Deadwood sat at his desk, reading through the local newspaper, poring through the various classified advertisements to ascertain if one of them, if any at all, were worth anything, and circling each one before he wrote down the phone numbers on a notepad nearby. Before he could circle another one, he was startled by the front door slamming open, the bell flying up in the air before it fell down into Sunset’s outstretched hand. After she retrieved the door where it had locked open, she gingerly put the bell back into its receptacle on the rear, sighing loudly and angrily as she took a seat at the desk and tossed her school bag on top, her Crystal Prep uniform faltering as it rumpled on the seat. Deadwood was loathe to assume, of course, that she was annoyed, but her bearing and attitude belied the feelings to him.
“Another long day?”
“Long day? Doesn’t even begin to describe it. There’s supposed to be the... Friendship Games soon, and I’m not allowed to participate because of the restraining order, as that will create an unfair dynamic. I was really looking forward to it, too. Dash said she was going to show off as much as she could, but I-” Sunset quieted down when Deadwood motioned behind him to the support group’s main room, where Rainbow Dash sat silently, holding a book and rocking back and forth. He shook his head, staring down at the newspaper quietly and returning to the classifieds. Sunset raised a hand to ask a question, but thought better of it, instead remarking to herself that a lot had changed since Canterlot High, but seeing Rainbow Dash so deeply bothered gave her a sense of desire to comfort, though she would have never admitted as much.
“She’s been in here for two hours already. That book is a journal her therapist told her to write in, and she won’t tell me what’s wrong. She’s been listening to some old music I had lying around, but-”
“What happened?”
Deadwood sighed, standing up and leaning on his desk. Before Sunset could say anything, he slid his jacket on, entering the support room and tapping Rainbow on the shoulder, eliciting her attention as she took her headphones off.
“W-What’s going on, Deadwood?”
“I’m going to Big Joe’s. I’m going to get some coffee, maybe a doughnut. You want to come with?”
“Y-Yeah. That sounds... good.”
Big Joe’s was quiet in the afternoon, his normal patrons around either early in the morning, or late into the afternoon. It suited the trio that passed through his doorway just fine, as Rainbow sat down and stared at the sugar and coffee whitener pots in the center of the table she found herself at. Sunset, puzzled, took a seat as well, attempting to ask a question before a blur of teal-green hair and rambunctious energy gripped her leg, hugging her tightly. Standing up to go play with Minty, she left Deadwood and Rainbow to their quiet table, the silence almost oppressive and punishing.
“What’s going on, Rainbow Dash?”
“The girls... they said the Rainbooms weren’t a good idea anymore, that we’re better off apart from each other. I tried to tell them how bad of an idea that was, and Rarity just screamed at everyone. Even Applejack was angry, and I had no idea why. It wasn’t my fault, was it?”
“Joe? Two large cups, one mocha, one double-chocolate, hot.”
Rainbow looked up, glancing at Deadwood’s eyes for the first time that day. The sheer amount of understanding that she felt from just meeting his gaze was enough to let her relax, her shoulders drooping as she pushed the journal towards Deadwood, trying to appear tough even when the tears were streaming down her face. The band meant a lot to her, and he was certain that someone else was behind the band breaking up. Something seemed off, and her notes in her journal read more like a research paper and observation report than a journal entry. New students had come around, and the girls had found themselves drifting further and further apart, despite any intentions by the others. It seemed like whoever these new students were, they were potentially behind the strange behaviour of the girls.
“So...”
“I’m trying to figure this out, Rainbow. Didn’t you guys have a weird Battle of the Bands that was sort of taken over by strange girls with voices that only really controlled teenagers for some odd reason? It feels like a repeat of what happened with-”
“Don’t. Don’t mention that person’s name. The girls all knew how badly we screwed up then, and how badly we can screw up if that happens again. But if he’s free-”
Deadwood held up a hand, shaking his head as he watched Joe walk up with their mugs, chuckling as he took a sip out of his cup and narrowing his eyes as Rainbow regarded her own mug. She was barely there, her thoughts elsewhere, from what he could see, and she was far less inclined to partake of the gift of hot chocolate, sweet and delicious though it was. He stood up, glancing outside towards a car that he knew well, and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Before he had a chance to react, Filthy Rich slammed open the Snack Shack’s main entrance, breathing heavily with anger and frustration.
