//------------------------------// // 2 - Unlucky Break // Story: The Equestrian Files & Associated Material // by hollowsbest //------------------------------// “I know what I saw, sir! A horrible scaled pony-dragon, tall as Celestia, clearly just done feedin’ on something.” “Lieutenant, was there anypony hurt at the scene?” “W-well no sir but we did find-” “Was anything taken?” “We’re ah- Not sure still. The owner still hasn’t given us a full inventory but I think-” “The valuable display pieces were untouched, weren’t they?” “Well, yes but the case-” “Was a display of paltry silver rings. Nothing else was touched, correct?” “I… No sir.” “Then what this sounds like to me, Lieutenant, is that the sirens scared the perp off before he had a chance to rob anything. And you, eager to find the stallion, rushed to the nearest alley in hope to find him. Being that it was late into the nightshift, you were tired and mistook whatever garbage was back there as some kind of monster-pony. Am I wrong?” “...I know what I saw.” “What was that, Lieutenant?” “Nothing sir, you aren’t wrong, sir.” ~*~ Jasper awoke to the taste of copper on her tongue and a ring clasped tightly between her hooves. She gingerly probes her lips with her tongue, finding the wounds healed but the taste to be lingering. She spits out a missed shard of glass, aiming far from her meagre setup of an overturned dumpster and a blanket stolen off a washing line. The trash once held by the bin piled far from it, and what refuse had been left was dealt with by a scrap of cloth and rainwater. The day’s rain collects in the upturned lid, the best she’s got. Cleaned the best she can. Jasper dips her head and drinks. It hasn’t killed her yet. She turns attention to the ring, still tightly sandwiched between her hooves. It’s a delicate operation to balance it on one hoof, but she manages. She scowls at it. The damning little thing. She needed to fix her issue of gripping things, else trying to find anything else would be a bust. Perhaps quite literally, caught by the cops and brought into what would surely be a fate worse than death. (She’s fucking sick of those.) Thus, she sits. Pawing with hoof on hoof, trying to grasp the ring in the way she’s witnessed before. To the point she knocks it off onto the floor (side) of the dumpster, so she just tries from there. Curled up under a blanket, still half asleep but unable to truly rest. Even for just a moment. It’s something to distract from the red fog still permeating her brain. (It’s reaching for something- She doesn’t want to know what.) A heavy sigh leaves her lips. Dull scraping of metal on metal permeating the small space. What was she to do here, really? Scrape together enough materials to wander this society in the light? Then what? Cobble together a runic combination powerful enough to break out of this reality- Pocket dimension- Whatever it is? Her expertise is demonology (and artificing) not fucking dimensional travel. (Honestly, that’s what put her in this mess. Messing with shit she barely understands.) She’s barely surviving as-is. A world she doesn’t know (barely knows), a society with rules she has no chance of knowing- She sucks in a deep breath, and gives her head a quick shake. She needs to think smaller. To ignore her current task’s hopelessness and look toward the immediate future. What will she do once glamoured? Jasper’s attempts at picking up the ring falter as her attention wanders. What can she do after? Other than find her way to a warm bed and a hot bath… Mm… A bubble bath would be heaven right about now… Clink. Her eyes snap to her hoof, barely raised, and the ring now stuck to it. The sound had been from her absently tapping it against the dumpster, not even realising she’d lifted it. She sits up and the blanket slides down her shoulders, raising her hoof higher to examine the now-dangling ring. She still can’t wrap her mind around it. How? An expanse of keratin, with a mild concave slope in the centre. She wiggles her hoof gently and when the ring stays solidly stuck, more violently. As her hoof relaxes into the motion, something she hadn’t noticed tensing, releases. The ring goes flying across the alleyway into the far stone wall. “Shit.” Jasper hisses, scrambling onto her hooves to chase it down. From the quiet plinks she heard of it bouncing off the wall to the ground, it had to have ended up closer to the alley’s intersection. But with the lack of light, a small ring- even in this remarkably clean alleyway- was going to take an age to find. What she wouldn’t give for a light right now. Jasper sticks her nose close to the ground and gets to searching. Sweeping back and forth across the alley until she reaches the end, or the intersection, and doubling back to try again. It takes an embarrassing amount of time to find the ring again, an event she vows to never speak of when she eventually recounts this case. A somewhat hesitant hoof is placed upon the ring, the moment of truth: can she replicate it, or was it a fluke? Some sort of muscle had been tense when she gripped it originally, so can she just… It’s strange, trying to flex a muscle you’ve never had. A tensing of an entire limb to try and force it, and when it is- With the familiar fizz and warmth of magic- Jasper finally understands. She lifts the ring to her face, sitting back on her haunches to pass it from hoof to hoof. A wide grin beginning to stretch across her face. A flow of magic, much like her runic circle channelling, but concentrated. Tied to the flexing of a specific muscle, bringing forth a tiny wellspring shaped into the simple functionality of picking something up. It’s utterly insane, but completely sensibly for creatures lacking hands but full of fountains of magic. A laugh bubbles up, and she knows she sounds utterly deranged, but she figured it out! She did it! The first step in a long, long line, had finally been completed. Now she can