In all honesty she didn't remember much of what happened after finding Shining Armor that night. From what the other officers told her, she had actually given a fairly good description of the murderer's face, as well as pointing out his green scorpion tattoo. Hopefully that would help them to find the guy and arrest him.
After that happened, one of the officers (a friend of Shining's named Clean Slate) drove her home. He didn't say much, save for him telling her that he promised they were going to get the bastard who did this. She didn't respond, still too numb from everything going on.
And then... And then she got home.
When Cadance opened the door, Twilight could immediately tell she had been crying. It was pretty easy to see, and frankly Twilight was thankful Flurry Heart was in bed right now.
She of course asked the usual "Where you hurt?" and "Did the man see you?" but Twilight simply shook her head for both questions.
Spike then came out, he himself showing signs of crying, and asked if it was really true.
She didn't want to tell him the truth. She wanted to lie, to tell him that Shining was fine. That any minute now he'd be walking through the door and telling one of his terrible dad jokes. The kind that she always found terrible, but right now would give anything to hear.
But she wasn't a liar. So she nodded.
And then she finally broke down, right there in the kitchen, sobbing her eyes out. She barely noticed Cadance and Spike wrapping their arms around her, though she could tell they were also crying.
Nobody had to ask if Twilight was okay.
She wasn't.
None of them were.
-One Week Later-[1]
Twilight looked down at her brother's gravestone, placed right next to the one belonging to her parents. "Hey Shining," she muttered. "Sorry I haven't been here since last week. At your funeral. It's just... hard. Knowing that you're not coming home anytime soon.
'We're all trying to cope. Flurry Heart's too young to really understand this, so that's gonna be an awkward conversation when she gets older. Spike... he hasn't really talked much since it happened. He just stays in his room reading comics or putting together his monsters. I've tried talking to him, Cadance has tried talking to him, but aside from a few short sentences he's just... hollow. Something we're all dealing with. Cadance is working on setting him up with a therapist to help him. And speaking of Cadance... she's doing her best to keep it together. Trying to be strong. But I still see her cry whenever she walks past the pictures of you and her. And I can hear her break down every night when she thinks I'm asleep.
'As for me... I barely sleep. I try, but everytime I close my eyes I'm suddenly back there. That night..." She fought back against the tears, trying her hardest not to break. "I just... I don't know what to do. I keep hearing people say we have to move on, but how?"
"Ain't that the question of the day?"
The question came from a woman wearing blue jeans and a white T-Shirt, with electric blue eyes with hair that matched, which was tied in a ponytail. Recognizing her, Twilight said "Hey Miss Sentry."
Storm Sentry gave a small sad smile. "Hey kiddo." Walking up beside her, she looked at the gravestone sadly and sighed. "Sorry I couldn't make it to the funeral. Doctor wanted me to stay off of my leg as much as possible."
"It's fine."
"No, it's not. I should've been there. I should've made sure the big idiot wasn't alone. Ever since we started this crusade against the Storm King, we've had targets on our backs. It was only a matter of time before that bastard sent one of his goons to make an example out of us."
Twilight didn't respond, deciding to just let Storm finish her rant.
"Shining managed to get most of the precinct together to try and take down this guy. Now that he's dead, everyone's scared so badly that even the Chief's saying we should back off."
Seeing that she was done, Twilight asked "Are you?"
Storm shook her head, looking offended. "Hell no! Shining was my best friend and my partner. Ain't no way in hell I'm letting that scumbag gunman and the Storm King get away with this."
Her words gave Twilight a little hope. "So, any luck on the gunman?"
She nodded. "Yeah. We've actually had him in our sights for a while now." She pulled up a picture of the man Twilight saw on her phone, though this time he was wearing a prison jumpsuit and had his head shaved. "Guy's name is Stinger Scorpio. He did some time in Ryker's for homicide a few years ago. Should've been locked up for life, but his fancy lawyer managed to talk the judge down to a ten year sentence. After that he apparently sold himself out as a contract killer, killing whoever you want for the right price."
"So what makes you so sure it's him?"
"Aside from the same face and same scorpion tattoo? Shining was the guy who arrested him the first time. That and the bullets that killed Shining were laced with poison. Specifically, venom from a scorpion. This matches the way Stinger's homicide victim died, as well as three other homicides that occurred after this bastard got out of the pen."
"That's go-," she stopped, her eyes widening. "Three? Why the hell haven't you guys gotten him locked up yet?!"
"Because any evidence we mange to get on this asshole is circumstantial at best. And every time the same fancy lawyer manages to get him cleared of any charges, or get him out of prison in a few weeks." She stopped, groaning. "The only way we'd be able to finally put this guy away for life would be if we got a full confession from his own mouth. And possibly finding his stash of poisoned bullets. Not that I think he'd be stupid enough to keep those somewhere in his apartment." Seeing the look on Twilight's face she added "Don't worry, kiddo. We ain't gonna stop until that skunk's locked up for life. No matter how long it takes."
