//------------------------------// // Act 3 Chapter 55 : Ride Home, Gentle Son // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale // by Chessie //------------------------------// "Any plan of sufficient complexity becomes mired in its own genius and is therefore susceptible to anyone with a bit of common sense, a hint of insanity, and a sturdy hammer." - The Crusader's Motto #6 of 68. It wasn’t exactly the response anypony had expected and it was hard to say who was more surprised. Seconds after Limerence’s declaration, Goldenrod was hunched against the left wall just outside the vault, his goggles askew, while his two female companions huddled against the right, their trigger bits dangling around their knees. Limerence stood there blinking owlishly at the three heavily armed troopers as they seemingly cowered under his gaze. His sword was still levitating at the ready, but he cautiously lowered it as Taxi got back to her hooves and Bones dusted off his jacket. “Well, that’s interesting,” Bones commented.     An especially powerful flash of energy from the portal sent alarming groans and creaks through the heavily reinforced superstructure, reminding everypony that death was imminent.   It was enough to bring the librarian out of his daze.  He swung back to the vault door, lighting his horn as he shouted, “Help me!  We have to shut this!”     “Why are we not just running?!’ Bones growled.     “We must close the door!  It’s thaumatically stabilized steel!  We have to keep the energy leak inside or it’ll melt the elevator while we’re in it!” Limerence snapped. Taxi quickly checked Hardy, finding him still not breathing.  Hefting his body, she limped to the door and quickly deposited him outside, before turning to the vault and throwing herself against the metal.  It didn’t budge, though the carpet-covered vase blocking it open rattled a few inches. After a few seconds, Bones joined her as Limerence wove his burning horn back and forth in the air, forming a cylindrical ram of solidified shining light.  Gritting his teeth, the archivist drew his head back, then slammed it forward, driving the floating ram against the edge of the door which shreaked on ancient hinges.     “Heave!”  Bones shouted. At the edges of the door, the carpet was quickly blackening from the fiery heat.  The smell of burning fur and scorching flesh from the vault was quickly being replaced by the scent of molten glass and plastic.  Great, black billows of smoke poured out, darkening the ceiling and leaving their lungs burning.     “Heave!”       Taxi felt something move beside her and glanced back to find Goldenrod, his goggles askew, bracing his muscular shoulder against the door.  Lute and the other mare whose name she hadn’t got were next to him, their bodies dripping as they threw themselves against the implacable vault.  She was so surprised she almost failed to heed the next command from Bones.     “Heave!”     As one, they hit the door with their combined strength.  The hinge yowled, then began to slide, picking up speed as weights in the walls pulled it shut with a bone-shaking clatter.  Limerence stumbled slightly, but caught himself as his horn blinked out, though the tip still glowed with excess heat. Reaching up, Bones wrenched the giant locking wheel in the middle of the door, spinning it shut as the bolts around the outside edges snapped into place, sealing the portal room. “Can we run now?” Taxi asked, breathlessly. Limerence took a deep breath and collapsed against the wall, his sides heaving as he tried to gather his wits. “If my math was wrong...ah...whoo...If my math was wrong, then there is not really a minimum safe distance,” he replied.  “Brace for a silence.” “Silen-?” Goldenrod started to ask, but he was cut off as Limerence’s horn sparked and the air around them flashed, leaving the trooper’s muzzle opening and closing a bit like a stunned goldfish. In the eerie quiet that followed, Limerence gestured for everypony to move back from the vault door.  Taxi grabbed Hardy’s scruff in her teeth and dragged him a few meters away, crawling atop his body and hunkering down.  Bones settled himself between her and the vault. The floor shook as the vault door suddenly turned a dull red and the already sweaty air became stifling.  Taxi tried to breathe, but the foul smoke stuck to her lungs like taffy and she found herself retching into Hardy’s mane.  Her head swam and she watched out of one squinted eye as Limerence fell to one knee, silently coughing into his fetlock as he tried desperately to cast another spell.   All at once, ice-cold rain splashed down on all of everypony’s backs and a thick burst of steam filled the hallway as the building’s sprinklers, long unused, finally decided they’d seen enough. Limerence let his silence fall and collapsed onto his side, his sword-tip burying itself in the carpet as his magic gave out.  Swaying aftershocks rattled through the floor and walls, followed by an alarming braying from the support structures, but the wartime fortifications held.  