//------------------------------// // 2014 project - Sons and Girls of the Badlands - 1 // Story: RoMS' Extravaganza // by RoMS //------------------------------// Sons And Girls Of The Badlands [ α Ω α ] “What happened between you two?” I muttered, moving my paw from a hunched over Trixie towards a pissed off Twilight. Both ponies were sipping the content of their dusty tea cups. My words earned me a thunderous glare from the princess’s dark-ringed eyes. With a grunt, she looked down and took another sip of the hazing brew. “It’s a long story,” Trixie mumbled without any conviction. “I made mistakes.” Twilight huffed softly, “At least the… Great and Powerful Trixie did get the memo.” Trixie shut herself up in silence. Soon enough, Twilight rubbed her right temple and mused an apology. “You did leave a bad taste in many ponies’ mouths the last time we saw you, Trixie,” Twilight breathed an explanation. “Understand that, seeing you here, I’m not going to be all happy and gentle all of a sudden. Especially in those circumstances. Last time I saw you, you got thrown out of Ponyville for your distasteful behaviour.” Again Trixie remained silent, looking down at her backlegs. “You shouldn’t say such words. Everypony deserves a second chance,” Mac chimed in with a rumbling bass voice. “Do you know where we found Trixie?” Twilight frowned and raised her dirty face and with questions trotting in her mind, she glanced at the ahuizotl. She was about to speak when Trixie finally broke her own fortress of silence. “I don’t want to talk about it, Mac,” she asked as she met his eyes for a second. “I… I’m not comfortable… I don’t want to talk about it. Especially with her. Please, Mac.” Twilight pondered the bottom of her cup until she gave a small series of nods. “Something did happen between the two of you,” Mac broke out with a rueful smile. “She must know what happened to you after she apparently… threw you out.” “No…” Trixie pleaded with a shrilling voice. “I… don’t want to.” “I understand,” Twilight clarified, lifting a hoof to calm Trixie down. “I understand.” “No, you don’t…” Trixie murmured with a glimpse of a tear rolling down her cheek. “You don’t.” The alicorn glanced over at her fallen rival. With a sigh she looked away. Avoiding Twilight’s stare, our light blue unicorn was sitting with her forehooves crossed. Her blank eyes were locked on the ground and her right leg slightly shook up. With the same compassionate smile, Mac leaned aside towards her and gave a gentle pat on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “Onward to the edge, ma CRICKAH!!” We all jumped on our seat. Some anonymous barflies even spat their drinks. Startled, we all looked down at the floor with hooves, paws, and hands over our hearts. There, a dark shape was rolling over and over, spewing, hacking, and grunting. With a holed hoof stretched towards the ceiling, Kril was battling against some invisible monsters. With her eyes closed, she did some fairly good fencing movements. That’s when she instinctively went for her sword with a hint of changeling magic. We all hissed or cried out when she started whistling her edgy tool around, her eyes still closed. Trixie rolled her eyes, lit up her magic, and lifted up the changeling. She unceremoniously dropped Kril on the nearest empty chair and dragged her closer to the table. Then she threw the rusty sword in a corner. Twilight rose her eyebrows as the changeling mumbled, finally opened an eye, groaned, and tried to grab a pint of beer that had long been taken away. “I’m thirsty,” Kril groaned. “You should stop drinking,” Mac teased with a wide grin and a slightly loud and annoying voice. “Fuck off,” she answered, holding her head between her hoof, then called out, “Barpone! Beer! Now!” The barpony, a large brown and white earth pony, gloated at his faithful client. It was another line on Kril’s tab… and another bit out of my pocket. I sighed. “Why a princess would come here, to such a shithole, to find a group of scrub-the-ground asses like us?” I finally asked. “What happened between the silky and goldly walls of Canterlot to get a princess’s rump over and out in the wilderness.” Twilight chuckled dryly as she made her shoulder blades pop up. “You are investigators, aren’t you?” she asked. “More like mercenaries,” Mac answered before me with one raised finger. “But… yeah, we do investigations.” With picky eyes, Twilight scanned Mac from head to tail until she diverted her eyes on me. Instinctively, she locked her eyes on the gun, now lying down the table top. Guns weren’t common in Equestria. It was a cruel weapon designed, built, and used by griffons or sand dogs for their own strives… not something meant for the peaceful ponies that lived happily behind Equestrian borders. “Your name is Teeth,” Twilight broke the ice with purple eyes boring in my soul. “However, people knew you as ‘Shark’ when you worked as a broker in Manehatten a few years ago for a big private bank. You made a fair amount of bits by trading commodities excavated by the your kind. At least it lasted until you got caught in a tax evasion scandal and nearly got caught red-pawed. You fled from Equestria to avoid being arrested… along with sixteen million bits in letters of changes, stolen from your company accounts.” Kril, Mac, and Trixie’s head slowly swivelled in my direction. With eyes devouring me with a barely hidden greed, they made me feel very, very small. I smiled awkwardly. “I don’t have the money anymore,” I hissed through gritted teeth with my paw raised in front of me. “Otherwise I’d not be here.” Kril threw her hooves in the air with a grunt of disappointment. Mac laughed lowly. Trixie simply looked sad. Money, it drives minds around, believe me. I was a good example of it. Meanwhile, Twilight stared hard at Mac who, I knew it well, was clenching his butt quite hard on our old sofa. The alicorn continued listing her gathered facts. “Macuahuilt, you are a foreigner coming from the far-South who got thrown out of Equestria for digging gold out of state-owned mines… illegally.” Mac raised his hand and tried to speak up for himself. Twilight quickly cut him off. “You were also involved in a scheme to rob the Canterlot Central Bank.” “Really!” Trixie, Kril, and I exclaimed. I was quite impressed. I had heard