I’d like to be able to say that I wake up at the crack of dawn this morning, but I’m no fibber. I hadn’t slept a wink all night, Luna clearly not wanting to have anything to do with my scaly behind. And who could blame her?
Rolling out of bed, my foot hits something made of glass and it rolls away. An empty bottle. I’d been hitting the sauce pretty hard, but chicken wings demand a little sauce. Still, I suppose I can afford to clean up the joint a bit.
Ah, later. Right now, I’ve got the most unpleasant job in the world to do, when you’re a private detective.
“Spike,” I tell myself, “there’s no doing but to do it. Ya got yourself into this mess, and there’s only one way out.”
I pull out a pack of Lucky Gems, and slip one of the long thin beauties into my maw. One of the green ones. Emerald. My second favorite.
I recall, with a pain in my heart like somepony’d stomped on it, that I’m more of a diamond drake, for personal reasons. Putting my hat on, I make my way out into the dim and dreary streets of this mean old town.
Ponyville. You’d never find a more vibrant hive of scum and wickedness in all of Equestria. Around every corner is an eye watching you. Every bush hides a cupcake aimed at your head. Yet, despite the place always looking like some schumck had just yakked up a technicolor coat of paint onto everything, my whole world was gray. Gray, with black shadows all around.
There’s Sugarcube Corner, just coming up. I walk right past the goons sitting outside, Don Sparkle’s boys paid to look tough and make sure nopony gets any stupid ideas while on her turf. They don’t bother me at all. Me and their boss go way back, after all.
The back door to the place, now that’s where the real ticket is. A big pink door set in the wall all innocent-like. But I know what goes on in a speakeasy like that.
The peep-hole slides open as I knock.
“Password.”
I grunt, “I got a twenty percent discount on seltzer.”
Door slides open, easy as Pie. A rainbow-colored palooka gives me a look like she wants to see how tough a baby dragon can be, but I dash her hopes. I ain’t here to fight.
No, not fight at all.
Rock and a Hard Place, the joint is called. It’s still swinging, even at this early hour, like any ginger ale joint worth its salt. The air is smokey, and heavy. Looks like Pinkie got that old smoke machine working after all, I chuckle to myself. But not too loudly. I ain’t in the mood, and it doesn’t do anydragon good to laugh too loud while in a place like this.
The music’s coming from the stage in the center of the joint, where a real class act is takin’ place. I’m actually mesmerized a little. There’s a world-famous cellist, that smokey dame herself, Octavia Melody strumming her heart out in a jazz number I only half remember. She does me the courtesy of not noticing me, despite our past associations. I helped her with that Fiddlesticks business back in the day, after all
Though they do a good job of making the booths hard to look into, nothing escapes my eye. Over around one table, the Cutie Mafia Cutthroats are splitting a cherry pie between themselves, while a really worried looking pony - probably some jerk who owes em a lot of samolians - sweats like he’s in an oven.
Past that, Twilight Sparkle herself holds court in a dark little corner of the room, with her lieutenants, Apple “Jackknife” and “Tightlips” Shy.
I tip my hat to Twilight, as a show of respect. A dragon doesn’t spit in a mare’s house, no sir. My mother taught me better than that. Twilight, in fact. She taught me that. Respect yer mother, kids.
She returns the gesture with a nod. I’m free to go about my business.
I nearly trip over myself passing another table where the Pie Sisters are clearly doing a black market gem sale with a pair of kirins from out of town.
Cut a dragon some slack. They had rubies the size of my head! I’m not made of stone here!
Anyway, I know where my business is, and I head my way to the bar.
“Of all the ginger ale joints in all the world, you had to walk into mine,” says the barkeep, a pink pony of perfect repute. She gives me a million bit smile, and adds, “Cuz it’s the best! Right?”
“Sodapop,” I say, popping the lollipop out and tossing away the stick, “no ice.”