After a moment, there was only the sound of panting, the running sprinklers, and the gentle hiss of water hitting the superheated door before turning instantly to steam. Pulling herself onto her front knees, Taxi glanced back at Goldenrod, who was standing in front of the door looking at them with a slightly blank expression on his face.  The female troopers stood beside him, their heads low and eyes glazed. “Why did you help us?” she asked, swiping her damp mane out of her face. Goldenrod’s head came up, slowly.  “He-he told us to.” Bones raised his head, water dripping from his glowing eyesockets.  The trooper blinked at the undead pony and backed up a step. “Aten-hutt!” Bones growled. All three troopers snapped to attention so fast they might as well have been yanked up by their ears and tails.   “Stand up straight.  Hold still. Let’s hear a ‘Sir, yes, sir!” “Sir, yes, sir!” all three shouted at the tops of their lungs. Taxi squinted at the troopers as she carefully climbed off of Hardy’s body.  A thin stream of filth was washing off each of her hooves as she stood, cautiously approaching Goldenrod and his two companions.  Reaching up, she waved a hoof in front of his nose. His eyes followed her leg, but he didn’t move to stop her. “Huh...Alright, take your masks off,” Taxi ordered.  The P.A.C.T. ponies scrambled to strip their balaclavas off and toss their thick goggles at her hooves.   Goldenrod was a silvery teal stallion with scars criss-crossing his nose and a chopped short mane.  He might as well have been printed from the P.A.C.T. recruitment guide. He was a bit young, but his companions were barely out of their teens.  Lute was a swarthy mare, her shoulder-length braid tucked into a golden bangle that suggested a zebra ancestry. The last of their group was a thin red mare with ropes of ugly, thick muscle standing out from her neck that suggested near emaciation while still projecting a lanky strength. “What are you thinking?” Limerence asked, glancing at Taxi. “Not sure yet,” she replied, then turned back to the soldiers.  “Alright everypony! Give me your biggest smiles! I want to see those chompers!” Without hesitation, Goldenrod and his squadmates cracked ridiculously outsized grins.  All three were sporting muzzles full of dangerous, half-inch-long meat-ripping teeth. Limerence’s eyes lit up.  “Aha! That is most interesting.” “Interesting isn’t the word I’d use.”  Taxi exhaled, then looked back at the warped vault door and wiped sweat from her forehead.  “Phew. Why is it so hot in here?  And what did you do to the Office?” “The heat is a side effect, but...I...shall explain when Hard Boiled is back amongst the living.  Needless to say, if the Scry has survived, we were unlikely to be able to destroy it anyway. Meanwhile...these three present a unique opportunity!” “Opp-opportunity?” Goldenrod stammered, his ears pinned back. “Yes!  Now, then...Sit!” Limerence commanded. All three troopers’ flanks hit the carpet. The librarian’s smile grew a little wider as he picked up his sword in his levitation field and quickly sheathed it.  “Roll over and bark like a dog!” With a clank of weapons and armor, the troopers flopped onto their backs on the wet carpet and let out a few half-hearted yips.   “Sweet Celestia, Lim,” Taxi muttered, glancing up as the sprinklers finally gave out, leaving the floor sloshing underhoof.  “You could have just told them to wiggle their ears.” “This is a more useful data point, I think,” he replied, then frowned as he plucked his watch out of his pocket.  Turning it over, he removed the back and studied the glowing interior for a moment before letting out a sigh of relief.  “Thank Celestia. The mind control field is gone. I had less than ten minutes left before returning to-” He shuddered and shut his eyes.  “-work.” “Speaking of short time, how long were we in there?” Bones asked, gesturing at the watch.   “I don’t know, nor shall I for some while.”  Limerence sighed and pocketed his watch. “The mental fail-safe magic disrupts all the other spellwork in the Archivists’ timepieces and the pony who can repair them is most likely dead or in hiding.  Needless to say, I believe we should move quickly.  Miss Swift is not known for patience or rationality when left to her own devices.” Taxi reached up into her mane and rooted around for a second.  “No problem there. I’ve got a...oh…” Lowering her hoof, she stared at a tiny insectoid body lying on it.  The ladybug was curled up on its back, legs in the air, distinctly dead. Bones plucked his ladybug from his sports jacket pocket.  It was also unmoving. “Damn.  I hate hopping dimensions.  Something like that always happens.  Poor little guy.”     Flicking a hoof under his lapel, Limerence pulled his own ladybug out, then shut his eyes and tucked the small corpse back in his vest.  “We will remember their sacrifice, but for now, we need to get out of the Office.”     “Do we have some way of figuring out if we disabled the Scry?” Taxi asked.     “Unless you wish to reopen that vault, I cannot think how.  However, if the Scry survived my attack, then...as I said, we could not have destroyed it.”     Taking a step closer, Taxi shoved her nose into the librarian’s face.  “You get as much of a grace period as it takes us to get back to the Dragon Flagon Wagon before you’re going to lay out for me precisely what you meant by the words ‘no safe minimum distance’ when you were telling us to close that door.”     “Ahem...Understood.”  Limerence flicked an ear at the three P.A.C.T. troopers who were still lying on the carpet.  “What are we to do with them? Their minds are obviously not their own, though I find it interesting that the control spells seem to have no safeties to prevent conflicting instructions.”     Taxi swung her loose mane out of the way and nudged the convoyer still gamely attached to the side of her neck.  “Get up. Are you three wearing one of these?” she asked.     The female whose name they hadn’t heard got to her hooves and tugged down the edge of her armor, revealing another of the tiny creatures on her throat.     “Do they interfere with your conditioning?” Limerence inquired.     “C-conditioning?” Goldenrod asked as he stood.  “What conditioning?”     Taxi wrung a bit of re-wetted blood out of her mane and asked, “Why do you obey our orders?”     “B-because you gave them?” Lute replied, as though that explained everything.     Limerence, Taxi, and Bones exchanged a meaningful look.     “Right.  We’ve got three puppets hunting strings here and I don’t feel like conducting an interrogation standing in this hallway,” Bones grumbled.  “If we succeeded, then there will be reinforcements coming to figure out why their trump card has suddenly stopped working.”     “Shall we take them with us, then?” Limerence asked.  “It would be useful to know if the spell that forces their obedience can be broken.”     “There’s some simple math there, Lim.  They have guns. We don’t. I don’t feel like killing any more helpless ponies and it’d be nice to have some extra eyes watching our backs,” Taxi replied, clapping her hooves as she returned her attention to the troopers.  “What are your names?”     “Private Goldenrod.”     “Private Lute Palomino.”     “Private Tank Tread.”     Nodding to herself, Taxi waved a leg at Goldenrod’s shotgun.  “What were your previous orders?”     “You...you mean the ones before you told us to get up or before you told us roll over and bark like a dog?” he asked, quizzically.     “Yes, before that,” she grumbled.       Goldenrod straightened until she was worried he might tip over if he raised his muzzle any higher.  “We have no prior orders, Ma’am! Our first orders were to roll over and bark like a dog, then to get up!”     It took Taxi a moment to work through that statement, then her ears drooped.  “You don’t remember any orders before that? Do you remember helping us shut that door?”       A slightly perplexed look crossed the stallion’s face and his eyes darted to his companions for a moment, but they both looked equally puzzled.  “No Ma’am! No prior orders. We...I...I don’t know how I got here...”     Bones clacked his teeth together and let out an airy whistle.  “Oooh, boy, now that’s a kick in the head.  You sure you want this lot watching our flanks, missy?”     “Honestly?  Even moreso.  If they’re too cooked to remember why they were sent here, they’re too cooked to shoot us in the back.”  Trotting over, Taxi carefully lifted Hardy. After a second, she felt the tingle of a magic field and felt Limerence applying his horn to helping her balance her friend’s limp weight.  “Can you charge his heart, Lim?”     “Not enough to make a difference in his condition,” Limerence muttered, slinging his sheathed sword back across his shoulders.     “Then we’re going.  You three? Your orders are to keep us safe.”     ----     ‘He needs me.’     It was the only thought keeping Taxi going as she staggered past the burned remains of P.A.C.T. troopers piled up beside one another like so much kindling.  She recognized the fighting style that’d brought them down as her own, but only flashes of the actual kills existed in the distant corners of her mind. Much as she felt she ought to be disturbed, she was mostly just tired.     ‘I swear, he’s doing it on purpose,’ she mused, to herself, heaving the body up on her back a bit higher.  ‘He gets to spend the ends of these little adventures dead, and I end up hauling his flank around like a sack of turnips.  I hate to think what he’d have been like as a foal if ‘death, then a nap’ had been an option. I’d have never got him out of the house.’     She glanced over at Limerence who was trotting along, head down, seemingly lost in thought.  His lips were moving, as though he were whispering to somepony, but she couldn’t hear any specific words coming out of his mouth.  Tapping her talent for as short a time as she could to get a sense of him, she blanched at the list of unfulfilled needs it spat back at her; he was barely into his twenties and ‘straitjacket’ was uncomfortably close to the top.     Turning to Bones, she touched him with her thoughts, again briefly as she could.  He only needed cigarettes, a stiff drink, and a kindhearted mare who didn’t mind a bit of necrophilia.   ‘Right.  Face forward. Keep moving. Never use my talent on an undead again as long as I live.  Solid. Glad I could get that in writing.’ She didn’t need to focus on the P.A.C.T. troopers to feel what they needed; it hadn’t changed. They needed orders. Nothing else. Not food, nor sleep, nor water.  