finally, finally put the ring where she won’t lose it. (And where it’s supposed to be worn.) Jasper reaches a delicate hoof up to her horn, prodding gently before she adjusts her grip on the ring and carefully slides it over top. The silver feels cold against it, quickly warming from her body heat. An odd feeling, when her usual pair is a simple curled mass of bone. This feels more like bone, covered by a layer of flesh and skin. (Maybe, she’s not certain.) Like a deer’s velvet before it sheds- Unlikely to ever shed, unless unicorns sparred with their horns. A harder tap against her horn disproves that theory quickly with the sharp pain it produces. Clearly not an object made for fighting. Jasper returns back to the dumpster with tad more of a spring to her step than it has in the days she’s spent here. She takes another long drink of the rainwater, then carefully drains it- A task made far easier now by her ability to simply grab the lid, rather than carefully balancing it on a hoof. As water spills and drains along the cracks and seams of the cobblestones, she glances around the alley. Thoughts and eyes wandering, her gaze lands on the rubbish. By all accounts, someone should be around to collect it soon. Or add to it. Or both. She’s been lucky enough to stay here for this long undiscovered anyway. Well, moving will be made easier when she gets this dumpster back on its wheels. She’s not cleaning another one of these stupid things. There’s nothing else to do today, anyway. Might as well make her way closer to her next target too. ~*~ It takes only a couple hours for Jasper to move the dumpster, made easier by the discovery her hind hooves can grip as well as the front. Bracing herself to push it had never been easier. Rolling through the city’s alleyways and occasional deserted sidestreet, she’d crossed into a new block of buildings. These ones smaller, but no less popular than her previous locale. From her nighttime wanderings, this district seemed to hold some sort of gemcutter, and a few other smaller stores- A food market, a clothing store with more plain-looking fashion, and a basic general store to name a few. Most other buildings seemed to be residencies, based on the mailboxes she’d observed. The buildings here stood of brick and mortar, older than where she’d previously been if she had to guess. Lot of wood accents. Very charming, reminds her of London, just a little. (Can’t let the homesickness set in, push it down Jasper.) Too much colour for that though. The dumpster’s new home is against the back wall of a dead-end alleyway, tucked behind two buildings with no rear entrances- Some windows though, but curtained. It once more lies on its side, lid flat to collect the eventual rainwater. Safe enough… For now. Now though, Jasper rests. Curled up underneath her blanket, silver ring shining on her horn. Conserving her strength for the tasks yet to come. ~*~ The skies have only just gone dark, and the day’s crowds have not yet dispersed, but it’s closing time for Cleft in Twain. Five PM on the dot. Lights off and staff gone by five thirty at the latest, like clockwork they file out the front door one-by-one and lock up shop. Not once has anyone stayed behind for longer, by Jasper’s careful observance over the last two days. Unwilling to repeat her previous mistakes (or make new ones), she takes the backdoor. Still no lockpicks, but she does have something better. The spare key. On her initial late-night recon, she’d found it sitting under the backdoor’s welcome mat. It had been a whim to check, a just-in-case check. A delightful jackpot to discover, and the reasons she’s willing to risk it just after sunset. In and out. And later tonight, the general store too- They leave the storeroom window open, it’ll be a tight fit but she bets she can make it. (And leave through the front door. Though the risk of the upstairs living space…) With a soft click, the door unlocks to its own key. Jasper’s hoof-dexterity growing by the minute as she turns the handle and pushes the door aside. The sight that greets her is a short hallway with two doors and an archway. Her footsteps are quiet on the floor’s carpeting. The archway leads to a small kitchen with a few chairs and a table, a staffroom. The first door is a bathroom. The second leads to what she’s here for, the workshop. (And if that doesn’t have what she needs, the storefront itself.) The workshop is a large space, clearly taking up much of the building itself, with five desks in various states of use. All covered in various tools, blades, dremels, sandpaper, and who knows what else. Some desks have half-cut stones, others have uncut rock, and a single desk has a fully cut gem. This draws Jasper’s attention the moment she spots it, her hooves loud in tiled space. The gemstone was around the size of an apple, purple, with glistening facets under the still-shining desk light. An amethyst perhaps, if she had to take a guess. Whatever it truly was however, was suitable for her purposes. She reaches out to grab it before pausing. If she tried to carry it in her mouth like the ring, she was likely to drop it with its sheer size. Maybe the room had a bag…? Jasper starts poking around, under desks and through drawers for something that could be called a ‘bag’. It doesn’t take long to find a pair of bags underneath a desk. Both bags were attached by a strap at the top, and a belt at the bottom- forming a loop. It tickles at a faded memory of her childhood… Something to do with that time Aunt Susie had taken her to the faire…? Or had it been a circus… Whichever it had been, it’d given Jasper an idea. It’s a fiddly affair to undo the buckle, but she manages. The bags’ contents were quickly dumped on a nearby desk, filled with notebooks, a pair of headphones, and a few small gems. Then, time for the fiddliest part of all. Fitting the bags on her back. Sitting on her haunches, trying to slide a belt