigo and fell to the floor, stone dead. “I am not a horrible person,” he shouted. The birds’ display took his breath away and made his next incantation a terminal wheeze. “I am not--is that, is that what you think this is all about?”
The wall behind them flickered red, signaling the approach of a strange and primordial beast as old as time. “We can’t wait any longer for him,” Indigo said to Powder Keg. His head turned, but his eyes stayed locked on Noir. “We have to go.”
"You think I’m finished,” spat Noir. “You think I’m some old hack. You think I’m too tired to run--there is more than one way to run away!” He jabbed his hoof at Indigo. “You watch. There is always another way to run away.”
Indigo shook his head. “Come on guys. We’ll take the scenic route past the mayor’s office, then break for the main road to Canterlot.”
Noir kept himself absolutely still, his lips locked tight, refusing to say a word.
Indigo and his partner started for the door, but paused a few steps from freedom. “Snowball, come on,” Powder Keg said, “we gotta go.”
“You go,” Snowball replied. “I’m staying with Mister Noir.”
“What?”
Noir gave his guard a strange look. “This is none of your business.”
“Well, he made his decision.” Indigo grabbed Powder Keg’s hoof. The two nodded to each other and rushed out the door, where the darkness was waiting to swallow them alive.
With just the two of them in the room now, the place seemed much bigger--though there was still no place to hide.
“You really should go,” Noir told Snowball. “He’s not here for you.”
“That’s who he’s getting.” Snowball’s eyes flashed passion. “This is what I want, Mister Noir.”
Noir sighed. Snowball was running too. "You're a loyal man... uh."
Noir trailed off. A moment of silence passed. The walls flickered, like the whole thing was about to go up in flames and collapse.
"Snowflake."
"Right. Snowflake."
Red fell across Snowflake’s confused face. He took a step back, then another, towards his lonely bastion at the front door.
“You should really stay away from the doors. I meant it,” Noir called after him.
“I’m the doorman,” Snowflake replied, his voice all cool and ice. “It’s my job to man the door.”
All at once Noir realized how deathly quiet it was outside. Without anypony talking he finally realized that none of the carriages outside had their sirens on. They all just glowed.
He fell back into his chair. The cushions heaved a sigh and relented to his weight. Snowball walked back to the entry way and shut the door behind him. Half a dozen locks snapped into place. The tomb was sealed.
Here at last was the long and straight path, the final stretch Noir would ever have to run. Away went the unhappy thoughts, the memories, the past tense. Noir is. Not was, or would be. Noir was not running away--quite the opposite. Noir is sitting in his desk, watching the shadows curl up the walls like tongues of fire, regretting the loss of the colt whose name he honestly couldn’t remember, regretting the loss of so many years, rejoicing that it is almost finished.
He sat up. The blood rushed to his head. Of course--beer before liquor, never sicker, why could he never remember that one rule? He reached for his bottle out of pure muscle memory, out of pure shameful addiction. The room spun away, left and right and finally behind. Like a sound that bent forever upward but never moved, the same four falls rolled across his vision like gasoline floating atop water. Unseen forces pushing it up from below and displacing it but never actually moving it far enough to be considered away. Was this what it was like to stop running? Fifty five years of life, and he didn’t even realize the whole world was spinning. Round and round and round! After all this time, he should have gotten used to the spin. But it wasn’t his fault, no! Noir ran in whichever direction meant life. Things changed, but to him they always felt about the same.Only now was he realizing that the rest of the world had moved on without him. He just ran further and further into the past while McTough figured things out and aligned himself for a head-on collision--
The front door exploded. The metal stayed in tact, but a few well-placed charges buckled the hinges. Noir heard it hit the ground. Snowflake shouted. Then there was a muffled boom. It could have been a gunshot or debris clattering against the second door.
Noir gripped his bottle by the neck and tensed himself, waiting for the second jolt. He moved but couldn’t feel it. Fine wine trapped in a cellar. Sitting. Waiting.
