The Ponyville Jail was a small, nondescript brick building on the edge of town. It contained only a few cells, and mostly handled rowdy drunks or the very rare domestic dispute or case of petty larceny. Serious crimes -the most recent of which was an assault charge way back in ‘89- went straight up to Canterlot. Twilight had walked right past it a dozen times by now without knowing what it was, figuring it might’ve had something to do with the school system.
She stepped into the cellblock just after lunch, having formulated a new round of tactics to try to pry additional information out of Trixie. Instead, she found Steel Shank, Amethyst Star, Aqua Regia, and Rain Chaser all staring at an empty cell.
The scholar briefly closed her eyes and pressed a hoof against the aching spot just underneath her horn. “She didn’t.”
Steel Shank just nodded, mutely, looking like he was either about to beat somepony to death with his bare hooves, or curl up in a dark corner somewhere and cry.
“When-?”
“Just a few minutes ago,” the Night Guard officer said, “Cpl Aqua called us in as soon as she saw.”
Aqua scuffed a hoof against the stone floor, and snorted in frustration. “I musta’ had my eye off her for two seconds…”
“Alarms and perimeter spell?” Twilight asked.
“All still intact,” confirmed Amethyst.
“And it’s not like the guard even so much as slipped her a drink of water or anything overnight…” the scholar began pacing down the length of the hall, then turned around and glared at Rain Chaser. “You didn’t open the door to give her anything, right?”
Chaser flinched backwards as though slapped across the muzzle. “Nay, ma’am. Nothing. Not even a chamber pot.”
"And you made sure you didn't just lock up a duplicate?"
"She felt solid enough when I shoved her in there, and I made sure she could talk!"
“Dammit, Spike was right. I should’ve told you two to verbally warn each other when you were going to blink…” Twilight stepped back over to the cell, squinting against the bright sunlight filtering in through the sole window. It was the size of a single brick, and double-barred; there was a simple pallet bunk bolted to the wall underneath, and the rest of the cell was composed of vertical steel bars running from the stone floor all the way up to a poured concrete ceiling. A cockroach would have trouble finding a place to hide inside it, much less a pony, but then again Trixie Lulamoon was no ordinary pony. “Are you sure she’s actually gone?”
Abruptly, Cpl Aqua drew her crossbow and fired a single bolt into the cell. It struck the back wall with a soft thud and scattered a few reddish flakes of brick onto the bunk underneath. “I can go find a grenade, if you wanna make extra sure.”
“Well it’s not like she’s hiding behind the door, or above the frame or something…” Amethyst mused, “It’s just a bar-steel cage, basically!”
“Even if she were some sort of contortionist, the gaps in the bars are smaller than a pony’s head,” Steel Shank added.
“I’ll take you up on that grenade, actually,” Twilight finally said, “Although… make it a flashbang, not fragmentation. This is still Ponyville property, and we don’t want to damage it.” Aqua turned to leave, and then the scholar held up a hoof. “On second thought…” She summoned the silvery cone of a powerful disjunction spell, and panned it over the cell’s interior.
The cell remained empty.
Then she fired off her favored flare spell, intense enough that Rain Chaser briefly flinched backwards as the cheap straw mattress began to smolder. She followed it up with a conical compression-distortion wave that shook loose mortar from the brickwork.
Nothing.
Twilight squeezed her eyes shut again, and slammed a hoof against the bars. As if on cue, the cell door swung open, followed by the ear-piercing shriek of the alarms. She barely noticed the rolled-up wad of clay drop out of the keyhole, but when it hit the cell floor, the entire jailhouse filled with thick purple smoke. Even though she knew Trixie couldn’t possibly be watching, she refused to give the showmare the pleasure of seeing her react. “I don’t get it. I don’t get it…”
While apparently corporal punishment was considered inappropriate in this enlightened Eleventh Century, Lancepesade Smokey Mirror knew very well what it felt like to be led up for a public whipping. The fact that it was to happen in an office in the Town Hall instead of in the square outside was largely irrelevant.
