“Good evening Seasaddle! This is your favorite radio operator gracing the airwaves and here to listen to all your stories, all your worries, and all your woes. It’s currently twenty-two past eleven and things are a beautiful sixty degrees at ground level, but it might be a little more drafty if you’re lurking in the upper reaches of our city’s beautiful garden of glass and steel. As always there’s a one hundred percent chance of rain, but there are rumors it might be intermittent, so you might be able to rest your hooves and put your umbrellas down for a few minutes if you’re getting tired of carrying around your own little spot of shelter. Let’s open it up to our listeners - what can you tell us about your evening, Mare Do Well?”
“Jasmine,” Loopy sighed. “This isn’t exactly what I was expecting when Bon-Bon said she was going to have you be the radio operator.”
She looked around the rooftop she was standing on. It was an apartment block whose lowest floors were occupied by several competing corner shops and a few very specific businesses trying to make a living in lots the size of a walk-in closet - locksmiths, food stalls with exactly one thing on the menu, a souvenir T-shirt stand, and, oddly, one of those places where you could pick out things to get them engraved with somepony’s name.
The only thing up on top of the apartment block with her was HVAC equipment and a hockey net somepony had set up to take advantage of some of the city’s rare flat space. She couldn’t shake a strange feeling and darted around the AC unit to peer into the shadows it was casting, narrowing her eyes. There wasn’t even a stray cat lurking in the shade.
“Am I doing a good job?” she asked. “I used to listen to the radio a lot to pick up on the latest trends, so I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what most of the talk stations were like. If you want, I could put on some soft jazz. It’s very calming.”
“That’s… actually tempting,” Loopy admitted. “I could use something to calm me down.” She hopped across the way to the next building over. “I can’t shake this weird feeling that somepony is watching me, but--”
Loopy spun around without warning, trying to catch somepony looking, but all she saw was empty rooftop.
“--Nopony’s there,” she muttered.
“Don’t worry,” Jasmine said. “Nothing bad will happen while I’m here to help!”
Loopy smiled under her mask. “Yeah. You’re a good luck charm.”
“So how about that jazz? I’ve got a few records I can queue up.”
“Belay that for a second,” Loopy said. She heard something below her and stepped over to the side of the roof. A mare was backed into a corner against a chain-link fence stretched across the alleyway, and a stallion was right in front of her with what looked like a length of lead pipe and a lot of bad attitude. “I think I just found something else to occupy me.”
Loopy took a deep breath and jumped off the roof, narrowing her eyes and getting into character. She dropped down right between the two ponies, her cape and hat obscuring her silhouette into a confusing mass, right until she stood up and gave the stallion with a lead pipe and, now that she was close enough to sense it, the desperate hunger of an addict, a glare that stopped him where he was standing.
“What do you think you’re doing in my town?” Mare Do Well growled. “Drop the pipe. Now!”
The stallion looked at the pipe in his hoof like he hadn’t even noticed it before. The fire escape above them squealed in the wind, and that set the stallion off like the starting bell of a boxing match. He threw himself at Mare Do Well. It was totally inexpert, like he’d never even gotten into a fight in school before. Mare Do Well ducked aside, almost slipping. Her leg suddenly cramped up, and he nearly hit her, dropping the lead pipe and stumbling forwards.
“I must be getting old,” Mare Do Well mumbled. She jumped to the wall, then right at the mugger, but somehow misjudged the trajectory, missing and landing roughly, her ribs and jaw sore. She got up, confused, and rubbed her nose.
“Are you okay?” the mare behind her asked. That was just humiliating.
“Better than he is,” Mare Do Well said. She kicked the pipe on the ground, sending it bouncing into the stallion’s temple and dropping him. “Hah. Still got it.”
“Was he a professional boxer?” Jasmine asked, gently cleaning Loopy’s scrapes with something considerably more gentle than the iodine Lyra used. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get beaten up like that.”
“Give it some time,” Bon-Bon said, from where she was going through paperwork. “‘Loop d’Loop’ and ‘requiring medical attention’ are like peanut butter and jelly. Two great flavors that go great together.”
“We still don’t have a plan for what to do if she ends up really seriously injured,” Lyra said. “Somepony refuses to go to a real doctor, which definitely won’t cause problems in the long run.”
“I don’t even know how he hit me this hard,” Loopy said. “I don’t remember him hitting me at all!”
“Hopefully the armored suit will help with that, if you can get it working,” Lyra said.
“If I can get it to like me, you mean,” Loopy sighed.
“A good start might be to get your mind off things and stop moping around,” Jasmine noted. “Now, I’m not an expert, but I know a little something about stress from overwork. I sort of lived with that stress for, you know, most of my life.”
“Point taken,” Loopy said. “You think I’m working too hard.”
“Working too hard, sometimes alone, after turning off your radio and refusing to tell us all the details of what happened,” Bon-Bon noted.
“Why don’t you go out and do something fun?” Jasmine suggested. “Just let things ride for one night. If something serious crops up, we can radio you, but the city can live without you on patrol for one night.”
“And I was your first choice?” Whisper West asked.
