//------------------------------// // Act 3 Chapter 43: Bang, Bang, He Shot Me Down // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale // by Chessie //------------------------------// "Why do I put myself in danger? Because every time somepony beats the stuffing out of me, I know they're not hurting somepony else. I'm the mare who can take it." - Saddle Rager, Power Ponies Volume #349. Assuming the ‘twenty minutes’ number was correct, I didn’t have terribly long to get back to Firebrand. Such is the life of those who can’t keep their noses out of the business of cosmic forces. Agent Bloom unconscious.  World in peril.  Sandwich, delicious.     My brain still felt like a spring that’d been stretched almost to breaking, but that left a unique state of mind which could appreciate - despite all the horrors I was likely to face in the next hour, including the possibility of my imminent demise - a really good sandwich.  The olives were canned, but the butter was still good and Cereus was one of the few creatures who could appreciate the fine vagaries of combining black currant jelly with hot salsa and pepperjack cheese.     Speaking of the dusk pony, Cereus was so nervous he was practically vibrating as we walked back to the tram.  His tail kept smacking me in the hip and his wings were jumping around every time he so much as drew a breath.  I suppose he’d every right to be nervous; I had the Helm of Nightmare Moon slung over my shoulder in a makeshift bindle.     “Detective, if I ask you again whether or not this is a good idea, are you going to hit me?”  Cereus whimpered.     “I haven’t hit you at all, Cereus,” I grunted, trying to pick a bit of olive pit out of my teeth.     “But...but Agent Bloom would smack me if I asked her this many times if something was a good idea!  You still haven’t explained how giving the helm to these ponies means they won’t just immediately enact their plan and murder us all!”     “They’re probably going to try to do that anyway.  Nightmare Moon left...something in my head which should give us a notion of how to avoid that contingency.  For now, I have to trust that she knew what she was doing.”     Cereus stopped so fast his hooves screeched on the concrete.  “N-Nightmare Moon...l-left something in your brain?!” I half-turned, then continued forward.  “No. You’re hallucinating.  In fact, right now, you’re just strolling along with me as I tell you my brilliant plan.  Just ignore anything you hear that doesn’t sound like rank genius.” “Oh...Okay,” he muttered, trailing after me with his tail tucked between his back legs.  “Is it alright if I just pretend I’m hallucinating until this is all over?” “I think it’s probably for the best, actually.  Look, do you think the tram could be rigged to transport more than a couple of ponies if we happened to need another fallback position?” Cereus shook his head and scratched his lower lip with one fang.  “I don’t know.  I mean, I guess I could fiddle with it a little.  There’s an extra tram-car hidden in a side tunnel and a trailer for moving larger artifacts.  We’re so far off all my manuals that I don’t think it matters who sees the Warehouse.” Pausing, I set a hoof on his heavily muscled shoulder.  “If this all goes wrong, I’m going to need you to get everypony you can out of Supermax, the Morgue, and anywhere else they might hide.  It’s going to be on you.  Find Taxi, Limerence, or Swift and tell them everything that happened here.”     “I think I want to go back to my mother’s house, sit in the attic, eat terrible food, and read comic books like I did as a little kid,” Cereus muttered, giving me a forlorn look.     “Save me a Power Ponies.”     ----     The tram shrieked back into the secret station, brakes blaring as the emergency lights flashed overhead.  The magic keeping inertia at bay held until I’d almost entirely stopped before giving out, but I’d preemptively braced myself against the wall and only got a bit of extra jiggle at the end.  Picking up the sack with the helm in it, I slung it onto my back, then clambered out of the cart.     From one of the overhead speakers, Cereus called, “Detective, there’s a very heavily armed dragoness standing just outside the entrance.  Is she with you?”     “Yeah, she’s a friend of mine!” I called.     “How will I know if you succeeded out there or if I need to go find Mister Limerence and your other friends?”     “You’ve got those monitors or cameras around the Vivarium, right?”     “We do!”     “If you see an army of monsters start killing everyone there, that’s your signal to go find my friends.”     The silence stretched until I wondered if he’d fainted.     “That’s a terrible signal!” he finally squeaked into the mic.     “It’s the one that matters.  Go tend to Night Bloom.  We’ll be fine out here.”     “Unless you’re all dead and I’m alone in the woods!”     “Yes, unless that,” I replied, listening to the soft creaking of the cooling rails.  “If that doesn’t happen, could you somehow hook up a line from the Warehouse to the city power grid?”     “I...I mean, that’s not complicated,” he murmured.  “The Warehouse is designed to run off city power if the solar panels on the roof are damaged.  But why?  We’ve got plenty of power...”     “There’s a friend of mine who lives in the electrical lines.  I’d like her to have access to your resources.”     I imagined, for a moment, that Cereus was doing that thing more and more ponies were doing with me lately, where he looked like he was trying to chew some air.     “Buh?”     “Just do it!  I’m short of time, and she’ll be ecstatic to explain.”     “A-alright.  I think I’m starting to understand why you and Agent Bloom drink so much...”     “Stick with me and we’ll make a broken, half-mad drunk out of you yet.”     With that, I headed for the stairs to street level.     ----     As I pushed open the door of the abandoned antiques store, I found Firebrand stretched out on the curb, one of her swords leaning against her thigh.  A bit of brown fur was sticking out of one side of her long muzzle as she used her tongue the pick pieces of something from her teeth. As she heard me coming, she sat up and brushed her mouth off, spreading her monstrous wings.     “Crusader!  I take it your ‘errand’ was fruitful?  I am bored, and there was only a cat to eat.”     