the CCB had a massive stock of gold, silver, and platinum. It was from where the Diarchy’s wealth came from. The hoard was only matched by the Crystal Empire’s many gem caves. All in all, it was a story sand dogs shared around at night to get the pups to drift off to sleep. “Not bad,” I giggled with an envious grimace cast on my face. “Hush,” Mac grunted with squinted eyes. As I dodge a slap from his tail, Twilight clacked her hoof on top of the ebony table, making Trixie’s cup jump up. “But you failed because one of your collaborators set you up…” the princess continued. “And the royal guard failed to get me arrested,” Mac notified with a large grin. “Right,” Twilight said with a nod. “Still, you are a most-wanted back in Equestria.” Trixie’s face was stretching down as the facts about how we ended up in that hellhole unravelled. I guessed nobody around the table was very happy wrapping out his or her past. We were friends, but we were also partners. Knowing one’s past was a powerful weapon, and giving out harmful hints to people for free wasn’t in our agenda. To be honest, we had agreed not to stir up the past. It was an untold rule of our group. Trixie had just jumped in the rushing train two months ago. Finally, Twilight’s picky eyes settled on a Kril. The fidgeting changeling rolled her eyes. “Come on!” Kril blabbered as the barpony brought her the beer, which she grabbed and downed without any further ado. “I know the deal. I tried to overthrow queen Chrysalis after her disastrous tentative of invasion in Canterlot. And my own coup also failed. All the yaddi-yadda... I guess we, changelings, are bad at coups d’état.” Kril ended her rant with a few rolls of hoof in the air. She really wanted to get over with it and it made Mac and I chuckled. Kril was always ready to get head-first in the dirty stuff. “Well, I learnt something,” Twilight smirked. Kril’s grey and green eyes widened and her own snarl vanished from her face. “What? What were you going to say?” she cried out. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Twilight snickered, playing with the changeling hot-blooded behaviour. “It’s also interesting to learn that changeling drones have a gender.” Kril’s temper violently chilled. She rose up on her seat and leaned closer over until her face nearly touched the alicorn’s muzzle. Her angry eyes shone greener. “Eh, eh, eh,” I cackled defensively, getting a paw on Kril’s nearest shoulder and my face in between the two mares. “Let’s not get into a fight… again.” Kril closed her eyes to a blade’s width and slowly sat down. “I don’t like her,” our changeling brought forth. “Me neither,” I approved as I focused back on Twilight. “But… Why did you come here? Especially for us.” “As I said,” Twilight began. “You are investigators. You’ve made a name of yourself in the Badlands.” Mac repressed a laugh. “People around here are as dense as diamonds,” the ahuizotl dropped. “It’s not that hard to stand out.” My paw pointed at him, I asked for some slient. Only after did I turn over and faced the Princess. “What are you searching for?” I asked. Twilight smiled at me. We were getting to serious business. “Not a what,” Twilight began, “but a who.” I frowned as she moved around. Her purple eyes bored in Trixie’s hide as her hoof slammed down on the table. “You remember my friends?” Twilight said. “Yes,” Trixie mumbled. “Fluttershy was very kind.” Twilight didn’t answer to that observation. However, she left a single piece of paper on the table: a photo. The mare on the worn out photo was surrounded by a mess of fabrics, needles, and mannequins. Her curly, deep purple mane shone under the light filtering through her window. Her smiling face did no hide the sweat rolling off her brow. She was at work and the light did outline the strain put on her. I’d have taken a bit out of the gems printed into her flank. A damn fine mare, if you asked me. “Rarity, the element of generosity,” Twilight added for our attention, “disappeared two weeks ago.” The four of us looked at each other as we started to really focus in the conversation. By the look Trixie had on her face, this disappearance was some kind of big deal. I knew about the elements yet it was more of a fire camp story for me than a rock-hard reality. “How is this possible?” Trixie broke out first. “I heard about Tirek. You six should be… unmatched.” Trixie had swallowed up her own pride by saying those words. It could be easily read on her face. “I’m not finished,” Twilight geared up. “When it was clear she’d disappeared we called out for a search… We found blood in her home. A lot of it.” A chill flew over our heads. “And you found nothing?” Mac asked. “There are teams of guards on the line, taking care of it. But it takes far. Too. Long.” She spat out. “You…” Trixie stepped in. “You’re not here on official duty, aren’t you.” Twilight stared blankly at the markings of the table. “You’re right,” Twilight agreed just before she glanced at us with watery eyes. “I’m fearing that something really bad happened and… and… official stuff takes too much time to get sorted out.” Twilight sighed and pushed back a strand of mane that had fallen on her face behind her shivery ear. “I want you to find out what happened to Rarity. I may be an alicorn, but I am not omniscient or gifted with prescience. And I can’t be everywhere at once. I need pon… people who can handle a real investigation… without caring for laws, etiquette, and procedures.” “How much are you going to pay us for such a… dangerous service?” Mac finally asked the most important question. “I’ll erase your cases,” Twilight said, throwing at us a bone we could avidly chew over. “You’ll be as clean and white as a new-born sheep. You’ll be able to go back to Equestria. Go back to your original lives. Evade the dirt and horridness of the Badlands.” We all looked at each other. Though Mac and I were quite happy with such a deal, Kril was definitely not going to agree. Her ass shaking on her seat, she was mustering some mean words of her own cru. “I’ll also pay you,” Twilight added. “How much?” Kril avidly asked. “Set your price,” Twilight grinned haughtily. “Oh, beauty,” Kril laughed, “you’re playing with fire right here.” While a wild banter began, Mac and I leaned over the table. “You sure about it?” he asked me.