Starlight Over Detrot Chapter 20: Rolling in the Aisles
Magical Contamination
Areas of "Magical Contamination" are defined as self-sustaining zones of significant and unpredictable magical influence; usually the result of miscast high-power spells or zones of catastrophic emotional turmoil. They are only rarely created artificially. As the results of magical contamination can range from the debiliating to fatal to worse than fatal, the deliberate creation of magical contamination zones is regarded somewhere between ‘felony’ and ‘war crime.’
DPD Policy states the following actions be observed by all officers regarding entering a zone of magical contamination:
1) Don't do it.
2) Seriously, don't do it. The Detrot Police Department is not screwing around. Do you like having one head and a torso not made out of a citrus fruit?
3) If circumstances dictate you really must, determine the source and origin of the contamination prior to entry and prepare accordingly. Magic being what it is, the origin may tell you what to expect. Dealing with a massacre site haunted by the vengeful dead should be approached differently from a site accidentally contaminated by an overzealous baker attempting to go all-out for a royal event. In one case, fondant and wax paper are likely to do you very little good; in the other, they may be your salvation.
4) Magical contamination seems curiously drawn to dramatic irony. Under no circumstances should you utter any phrase along the lines of “How bad can it be?” or “What’s the worst that could happen?” whilst inside a zone of magical contamination, as this can result in you being immediately rendered into glue.
--Excerpt from Appendix H: Subsection B.44 of the Detrot Police Department manual
Twice in one day, I’d found myself under attack by educational paraphernalia. Twice in one day.
Even for me, that’s bad.
****
It was, if I’m being generous, a stalemate. For an enchanted school, I admit, I had been worried about a more lethal brand of magic than vengeful squibs and papier-mache dolls.
The noise was probably the greater danger. While the walls were thick, anypony passing by outside was bound to hear the clicking, slicing, splashing, splurting tornado blowing around the tiny classroom. Whether or not they’d be coming to investigate was a question of how much they wanted to fend off the attacks of vicious washable markers.
I ducked into my coat, holding it over my head as a shield against some safety scissors which were trying to go for my throat in the most ineffectual manner possible. Taxi had learned the value of cover from her bloody nose, yanking a desk onto its side and pulling the top open. This would probably have worked nicely if it hadn’t released a raging swarm of erasers which immediately tried to fly into her ears.
Bake and Boil just stood there, hooves over their eyes, being buffeted by kamikaze glue-sticks. Swift huddled between them, her wings over her head, with a rolled up syllabus repeatedly smacking her across the back of the knees. Zeta, deciding the best part of valor was evasion, was dashing around the room in acrobatic circles; she was making me tired just looking at her.
“Thoughts? Options?” I yelled, smacking a shiv-shaped piece of paper out of the air and pinning it to the floor.
“None coming to mind!” Taxi shouted back, tossing her mane to fling off a folder clip that was trying to eat her one very small bite at a time.
“Sir, I’m going for the teacher’s desk!” Swift called out. I couldn’t see her through an explosion of confetti, but the vague shapes of Bake and Boil were still visible, their skins glowing.
“What? Why?!”
“Nothing’s attacking Zeta!”
I looked over the top of my coat, then sneezed as a pot of glitter burst in my face, stuffing my nose with sparkles. After some moments of choking, I managed to get a look towards the front of the room. Zeta was standing on the teacher’s desk, hooves raised, turning in circles in her combat stance as she waited to deflect another object flying at her face, but indeed, none seemed interested in doing so.
“Zeta! What did you do?”
“I have no idea, Detective Pony!”
As is often the case when dealing with magic, discovery is a matter of experimentation and observation. Sometimes this included tossing somepony out over the lava and seeing if they learn to fly on the way down. Senior officers have frequently commented that the relationship they maintain with their juniors, at least where magic is concerned, is similar to that of scientist and lab rat.
I find this distasteful and inaccurate; I have never, personally, detonated a junior officer. This doesn’t mean I’m above letting them get some on-the-job training in why you shouldn’t leave cover to play hunches.
“Kid, go for it! You’re up!”
“Yes, sir!”
I heard the beat of Swift’s wings over the roar of the storm, using the downdraft to sweep away her worst aggressors as she leapt into the air. Immediately, two rolls of thick construction paper bounced off the floor and wrapped themselves tightly around her rear legs. She slewed sideways, then caught her balance, kicking them off as she landed beside Zeta on the desk.
