//------------------------------// // Case Twenty-One, Chapter One: Spycraft // Story: Ponyville Noire: Rising Nightmares // by PonyJosiah13 //------------------------------// The snow clung to the windows of the Apple Pie in Your Eye, reflecting the array of multicolored lights strung in every frame. Santa Hooves had parked his sleigh packed with gifts atop the building, waving down at the passerby on the street, inviting them into the warmth of the tavern.  Seated at the bar, Daring Do studied the gift in her hooves. The book’s title was Sunken Treasures and Shipwrecks, the silver words splashed across the ghostly image of a galleon resting at the bottom of a dark body of water. Sharks and squid orbited the wreck like planets around a dark, mysterious star, which seemed to beckon towards the reader, inviting them to explore the sunken secrets within.   “I, uh...I might have run out of ideas,” Rainbow Dash admitted sheepishly from her seat next to her, rubbing the back of her mane. “I went to the bookstore to get something for Twilight, and I still hadn’t thought of something for you, but I figured that you’d probably need some ideas to research for your next books, so I just kinda wandered around the history section and that one jumped out at me.” She shifted nervously in her seat. “I mean, unless you already had that, which is fine, I--”  Her sentence was cut off by a golden wing draping around her shoulders and pulling her into a warm embrace.  “Thanks, kid,” Daring beamed, tussling Rainbow’s mane. “Happy two-days-after-Hearth’s Warming.”  “Heh!” Rainbow chuckled, a relieved grin spreading across her face. “Thanks, Daring!”  “Now, here’s yours,” Daring replied, taking out a small, neatly wrapped package and passing it to Rainbow. Rainbow pounced on the gift, tearing the paper off in a flurry and taking the top of the box off.  Inside was a bright orange cylindrical whistle with a compass embedded in the end. A lanyard was wrapped around the entire cylinder.  “An emergency kit,” Daring explained as Rainbow extracted it for closer examination. “Compass, whistle, firestarter, and signal mirror. Something that you can take with you for weather duty or Air Force. Better to have it and not need it and all that.”  “Sweet!” Rainbow declared, uncoiling the lanyard and draping it around her neck.  Daring smiled at her protege, but the expression turned wooden as her eyes fell on Rainbow’s left wing. The metal prosthetic flexed in perfect synchronization with her flesh and blood wing, but it was still a poor simulation. Daring’s eyes went to the stump of bone that the metal was attached to.  Part of her still found it horrifically fascinating how the cut was perfectly smooth, as if Rainbow’s wing had been made of butter. Half a heartbeat, that’s all it had taken to cut the wing off.  For a moment, Daring was back on Twilight’s porch, feeling Rainbow’s hoof clinging tightly to hers, watching as the tears ran down the younger pegasus’ pale face, mixing with the pouring rain. She turned away before Rainbow could notice her hooves starting to shake, sucking in a breath to steady herself.  On the other side of the bar, Big Mac looked at her with a cocked eyebrow, continuing to wipe down a stein. Daring took a sip of her Manticore Rare, the burning bourbon going a long way towards completely calming her, and gave him a reassuring nod.  She glanced back at Rainbow, who was now watching the stage of the Apple Pie. Rara was seated at her usual place at the piano, crooning out Hearth’s Warming carols in chorus with Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Steamed Carrot, with Phil on saxophone. A warmth spread through Daring’s heart when Steamed Carrot made eye contact with her and beamed. Daring raised her glass in reply and took another sip.  At a nearby table, Twilight Sparkle was sitting and reading a book. Next to her, Smolder and Yona were engaged in an arm-wrestling match; the dragon and the yak were evenly matched, determined grins on their faces despite the sweat that was running down their brows. Spike was hoarsely cheering Smolder on; the drake’s boils had been reduced to a more manageable number, which he only occasionally scratched at.  At another table, she saw Flash's cousin Sandbar sitting with Silverstream and a disguised Blue Rose and Ocellus. The sight of Sandbar and Ocellus holding hooves brought a small smile to Daring's face. She then spotted a familiar blue griffon sitting in a nearby booth, shooting an occasional glance at Silverstream over his coffee. Daring made eye contact with Gallus, then meaningfully tilted her head at the hippogriff. Gallus glared at her. She maintained a steady gaze, cocking an eyebrow.  After a moment, Gallus sighed, stood up and made his way over to Silverstream. The younger hippogriff looked up and beamed at his approach, standing up to give him a welcoming hug. Gallus’ cheeks burned bright red, but he smiled as Silverstream began introducing him to her friends.  