//------------------------------// // When They Come For You // Story: Ponyville 911 // by MisterMoniker //------------------------------// As far as drinking partners went, the Apple family’s Big Macintosh was among Cherry’s favorites. He returned her stare over the rim of her mug, not budging an inch as the thick, amber liquid drained from both of their glasses. Around them, the usual patrons at the Filthy Whore honky-tonk bar milled about, keeping themselves busy at the pool tables and in a row of greasy booths near the back. Nopony came here to “relax” after a hard day’s work with a glass of scotch or a mint julep; the Filthy Whore was a blemish on Ponyville that had somehow maintained a healthy patronage over the years. Nowhere else in town could somepony order a Pegas Bomb, get into no less than three fights within the twelve hoofstrides from the bar to their seat, and wake up in the alley the next day approximately one kidney lighter. Local rumor had it that a happy thought had stumbled through the front door one day by accident. The bouncers had kindly helped it right back out. Cherry loved this place. Her glass lowered in time with Mac’s, the liter of stout between them completely gone. The mare wiped a film of head from her lips and waved pretty young Blue Bell to bring the two contestants another round. Blue Bell, or “lil’ Blue,” as the grizzled leeches surrounding her bar called her, didn’t look like the sort of pony who should be draining the tap at the town’s dive on any day of the week. Sure, she could be mistaken for a bartender - if the “bar” were in fact a martini lounge in a Manehatten entertainment district, and if “bartender” was confused as silly plebeian-speak for “hostess.” Her blond mane and tail were styled impeccably to accent the baby blue hue of her coat, and a single golden hoop in her left ear helped draw attention away from the pair of lavender eyes that watched every event in her establishment unfold. Blue was beautiful, she was crafty, and she cheerily exchanged a pair of fresh glasses for the two empty ones at Cherry and Mac’s corner of the bar top. “Cher’, hon, it’s not gonna happen. Big here’s been out-drinking every sleazebag in my place since I opened it. You’re not the first to try, and you’re definitely not the brawniest.” Wiping down the glasses carefully in her horn’s magical field, Blue leaned back to watch Cherry and Big Macintosh tap their drinks together and bang the worn wood of the bar before chugging. “Speakin’ o’which, this sleazebag still wants t’know why you even dragged me here in th’ first place,” Dodge yawned from across the bar. He fiddled with the end of his pool stick, puffing lightly at his twentieth cigarette of the evening. His score stood at four wins so far tonight; three at billiards, and one in a brutal smackdown with a sore loser that left him a little more bruised than usual. The other guy looked a lot worse, though. The pair of mugs banged heavily on the bar, empty once again. Where one massive red stallion had been sitting, Cherry could almost swear that two were slowly materializing - both with the same tiny smirk, one sitting on the other’s lap. She groggily blinked the issue away; what identical twins in the Apple family did together was their own business. “I dragged you here because you need to quit pining for your little ménage-a-tyrant, Dodge...” The floor tilted under her, causing the mare to grasp at the bar for extra stability. “...And because I’ll probably need to tag you in soon. Mac, you and your brothers need to quit swimming up and down the bar. You’re makin’ me dizzy.” Big Macintosh sighed and scooted a hoofful of bits across the bar towards Blue. She winked a sultry eye and took their mugs, humming an old sailor’s jingle as her hooves kept the liquor flowing and the barflies fed. As soon as the mare had turned her back, Mac caught Dodge’s attention and nodded towards Cherry as she teetered from side to side on her barstool. He shook his head and chuckled. Drunks clambered out of the way as he left the two policeponies to their devices with a soft “eeyup.” Nopony could drink Big Macintosh under the table. Nopony. “C’mon, then, Cher’, let’s get you home. All those big, sweaty Macintoshes left already an’ I think you’ve found your limit.” Dodge scooped the mare from her seat and laid her across his back, avoiding the heady scents of alcohol and pipeweed that wandered around both the saloon and his partner’s face. “Bullshit! I’m not done, coach, I can still play!” She wobbled dangerously over his shoulders and he forced himself not to flick the unicorn straight on her horn. Not only would she likely beat him - badly - in her inebriated state, he couldn’t help but feel a little more protective of the fiery-maned female ever since the two of them had come home from Canterlot. Watching his partner take a horn through her second-chance vest had been a sobering experience for him. Even though he had made peace with Chrysalis and her brood (“Chrissy,” as she practically ordered him to call her, had gone to some impressive lengths that evening to make peace with him specifically), the stallion still kept a slightly more wary eye on his friend’s health and well-being. Concerned as he was, he still couldn’t keep Cherry from being the responsible young arsonist that she always would be. She groaned as he neared the door, giving into the cruel powers of fatigue and Diamond Dogfish Head amber ale.  “You ain’t better’n me,” she barked to nopony in particular. “Come on, Dodge, we’ve been off duty for three days and I’m bored as hell.” Her eyes sparked to life almost immediately as a sea-green swarthy sailor of a colt with whiskey on his breath trotted into Dodge’s path. “Ey, son’, that’s a fine-lookin’ parcel ye be carryin’ off wit’ye. Don’t suppose ye’d mind shippin’ it my way?” His lopsided grin turned sour as soon as Cherry craned her head towards him, magic already building at the base of her horn. Her grin looked almost as dangerous as the sparkly haze that formed around the unlucky scumbag. “Oh, buck the hell YES.” ----- “Billions of blue blisterin’ barnacles in a ‘tunderin’ typhoon!” Dodge could only watch and keep walking through the shattered doorway as the poor stallion soared off over the horizon, bellowing in a horrible Scolttish brogue until he faded into the distance. Cherry’s flickering magical storm fizzed madly into the air as she waved a hoof and shouted in defiance: “Go suck a white whale, Ahab!” He’d have to come back tomorrow, he realized. Blue would have his hide if he didn’t cover for the repairs. Again. She was a sweet mare on the outside, but behind those purple eyes hid the old soul of an uptown mob boss. And she wasn’t afraid of breaking some kneecaps herself if certain walls, ceilings and pieces of furniture weren’t magically un-damaged soon. “Cher’, y’know that destruction o’private property an’ attempted coltslaughter are both illegal, right? Well, I mean, while we’re not on th’ job, anyway.” “Buck the police, Dodge. I am the law!” Great. She was officially in Cherry-Anne Berries Destroy Mode. She’d had another Four Horsemen while he hadn’t been looking. “Don’t sweat the small stuff, Dodge. Misdemeanors and minor felonies are all just happy memories waiting to happen between good friends. Besides, I took pictures!” Discord’s cheerful interruption was cut off as Dodge began choking on a large, painful lump in his throat. Beating roughly on his chest, he hacked up a stream of full-color photographs that showed the Scolttish stallion in various terrified poses. One of them in particular caught his eye; the green colt in the fetal position, tears in his eyes as a stuttering magic field forced him to become intimately familiar with an empty beer bottle. “Yep. That one was a Kodak moment.” “Gettin’ real tired of your shit, Discord,” Dodge muttered as he stepped over the heap of pictures in the dirt. “...But yeah, that one was pretty funny. Didja see his face when she hit it with th’ pool table?” “See it? I savored it. I love that mare. She’s an artist, a true bard for our age that speaks only arson and profanity. A couple thousand years ago she would have been my Queen.” “Okay, see, we’ve gone an’ hit that part of the chat where shit starts gettin’ creepy with you. There’s a kind of line y’don’t cross in social circles, an’ y’keep crossin’ it, full-kilt, arms wavin’ in the air, with th’ police in hot pursuit.” “Please, Dodge. I don’t need a stallion who consistently flees awkward, romantic entanglement with members of royalty to roast me on the nuances of polite society.” “Look,” the stallion backpedaled, starting to sweat, “what may or may not happen between me an’ certain queens and/or princesses s’ my business an’ nopony else’s.” “...He said unironically.” “Buck you.” “I live in your head, Dodge. It’s not like I can just go, ‘Hey, seems like my brainbuddy here’s about to wake the proverbial dead by bedding creatures of myth and legend; I guess I’ll just turn up the Kenny G on my stereo and sit back with a copy of the Times while he’s busy.’ Your business is my business, pal. Get used to it.” Dodge could hear the Draconequus quietly harrumph to himself in the confines of his skull as he strolled down Lamp-post Lane towards his apartment. “A’right. I guess that’s fair. I might not like ya much, Discord, but as long as th’ two of us are sharin’ the space, I figure arguin’ won’t get us anywhere. Truce?” “I promise not to turn your brain into a fine, pink mist leaking out of your earholes.” “...That’ll do.” Crickets chirped in the distance as Dodge passed through the outer edges of Ponyville’s market district. He could see his apartment building from here; there weren’t a lot of buildings in the small town that were taller than two stories. The apartments themselves were situated a few blocks away from most of the picturesque cottages and houses scattered around the heart of the village. This area was usually a little quieter, which was just the way he liked it. Cherry had long since passed into a drunken coma on his back, and he had more or less given up hope of taking her to her own place across town. She probably couldn’t even remember which house she was supposed to stumble into and methodically destroy from the inside out on her way to bed. Mistakes had been made after drinking nights in the past...subpoenas had been served, apologies made. The least he could do for the mare was keep an eye on her for a while. Celestia almighty, she snored like a freight train. Adjusting her on his back again, Dodge kicked his front door open and crept towards the bedroom. It was getting pretty late; he’d already filled his evening’s scrum quota at the bar, and he needed to catch up on the sleep he had lost during their little adventure in Canterlot. With a heavy grunt he slipped the unconscious mare off of his back and onto the black sheets of his simple bed. Cherry could sleep off her poison for the night and rise to lay waste to the streets again in the morning. “Awww,” Discord simpered. “Look at that. She’s a regular bundle of class when she sleeps.” Cherry’s head was cranked to the side at an awkward angle, a trail of saliva dangling from her mouth like a fishing line swaying over the ocean. One hoof was already feeling around for the comforter as the other three kicked softly at the air. “Bedtime for Bonzo, guy. We’ve got duty in th’ mornin’.” Shuffling back into the small living room, Dodge climbed onto the stark plush couch and rolled onto his back. His eyes drifted from the ceiling fan to the single window above his head, and the moon and stars beyond. When did this become his life? Calamity seemed to be able to follow him around, and by relation, his partner. Maybe being a small-town cop wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. “Stop thinking about things. I’m trying to sleep.” “...G’night to you, too.” ----- Would it be considered good or bad to find waking up wrapped in two pairs of hooves becoming familiar? Dodge blinked at the shafts of sunlight creeping through the window above his suddenly-crowded couch. A pair of bodies weighed him down and prevented him from rubbing his face with a hoof. One was a deep blue; that would be Luna, then. At least she wasn’t in Bizarro Mode. The other was bright pink, and her mane cascaded around her face as she slept in waves of gold and purple. Ah. Cadance. Why not? “How long d’you figure I’ve got until Shining tears off my head an’ shits down my neck? I need t’ get my partner out of the next room before my place gets leveled by a tact’cal buckin’ warhead.” The mares stirred and yawned almost in unison as his voice interrupted their snooze. “Ah, Dodge. What a wonderful pleasure it is to see you again. We simply must stop bumping into each other like this.” Cadance tossed a sunset hue of mane out of her face and nuzzled closer to him. “Uh...stop?” Terrified as he was of potential Celestial and/or military wrath, Dodge was a stallion, and there were two very lovely princesses literally in his lap, and words were beginning to fail him. Luna smirked and stretched her legs out behind her as Cadence laughed. In a flash of lime-green lightning, the alicorn’s petite pink frame was replaced with a creature of lacquered chitin and wispy blue hair. “I apologize. Seems I forgot to shed last night’s latest role-play outfit.” Chrysalis shrugged, the very picture of nonchalance. “It’s been an...interesting use of my race’s natural abilities. It certainly keeps things interesting in the court at Canterlot.” “Agreed,” the Princess piped in. “The addition of Changeling consort-judges, consort-guardsponies, and consort-prostitutes has been an exhilarating experience for myself and all the Canterlot nobility.” “Sounds like you’re all gettin’ along pretty well then. So, what, does every Changeling...y’know, pretty much jus’ have a buch of state-approved sex alongside their actual jobs?” “Well, we can hardly live without it any more. What easier way to quickly show passionate love and affection than random, meaningless sex?” The queen smiled wryly and traced a line up and down Dodge’s side with a hoof. “I, uh...I probably had a hand in that when I altered the absolute core of their being as a species and twisted their DNA like a kitten with a ball of yarn. It really seemed like a good idea at the time.” Discord’s voice heralded through Dodge’s head with a flawless laugh track that echoed through his skull just a little too long. “Well...I guess it makes for a pretty interestin’ resume. Now, uh, if y’Graces don’t mind, I need t’get up and go to work.” Queen and Princess disregarded