Just orders. ---- The elevator ride was a bit cramped, but the troopers didn’t seem to have a concept of personal space left to them and hence could be stacked a bit like cordwood in one corner. As they wove their way down, Bones paused long enough to step over a dead body and buck open a cigarette machine to loot a pocket full of fresh packs.  The air hung heavy with the stink of burnt bodies, but a little later he still stopped to pick up the still-smouldering end of a femur bone and light a smoke before offering one to Limerence.  The librarian quietly took the cigarette, quickly puffed at it for a moment, then was reduced to a gagging fit. Taxi tried to force her mind into a state of preparedness in case another fight broke out, but she didn’t have the mental resources.  She felt a bone deep exhaustion that’d stolen her will to do more than put one hoof in front of the other. When the elevator doors dinged and they were let out into the hall overlooking the ruined foyer, she could only look down with a quiet resignation.   All those bodies and nopony to bury them.  Dead in heaps and dead in piles. ‘I’m going to end my days digging a grave for the whole world,’ she thought, stopping for a second to nudge the scorched-out skull of a P.A.C.T. creature, outsized fangs still hooked over the remains of its shattered jaw.  She moved on, listening to the slow settling of the building. ---- Time passed.   If there’s one distinct advantage to being temporarily dead, it’s being able to check out for extended periods.  At some point after my short discussion with Nightmare Moon, I’d simply drifted away from the mortal coil into somewhere gloriously empty.  It was cool, gentle, and quiet. It was a place I would have been perfectly happy to stay. With that, nopony should be surprised I woke with a start to a ringing skull, a burning cheek, and a sore muzzle. “Hmmm...He looks like he’s coming out of it.  Maybe hit him again?” Before I could protest, somepony landed a blow on the other cheek that rocked my head around on my neck.  I winced and waved a weak hoof, swallowing a few times to get enough saliva into my mouth to form words. “Mmmerfle…D-do we always need to d-do this?” I asked, weakly.    “That’s definitely Hardy.” Ah...That voice. My lovely driver.   “You died.  What did I tell you I would do if you died again?” Taxi demanded from somewhere on my left.  Such a kind pony. So sweet. “N-not my f-fault,” I mumbled, pitifully, as though that would save me.  My legs didn’t seem to be working properly, and as I opened my eyes all I could make out was several colorful blurs against a black background.  Fortunately, my nose was operating just fine. Incense, cigarettes, spilled alcohol, and scared griffin.     “Oh, I know!  You let yourself get possessed!  Possessed, and then shot in the butt.  Do you know how much blood I have to get out of my tail?”     Another voice chimed in, punctuated by the snap of a cigarette lighter and a long, indrawn breath. “To be fair, missy, most of that blood ain’t his.”     “I don’t care!  He died! I am going to be peeved!”     “Can you be peeved later?” a bobbing, bright orange shape added from the corner of my vision. “We really, really need to get out of here!”   ‘Swift! Oh, thank goodness you aren’t dead,’ I thought, though I didn’t have the energy to say it out loud.  ‘Of course, if you aren’t dead, then that means-’ A soft, slightly chunky weight landed on my stomach, and something sharp poked me in the snoot. “I and I swear, Eggpony.  I be going to bop you in the male bits next time you be making me wait like that!  You be leaving me with the borin’ pegasusus!” I carefully put a hoof around Mags, hugging her to my chest as her wings flopped down over my sides and her tail coiled around one of my back legs.  The tiny griffin let out a gruff sigh, then relaxed as I held her close. Agency over one’s own body is terribly underrated. “It’s good to see you, too, Mags,” I replied, reaching up to wipe at my eyes.  Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to help. “Anypony know why I can’t see? Everything looks like a toddler’s hoofpainting.” A gentle tingle of magic swept across my eyes, then crept under my skin in a fashion that made me shiver.   “Your optic nerve is damaged.  It’s a consequence of severe blood loss,” Limerence said, from off to my left as the energy faded away.  “It should heal soon. How much of what just happened do you remember? Anything?”     Mags hopped off my chest as I rolled over onto my side and drew in a breath that tasted like rancid meat.  “Enough. You can fill me in on the details as we go. Where are we?”     A yellow blob moved into my field of view, though my eyes wouldn’t quite focus on it.  “We’re back in that toy shop, in the Dragon Wagon,” Taxi murmured, “There’s more than a little commotion outside.  I’ve counted five teams of P.A.C.T. headed for the Office. Whatever else we did, I’m pretty sure we kicked over one heavily armed ant-hill.  I don’t want to make a run for it just yet.”     “I hope that means we took out the Scry.  