//------------------------------// // Act 3 Chapter 32 : A Road Trip With Iris Jade // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale // by Chessie //------------------------------// Good ponies and bad ponies walk two sides of a razor thin line, separated by one bad day. I can't remember my last good day. -Caught on a hot mic during the last Detrot election for Chief of Police. Iris Jade. Maniac, self-admitted multiple-murderer, corrupt cop, former drug addict, and mother.   She’d been a source of almost untold misery in my life, but also an ally.  She’d managed to clean up big sections of the city while simultaneously undermining anything which might have stopped the most pernicious evils we faced.  Certainly, she’d have turned me over to whoever was running the Biters if she thought it would earn her enough brownie points to ensure her daughter’s safety.  I couldn’t really spite her for that, but hindsight is 20/20 and the extinction of all life on Equis is probably a high price for any one pony’s life. ---- Jade yanked the sheet off of her head and rolled onto her stomach, glaring blood and fire at me.  Her horn let off a feeble spark, but nothing more. Reaching up, she touched the restrictor rings locked around its base, then let her leg drop.  Her olive features were a bit waxy, but she looked none the worse for wear for having almost exploded an hour ago.   “I can break out of these, you know,” Jade murmured. The sound of Masamane’s hammer cocking brought her head around. “If you can do it without knees I will be super impressed, Ma’am,” Swift replied, casually adjusting her aim an inch.  “The Chief wants you here, but I’m not going to let you hurt anypony.” I don’t know what I expected, but a smile wasn’t it.  Her razor-thin lips peeled away from her perfect white teeth like those of a tigress who knows her prey is lame.  It started with a few weak chuckles, then developed into a manic, snorting laugh.  Second later, she was howling like a mad pony, hugging her sides as she rolled back and forth on the floor of the truck. “She be brain burnt?” Mags asked, peeking around my side. “Yes and no,” I sighed. Jade’s peals of laughter echoed around inside the tiny space until she’d worn herself out, lying there on her belly, all four legs splayed out and her chin resting on the steel bulkhead.  Finally, after a few awkward seconds, she sat up with that unsettling grin still in place. “Phew...I needed that.  Chief Hard Boiled!  Hah!  Celestia’s backside, do you know how often I thought about dumping the department in your lap, you self-righteous crap stain?”   I pulled myself onto a bench and lifted Mags up beside me.  “Yeah, well, everypony has times they’ve thought of quitting and moving to Haywaii.  I’ve had a few today myself, and I’ve only been on the job a few hours.  You want to fight, or you want to talk?” She waved a hoof at my ward.  “Oh, by all means, talk.  I presume you brought her to keep me from deboning you?  Where are her parents?”          “Her father died in the Moonwalk.  These days, she’s a pretty fair little bodyguard,” I answered, plucking Swift’s meat snacks out of my pocket.  Unrolling the little package, I popped a piece of smoked chicken into Mags’s beak.  She let out a happy growl and pinned half of it under a claw so she could rip the morsel to messy shreds.            Jade’s eyebrows furrowed, and she touched her abdomen.  “The last thing I remember is shelling open a can of beans.  Did you hit me with some sort of anesthetic spell?  My stomach feels like I’ve been curb stomped.”          I opened my muzzle to explain, then replayed the events of the last couple hours in my head.   'Yes, let's commit suicide with our mouths. That'll be fun,' I thought.          What I actually said was, “We had a mole in the department. They poisoned you, and then the Biters attacked the Castle.  I called some allies of mine.  Diamond dogs.  We held until they burrowed in and evacuated the survivors.  We took losses, but the civilians are safe.”          Maybe it was the catch in my breath, or the cold sweat that suddenly beaded on my brow, or possibly even the quick eye-roll from Swift, but I suspected I wasn’t very convincing.            “Hard Boiled, pretend, for a moment, that I am not an idiot.  You obviously expect me to help you with something, else I’d be waking up in manacles or not waking up at all.  Since I don’t see Sweet Shine behind the wheel up there, I imagine you left her in charge while you run off on the suicidal mission.  This is an A.M.V. we’re sitting in, so you’re expecting dragons or we’d be in that crazy cab.  