“Anyway, hopefully this works,” said Shard. He gave Pale a small syringe of green liquid, with a cap over the needle for safety. “I think I did it right.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” Pale asked. She held the vicious-looking dose before her eyes, wrinkling her muzzle reflexively.
Shard shrugged. “It’s not as if we’re going to be trying it on anypony we like.”
Pale nodded in agreement.
Seeing a need, Shard had been hard at work developing a truth serum for the guild to use while interrogating Weeds. The substance hadn’t been tested yet, but Pale was sure she could find somepony to help with that. They just might not enjoy it very much.
She headed for the mouth of the cave. Piper said goodbye as she passed him, but didn’t give her any tasks, remaining doubled down over old maps and newspaper clippings. They both already knew where she was going.
Other members of the guild had spent time in Manehattan searching for the Weeds on what was becoming a regular patrol, but Piper seemed to have given the task to Pale to lead. There hadn’t been a spoken acknowledgement, but he’d more often asked her opinion lately and been hooves-off on how she ran the operation.
It was good that control of the Weeds task didn’t involve much actual leadership, or Pale might have been reluctant. Unfortunately, it still left the planning and decisionmaking to her.
There was nothing wrong with that or Piper’s conspicuous absence of management. But in the back of Pale’s mind, a thought kept pricking at her: Piper was getting old. Eventually, somepony would have to replace him. Did he want it to be her?
Pale reached the safehouse in Trottingham. She took a careful look around and unlocked the door. The outside had been maintained only to the extent of keeping it from looking abandoned. Trees were the exception. All of them near the house had been trimmed to deny any hiding places.
Whirl was inside. His time with the guild hadn’t changed him at all. He still idled nervously, seemingly afraid to meet anypony’s eyes, and as Pale entered the room, he barely even acknowledged her.
“I didn’t see anything the last time I was in Manehattan,” he noted, and headed for the door, barely pausing. Pale had nothing to say in reply, but would have at least liked to get the chance.
There was no open hostility to Whirl like Gilderoy had implied his old group had shown him, but Pale could understand why Whirl might not be the most popular. Piper had kept him busy, usually far away from anypony else.
Pale frowned. Was that why she was here, alone? She told herself she would have noticed the others pushing her away. Her frown deepened. Then again, Whirl didn’t seem to notice.
She shook her head. There was no proof of that. At any rate, if she was concerned about being liked, she was in the wrong line of work.
Pale set her things down. She would have made herself at home, but despite being more hospitable than the cave, the house didn’t feel like anything more than a rest area.
The place had changed surprisingly little since the guild purchased it. It was almost as if they were only borrowing it from Cosmograph, the deceased former owner. Most of her possessions were still where she had left them.
Pale walked through, surveying the rooms. Whirl hadn’t made the bed. At any rate, she would like to wash the sheets before reusing them. She went to get detergent, which was in the bathroom, or it would be if the package wasn’t empty. Pale would have to get more.
She turned, catching sight of herself in the mirror on the bathroom wall. The Lying Mirror had one in her study back at the cave, though the only time Pale had ever used it was when Mirror had some piece of clothing for her to evaluate.
Pale pulled her hood back, letting her mane out. It was getting long and she should probably trim it soon. She pulled it back, giving it a twist so it would stay in position. It only served to expose her neck and the blemishes on her skin. Pale was reminded why she kept her mane long.
There were still leftover cosmetics in the cabinet. Pale picked up a tube of lipstick and looked at it. She took the cap off. The product was bright red. She hesitated, but gingerly applied it to her lips before checking the mirror once more.
It was like painting knotty wood: the color might have been there, but the underneath showed through. It probably still wouldn’t have looked attractive even if Pale knew how to apply makeup.
She shook her head and wiped off the lipstick, streaking it all over her foreleg. She didn’t know why she had even bothered trying it on. Pale pulled her hood back up and headed for the door.
Trottingham was a big enough place to have just about anything, but small enough that community markets were still the place to get it. Pale found the detergent and then went to seek out something to eat. There was a fruit vendor she had interacted with before. She didn’t know his name, but knew him on sight.
Pale gave him her order and he bagged it up. He told her the price and she paid him. Functional conversation without social expectations, her favorite kind.
But then, just as she was ready to walk away, the merchant added something that gave her pause. “Oh, somepony was looking for you.”
“For me?”