“Deadwood!”
“Filthy Rich. What an unpleasant surprise.”
“Don’t patronize me. You have to be behind what’s going on with my daughter. Where is Diamond Tiara, Deadwood?!”
Deadwood stopped, putting his mug back down on the table. Sunset re-entered the main dining area to see the expression of thought disappear from Deadwood’s face as he became focused, Filthy Rich explaining the events that had happened, including Diamond Tiara’s extremely cold behaviour to both him and his wife, as well as her less-than-stellar track record in the last few days. A notepad was in the detective’s hands as he took notes, nodding every so often as he recorded the information. Filthy Rich had dropped from anger to sorrow, wondering where he had failed as a father that she was ignoring any mention of his existence.
“Rainbow, does this sound vaguely similar to what’s been happening with your circle of friends as of late?”
“Y-Yeah. Insisting that their time is better spent with people they barely know, repeating the same phrases in different patterns just like he made me do.”
“I was afraid of this,” he stated plainly, placing his notebook back into its pocket inside his jacket, nodding to Sunset and Rainbow before he took a step towards the door. “Sounds like someone is back who wants revenge, and that’s a dish that no one wants served. Rich, you’ve got your car out there. Mind if we take a ride over to Crystal Prep? I need to confirm a suspicion of mine.”
Filthy Rich could only nod as Deadwood motioned to Rainbow and Sunset, the two teens following him out of the cafe as they walked to Rich’s car, the bodyguard stationed near the door confused until his employer shook his head, giving him a signal to open the door. As the four of them took their seats, Deadwood withdrew his notebook once more, tapping on the new page he had just turned to with his pen as he looked at everyone present. Sighing, he looked out the window, trying to figure out what exactly was happening. From all reports he had heard, Diamond Tiara was more like her mother than anyone else had expected, rude and angry to the core as she threatened, blackmailed and generally ruined a lot of people as she made her way through school. Just like the fraudulent attempts ten years previous, it seemed that her father had imparted the ways he did business to her quite assuredly. Something was not adding up, and he was hoping that at least something at Crystal Prep was able to give some insight – he was off his game, and he needed something to get his mind going. Not even using his notebook as his muse was working, as the case did not make sense. Something was not in line with the usual facts, like a thread he could not pull if he wanted to get to the bottom of it all.
“How are your daughter’s grades, by the way?”
“She gets top marks from her teachers. They tell me she’s disruptive, but her mother and I have been a little busy. I’ve been looking at some new property outside city limits, a little place called Camp Everfree. Good location for a grand resort, especially with the amazingly clear lake nearby.”
“Hmm.”
Deadwood stepped out of the limousine, flanked by Rainbow and Sunset, the former still in her Crystal Prep uniform, while Rainbow was clad in her sports attire. Filthy Rich followed suit, nodding to one of his bodyguards that flanked him, the bald man following closely behind as they entered. Despite knowing that on the ride over it had been insisted for extra security, Deadwood could not help feel as if the bodyguard was there to keep things quiet, and shut down any suspicions if they should arise that something was less than ideal.
Too late in that regard, Rich.
Pushing and holding open the front doors of the school, Deadwood ushered everyone else in, glancing around in case someone was gazing with prying eyes. Placing his notebook back in his pocket, he withdrew a small digital camera, holding it in his left while he made sure the front doors shut quietly with his right. Canterlot High made his skin crawl when it was quiet and after hours, but Crystal Prep felt oppressive, and it was not even late afternoon either. Something about sterile halls, organized boards that were all even and perfectly spaced, and not a speck of dust anywhere made him feel far more out of place than any regular high school could possibly made him feel. A quick, cursory check revealed almost nothing, though their first stop at Diamond Tiara’s locker was partially open. Snapping a quick picture, Deadwood slipped on a pair of nitrile gloves, making certain to not disturb any potential marks for the police as he felt along the edge of the locker’s door. Telltale cracks in the paint and a small pile of paint chips on the floor confirmed that it had been forced, and the specific bending of the metal suggested some kind of flat pry bar – a crowbar would have left a far more rounded impression in the weak metal.