That would tend to mean you’ve got us heading out of the city.”          I dipped my chin.  “True.  There’s a lead on our enemies in the deep Wilds.  Even in an A.M.V., we’re probably going to be attacked by something. You’re—”          “—the heavy artillery,” she grunted, crawling up onto a seat.  “Good to know our years of mutual respect and trust have reduced me to a horn with legs.”          I gave her a dubious look, then shook my head.  “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.  Either way, we both get something out of this.  I need not to die and you need the city not to burn to the ground, because the one thing I know you love happens to be sittin’ pretty in it.”          Jade rested her cheek against the bulkhead, one eye still on me.  Swift’s gun seemed not to bother her in the least.          “I suspect you saved my life,” she said, after a moment, her tone suddenly somber.  “I’ll tell you, I hated that job.  Watching you have to take those particular reins has a certain satisfaction to it, particularly since I doubt you’ll get the chance to put them down before somepony kills you.  Still, I guess you can’t possibly fail any more completely than I have.  I presided over the end of the department in all but name.” “You kept them alive,” I murmured, toying with my revolver’s bit.  “That’s more than I think most could have, given the circumstances.” Flicking one eye at her hummingbird and flower cutie-mark she shook her head. “My talent is supposed to be delicacy, Hard Boiled.  I used to be able to hold a hurt bird in my magic while I reset his bones and he’d not let out so much as a peep.  Then I took that job.  I campaigned because I thought there was something good in the city that deserved a champion.  I fought through the deaths of several of my friends and subordinates without losing that hope. Then the Cyclones fed a rookie named Ambergris a thousand needles and left him for his wife and children to find.”  Her teeth clenched as an uncharacteristic tear gathered in the corner of her eye.   “I tried to fix a blue-jay’s wing the week of his funeral.  One stray thought of the terrified, tortured look in Ambergris’s eyes when he died, and I crushed that poor creature into paste in the time it took me to blink.”  Exhaling, she rubbed her cheek on the cool metal.  “The birds don’t come to my window anymore.  Now, it’s only mad Detectives who think this world can be saved.  I admit to wondering, from time to time, when you’ll end up crushed.  I can’t say it’ll bother me half so much as that little songbird did.” “I don’t know if we can save it, but you’d never have tried to help those birds if you thought there was nothing worth saving,” I said, quietly.  “If you want out, though, I can have Lily pull over.” Brushing herself off, Jade tugged bits of her scorched pant suit off and flicked them into a corner before laying her head on her forelegs.  “You know I’ll help, damn you.  Cerise deserves another mother, but she’s got me.  This city deserves you. I might hate you, but it won’t bring the birds back.” Snatching the sheet off the floor, she wrapped it around herself again.  “Call me when you need something killed.” I contemplated Iris’s bony back for a long minute, ruffling Mags’s neck fur.  Swift tapped her pistol against her leg and flicked her blue eyes at me.  The question was right there, hanging between us like a spinning coin after the bets are down.   Pulling myself off the padded bench, I trotted over to where Jade lay.  Reaching over her, I ran my toe down the restrictor rings on her horn. They clicked open and dropped onto the seat. Without another word or waiting to see what she might do, I dragged myself onto one of the benches, put my head between my forelegs, and shut my eyes. ---- As though we’d crossed a line in the dirt, the city had fallen away, leaving only the dark horizon and the shadows of an uneven treeline in the distance. Farmlands stretched as far as the eye could see, and charming little houses sprouted at the ends of dirt paths.  They might have lent the place a cheerfully rustic air if not for how many of them were half-burnt or seemed to have been sacked by looters.  There were still a few cars and carts to dodge, but there weren’t many recent signs of equine habitation.  Belongings were strewn across some of the yards, while most of the surviving houses were boarded up from cellar to rooftop.   We hadn’t seen any dragons yet, but the signs of their passing were everywhere; entire fields were burnt or flattened, and sections of the road were reduced to black glass.  The pervasive silence—broken only by the muted engine of our transportation—was starting to give me a major case of nerves.   