“I think I’m oka—” My partner let out a howl of pain as the teacher’s ruler snapped off the floor and cracked her soundly across the cutie-mark. She toppled off the desk, landing behind it and sending up a spray of paper.
“Kid? Kid, talk to me!”
A few seconds later, Swift’s head popped up over the side of the teacher’s desk. “Ow... I’m fine, sir. In fact...”
My partner stepped out from behind the desk, trotting towards me. I fully expected her to be instantly turned into an orange art-project by the animated school supplies, but the vicious little bastards seemed to have suddenly lost interest. Still wiping glitter out of my mouth, I watched as a tape dispenser swerved in mid-air to avoid her out-stretched feathers.
“How are you doing that?” I demanded.
She examined herself, then reached under her wing and peeled something off of her side, then held it out. It was a piece of paper with the word ‘Hall Pass’ printed in big, official letters across the top.
“I fink iz diss,” she mumbled around the paper.
Zeta glanced down at her hooves, finding another pass sticking to the bottom of her stealth-shoe. There was a scattering of them underneath the teacher’s desk and spread across the floor where Swift had landed.
I had to pull my head down as an especially loaded eraser plopped a cloud of dust on my shoulder.
“Everypony gets one! Yes, you two, too! No, I don’t care if you’re enjoying yourselves!”
****
Five minutes later, the storm had ended. Five sticky, glittered, marker-stained equines, plus Zeta and the unconscious Edina, who’d managed to avoid the mess altogether, sat around the teacher’s desk with our blueprints spread out before us and hall passes glued or pinned to whatever flesh was immediately available.
Again, luck was with us; the soundproofing between classrooms must have been spectacular and nopony seemed to be coming to investigate. The mess spilled across every inch of the room was gradually cleaning itself up. Erasers dabbed spots of chalk off the walls, sparkles were swept back into vials, and bits of paper rearranged themselves in neat stacks inside student’s desks. It was, altogether, a weird thing to watch.
Taxi lifted her hips to let a piece of foal’s art slip out and fly up onto the wall, taping itself back in place with a fresh strip from the dispenser. “Hardy, I hate to bring this up but since nopony else seems willing; what’s the reasoning behind the hall passes?”
I ducked as a ball of yarn flew over my head, settling amongst a pile in the corner. “You remember what the diary said? His spell would ‘solve all his problems’? Spirits had constant truancy issues with his students, so now the school makes sure they’re where they should be. It fits with High Spirits’ twisted logic; if they’ve got a hall pass, they’ve got permission to be where they are.”
A couple of tiny brushes were dancing along the floor, sweeping up confetti. I watched them for some time, and realized - High Spirits wanted to solve Calliope’s problems, too. Calliope was the janitor. Now, by the same magic, the school helps clean itself. It was kind of imaginative, in a unicorn sort of way.
Zeta flicked her striped tail, looking impressed. “That is... brilliant. Why did you ponies allow such an amazing training ground to fall into disuse?”
I had a brief flash, just then, of what world travelers must feel when passing through a country with vastly different social mores. Knowing what I did of Zeta’s past, her question almost made sense.
I spent a few more moments listening to the swish of animated brushes whilst formulating an answer. “...That boiler... was rebuilt and enchanted by a pony who hadn’t slept in months. I’m pretty sure nopony wants to volunteer to find out what else he decided to ‘improve.'”
The zebra tilted her head forward in contemplation then nodded. “I take your meaning.”
Turning the map sideways, I eyeballed the distance between the classroom and the auditorium. “Sweets, check me on this... that looks like about... two hundred meters, right?”
She put her hoof on the paper, using the scale at the bottom for a general measure. “I’d use one of the measuring sticks in here if I wasn’t worried it would bite me. I could call it that, sure.”
“Alright, Zeta, you up for another little jog?” I asked, gesturing towards the zebra.
Stretching her legs one at a time, Zeta shook herself all over. “Of course. What do you ask of me?”
“Scout ahead.” I cocked the brim of my hat at the classroom’s door. “Keep it silent and avoid confrontation if you can. Get us a general sense of what’s in the auditorium. I’ll drop in with the ladybugs and take a look once you’re out there.”
“I go.”
Between breaths, Zeta had vanished and the only sound was the soft click of the lock sliding closed.
