Ebon held her face with tears in her eyes, coughing on the trickle of blood making its way down the back of her throat.
“Why did you do it, Ebon?” Octavia walked past Ebon into the apartment. Ebon made a horrible sucking noise, and spat a dark, thick clot into the half-dead potted plant by the door.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Ebon hissed, keeping her head tilted back. “You’ve just come into my apartment and hit me! Ow. Really hard!”
Octavia went to get her some paper towels from her kitchenette. “Yes, I did.” Octavia was sick of playing games. She’d already lost playing cute with the court and the cops. Now she’d just got to hit someone. Focusing on that was the only reason she wasn’t screaming at Ebon right now. “Why did you turn my wife in, Ebon?”
Ebon went stiff. “You think I did something like that?”
“I know you did.” Octavia tore off some sheets and handed them to Ebon. “And I’d like to know why.”
Ebon grabbed the paper sheets and wiped her nose clean. Once she saw the sheets came out red, she squeezed a wad of it to her face. “...Can I get some ice first, please?” she sniffled. “You really hurt me.”
Octavia went to the freezer, and kept her breathing as even as she could. She had all the power over this situation, for once, and this was just another part of it. She just had to stay in control of herself a little bit longer.
Ebon sniffled again. “Who told you?”
Ice cubes and bags. No big cube, no ice pick. She grabbed one of the bags and wrapped it in some more paper towels, and grabbed some painkillers from the cupboard to go with it. “Nobody. Nobody had to tell me.”
“So you just think—”
“Know.” Octavia voice came just short of a shout, and Ebon flinched. “Know,” Octavia repeated, quietly again, as she gave the ice over to Ebon.
Ebon took the ice off her with a weak, grateful smile. She knocked the painkillers back, and kept her head tipped back with a wince. “You know I would never do anything like that to you.”
“Because you didn’t do it to me,” Octavia went to the kitchen again to fill the sink with hot water and soap, and left the water running. “You did it to my wife. You still haven’t told me why you did it.”
“Octavia—”
Octavia whipped around and gestured at Ebon with a dirty chef’s knife. “Because the detectives searched my club before and found nothing,” she hissed. “Because if it were one of Photo Finish’s friends who had betrayed us, then I would not have walked out of that courthouse yesterday. Because only you, me, Vinyl and Photo Finish knew about that basement. And they still found it.”
Octavia dropped the dirty knife into the dishwater and started to clean it. It was so blunt you could barely cut a tomato with it, anyway.
Ebon took a sigh of relief, then her face twisted in indignation. “That’s it?” She moved the ice from her face long enough to point at the growing bruise around her nose, in all its fresh shades of red and yellow. “That’s what made you so sure you punched me? You don’t think they might have gotten suspicious about moving the piano?”
Octavia shook her head. “The club hasn’t been open since we moved it. Only you and I should have seen it moved.” She scrubbed the blunt knife and put it in the drainer, and moved to wash the wine glasses next. “But you didn’t turn me in, did you?”
“... No,” Ebon agreed, watching her. She kept lifting the ice pack off her face and pressing it back down, unable to commit to one kind of pain. “You break my nose, then start doing my dishes for me?”
Octavia shrugged as she started on the glasses. “Either it’s an apology for acting rashly, or I’m making sure there weren't any signs of a struggle.” She smiled over her shoulder, like she was joking. “I haven’t decided. It really depends on your answer?”
Ebon sighed. There was whistling in her throat from the blood clotting in her sinuses. “Why would I betray you?”
“I am getting bored of this game, Ebon.” Octavia stopped scrubbing and leaned into the sink. Focused on the sharp prickling pain of hot water to keep her voice level. “Why did you turn in my wife? Either tell me the truth, or lie, but stop being too much of a coward to do either.”
After the question, the room was so silent that, for a moment, you could hear the metal pipes in the wall cooling. A tinny rattle. Octavia reached for the cold water tap and let it run a little.
“It wasn’t my fault.”
Octavia snapped the wine glass she’d been scrubbing, the bowl from the stem, underneath the water. The snap had been muffled by the water, Ebon couldn’t have heard it over the running tap. Octavia pretended to keep washing it, testing the sharpness of the point. “Then why didn’t you start with that?”
“You started by hitting me!”
Octavia thought about it. “I did.” She felt the spike under the water. “You were saying it wasn’t your fault?”
Ebon bled quietly, looking down. Still couldn’t lie, still couldn’t tell the truth.
Octavia waited. Just once, in the neck. Like Ebon had tripped and fell on it. That would be all it took.