He grit his teeth and stepped through the front doors.
Filthy Rich was standing in the lobby, surrounded by a crowd of other ponies- among them Thunderlane, Carrot Top, Lucky Clover, and a mare Smokey didn’t know by name who owned the wagon shop.
“First it was the unwarranted searches,” Filthy was shouting. He stood so the water tower’s ruins were visible out the window behind him; Smokey wondered if that was intentional. “Then they bring in more troops, and the same Lunar monsters who occupied our town at swordpoint along with them! Now we aren’t even allowed to speak to the press- more than that, the press is actively banned from the entire town! And they still won’t even tell us what’s going on!”
“You know, I heard some of those Guards went and killed a reporter, out in the woods!” Added Lucky Clover.
“That… that doesn’t make sense, that’s not what happened,” Fluttershy spoke up. Smokey hadn’t, initially, realized the pegasus was even present; she lurked in a corner away from the group with a sheaf of papers clasped under her wing, looking very uncomfortable indeed.
“Yeah, they were laughing about it!” the wagonwright called back, “Something about impaling her on a tree branch and letting her bleed out, cackling all the while!”
Smokey wondered how the townsponies could possibly know that kind of information.
“Then monsters from the Everfree start attacking,” Filthy continued, “after the ponies from Canterlot start poking around in there, dabbling in Ceres-knows-what, of course! And now…” he waved out at the collapsed frame of the water tower. “… this! How many close calls is it gonna take? Gaia preserve us that nopony got hurt last night, but what about the next attack? And the next? Because there will be more, as long as they keep running those experiments out there!”
“Umm, well, Sgt Phalanx… kind of lost a meter of small intestine, and Springtime and Bolero both have concussions, and Nightingale took a claw to the spine- she's lucky she can still walk...” Fluttershy muttered, even as she visibly shook and seemed to be trying to squeeze herself through the back wall.
“Oh, is that all?” Filthy rolled his eyes. “I thought those Guardsponies were supposed to be dedicated…”
Smokey let him continue his rant, and slipped past into the conference room.
The town mayor sat at the head of the table inside; the pink mare from the tour group, who he’d since learned was named Spoiled Rich, sat to her left. Steel Shank, Cheerilee, and Drs. Verse and Daycaller were all bunched up on the opposite side. Regardless of position, all of them turned to glare at him when he stepped inside; save for Dr. Verse, who simply looked terrified.
He shut the door behind him, and took a seat next to Steel Shank.
There was a long, strained silence, broken only by the continued sounds of muffled conversation outside.
Finally, Spoiled Rich leaned back in her chair, looked at each of the ponies across from her in turn, and asked, “Well?”
Dr. Daycaller scratched under his neatly-trimmed orange beard, doing a very good job of not seeming at all nervous. “‘Well’ what?”
“Well, do any of you have anything to say for yourselves after traumatizing my daughter?”
Smokey swallowed hard, and looked at the others. The others looked back at him impassively. He couldn’t bring himself to face the mare across the table, and settled for tracing the grains in the imitation wood. “Nay, I do not.”
Finally, he found the courage to look up again. Spoiled had transferred her attention to the Mayor. “My little Diamond hasn’t been able to sleep through the whole night ever since the incident, you know. She jumps at just about every shadow, and she told me she’s being teased -teased!- by the other students about it. We can’t even take her out to the market when there’s always those horrible bat-ponies wandering the streets… I don’t know what we’re going to do when Nightmare Night rolls around, it’d be unfair to just keep her home, but there just wouldn't be enough time to go around and approve the costume of every child in Ponyville to make sure it isn’t too scary…”
The mare prattled on, and Smokey had to fight the urge to go back to studying the table. Instead, he surveyed his own side of the room, again- and found no support there. Spoiled represented just about everything he’d taken the Oath to fight against, but Moon Above her stare was icy. He’d be much happier if she’d just ask for rapiers at dawn and be done with it.
Finally, she turned that freezing gaze to Steel Shank. “Well, what will be your reparations?”