Taxi trotted over and tugged the door open, peering down the hall in both directions. Pulling her head back, she exhaled, “She’s amazing.”
“Yes, and scary. I’m glad I don’t make striped enemies very often.” I replied, then my eye caught something on the back of the door. “Hey, what’s that?”
“What’s...huh.” Taxi opened the door fully and examined the outside face of it. It was papered, from floor to ceiling, with hall passes. “You think that’s how they managed to keep the school from trying to clean up the drug lab or attacking them?”
“Good bet, yeah.’ I noticed a broom making for the exit and motioned for her to close it again. Reaching up, I jiggled the ladybug in my mane until it meeped. “Make sure my hall pass doesn’t come off while I’m gone. I’m going to take a ride on the zebra express.”
Pulling my coat more comfortably around my shoulders, I sat down and shut my eyes.
“Sunshine, sunshine...”
****
An hour, so it turned out, was plenty of time to forget what it feels like being tossed into a barrel rolling down a steep hill with a crazed wolverine attacking the base of your skull. Zeta moved at such speed and with so little regard for simple things like ‘up’ and ‘down’ that I was momentarily thankful I was in her body and not my own; motion sickness is my least favorite brand of nausea.
Zeta was slinking, in near total darkness, down the top of a long row of lockers. Her breath caught as she heard hooves somewhere ahead and she dashed down the wall, up the opposite side. Pausing for a few seconds, she flipped a tiny tool out of one side of her hoof and began unscrewing a vent, removing the screws and setting them on the locker. If it weren’t for her own breathing, I’d have thought she’d gone deaf; the operation was conducted in near perfect silence.
Slipping into the duct, she squirmed along the thin, aluminum tunnel as fast as I might have walked with nary a sound. It was just a freakish sensation to be moving that quickly in such a tiny space. I had the odd sensation of time contracting until, without warning, Zeta froze in place and held her breath. Whatever additional senses she had operating weren’t transmitting down the ladybug’s network; I heard nothing for a gut-clenching ten seconds until a voice filtered through the maze of vents.
“—dimwitted sack of chickenshit! Your mother would have used a condom if she’d known you were on the way down daddy’s pipe!”
The voice was familiar; Snicket. Cosmo’s creature.
There was the sound a body crashing into something and breaking glass, followed by a low moan.
“Remake it, and you will be trying the next batch yourself. A full needle too!” Snicket barked. “Dead clients don’t give us repeat business!”
Zeta was moving again, writhing like a silverfish down the narrow tunnel. Abruptly, we came to a closed grate in what I’d been thinking of as the left wall. Zeta rolled with the tunnel until it became the floor and my inner gyroscope threatened to throw in the towel if she didn’t stop confusing it in such a cruel fashion.
Flickering yellow light spilled up through the grate as the sneaking zebra pressed her cheek to the metal, trying to get a look. Her eyes adjusted slowly until the images resolved out of the mottled mass of bustling, blurry figures down below. What she saw gave me a rough case of vertigo followed by an emotion I’m all too acquainted with; tactical self-pity.
It is the feeling one has when they find themselves facing down any situation where bulletproof vests start to feel inadequate and silly.
I’d played my cards correctly, though there was very little satisfaction in that. The drug lab was, indeed, in the auditorium, but the room was much larger than it was on the out-dated blueprints. Somepony must have decided, not long before the school closed, that just the thing to drive the students away from lives of crime was a theater that could put the Canterlot Royale to shame.
The architect's solution to the ever-present issue of demolition in a tightly packed city was to sink the expansions into the ground and use the old building, making the room about fifteen feet deeper than it had originally been. It was elegant, simple, and made for one ridiculously difficult position to invade. Two sets of stairs on either side of the main door lead up to halls behind the risers that, I presumed, included roof access. I counted at least four exits.
Tables filled the orchestra pit and lined the stage; at a quick count, a half dozen ponies in lab coats hustled between them. Four guards, all giving off that hyper-attentive vibe that security only does when the boss is around, were standing in the high-rise boxes on both walls. Sure enough, there, on center stage, trying to rub a spot of something red off the sleeve of her tuxedo, was Snicket herself.
Having taken in the tactical situation, I noticed a mare laying against one of the curtains, surrounded by a heap of broken glass and what looked like sand. She was nursing a bruised cheek, but the other technicians were very carefully not looking at her as she pulled herself up and started to slink away. “I’m sorry, ma’am...”