Pinkie grimaces at the thought of warm soda, but she owes me one for taking care of that Mud Briar character who was making the moves on her sister Maud. One word from her, and I had him sleeping with the fishes by week’s end.
I don’t know how Aloe and Lotus think of these things. I mean, sleep therapy? With fish? Nuts, if you ask me, but he seemed to like it, and he and Maud were actually pretty good together.
“Rarity come into work today?” I ask, hoping I’m wrong.
Pinkie’s about to answer, when she sees something over my shoulder, and a voice cuts through the music, to me at least, like a bell in a quiet room.
“Darling, why don’t you ask her yourself?”
Yeah, I should have known. Nothing ever works out for me.
I turn around as Pinkie backs herself off to do barkeep things.
No, nothing ever works out. The world’s against good old Spike. If it weren’t, me and this, the most beautiful mare I’d ever seen in my life, we could have been happy.
Still.
There’s always hope.
“You should have left,” I whisper, sadly. “Should have left and gone by now.”
Rarity - beautiful, radiant Rarity, in her fatally feminine dress - tosses her mane, and gives me that coy smile I love so very much.
“And why would I do a thing like that?” she laughs, and sits down next to me. “All of my things are in Ponyville.”
A warm soda slides into my claw, and I knock it back. It burns good on the way down. Very carbonated.
“Because, Rares,” I sigh, “they know.”
Her smile doesn’t falter, but I can see something in her eyes. Is it a spark? Or is it the light going out? I can’t tell.
“Who?” She asks in a way that sounds like she doesn’t much know what I’m talking about. But she does. “What does who know, Spikey?”
I sigh. If Twilight heard her just then, Rarity’d get a whole lecture of proper grammaticals. She wasn’t gonna make this easy.
“The guards,” I say. “They know it was you, not Coco Pommel. She never would have ordered that job. Not like that. The one the press are calling the Hearts and Hooves Day Massacre.”
“Hearts and…” she scoffs. “Darling, your imagination is getting away with you! Why ever would I have…?”
My claw closes on her hoof. “Because of the diamonds, Rarity.”
She’s silent, for once.
“You think I wouldn’t find them?” I ask. “You think I wouldn’t know it was you who ordered that dress destroyed? Diamonds stolen, and the dress bathed in so much ketchup that they thought at first it had been a murder…?”
“Moida.”
I pause, and turn back towards Pinkie Pie.
“Eh? Pardon?”
“Moida,” Pinkie repeats herself. “Like, Murder, but with more ‘oi’ and ‘a’?”
I really don’t know how to respond to that.
But Pinkie apparently does.
“I don’t wanna tell you how to do your job there, Spike,” she says, rolling her eyes around, “but if you’re gonna do the whole ‘private eye’ thing, with the hat and the references and the whole lot of it, ya gotta do the accent too!”
Rarity snorts, and says, “Pinkie, take a toffee break. You get so bizarre when your blood sugar’s low.”
Pinkie Pie smiles at that, and cheers, “Yay! Toffee!”
One of her mane curls reaches down and… somehow… manages to pick up and unwrap a little candy treat she’d had stashed under the table. She pops it into her mouth, and prances out the door as she’s chewing it.
Dames.
No, not dames. Pinkies. Pinkie scares me like most ponies are scared of the dark. Or rabbits, for some reason.
Whatever. Got to get back on track.
“Rarity,” I say slowly, gazing into the mare of my dream’s eyes, “you really stepped in it this time.”
She glances worriedly at her hooves. Then, back up to me with those baby blues of hers.
“What do you want me to do, Spike?” she asks. “How can I make this… right?”
“You can’t,” I say with a shake of my head. “It ain’t about that anymore. The guards need somepony. They need somepony to blame for all this. This chaos has to stop.”
“Spike…”
Please don’t cry, Rarity. I can’t do this if I see you hurting.
“I gave them Twilight,” I whisper.
She gasps. Rarity glances up, and then quickly away from where her boss is sitting, enjoying a drink with her compatriots while Melody plays.