Have we been able to contact the Vivarium?” I asked. “I tried to see you with my ladybug, but...it...it sat there and looked frightened,” Swift said, nervously.  “The radio isn’t working, either. Or the walkie talkies. I can feel Tourniquet, but she’s very, very distracted.  Something...bad...has happened.”     I reached up to touch my hat for comfort and my hoof brushed against something trailing from my chest.  Feeling along its length, I found a plug attached to my heart and became aware of a soft buzzing sound coming from somewhere under my hooves.  I gave it a yank, pulling the plug free.     “One of these days, I want to get to participate in the escaping portion of one of these plans,” I groused, then rubbed at my eyes.  “Lim, can we use the Dragon Wagon’s stealth?”     Limerence leaned between the front seats, then shook his head and tapped his staff.  “It is drained. I have enough magic for a brief Silence, however. I suppose having our ‘prisoners’ create a distraction would be out of the question.”     I stiffened and looked back and forth, much good as it might have done me.  “Prisoners? We have prisoners? When did we get prisoners?”     “I...I...I think he m-means us, Mister Boiled,” a reedy, unfamiliar voice said from the other side of the compartment.       Jerking back, I bumped into the seat.     “Who said that?  Speak up!”     “Private Goldenrod, sir.”     “Private?” I asked.     “We...I think we might be P.A.C.T. troopers, sir,” the voice mumbled.  “I d-don’t really know. Everything is fuzzy. Can you please t-tell me what to do?  I need orders.”     I flicked an ear toward where I’d last heard Taxi’s voice.  “How many of them are there?”     “Three, sir,” Swift interjected.  “I don’t like it either, but they’re like I was when you found me in that griffin bar.  They don’t even know what happened to them. Bones wanted to shoot them to make sure they didn’t tell anypony where we’d been, but--”     I held up my hoof and turned in the direction the voices had come from.  “You three. Ponies who may or may not be, provisionally, our prisoners. Do you know where you are right now?”     Silence.   I was getting tired of not being able to see, because I’d have liked some additional input.   “N-no,” a soft mare’s voice muttered.       “Right.  Until such time as I figure out what to do with you lot, sit there and shut up.”  I put a hoof on Mags’ head and waited until I heard three sets of buttocks hit the seats at the back of the cabin.   Complications.  Endless, needless complications.   In the police emergency response manual, the first priority it always to set priorities.  Bullets flying at you rate higher than bullets flying at other ponies.  It’s a bit counterintuitive that self-sacrifice is discouraged in cops, but the logic is that you can’t save anyone’s life if you’re dead.  Having thoroughly disregarded that line on multiple occasions, I felt a bit qualified to push my own survival a little lower on the totem pole.   “Swift?  You’re in charge of this bunch,” I ordered. “Me, Sir?!” “Your job is to get them to Tourniquet and get her to slap her magic on them.  You think you can do it?” “You...you want to see if she can fix them like she fixed me?” Putting a hoof out, I felt her move underneath it.  “The center of the city is full of ponies who’ve lost themselves.  Win or lose, when it comes to it, friend or enemy, they’re still ponies.  We need a plan to save them.” I couldn’t see her expression, but I could hear her suck a breath through her teeth, then slowly exhale.   “Y-yes, Sir,” she whispered, as I let her go and stepped back.  “What...what if we can’t save them?” “Then, kid...it’s in the hooves of the Princesses,” I replied, turning to my driver.  “Sweets? Take us to the Vivarium.” ---- I stared out the front windows at the remains of my city as it coasted by in the red gleam of the Darkening.  It was a sight for sore eyes, and my eyes were ever so sore, though my vision seemed to have recovered somewhat.  We were rolling through an old shopping district which had been barricaded on both sides with cars, though whoever had maintained the barricade was dead or run off, leaving only a few burnt-out vehicles.  The view left a sour taste in my mouth and an empty ache in my chest. Limerence’s silence blanketed the engine, though the sound of the tires grinding over the pavement still felt too loud in the enclosed space. Would grandmothers ever sit on those benches and complain about the youth again?  Would foals run through that playground, watched by proud, harried parents? Would the sky ever be blue, again? Probably not.  Frost was already clinging to the browned grass and icy, crystalline fingers had started to creep over the edges of windows.     Pulling off my hat, I stared at the black felt.  A bit of blood smudged the brim and more than a little ash, but it still smelled faintly like Scarlet’s perfume.  I put it to my nose and inhaled for a second, before slapping it back on my head. There’d be time for those thoughts when I knew he and Lily were safe.     I looked down at the spot between the passenger and driver seats where Limerence sat.  The librarian’s mane was pasted to his neck by drying blood and his eyes were shut in what appeared to be a light meditation.  