his request and laid back down for another nap. “No, seriously, the Chief’s gonna have my ass if Cher’ an’ I come in late.” “Ugh. By royal decree, I pardon thee from any work-related activity while you are serving as my personal consort and throw pillow. Now be quiet.” Luna didn’t even bother to open her eyes as she shrugged his worries away. “Besides, believe it or not, the two of us are here regarding matters of state that will include you and your partner. You are my subject, correct?” “Well, yes, but-” “And your Chief Iron Will is as well, is he not?” “Yeah, I guess; minotaurs officially became legal citizens a few years ago, but-” “Then quiet yourself,” Luna snorted. “Your daily events have already been planned in their entirety by members of the Royal Court of Equestria. The first and most important of which shall last until eight-thirty this morning, by decree of the Night Princess Declarant. Stop fidgeting and enjoy yourself, officer. That is an order that no pony can disobey.” With a hearty crack, the apartment’s front door shattered inwards under the blow of a creature who was very much not a pony. “OFFICER DODGE CHARGER, IF YOU DO NOT OPEN THIS DOOR, IRON WILL WILL SMEAR YOU ON THE FLOOR!” A truckful of raging minotaur silhouetted the doorway, blocking the glaring light of the sun and filling the room with the stench of raw, hideous rage. A jumble of feathers and fur appeared behind Iron Will and shoved its way into Dodge’s living room, wielding a S.W.A.T. battering ram like a t-ball bat. Tossing the ram aside, Gilda the griffon brushed a few specks of dust from the shoulders of her police jacket and sighed. “That felt kinda contrived, if you ask me. We need to work on your catchphrases again, Chief.” “Sorry,” Cherry piped from the kitchen. “That was one of the rhymes I suggested last week.” “And what th’hell are you doing in my apartment? Cherry, how long have you been awake? Why did you have to break my door down in the first place!?” Dodge flailed and rolled out from under the pair of pouting royals, trying his best to straighten himself up in front of the mountain that towered over him. Carrying three cups of coffee above her, Cherry stepped over a few loose bits of debris and took a seat on the arm of the couch. “Well, I woke up just early enough to see the three of you having your fun on the couch there - never sitting on that thing again, by the way - and I decided we’d all need a little java to, uh...perk up for work.” She blew the steam away from her drink and sipped as the two other cups floated to the royalty on the cushions. “You burnt this,” Chrysalis groused. “I burn a lot of things.” Iron Will clenched and unclenched his ham-sized fists, cracking each of his knuckles in a steady rhythm that signaled an incoming beatdown. Gilda rolled her eyes and stepped aside as he thundered towards the two officers with murder in his gaze. “Coffee is not what Iron Will committed his morning arson for today! You, Officer Charger, and you, Officer Berries, are exactly three-and-a-half minutes late for your morning shift. Ooooh, Iron Will would hate to be you right now. Iron Will is going to take you apart and put you back together so he can take you apart all over again! CAN YOU SMELL WHAT IRON WILL IS COOKING?” “Heh, actually, that’s me again. I torched the eggs. And the juice.” Cooking, among other things involving flammable objects, wasn’t generally Cherry’s strongest skill. “I didn’t know you could burn juice,” Luna wondered aloud. “What Officer Berries can or cannot bring to flaming ruin is not important right now! What do you have to say for yourselves, officers? If you cannot explain, then I will bring you pain!” He stomped his hooves into the carpet, sending shards of door up into the air and earning a few hollers from the apartment below. Princess Luna set her coffee aside and rose to her hooves, gesturing for Chrysalis to follow her. Between the two of them they stood nearly level with the hulk of muscle and horn that threatened Dodge and Cherry, and that fact was not lost on Iron Will. With a lazy smile, Queen Chrysalis stepped forward. “In truth, sir, their tardiness this morning was due to our presence. Princess Luna and I came to speak with your officers personally.” “Heh. Came,” Cherry snickered. “...Yes. Anyway, we have need of the skills offered by you and your officers, Mister Iron Will. The Crown is extending an opportunity to the Ponyville Police Department to furnish a set number of your best as assistance in a wholly new branch of law enforcement.” With a green spark from the tip of her horn, the changeling queen pulled a large cedar box and a scroll stuck with Celestia’s seal from the crawlspace under the couch. “Mares, gentlecolts, and other creatures of the united tribes of Equestria...welcome to the sworn brotherhood of the Celestial-Lunar Operations Police Squad.”