I paused mid-step, letting the door swing shut behind me before taking one of those deep breaths you only take when a friend of yours has eaten a cat.     “Yes, it was fruitful,” I replied, hefting the helm off my shoulder.  “You have our ‘special accommodations’ for Nightmare Moon?”     Firebrand unlimbered the dragon-blood-filled bag from her back and tossed it to me.  Unzipping the vile thing, I pulled the helm out of the sack and tucked it inside.  Fresh blood stinks, and Stella’s had an especially fishy odor, but there was nothing for it.     That done, I pulled my magical gag out of a pocket and slipped it over my head, leaving the ball sitting on my upper lip.  “Alright, we’re heading for my parent’s house.  Taxi give you the location?”     “Yes.  It is only minutes from here.  She made mention that you have not returned to this house in many years, nor sold it.  May I ask why?”     Pulling the bag onto my back, I shook my head.  “Sentiment, mostly.  My mother was the greatest woodworker this city ever saw.  She built that house.  The taxes aren’t bad.”     “An odd reason to keep an empty home…”     “Eh...I thought I might retire there one day,” I replied, tugging at the ball gag.  “Seems like that’s off the table.”  Trotting over, I positioned myself between her forelegs.  “Let’s make with the flying, before I lose my nerve.  Dead-stallion-walking has got places to be, and I don’t need more reasons to shoot myself today.”     ----     So, I’d lied to Firebrand.  Truth be, I think I’d have given an eyeball to be headed almost anywhere besides my parents’ house.  Note, I say ‘my parents’ house’. It’s always been their house. My mother built the place when they married.  They loved, lived, argued, laughed, cuddled, and finally had a little colt who they raised to the best of their abilities.  It should have been a great story, bookended with a quiet death holding hooves as they watched the sun set on some hazy Saturday evening in a distant, distant future. Instead, my father caught a bullet, and mom died just a few years later of what I’ve long suspected was a broken heart.  She never talked about her feelings much after the funeral, but when Dad cashed his chips the woodworking took on a distinctly new flavor.  More of her pieces started landing in museums and shows dedicated to ‘the avant garde’; translated, she started carving lots of things with skulls and tentacles on them. Still, Dovetail was my mother and the house was their home. I don’t think anyone was surprised when she died slumped over her woodworking table, a beautifully rendered equine heart carved of cherrywood sitting between her hooves with her chisel sticking out of it.  Going back felt like trespassing somehow, even though she’d willed it to me along with enough of her works to keep me in beer and pretzels for life. After a solid year of moping, I’d put the furniture and art in storage, boarded up the windows, set up an automatic payment from my bank to the storage company and a tax preparer, and tried to put the building out of my mind. Cowardice, you say?  I agree wholeheartedly. My parents would have loved to know I was living in their old house and renting an apartment wasn’t doing my bank account any favors, but every plank and fiber was soaked in the sound, scents, and memories of home. It also was the perfect knife to stick in my gut and give a good twist. ----     Exhaustion is a good balm for panic; I barely had it in me to struggle as we took off, and I very shortly settled into a pleasantly paralytic catatonia, dangling from the dragoness’s claws like an especially pathetic kill being carted off by a mighty bird of prey.     Hanging over midtown, I tried to go inside myself and find a reserve of calm.  I knew how this meeting could go down, but a part of me was praying for better outcomes.  D.W. was the most ruthless of opponents, but he didn’t seem the sort to order all that death without a solid reason.  With a bit of luck, I might walk away without a mass murder on my hooves.     The city looked so quiet down below that, were it not for the sections without functioning streetlights and the occasional fire, one might almost pretend things were normal for a dull Sunday evening in late fall.  The air was no longer ‘pleasantly crisp’, but had moved straight to ‘cold as a bastard’.  At one point, I heard Firebrand’s breathing catch as we hit an especially icy patch, then she dropped a good twenty meters to get out of it.     After a few minutes, she slowed, then began to descend until we came in for a coasting landing at one end of a street I’d hoped only to see in my bank statements.  Strange how little a place can change, despite the impending end of times. Most of the houses from my childhood were unchanged with the exception of a few more boards on windows and ‘looters will be shot’ painted across most of the front doors.     Firebrand landed beside me as I trotted under a streetlight, unable to disguise the trembling in her limbs. I wasn’t doing much better; my hooves felt downright numb.     “Hot cocoa would be amazing just now,” I muttered.     “Mmm, give me a lava bath and a sunny rock to sit on.  Maybe a good book as well,” she replied, blowing a bit of flame onto her claws to warm them.  “My clan was already discussing retreating underground when I left.  I don’t know what good that will do.  Prey is on the surface, unless we wish to subsist on diamond dogs and raw gemstones.”     “I don’t want to think about what the last month has done to the annual harvests,” I added.  “This is going to be a bad year.” “Or we’ll all be dead.  Then it shan’t matter.” Turning to the street, she nodded at the rows of empty, darkened houses.  “Speaking of dead, what plan have you for this battle?”     “I play this right and there won’t be a battle.  Go find a place to hide.  If there’s shooting, wait until it’s over, then get my corpse out of there and take it back to the Vivarium.  If they take my body, get to the Vivarium and let them know.  Tourniquet can track it.”     “You speak of your ‘corpse’ in very casual terms, Crusader.”     “Heh...I’m starting to think of it in very casual terms.  Speaking of that, can I borrow a scale?  Actually, two scales?  Preferably medium sized ones, about as big as my hoof?”     