“I owe you a few drinks after the hostage situation,” Loopy said. “Besides, I want to think we can be friends even outside of my work.”
“You had me at ‘going to buy me drinks’,” Whisper said. “Thanks for letting me choose the bar.” Malus Malus was all polished wood and green details. It was a nicer bar than Loopy would have expected for this part of town. The crowd was half professional drinkers, half upper-class ponies slumming it a little in an authentic Seasaddle pub.
“You’ve got better taste than I do,” Loopy said, looking around. It was fancy enough that Loopy felt a little underdressed without a dress or jewelry, but not so fancy that they’d kick a pony out for arriving au natural. The drinks menu was all fancy cocktails with ingredients Loopy could barely pronounce.
She looked up at Whisper helplessly.
“Speaking of good taste, I don’t suppose…?”
“I’ll order for you,” Whisper said, patting her shoulder. “Excuse me, bartender? Two martini aux pommes.”
“What are those?” Loopy asked.
“You’ll like them,” Whisper promised. “So how have you been holding up? Bon-Bon seemed worried about you.”
“I had a rough night,” Loopy admitted. “I don’t know if I wasn’t paying enough attention or if I was just unlucky.” She turned around to look behind her.
“What’s wrong?” Whisper asked.
“I don’t know,” Loopy said. “I’ve just had this weird feeling for the last few nights like somepony is watching me.”
Whisper glanced around. “I don’t see anything strange.”
Loopy sighed. “Yeah, I think I’m just paranoid. Too much weird stuff has happened over the last couple of months.”
“It really has been a lot of weird stuff, huh?” Whisper said. The drinks were placed in front of them. Loopy took an experimental sip. It tasted like somepony had made gin out of apples and then mixed it with cider. “Did you ever figure out all the connections?”
“What connections?” Loopy asked.
Whisper rolled her eyes. “Really? The connections between all your cases! Like… the attack on PrinTecca. They were trying to destroy their synthetic pony project, right? But why? And then a mysterious synthetic pony tries to steal the Etherite that was seized by the police after you busted a child labor operation! The same pony must be behind all of that!”
“Okay, yes, maybe, but we still don’t know for sure why they wanted to destroy the synthetic ponies PrinTecca was developing,” Loopy said. “And nopony knows what the Etherite is for.”
“I actually looked into that,” Whisper said.
Loopy raised an eyebrow.
“I’m a professional author,” Whisper reminded her. “I’m used to doing a lot of esoteric research. You should have seen me trying to get a maximum lifting capacity for military-grade airships. It’s classified and gets you put on a list if you ask too much.”
“But I bet you found an answer.”
“Around seventeen tons of live load,” Whisper said. “And it turns out Etherite does have some interesting properties. For one thing, it can enhance cutie mark magic, but once it’s used, it gets locked to that cutie mark.”
“That must be why they had foals mining it,” Loopy muttered. “They didn’t have their marks yet, so they wouldn’t contaminate it.”
“And why they’d send a machine to get it back,” Whisper agreed. “No cutie mark there, either.”
“It makes sense,” Loopy admitted. She picked up her glass and for a second, she thought she saw something in the reflection. She turned, but nopony was there. “Anyway, I should be relaxing, not thinking about work.”
“Good point. So, is it true you started dating someone?” Whisper asked, grinning and leaning on the bar.
Loopy almost spat out her drink. “What?! Where did you--”
A pony shoved her from behind. She scowled and turned to find one of the rougher members of the crowd glaring down at her.
“You spilled my drink,” he snarled. The cheap beer staining his front seemed to confirm that, except for the small detail that Loopy hadn’t gotten out of her seat since she’d arrived.
“You have the wrong pony,” Loopy said. She rubbed her nose. It was oddly sore again, like she’d bumped it against something. “I didn’t spill your drink, but if it’ll make you happy, I’ll buy you a beer even though you’re not my type.”
“Then who else did it?” the pony snapped, motioning around them. The rest of the bar was packed, but there was enough empty space around them that it felt like they were practically being shunned.
He probably did it himself since he’s such a big idiot.
“You probably did it yourself since you’re such a big idiot!” Loopy yelled back. “I offered to buy you a beer because I was feeling nice, but now you can buy your own swill!”
The stallion snarled and threw a punch. Loopy tossed her drink in his face, which wouldn’t have done much except she threw the glass, too. That distracted him enough that his hoof went wide, and she ducked under it, slipping off her seat and--
--And falling on her face, her legs just giving out from under her, ankles feeling like she’d sprained them without noticing.
“Loopy?” Whisper asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m still under the weather,” Loopy grumbled. “Maybe I should have gone for a massage instead of drinks.”
The angry stallion glared down at her and stomped. Loopy ignored the sore spots on her legs and ribs, wondered how she’d hurt herself so badly falling out of a chair that it felt like she’d cracked her carapace, and grabbed his hoof on its way down, shoving it up and knocking him back and off-balance, stumbling into a table.
Several more drinks got spilled. He’d only jostled the table but every single glass tipped over, right into the lap of its owner. The entire table got up to glare at Loopy.
Loopy got up and brushed herself off. “Okay. I can see where this is going.” She sighed and raised her hoof, motioning for them to come and get her. “Let’s do this.”