Ebon tipped her head back again to talk, “A big red stallion talked to me.” It came out like she was ripping a bandaid off. She kept her eyes screwed shut to say it, unable to look at Octavia. “That night, after we left. He said—”
Octavia dropped the spike, eyes wide. “Did he talk strangely?” she said, turning around. ”Have a bit of a speech impediment?”
“Yes?” Ebon sounded surprised. “You know him?”
“More than I’d like to, less than I need to.” Octavia dried her hooves with a dishcloth, leaving the spike in the sink. “Go on.”
“He talked about... about burning the club to the ground to find what he needed to.” Ebon held the ice pack just off her face to talk, but even then she kept her eyes shut. “Well, he didn’t say that, but he did talk about how flammable the building was, how it’s so hard to trace those things to a culprit... the implication was there.”
“That’s a threat against me. Not against you.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Ebon protested. Her nose was starting to dry up, even as her sniffling was getting louder. “I feel like it’s more home to me than here, now. Or at least I did, until you punched me in the face.”
Octavia wrapped the dishcloth around her hoove to take the ice pack off Ebon. “I just saw my wife being pushed into a police cart in handcuffs,” she said as she put the ice back in the freezer, then slammed the door hard. “I’m told they might hang her.”
“Might—” Ebon went white, and it was like all her joints locked up at once. “Who told you that?”
“A big red stallion with a crooked jaw.” Octavia caught her reflection in the dishwasher, and splashed it until the soap bubbles made the ghastly spectre disappear. “So either he was lying, and he’s played me like a fiddle, or he was telling the truth.”
“Octavia, I—I ’m so sorry.” Ebon stood up, but then Octavia glared at her until she sat back down. “He said it was just your wife he wanted, but they were willing to go through you to get her. He told me either I co-operate, or they’d get you too!”
“You had no right!” Octavia snapped. “And you have no right to ruin my life trying to protect it.” Octavia touched her wedding band. Would Vinyl be safe, now, if she’d kept her from all this? Maybe, but it wouldn’t have been fair to her.
“What now?” Ebon asked. She was resolute. Putting on a brave face. She was only pretending to be brave, now, but Octavia appreciated she was at least trying to pretend. “Obviously you can’t forgive me. But I hope you at least understand why I did what I did.”
“You’re right. I understand. I can’t forgive you, though.” Octavia took the broken glass out of the sink and dropped it in the trash can. Ebon flinched when she saw it. “You wanted to protect me?”
“Of course I did.”
“Then you could have lied to him. Given us alibis. So either you were too much of a coward to put yourself at risk, after everything I’ve done for you... or...” Octavia trailed off and looked at Ebon. Really looked at her. “You didn’t even think of that, did you? You told yourself a story where my wife was gone, and you could be there for me in a vulnerable moment. Is that it?”
Ebon rose out of her chair. “No!” she shouted. “No, I—” but again, Octavia glared her down.
“But it did cross your mind?”
Ebon was quiet.
So it hadn’t been Vinyl’s dangerous friends, or Photo Finish’s recklessness, that had caused this. It had been Octavia’s one safe friend.
That’s what hurt the most.
Octavia barked a laugh. “Nothing would ever have happened between us. You don’t have what it takes to be with an artist.”
Octavia took the contract they’d both signed for her, and dunked it in the dishwater. “And you don’t know me half as well as that red stallion.” She pulled the plug. Ebon leapt up from where she was sitting to try and will it back out of the water, and Octavia walked towards the door. “He figured out that I would do anything for Vinyl. Especially something stupid, something reckless.”
Ebon had just started wailing when she closed the door behind her.
There was only one question left to ask, and nobody else she could ask but herself:
What was she capable of, now?
Octavia made for one of the first emergency kits she’d prepared, in an alley between the club and her apartment. One of the first plans she’d made.
Ever since that showing with the Resistance, Octavia had been forced to be reactive, responsive. Defensive. That wasn’t her tempo.
Now, she had to get Vinyl back. She had to stop thinking like prey, to start thinking like a predator again.
The fur dye and contacts in this disguise kit made her look like Cherry Twist—then just a bartender, now her best manager. That showed how long she’d been living in fear for.
She took the notepad from her vest pocket that was meant for taking customer orders, and started making plans in shorthand while her fur dried. Made contingencies.
Note pages got filled and stuck to the wall with shreds of chewed chewing gum, moving around. Everything could fail, and she had to anticipate every failure. What she could prioritize, what she could stand to lose, she stuck it all up on the wall.