As Daring returned to her drink, she noticed Blue Rose, Ocellus, and Sandbar exchanging knowing smiles, prompting Silverstream to blush. She chuckled to herself as she sat down next to Rainbow.  Her attention was then drawn by Applejack and Pinkie Pie cradling a pale gold unicorn colt with baby blue curls, wrapped in a pale green blanket decorated with apple trees. The colt was giggling happily as Applejack played peekaboo with the colt, his silver eyes shining with happiness. "Mama!" Endeavor babbled. Joy spread across Applejack's freckled face and she cuddled her son, a happy tear running down one cheek, though Daring felt a small pang in her chest at the single, powerful word coming from Endeavor's mouth. "He's in a good place, Sparks," she whispered, taking a long sip of the bourbon. The bell over the door jingled, announcing a new arrival. Daring turned to behold a honey yellow-colored stallion with a long blonde mane entering, doffing his Stetson hat and stamping the snow from his boots at the threshold. He was wearing a brown vest with a gold star pinned to the front.  The stallion spotted her and made his way straight towards her. “Detective Do, ma’am,” he greeted her with a slight bow.  “Deputy Braeburn,” Daring nodded back as the Appleloosan deputy sheriff hopped up onto a stool.  “Howdy, cousin,” Braeburn grinned at Big Mac, greeting him with a warm hug. “Happy Hearth’s Warming!”  “Eeyup,” Big Mac replied, pulling out a bottle of Sweet Apple Acres Cider and pouring Braeburn a glass. Braeburn took a long gulp of the amber liquid, letting out a contented sigh and an approving nod.  “How’s Smokey?” Daring asked.  “Back to work and doing great,” Braeburn smiled. “Never thought that he’d be willing to get on a train again after the crash, but that’s my husband for you.”  “Good for him,” Daring nodded.  “Much as I’d like for this to just be a social visit with my family over here,” Braeburn admitted, turning to Daring. “This is a business call, I suppose.”  He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and placed it on the counter in front of Daring. She raised an eyebrow at the contents.  It appeared to be a golden bit, but sliced in half lengthwise, like a sandwich, revealing a hollowed-out interior. Also included in the bag was what Daring presumed was the content of the false coin: a tiny square photograph with minuscule writing upon it.  “Where’d this come from?” Daring asked, holding the bag up to the light for closer examination. Seeing the object of her fascination, Phillip climbed off the stage after finishing up a round of “Faust Rest Ye Merry Gentleponies” and made his way to the bar. “Funny story, that,” Braeburn explained. “Yesterday morning, First Gear, who works as a delivery kid for the general store, came into the local police department with this. He accidentally dropped the coins that he'd gotten for tips that day; one broke open when it hit the ground and that came spilling out of it. Sheriff Silverstar couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Thought that you might want to take a look at it...especially because of the radio message we intercepted earlier this week.”  He pulled out a notepad and smoothed it out on the bar. On it was a long list of letters: “AFFGDXGXFD…” “We were doing maintenance on the department’s radios Hearth's Warming Eve and stumbled on this frequency,” Braeburn explained. “It was just letters being sent out in Horse code. We didn’t know what to make of it; never heard anything from that frequency before, and never heard anything from it again.”  “It’s an ADFGX cipher,” Phillip stated, pulling out a magnifying glass and studying the tiny photograph. “Invented during the First Griffonese War.”  “Right,” Daring said, grabbing a napkin and drawing out a five-by-five grid on it, then writing “ADFGX” over the top and down the side. “You write out an alphabet in a grid like this one. Each letter corresponds to a pair of letters: a becomes ‘AA,’ b becomes ‘AD,’ and so on.”  “Why choose those letters?” Rainbow asked out loud.  “Because they’re all very different in Horse code, so you’re not likely to mix them up,” Daring explained. “What’s on the photo, Phil?” “Some kind of key, I think,” Phillip said, grabbing a notebook and copying down the miniature codewords.  Do: volpe Lun: sole Mar: erba Mer: ragno Gio: nube Ven: fiume Sab: cielo “What the heck does any of that mean?” Rainbow asked.  “It’s Crystalline,” Daring said. “The seven columns are abbreviations for the days of the week: domenica, lunedi, martedi, mercoledi, giovedi, venerdi, sabato. The rest of the words are ‘fox,’ ‘sun,’ ‘grass,’ ‘spider,’ ‘cloud,’ ‘river,’ ‘sky.’”  “And what does that have to do with this cipher?” Braeburn pressed.  “There’s more to it than just the letters in the grid,” Daring explained. “There’s also a keyword involved to change around the order. You said you got this on Hearth's Warming Eve?”  “Right,” Braeburn confirmed.  “So he used ragno as a keyword,” Daring said. “So what you do after you encode your message is you write out the message in columns underneath the keyword, like this.”  R A G N O A A D D F F G G X X “Then you rearrange the columns in alphabetical order, like this.”  A G N O R A D D F A G G X X F “Finally, you write the message out in a single line, like this.” AGDGDXFXAF Rainbow stared at the little letters on the notepad, puzzling over their permutations and meanings. “Man, I should read about this stuff more,” she muttered to herself.  “So you’re saying that there might be some Crystal Empire spy in Appleloosa?”  Braeburn asked, disbelief and concern warring across his countenance.  “Looks like it,” Phillip commented, carefully transposing the intercepted message into columns, then into pairs. “Right. Now it’s a substitution cipher.”  “Yo, Twilight!” Rainbow shouted, waving at a corner table. “What?” Twilight asked, looking up from her book.  “Need your egghead powers over here!” Rainbow said, beckoning her over.  “They’re not powers, Rainbow,” Twilight chided as she approached. “It’s knowledge, logic, and reason. What’s up?”  Phillip, Daring, and Braeburn briefly filled her in as Twilight began to study the code.  “I see,” Twilight nodded. “Well, the most common letters in Crystalline are E, A, and I...I see a few double letters here and here…”  With a flicker of her horn and flash of purple light, Twilight summoned a pile of notebooks and pens. She started writing down formulae, ciphers, grids, and calculations, muttering to herself the entire time; occasionally, Phillip and Daring would interject with a comment or a suggestion. Braeburn stared wide-eyed as the trio worked on the riddle.  After nearly twenty minutes of work, Twilight stared at her notepad, then raised her hooves with a triumphant “Eureka!”  Every head turned towards her at her cry, the carols pausing. The silence was punctuated by a loud thump as Yona slammed Smolder’s arm to the table, letting out a triumphant laugh.  “Ha! Yak best at arm wrestle!” she declared as Spike groaned in disappointment. “But dragon is worthy opponent!”  Her grin faded as she realized that everypony else was staring at them. She chuckled sheepishly and sunk back into her seat.  Her cheeks coloring, Twilight ran a hoof under the deciphered message:  Cinghiale uno e con Appleloosa bufalo. “‘Boar One is with Appleloosa buffalo,’” Daring Do translated.  “Why would they be sending a code about pigs?” Braeburn asked.  “Whoever or whatever Boar One is, it’s in Appleloosa,” Phillip says. “And it’s probably not good.”  "Suspects," Phillip said, turning to Braeburn. Braeburn scratched his head. "Well, we already questioned the four ponies that tipped First Gear for his deliveries. Let's see..." He flipped through a notebook. "Della Delivery, one of the mailponies; Coal Tender, who works at the trainyard; Open Casket, the undertaker; and Golden Crust, the baker. 'Course, they all denied that the coin was theirs." He flipped his notebook shut. "Not gonna lie, Phil: we're more lost than a cow in a chicken coop. We could use some help here." Phil turned to the two pegasi next to him. “Well, we’ve already found all the lost bunnies in town, and the police will call us if they find anything on the Plague Doctor,” Daring said. “This might be a good lead.”  “Sweet!” Rainbow cheered. “I’ll go get a train ready!” And before anypony could stop her, she zipped out the door in a rainbow blur, the bell over the door jingling in her wake.  Daring stared after her for a moment, her stomach twisting with worry. The cutlass with the twin black suns flashed before her eyes once again; the echo of Rainbow’s screams and whimpers rang in her ears.  “Hey,” Phillip said, taking Daring’s hoof. “We’ll be there. We’ll take care of her.”  Daring squeezed his hoof back and nodded, forcing a tight grin on her face.  “Glad that you can come,” Braeburn said as he rose. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing.”  “Oh, thanks for jinxing it,” Daring groaned as they headed for the door.  “Hey, Phil!” Pinkie Pie called from the bar, concern splashed over her face. “You’ll be careful, right?”  “We’re always careful, Pinkie,” Phillip reassured her.  “Just don’t let the Plague Doctor stab you with his knife!” Pinkie Pie called, holding up a newspaper clipping: a surveillance still of the Plague Doctor brandishing his crescent-shaped blade.  Phillip cocked an eyebrow at Pinkie. “That’s not a knife,” he said.  A grin spread across Pinkie’s face. “I got you to say it!” she chirped. “Have fun in Appleloosa!” Humming merrily to herself, she moved on to serve some other customers.  Phillip blinked, then stared at Daring. She returned his puzzled gaze, then sighed and rolled her eyes. With a shrug, he held the door open for Daring and they stepped out into the cold.  “For the last time, copper,” the rust-colored griffon snarled from across the table, his forearms folded across his chest and his eyes firmly fixed on the wall to his left. “I don’t know Curveball, and I don’t know anything about any doctor.”  Flash Sentry scowled at his interview subject, then frowned at his folder. He scowled at the autopsy photographs of Curveball and his companions from the Industry Kings that the Plague Doctor had murdered. The slit throats gaped open, blood staining the fur around their necks. But even this had not been enough to persuade the suspect to talk; he had instead spoken through averted eyes, a clenched jaw, and a few beads of sweat that ran down the back of his neck despite the coolness of the room.  “Funny that, Simon,” Red commented from behind the griffon, striding forward to slap a pair of pictures onto the table. The griffon’s blue eyes briefly flickered to the surveillance crystal stills that depicted a battered but still serviceable four-door cruising through the streets of Ponyville at night.  “That is your car, isn’t it?” Red pressed, leaning down into Simon’s field of view. Simon’s response was to turn the other way, shifting in his seat and clutching himself tighter as if for comfort.  “Because it was spotted at the junkyard the night that your friends’ bodies were dumped,” Red pressed. “Went straight there from the docks where you were supposed to be working unloading the Sealight Delight--”  “Lawyer,” Simon interrupted, speaking through his gritted beak.  Red and Flash looked at each other. Red let out an irritated huff, but nodded and headed for the door.  “We’re not the worst option here, friend,” he advised Simon as he stood up. “You keep that in mind.”  The griffon just grunted, still refusing to meet the detectives’ eyes as they exited, closing the door behind them.  “Five up, and five down,” Red grunted. “We’re getting nowhere with the Industry Kings.”  “They’re more scared of the Plague Doctor than they are of us,” Flash replied. “And frankly, I’m not surprised.”  “Whatever they’re smuggling for him has got to be important,” Red said, then huffed out a breath. “Should’ve gotten the Sealight Delight back in here, but of course, it’s already sailed off and even its own shipping company can’t get hold of it.” He scoffed. “It’s a miracle. Ship up and vanished like a fart in the wind. I hope Agent Strider manages to track it down soon." "Simon?" Officer Gallus approached the window, frowning at the griffon in the window. "Flash, I know him," he protested. "He's not with any of the gangs." "Then explain why his car was spotted at a body dump site," Red grunted. "Sorry, Gallus. Your buddy's stuck in this." Gallus glared at Red for a moment, then turned back to the griffon in the empty interrogation room. As if sensing his gaze, Simon glowered at the window for a brief moment, then returned to his silent contemplation. Gallus opened his beak as if to speak for a moment, then sighed. "Just wanted to let you know," he grunted to the detectives. "Prowl, Bumblebee, and I managed to get the dock manifests for the Sealight. They're waiting on your desk, Flash." "Thanks, Gallus," Flash said. The griffon didn't acknowledge his praise as he headed back up the wall except with a quiet grunt. Flash frowned in thought. “You know, it occurs to me that someone had to build the Plague Doctor’s hideout under that warehouse,” he commented. “And someone had to have seen something. I mean, it’s not like a concrete room just magically appeared under there, right?”  “That is a good point,” Red commented. “We’d better start leaning on the construction crew and see what they know. But I’m not giving up on the Industry Kings.”  “Don’t expect you to,” Flash replied. “But we’re getting nowhere with these guys. We gotta try something else.”  “Yeah, you’re right,” Red admitted. He held up another folder, studying the photographs of the white, heavily scuffed mid-sized cargo ship with the name Sealight Delight painted across the bow in purple. He puffed out a breath. “The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh, Sentry?”  Flash mopped his brow and glared at Simon. “Too right.”  A flutter of wings passed overhead and a small metal tube clattered to the ground. The spy scooped it up, the pass so quick and clean that they doubted that anypony would’ve noticed.  If anypony was even watching them. Seven years in this backwater joke of a town. No point in wasting it now.  As soon as the spy returned home, they headed straight to their office and extracted the thin sheet of flash paper from the metal. Beneath the pale glow of an ultraviolet flashlight, the encoded message stared up at them. After all these years, they barely saw the cipher, translating the code in their head.  Received your message. Plague Doctor en route. Prepare transport for Boar One and Three to Ponyville. A grin spread across the agent’s face as they held a match to the paper, watching it burn away to ashes in moments.  After all these years, they would be the one to bring the traitors to justice.