Then came some more bad news. “Sir?  We’re being followed,” Swift murmured, peering out one of the circular portholes mounted above each of the bench seats. “What’d you see?” I asked. “I don’t know.  I just caught a glimpse.  Something moving in the sky.  It crossed a couple of stars.  It might be a dragon, but if it is, it’s trying to be sneaky or it’s pretty far away.” “There be more than one,” Mags added, her tail lashing against her ankles as she watched another of the windows on the opposite side.  “Want my gun.” I contemplated our options. Stop and fight seemed like a good way to get everyone killed.  Biters or dragons, my combat style favored close engagements and while Swift might have been perfectly happy in a dogfight, there were three other ponies and a griffin who were ground bound.   “Lily, slow us down,” I ordered. “Swift, get out and charge the Hailstorm, then come back.  If you see anything, don’t engage.  Just report.” “Yes, Sir.  Back in a jiffy.” Swift saluted, then grabbed a drawstring bag from under her bench and began wriggling into the Hailstorm’s boxy saddlebags. The gun’s turrets lazily lifted out of their mountings, seeming to peer around for a moment before sinking back. Once dressed, she poked a button on the wall, and a metal ladder dropped from the ceiling, slotting into grooves on the floor.  Crawling to the top, Swift heaved open a circular metal hatch on the roof.  As Lily applied the brakes, Swift launched herself into the sky.   Iris Jade, who’d been lying in an ill-tempered heap facing the wall for the last twenty minutes, roused herself into a sitting position.  “Hrmph.  I’m stunned you haven’t gotten her killed, yet.”          “The night’s young,” I grunted, pulling Mags’s gun out of my pocket and tossing it to her.          “Explain something to me.  Is it just an ego thing?” Jade asked, and I caught a hint of disapproval as she watched my ward crack her breech and check the rounds inside. “Excuse me?” I growled. “Why drag these children around with you?”  Pushing herself up, she hopped off her seat and trotted to one of the portholes to get her own look outside.  “Sweet Shine I can understand; she’s mentally ill and might be one of five ponies in the city I’d have some genuine worries about rumbling with.  Cuddles worships you, but you could have left her behind.  Same with this chick and that filly behind the wheel. You even keep that little colt with you…the Archivist. He’s barely older than Cuddles.  Why keep this bunch with you, if not for your ego?  That was certainly Juniper’s reason for keeping you around.” “My ego has nothing to do with it,” I answered, not rising to the bait.  “Swift’s proved herself twenty times over.  If she were going to die easy, she already would have.  As for the rest...I could have taken another cop to drive, but Lily volunteered and time was short.  Mags is my responsibility, and I promised Lim’s father I’d take care of him.  Do you have any more loaded questions?” She shrugged and went back to watching the horizon.  “I’m sure I’ll think of a few.  I suppose, if I’m to be your protection on this little adventure, I should know where we’re going.” Easing Taxi’s map out of my pocket, I tossed it to her.  Catching it in her magic, she unfolded and studied it.   “Mmmm...it would be there, wouldn’t it?” she mused.  “That’s a Shield Pylon, isn’t it?” I jerked my head up.  “Pardon?” Jade set the map down and leaned against the wall, examining her scuffed hooves.  “It’s the sort of thing a pony only notices after she’s been sober for a few weeks. It does explain the magical ‘lockdown’ they’re in, though, doesn’t it?  I’d thought that was some wartime enchantment to keep them from being tampered with if the city fell or there were riots in the streets.  Considering how secretive the Shield Corporation is, it’s the type of feature they’d conveniently ‘forget’ to tell the police department about.” “I’ve been chasing down that lead since the damn eclipse!  Are you telling me you knew?!” Raising her eyes, Iris nodded her horn over the papers.  “Did I know that the Shield Pylons were a giant spell framework?  Yes, I knew that.  Every colt and filly learns that.  Did I suspect they might have other purposes than simply repelling monsters?  No, but it’s obvious when you think about it.” I shut my eyes, tight as they would go.  The comforting darkness behind my eyelids was all that was keeping me from slamming my head against a wall until I could get some lovely blood and crunchy skull noises to mask my pain at the world’s stupid. “What else?” “Nothing that matters now, I suppose,” she murmured, refolding the map.  “Just that I diverted police resources away from several cases around those things at the behest of my...heh...my dealers.  Oh, they never mentioned the pylons explicitly, but...now that I think about it, the pattern is there.  Who knows?  I might have had some mental resources to devote to the topic if I hadn’t been cleaning up after an insufferable idiot who couldn’t manage to keep me in the loop over the last several months, even when he was working for me.” Before I could explain to Jade—possibly with gunfire—what I thought of that excuse, a soft thump on the roof announced Swift’s return.  She knocked three times on the hatch, and Jade spun it open.  Rolling into the compartment, she caught the ladder and slid to the ground, panting like a puppy who’d just gone for a run.  The Hailstorm’s turrets were out of their mountings, peering back and forth alertly.   “Sir, we’ve got problems,” Swift breathed, folding her wings tight against her sides.  Sweat dripped from her eyelashes and forehead as she tried to get her breathing under control.  “I...ah...I didn’t get a good look at whoever is following us. They’re pretty quick, though.  Not as quick as me, but they kept to the cloud layer and played hoofsies until they were out of range.  If there’s more than one, they’re not going to have any problems tracking us.  This thing sticks out like a sore leg.” “Those creatures I ran into at the Castle weren’t the sort who’d run.  They were almost like...berserkers,” I mused.  “Different species, maybe?” “I don’t know, Sir.  Whatever it was didn’t seem interested in a fight.” “Wait, wait, wait!  What creatures are these?” Jade broke in, her horn flickering.  My armor let out a little squeak and a squirt of sparks. Iris frowned, letting her magic die.  “I really must get used to not being able to grab you by the throat.  Never mind!  Did you actually see Biters at the Castle?” “There might be more than one variety, but yes,” I explained.  “The ones that managed to get in were ugly.  Big teeth, bulky, heavy, fast...strange legs with too many joints.  Armored bodies.  They were definitely ponies, or at least, used to be.” “You...you think I’d end up like that if Tourniquet hadn’t stopped the spell inside me?” Swift whispered, covering her mouth with a hoof.   “Considering what Sweet Shine’s father looked like and what was left of that poor idiot who Dogenes was keeping on ice, I’d say we’re looking at some hardcore transformative magics.  Stone Shine was a prototype.  Canyon was a failure.  The Biters?  They’re something else.  Probably the final model.” Jade looked back and forth between us, then stamped her hoof.  “Dammit, I am missing information here!  Dogenes?  The diamond dog?  What’s he got to do with this?  For that matter, what does Canyon?  Last I saw that fool, he’d just stuck his muzzle under my skirt at a party and earned himself a shattered jaw!  And Stone Shine is in Tartarus!  How the blast is he involved?!” “Uh…”  I hesitated, then called toward the front.  “Lily?  How’s our time frame?” “We’ll be hitting the woods in twenty minutes if I’m reading this display right!” she shouted back.  “Still not seeing any dragons!” I sat down opposite her.  “Then, Miss Jade, I think it’s time I told you everything.” ---- Despite my looks, I’m not actually that stupid.  Of course, I didn’t tell her everything.  Granted, since I didn’t know what was actually important to the case at the time, nothing I held back mattered in the least. ---- The look on Jade’s face mixed skepticism, distemper, and a hint of admiration.   “Such a body count,” Iris mused, running a hoof through her wiry mane.  “Between your career and your most recent actions, I am both curious to see and horrified to consider what you might do if given some proper resources.” I watched Mags lazing about on one of the air vents and sighed.  “You know, Iris, it’s when you say things like that that I remember why we don’t like each other.” “Then, leaving aside the obvious and gaping holes in that very condensed story of secret princesses, changelings, shadowy armies right under my nose, and Sweet Shine’s father somehow being involved in the creation of the Jewelers, why are you still doing this?  Hard Boiled, you died.  That should be a warning sign that you’re out of your league!  There must be somepony in this city better suited—” “Actually, by my count I’ve died at least three times, now,” I interjected, tapping my chest.  “As you say, though, that’s a lot for anypony.  I think the primary reason I’m still working is that I do keep dying.  It’s a rare privilege.  