There was a gap in the notes, though. Some things she didn’t know, some things she couldn’t. She’d have to go back to the club, where the police were probably waiting for her to do something incriminating. They’d be watching every alley, every exit.
Octavia forced her back against the side of a dumpster and rolled it in front of her notes, in case she had a chance to come back to them when she’d filled them in.
She threw the vest back on, over her now-dry fur. It was time to test how closely they were watching the front door.
There was an officer standing by the hole where the security gating had been. That had been removed from its frame, the doors knocked from the hinges. Looking inside, she expected more to be taken. For now, though, it was in place.
The piano had been moved, and the carpet. They definitely knew about the basement. Already helpful to know.
Octavia smiled at the officer. “Excuse me, am I allowed in?”
The officer squinted at her, and checked his clipboard. “Name?”
“Cherry Twist. I’m a manager here. I thought it might be a good idea to get my things, now, while I can?”
The officer nodded. “You’re on the list. Ah, while you can?”
Octavia rolled her eyes with as much venom as she could. “I heard you guys shaking my boss down. Some red stallion with a crooked jaw?”
The officer frowned and looked back at his list. “That would probably be Detective Blue Brass. I wouldn’t really worry about that, he’s all talk.”
Now she had a name. Octavia nodded, tilting her head towards the club. “Still, though.”
The officer stood aside. She assumed he’d be checking her pockets on the way back out, so she couldn’t grab anything now. And the basement hatch was visible from the door, so that was out.
She could make plans for that, plans for getting past the officers, plans for everything. But she’d have to commit to them.
What was stopping her right now, though, was that the grand piano had been moved back to center stage. A request Ebon had made, when negotiating on Octavia’s behalf. Octavia walked up to it, looked at it. She could still see Ebon’s marks on it, scratched onto the lid.
Her cello was in a corner of the stage, behind the piano. It was still the last connection to her old life when Celestia was her Princess and she’d play in the palace. She’d been happy then.
She couldn’t play it now, not without blowing her disguise. She couldn’t even risk touching it. If she really wanted to she would have to come back, in the open, as Octavia the musician. She would have to do everything the right way, the legal way after that. Give up the reckless plans.
And then she could be the mare who had performed with Ebon again, and she could have that happiness.
She moved to the bar to pour herself a drink and saw that most of the good bottles had been taken off the top shelf. Someone in the department, it seemed, had refined tastes.
This was the last chance she had to stop this. Stop everything. Maybe she could fight for Vinyl in court, the proper way. Do everything by the book. Work for years, and years. That would be the safest thing for her.
That’s what Ebon would do, had done, Octavia looked back at the cello and the piano. That’s what the woman with a crush on her would expect of her. Cautious to the point of cowardice.
That wasn’t who Vinyl had fallen in love with. The Octavia that Vinyl loved was determined, had the tenacity to climb to the very top, and to start all over again. That Octavia was calculating.
Ebon’s Octavia would walk away from the table when she was losing, but Vinyl’s started counting cards.
She checked the top shelf of the bar again, and her scotch had definitely been taken. That really would have helped her decide.
Octavia looked down at the button below the bar. Was there anyone down there, waiting for someone to kick it? Probably. Not worth finding out, but there were things she needed to find down there.
Something caught her eye, behind the counter and above the button; a contact book. There were a few names and numbers here anyone would expect—wholesalers, stage hands, returning performers. Ebon was in the more recent names. After that, though, were a lot of dangerous names that Vinyl had been reckless to put in here, names Octavia recognized as fans from that first showing.
She slipped the contact book into her pocket.
Last chance. What was she willing to lose for Vinyl? Her life, her happiness?
She made her decision as made her way for the small kitchen. She noted where the gas lines were, and turned the stove top on as low as she could. If she held her ear right up to the hob she could hear the whisper-squeak of gas; but only if she held her ear to it.
If she did this, there would be no way to save the cello. But it had never really been a choice.
There was no life, no happiness, without Vinyl.
Octavia headed back out the entrance, and the officer stopped her, just like she expected him to. He patted down her pockets, and found the contact book she’d slipped in there. He held it up. Octavia laughed.
“I have a feeling, if Detective Blue Brass makes good on his threat, that I’m going to need all the help I can get finding somewhere new.” It wasn’t even a lie.
The officer flicked through it, snorted, and nodded. “Good luck, Ms Twist.”
Octavia graciously took the book back off him as she headed off towards the dumpster she’d kept her planning board.