Firebrand gave me a curious look.  “Why do you need my scales?”     I hesitated as my brain caught up with my mouth, then blinked a few times.  “I...er...I have no idea.  I just know I need two of your scales for...for something.”     “My scales are attached to me, Crusader,” she rumbled.  “If I lose two now, I won’t get them back until I molt.  That could be a year or two.”     “Yeah, I get that,” I poked myself in the temple, trying to make some semblance of sense out of the weird impulse driving my words.  “Look, an acquaintance of mine stuck something in my brain meat.  I think she intended it to help us through this situation.  I have no clue why I need two of them, but it is vitally important that I get two, or I’m pretty sure we all die.”     Firebrand turned her head, first this way, then that, looking at me out of each eye.     “This is not a request one makes lightly,” she said, adjusting her bandolier.  “It is like asking if I might borrow most of one of your hooves until it grows back.”     I settled on the curb, my rear hooves in the gutter, staring up at the darkened sky as I took a quick mental inventory.  Crippling neuroses: check.  Major emotional dysfunction: check.  Unquenchable desire for alcohol: check. Sudden, overpowering need to own a pair of dragon scales? Check. It was a craving the like of which I hadn’t experienced in years.  Even my barely controlled love of bagels couldn’t quite match it.  By power of deduction, this was probably a manifestation of letting an ancient, bitchy demigod screw with my already-deep-fried grey matter, but knowing that didn’t improve my outlook. “I...I wish I could tell you why I need your scales, but I’ve got no idea myself.  You know I wouldn’t do this for fun.” Firebrand clicked her tongue and turned sideways, raising one wing.  “I suppose I did slit your throat, earlier.  If we all expire soon, at least I will not have to itch for a year.” In an impressive display of flexibility, she reached back with one talon and dug her claw-tip underneath a good sized scale on her lower back.  Hissing, she yanked it a couple of times until it came loose, then tore it free, revealing a spot of pink flesh underneath.  Blood quickly welled up and spilled down her side, but it was no more than your average nose-bleed.  Raising her other wing, she repeated the procedure on the other side. I couldn’t help a wince at the soft, meaty noises as the scale popped loose.  “Doesn’t that hurt?” She flicked her gaze at me, wiping the bloody scales off on her thigh before holding them out.  “Profoundly.  Here.  Do not ask me for a Hearth’s Warming Eve present.”     I gingerly took the scales in my hooves, turning them over.  They were surprisingly light and gleamed in the lamplight like thin plates of metal.  Rubbing my neck, I waited for some kind of ‘sign’ as to what I should do with them, but none was forthcoming.     Letting out a little sigh, I half-unzipped my heart pouch and stuck one inside before zipping it shut, then shoved the other under the brim of my hat and against the front of my skull.  Those were, of course, the only logical places to put such things.  It’s not as though I had pockets or…     ‘Wait a tick…’     “Firebrand, how bullet resistant are your scales?” I asked.     Firebrand cocked her head, then tapped the spot on my hat where the scale was lodged.  “Armor piercing rounds will penetrate them, but antipersonnel rounds do not.  I find it curious that you would choose to bulletproof only your heart and forebrain...”     ‘Ah...Clever girl.’     “No, this makes sense.  Like I said, just make sure to get my body back to the Vivarium and plugged into the grid.  If any parts have come off, see if you can gather them up in a sack or something.  A friend of mine can sew it all back together, and it should stick.”     Her pupils contracted to lines, and she regarded me like one might a very unusual insect pinned under glass.     “Crusader, when I look at you, I see a squishy little stallion who cries, drinks, and seems to be madder than a phoenix who has been urinated on.”     “Well, you’re very perceptive, then,” I replied sardonically.     “I do not believe my eyes are giving me the entire tale,” she added.     “You think not?” “I think not, because when you speak, I hear the terrified whimpers of demon princes torn from their pits and ground beneath your hooves…” I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat as the notion of what I was about to do finally hit home. “Firebrand, if they shoot me in the face, don’t let Swift and Mags see me, alright?  I know it’s a little thing, but I’d rather not give those two any more bad dreams than I already have.” “Of course, Crusader.” ---- Strolling down the street I’d been raised on, I couldn’t help reflecting on the life and times of Hard Boiled Junior. Junior. I remember the little shit.  When had that colt who’d run those roads and alleys, rolled in that grass, and trampled over those begonias become the rotten bastard seeking justice at any cost?  Had breaking Stone Shine’s skull with a baseball bat set me on the path, or was I on it the day I was born? If I have one quintessential problem the idea that we all have a ‘destiny’, it’s that plenty of ponies have not been looking where they were going, stepped into the street, and gotten hit by a speeding bus, but nopony gets a roadkill cutie-mark.  Maybe destiny is something else, something we have to make.  Or that might just be my destiny. To be fair, my talent’s not an especially ‘normal’ one.  Most people’s talents don’t cause them physical pain if they’re not pursued.  Bakers won’t get pins and needles in their backside when somepony in the vicinity is craving a cupcake. These were all thoughts I’d had many times before, but thinking them whilst heading to a confrontation with some ponies who were very likely to gun me down leant the contemplations a new flavor. Strolling down the middle of the empty street, duffle-bag on my back, I perked an ear to catch the sounds of the city.  They were very different, but still painted a picture; my city was bleeding and frightened.  Would she recover?  That’s a question better ponies than I would have to answer. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the empty lot where Sweet Shine’s childhood home once stood, a starkly blank spot of gravel and broken foundation between two homes.  