“But…” I say, hesitating. The next part, I know, that will kill her. Worse than anything else I could ask. “She knows who really did it.”
I shouldn’t have worried. About the crying. Rarity doesn’t cry when it’s serious, just when she wants something from you. No, right now, her eyes harden into glass as she looks at me.
She’s waiting. Waiting for me to…
“Come with me,” I say.
Her whisper is almost silent, nearly too low to hear in the bar. “Where?”
“Anywhere!” I give her hoof a squeeze. “Casabronco! Celestijuana! I don’t care, so long as I got you by my side.”
“Spike…” she says, slowly.
I don’t let her break my heart. Not now.
I’m in too deep.
“Rarity, when Twilight finds out what I done,” I whisper, keeping my eyes from jumping to the Boss, “she’ll have us both whacked! Probably hard, too! Like, with a rolled up newspaper or somethin’.”
Rarity demures, turns away. “Spike, my… my life is here…”
“Life can be wherever you want it to,” I say. “Look, maybe the troubles of two lonely creatures don’t amount to a hill of beans in this world, but I ain’t gonna stand here and tell you that I don’t care about you, or that I don’t want to save you even from yourself.
“Just…” I scramble for the words. Any word that’ll act like a key to her heart, to keep her here, with me, wherever ‘here’ ended up being.
Too deep, I said. And I was right.
But… Rarity’s not saying ‘no’. She’s sitting there, with me, on a barstool in a speakeasy, with about a hundred gangsters between us and a line of guards ready to come pouring down on this place like a storm.
And she ain’t saying ‘no’.
No. Her eyes are saying something else.
“Spike…”
I tell you, the world has it out for me. It really does.
The music stops, and the crowd cheers. Over it all, I can hear Twilight cheer the loudest.
“Play it again!” She says. “Play The Mare Says All!”
But that’s what I hear. What I’m seeing is Rarity, working up words of her own.
I would give anything to know what those words are.
But that’s when it happens.
The door slams open, and the crowd hushes even as a line of guards storm the place. Through the doors, a mare enters. A mare with a mane the color of bubblegum and… and blue.
I’m no good with words under pressure. Sue me.
The rainbow-colored thug from before hits the ground, at least two guards cuffing her hooves and wings.
“Everypony be ready to show ID and registration!” Bonbon cries. “This establishment is in direct violation of the Saltstead Act, and is hereby closed! Guards? Take em in!”
Another mare shouts, in wild disbelief, “Bonbon? You were a Prohib this entire time!?”
“Lyra!?” Bonbon stares, shocked at seeing the mare I knew she’d been seeing the past week – I’m a sucker for town gossip, don’t judge – playing the lyre alongside Miss Melody and Scratch.
After a moment, Inspector Bonbon shakes her head, and screams, “We’ll talk about this at home! Officer Derpy! Take everypony in!”
“You got it!” said Officer says, racking a new magazine into her Brownie Automatic Launcher.
Guards stampede in, but I already know how this is gonna go, cuz one of the crazy fools makes his way right towards Twilight Sparkle. And there’s one thing I know about Twilight that makes her an impossible mare to take in a fight.
You never fight Twilight “Princess” Sparkle alone.
You fight Ponyville’s Don, you gotta go through her friends first.
Fluttershy’s the quiet one, usually. That’s why I always knew she was really the craziest one. Before the guard gets the cuffs out, she’s already leaping through the air, pies in every hoof and wing.
The guard takes a banana cream right to the mug, and drops before I think he even knew he’d gotten got.
“FOOD FIIIIIIIGHT!” some idiot cries, and it’s havoc throughout the club. The CMC draw caramel treats, the Pies and Twilight’s crew start lobbing cream and fudge pies like it was going out of style. The band gets in on it too, Octavia pulling a flippin’ Chicoltgo Typewriter – one of them automatic cupcake tossers! – out of her cello case and starts sweeping the aisles with deadly proficiency. Lyra even drops a lemon meringue – a meringue for Celestia’s sake! – onto Bonbon’s head.