Most ponies are relegated to the single attempt, and I keep getting do-overs.” Swift, who’d been preening herself after her flight, raised her head and smirked.  “Sir, didn’t Taxi also threaten to raise you from the dead if there was anything left of your body just so she could hurt you for dying again?” “Yes, well, there’s that too.  Point being, I’ve got no choice, and I’m the one who is best suited.  My talent doesn’t negotiate.  Neither do my friends.” Jade sucked her teeth at that.  “Eh...Best suited, or too dumb to quit.  I suppose the two aren’t that different in the end.” From the front seat, Lily called, “Hardy!  We’re almost to the border!” ---- Welcome to the jungle. The zone beyond the Shield-protected borders of the city was a vast temperate forest stretching for hundreds of kilometers north and south.  A few picturesque little villages might be found amongst the trees, but the cost of maintaining small P.A.C.T. teams or similar protective bodies was sometimes prohibitive.  It made homesteading dangerous, but there has never been a lack of mad optimists and misanthropes willing to find their own little plot amongst the unclaimed territories.   Technically, all of it was ‘Equestria’, protected by both the Equestrian Army and the diarchy, but in a meaningful sense there were just some bits nopony had gotten around to sticking their muzzles into.  Highways and outposts traversed the forests, and most of the dangerous wildlife knew that it was a bad idea to go after anything on or near the road networks, but there’s never really been a cost effective way of making all that forest safe; too many ancient enchantments, uncontrolled magics, and weird mutant lifeforms like to spring out of such places.   Thankfully, the most dangerous of them tended to be the smartest and the smartest had learned the one unequivocal law of surviving in the Wilds from the Dragon Lords themselves: Don’t screw with ponies. Of course, lately, all bets were off. ---- Driving to Tartarus Correctional is one thing.  It’s in the general direction of Equestria’s interior.  Driving out beyond the farmlands, beyond the outposts, and toward the border is something else.  It’s a place of trees as far as the eye can see, punctuated only by an occasional mountain or hill.   Last I’d been out this way, Juniper died.  I supposed that could explain the trembling in my tail that wouldn’t stop no matter how hard I clenched it between my back legs.   The tension wasn’t helped by the close proximity of Iris Jade.  As I sat in the passenger seat, Lily studied the navigation map, and Iris stood between us in the aisle, watching the sky.  Her mane was lank and flat, her eyes distant, but funny as it might sound, she seemed calmer, more relaxed, and was even smiling now and then when she glanced at the badge dangling from my neck. As the trees closed in overhead and the road narrowed to four lanes, Lily flicked on the headlamps.  The thick pines seemed intent on reclaiming the road, reaching over the low concrete barriers on either side to clutch at their neighbors on the opposite side.  So far out, there weren’t any more vehicles to be seen and even fewer exits. “How are we doing for time?” I asked. “Mmm...this dumb spell doesn’t calculate for off road,” Lily muttered, poking at the dash. “Maybe a half hour from the turn off, then another half hour to the valley.  That’s just guesses, though.” Jade hummed a note, gesturing at the map.  “Hard Boiled, we’re going to be out from under the part of the border that the Shield usually protects here very soon.  The spells on the road network might keep the tarmac, but they won’t keep a chimera from deciding we’re a snack once we turn off.  You have a plan for that?” “We’ve got ordinance for a chimera.  Not worried about big uglies.  More worried about the small and plentiful ones.  The next logging village is almost sixty miles deep.  Assume anything we encounter between here and there is hostile.  Rogue changelings, parasprites, ogres, giant spiders...everything.  Whatever Swift saw is still out there somewhere, too.” Despite my reservations, our luck was still holding when we turned off onto a two lane road and headed further into the woods.  A blinding fog was rolling in from somewhere, despite the breezeless forest, but Lily activated another of the A.M.V’s seemingly endless features which turned the windscreen bright green, showing an almost perfectly clear image of the road ahead.   Not that there was much to see.  The trees were growing thicker, older, and taller the farther we went, but at the speeds the truck was capable of they might as well have been a black wall.  