No grass grew there, not even a hardy shrub.  Taxi had come into possession of the place when she reached the age of majority and her sane, rational response was to have it leveled and the ground salted - literally; she’d gone over there one night with a bag of salt and scoured the area with it. Of course, if that was there, that meant that my parents’ house was right behind me.  I hadn’t really been paying attention to my path, trusting my hooves to guide me.  Turning around was as easy as kicking up my heels, and yet it felt like there was a ten ton weight on my back legs. ‘Right.  Stop acting like a filly.  You knew you were going to have to face this tune one of these days.’ Heaving a breath of the cold air, I turned. ‘Ahhh, home.’ The place looked pretty much like I’d expected, considering the years of neglect.  The picket fence was barely visible behind a wall of overgrown foliage you couldn’t cut down with a stick of dynamite, though the paint still clung gamely on. Mom never built anything with the intent that she’d have to replace it this century, hence why what I could see of the roof seemed to be in pretty good nick. Trotting to the gate, I lifted the ancient padlock in one hoof and gave it a sharp tug.  Still seemed okay.  Digging my old apartment keys out of one of my pockets, I sorted through them until I found the right one, then fed it in.  With a sharp click and a shower of rust, the lock snapped open. The gate squeaked as I pushed it open and edged around inside; the path up to the porch was riven with cracks and grass, but I could still see it running through the head-high jungle of uncut grasses and dying shrubs.  The porch was in surprisingly good condition, though some little bastard had painted the word ‘pigs’ across the door in purple paint. I inspected the latch and found that somepony had tried to get in with a pry-bar at some point; there were scratches and scuffs all along the lintel.  It didn’t seem they’d had much luck, however, which wasn’t surprising considering my mother’s love of stonewood and my father’s cop-obsession with keeping the family safe.  They’d have had better luck with a bazooka, but only just.     Pulling a bit of hardened gum out of the lock, I unlatched it and shoved the door open only to catch a muzzle-full of dust.  Coughing, I pulled the lapel of my coat over my face and staggered into the empty living room. Most of the stranger things Mom had carved were in storage, but the exception was a giant gaping mouth with eerily accurate anatomy that was nailed above the fireplace like a massive pony had stuck their muzzle through the well. Most holidays I’d been able to convince her to throw a sheet over that one, but she always took it down the second the guests were gone.  It still gave me the shivers. Mom never really explained why she’d gotten into carving creepy figurines and disturbing images.  When pressed, she tended to smile and say that it was what was selling.  I should have known better; she was carving the things she saw in her dreams without Dad there to hold her at night. Wiping my forehead of a chilly sweat, I closed my eyes and tried to populate the room.  There, the sturdy kitchen table with dinner steaming and ready.  Over there, the hat rack with Dad’s police cap perched on it.  On that side, my tiny work desk, a half finished model of an old sky chariot sitting amidst tiny piles of wood scrap. Opening my eyes felt like aging twenty years in five seconds. Shaking off the melancholy, I set the duffle-bag down and swept off my coat, rolling it leg over leg.  Heading for the back office, I raised an ear, listening for the P.A.C.T. troopers.  They didn’t seem to have arrived, yet, but then I’d probably come early.  Knowing that bunch, they’d make an entrance. As a foal, my father’s office was the one place in the house I wasn’t allowed to go without permission.  I’d never seen the inside of it without Dad there to pack away the crime-scene photos or put away the confidential files, hence it was the place I most strongly associated with him.  Empty as it was, I could still distantly detect gun oil, sweat, and coffee.  Even long disused, it smelled like a cop’s office.     Without furniture, the only thing left to draw the eye was the wall safe.  Dad’s safe.  It was the place of wonders where he hid my Hearth’s Warming Eve presents and all of his files.     I set myself before it and quickly spun the dial, then started on the combination.  Ten years and the memories were fresh as the day his Last Will was opened. My birth year.  His birth year.  Mom’s birth year.  Click. I opened the safe and sighed at its emptiness.  It felt like everything else in the house: a mausoleum for the internment of better times.  Stuffing my coat inside, I shut it, and spun the dial. A sudden thump from the roof made me jump. It was followed by the sound of trotting hooves just overhead.  Right on time. I took my time, moving back to the living room as my hoofsteps echoed through the deserted house.  Picking up the duffle-bag in my teeth, I peered out through the thick, smoked glass plate in the middle of the door.  A few indistinct shapes were moving about in the street.  It might have been my imagination, but they seemed to exude an almost cartoonish menace.  That made me smile a little. Considering what I was fairly sure was coming, it might have been kinder to take Iris Jade’s suicide pills.  Maybe they’d dull the pain a little.  Knowing her, probably not, though. A booming voice shouted from outside, “Hard Boiled! Come on out!  Let’s settle this!  Your friends are safe so long as you don’t piss me off any more than you already have!” I set my foreleg on the door handle, then tugged it open.     Stepping out, I shut it behind me and sat down, dropping the duffle-bag at my hooves.  Slowly, making as few sudden moves as possible, I surveyed the street.  No less than eight black-clad P.A.C.T. troopers stood out there in a straight line, facing my parents’ house.  They weren’t making any efforts to hide themselves, which tended to mean they either had no particular need to, or there were many, many more of them tucked away out of sight. At a quick count, most of them seemed to be armed with antipersonnel weapons; I picked out two repeating shotguns, a shoulder mounted taser, and five chatter guns of different flavors.     