//------------------------------// // Case Twenty, Prologue: Interrogation // Story: Ponyville Noire: Rising Nightmares // by PonyJosiah13 //------------------------------// The mare woke up with a gasp to be greeted with complete darkness, so thick it felt like a blanket over her. She tried to sit up, but her head spun violently and she fell back with a moan, feeling the cold metal slab pressing up against her back.  “What..what the fuck…” she slurred, shaking her head with a moan. As her head slowly cleared, her mind went back to earlier. The phone call telling him he was home at last...driving out to the cottage...getting him in her arms once more, all his friends laughing...taking him out to the wheat fields and making love beneath the stars...he’d dropped her off at the apartment, promising to see her again the next day after work… The cut on her face stung in protest. The cut that she’d received the moment that she stepped out of the car in front of her apartment. She’d looked up just in time to see the black wings flying away, and then… With a grunt, the mare tried to sit up again, only for her progress to be halted by thick straps that bound her limbs to the table. She grunted as she struggled, but her bonds refused to budge. She tried to force magic to her horn, but nothing happened; she felt as though the energy was being blocked by a wall that she couldn't push through no matter how much will she pressed against it. “Hey!” she called out into the darkness, trying to squint enough to distinguish shapes. “Who’s there?! What the fuck do you want with me?!”  Blinding light stabbed her in the eyes and she flinched with a grunt. Hoofsteps sounded from beyond, pausing by her side.  “You are Rough Diamond?” a stallion’s voice came, hot breath reeking of coffee and aftershave.  Diamond coughed on the miasma, turning to squint at her interrogator. “Who the fuck are you?” she snarled.  The pale emerald eyes stared down at her coolly. “Listen to me carefully, señora,” he said, tone as dispassionate as one who is instructing another how to fix a sink. “Mi amigo is going to come in in a few moments. He’s going to ask you about Winged Key.”  Rough Diamond’s heart retreated deep into her gut; every throbbing pulse made her stomach churn. “I...I haven’t seen or spoken to him in moons!” she protested. “Whatever he did--”  “He stole something that belonged to us,” the stallion cut her off. “We need it back. And we know that he's in Ponyville.”  A mirage of the painting of a strange stallion in front of a mirror flashed before Diamond's eyes. “He’s not!” Rough Diamond protested, straining against her bonds, her accelerating heart giving her desperate strength. “I don’t know where he--!”  A hoof against her neck cut off her arguments and her air, making her gag as she was forced back down onto the slab that she was strapped to.  “You are lying.” The stallion’s voice was as cold as the metal that pressed against her back as he removed his hoof. “I am offering you mercy, Señora Diamond. Mi amigo is...most unpleasant in his methods, and I do not wish to see a beautiful mare tortured. We know where he is. We just can't get to him. Help us get what we want and nothing need happen to you.”  Rough Diamond was left gasping for air long after the pressure of her interrogator’s hoof was removed, as if the darkness itself was choking her. “I...I swear, I don’t...I don’t know where K-Key is…” Tears stung her eyes. “P-please, I don’t know--”  “Hmm,” the stallion murmured, then sighed. “Perhaps you are telling the truth. But we’ll know for sure soon.”  A door opened and shut. More hoofsteps entered, moving around in the darkness to Rough’s other side. She squinted at the approaching shape, then her eyes widened in horror.  “No!” she pleaded, squirming in her bonds, trying to get away from the masked face that was emerging from the shadows. “No! Please don’t!”  There was no mercy in the crimson eyes. He bent over her, his breath coming muffled as he studied her up and down. Like she was a bug on a slide.  He held up a photo. Diamond's eyes widened as they took in the three-story brown cottage in the fields, two stallions smoking at the head of the dirt drive and a mare standing on the balcony over the front doors. "He's not there!" Diamond protested, shaking her head frantically. "He's not there, I don't know where--!" His hoof went to the bandolier and extracted a syringe of pale yellow liquid. His hoof clamped down on her foreleg, pinning it like an iron weight as she continued to futilely squirm away.  “Please!” Rough screamed as the tip of the syringe lowered towards her flesh.  There was a click from the distance; a glance up revealed to Rough that the brown earth stallion from before was now standing behind a camera set up on a tripod. He looked at her over the viewfinder, then turned away in distaste.  Rough Diamond gasped in shock as the needle pierced her flesh. She started sobbing as the yellow liquid was flushed from the glass container.  Then she started screaming.