“I think Princess Luna is already wanting another movie night.”
You grunt into your sip of coffee before setting the steaming mug back down to the cafe table. “Is she going to crash in my bed and snore like a chainsaw like last time?”
“Whats a chainsaw?”
“Loud.”
You and Umbra are seated in the back of a small cafe that opened in the front part of the Artisans District as the last sun rays over the horizon fade. A quaint, rustic place that's open 24/7 for night owls and vamponies, the latter of whom are starting to come out now that the sun has fallen.
Umbra hums in thought as she watches the rising steam coming your mug. “So some human contraption? Everything that comes from earth seems loud and annoying,” she says, the beginnings of an impish grin on her muzzle.
“You’d fit right in, don’t you worry.”
Your best friend rolls her eyes, her grin not falling. “Fitting in isn’t something to worry about. I’m just wanting all the guys to suck on.”
You cough and hack when you inhale mid-drink, hot coffee scorching your poor trachea. The sudden spike of raging jealousy hurts even more than your burnt lungs, through.
With some effort, you force down the urge to cough more when the few other patrons in the cafe look your way over the racket. “W-what..?!”
Umbra giggles behind a hoof. “Jeez, such a scandalized face you've got over a joke,” she says, reaching across the table with a napkin in hoof to dab at your coffee-stained chin. “I’m not looking for a new boy toy any time soon.”
You snatch the napkin from her and wipe your face off yourself, muttering a curse under your breath. Why she felt the need to say such things, you have no idea.
The fanged grin falls of Umbra’s face when one of her ears twitch. She blinks and twitches it again. “Do you hear that?”
“If you have to ask, then the answer is no. What’s up?”
Her face slowly morphs into a very not-Umbra frown. “I swear I just heard glass breaking some ways down the road, and I don’t mean something like a cup being dropped. More like a store window being busted.”
Suddenly, a dull “boom” rattles the cafe just the slightest, making everyone inside gasp and more than one set of ears fold back.
“Okay, I heard that one.”
Umbra is out of her chair and already at the door, little more than a grey and blue blur. “C’mon Anon!”
You toss a 10 Bit coin on the table and run after her with a sigh. “Yet again we run TOWARDS the explosion than away…”
Outside, ponies mill about unsurely, chatter from countless mouths about the sudden noise filling the air with nervous energy. You watch Umbra’s ears tilt to and fro trying to pick out info from the dull roar. While she was busy with that, you walk over to a vampony mare poking her head out of a nearby store.
“Heya,” you greet shortly. “Any idea what happened?”
The mare bites her lip and shakes her head. “I’ve none. I just heard that boom and wondered…Oh please don’t let it be changelings...”
So a normal vampony didn’t hear glass breaking but heard the explosion. If the two are related, then it must be deeper in the alleyway. But why is the big question? Further down it gets, the more run down and sparse it becomes. The only thing of value down there besides niche shops is Glimmer’s store.
‘Glimmer’s store…Oh shit.’
Another boom echos from further down the alley, turning the worry around you into fright as the ponies around steadily retreat away from the noise. Only Umbra and a few other braver souls refrain from running.
Your guard bristly trots to you and turns around, backside facing you. “Hop on. We need to move,” she says, her tone uncharastically serious.
“Not this again…” you groan.
Umbra rolls her eyes and does a wing-assisted hop up backwards, smacking her armored rump into your hips.
You tilt forward and have to wrap your arms around her neck to not eat dirt. Before you can complain about how inappropriate the rump-on-groin move was, she spreads her wings and asks; “Ready?”
“Ready? For WhAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
The whole world is suddenly a blur of color sided by an endless roar of wind in your ears. Every pump of the wings on each side of you sendings you and your ride rocketing just a bit faster. Your legs can only drag behind you, helpless to the air resistance pulling them back like ribbons on a kite. You have to press your face into Umbra’s neck so the air doesn’t tear at your eyes and mouth.
“You’re a bitch!” you yell at the top of your lungs.
Her reply is lost to the din of flight.
After the longest twelve seconds of your life, Umbra slows enough that your legs can fall, letting the tips of your shoes drag for twenty or so feet before she lands and stops.
You just hang onto the vampony for a moment, trying to reorient yourself and pull your stomach out of the soles of your feet. “Christ…”
“Oh don't be a foal, Anon. We’re gone faster than that before,” Umbra teases, but despite the tease, she waits for you to let go rather than shrugging you off.
You slide off of her side and land heavily on the cobblestone street back-first. The sun has set now, leaving the sky a beautiful shade of purple, you note.
A set of gold eyes peer down at you. “I know the sky is nice and all, but I think we’ve got more pressing things…” Umbra says, her eyes looking to the side.
Turning your head, you follow her gaze and feel your eyes almost bug out of their sockets.