There was no mistaking their leader.  The heavily armored stallion was two and a half heads taller than myself.  Those P.A.C.T bastards liked their muscle building, but there’s only so much steroids and gym memberships can do before you’ve got to turn to magic for your extra bulk, and he’d taken the full ‘make my ass look a sack of boulders held up by four tree trunks’ package.  Two gigantic, leathery grey wings were folded in against his sides, extending almost a meter beyond his flanks.     He was the only one of their number who didn’t wear an obscuring, black sock over his head, and his royal blue mane was windblown, but somehow still perfectly ordered.  His pelt was white as bone.  Glittering green eyes peered up at me, full of the malice of a snake with a rabbit in its cage.     Despite the various magical changes - including the strange wings, which he hadn’t had the last time I saw him on television - he was still familiar. While I’d never met him personally, nopony in the Detrot Police Department would fail to recognize the lord and master of our friendly counterparts in the P.A.C.T.     “Colonel Broadside,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.  “I’ll admit, I was wondering when you’d make an entrance.  Nice wings, by the way.  They new?”     Broadside snorted, his nostrils letting out two thick streams of steam that reminded me unpleasantly of dragon smoke. “Hard Boiled,” he grunted, in a voice that seemed permanently set to ‘drill instructor’. “I read your name in a newspaper a few times.  Strange thing, really.  You kill a few hundred ponies, but you never think you’ll get to do one you’ve heard of.”     “Believe me, I know the feeling,” I replied, pushing the duffle-bag in front of me.  “Do you want to take this inside?  Gunning me down on the street seems a little gauche.”     His thick lips pulled into a grin that looked like somepony had split his face open with an axe.  Two rows of perfectly straight, but extremely sharp looking teeth filled his muzzle. “It’s been good enough for plenty of other cops.”     I’d been expecting that barb, but even then, a few faces of ponies I’d seen die at the Castle flashed through my mind and set my back teeth grinding.  Broadside must have noticed, because his grim smile widened an inch.  I wanted nothing more than to break his head, but I’d have needed a backhoe with spikes on it to so much as give him a bruise.     I shoved the duffle-bag with the Helm in forward and took a few steps back until my rear end hit the front door.  “Our deal?” Rather than answering, Broadside glanced at one of his subordinates.  The indicated trooper popped a quick salute, then trotted through the front gate and up the walk.  He didn’t even bother to meet my eyes as he picked up the bag in his teeth and backed away to the edge of the porch.  Unzipping the duffle, he pawed through it, then looked up at his superior. “It’s in here, boss,” he called.  “Damn thing is covered in blood.  Smells like dragon.” “Dragon, huh?  You hid the Helm of Nightmare Moon in a dragon’s hoard?” Broadside asked. “I needed somewhere safe,” I replied, cooly.  “It turned out the dragon didn’t feel like giving it back.  He’d probably feel different about sticking to deals in the future, if he could still feel anything from the waist down.  Now...our deal?” Zipping up the bag, the trooper spread his dark wings and took off, coasting over to land beside Broadside.  The Colonel put a hoof on the bag and wrinkled his nose at the stink coming off of it. “I didn’t make a deal with you, Hard Boiled.”  He sneered and turned to his squad. “D.W. isn’t the sort of pony to go back on his word,” I said. Broadside rounded on me. “You’ve got no idea what sort of pony he is, you son of a whore!” he snarled, emphasizing it with a stomp so hard that a web of cracks spread out in all directions. “You think?  I’ve seen what he’s done.  There’s a lot of blood on his hooves.  You sure you backed the right pony?” “My brother plays dangerous games,” Broadside chuckled, bringing his back hooves together with a sharp click.  “It is fortunate that he has me here to make for damn sure this world turns in the right direction.” There was no disguising my surprise.  “D.W. is your brother?!  That means...ah...” ‘Oh, here it comes.’ “You burned my home, cop,” he said, his voice dropping to a throaty growl.  Jerking his head at his companions, he sat down on the pavement.  “No kill shots. I want him alive for this.” Half a dozen guns rose and, before I really had a chance to process what was happening, I heard the snapcrack of weapons fire.  Nattering reports followed in quick succession as the street was filled with a sudden burst of smoke.  I could still see Broadside’s smile through it. Unlike the movies, when you’re shot, you don’t go flying backwards off a cliff.  There’s just not a lot of mass in normal bullets.  They have a tendency to rip right through and antipersonnel rounds are designed to damage organs by splitting apart inside their target.  The first impacts felt like somepony giving me a rough poke, followed by a burning sensation that spread out in my stomach and legs.  I just sort of slumped against the front door of my parents’ home, listening with what was left of my consciousness as bullets tore into my stomach and lower body.  It hurt, but only in a sort of distant fashion one feels when they’ve got heavy nerve damage. My eyes slid shut, and I sagged onto my side. ‘Oh, mercy, that warm puddle around my cheek came from me, didn’t it?’ I thought.  My hat had come off and was lying half across the side of my head, shielding my eyes. Hoofsteps approached, and I heard the sound of sloshing liquid, followed by something ice-cold splashing on my face.  Scalding agony spread through the wounds up and down my body that offered me one more tortured moment of consciousness during which I couldn’t do anything more than flail weakly at the air with my forelegs.  My back legs didn’t seem to be responding.  No surprise there, considering the quantity of shrapnel in my spine. The stinging simply would not fade, but there was nothing I could do about it.  