strap through a buckle it does not want to go through is not what she’d call a ‘fun time’ in any sense of the word. She succeeds in the end however, the bags tightly secured to her withers. It’s a piece of cake to toss the gemstone into one, walk out the way she’d come, and lock the door behind her. Leaving the key right back where she’d found it. Returning to the alleyways and her dumpster. ~*~ This, Jasper decides with her hips stuck in the window frame, is also not going in the case report. She pushes at the surrounding walls, pushes off the nearby shelves, but doesn’t shift an inch. A quiet growl emanates from her throat. It’s validating, almost, that her hips are giving her issues. But it is more than anything else, annoying as all hell. It’s barely even her hips! She’s got the bags on and they’ve got clearance. It’s her fucking hind legs, she can’t lift them back far enough to slide through the window. Forcing the issue as she has, has only made her legs hurt and her fury rise. Her tail flicks back and forth, her displeasure apparent to all who could see her- Which fortunately, was none. Jasper slumps, sliding back against the wall and falling as limp as one can when halfway through a window and is digging into all your organs. She needed a new plan, and quickly. This was not only embarrassing, but risky. Maybe if she tried rolling…? The process to roll onto her back was painful, the window frame grinding into every inch of organ and spine it can get its little wooden hands on. But- But-! It’s working. A careful process of pulling her back half through, braced on whatever goddamn shelf she can reach. And she’s almost-! Bang! Jasper lands in a crumpled heap below the window. She stifles a groan as she untangles herself, getting to her hooves. Hopefully that hadn’t woken anyone upstairs, or if it had, they’d ignore it and go back to sleep. Either way, she should be quick. Everything she wants should be in the storefront. The shelves make quick navigation hard, however. Despite this, it’s a quick trip through the hanging bead curtain- A regrettable noise, but unavoidable. There’s a small child section in the corner, which Jasper beelines for. She’d seen it in her earlier observance. Though she hadn’t seen chalk, there was a high chance it was there. (Else she wasn’t sure where she’d get it.) She squints at all the labelling and packaging in the dark, despite her decent night vision, text was still hard. A creak of a floorboard up above. She needed to move faster. Jasper stops bothering to read the text, focusing on packaging and shape- Though would it even be in a form she recognises? Chalk pails were shaped because humans had the fingers and grip to peel them open, ponies might have magic fucking hooves but that didn’t mean their children were able to make use of it so early. Her momentary lapse in searching was rewarded by discovering a small pack of chalk, tucked under a mask of… She doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be. She tucks the chalk away in a bag, moving immediately to try and find a mirror of some sort. Maybe just with a mirror sheen. The aisles that greet her are filled with shelf-stable goods, gardening tools, non-gardening tools, linen, and all sorts of what have you. Nothing mirror-like or even an alternative illusionary replacement. Her hooves making far too much noise as she picks up the pace, unable to keep moving at a pace to keep them near-silent. More movement from upstairs, faster, louder too. Last aisle. Full of nothing but household goods. Fuck. Was there anything else? If there was, there wasn’t any time. She can hear a thundering of hooves down the stairs. Jasper changes tracks, spinning around for the door. Her hooves pounding against the wood. She had to go, there was no mirror no nothing but a- She’s not even thinking as she barely misses the door and delves back into the children’s aisle. The mask is right where she left it. It’s just been shoved into her bag when a female voice bellows into the storefront. “STOP RIGHT THERE WHOEVER YOU ARE!” Jasper does not stop. The lights flick on. “I’VE GOT AN AXE AND I’M NOT AFRAID TO USE IT!” The door lock clicks in her hooves. “HEY YOU-” The bell jingles as she throws the door open. She’s out the door by the time the scream starts. Jasper doesn’t wait for the sound of sirens she knows are coming. She was lucky last time, with her hideaway so far from the scene of the crime. But now? It’s far too close for comfort. She has to move. Now. Can’t risk being cornered like this. The bags sit heavy around her waist as she heaves the dumpster upright, a clattering of noise she wishes she could avoid. She plants her hooves on the side and gets to pushing. Retracing her earlier steps of a few days ago, but not quite. She needed someplace quiet, far away from the hustle and bustle of the city’s storefronts. (And police.) She hears the sirens start to echo as she leaves the city block. Blood rushing through her ears as she pushes faster, over a far too open stretch of street. Her hooves take her as far as she can go, crisscrossing empty street after empty street, alleyway after alleyway. It all looks the same. Like a labyrinth of huge proportions, leading her in circles until she exhausts herself running from a monster that is simply waiting for her at the end of it all. She goes in as a straight line as she can manage after a certain point, moving until her hooves cannot move any further. Jasper uses the last of her strength to push the dumpster off the street. Into barely an alleyway, neither building flanking it tall enough to bring any sort of security. The street far too close to it for comfort, but her legs are screaming at her. Her movements sluggish, unable to even knock the dumpster over. Forcing her to claw her way to the top, and into it. Closing the lid as she collapses upon the blanket inside. Eyes slipping closed, until she thinks no more.