As soon as she was out of sight of the club, she looked through the numbers and picked two. A lighting equipment company, and one of Vinyl’s most dangerous friends.
She tore both pages out. As soon as she could move the dumpster again, she pinned them to her board.
Now she knew everything she needed. The moment she’d turned the gas on the stove, too, she was on the clock. A hard time limit had been made.
Already she could write off one of her contingency plans as impossible now. She removed from the wall and tore up the notepage with “Give up” on it, and hoped she managed to go down one of the plans that let her sleep at some point.
If there was to be any chance of that, she’d have to start now.
Octavia, still disguised as Cherry Twist, walked down the alley behind the club with a steel can of removal solvents. There were no entrances here, so no reason for the police to be watching.
She took off her manager’s vest, and the coloured contact lenses, and soaked herself in the solvents, her disguise melting into puddles and fumes. It was fortunate the alley was as open as it was, even this much ventilation and she was getting dizzy.
She twisted the vest into a rag and rubbed herself down with it, scrubbing the last traces of colour that she could, soaking the rag with the highly flammable solvent. Then she twisted it, and shunted it deep into the metal can.
She reached into the pocket of it and pulled out the lighter she’d kept on her, a courtesy she’d gotten into the habit of for Ebon’s sake. She flicked it, and lit the tip of the rag.
Then she pushed the makeshift fuse next to the hole in the wall from the kitchen, next to the stove she’d left the gas running on, and walked near the end of the alley, and waited.
A few seconds later, the club’s kitchen exploded, and the fire would already be spreading to the bar.
Ponies flooded from the nearby buildings into the streets, screaming. Octavia slipped out and hid in the crowd, letting herself be pushed through it like a fish in a school.
As they got into the middle of the road most ponies stopped to watch the flames rise up from the club in great gulping gouts, clouds of black smoke swallowing the Manehattan streetlights at every angle.
Octavia looked back only a moment before disappearing down a sewer entrance, and sprinting for the half-built emergency exit she’d never managed to get built for Vinyl, in case of something like... well, a fire. But there’d never been a big enough distraction, or a way to hide it down here.
Now the floor of the basement had collapsed in a rattle of gravel and concrete dust. Firelight caught every mote of dust and powder in the air, as above she could hear the snapping of wires as the grand piano burned.
Next to it, her cello.
Octavia bounded up the heap of rubble into the basement. Trying to run and hold her breath was making her lungs scream at her, but breathing deep now wouldn’t help.
Everything in the basement had been taken. The boxes, the projectors. But that just meant less to search through, nothing to trip her as she ran to the back wall. She didn’t need to fumble with it, she remembered exactly where the hidden compartment had been.
The acrid smoke was sending shooting pains through her eyes, and she was starting to get dizzy from holding her breath. She kicked the wall hard enough to pop the brick out of the loose mortar, and grabbed the film reels she’d hidden here a lifetime ago, just as part of the stage crashed down next to her head.
She dove back for the hole out, like a rabbit for its burrow, managed to hold her breath until she was out.
The sewer air was the best, sweetest lungful she’d had in her life. It smelled like rain, and only a bit of burning hair. She certainly wasn’t damp from the solvent anymore.
Octavia hugged the sealed metal film cans to her chest and clung to them like a life preserver. It had all been worth it for—
Hold on.
There was more here then she remembered hiding.
Octavia cried into them. It was so easy to forget that Vinyl knew what she needed better than she did, too. Pulled tight to her chest were the films she came here for. And two extra reels that Vinyl had put there for her.
She’d lost her cello, but she’d managed to save their wedding album.
Octavia kept wiping away tears long after the smoke had gotten out of her eyes.
She thought of her contingencies, and wondered which of them would make the best use of this precious gift. She ran down the sewers to find one of the emergency stashes she’d hid under here, again between the club and her apartment.
This one had a false identity she needed, fake passports and identity papers. She’d have to come back for it, but she needed to remember one of the names she used.
Most of her plans would need her to make a booking under an assumed name, some equipment rental. Delivered at a very specific time, if any of this was to work. The first of the pages she’d torn out of the contact book.
Then she went to bring the film reels to the other, one of Vinyl’s dangerous friends. She’d learned who she could trust, now.
Octavia walked into the police station where she’d been interviewed earlier this week. This week? When was the last time she’d slept? Didn’t matter. The adrenaline only had to last a few more hours.
“Ma’am?”
She shook her head. She was standing in a police station, had to focus on that. “Oh, I’m sorry.” Octavia walked up to the receptionist with an apologetic smile, “I was miles away.”