“Bunsen, while you’re being sorry, clean that up? I imagine you’re going to be unavailable tomorrow while you come down...” Snicket waved a hoof at the spill near the curtain. “...and I don’t like my operations messy.”
“Y-yes, ma’am,” Bunsen whimpered, rubbing her face as she started for a bucket and mop. As she passed, Snicket’s rear hoof snapped out, catching the hapless mare across the shoulder and landing her face first back in the sandy concoction. She gagged, then shrieked in pain as she tried to scrape the chemical out of her eyes with her hooves.
Before the Red Hoof could find any other ways of punishing the damaged pony, a stout stallion, whose cutie-mark was a saw cutting a log in half, pulled Bunsen behind the stage curtain and forced her face into a bucket of soapy water. The screaming subsided in a bubbly gasp.
Snicket gave the big colt a disapproving glare as he dragged away her toy, then turned back to the lab, catching everypony staring in stricken horror. She dramatically swept her leg over their heads and announced, in a voice that could be heard right to the back row, “You bunch get back to work! Need I remind you that we sell a quality product here, ladies and gentlecolts? And that I am personally responsible for the continuation of our customer base, and that you are responsible, each and every one, to me? You know where you owe your debts, and there are three ways to pay it; Bits, work, or pain. Just be glad you’re useful; most ponies only get two of those options.” She dropped her leg and turned, leaving the stage and Zeta’s limited visual range. The technicians paused for only a second, before hurrying back to their variously steaming, smoking, rumbling apparati in hopes of escaping any attention on themselves.
Behind the curtain, the stallion was dabbing the filly’s eyes with a cloth as she sobbed against his chest.
I never worked in Narcotics, but I'd seen enough bodies in stash houses that I thought I knew what to expect, and I had not expected a room full of slaves. It was just one more crime to add to Cosmo’s docket if ever we could get him into a courtroom, which was looking like an increasingly remote scenario.
It was a rare thing for me to get emotionally involved in my work. Perhaps it was the helplessness with which I’d watched her or the callousness of her brutality; maybe it was the exhaustion of the last three days getting to me - but I really wanted nothing more than to have a little dance on Snicket’s face.
None of that was helping with the strategic situation. If we just burst in, a couple of hoofballers were going to cover us about as well as a pair of sandbags with legs.
‘Ladybugs, signal zebra to pull back and let me out.’
It was time to come up with a plan.
As I may have mentioned, I hate plans.
****
“...so that’s it, then? Hardy, you're making retreat sound lovely."
Taxi’s expression was skeptical as she cast an eye back towards the trap door we’d come up through.
“If retreat were an option, I’d be considering it heavily,” I agreed, tapping the map. “The fresh guards outside are going to make that difficult. At best, we get out without somepony seeing us and leave empty hooved, but I don’t trust my luck that much. More likely somepony gets shot.”
“Sir, we can’t just... leave those ponies in there, can we?” Swift rustled her wings uncomfortably. “Indentured servitude was outlawed in Equestria five hundred years ago!”
“I don’t intend to leave them there,” I assured her. “Surprise and storming tactics aren’t going to be enough, though. We need something else if we’re going to come through this bloodlessly and right now, I’m open to suggestions.”
Taxi and Swift looked at one another, then down at the blueprint.
In a perfect world, these sessions would be done long before any operation occurs so everypony knows what they’ll be going into. Since we don’t live in a perfect world, we’re forced to deal with what’re often called ‘evolving battlefields.’ There’s another, less socially appropriate, term that the ponies actually on those battlefields use: clusterbucks.
I glanced at Bake and Boil who were sitting against one wall of the classroom, conferring in low voices. Now and then I’d catch a word, but their conversation seemed mostly wrapped up in how they might get Stella to give them permission to move High Spirits’ boiler. They had the bag of griffin between them and were using the opportunity, while she was asleep, to braid her tail-tuft. I decided against asking them for tactical advice.
“Sir?” Swift began, haltingly. “Th-the police manual s-says we should come back with backup and n-not risk civilians.”
I gave her a dour look. “Kid, if we follow the police manual, then King Cosmo is going to have Snicket kill everypony in that room tonight.”
“What?!” My partner’s eyes almost popped out of her head.