My lungs felt heavy, thick, and full.  I desperately wanted to take a breath, but when I opened my muzzle, a gush of liquid rushed out.  Oh, more blood.  Goodie.  Probably be running out of that, soon. A hot breath on my ear was followed by a whispered voice.  His voice. “Now, cop, I know you can still hear me.  My troops are good shots.  I just want the last thing you hear to be my voice telling you that five days from now, we’re going to that whorehouse.  I’m going to spend the day with every mare and filly in that building.  Then, I’m heading to the Morgue.  Everypony you ever loved is going to die screaming, raped, and watching my creatures tear the flesh from their bones.  Not you, though.  You die here and you die burning.” Somewhere above me, a scratching sound was followed by a soft hiss. A gentle warmth spread throughout my body.  The gentleness lasted all of ten seconds.  Then, the fire came. ---- Burning alive was rubbish and I’m thankful I don’t remember most of it.  The pain, yes, but they’d already done me so much damage that most of my major muscle groups were paralyzed or not sending information back to my brain.  I’m pretty sure I screamed or vomited about five seconds in, but that didn’t do much beyond inviting the fire into my lungs. It turns out death by incineration takes a good long while.  I must have laid there, squirming whatever I could squirm, for a solid five minutes as my fur was scorched away and my flesh boiled off.  Much as most ponies might think you’d be consumed by such a fire, it takes a lot more than petrol to burn a body completely.  We’re mostly liquid, and gasoline is a terrible long-term fuel source in the open air. Of course, I didn’t have any of these thoughts at the time.  While it was happening, I was mostly thinking ‘Oh Celestia, please put me out!’     I’ll never know if I fainted or just expired, but at a point, an icy cold gripped my senses, and I slipped away into the darker places between worlds.     ---- Again? Yes, again. I’d known it was coming.  For once there wasn’t really a question of how or when, but it was still a pretty crap way to go.  That’s the thing about being dead, though: you’re dead.  Nothing really matters, unless perchance you have a chatty ex-partner who likes to sneak into your cooling grey matter for a postmortem kibitz. Fortunate then that the powers that be were keeping him occupied.  I needed some downtime and didn’t want to think about anything for awhile. The bastards burning down my parents’ home and leaving me to roast was enough for one day. ---- I couldn’t tell you when I transitioned from ‘dead’ to ‘dreaming I was in pain’ to ‘awake and in pain’.  Corpse-time is irrelevant and sleep time doesn’t really count either, so it was only when I could finally count the seconds between my own wet, rattling breaths that I considered the possibility that something had changed.  My brain still felt like a skull-shaped puddle of overcooked mud.     A long while later, I heard a slurping pop, followed by the roar of rushing water.  It faded after some seconds to a dull ringing, but with all the other pain coursing through my muscles, that seemed a relatively minor change.  Some part of me registered that it was my eardrums growing back.     All at once, voices faded in.     “...don’t know!  Tourniquet said she’s diverting everything she can spare…”     “Then why isn’t he waking up?  It’s been hours, and the power is still not coming back on!”     “Did you see what he looked like when he came in?  He didn’t have any skin left!  It took ten hours of magical surgery to get all the shrapnel out of him.  If he’d been alive, it would have killed him.”     “We had to put nine pints of blood into him before it stopped leaking out.  It was like trying to fill a sieve.”     “I know, I know!  I just want to kick his flank for this.  The plan was for him to fake his death, not get cremated!”     “I don’t think he planned that…”     “Of course he did!  Why do you think he stuck a dragon scale over his heart?  He was making sure they didn’t shoot him anywhere that wouldn’t grow back!”     There was a silence after that.  A gentle, then growing pressure in my eye sockets was followed by the most intense itching of my life.  Most of the nerves on my skin were still only returning dull pain, but the ones in my eyes lit up like a pair of spotlights.     It was then that I realized I hadn’t really been seeing the backs of my eyelids.  I hadn’t been seeing anything at all. Most ponies think being blind is like having your eyes shut, but even with your eyelids closed, there’s still a lot of sensory information pumping through those nerves.  I got the very rare experience of feeling optic nerves growing in.     A bit later, with a feeling a bit like congealing custard full of hot peppers being drizzled over my body, flesh started to pour over my seared muscles, and nothing in this world could keep me from screaming when that happened.  My eyes shot open, only to find that the world was also in darkness.  More than a half dozen ponies were in the room, holding flashlights and candles, watching me like a specimen on the slab.     Swift was sitting there without her armor and with both hooves stuffed in her mouth as Taxi stood behind, a determined, furious expression on her face that was ruined somewhat by the tears streaming down her chin.  Limerence had Mags sitting on his head as he ran his gaze up and down my body with as much clinical detachment as he could muster.  He was shaking, while Mags seemed almost bored by the proceedings. Last amongst them, Slip Stitch, Lily Blue, and Scarlet Petals stood side by side at the door.  Stitch was grinning, but Lily and Scarlet just looked a bit numb; their face-fur was streaked and their eyes were both red as tomatoes. I coughed, and spit something nasty on the slick, white bed-sheets; it was a bit of deep fried tongue, probably bitten off while I was cooking.  It would have been nice if somepony had thought to check my muzzle.  I could have done without that texture. ‘Oh, heavens, please let my nose not start working again until after I’d had a bath.  I don’t need to smell this.’ No such luck.  A second later, the reek of burnt fur and flesh filled my head.  Smelling it from somepony else is one thing, but smelling your own body after it’s been flame broiled is something else.  