//------------------------------// // Act 3 Chapter 63: Detrot Rises // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale // by Chessie //------------------------------//     It was a moment they would remember the rest of their lives, though none knew how long those lives might be.       Lightning flashed in the File Cloud, cracking the sky like a hammerblow.  Thunder shook every being in the vast throng gathered below the Fortress Everfree.  The army quailed, made only worse by the face that appeared in the cloud itself.     It was a face from their deepest, darkest childhood fears; Nightmare Moon, the great terror.  The projection was massive and the effect, powerful, Most could just make out the mare standing on the edge of the roof and there was no doubt in anypony’s mind who it was.  Her fangs flashed and thousands shook as though the very air itself had become volatile. Her great, black mane flowed out from her skull like a wave of ink, blotting out a section of the sky.   A few thought to raise their weapons, only to have them knocked down by the Marked who were spread through the crowd.   The silence that followed was broken only by the rumble of the clouds.         Nightmare Moon studied the army for a long moment, letting them soak in her presence as the vast host shivered under her gaze.  Spreading her black wings, she reared back and her voice rolled out across the distance, amplified so even the deafest and farthest member of the assembled creatures could hear her.       “Equestrians!  Hear me! I am that which stalks your darkest dreams.  I am...The Nightmare!”     At her name, shrieks went up, but still the crowd did not move.  They were transfixed by her and some part of them which was older than any individual life froze their hooves to the ground; she was the predator and they, the prey.  Yet she hadn’t moved to attack.     After a moment, Nightmare Moon continued.     “In this evilest of times, strange alliances become necessary!  Today, I come to fight alongside you! In a dead world, there can be no more dreams for me to haunt!  There will be no more foals to frighten! There will be no more fear for my dinner, and I will starve!  If you die, so too, shall I die!”     Ponies began to look back and forth at one another, confusion on their faces.  She didn’t give them time to adjust to the odd state of affairs. Before their bemusement could form into questions, she continued. “If there are no shadows, where will I creep?  For there to be shadow...there must be light!” Rising up, she jabbed an accusing hoof towards the Eclipse.  “I say, for all my crimes, that there is no evil like the evil they have perpetrated upon you!  I say, I will not stand for it! I have thrown down my gauntlets! Today, I ride into battle alongside the one you call Dead Heart!  For the sake of dreams...Now, so must you!”     Another flash of lightning crackled across the File Cloud, blinding all those looking up at Nightmare Moon for just an instant.  When the dazzling light faded, she was gone. In her place there was the image of a grey stallion with golden eyes. His face was familiar to everyone. They’d seen his pictures in the pamphlets dropped by the enemy.  They’d heard the stories of him, told by the radio ponies. They’d witnessed his great deeds.   Some had seen his body, before he rose from the dead.  A few had heard his voice, telling them to stand strong against monsters who were never meant to exist in Equestria.  A smattering rode into battle beside him, to save their families, their clans, or their honor. All knew his name. His eyes were sunken, but harder than steel.  He didn’t shake from the cold, nor did the bitter wind seem to touch him.  His coat billowed out behind him like a cape as he stood there in the red glow of the Darkening.   He was not impressive the way Nightmare Moon was impressive, but something in him seemed to buoy them up. At once, voices began to go up. “Bulldog!” “Chief!” “Dead Heart!” “Crusadah!” “High Justice!” He waited for them to die down, then took a deep breath and began to speak. “You all know who I am!” After a few seconds, a steady thump of hooves, claws, and wings began to beat against the earth. The shouts grew even louder. “Today, the monsters in Uptown are going to attack our city!  Anyone not in a bunker will die if they are unchallenged!” The beat faltered for a moment.  Ponies eyed the center of the city, fearfully, then turned their attention back to the Detective.   He seemed unafraid, so they were unafraid. “I’m going into Uptown!  You can stay here and be safe, behind these walls, or you can follow me!  I’ve crawled through the gutters of this city! I have seen the dead by their thousands!  I have seen the plan these monsters have, and you are not in it! I’ll do it alone, if I have to, but I am going into Uptown, one way or another, and those bastards are going to pay in blood for what they’ve done to our city!” The army’s thumping applause reached a mighty crescendo as the Detective threw his leg out over them. “The Princesses will return!” he continued, his amplified voice like a warhorn rolling through a valley.  “They have not abandoned you! I have gone far from the city and spoken to them with magic! They were banished to the Moon, and if we win this day, we will bring them back!  I have enslaved the Nightmare to my will, and she will keep you safe from fear!” They heard his words, and they believed. They didn’t need to know the truth.  The truth wouldn’t have kept them alive. “Today, we are one!” he shouted.   “Today, this horror ends!” “Today...Detrot Rises!” Again, the lightning flashed...and he was gone.   The Scholar I stumbled away from the edge of the roof, falling to my front knees and puking into the gravel.  It wasn’t dignified, but it was better than horking on the crowd of ponies down below. My shoulders shook as I wiped the back of my mouth on my sleeve, then wrestled down another racking case of vertigo which threatened to empty whatever was left of my stomach.   “That bad, huh?” Gypsy murmured, appearing at my shoulder, Telly’s half-formed body floating beside her.  She reached out to touch me, then thought better of it. “That bad,” I muttered, clutching the lapel of my coat shut as the wind picked up and the snow began to catch in my fur.  “I don’t like heights, I don’t like crowds, I don’t like public speaking, and I damn well don’t like the notion that I just convinced a bunch of those poor people to go die for me.” Gypsy snorted, or at least, it sounded a bit like a snort. Considering she didn’t have a nose, it was a neat trick. “None of them are dying for you, Hard Boiled,” she replied.  “You’re a figurehead, same as me.  They’ll die for their neighbors, or their friends, or their families, if they do die, but convincing them to go out there is the only way they’ve got a chance to live.  By the way, do you want a bottle of wine to go with that ham?  That speech was ridiculous. The trick with the image of Nightmare Moon was neat, but the rest of that reminded me of a stump speech for a cartoon character running for office.” I cocked an ear towards the crowd who were still stomping their hooves and cheering loud enough to shake the building.   “They seemed to like it well enough,” I said. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t pull it straight out of a television program,” Telly added, floating down to my head height.  “Anyway, who cares whose conscience all this is on? Today, they fight or real soon they’re extinct. There aren’t a whole lot of in between outcomes.” “You seem to have found a decent ‘in between’, if you ask me,” I said, flicking my tail at the File Cloud. “You want to get all of Equestria in a line and march them up here, I’ll be glad for the company, but I don’t think they’ll be thrilled with the fine print.” I finally succumbed to the shivering, staggering upright.  “If it comes to that, we’ll make ‘dissolve the bodies of all ponykind and suspend their spirits in a magic cloud’ plan D or E.  I’m pretty sure we can come up with something before we’re there, though. Where’s Swift?” “Your friends are already headed to their teams,” Telly murmured.  “Taxi is taking Firebrand, Ambrock, and Vexis out to her staging point so she can intercept Propana after some kind of detour through the Skids.” “Limerence is headed for a Shield Pylon about six miles from here on the edge of the waste zone,” Gypsy added, pointing off to our left. Shaking dust off my hooves, I sighed.  “They didn’t even stop to say goodbye?”   “That was Swift’s idea, if you can believe it,” Telly answered, spinning in a little circle.  “She told them you’d keep yourself alive if you thought you’d never get to say ‘bye’.” I clenched my teeth to keep myself from smiling.  “The little turkey is right, but dammit, I don’t like that she knows me that well.”   Turning on my heels, I trotted for the door down into the fortress.  Truth be, I couldn’t get off that roof fast enough. My heart was still pounding like mad and the adrenaline was making my teeth chatter.   “Hardy?” Telly called out and I paused mid-step, not looking back, lest I lose my nerve, again.   “Yeah?” “I want my job back,” she said, just loud enough for me to catch it over the whistling winds. “You think I can make that happen?” I asked. “You’re the pony who just told all those people down there that you’d walk into Uptown alone if you had to.  I just want to sit behind the console at the Castle and shoot the shit with five hundred cops while listening to pop music and secretly reading porn in my desk drawer.  I want to order in doughnuts by the hundreds on an expense account and watch pissy little rookies become officers of the law.  If anyone can bring those days back to me...it’s you.  Die if you have to, but...don’t fail.” With that, Telly and Gypsy both vanished into mist that dissolved upwards into the File Cloud, leaving me alone, listening to the army below readying themselves for war.   ---- An hour passed, though I’ve only a few specific memories.  