Before Deadwood had a chance to voice his concerns, rapid footsteps somewhere in the distance caught his attention. Without even a single second of hesitation, he withdrew a flashlight from one of his many pockets, shining it down the hallway. Something about the area where the noise came from sent a shiver down his spine, like a glimmer of momentary recognition before immediate forgetfulness. He could have sworn he saw a young woman sprinting around, but it made zero sense as to why someone like that would be at Crystal Prep without being a member of the faculty or a student. Nodding to the bodyguard, Deadwood reached inside his jacket, sliding out his Coltfield revolver and checking the ammunition. Rainbow stared wide-eyed at Deadwood while Sunset covered her face.
“You were just carrying that on you, and you didn’t care to mention it?”
“After the last incident like this, I prefer to come prepared.”
Taking an efficient stance where neither the flashlight nor revolver were interfering with each other, he stepped slowly, taking care to sidestep anything that potentially could make noise. Behind him, Sunset sighed, pulling out two pen-lights from her uniform pockets. Handing one to Rainbow, they clicked them on simultaneously, sweeping from one side to the other as they followed Deadwood’s pace. The footsteps echoed again, Rainbow turning around to see Filthy Rich being escorted out of the building by his bodyguard, who nodded as he frowned at the trio moving off.
“Are you good with that pistol?”
“It’s my old service revolver, so I should be. Keep your corners covered. I need to know the moment you see something.”
As they crept closer to where the footsteps had been coming from, the light around them appeared to dim, as if the shadows themselves were suffocating the rays. Deadwood tightened his lips, about to motion to the others as he frowned, his eyes immediately growing cross-eyed as a dull thud echoed down the hallway. Rainbow turned to Sunset, about to warn her before something slammed over their heads, the last thing they could hear was something that sounded... off, like a distorted walkie-talkie, all too late, unfortunately, as they slipped into the embrace of the darkness of unconsciousness...
ACTION NOT ADVISED
“I know the action is not advised, I just gave you primitive crystalline components, work with me here!”
Deadwood awoke to the muffled cursing of a woman in a strange uniform, his vision mildly blurred until it clicked in his head – he was floating, in some sort of tube. He tried to move, almost on instinct to draw a sidearm, but found his arms restrained above him, and his legs chained to the bottom. He was encased in some sort of strange jumpsuit, and as he glanced to his sides, his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the room, and his gaze fell upon two other similar tubes, Rainbow and Sunset motionless and floating in them as well. His muscles felt like the heaviest material on the planet as he attempted to flex, his wrists pushing hard against the admittedly strong handcuffs that held them in place. With a grimace and a sharp intake of breath, he stopped, almost coughing up a lung as it dawned on him that while his focus had been on escape, he had wires and instruments all across his torso, and some sort of tube down his throat.
“Wait, wait, he’s waking up! Yes, in your face, Tayvin!”
Before his brain could process the name he heard from the woman, the tube suddenly drained, the cuffs holding him in place beeping and unlocking fast enough to let him drop and land on his feet. The other two tubes in the room, quickly emptying, still held the motionless forms of Rainbow and Sunset, though something seemed... off. Flexing his hands, he realized he felt a lot weaker than he would have normally.
“Wa... woo... kah?”
“Look, don’t try to speak yet. Your vocal cords are probably damaged from being inside those tanks for so long. Pre-Collapse tech is a bit harder to decipher, but you and your friends have been here for a, well, a very long time. Looks like the computers were running some sort of... detective story? Based on the data, it was a cumulative effort based on all the memories shared between the three of you- ah, there’s the fish-out-of-water look I was expecting.”
“Wa... wh-at...”