“Well.” The officer working the front desk smiled at her, all reassurances, “How can we serve you today?”
“That’s just the thing, isn’t it? Apparently I need to speak to a detective Blue Brass?”
“Blue Brass?” The receptionist checked her clipboard with a frown. A sergeant in a wheely chair rolled out to watch with sudden interest, chewing thoughtfully on the end of a pencil. The receptionist clicked her pen. “What is this about?”
“Apparently,” and Octavia licked the ash off her lips, “the word is that he’s responsible for my club burning to the ground. I’m pretty sure you can still see the smoke from here.”
The sergeant’s pencil dropped to the floor. The room had gone so silent that Octavia could hear it hit the carpet.
“Ah... We’ll let you know when he can see you. Should I wait for your attorney, or...?”
“I don’t think that will be needed.” Octavia gave a look like she was just dreadfully embarrassed about all this. “Tell him I’m trying to be as co-operative as possible.”
It was the same interrogation room, with the same tape recorder between them. Octavia knew it wasn’t an accident.
She’d gone in first and been told to wait. She’d settled in after just one little thing. Now, just a minute later after some yelling in the hall from a voice Octavia didn’t recognize—a captain, maybe?—Blue Brass settled down in the seat across from her.
He looked impressed.
“Burnin’ your place to th’ ground,” he mumbled, moving his mouth as little as possible to make the words, “jus’ to see me clapped up for arson? Ey?”
“Please.” Octavia rolled her eyes. “You threatened me with it in front of all your colleagues the first time we met. Then you just threatened it again to a—” she bit her tongue, “coworker of mine.”
“Coworker, huh?”
“You managed to find the films my wife was holding for Photo Finish—”
“Holding for her? Is that really what we’re going with?” His jaw clicked and cracked as he got more worked up. He massaged it with a hoof. Then, he looked down, and saw that Octavia had turned the tape recorder on when she’d sat down. “Ah.” He smiled. “I see. You’re trying to get it on record, ey? Cute.” Blue Brass hit a button on the recorder between them. “Cut the bullshit.”
Octavia sighed. “I thought it was worth a shot. But I don’t suppose that tape would have ended up anywhere useful to me, anyway?”
“I ain’t tha’ thick, love.” Back to simple words and stiff movements. He was relaxed again. “Was never gunna work, you know.”
“I know. Now that it’s off, I suppose I can speak plainly.” Octavia cleared her throat. “I just needed to get in a room with you, alone, for a moment. To cut a deal.”
“Cut a—?” Blue Brass barked a laugh and rocked back in his chair. “The one the songbird gotya,” he said ‘got you’ entirely with the back of his throat, and his tongue. “Not good enough?”
“I suspect you knew it wasn’t when you made it.”
“Too right.”
“There’s something I don’t understand, Detective. Why do you have it out for me so badly?” Octavia felt the adrenaline starting to leave her. She suddenly felt so agonizingly, bone-wearily tired. “Why does this feel so personal?”
Blue Brass looked at the exhausted mare in front of him, and let out a weary sigh of his own. “As a young’un... I played saxophone.”
Octavia looked back up, surprised. “You were good?”
“Notta brag bu’, yeah. The best. Coulda made it outta the slums, playin’ like I did. Was the poin’, really.”
Octavia rolled her eyes, and slumped back down again. “Oh, I see. So your parents didn’t take you to enough music lessons, and maybe they hit you, and that’s how you got the bad jaw, right?”
Blue Brass just shook his head. “See, this is why i’s personal. You don’t get it. Folks loved me. Real proud.” He was talking really slow, popping and unpopping his jaw to try and get the words out as well as he could. Thoughtful. “Took me to all my practices. Real proud.”
“Then I’m afraid I don’t understand?” Octavia admitted.
“What they couldn’t afford,” he pointed at his jaw, “was the dentist.”
“The... dentist?”
“Eeyup.” He pulled his chair closer to the desk. “Expensive. Wisdom teeth came in wrong. Cracked a molar. Got infected.” He shrugged, and then seemed to give up on the careful speech, and went back to his easy slur. “Hospital was real good fixing it up then, but it was too late. That was it.”
“I—” Octavia paused, “Really?”
“Princess Luna, she gave guys like me another way outta the slums. Poor kids who knew the city, The ones who know how hard law’s gotta be, for order.” He pointed again at his jaw, “Scars of poverty an’ all. So yeah. Maybe I gotta grudge.”