It came a moment later, sending the second door flying into the center of the room. Smoke and red light poured in through the front door and danced like fire on the smoky ceiling. The entryway looked like something out of the old Inferno scriptures--like the gods themselves were spitting fire at Noir, trying to cook him before devouring him whole.
Through the smoke, Noir noticed a crumpled white heap crushed by the remnants of the outermost door, held together with a scorched leather jacket. Though it shouldn't have, the sight sent him into a blind rage.
“You--fucker!” Noir shouted into the jaws of death. He flung the bottle into the doorway where it disappeared, trailing liquid on the floor.
The smoke parted. A long figure cloaked in black stepped through the doorway.
"He didn’t have to die," Noir groaned, his head still reeling with the echoes of the blast. “That stallion did not have to die.”
“He wasn’t hiding behind that door out of fear.”
“He did nothing to you.”
“That’s not counting the four ponies he killed before you hired him.”
Shades of red ricocheted off McTough’s black visor as he stepped out from behind the smoke.
“I’ll save my breath if you save yours,” Noir snarled, leaning into the desk until it--and he--creaked and cracked.
“No, you’ll listen to what I have to say,” McTough replied.
“Always so righteous!” Noir hit the desk. Bottles rattled and fell to the floor. The orchestra swelled. Sineightra started to sing! “Tell that to a judge--tell it to the gods! Tell them! Holy spirits, I had to kill him, I had to! He believed, your honor! He believed he was right! I had to do it! So I’m the bad guy here--well I’m not the one who’s been chasing a bad memory for seven years!”
McTough’s lips curled, down.
Noir knew deep down the little crack in McTough’s armor meant nothing, but it made him feel at once angry and strangely powerful. He pitched a smile and said, "No one's watching you now. You're not acting for EQUIS anymore. So what are you doing here?"
“You’re being detained for the murder of nineteen--”
Noir heaved and groaned. “They were scumbags, McTough! They died so Canterlot could be safe again.”
“I thought you’d have a better answer by now, but I guess you don’t. You’re a disappointment.”
“I’m the disappointment? How do you think I feel? I’m the one who had to watch them suffer. I had to finish them off. How do you think I feel about it?
For the first time in a long time, Noir watched the facade fall. McTough’s voice betrayed his anger, even as it slid from behind his impenetrable black visor. “You are the one who disappointed me. We were the one thing separating Equestria from the griffons raping and shooting each other for fun across the border. We killed so many of them to save Equestria. We saved everything, and then you got in with the Philarmonicos and destroyed it for them. You’re no better than them, Noir.”
“I think you think I’m some crazy murderous psycho. I killed those ponies to save Canterlot from a plague of Philarmonicos. They were the enemy.”
“You are the enemy. You’re the enemy of decency and you’re the enemy of the state.”
“I saved lives. I saved hundreds of prostitutes from a life of slavery, a thousand dirt-poor rock candy peddlers who would have otherwise been competition. I can’t show you the lives I saved, but you can show me the ones I ended. That’s why you have decency and I don’t, even when we’re pulling the same stunts. So don’t pretend decency is some big deal, because it’s not. You’re either decent or you’re smart, and no dummy ever walked through my doors uninvited.”
McTough hoofed the revolver strapped to his side. “I tried. That’s what the system’s all about. I was decent as long as I could. I really tried.” The gun rocked back and forth in its holster. A pony’s gun gave away things their words and faces never could.
“Think back to when we were rookie cops patrolling the refugee slums in Canterlot. Remember the way the foals would stare at us? I’ll tell you something--they were really just staring at our guns. Guns fascinated them. They grew up around them, the war and the camps and everything else. They hated us every day we occupied their lives and we hated them every second they occupied our city--but everypony understood what the guns meant.” Noir licked his lips, aching for a bitter taste of alcohol. “They knew.”
The hesitation disappeared. McTough slapped his hoof into the revolver’s clamps and locked the device in place around his leg.