Shaking her head, the woman whom Deadwood could not identify, though she felt very familiar somehow, like he had met her before. The deep violet hair felt very close, but it was not registering at all who he could even be talking to. Though, from how she spoke, he doubted she was the one his thoughts could have been drawn to. Coughing heavily, he spat out what appeared to be two smaller tubes, falling to a semi-sitting position as he tried to clear his throat.
“All the computer says is that you three were found unconscious in some sort of ‘shool?’ Ah, that’s a c, so... a school. They couldn’t wake you, and you apparently had a rather substantial amount of capital thanks to a person you had been hired by who wanted to have a new... Cryogenics division? Huh. Well, he had them test out some new devices – the- the tubes you came out of? They’re Atlas Medical property? That name ring a... of course it doesn’t.”
“What... the hell... happened? All I remember was-”
A sputtering noise drew his attention elsewhere as Sunset awoke, feeling the slimy sensation of whatever was in her tube across the jumpsuit she wore. Flexing her hands, she stared at Deadwood and the unknown woman before her gaze turned to Rainbow, quickly rushing over without a second thought to ensure her friend was still alive.
“Ha... he... ah...”
“Index spare me, you lot are idiots. Don’t. Try. To. Speak. Your vocal cords are damaged, and there’s a little- and she vomited it up. Great...” The strange woman sighed as she pulled out what appeared to be some sort of gun, holding it up to Sunset’s neck. Deadwood’s eyes went wide as he tried to scramble towards Sunset and Rainbow, discovering quite quickly how numb his entire body was. Before he could scream at her to not do it, something made a quick hiss, and a thump echoed as a vial ejected and slammed into what appeared to be some sort of grated catwalk plating underneath his hands as he noticed barely understandable lettering and a white medical cross symbol.
“That was-”
“Medicine, you absolute moron. It’ll help her more since she’s a lot younger. You’re just going to have to deal with it for now. Oh, right, minor muscle atrophy. I’ve got something for that, hold on.”
Deadwood tried to reason with her to not inject him with something he was not entirely sure was even safe, from his perspective, but she brushed him aside as she pointed the gun-like device at his neck. A tiny stinging sensation painted the side of his neck, but the feeling of, well, feeling returned like a lightning bolt across his entire body. Standing up quickly, he started shaking as his body went through what felt like heatstroke, hypothermia and the flu all mixed into one, the feeling quickly passing as he stared wide-eyed at the woman.
“’Atlas Medical Nano-Restore. Guaranteed to put a new pep in your step.’ Stupid slogan, but... you can see the stuff works. Expensive though – we’ll talk about payment later.”
“Where... where the hell are-”
“That... I can answer in two minutes. Opening shutters.”
Before Deadwood could ask what she meant by shutters, a hazy light began to shine from behind him as he stared out beyond massive metal plates retracting into the ceiling and floor, though that slipped his mind as everything came into stark focus. Vehicles buzzed through the air in the coming sunlight, a train hovering above the ground as it transported... something across an expansive desert. From his perspective, they were hundreds of meters above whatever desert they surveyed. His hands instinctively went forward, contacting the most transparent glass he had ever touched.
Glancing beside him, he could see the same feeling spreading across to Rainbow and Sunset, the former finally having arisen with a little help from the woman with her strange ‘Atlas Medical’ materials and the weird injector. Their eyes stared down, growing wider as he stared, his attention focused on something happening in the distance, one of the flying vehicles shaking and sputtering as a tiny black speck flew away from it. An explosion later, and his analytical mind wanted to know so much more.
“This is going to be hard for all of you. Your lives... as much as it pains me to say, whoever you were in the past was lost long ago. But there’s more than enough chance to figure things out. That car belonged to one of the major corporations that run this little metropolis, and that’s the equivalent of the most legal way of collapsing competitors.”
Deadwood narrowed his eyes as he settled into a mood, his gaze focused as he tried to reason in his mind what he could do. Considering the vehicles, they could have technology that would have put him out of business years ago, but then again, people always underestimated the practicality of the human approach.
“So...”
“Welcome to Megacity 17.”