My throat worked on puking, but there was nothing in my stomach. ‘Damn it’s cold.’  I thought, then realized the problem.  ‘No fur.  Lovely.  Maybe I can have somepony knit me a sweater...’ This thought seemed to summon a new level of discomfort; suddenly growing fur was a level of torment akin to an attack by a swarm of salt coated wasps.  My teeth chattered in my mouth as I writhed over onto my back, trying desperately to get away from my everything. Slip Stitch pushed between my friends and leaned over the bed, stethoscope in hoof. “Ah!  Chief of Police!  It is magnificent to see you looking properly fluffy again!”  He pressed the scope against my chest, then nodded to himself.  “Amazing! You went through almost twenty nutrient bags, but you’ve made a full recovery!  One hundred percent third degree burns to fur and smiles in under a day!” “Can...can we unplug him?” Taxi asked. It was then that I finally noticed the gigantic cord leading up over the edge of the bed and into my chest.  The thing was thick around as my foreleg and seemingly composed of lots of smaller cables wound around each other.  The plug on the end was some kind of industrial rubber that looked a bit like they’d taken the end off a toilet plunger and stuck it to my barrel. Swift let out a soft hiccup, then swallowed a couple of times before she managed to reply, “T-Tourniquet says he’s only drawing a normal amount of p-power now.  He was using almost thirty city blocks’ worth of electricity a minute ago, but...but she thinks it should be safe.  She’s going to bring the lights back on in a couple minutes as soon as she rebalances the load on the grid.” I tried to speak, but my tongue felt several sizes too large and not entirely in my control. A blue hoof on my neck gently pressed me back down on the bed.  Limerence lowered himself in front of me until we were at eye height to one another.  My eyes weren’t quite focusing correctly, but I could still make him out. “Rest, Detective,” he murmured.  “Your muscle memory will return, but the damage was severe.  You have a tube in your stomach, and if you pull it out, the surgeons will have to come back and put it in again.” Mags crawled off his back and pushed her cheek against mine.  “You smell like bacon, Egg Pony.  I be glad you not dead again anymore.” Coughing, I struggled with my foreleg until it rose enough so I could lightly pat my ward’s fuzzy, feathered head. “M-me too,” I whispered. ---- It was another hour until my mane and tail grew back, during which they brought me another bag of fluids to hook into the tube somepony had sunk into my stomach.  It was a terrible way to have dinner, but filling enough.  My companions remained, making quiet conversation with one another until various duties called each of them away. Taxi refused to leave, but conceded to bring a pile of maps she was working on over and sit on the end of my bed.  Swift was there for a long time, but eventually a young griffin came by, knocked on the door, exchanged a few words, and my partner followed her out.  At a point Bones stuck his skull in, gave me a quick look, then vanished again. Being laid up in a hospital bed when all the world is moving around you is terrible, but I didn’t have many other options.  My throat was improving, but talking hurt.  Not that anypony was much interested in having a conversation.  Last they’d seen me, I was a burnt crisp.  That’s an awkward place to converse from.  Mostly, I just watched everything move and did my best not to think about it too much. Eventually and after an uncounted number of hours just lying there in bed, Scarlet and Lily returned.  Both wore clean nurse’s scrubs and had a stack of towels thrown across their backs.  Taxi immediately began rolling up her work into a tube, then stashed it to one side before getting out of their way.  I didn’t register what was happening until they began carefully moving me toward one side of the bed.  A wheelchair was there, ready to receive me. I was weak as a newborn and my legs barely worked, so protest wasn’t likely to get me anywhere.  I let them pull the sheets sideways off the bed and push me carefully back into the chair.  Blood rushed to my head, leaving me dizzy and sore, but I managed to hold myself upright. My stomach tube was unhooked and they wheeled me down the hall and into another room where waited a giant, claw-footed tub full of steaming hot water.  Lily’s horn lit up, and I was levitated off the wheelchair.  I couldn’t hold in a squeak of pain as they lowered me in and my fresh skin felt heat for the first time, but there was nothing to be done.  The water instantly turned a foul brown, but they were undeterred. “Shhh...it’s okay,” Scarlet whispered, patting my mane as I let out a pained sob. “Oh, Hardy...How do these things keep happening?” Lily asked, softly, though I don’t think she expected me to answer. Scarlet took my front half and Lily, my back.  Between a pair of scrub brushes and a liberal application of baby-shampoo, they worked my body over for what felt like an hour, emptied the tub, then refilled it.  That was repeated a couple more times until the water began to run clean. By the time it did, my legs started to feel like they might be willing to hold me. ‘Come on, Hard Boiled...say something to them,’ I thought.  ‘You can’t be that traumatized.” Lily was sitting on one side of me, and Scarlet on the other.  They both looked a fright, covered in what I presumed were my ashes.  Lily’s soft, cerulean coat looked several shades too dark, while Scarlet just looked like he’d gone for a roll in a coal pit. Reaching out to them, I tried to find words. They put their legs around me, and in an instant, I broke. ---- A good cry helps most things. That was not a good cry. I wept and wept, but even once the last vestiges of soreness flowed out of my body, the ache in my soul remained. This was no merciful easy bullet to the heart or gentle brain hemorrhage sending me careening into unconsciousness.  Broadside had tortured me, then killed me in about the most brutal way possible. No quantity of toughness or testosterone was going to make that go away. Still, after an hour had passed and the next panic attack felt like it was coming, it was washed away instead by a wave of coolness spreading out from my chest.  