“You could have killed me seven years ago,” Noir thought out loud. “You didn’t have to scare the shit out of me and kill my guy. You waited for this moment.” Noir pointed at McTough with an empty hoof only to realize his mistake when a shiny new revolver flew halfway to level and paused, glistening in the red light. “That’s a new gun. Is that what the department gave you when they snipped off your nuts?” Noir asked. When he got no reply, he continued, “Why’d you wait until now? Why? You didn’t have to kill... him.” He gestured towards the door, the smoke, the light. “It didn’t have to be here.”
McTough considered Noir’s words before replying, “I think you know why the kid is dead. As for why I’m here--” McTough made a vague gesture above him. “This is your business. It’s your life’s work.”
“It’s my house,” Noir replied dryly.
“Alright then, this is your house. This is where you’re most vulnerable. If you attack a pony on the street, he will destroy everything he can grab trying to fight back. But if you attack him where he lives, it all becomes so much more personal. He lives there--sleeps there, eats there, shits there. He feels safe. You take that safety away and it shakes him to his core. All of a sudden you start knocking down doors and breaking tables, and it’s personal. That’s his door you’re kicking, his chair you’re swinging.”
Noir barred his teeth.
McTough continued, “Noir, I’m here to put the fear of the gods in your heart. I had to make you fear the law. I had to make you fear me.”
“I’m not afraid,” he hissed.
“If we both don’t believe in what we’re doing, we’re just two ponies killing each other. There’s no sense to it. If we both believe we’re the good guy, nopony really learns their lesson--but if I really truly believe I’m good and you really truly believe you deserve it, then I win. The law wins.”
“You can’t make me believe I’m the bad guy here. I saved--”
“There! You don’t have to know it. You don’t even have to admit it to yourself. It comes out in different ways. Like running. Are you tired of running? Is that why you stayed while your friends snuck out the back door?”
“Fuck you.” Words like bile dripped from Noir’s mouth. They plink--plinked on the table in time with his breathing.
“You don't have to believe me. You fear me. That’s what I need.”
“I am not the pawn in your little moral crusade!”
McTough raised a stubby revolver and snapped the hammer back.
“Wait--wait wait wait wait wait.” Noir raised his hands. Cymbals crashed. The buildup to the final crescendo had begun! “Wait a damn minute! Don’t--don’t shoot me yet. I have something that might be of interest to you. Call it an apology.”
McTough paused. The front sight quivered in the air, then dropped at a shallow angle. If he fired now, he might catch the desk at a good enough angle to send splinters into Noir’s face. “What is it?” he asked.
With a desperate, runaway smile, Noir turned to the picture behind the wall. “You think I’ve played all my cards. You think I’m out of tricks. Nowhere to run. But I’ve learned there is more than one way to run away.”
Nodding as if to convince himself, Noir spun around and flung the framed art hanging behind him from the wall. It landed in the corner and shattered. The revolver snapped back into place.
“You wouldn’t shoot your best friend in the back, would you?” Noir tossed over his shoulder. Before McTough had a chance to answer, Noir stepped aside to reveal a sizeable safe built into the wall. “It’s not the most original place for a safe, but when you have metal doors and guns and henchmen, you don’t worry too much about home invasion. Would you please put that thing down?”
A few practiced flicks of the lock, and the safe door was open. McTough took a slight step forward, forehoof unwavering. Where was the music? Noir felt it swelling inside him. He rooted his legs to the floor and stuck a hoof out like he would try and catch the bullet, knocking the safe door wide open in the process. It hit the wall with a thud and swung forwards. Noir flinched and caught it with his hoof before it could swing closed again. “See?” he said. “Look--look.”
Inside the safe were dozens of gold bars, untarnished by dealers’ marks or imperfections. Sineightra would have crooned at the sight--For what is a man? What has he got?--
McTough snapped the revolver’s hammer into place.
“Ah ah ah--wait wait wait, don’t do that, don’t do that.” Noir tucked his head behind his outstretched leg. “You don’t want to do that. If you do that you’ll have no reason to take the contents of this safe and, in return for my safe passage from this building, retire into a life of luxury no cop will ever earn in five lifetimes of service. No more running around, risking your neck for the system. How long do you think they’ll keep you before they throw you to the sharks? You’re getting old, McTough-guy. Those knees--do they pop when you get out of bed? Mine do. Does your back hurt when you’re through with your morning stroll to get the newspaper? Mine do. Do you huff and puff when you run after the bad guys who are just trying to run away, same as you? This is the sum of my life’s work! What do you think of that?”