“You’re looking at battery, destruction of property, public disturbance, failure to pay a debt…” Detective Arabica sighed. “Did you have to throw them behind the bar? The top-shelf liquor you destroyed is worth more than my entire paycheck.”
“What do you mean failure to pay a debt?” Loopy asked.
“You didn’t pay your open tab,” Arabica said.
“Oh. Well, it wasn’t that much. I only ordered one drink, and then poured one for the road before you all showed up to take us away.” Loopy shrugged and sat back in the holding cell. “Look, I explained this already, I was acting in self-defense. All the damage was caused by the stallions who decided they had to show how brave they were by taking it out on an innocent little mare like me.”
“Innocent,” Arabica raised an eyebrow. “You took down a bar full of stallions on your own.”
“Innocent, not helpless.”
“And free,” Bon-Bon sighed. She walked in and gave Detective Arabica a bundle of paperwork. “Here. Her bail is paid. Loop d’Loop is an idiot, but she’s a free idiot.”
Arabica didn’t even look at the papers. “The bartender is pressing charges, and so are the ponies she ‘self-defended’ herself against. They all claim she started the fight. She’s free until her court date, and after that she’s going to need a decent lawyer.”
“SMILE will investigate it as an internal matter,” Bon-Bon said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
“You get spooky when you’re acting professional,” Loopy said. Jasmine was looking her injuries over, shaking her head and sighing at every bruise and chip in the changeling’s chitin. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that angry.”
“What were you thinking?” Bon-Bon asked. “Starting a fight in a bar? Getting arrested?! The least you could have done was try to get away without leaving a police record!”
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Loopy snapped. She groaned and sat back. “Buck, I feel like I slept in a concrete mixer.”
“Maybe you needed more rest than we thought,” Jasmine said. “Is there anyone you could talk to? Maybe you need some kind of special changeling medicine.”
“We could contact King Thorax and see if he knows anything,” Bon-Bon muttered. “But first we have to keep Loopy out of prison. She’s looking at two to five years, even with a plea bargain.”
“Well, I’ve got just the thing!” Lyra said, bouncing down the stairs. “I sweet-talked the bartender and got us a copy of the security footage.” She held up the tape. “We’re going to be able to figure out what really happened!”
“Good,” Loopy said. “You can see that I’m telling the truth. And then we’ll show the police, and we can make this stupid thing go away.”
Lyra started setting the tape up.
“If we can get out of this without having to beg for money from the budget to settle legal fees, I’ll be happy,” Bon-Bon sighed. “The home office already thinks we’re sort of the black sheep of the family.”
“You’re only saying that because we work out of the sewers, we have almost no personnel, and our main mission is keeping a vigilante on the right side of the law,” Lyra quipped. “Here we go! I just wish we had popcorn!”
The screen buzzed to life, and grainy black-and-white footage started playing. Lyra started working the controls, fast-forwarding.
“You two come in around… here,” Lyra said, putting the playback to normal speed. Loopy saw herself at the bar, sipping on a drink. Behind her, the stallion whose drink she’d been accused of spilling was looking away from her and suddenly stood, his drink knocked over into his lap.
“See? I wasn’t near him when his drink spilled,” Loopy said. “It just tipped over on its own.”
“Um…” Jasmine hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” Loopy asked.
“Nothing,” Jasmine said, shaking her head. “Sorry.”
“Anyway, you can see it all, I barely did anything,” Loopy said. “Maybe I was a little enthusiastic about things, but I didn’t throw the first punch. I was too busy falling on my butt like an idiot. Then when the others joined in, it was a brawl, and I was just trying to avoid getting hurt. I wish I’d done a better job at it.”
“It’s weird how their drinks all spilled like that,” Lyra noted. “The table must have been wobbly.”
“...Are you feeling okay?” Jasmine asked, concerned.
“Huh?”
“Well, it’s just… what about him?” Jasmine pointed to empty space.
“Him who?” Loopy asked. “There’s nopony there.”
“No, there’s a pony standing there,” Jasmine said. “Rewind the tape a little.”
Lyra raised her eyebrows and did what she asked.
“Okay, play it from here,” Jasmine said. “He’s walking in behind you.” She pointed to empty space with her hoof and followed it to the bar. “Now he’s spilling the stallion’s drink. He just pushes it right into his lap, but the stallion doesn’t even notice. Then he slapped you across the face, but you acted like he wasn’t there.”
“What…?” Loopy touched her sore nose.
“When you got off the stool, he kicked your ankles to make you fall, then when you were on the ground he hit you in the ribs a couple of times, but you don’t even look at him! Then he went over to this table and spilled everypony’s drinks…”
“There’s nopony there!” Loopy said.
“I don’t see anypony either,” Bon-Bon agreed. “Lyra?”
“It’s just empty space,” the unicorn said. “What do you see, Jasmine?”
Jasmine grabbed a pad and a pencil and started sketching. “I’m not much of an artist,” she said. “And the tape isn’t very good. But basically, he looks kind of like this.”
She turned the paper around to show a one-eyed, thin pony, wearing bits of armor and a black hoodie.