Shortly, the only light penetrating the sucking dark was our own headlamps. I heard a soft sniff.  Mags was sitting up, her beak in the air.   “Do you smell something?” I asked. Her feathers puffed out.  “Mmm...Not know.  I smell...scared...” “Sir, I smell it, too,” Swift added, nervously.  “I can’t put my hoof on it...but I swear, it’s familiar.  Maybe something I smelled in training?”  Her eyes went wide as she scrambled to her hooves.  Spinning to face the wall, her head slowly tilted back until she was staring up at the corner.  “Oh poop!” A sound that made every inch of fur on my body stand straight rolled out of the woods and seemed to go on and on, stiffening every muscle in my body.  It was the scream of a raging steamroller receiving a kick in the genitals projected through a dozen loudspeakers. The noise vibrated deep in my chest, leaving a cold.  Mags shrieked and dove into my lap, burrowing underneath my coat. “Lily, can’t this thing go any faster?!” I shouted. “Not unless you want me to put up in a tree!  I’m already having trouble keeping us on the road!” Fighting my way free of my seatbelt, I pressed my muzzle against the window, cradling Mags to my chest.  “Kid, what’s out there?”   Swift didn’t reply.  Her ears were pinned back as she stood there on unsteadily trembling legs.  Her wings were half-extended, the feathers shivering with fear.  Whatever she was seeing on the Hailstorm’s display had her rooted to the spot.   “Ah...Hard Boiled, don’t you recognize hydra musk?” Jade chuckled, cocking an ear as that horrible cry shook the vehicle hard enough to rattle the suspension.  “Mmm, sounds like a big one, too.  Maybe eight or nine heads.  I don’t suppose you have a notion for fighting something that size?” “We can outrun it and—” Swift’s panicked voice broke in.  “Sir, we can’t!  It’s ahead of us!  We just entered the musk field!  It’s trying to head us off!” A quick-tempoed thumping noise started up, like a heartbeat coming straight out of the ground.  It was quickly followed by the sound of breaking foliage as something approached at high speed.  Lily put on a bit more speed, but the beast wasn’t getting any farther away.  If anything, it seemed to be getting closer. “Lily, look for any turn off!  Anything!” “I’m looking!  There’s nothing on the map but more trees for about two miles!” Swift bared her teeth at the wall. “Creatures that big aren’t supposed to come this close to the border.  This is the P.A.C.T.’s job!” My heart rate was picking up, and I licked dry lips.  Even with the A.M.V., a hydra was a nasty customer.  Larger members of the species had been known to decimate the populations of small villages in the olden days, but I’d never seen one any closer than the tiny versions kept in the city zoo.   I glanced at Iris, who was looking far too calm and smug.  She returned my look with a little smirk, crossing her forelegs. Shutting my eyes, I mustered my dignity and asked, “You’re about to say something that’s going to make me wish I’d left you for the Biters, aren’t you?”   Jade casually got to her hooves, bracing her hip against the edge of my seat. “Well, I would never claim you were unperceptive.”  Reaching down, she touched Mags with her horn.  My ward’s eyelids fluttered slid shut, and she went limp in my legs, letting out a soft snore.  “You’re a gormless ape who should be dangled, fleshless, from the walls of the police department and whose grave I will gleefully waltz upon one day, but...not unperceptive.  How many do I owe you?” Another roar from the beast set my nerves jangling.  It was getting closer. “Owe me?!” I snapped.   “Oh...for the various indignities I’m going to find out you inflicted upon my person while I was unconscious.  You didn’t, perchance, parade me through the middle of the Castle with those restrictor rings on my horn, did you?” I gulped and leaned as far from her as I could in the cramped cabin.  Her smile only widened as she saw the truth behind my eyes. “Is this really the time for this?!” I pleaded. “Oh, I can think of no better time, Hard Boiled!  Public humiliation after public humiliation, and...suddenly, you need me, and I lose nothing by helping you!  Isn’t this rich?”  Jade tilted her head towards the general direction the crashing footsteps seemed to be coming from.  “Mmm...he sounds mad, doesn’t he?  Probably crack this truck like an egg.  Now then, accounting for my rather ignominious treatment and the fact that you kissed my daughter and forcibly took my job, balanced against saving my life…” I jammed my head around the corner of the seat. “Swift!  Can you fight that thing?!” My partner was still standing there, the turrets of the Hailstorm frosted from barrel to base as they spun in their mounts.  “Not in these trees, Sir!  Night flying in a forest is how you die!” “Crap…” ---- Now, I’m aware there are those in the world who’ll ask themselves why Iris would decide that was the time to torment me for her own amusement.  Anyone who would ask doesn’t know Iris Jade very well.  In all the years since I’d met her, fought with her, tried to get one over on her, and generally been a thorn in her side, there was always one essential understanding between us; Iris always gets the last laugh. Petty?  Yes, very.  However, it was a truth that was all but inescapable. Revenge was one of the driving characteristics of her psychology, and she’d never have brought the matter up if she wasn’t aware of exactly how the cards would fall. ---- “Jade...if you have an idea, I’m open to accepting my own ape-hood, here,” I sighed, defeated. “Ideas?  Oh, I have many ideas!”  Jade snickered, daintily pulling her mane back from her horn.  “Tallying everything up, though, I know just the thing.  Something to give me smiles all throughout my retirement.  No maiming, of course, but...I get to record whatever I decide to do to you for posterity.  Do we have an accord?” Trees at the edge of the road began to shake and roll as the stink filtering in from outside became almost overpowering.  The fog had thickened until I couldn’t see more than a meter out of the side windows.  The creature was going to be on us in seconds. I shut my eyes, tasting the sourness of defeat.  She had me. Again.   Jade clapped her hooves together gleefully.  “Lovely! Pull over, Miss Blue.  I’ll be back in a jiffy!” Before I could ask just what she meant, there was a loud snap, and a compression wave made my ears pop as she vanished.   “She’s...crazy,” Lily muttered.  “I mean, I knew the stories, but I never thought she’d use a hydra attack to get somepony to let her...do...wait, what is she going to do?” “I’ve no idea,” I replied, carefully picking up Mags’s sleeping form, popping open the glove box, and tucking her inside.  “You heard her.  Pull over.” Lily hit the brakes, skidding into the gravel at the side of the road.  “Wait a second!  Hardy, did you just agree to let a psychotic mare, who hates your guts, do whatever she likes to you without knowing what that is?!” Outside, the hydra’s howls changed tempo, rising to an enraged crescendo.  The sound of ripping trees was soon accompanied by vicious snarling as battle was joined.  Bits of dirt and debris rained down on the roof. “Two reasons,” I explained,  “One?  Jade is, despite everything, probably on our side.  If some humiliation is what it takes to buy the loyalty of somepony who can rumble with a hydra, bring on the whoopee cushions.  I’ll let her enchant my head so I always talk like I’ve got a mouthful of peanut butter, if it means she’s working for us.” I leaned forward to catch a glimpse of the epic fight that sounded like it was just a few meters beyond the end of the truck’s bonnet.  There wasn’t much to see, unfortunately; mostly swaying trees and swirling dust, punctuated with flashes of blinding light through the branches. “I know I’m going to regret this, but...what’s the other reason?” Lily asked. Swift stuck her head between the seats.  “Sir, I think I know this one.” I shifted in my seat, reaching over to pin one of her chest pouches shut.  “Oh?  Alright, kid.  Thrill me.” ”Is it because if Iris Jade thinks she can get revenge, she won’t let any of us die until she’s got it and had time to enjoy it?” A tree branch the size of a small car crashed down from the sky, landing a few inches from the end of our bumper.  A terrified and strangely familiar squirrel with a bit of what might have been cabbage in his teeth was clinging to one end, staring at the smoking ruin of what’d surely been a very nice nest.  He looked up at me right through the windshield, and his beady little eyes almost popped out of his head.  Leaping off the remains of his home, he scampered away into the underbrush. “Nicely done, kid.  Like she said, whatever Iris plans, she will want witnesses.  You two aren’t hardly enough.” Lily gave me an incredulous look.  “And...that’s...okay, with you, is it?”   “Short term?  Yeah, it’ll probably be hideous.  She’s very creative.  In the long run?  I’m very okay with it, because whatever she does, it can’t possibly be worse than watching the planet and everyone I love die.” There was an earthshaking howl of fury from someplace beyond the treeline that was cut short by a sound that’d no business coming from something that size: a feminine squeal of distress.  