The front of Glimmer’s shop is gone. Not broken or destroyed, but gone. The better part of a perfectly round hemisphere stands where the door was with no debris around. A look at the ground shows the last bit of the hemisphere and a bowl shaped divot in the ground. It’s as if a sphere of space just stopped existing. Glimmer stands just outside, unhurt, but her creepy smile is so forced that it looks physically painful and her horn sheds sparks every few seconds.
You roll to your front and stand, pushing away the lingering nausea. “You okay, Glimmer?”
The unicorn’s wide eyes focus on you with such intensity that you almost flinch. The enchantress is silent for a moment. “Your concern is appreciated, Mister Anonymous,” she says, voice little more than a seething hiss. “I am unharmed, but I cannot say the same for my humble shop… Or the intruder.”
Beside you, Umbra’s eyes widen. “You mean..?” she trails off, looking at the obliterated storefront.
“He is not deceased, sadly,” Glimmer says with a wave of her hoof. “The miscreant was woefully unprepared for me to defend my wares and in his panic, threw several of my gems at the ground. They detonated with a flash that blinded me, and by the time I was fit to pursue, he was gone and the damage was done.”
Umbra sighs. “What a mess. No idea where he went then?”
The ‘crackle-spark’ of the unicorn mare’s horn is the only sign of her agitation as her smile strains more. “None. But…” She glances back towards the ruined shop, her horn lighting up before a clear crystal ball in a fuchsia aura floats out. “I did capture his visage with memory gem acting as a camera. It will be a standard practice from now on.” she finishes, smile easing slightly.
The apple-sized ball is dropped into your outstretched hand and immediately lights up. In its depths, a scene starts to play from the crystal ball’s point of view on the counter.
A pony in a covering black cloak enters the store without a sound and talks with Glimmer, lips moving but silent.
‘No audio then,’ you think, glancing away long enough to see Umbra hovering over your shoulder.
The cloaked pony points to something behind the counter and out of the ball’s view with a hoof. Glimmer nods and opens her logbook. Then in one swift motion, the unicorn grabs the customer’s cloak in her magic and rips it off, leaving a startled, brown-coated earth pony stallion behind. The crystal stopped playing and zoomed in on him without any prompting. He’s honestly pretty unremarkable sans what looks like a backpack cutie mark.
...Why is it a backpack when ponies use saddlebags?
Umbra studies the crystal ball in your hand with narrowed eyes. “So this is the so-called ‘Outback’, right?”
“Undoubtedly,” Glimmer responds with a nod. “Now whether or not that the name is an alias remains to be seen. I can only assume that it is, as what criminal would give their real name just before they commit a felonious act?”
You click your tongue and shake your head. “I don’t know… there are some stupid and sometimes bold crooks out there. If they think that they’re hot shit, they may actually use their real name.”
“Either way, just being able to put a face to a name helps immensely. With his cutie mark caught as well, that will help more than anything,” Umbra says, still looking at the crystal ball. “Are you able to keep the image frozen? If we turn this over to the CPD, then that should help out their investigation and put this guy behind bars even faster.”
“Of course,” Glimmer responds, the strain on her still too-wide smile easing. Her horn glows and the hazy image of the surprised stallion in the crystal becomes much clearer and stops wavering as if it were on an old TV. “The faster that this moronic troublemaker is punished, the happier I am.”
Glimmer looks back over her shoulder to the wrecked front of her small shop. “Now, if you would excuse me, Major, Anon, I’ll need to lock down what remains of my shop and get in contact with my…” the unicorn makes the closest thing to a frown you seen yet on her. “... insurance company.”
You wince in sympathy and slip the crystal ball into one of the internal pockets of your jacket. “From the look on your face, I can already tell that insurance is still not fun to deal with even in a completely different world. Good luck.”
The unicorn shakes her head, sending a wave down her mane. “They wouldn’t be a proper insurance agency if they weren’t most unpleasant to deal with. I bid you both a good night.” With that, Glimmer turns and retreats.
You stuff your hands into the pockets of your jacket and groan. “Great, a nice walk all the way to the police station… which is on the other side of town. Fun.”
You look up to Luna’s Moon in the cloudless sky, but you know that Umbra is rolling her eyes. “If you don’t want to walk, I could just fly us there at top speed.”
Without even bothering to respond or even look away from the moon, you turn and start walking back towards the front of the Artisans District, earning you a giggle from the vampony.
Barely even 10 yards away from your starting point by the enchantress’s shop, you hear Umbra suddenly stop, stiffen, and about-face if the slight rustle of her armor is anything to go by. Somewhere close behind you, the gentle taptaptaptap of four metal ponyshoes lightly landing on cobblestone makes you stop as well.
“Well,” a delicate, feminine voice so wrapped in sensuality that your heart skips a beat begins. “It looks like this one will need to up her training is her response time is so poor.”
You lick your suddenly dry lips and turn.
Luminescent emerald eyes partially covered by a subdued pink mane stare back, mirth dancing within them.
“Orchid?”