It had the unmistakable flavor of Gale taking over my worn out synapses to put an end to the rolling waves of fear.  I sent appreciative thoughts in his direction, then slowly pulled away from Scarlet. Only then did I realize that, at some point, I’d dragged him into the bath with me.  He was soaked and shivering, but seemed otherwise unbothered by it.  His pretty eyes were full of concern as he held me close.  Lily had her forelegs around my neck and her chin resting between my ears.  We were all wet, and the water had long since gone cold, but it was what I needed just then. Fishing around inside myself, I found my willpower cowering in a corner and coaxed it out. “Scar…”  I hesitated as the other stallion’s ears perked, then forced myself to continue speaking.  “Scarlet...w-we have four days before the attack.  G-go tell Stella.” “I don’t want to leave you,” he said, softly. “I know.  This...this is important.  We have to hit the Office tomorrow.” Lily put her hoof under my chin and turned my eyes to hers.  “You’re in no condition to fight, Hardy.  There are ponies in the nursing ward who’ve been through a twentieth of what you have, and most of them are catatonic.” “It doesn’t matter what condition I’m in, Lily,” I said, touching her soft cheek with my toe.  “I fight or everyone dies.  You both have duties, right?” “Our duty is to make sure you’re okay,” Scarlet said, a firmness to his tone that I’d never heard before. “Well, I’ll be okay,” I lied.  “Go handle your chores.  Taxi is outside, right?” Lily nodded, flicking her eyes over my shoulder at the door. “Could you two send her in, then give us a bit?” “B-but-” Scarlet began, but I gave him the tiniest of pecks on the lips and he fell silent. “Please,” I murmured. Reluctantly, he pulled himself out of the tub, then draped a fluffy, pink towel around my shoulders.  I felt Lily’s hoof on my shoulder. “We’ll be nearby if you need us,” she said.  “Is there anything I can get you?” “Some dinner that doesn’t come in a bag would be wonderful,” I replied.  “Scarlet?  You mind finding me a hat?  I’m sure somepony around here has something that’ll work.” “A hat?” he asked incredulously. “Yeah, a hat,” I made the motion of putting something on my head.  “Circular thing, brain box goes in the middle?  I’m a size ten.  My old one burned along with most of my skin.” Scarlet was giving me the ‘I’m talking to something from another planet and it asked me for a hat’ look; It’s a very specific expression and rarely used, but unmistakeable. “O-okay.  Hat.  Size ten.  A-anything else?” I shook my head, then lay back in the tub and shut my eyes again.  I heard the hum of Lily’s horn, then the soft sucking noise of water headed for the drain.  Waving a leg, I slid down until the back of my head rested on the edge of the bath. “No, that’ll do.  Taxi, dinner, and hat.  In that order, if you please.” I listened until their hoofsteps retreated and the door to the bathing-chamber opened, then shut again.  I could hear words being exchanged outside, but didn’t put much effort into listening in.  Rather, I slid about until I was on all fours, then heaved upwards with all my none-too-mighty might.  I managed to get on my hooves just as the door opened again, standing there quivering like a yearling who’d just run a marathon.     Gripping the side of the tub, I swung one knee over, then another.  Unfortunately, the floor was a lot farther away than it’d looked.  I started to slide, when a pair of bright yellow forelegs caught me in a grip of iron.     “Hardy, I swear to Celestia,” my driver muttered in my ear as she helped me to the ground and began ruffling the towel through my mane.  “No...no, you don’t need me to scold you.  Never mind.  You need recovery time.  At least three months worth, just to be able to function.  Of course, you also need to not die tomorrow, and you’re going to go on the Office run, whether or not I try to pin you to a bed.  Damn.”     I stared into the shining tile under my hooves, then up into her worried eyes.  “Sweets, I don’t know if I can do this anymore...”     “You and me both, Hardy,” she replied, stroking my cheek.  “The truest answer I can give you to the question you’re about to ask is...go far away.  I wish I could take you somewhere safe.  Just you, and me.  Nothing else is going to work.” I shook my head.  “Not good enough.  I can’t leave until this is finished.  We’re close.  They’re going to attack us in...in four days.  Four days, Sweets.  It’s not three hours, but it’s not much better...and now they have the Helm, and...and Nightmare Moon did something to my brain and she’s trying to help us now, and it’s all gone crazy-” Turning me about, she lifted me lengthways across her back and stood, barely grunting with the added weight.  I put my nose in her checkered mane and inhaled the permanent scent of incense that she wore like perfume. “Come on.  Back to bed with you.  If they attack us sooner, you napping won’t make one iota of difference, and if they attack us in four days, you can afford to take a day to recover. You need to rest, and you need to argue about it, but you also need to lose this particular argument, so we’ll skip straight to where you just lie there, instead.  Lily is fetching you dinner and Scarlet’s out hunting up a hat.  Speaking of that, where are your coat and gun harness?” “My harness was on me.  Probably cinders.  I stuck my coat in the safe at my parents’ place before it burned.  It should be fine.  It was a fireproof safe.” “I’ll send somepony to dig it out.  Same combination as when we were younger?” “I...Yes, but...wait second.  How do you know the combination to my father’s safe?  He didn’t even tell me that until I was twenty!” “Hardy, I snuck into your room once a week.  I raided your fridge every time my father didn’t feed me.  Are you really that surprised I got into your dad’s office?” she asked, heading for the door with my rear toes dragging along the floor on either side of hers.  “Besides, he hid some really good liquor in the safe, and so long as I always watered it down a little, he never noticed.” I fought it with all my might, but in the end, Taxi always won; I smiled. Glancing back, she gave me a wink, then nosed open the bathroom door.