It’s chaos, instantly. Guards charge into gangsters, gangsters pie guards, Derpy gets stuck in one of the novelty chandeliers (though how, I’ll never know).
But I’m not paying any attention to the battle breaking out before me.
I’ve only got eyes for the mare, who squeezes my claw back.
“Out the back, Spike,” she says. Without any real effort, she vaults over the bar, and charges towards the rear entrance. The other one. Which was actually the front of Sugarcube Corner, since the back was the front. Which is the criminal front for Rock and a–
Right, I gotta stop before I make my head spin.
“Stop them!” a guard, Bonbon I guess, shouts behind us.
Rarity turns back towards me, worry in her eyes plain as Celestia’s day.
“Go on!” I say. “I got these chumps!”
She nods, and heads on out of there before the guards and the gangsters can rush me. I flip behind the bar myself, and take a deep, deep breath.
I don’t pack the sort of heat like what ponies got. No cupcakes or pies or brownies or cookies have I to defend my scaly behind while out on the mean streets.
Nah.
Dragonfire does the trick plenty fine. Best part is with all that lovely, semi-flammable frosting getting everywhere, it doesn’t take more than one big blast to send everypony scattering, ducking and dodging the caramelizing destruction. Ain’t like I’m aiming at anypony, but they don’t know that.
And in the confusion, I’m out of there! After the mare I love.
Love. It… feels so different now, that word.
But the world’s against me, as I said. And as I sprint down the kitchen service halls, I can’t help but feel my stomach twist up inside of me. It can’t be that easy, right?
The back door’s open to the main street in front of Sugarcube Corner. And right there, just a few feet away, Rarity stands.
She’s not alone. She’s rearing back in terror from a pink shadow coming the other way. There’s a thump, and a spat, and my whole world slows down.
“Pinkie!” she cries out, and flails backward. My heart sinks as I charge forward, catching her just as she falls.
I love her, but the simple mechanics of a baby dragon holding up an adult mare catch up with us. We’re both down instantly.
“Rarity!” I shout, clawing my way out from under her. And in a flash, I know I’m too late.
Pinkie isn’t even sorry.
“Seriously, Rarity,” she groans, “it’s just toffee. One good rinse cycle or two, and that’ll work its way out…”
There, splashed across my love’s front is a thing I’ll never forget. A smear of oily, molasses candy. It’s in her mane, her fur. It’s even in her clothes, the fancy dress I always loved seeing her in.
“N-no!” Rarity gasps, weakly. She huddles up into my claws, and she tries to feebly hold onto me. One hoof drags along the front of her ruined dress, whispering, “It… it was taffeta. Real taffeta! It… it will never… wash…”
She faints, dead away. A gasp leaves her lips, and I know… it’s over.
The rest is a blur. Guards swoop in, take statements. Ponies are dragged away.
“Jeez, you guys! It was just toffee!” Pinkie protests with a roll of her eyes just as she’s shoved into the guard wagon. “Why is everypony being weird today!?”
All I can do is stand there, off to the side, ignored by Bonbon (who’s got her own troubles now, and can’t bother herself with a private eye who got himself in too deep), and left to rot in my own misery.
No, that’s not the worst of it. The worst part is when Bonbon tells me to just get on out of there. To go home. She thinks she’s paying me back for that thing that happened with ‘Sweetie Drops’ and that Maretese Griffin incident a few months back. She thinks she’s saving my life. That when time goes by, I’ll thank her for covering for me being there when it all went down.
The last thing I remember, what I want to ever remember of this case, this danged old case, is my partner. Discord offers to walk me home, like a good friend ought to. But when we’re leaving, and I keep turning back, keep turning to get one last look at what could have been…
It’s his words I’ll remember forever.
“Come on, Spike…” he says, half sweet, half like he knows he’s in on a joke at my expense.
“... It’s Ponyville.”