There was a second of silence as Octavia thought about that. “Tell me. Has ‘Princess Luna’ done anything about making dentists affordable?”
“Cops get dental. Great deal.” He opened his mouth wider, and showed off his shiny metal molars. “You know what really gets me though?”
Octavia arched an eyebrow.
“It’s tha’ you’re so damn smug.” He rolled his eyes. “Thinkin’ you snuck by me tha’ first night. Tryin’ to play tough in here the other night—yeah, I heard tha’ tape—tryin’ to play the court like a fiddle. I saw all that. You ain’t half as good as you think you are.”
Octavia smirked, and he cut her right off again.
“See? There. Just rich, and lucky. Tha’s it.” Blue Brass shook his head, “But that’s all that mattered ‘til now. What were you really trying to accomplish here?”
Octavia took a deep breath. “I have the nail in the coffin for Photo Finish’s trial. Everything else you can pin on Vinyl. And Photo Finish is making an absolute mockery of the thing. Can you imagine how it would look if you couldn’t get a sentence on her, just because you jumped the gun on my wife?”
Blue Brass looked like he’d been slapped. “Ah, didn’t thinka tha’... I mean, I’m sure we could get both...”
“Are you?“ Octavia was just making it up as she went here, but she’d played harder jazz than this. Because he was right—all she had now was luck, and she felt like she’d darn well earned it. “Are you really sure?”
He snorted, but then he paused. He rocked his head side to side, working so hard to play the argument in an imaginary courtroom that Octavia could almost see it too, before he growled in frustration. “What’s your evidence, then?”
“I have in my possession the full, unedited newsreels that Photo Finish was supposed to edit and show, instead of my wife’s film that was shown instead.”
Blue Brass chuckled. “Already giving up the ‘just holding the bag’ story huh?”
“I am. You stopped the tape, we can be honest now.”
“Never actually stopped the tape.” Blue Brass pointed. “Hit the record button twice. You played yourself. All that’s on record.”
“I saw what button you pressed. I got a good look at what button does which the last time I was here, I assure you.” Octavia shifted in her seat, and pulled out the tape she was sitting on. The one she’d taken out of the recorder before turning it on.
She snapped it in half, then slid it across the table to him. He glared at it, and snarled with a curled lip.
”Let’s negotiate my terms of surrender, shall we?” Octavia said sweetly.
“Alright,” Blue Brass said, “Lemme guess. This is you cooperatin’, right?”
Octavia just smiled.
Octavia looked down at the film reel. Most ponies didn’t know that the middle section of a film reel wasn’t film, but a hollow for a spring and winding mechanism. Some were simply spools for the projector to pull from, but this kind had wiggle room to play with.
The middle of this one had been replaced with an insurance policy. Which is also why she had a pair of Vinyl’s dark shades resting on top of it.
Octavia had agreed they’d meet at a location of Blue Brass’s choosing, as long as it was in the open, on a main street. She needed to see her wife was still alive—that she hadn’t already been ‘disappeared’. Crossbows would be pointed on them at all times from both sides of the street.
Perhaps most importantly, though, she’d also gotten to pick the time.
Blue Brass had picked a donut shop close to the station, somewhere most ponies wouldn’t look twice at if there were guard ponies lingering there. He’d taken a seat with Vinyl at an outdoor seat on the sidewalk, a cheap white plastic setup with a torn umbrella limply dangling over it.
Vinyl rose from her seat as soon as she saw Octavia, but Blue Brass took his time to stretch and unfold himself from his seat. Octavia could hear him crack his neck from across the street.
Before she crossed, Octavia noted the location of the nearest manhole cover, and made sure to walk across it. When she made the exchange with Blue Brass, she wanted to make sure she had her back to it and knew exactly where it was. It helped that Vinyl watched her do it.
While she crossed the street, Blue Brass stood patiently with Vinyl beside her. They’d agreed no hoofcuffs—not worth the public attention.
Besides. It meant Octavia could come crashing into her for a hug, right now, and Vinyl could hug her back.
Blue Brass started coughing into his hoof, longer and louder until even Vinyl couldn’t ignore him. “The reel?”
“First,” Octavia put the sunglasses she’d been carrying on Vinyl’s face. “You look naked without them.”
Vinyl gave her a surprised look, but Octavia always could trust her not to say anything.
She needed to trust Vinyl a lot right now. “Here you go,” Octavia said, handing Blue Brass the reel. “As promised.”
Blue Brass nodded, taking the reel in one hoof and hefting it. He held it up towards a streetlight, and pulled the end of the film strip from it to confirm it was authentic. “You know, I nearly fell for your trap here?”