His horn glowed like a candle in the dark as he kept his spell in place. The young stallion’s face was sharply lined and he’d already developed a few crow’s feet around his eyes.     Sad to see a pony so young starting to look like me.     Clearing my throat, I reached down and gave him a light nudge.     “Lim?”     “Yes, Detective?” he responded, eyes still closed.     “What did you do to the Office?”     His opened his eyes and a cold smile grew on his face as he returned my gaze. “Physics.”     ----     Not long ago, in the Office control room:     “Do you think they will make it, brother?” Limerence asked, his staff levitating beside him as he stood at the vast panel which maintained and administered the arcane functions of the strange dimension.       His brother didn’t respond to the question, nor did Limerence expect him to.  Zefu was, no doubt, still adapting to his new living arrangements and had always been prone to sulking when confronted with a challenge he couldn’t overcome.  Still, it would have been nice to have his input.     “You are right, of course.  It is irrelevant,” Limerence mused, propping the staff against the window as he turned back to the binder of instructions, thumbing open the index.  “Detrot must have a fighting chance and blah-de-blah-de-blah. How is it the detective always has a witty and noble sentiment in times like these?”     His hooves were itching to begin throwing toggles and playing with switches, but such pleasures were for ponies who weren’t on a timeframe.     “I wish I could find the pony who wrote this mess and rub his nose in a technical manual,” he sighed, rolling his neck back and forth.  “Alright, fine. Start from scratch. This switch controls location and this controls mass, therefore this dial...is mass entering the portal before the portal switches locations.  I suppose that would make these...ehm...aha!  These are the macro system.  So, I can save instructions to be carried out in succession!  Wonderful. That will simplify things.” Flipping to the next page, he exhaled.  “Now, then: safety systems to be disabled.”  He hesitated, then narrowed his eyes at the binder, before going back to the panel.  His smile returned, sharper than before. “Oh, Celestia...this must have been designed by an overworked engineer.  Nopony else could be so simultaneously brilliant and magnificently stupid.” Tilting his head towards his staff, he added under his breath, “Of course, when one is committing suicide, a ‘safety’ is probably unnecessary, but not having one is ridiculous.” Performing some quick math, he had a moment to glance toward the window again.  The approaching pair of troopers were even closer to his position, though they’d been slowed somewhat by an errant desk that’d decided, for some reason, to wander into the aisle between the cubicles.  An Overseer beast was quickly herding it out of their way. “It’s been some time since I converted to a mathematical system created by a higher intelligence, but...well, you won’t mind sparing a little magic to do sums, will you, brother?” he muttered, picking his staff up once more and unsheathing the edge a few inches.  A thin stream of bright green energy leapt from the naked metal to his horn as the screaming face on the blade twisted into an angry grimace. Sweeping his horn back and forth across the dials, he waited for several seconds, then breathed a sigh of relief as an array of glowing letters and numbers burst into being, hanging in the air beside the mechanisms.  Brushing a few symbols out of his face with one hoof, he quickly rearranged several others into a new configuration. The numbers seemed to flow and sweep like a thick mist, coiling around his head to be summoned up at will. “Now, then, my dark dimension,” Limerence whispered, a lick of flame dripping from the tip of his brightly burning horn.   “Hear my instructions and pay heed. Your new master has a few little errands for you to run.” ---- They moved with deadly precision, ducking between aisles as they closed in on the control room.   Their teeth were sharp. Their orders were clear.   They might not know where the orders had come from, but that was irrelevant; they had orders.  Orders were everything. Both longed to join the chase behind them, but they’d been told to secure the control room and make certain the ponies who were attempting to escape had left behind no surprises. Of course, if that surprise happened to be another pony, all the better; they’d been given no orders regarding disposal of any prisoners they might acquire and both their bellies were rumbling.  A delicious, still-screaming meal was just the thing after a mission. Reaching the elevator, the two predators paused to check their weapons, then pressed the ‘up’ button.  After a few seconds, the elevator *dinged*, and the doors slid open. They quickly swept the interior, then piled in beside one another, edging against the walls so as to be out of the line of any fire when the door reopened.  The left hunter unlimbered a ballistic shield and readied it, while his fellow set his shotgun atop it and prepared to gun down any easy targets. He aimed a bit low, not wishing to pick lead out of his teeth, but those who’d given orders hadn’t specified how lethal nor merciful they were to be in carrying out their directives.  