“You think he’s going to let a bunch of eggheads pay off their debts and just ‘walk away’ from a drug operation?” I let out a soft snort. “He’s going to have them all dumped in the canal when he’s done with them. If we’re detected leaving, it’ll be done right then and there. If you want to save their lives, we’re going in there.”
“But sir-”
Whatever objection Swift was about to raise was cut short by a screeching yawn from across the room, announcing Edina had regained consciousness.
“Ahhh, the drink of heaven has released its hold!” There was a pause, then the softer of her two voices asked, “Why are we in a bag?”
Bake made to open the bag just as a set of four claws ripped a griffin-sized hole in the side of the sack, nearly clipping off his nose. Like a princess entering the grand ball, Edina sauntered out, shaking the kinks out of her wings and neck. Flipping one of her whips off her shoulder and giving it a few practice swings in the air, she studied the classroom briefly, then her predatory eyes found mine.
“Ahhh, the meat! What did we miss?”
I was about to answer with what would have, no doubt, been a succinct and brilliant summation of the ridiculously dangerous situation, wherefrom might have come a perfect scheme for eliminating our enemies in time to be home for breakfast. I’m sure it would have calmed her considerably while settling in everypony’s mind the idea that everything was under control.
How unfortunate, then, that the chemistry textbook on the shelf beside me had other ideas, such as “Fly off the shelf and try to eat Edina’s face.”
****
Dealing with a crazy person is most often a matter of finding the right lever. Even the most psychopathic serial killer usually has one or two little buttons that you can find and push to get them to make a mistake. For some, it’s reading that their mother probably abused them in the newspaper. For others, it’s giving them all the coffee they could possibly want. Once, I got a full confession just by having all the interrogating officers blow bubbles with a piece of gum whenever they were in the perp’s presence.
When the crazy person in question is an ally, the business of finding levers becomes a more sensitive task. I can attest to this, having survived Chief Jade’s tenure mostly because I knew how far I could take things before she started breaking bones.
In this regard, Edina was no different from any other nutcase, except insofar as I had to wrap my head around the idea that there was more than one nutter that needed dealing with.
****
“I will devour you for your crimes, pony meat!” The griffin screamed as a second volley of blackboard erasers bounced off her rear leg, leaving her coated in a thick cloud of dust. Her second voice chimed in, “No, we peel it first! Then we set it on fire!”
Swift was trying, once again, to get close enough to slap a hall pass on Edina, but the griffin had a whip in one claw and almost took her ear off with it. For what felt like the fourteenth time in three days, I was tempted to shoot down something small and winged, but we needed the mad griffin in fighting condition.
“Miss Edina! You have to listen!”
“Listen to this, flappy meat!” Edina shrieked as she swung her whip again, forcing the pegasus back. An especially speedy graphing compass raced ahead of the pack and buried itself a half inch in the griffin’s fuzzy backside, sending her bolting back the other direction.
Taxi and I stood on opposite desks, trying to snatch the crazed hybrid out of the air. Bake and Boil seemed uncharacteristically content to sit back and watch, which I should have taken as a measure of the futility of our “Grab Her” plan.
“Over there! Hardy, she’s coming for you!” My driver yelped, then dived out of the way as a dozen boxes of crayons shot by her head.
I leapt at the griffin but found my forelegs full of nothing but air; I then found the ground rushing up to meet my face. A flash of black and white snatched me out of mid-air, set me on my hooves, then bounced across the desks like her rear end was spring-loaded. Where Zeta had appeared from was a question I was prepared to leave for another day; she definitely hadn’t come in through the door. Still, I was just grateful to have her there.
On her next pass, Swift managed to bring Edina closer to the ground and Zeta hopped up, snagging her in all four legs. The griffin yowled like a trapped alleycat as they fell, rolling end over end into a pile of desks. She came up fighting, but found her thumb-claws tied tightly together; the zebra ended up sitting behind the teacher’s desk with her rear hooves up, cleaning a tiny scratch on one of her fetlocks.
“Edina! Be calm!” Zeta ordered, blotting at her wound.
Against all reason, this seemed to have at least some measure of the desired effect. The griffin’s puffed-up chest-feathers flattened slightly. “You meats have dragged us into a pit of perdition and we have been attacked by demon possessed books!” Edina complained. “Why should we be calm?”