“My trap?” Octavia asked.
“Photo Finish has that courtroom camera’d up every which way up the wazoo,” he growled. “I spoke to the legal folk—”
“You actually spoke to your attorneys?” Octavia scowled. “I feel like that’s cheating.”
“Yeah, well,” Blue Brass shrugged. “Turns out they think you want this played as evidence. That’s what you’re turning it in for, right? That everyone gets to see it, like a picture in picture... Photo Finish already got one movie she shouldn’t have out, before...”
Octavia laughed, like she hadn’t been caught. “You think she’d pulled the same stunt twice?”
Blue Brass laughed, too. “Of course I do. If that happens while she and your missus here are in custody, you’ve both got airtight alibis. Photo Finish pleads innocent. You all live happily ever after. I’m impressed.”
Octavia couldn’t see them, but she could feel Vinyl’s eyes darting back and forth between them.
Octavia squared her shoulders. She was playing defensive again, and she didn’t like it. “Then the smartest thing to do is double or nothing. Let it happen, and you can take down more than Photo Finish herself. You could figure out her accomplices.”
“Never bet with your winnings.” Blue Brass pulled out a cigarette lighter, one that looked just like the one Octavia had kept in her pocket earlier that day. He held it up to the film stock—the highly flammable film stock. “The deal’s off. You got cocky. Nobody’s as smart as you think you are.”
Octavia grabbed Vinyl to hold her back as the film stock lit like a fuse, straight into the insurance policy. Blue Brass had been right about her plan.
He’d been wrong to think she’d only have one.
Vinyl’s most dangerous friend was a pyrotechnician, and Octavia’s insurance expert.
The film canister exploded in a blinding flash of light and sound, that only Vinyl’s sunglasses could protect her from. Then came the burst of thick white smoke, impossible to see through, in the second Blue Brass dropped the can in shock.
Octavia pulled Vinyl backwards, and Vinyl immediately understood the plan. Octavia was dragged by Vinyl towards the manhole and dropped in.
The last thing Octavia heard before Vinyl slid the manhole cover shut again was Blue Brass’s furious roar. Then she heard a wet sploosh, and she knew it was from Vinyl throwing her glasses in the water to their side. She wished she could have seen it, but her vision hadn’t quite come back yet.
Vinyl led Octavia, blinking, through the sewers at a sprint, looking for one of the kits that Octavia had hid down here. It didn’t take long; Octavia had moved one close by as soon as Blue Brass had told her the meetup location.
Normally each kit was as good as each other, but this time she needed to use the same alias she’d used for the equipment rental.
Now the only plan she had left was getting to Ponyville, any way they could.
Hours later, and days since she last slept, Octavia followed Vinyl out of the tunnels by the river. Octavia was now a sky blue with a light brown mane and tail, and Vinyl a dark wine-red fur with pink hair. They matched the fake identity papers they had on them.
“You know, that’s actually a fetching look on you.” Octavia kissed Vinyl’s cheek. Vinyl stuck her tongue out and winced. She didn’t have to wear contacts, this time. Most ponies had never learned what her eyes looked like anyway.
The bridge had already been closed. The trains weren’t leaving the station above. The river would be too cold to swim across.
There was a barge heading back over, the kind used to haul freight that was too big for the roads. Vinyl shone her horn at it, and they flashed a light back. A pegasus jumped up from the deck of the barge and flew over to them, gliding low over the water’s edge.
He had a grip’s cap. He was industry. Vinyl recognized it too—she beamed at him.
“Hey,” the pegasus said, “What’s up?”
Octavia didn’t have to pretend to be miserable, or exhausted. “They’ve closed the bridges at the worst time. I just ordered the delivery of a very expensive bit of lighting—”
“I know I shouldn’t give client names away,” the pegasus said, “But you wouldn’t happen to be a Ms Pizzicato would you?”
It was the pseudonym she’d used to hire the light, the name on the papers she was carrying. “Yes, actually. What an amazing coincidence!”
It wasn’t, really. There were so many ways this could have gone, and she’d made plans for all of them. For years now, years, she’d been making contingency after contingency, plan after plan, all to protect Vinyl.
She didn’t particularly name them, or even write them down, but it can loosely be said that this wasn’t the worst way things could have gone. Her only regret was that what might be called plans a through f at least gave her time to sleep. She was too many failures and backups past that, and the adrenaline was wearing off.