Twilight didn't reply, still looking at Shining's grave. Eventually she asked "Did you feel the same way when you're husband died in that fire?"
A bit surprised by her question, Storm replied "The feeling of emptiness in your soul? Yeah, I dealt with that."
"How? How do you deal with something like this?"
"Well for me? I focused on the family I still had, figured my husband wouldn't want me to wallow in my self-pity and grief, and I found people to talk to. Other than that, I just put one foot in front of the other and kept walking. That's really all you can do." She gently placed a hand on Twilight's shoulder and said "You'll get through this. Shining always said you were one of the strongest people he'd ever known."
A small smile managed to show itself on Twilight's lips. "Yeah. He always told me that."
Storm Sentry left a few minutes later, leaving Twilight alone at Shining's grave.
After what felt like a small eternity, Twilight finally said "I'm not gonna wait for them to find him, Shining.
'I'll find him myself."
Looking back on it, the following week had been one of the busiest of Twilight's life. Whenever she wasn't at home trying to get Spike to come out of his room or keeping an eye on Flurry Heart while Cadance took care of some legal stuff (mostly taking care of Shining Armor's Will and such) she was in her lab working on stuff she was going to need.
The first thing she put together was a costume. Considering she couldn't get her hands on anything fancy (even spandex was out of reach for her at the time) she settled with a pair of dark blue sweatpants and a purple hooded sweatshirt. A ski mask had had eyeholes cut out for her, while also putting a pair of goggles through it so that nobody would be able to see her actual eyes. It was cheap, rough, and definitely wasn't something you'd see a superhero in the comics wearing, but it would make sure nobody would know it was her underneath.
The second thing she worked on was something she really felt she needed: webs. Not only would they complete her whole spider motif, but also should be able to hold Scorpio in place until the police came to get him. Using her knowledge of chemistry she was able to create the web fluid, making it have far greater tensile strength than actual spider webs. Not only that, but they stuck like instant super-glue and were strong enough that a few strands were able to lift and hold up a large truck engine. But like most webs they were biodegradable, dissolving into foam in roughly an hour. Fortunately if her plan worked, the police would get to where Stinger was long before that happened.
As for the launching mechanism, she settled on a pair of wrist-mounted launchers that she dubbed The Web Shooters Mark I. The design was simple and functional, if a bit clunky. Once she got the Web Fluid loaded into some specially made cartridges, she constructed a carousel-loaded system that would feed her a new cartridge of web fluid when the previous one was empty. The web shooter would only activate if she pressed her middle and ring finger onto the trigger that was in the middle of her palm. This was so she didn't accidentally shoot a web out if she made a fist or grabbed something. A small but powerful battery would power the air jets that would push the web fluid out through the nozzle, and a double tap would detach her current line. Otherwise she'd run out of web fluid with one line.
And in a surprising bit of luck, she managed to get the Mark I Web Shooters working after three tests; the first test fried the inner components, the second test the webs fired everywhere and she had to wait an hour for the webs stuck to her face to dissolve, and the third one worked with no problems whatsoever.
"Okay, that's taken care of," she said to herself, looking at the machines strapped to her wrists. "Now, I just need to figure out how I'm going to get around the city. It's not like I can just take the bus while I'm in costume."
As she mused on this, she turned and saw a solitary spider hanging by a single thread from one of her machines.
And then to her surprise she saw the spider swinging back and forth on the web strand until it reached the side of the machine, clinging to it before breaking the strand and crawling away.
The gears in her head turning, she looked at her web shooters. "Well... if it could hold up a truck engine, it should be able to hold me.
'Plus, Cadance and Spike have both said I really need to get over my fear of heights."
"Though I don't really think this is what they had in mind," she said with barely contained fear.
She was currently in her costume, mostly used to seeing through the goggles of her mask...
...and she was currently adhered to the wall of the Kingdom State Building[2], over 100 floors up. She didn't even want to know how many feet high she was, how many feet she forced herself to climb since she really didn't want her face to show up on the cameras since she couldn't wear her mask inside. Honestly that had been the easy part. She just forced herself not to look down and kept climbing until she felt she was high enough.
Mentally she was berating herself, telling herself that this was probably going to be the stupidest thing she has ever done.
The only reason she hadn't stopped at the halfway point of the building was partially because of the adrenaline thrill, but the other part was her constantly repeating to herself "I'm stronger than I think. I'm stronger than I think. I can do this. I can do this!"
Now that she was here, she could clearly see just how high up she was.
And if she was being honest, it wasn't really that bad.
It was much, much worse.