I saw the briefest flash of a gigantic eye through the foliage which disappeared almost immediately, followed by a thunderclap and then, silence.  I held my breath, watching for some sign.  Swift stood beside me, her hooves up on the dash, scanning back and forth across the green-lit windshield.   After a full minute, the pounding of the beast’s giant feet returned.  It’s gait sounded somehow uneven, as though the creature was staggering drunkenly about.  A sudden, high pitched, keening moan shook every bolt in the vehicle.  Several more joined in, creating an orchestral movement of pained whimpering.   The footsteps began to slowly move away from us, still shaking the ground, though much lighter.  I had a strange image of the creature gingerly goose-stepping deeper into the woods.   My lungs began to burn, and I exhaled, loudly, slumping against the door.  A minute or two passed in silence before Swift leaned over and touched my foreleg. “Sir, do...do you think we should get out and go...I don’t know...look for Miss Jade?”  she asked, softly. I looked at her out of one eye.  “Kid, that was a hydra.  Think about what you just said.” Swift’s ears pinned back as she sheepishly mulled over her own words.  “Sorry, Sir.  Can I blame that on being tired?  The last time I slept right at all was while I was interfacing with Tourniquet…” “Nightmares?” She nodded a little.  “Princess Luna is going to have so much work to do when she gets back…” I was about to reply when from of the fog emerged an equine shape, prancing toward us between the beams of our headlights.  Something was hovering along beside it, held in a field of green magic.  The grin on Iris Jade’s face was from ear to ear, though she seemed to be breathing a bit heavily and was drenched in something that looked to have discolored her fur to an off brown.  I couldn’t make out what she was carrying, but it looked fleshy and was dripping a viscous fluid. Lifting the gooey mass, she slapped it down on the roof of the A.M.V. with a wet ‘splat’.  The stink that filtered in was enough to set everypony retching; a mixture of unwashed jockstraps, rotting meat, and skunk fumes.  My eyes blurred as I flailed about on the dashboard.   “S-Swift!  Swift, tell me this thing has…*cough*...air filters!” My partner was in a corner, depositing her lunch into an open locker.  “Central console, little button with a fan on it!” she gasped. It took an agonizing thirty seconds to find the button as my lungs begged for anything besides hydra musk.  I finally found the button, and fans in the floorboards roared to life.  Sweet, clean air blew through the cabin, and I all but collapsed back in my seat, taking deep breaths. The back hatch of the A.M.V. opened, then quickly shut, only letting in a whiff which was just enough to set off my gag reflex again.  I pushed past Swift into the back compartment.  In the low light, all I could make out was a dripping form with bright eyes and a slightly sinister smile.  Streams of something foul were flowing off of all four of her legs. “Iris?” “Yes, Hard Boiled?” “Towel?” “Yes, please.” Tugging open one of the underseat compartments, I pulled out a police-issue blanket and some disinfectant, balled them together, and shoved the package across the floor in Jade’s direction. The stink coming off of her was pretty righteous, but funnily enough not as bad as the outside of the hydra. Picking up the towel, she squirted some disinfectant into her fur and began wiping down.  I waited patiently while she got a bit of the blood out of her mane, then sat on my haunches and nodded at the ceiling.  Lily and Swift were both staring back at the two of us with wide eyes, but she didn’t seem to notice.   “Now, Iris...I’ve got to ask and I don’t really want to, because I know this is a ‘truth hurts’ situation, but what did you put on the roof?” Jade wrang some hydra juice out of her tail. “Musk glands,” she replied.  “They’ll protect us from any of the other local carnivores.  I figured he also needed a lesson in respect that he won’t soon forget.” “Wait...he?” Swift’s ears pinned back as she explained, “Sir, the male Equestrian giant hydra’s musk gland is in its reproductive...uh...reprod...re...oog...” She trailed off, leaving a many month pregnant silence in her wake. Jade tossed the blood-soaked towel in my face. “Hehehe...So many heads and still only two of those.  I wonder if four will grow in their place...” I felt suddenly faint as what she’d done sank in.   I staggered, putting a hoof on one of the benches for stability as my tail tucked itself tightly between my rear legs. ‘Right.  Good.  Just...just going to have a little lay down, now.’ *thump*