“Well, he was looking for a tall mare in a hood, anyway. I’ve seen you around, but I don’t know where you live. I told him he’d just have to watch for you.”
Pale’s eyes narrowed. “Who was he?”
The fruit merchant shrugged. “Blue pegasus. He talked like a Manhattanite.”
Pale started to turn away, but stopped, thanked him, and then departed. Securing her shopping bags so that they did not obstruct access to her knives she headed out of town. Noting the sun, she made sure to keep it at her back, taking a looping route back towards the house.
Out of sight of anypony else, her senses sharpened. She paid attention to the wind, which had noticeably dropped among the sparse trees on the way back to the house. And then, she saw the shadow she had been expecting.
He’d been clever and planned his attack carefully, picking the ideal spot. Pale had suspected the pegasus was going to come at her there. It’s where she would have done it.
She timed it well, and spun around when it was too late for him to adjust his speeding trajectory. He had a blade extended from his hoof which she knocked aside as it passed her face. Pale caught his neck with her hooves and bent her knees, translating his momentum into a flip that slammed his back to the ground. The breath whooshed out of his lungs.
Pale used her hold on his neck to roll him over and then pulled his head towards her, leaving his body bent up from the ground and using her hind legs to hold down his back and wings. She glanced at his cutie mark, a loaf of bread.
“I’m getting really tired of you ponies,” she said, taking care not to crush his windpipe. At least not until he’d told her what she wanted to know.
“Same to you,” Loaf managed to grunt through her choke.
Pale adjusted her grip and pulled out the syringe with a spare hoof. She popped the cap off in front of Loaf’s face.
“Do you think you can threaten me with poison?” he grunted through clenched teeth. “I’m not afraid to die!”
Pale debated. Should she tell him what it really was? Would he then fight against the truth serum or would the placebo effect actually help the effectiveness?
But then, another idea came to her.
“No,” she replied calmly. “It’s actually a cure.”
“What-no! That’s impossible!”
“So you say,” she replied, moving the needle closer to his neck. “Want to find out?”
“No! Just kill me!”
Pale knew the Weeds weren’t exactly levelheaded. Were they really crazy enough to prefer death over being cured of the Blight?
“Let’s talk,” she said. “What can you offer me?”
The stallion shook his head furiously, or as best he could while in her headlock. “I’m not saying anything. Just kill me.”
“What if I were to cure you? What then?”
“I’d…” he paused, his mouth opening and shutting lamely a few times.” I’d kill myself.”
“If you were cured and weren’t feeling destructive anymore, would you still want to?”
He hesitated. Pale stabbed him in the neck and pushed down the syringe’s plunger.
Loaf reacted like she’d actually stabbed him with a red-hot poker. He screamed and struggled, thrashing like it wasn’t just his neck, but his whole body on fire. Pale tightened her grip.
Pale figured if the truth serum worked, he would tell her what she wanted to know. If it didn’t, he might still believe himself cured, which would open up different conversation paths.
She felt water dripping on her foreleg and realized he was crying. His entire body was still convulsing, and Pale realized the serum must actually have given him blinding pain through his entire body.
“...kill me…” Loaf pleaded, sobbing hysterically.
“It’s a magic cure,” Pale said, hoping she could ad-lib well enough to fool him. Perhaps, as he was highly distracted. “It comes with truth. Let it all out.”
“I grew up in Manehattan.” He made a wet sputtering noise.
“How about something more recent?”
“The world is going to end. My friends and I are the only ones who see it coming.”
Pale saw blood dripping onto the sleeve of her cloak. Alarmed, she loosened her grip on him. “Where do you meet your friends?”
“Forty-Seventh-” he started, before losing his words to gagging.
Pale turned him around and realized he was bleeding from every orifice on his face. She jumped back, tearing her stained cloak off.
Loaf gurgled and convulsed for only a few seconds more, and then was still.
Pale took a breath and shot a look at the nearby parasprite. “Tell Shard the test results were inconclusive, but there are some definite side effects.”
She headed for the house. After washing off, Pale found a garden shovel and hurried back to bury the biohazardous scene before it was found.
That done, she put the shovel back, donned a new cloak, and headed for Manehattan.
Loaf’s clues were incomplete, but the most logical place to start was Forty-Seventh Street. Fortunately, it was one of the crosstown streets, which narrowed a huge city down to only about fifteen blocks.
That was still a lot of ground to cover without knowing what she was looking for.
Pale sighed. She had better get started.