She took a deep breath, trying and failing to steady her nerves. "I'm crazy. I'm absolutely insane." She braced her legs, ready to spring away.
And as she let go, she kicked off with her legs, launching herself off the side of skyscraper and into the Manehattan night sky, somehow back-flipping and diving headfirst towards the earth.
She felt several things at once; sheer unadulterated terror, the wind rushing against her like a bunch of pillows, and her whole life flashing before her eyes.
But after a few seconds those all faded away, and she felt something else.
She didn't feel like she was falling.
No.
She was rising.
She barely registered what she was doing, only that she flung her arm away from her and shot out a thick strand of webbing, double-tapping the trigger to release it. Grabbing it with both hands, she braced herself before the line went taut.
And before she knew it she was swinging in a wide arc, reaching the peak of her swing within a few seconds. She let go of the line, reveling in the temporary feeling of weightlessness before she started to go back down. She immediately fired another web line and swung, her feet barely missing the top of a 18-Wheeler. Swinging close to the side of a building, she let go of her web and stuck her feet to the wall, keeping her momentum by sprinting Prince of Persia style. She then jumped, landing on a bus before jumping off and firing another web line, zipping towards a horizontal flag pole. She grabbed it like an Olympic Gymnast before spinning on it three times before letting go, flinging herself up into the air.
Unable to hold it in, she let out a very loud "YEAAAHHH!" of triumph, before she took off swinging again.
And on the ground, everyone on the sidewalks looked on in shock, amazement, disbelief, and some confusion at the amazing sight before them.[3]
A few hours later, Twilight collapsed into a chair in her lab, exhausted but with the widest grin on her face. "Wow. Th-that was... That was awesome!" She sighed. "Well, I'm not afraid of heights anymore."
She looked at her web shooters, then looked at the mask in her hands. Her face morphed into one of pure determination, and she said "Okay. Now that that's taken care of, it's time to get started."
"First off, I need to get some more information..."
Around 2015, DisCorp donated to the Manehattan Police Department a series of security towers, only about ten feet tall and situated on the top of each of the major precincts in the city. They were made to make communication between precincts easier and more efficient, as well as detect 911 calls no matter where you were in your district or how crappy your cell service was.
And thanks to the hacking app she created for her phone, Twilight was able to tap into that network without anyone knowing she was in.
And if they did happen to notice, she had the whole thing routed through multiple dummy servers all over the world. It would take them years to find her.
Originally she was just planning on looking into the police database to see if they knew where Stinger lived, sneak into his home to see if his poisoned bullets were there, then trick him into confessing while she recorded it using the voice recorder she had in her pocket. Once she got that onto a flash-drive (and copied it in case someone tried to destroy it. Pays to have a backup) she'd drop it AND Stinger off at the station, webbed up with a nice-little bow.
But then she saw that someone in the precinct was trying to make a phone call. Nothing too suspicious at first...
...until she noticed that they were trying to talk to someone on an encrypted phone line. That was definitely suspicious.
So with a few button prompts she tapped in on the phone call, just in time as someone answered. "What is it?"
"I figured you'd want a warning about this. Your little stunt with Shining Armor had a witness."
"The hell? Who?"
"His little sister. About fifteen years old. Apparently she'd been at the graveyard with him earlier, then saw you after you shot up the loser."
That line was enough to confirm it. The guy on the other end of the line was Stinger, which meant that guy who made the call... "Looks like I found a dirty cop."
Returning to the conversation, she heard "Look man, I was only paid to kill that goody-two shoes Armor. I don't kill kids, not unless the client's willing to pay me extra. Besides, it ain't like her word's gonna mean much."
"Yeah, no kidding. No video, no prints, and the only witness is a 15 year old girl. That lawyer your boss hires for you will make quick work of her." There was a pause before the cop said "Speaking of your boss, when exactly am I gonna start seeing the money he promised me for playing my part?"
"Don't worry, pal. The Storm King always rewards his followers. Just be patient."
"Patient my ass. Do you know how many times I almost got caught trying to put that tracer on that loser's car? If it weren't for me you wouldn't have found that loser to pull this off."
Twilight felt her blood boil, but she kept it from boiling over. She'd take care of that later.
"Moron, don't say stuff like that out loud!"
"Don't worry, I'm the only person here in the men's room. Put an out of order sign on the door and nobody questions it."
"Ew. Look, keep me informed of anymore developments and I'll put in a good word to have your money transferred ASAP."
"Thank you."
"Just remember, Brick. You squeal, you won't live long enough to regret it."
"Yeah, I know. You made that clear to the last cop on your payroll who tried to squeal. How far he'd sink into the Hudson again?"
"Deep enough that the cops will hopefully never find him."
"Let's hope so."