She’d had to time this perfectly, to be able to get Vinyl out just as the barge would have been coming back in. Which meant she didn’t get to use any of the plans that let her sleep. She couldn’t save Photo Finish, either.
But Vinyl only saw the plan that worked. And, if Octavia let herself look in her wife’s eyes for a moment, she saw that she looked like Celestia herself. As wise and all knowing and as powerful.
She was still the Octavia that she’d married, and anybody less wouldn’t have deserved a wife like Vinyl.
So, Octavia just let herself enjoy it when the barge offered to ferry her over, no extra charge, to meet up with the lights she’d ordered. She didn’t have to tell Vinyl about everything that could have gone better. Let that crooked jawed detective still think she was just lucky.
Together, she and Vinyl walked to the hill they’d agreed as a meeting point. Then it had just been because they could catch a train from here. But the trains had been stopped. It was too long a walk to Ponyville, and there were pegasus guards looking for them now. These ones wouldn’t be scared off by a red rubber ball.
Octavia had run out of plan.
Now, though, they found the big light waiting for them. The same kind Photo Finish had used to project her message into the clouds, to make sure she was arrested instead of disappeared.
Octavia had ordered a modified kind, one that could be used as a film projector.
“I know how you work,” Octavia murmured into her wife’s ear. “You get the best parts of the footage, the highlight reel, all together so you can work out how it all fits together. I’m going to guess that’s what the other reel you put behind the wall was?”
Vinyl nodded, and Octavia sighed in relief.
“Oh, thank goodness, because I haven’t had time to actually look through this yet.”
Vinyl snickered like Octavia was joking, but she wasn’t. She’d had to plan around so many of these guesses already. This guess had been too low a priority, but it was still nice to be right about it.
“Well. I couldn’t work out how to get Photo Finish. I couldn’t even work out how to get us to Ponyville, it seems.” Octavia grumbled. Shutting down all the trains was a tad melodramatic to catch a petty arsonist and a punk editor, if you asked her. “So, why don’t you show the world what you’ve got one last time?”
Vinyl looked out towards the distance.
They could still walk to Ponyville, couldn’t they? Their disguises weren’t blown. But then she looked at Octavia, collapsed on the hilltop. She wouldn’t be able to go another ten steps.
This was the end of the road.
Vinyl brushed her hoof down the side of the gigantic light. A crystal generator hummed, and the spotlight lit up the clouds above Manehattan like a movie screen.
Then Vinyl played her highlight reel of everything Nightmare Moon didn’t want people to see, didn’t want people to know. Everything that was supposed to have stayed on the cutting room floor.
There was no sound, no music.
Maybe it was for the best. She hadn’t seen this one before. It was amazing what ponies would do on camera if they thought they were the only ones who could touch the tapes... After seeing this, ponies would have no reason to doubt that the Manehattan police were capable of burning down her club.
Most of all, it showed what it meant for a pony to get ‘disappeared’. That quiet way some ponies just didn’t go home, didn’t show up to work, and everyone got to pretend they didn’t know why.
Now they couldn’t pretend anymore. After this, everyone knew why Photo Finish had to tell everyone she was getting arrested in a message across the sky.
Hopefully, it meant they were about to be the last two ponies to get disappeared. What was the point, if nobody could pretend anymore?
Maybe they’d made things bad enough that ponies felt like it was finally time to try something drastic.
Vinyl pointed at a pegasus flying above them in a Shadowbolts uniform. It seemed like the party was over.
“Well,” Octavia smiled, her eyes flicking shut as she tried not to cry, “It’s been a good life.”
Vinyl leaned against her shoulder and kissed her neck, holding the one last item that Octavia had couriered up here. Their wedding album.
The Shadowbolt landed in front of them and ripped her hood off. Vinyl recognized her immediately. She’d spent hours poring over footage of her, and she was one of the heroes of the film she’d got arrested for.
Octavia knew her as the weather manager of the town they’d nearly escaped to.
“Oh my gosh,” Rainbow Dash laughed, “Wow. I was supposed to be looking for you guys, I didn’t expect you to make it this easy for me. You both need help getting out of here or what?”
Octavia and Vinyl stared as Rainbow offered both of them a hoof up. “Excuse me?”
“Celestia’s old protege Twilight Sparkle wants ponies like you back in Ponyville. Said ‘Welcome to the Resistance’ or something corny like that. I expected most folks to hoof it but, uh... looks like you two could use a lift?” Rainbow Dash looked up at the film playing on the clouds as she hefted Vinyl and Octavia, one under each arm. “So? What’s the plan?”