Commendably, the other Lunar didn’t look away. Instead, he grinned. “Well, ordinarily, I’d give the Lancepesade my personal congratulations for his actions, then slap him in the stockade for a day, or perhaps two. However, as of yet the Night Guard has no formal position in the Government, and I no longer have authority over matters of discipline.”
“And, well, I’m just a scientist and not particularly qualified to discuss matters like this,” continued Dr. Daycaller, “But when either of my children blow things out of proportion to fish for sympathy, I’ve found what works best is just to pretend like nothing has changed and go on with business as usual. If it keeps up for more than, I don’t know, a week, my wife’s the one who usually sits down with them and has the Serious Talk.”
“My taxes pay you ponies, and my donations are what allow your shack of a school to afford better than the bare minimum in supplies and materials,” Spoiled hissed, looking from the Mayor to Cheerilee and back again. “I should pull my daughter out. Homeschool her, perhaps hire a few private tutors from Canterlot. Spend my money where it’s appreciated.”
Cheerilee just blinked. “No, please, anything but that,” she stated with perfect apathy.
The Mayor raised a hoof. “I… hope you realize that even if your daughter isn’t actually attending class at the elementary, a portion of your property taxes will still go towards covering her hypothetical presence. So, it really is in at least your financial interest to keep Diamond Tiara in the public school system- since, you know, you are already paying for it.”
Smokey was fairly certain he saw Spoiled’s upper lip peel into a sneer, just for a moment.
Then the Mayor turned to look at him. “That said… Smokey Mirror, for your actions, justified as they might've been at the time… You are no longer welcome in the town of Ponyville, and will no longer be permitted within town limits for a period to be subsequently decided. You have until the end of the day to leave.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re lucky you aren’t being charged with aggravated assault.”
Mutely, the Lunar swordstallion nodded. He had, in fact, been expecting far worse.
Steel Shank turned to him and announced to the room, “I’m headed back to the Harbor myself. I will see you on the six o’clock train.”
That sneer was back on Spoiled’s muzzle, and she was practically vibrating with restrained fury. She was starting to sweat, which was undoing her flat-iron manestyle and carving streaks in her thick blush.
“Is that all?” Smokey finally found the courage to ask.
The Mayor nodded.
The Night Guard turned to Verse, Daycaller, Shank, and Cheerilee. “In that case, I apologize for causing so much trouble.” He slipped out of his chair and stepped outside. A sigh of relief caught in his throat when he saw that Filthy Rich was still in the lobby, standing right next to the door. There were no other exits he could see- the windows were always a possibility, but he figured he was in enough trouble with Ponyville’s residents already. Instead, he grit his teeth and headed for the door as quickly as was reasonable.
Filthy Rich stuck out a hoof and barred his way before he could pass. “Now, you listen here, you slit-eyed, demon-worshiping freak,” the merchant’s voice was quiet, level, and deadly-cold. “Those Canterlot drones might’ve forgotten just what you and your buddies did at the Summer Sun Celebration, but I haven’t and neither has the rest of this town. If you ever lay one hoof on my daughter, you’re going to wish you’d never crawled out of that tomb. Do you understand me?”
“… Perfectly, sirrah.”
Trixie Lulamoon stumbled on aching legs through the mountainous countryside surrounding Ponyville. It was hard going, but she couldn’t exactly risk traveling along any of the main roads right now- not when her face was probably stuck to a bulletin board in every public building from here to Fillydelphia. She’d had a bit of a scare a few miles back when she thought she’d spotted a pegasus trailing her from high altitude, but whatever it was it had peeled off not too long ago and hadn’t reappeared.
Her situation was, admittedly, looking pretty bleak at the moment. She was out a wagon, up an arrest warrant or two, and missing most of her gear. She hadn’t spotted any kind of settlement nearby to slip into a post office and check, but she figured her bank accounts were probably frozen by now as well. That meant all she currently had to her name was a nine-thousand bit cloak; most of a hoof-rolled smokebomb the crayon-eaters somehow missed while they were frisking her; and that was it. Picking the jail cell's ridiculously simple lock was easy enough- even without her tools- but it wasn't lost on her how lucky she was they'd left her cloak and hat hanging nearby, instead of sticking it in an evidence locker with the rest of her equipment.