The call ended and Twilight growled under her breath, visualizing just how she was going to beat that dirty cop to a bloody pulp, when an idea occurred to her. "Looks like there's going to be one big development coming up, asshole."
Stinger sighed as he sat down, taking a big drag from his cigar as he watched the news. He rolled his eyes when he saw the headline. "Seriously people? It was one cop. You guys act like I killed the President. Or the Pope. Or Santa Claus."
He was stopped from going any further down that rabbit hole when his phone went off. Answering it, he asked "What? If it's about the money-?"
"Shut up and listen! The cops found out where your stash is!"
Confusion and shock ran rampant through his body. "What?! How?"
"Some rookie cop saw you entering and exiting a warehouse! They're working on getting a search warrant filled out, but the way they're talking it sounds like-"
He took a quick breath and said "Alright, calm down! Do they have the thing filled out yet?"
"No. Not yet. Still waiting on getting it finalized."
"Fantastic. Do they know about your involvement?"
"No man! I didn't squeal!"
"Calm the hell down!" Stinger sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Look, just act like everything's normal, and go back to doing your job. How long do you think it'll take before they get that warrant finished?"
"About an hour. The guy in charge is a stickler for protocol and moves at a snail's pace."
"Thank God for that. I'm going to run to the warehouse and get my stuff outta there. I got another safe house I can stash it at until the heat dies down. Until then, keep your head down and don't do anything stupid."
He hung up before Brick could reply, before putting out his cigar and grabbing his car keys. "First I get seen by a kid, now this. This keeps up and my reputation's going to be in the toilet."
Little did he realize, there hadn't been a rookie cop who had been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of him.
No, the whole thing was set up by one very clever (and lucky) spider.
-A Few Minutes Earlier-
Loose Brick sighed as he stepped onto the roof, glancing around to see if there was anyone already there. Seeing there was none, he reached into his pocked and produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He was about to pull one out and light it up, when...
Thwip!
Something white swiftly shot out and grabbed his pack of cigarettes and yanked them out of his hand. He whirled around, pulling his gun out and bringing it up to fire, only for his assailant to grab his wrist and twist it, forcing him to release the gun. His assailant then moved forward and delivered a right hook into the side of his fast, making him see stars and knocking him to the ground. There were multiple Thwip! sounds, and suddenly his hands and feet were stuck to the ground, covered in... webs?
He managed to turn his head up towards his attacker, just in time to see them plant their foot down hard on his chest, driving the wind out of him. Once he got his breath back he gasped "W-who the hell are you?!"
Their goggled eyes seemed to glare at him, before they spoke (in a voice that sounded female, but was clearly being played through some sort of voice modulator) "I'm your worst nightmare."
He struggled, trying to break free, but the webs were too strong and her foot held him down fast. "Just- just take it easy, lady! I'll give you whatever you want!"
She lowered herself down to glare at him. "What I want is for the man who murdered Lieutenant Shining Armor to spend the rest of their life in prison. As well as anyone involved with it."
To prove her point, she pulled out a generic looking burner phone, pulled up a file and pressed PLAY.
And to his horror, the conversation he had with Stinger not even twenty minutes ago played loud and clear. "O-o-o-oh fuck!"
She grabbed him by the front of his uniform and lifted him up slightly. "Now listen, scumbag. I'm feeling generous. Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna call that asshole again. You're gonna tell him that the police got a lead about where he keeps his poisoned bullets and our getting a search warrant to find them. And you're going to make it so damn convincing that he'll fall for it; hook, line and sinker." She got so close to his face he could practically feel her breath. "Or else you're going to be taking a shortcut to the ground floor."
In all honesty, Twilight was bluffing. She wasn't going to kill the man. She was just trying to scare him.
And it worked, because he immediately nodded and told her where his phone was (since he couldn't really grab it at the moment, with his hands restrained.)
-Present Time-
"Good job," Twilight said as the call ended. She'd already gotten her phone to trace Stinger's, and could see he was already on the move.
Brick nodded. "Okay, you got what you want. Now could you please-"
Thwip!
The rest of his sentence was blocked out by a wad of webbing that Twilight fired, covering his mouth but leaving his nose free so he could breathe. "Don't worry. That stuff will dissolve in about an hour." She smiled under her mask and continued "And by that time I'll have Stinger in custody, and the police will have all the evidence they need to lock him up, and you." Seeing his eyes widen in fear and hear his mumbled attempts at begging for mercy, she said "Enjoy your last hour as a free man."
She checked her burner phone (thankful she decided to do that instead of using her ACTUAL phone) and saw the direction Stinger was heading. "Greenwich, huh? Alright then, let's see where the scorpion makes his nest."
And with that she fired a web line and swung away, eager to find her brother's killer and enact justice upon him...
To Be Continued...