Orders were orders, but feasting was feasting, and it was easier to simply rip open a torso without having to worry overmuch about spitting out shot. Leg meat was delicious, but the necessity of bringing down a target came first. The elevator let out another *ding* and the doors slid open on a strange scene that gave them momentary pause. A young stallion stood before a giant glowing golden portal stretching from floor to ceiling.  The unicorn held an unsheathed sword, its tip leaking a thin trickle of green magical energies that touched his horn.  Glancing over his shoulder at them, he waved a hoof. “Gentlecolts, I would recommend you don’t follow me,” he said. The predators tensed, but before they could recover, the stallion leaped into the portal and was gone.   They rushed forward and quickly scanned the room, finding it empty.   Their orders were clear. With one last look around, they jumped into the portal after the unicorn. ---- “It was a simple trick, I suppose.  I noticed the portals give positive motion to whatever passes through them.  They accelerate anything that moves in to make sure it also exits the other side.  It required a bit of higher math, but...I set it to accept only the average mass of a grown stallion, a grown mare, and an equine skeleton, then move itself into the control room.  When it appeared I knew that the three of you had passed through and escaped. Then, I left another instruction to move it again, once it had accepted my mass through, then allowed that of two troopers to pass in, but not exit.  There was no safety preventing me from putting one portal inside of another...so once I leapt through, the portal in the control room moved to the vault.” “Wait, wait, wait!”  Swift huffed, trying to keep up as she poked her head over Limerence’s flank.  “You...moved one of the portals inside the other with...with two ponies inside it?” Limerence frowned at the interruption.  “That is correct. The portal is a wormhole matrix suspended inside a three dimensional liquid medium.  Hence the slightly...gooey...sensation of passing through it.” “Alright, I get the...I get the idea, but what caused the whole thing to explode?” I asked, quizzically. “As I said, Detective...Physics,” he replied, tapping his chest.  “Remember I said it gives positive acceleration? With the portals inside of one another, they’d effectively become a loop, and each passage increased the troopers’ exit speed.  It wasn’t perfect, hence the energy leak, but...they accelerated and accelerated and accelerated until they reached what I calculated to be an appreciable percentage of the speed of light.  An accelerating body gains mass. Once their mass reached that of a small star...well...I ordered the exit portal to move back to the Office’s control room.” I was still confused, but Swift’s ears slowly lay back against her head as she seemed to gradually comprehend what he’d done. “You opened the portal and...they’d have come out as almost pure energy, right?” she whispered, with a hint of awe. “I believe the closest scientific terminology is ‘relativistic bomb’.” I reached down and carefully put a hoof under Limerence’s chin, turning his face to mine.  “I want you to use very small words, when you answer my next question, Lim.  If you’d been wrong...how much damage could this have done to Detrot?” His eyebrows rose a few inches, then he shrugged.  “I considered it worth the risk.” I grabbed his thin face in both hooves and forced him to look up into my eyes.  “That’s not what I asked. How much damage?” The librarian licked his lips, his gaze darting away from mine for a moment.  “Eh...it...ahem, it would have likely leveled the city...to a radius of twenty miles.” I released his jaw.   “You felt it was worth the risk to kill everypony in Detrot?” Taxi hissed, putting a little more weight behind her hoof as she gassed the engine.   Limerence slowly nodded.  “If I succeeded, we had the opportunity to take back Detrot.  If I failed, Detrot was lost...but the world would have survived.” “How does that work?” Swift asked, ruffling her feathers. “You tactically minded ponies…” Bones rumbled in our thoughts.  “You don’t think on the big scale.  Not like him. Take a minute. Stop worrying about everypony you love.  Think!” There was a moment where nopony spoke.  As always, when it came to strategic thinking, my driver was first to catch on. “If...if the city exploded, it would probably destroy the Web of Dark Wishes...and...and kill that army of creatures in Uptown,” Taxi said, gently applying the brake as we nudged an old cart off the road with our front bumper. I put my face in my hooves.  “Right...and an explosion like that might have disrupted the magics keeping the Princesses trapped on the moon.  The world would have survived. Equestria could have rebuilt with the loss of one city. Mercy, Limerence. You’d have sacrificed...everyone...to save the world.” “I...I assure you that it was not a decision made lightly, Detective,” the librarian muttered. My stomach was doing a ragtime dance and I felt more than a little light-headed as the full weight of the implications set in. There’d been a moment, back there, when a coin was in the air.  