McTough’s lips curled. “I think I won.”
The happy look on Noir’s face took a turn for the worse. “Oh, shut it, would you? I think I won,” he mocked. “Where do you get off?”
McTough took another step forward so his legs were spread evenly.
Noir opened his mouth and skipped a beat. “And--gods above, McTough-guy, you’re an honest pony, but you’re a smart pony too. You could buy half the crime rings the EQUIS is chasing with this kind of money. You could buy the whole force matching battle tanks. Forget nighttime bar raids. You’d be an unstoppable force.” In the absence of the duo’s voices, the room descended into mad silence. Smoke rushed into the gap between them where air seemed thinnest, burning their eyes, choking them. The music played on and on. “Do you hear me? You’d be an unstoppable force!”
Noir’s mouth moved a little, then tasted something bitter and shut on reflex. McTough remained absolutely still, his revolver pointed at the base of the desk. The visor caught a shaft of light from across the room and glinted red, the bloodshot tired eye of justice.
"I’m not sure you understand--the gravity of this, this little safe.” Noir exposed his yellowed teeth. “I devoted my life to the acquisition of material goods so that one day I would be able to bribe you out of killing me. This is everything I possess. I cashed all my checks. It’s all there, every penny I’ve earned since I left the police force.”
McTough said nothing. Noir wished he could see McTough’s eyes, just for a second. He couldln’t even remember what color they were.
“Wait--stop. Stop!” he shouted indignantly. The timpani rolled, swelling with the blaring horns, and shook the Earth. “This is everything!” Noir’s back cracked as he spun around, sending bolts of pain through his body. “This is everything!” he repeated. McTough almost shot him where he stood, until he realized he wasn’t drawing a gun but hefting one of the gold bars out of the safe. “You want it? Take it! Take it all!” With a mighty howl, he threw the bar over the table, where it clattered pathetically on the floor a few feet in front of McTough. There was the fire, the old Scoltcilian youth who lived for nights like these.
Noir threw a second, then a third bar. No matter how hard he strained, no matter how much he roared, they all fell short of their mark.
“Take it!” His voice cracked and shattered. It showed his age now. He was old, too old. He had some very good years--had. “Take it, please, take the gold.”
The air in the room crackled, like it was about to combust. Noir remembered now--McTough’s eyes were black shatterproof plastic.
“There’s no more you’ll ever get. I am the richest pony in Equestria.”
Drums rolled into his chest and crested. Sineightra wailed atop indignant screaming horns. They were proud! They were mad!--I did it my way!--
McTough shot Noir. Five rounds, right in the chest.
Noir fell backwards into his chair to the crash of cymbals, to an old pianist’s final fearful chords suspended in time, to an aging stallion’s resigned silent smiling--Yes, it was my way--
Faint traces of gunsmoke curled into frowns and smiles on their way to the ceiling. Mctough snapped the cylinder open and cursed as an unused bullet fell into his waiting hoof along with the empty cartridges. The unused bullet went into the cylinder. The cartridges went into his pocket for recycling.
Outside, half a dozen police carriages roared to a halt. The entire Ponyville police department emerged, covered head to hoof in mismatched riot gear. Shouting gave way to dead silence as they formed up in the middle of the street and waited.
McTough grunted, snapped the revolver back into its holster, and stole a glance at the back door. From his position he could see past the line of trees, deep into the Ponyville Park. Dark branches protruded from the trunks at wild angles like mangled rifle barrels pointed at him. Another step forward and they’d open fire. He could try to run, but they would rip him apart.
Pearlescent white broke through the hard reds and blues as the police lights shut off, one by one. No sirens. Where was the wail? Where was the end?
McTough raised his hoof in surrender and walked outside.