Most of it was a blur. I’d come out of the swinging security doors of Fortress Everfree to a cheering crowd, though they only shouted my name for a moment before darting off to the tasks they’d been assigned.  One wouldn’t think an armed camp could come together so quickly, but there were no less than three extremely capable armies organizing it and ponies are a species of herd animals with a powerful survival instinct for being where they needed to be. Sykes swung by to hug me so hard I’m pretty sure he broke a few ribs before winging off into the sky with a squad of fliers.   Dogenes put in an appearance with a group of his diamond dogs; the weird bastard had some mad idea about creating a fallback position underground in case the monsters got on top of us.  I figured it couldn’t hurt to let him try. Slip Stitch wanted to know what my feelings were on using extraneous bodyparts of volunteers for quick triage; second lungs, parts of livers, kidneys, and so on.  I told him to mix and match to his heart’s content so long as he saved lives. It didn’t occur to me until he’d already gone that Slip Stitch's ‘Spares’ were probably volunteering out of something besides a sense of civic duty.  Any sort of religion started by that pony was likely to be trouble down the line. Granted, that could have been said of almost everything we’d done in the last couple months. Then it was time. I didn’t want to watch as the army marched into the sewers, an ocean of ants heading down into the shadowy tunnels. I hid from that sight.  Does that make me a coward?  Probably. Soon, all that were left were those too sick or injured to fight. My friends were off to battle, and I was left to wait. ----     I lay back, watching the snow outside and listening to my own heartbeat.  There was nothing else in the insulated little world I’d found myself in. Outside was muffled, distant, and silent.       I tugged at my coat, stuck hooves in my pockets to make sure I had spare ammo, checked my guns were loaded, touched my hat, picked up the small radio from my lap and made sure it was on the correct channel, then went back to sitting.  It was a routine I’d conducted no less than six times in the last few minutes. The signal would come, and then I would begin my vigil. ‘Your anxiety is leaking into my corner of your brain,’ Nightmare whispered.  ‘I find it most distracting.  I am trying to come up with scenarios where we survive today.’ ‘Do you expect a pony in my position not to be anxious?’ I asked, internally. A picture of the black alicorn sitting on a beanbag chair with a bucket of fried okra between her front legs flickered through my mind.  ‘No, but your usual method of improvisation cannot be all you rely on today.  They were correct about your speech. You couldn’t have hammed it more if you’d had a curly tail and upturned nose.’ ‘What about you, Miss ‘I am the Nightmare!’?  Were you trying to make everypony pee themselves?’ The image of the alicorn stuck her nose in the bucket of okra, chewing noisily before sitting up with several pieces sticking out of the corners of her muzzle.  She swallowed before continuing, but didn’t bother to brush the crumbs off her nose. ‘I had ten minutes to prepare and I was working with the contents of your brain!  Have you considered that the odious monologue you just gave is probably going to be recorded for posterity, if there is any posterity to remember this day?” ‘Oog...I wonder if I can convince Tourniquet to erase every copy,” I thought. ‘In a city with Iris Jade? Not a chance.  Still, it seemed to have the desired effect...though now, you will have to explain to somepony how you pulled the trick of turning into Nightmare Moon or summoning Princess Luna.  Be glad they were too frazzled, distracted, or excited to demand explanations.’ ‘If it means the world survives, awkward explanations may become my stock and trade.’ ‘Indeed.  Ah. Your little device is making a noise.’ I jerked up and looked down at the communicator, then flicked the ‘listen’ button.  Tourniquet’s voice came through loud and clear. “Detective are you there?” Great speech, by the way!” she enthused. “Thanks. Limerence is in position?” “He’s waiting on your order!  I’ve got Queenie hooked up to a caffeine drip, and every ladybug left in the city is either with your friends or sitting down here with me!  You should get a solid pipeline, so long as you only view one at a time!”  She paused for a moment, then added, “Queenie says its network is stable, for now, although they all want to run away from whatever energy is coming out of Uptown.  Are you ready?”     Pulling back the sleeve of my coat, I studied the eight ladybugs sitting on my leg.  One of them raised itself and gave me a quick salute with one tiny leg.     “Good to go here. Send Lim in.” I flicked the talk button off and got comfortable. ‘Gale, let Nightmare monitor what’s going on,’ I thought. ‘She already is.’ “In that case...Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake.”