“The books will only attack you if you take that paper off of your buttocks, you silly thing.” replied Zeta. Edina peered over her shoulder to find a hall-pass duct taped to her rear and, soul of wisdom that she was, immediately went about trying to peel it off. Zeta hefted a book in both hooves and chucked it at her. “I said, you will get attacked if you take that paper off. Now leave it!”
“It’s sticky!” The softer of Edina’s voices whined. “We don’t like it!”
“I don’t care,” Zeta snapped with unusual brusqueness. “Unless the two of you wish to be eaten alive by this school’s spirits, I do recommend you settle. There will be foes aplenty for you to take out your rage upon here soon.”
At that, Edina perked up slightly. “There is meat we can hurt?”
****
Watching the school attempt to devour Edina was quite inspiring after her performance with the coffee cup that morning.
As their conversation was unfolding, an inkling of an idea was beginning to form; an idea that made use of the the bastard child of a vindictive vice principal, sitting alone in his basement home, weeping over lost love, and cursing the ankle-biting beasts he’d spent every day trying to save.
If it worked, we might save everypony, and even manage to avoid terminal bloodshed. If it failed, we’d probably all be dumped in the canal along with a half dozen innocents before the night was over.
****
I stepped forward and put my leg around her shoulders. “Yes, yes there is much meat you can hurt - And you can hurt it as much as you want to! So long as you follow some very simple instructions.”
“We do not follow instructions! We give them!” Edina nipped at my face, but I caught her beak on the bottom of my hoof before she could remove my upper lip.
“Oh, I think you’ll like these... because they will hurt a lot of meat.”
The devil’s grin on my face gave her pause. Edina’s left iris grew slightly, while the right centered on my face.
“Tell us more.”
“Gather ‘round.” I raised my hooves to draw my companions in close. “I think I know how we can pull this off.”
****
Fifteen minutes later, the pounding of hooves and slamming of metal locker doors echoed again down the halls.
Once, it would have been hundreds of foals dashing to and fro, class to class. But not that night.
That night, the noise was just two ponies. Two scarred colossi of destruction, crashing like a wrecking ball ballet from wall to wall, bashing lockers and smashing doors. Their horns glowed with burning green light as they held an eagerly squirming black bag between them.
Behind the titanic charge of demolition, four shadows moved, tearing paper off walls and pushing open classrooms.
Far down in the depths, the cheery tune of a calliope took up a quicker beat, piping through heating vents that stretched acre after acre within the abandoned school until a gleeful war-song thumped along with the mighty charge. With each door opened, a subtle drone built until the vibrations grew into the roaring of caged lions being set free upon their captors.
Zeta, Taxi, Swift, and I did our best to keep our heads low as the swarm boiled out of each room. In the darkness, it might have seemed as locusts soaring out over fertile fields, were it not for the occasional much larger object, a mop or broom, which whipped past our ears.
I caught sight of Swift’s maniacally grinning face as she snatched down a strip of hall-passes off in her teeth and threw them into an empty garbage can. Behind her, Taxi was working methodically, moving from locker to locker and yanking each one open. Zeta, bringing up the rear, passed like a cleansing wind. A box of some strongly scented powder bumped into the shoulder of my tactical vest, spilling over my hooves before flying on after the two barreling hoofballers who were moving ahead at a neck-breaking speed.
Deciding we’d done enough, I kicked the trigger bit of my shotgun up into my teeth, dodged an ungainly artist’s easel, and set off at a full gallop after the twins. Sweat dripped into my eyes as I ran. The heart hidden in my coat was chugging with excitement, rocking back and forth with the beat of my hooves on the tiled floors. My lungs were full of fire; my thighs full of acid.
Juniper’s manic laughter chased me amidst a hurricane, a veritable typhoon of enchanted objects all swinging to avoid me by a matter of inches as they chased after the rampaging hoofballers. As I ran by, the others stopped in their efforts, hiked up their own weapons, and followed.
The coin was in the air, and there was nothing left but to see where it would land.
****
We swung around the final bend towards the auditorium just in time to see a curious face with a trigger in its mouth poke around the side of one of the theater’s wide double doors. I didn’t get a good look before Bake’s rear hooves crashed into the woodwork, sending the guard and the door for a short but extremely painful-looking flight.
The sack held between the brothers ruptured, and Edina, her hall-pass left back in the classroom, burst out into the drug lab proper with four whips, holding one in each claw. She was a screeching, spinning cannon ball of sadistic terror, and on her tail-feathers followed the unleashed fury of High Spirits and the Sunny Days Foster Care Facility.