On one side, a world saved at the cost of a city. On the other, the world maybe saved by a band of idiots who’d put that coin in the air in the first place. It was a moment when everypony I loved might have been disintegrated in a wave of fire, with no true way to know which was more likely to happen and, once the coin was up, no way to stop it landing on one side or the other. The control freak in my soul wanted to shout myself silly at the stallion.  It was a silly impulse, but some base part of my moral system dictated that nopony should willingly take so many lives in their hooves.  I knew it was hypocritical; I’d taken lives in my hooves every day since I found Ruby Blue’s body lying on the pavement outside the High Step.     “It...it was the right call, Lim,” I said, at last,  “I hate that you had to make that decision, but it was the right call.”     He looked noticeably relieved as he shut his eyes and went back to his meditations.  We were all filthy, covered in blood, and only slightly less foul than we’d been before the sprinklers went off back in the Office, but we were alive.  Nopony died. Well… “Lim, what...precisely did you do to Zefu?” “I’m using his soul as a mana battery.  I’ll send him to damnation after we’re done saving the world.  It’ll be in the debriefing, if we get to have one.” “Oh.” ---- Five minutes of silent driving later, I was getting restless.  It should have been impossible to be anything but tired, but I’d been a mostly passive observer to the day’s events.  There were too many discussions that needed to happen and I couldn’t decide which one to have first, so I simply sat, listening to the tires. Everypony jumped as the radio squawked at us. “This is Gypsy calling the Detective!  Can you hear me? Dammit, if you’re alive, you better say something or I swear I will find whatever lever in this File Cloud lets me yank your stupid tail out of the afterlife!” There was a moment of comic fumbling with the radio mic before I managed to grab it and slap the ‘talk’ button.   “Gypsy!  Gypsy?! Thank Celestia!  What happened out there? We lost radio contact and our ladybugs are dead!” “Hard Boiled?!  Is that you? I can barely hear you!” “It’s me, Gypsy!  What’s the story out there?” “Nothing good!” she replied, gasping for breath.  “We’ve lost radio contact with the Morgue, the Vivarium, and Sky Town!  Tourniquet lost three quarters of the city power grid! Electricity is out almost everywhere and Supermax is cut off!  We’ve seen major troop movements towards the other city strongholds, and there are fires in the Heights! Where are you headed?” I closed my eyes, putting a hoof over my heart.  It felt like it’d sunk right into my hooves. “We’re aiming for the Vivarium.  Are the ladybugs working?” I asked, trying to ignore my friends’ eyes.  I could hear the dozen silent questions they wanted me to ask, but they knew what the priorities were. “Queenie says the swarm had to pull back to less than two dozen so the hivemind wouldn’t collapse.  Something out there is messing with communication systems in a big way. All of them.” “How are we talking?  Am I going to lose you, soon?” “You should be nearing the Twenty-Third Street Police Department.  There’s a transmitter there that’s working. I’ve been waiting for the cab’s receiver to enter the range of a signal and sending a call back code so it’d let me know.  The File Cloud is still tapped into a few police systems. Tourniquet says I have about a minute and a half before she has to cut this transmission.  We’re using enough power to parboil a sea serpent and the transmitter is going to fry.” I swallowed, then gripped the mic in both hooves.  “Alright. That complicates everything, but...tell Tourniquet to send runners through the sewers to the Vivarium, the Morgue, Sky Town and the Underdogs’ village.  Get status updates from all of them, then have them come to Stella’s.” “What about the Scry?” she asked.  “Won’t the P.A.C.T. see our movements?” I turned to Limerence and he nodded.   “It’s destroyed,” I said. “Huh...That explains that!  The nasties all pulled back towards Uptown about fifteen minutes ago.  You should have a clean run to the Heights. Don’t get dead, Hard Boiled.” “Too late, Gypsy.  We need everyone who still controls capable fighters to meet at one safe location, once I figure out what ‘safe’ means.” “I’m on the job.  Send the runner back when you’ve got ‘safe’ sussed.  This is the Lady of the Signal, signing off.” “Egghead out,” I mumbled, slapping the mic back into its holster.   Swift stuck her head between the seats and Mags crawled up her back to join us. “Sir?  Do you think--” “No, kid,” I said, before she could finish,  “We are not conjecturing. We’ll be n the Heights soon.  Get the Hailstorm on.” “Are we expecting more trouble?” Taxi asked, then yawned capaciously.  “I don’t think I have another fight in me. Not without some food and sleep.” . “Me either, but...if we have to fight, we fight.  I refuse to die with extra-dimensional farts as my last meal.”