Still, it was not in Trixie’s nature to give up. This wasn’t even the first time she’d had to contend with an arrest warrant- although the less she thought back to that one show in Seaddle, the better. She was probably still in her employers’ good graces, too. They looked after ponies who looked after their own interests -or died trying- and it wasn’t like she’d left a check with their name on it in her wagon for Twilight-rutting-Sparkle and her Canterlot pals to discover. They’d have a place available for her to lay low, if nothing else. That wasn’t even counting the bargaining value of the artifacts she’d already smuggled out, or the documents she’d gotten from the Station, or for that matter the designs she’d lifted from that tailor’s shop. The Guards had taken away her physical copies, certainly, but Trixie had a good memory.
She was pretty sure she’d do just fine.
Twilight stood in front of what was fast becoming her personal card table in the grasslands near the Station, Trixie’s Class II enchantments license and miscellaneous other documents spread out before her. Nearby, Spike, TSgt Leafspring, and a few other Royal and Night Guards were hard at work picking apart the remains of the showmare’s wagon.
Carefully, she held a piece of paper over the license, and rubbed a stick of charcoal across the ‘name’ field. Clear as day, ‘TRIXIE LULAMOON’ was superimposed with ‘SHUTTERFLY’
“Well, that’s interesting…” She walked absentmindedly around the table, watching Spike fiddle with the wagon’s solitary intact wheel. He paused, then pulled a slip of paper out from between what had at one point been the floorboards. He unfolded it, and studied it silently for a solid minute.
Twilight sidled over and read over his shoulder. The paper appeared to be a receipt for a wire transfer from a company called ‘Night Star Organizational Solutions’.
“It's the address that caught my attention,” Spike turned around and looked at her, head tilted quizzically to one side. “PO Box 122, Baltimare. I've heard that before…” he idly stroked his not-quite-beard, “Right, Rarity mentioned this, this is part of the same block of boxes those weird Society for Lunar-Equestrian Studies ponies use!"
“Dear Princess Celestia:
Ironically, it seems that all it took to finally get our operation and the local authorities on the same page, administratively, was the leveling of a few inconsequential sections of Ponyville. Of course, this also seems to have stirred up some amount of discontent among a few of the more influential citizens… I suppose ‘three steps forward, one step back’ is simply the natural course of all such investigations.
Attached, you will find my sworn deposition concerning these events, as well as its cover letter. While I in no way recommend against the standard protocols for pursuit of escaped fugitives in Trixie’s case, I have my doubts that anything will turn up. In all probability, she’s already halfway to Klugetown by now. While I’d begun writing this letter with every intention of suggesting that Trixie was hired by Lord Goldstone to exact some hackneyed vengeance for my recent involvement in Innsbeak, I'm beginning to think that explanation is doubtful at best. I am, instead, fully convinced Trixie is part of a network including a variety of businesses, political action groups, media figures, and entities such as the mysterious ‘SLES’ which defy easy categorization. This network has been in operation since well before my relationship with Goldstone soured- indeed, while I shudder to even contemplate the idea that elements of the Government have themselves been compromised, it provides a ready explanation for the intransigence on the part of the DATA Review Board that led me to Innsbeak in the first place- as well as Canterlot's abject refusal to help Capt Marigold while I was petrified.
As for who -or what- might actually be responsible, I have no solid hypothesis. Spike and I have identified names and locations, but any real understanding of the ‘enemy’s’ motives or internal structure escapes me, and I have neither the time, resources, nor skills necessary to conduct a full investigation of this type. I wish I could say that I’m happy to turn that task over to the proper legal authorities, but I fear that doing so may be exactly what the ponies responsible for all of this want.
I suppose, ultimately, all I can do is focus on my responsibilities, and continue my research into the last days of the Lunar Rebellions.
Your faithful student:
Twilight Sparkle”