If we’d been hoping for chaos, we couldn’t have designed a more brilliant entrance given six months to plan. It felt odd, giving no warning, but then that would have rather defeated the purpose of this attack. Bake and Boil were already inside when I reached the doors, dashing down amongst the rows of chemistry sets with reams of hall-passes in their teeth, slapping one after another on the stunned scientists. A splash of fire boiled up from a tipped-over table, but was immediately doused by a floating fire extinguisher.
I stopped in the entrance, peering around the side only to be yanked back by my tail as a spray of gunfire spattered the side of the doorway. A guard up in the spotlight catwalk dangling above the stage, quicker on the uptake than his fellows, had blasted a nice-sized hole in the wall with an SMG. Thankfully, Taxi was even quicker, and the school did not take kindly to having holes put in its walls.
Two seconds after he’d opened fire, a terrified scream followed as the pony was booted out of his perch by a flying broom. Before he could fall to what would probably have been a quick and messy death, a lasso snapped out from one of the balconies, wrapping itself around his front right hoof and turning his descent into a swing, squarely into a pillar. I picked out a flicker of stripes, then Zeta was gone, leaving the guard dangling like a concussed pinata.
The other guards had regained a semblance of composure and were lining up shots. From the perch of a stage-right riser box, a grey-green earth pony mare with three eggs for a cutie-mark let off a few rounds from a semi-automatic pistol held in her teeth. The bullets peppered Bake’s side and he stopped in mid-run, clenching his teeth, then letting out a moan that could be heard over the deafening thrum of the swirling tornado in the center of the room. His assailant cheered and thrust one hoof in the air, only to go wide-eyed as the gigantic hoofballer giggled drunkenly and stumbled on his way. While she stared, Zeta appeared behind her, looping a rope around her neck and another around her ankles, plucking her gun from her lips and tossing it away as she hogtied her to one of the uprights.
The three remaining guards had mistaken loudness for danger and decided on that basis that Edina was the biggest threat; they started snapping bullets at her as she winged by them. One who didn’t step back quickly enough caught a face-full of her whips that sent him tumbling up against the wall, clutching his slashed-open cheeks.
The technicians were in a panic, though most had the good sense to throw themselves underneath the stage. The two who remained out of cover were quickly herded by the twins underneath tables and behind bookshelves.
Two guards in sniping positions stood overlooking the audience pit, trying to follow Edina with their guns. One wore a thin denim jacket with a pocket full of what I presumed were extra bullets, while the other had taken the ill-advised route many young gangsters have in recent times and gotten a facial tattoo. It was somewhat unfortunate, then, that he couldn’t be bothered to keep that bit of flesh shaved; it had grown back in such a way that he looked like he had a bad skin disease.
Those were our next priority. Taxi and I pressed against the walls as I gestured towards the right side stairs, where we could move to flank them. On the count of three, we both dashed up the steps, then Taxi reared up, hefted the P.E.A.C.E. and winked at me. I stepped back slightly and the cannon made a dull ‘thunk’, a cloud of purple smoke bursting out of the end.
The round bounced neatly off the nearest support pylon and sailed past my cheek; If I’d been an inch to the right, I’d have lost some of my head. I glared at my driver, who compensated for nearly decapitating me by presenting me with an elusive sight: Taxi Looking Sheepish. Her debt thus paid, she then lined up her second shot and yanked on her makeshift trigger; it exploded all over Denim-Jacket, covering the stallion and the immediate balcony in a thick violet dust. It wasn’t a very large radius - a few yards, at best - but it was enough; He had time to gasp once before his eyes rolled up in his head and he hit the floor like a lead weight, tongue lolling from his mouth.
“What was that?!” I had to shout to be heard over the rumpus occupying the center of the room; By this point, this consisted mostly of Edina, who seemed to be reveling in the ongoing chase as the school tried unsuccessfully to bring her down in a place where she had plenty of room to maneuver.
“Sleeping powder! He’ll be out for ten hours!” she yelled back.
That was about when our second target had realized he was alone, and yanked his rifle towards our position. My brain did one of those automatic calculations and the answer it spat out was not good; if I wanted to shoot him at this range, I’d have to use my revolver and that would have neatly negated our goal of ‘zero corpses.’
Taxi took another shot, which went wide and decorated one of the chandeliers. The stallion raised his leg to fire. I braced my legs, ready to put a round in the guard’s chest, or to tackle Taxi and take the shot on my armored sides; I’m not sure which it was.
Fortunately, as the guard was about to bite on his trigger, some part of my mind registered a sound like a thunderbolt winning an argument; At the same moment, his trigger bit exploded out of his mouth, twisting sideways and slapping him in the opposite ear.
I don’t know who was more surprised, me, Taxi, or the poor sod with the freshly bruised face and bleeding lips. We stood there, staring at each other, until there was a second report, and his gun burst, throwing hot shrapnel all over him. He came out of his shock with a full-throated squeal of pain, tossing himself on his back and rolling wildly in circles as he tried to get the burning metal out of his fur and his face.
I was just going through a series of chants, prayers, and graces to any royal beings of power who might be listening, when Swift dropped onto the balcony over the fallen gunner, her expression panicky. “Oh my! Are you okay? I just meant to hit your gun! I didn’t think it would blow up!"
For a moment, my brain actually froze up in confusion, as it tried to piece together two things: First, that it had been my green rookie partner who’d pulled off that shot, and second, that she wasn't taunting her target; her voice had been quivering with frightened sincerity. It was a real apology. Here was a pegasus who’d just performed a feat of marksmareship that would have impressed Calamity Mane, and all Swift was expressing was genuine concern that she might have hurt the murderous drug-gang soldier who’d been about to drill a messy hole through Taxi.
I groaned and slapped my face with one hoof. We were going to have a long talk. Later. "Dammit, kid!” I hollered. “We're in a fight! Go support Edina!"
"Oh... right! Sorry, sir!" She hopped onto the railing around the balcony and took to the air, coasting like a big, underqualified kite.
Face-Tattoo was just getting to his hooves as Taxi pushed the P.E.A.C.E. under his nose, letting him get a good whiff of the residual Hush Now powder on the barrel. Five seconds later, he was snoozing like a baby. Opening my coat, I pulled out a pad of hall-passes, laying one on him, then another on his partner, leaving them to nap.
Throwing my legs over the balcony, I looked down into a scene of catastrophic damage. Bake and Boil had taken a very systematic route through the chemistry sets, blowing out fires and upending everything they could that didn’t seem immediately explosive. The school was already in the process of cleaning up the mess. A garbage can flew by, laden heavily with steaming beakers. The scientists were still hiding under the stage and each time one would venture out, the hoofballers would push them back.
“Well, that was easier than I... tho...”
I don’t know why anypony would ever say that sentence in its entirety, least of all me.
Math was never my strong suit, as Taxi had been known to shout about after she’d had a few drinks. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe all the booze was finally catching up to me, but I realized then that there were four guards in various states of unconsciousness or incapacitation.
There had been five ponies guarding the laboratory. Snicket wasn’t amongst the fallen.
A crash from backstage was all the warning we got before nine heavily armed ponies poured from behind the stage curtains, lining up on stage with their guns trained on the balconies. Taxi and I were trapped on the right side behind the riser boxes. Unlike the last bunch, this crew had ample warning. Every one of them had a hall-pass attached to their flank.
Three mares had saddle-mounted shotguns in various delicious flavors pointed at Bake and Boil. The twins were standing below the stage looking up at this fresh development with an unsettling lack of emotion towards the idea of being shot in the face. Their armor was cracked in a few places where bullets had bitten into the plastic, but overall none of their injuries seemed more than superficial. The remaining guards were sweeping their sights along the railing, looking for any easy targets.
All the while, a swirling vortex of school materials whipped through the center of the room, cleaning and pecking apart the damaged drug lab. Swift and Edina were nowhere to be seen, nor was Zeta, which wasn’t terribly surprising.
One of the drug makers, a young stallion with a bleached blond mane and more curiosity than could ever be called healthy, started to stick his head out from under the stage, but Boil shoved him back amongst his fellows.
I raised my head a few inches over the balcony and a rifle let off a loud report. A bullet whipped past the brim of my hat, nearly taking it off. I ducked back, relying on a thin crack between two slats in the viewing box to see what was going on down below.
Snicket, like a spotty pink bullseye, strutted out onto center stage. Her weaponized hooves clicked and clacked on the polished floor boards. She seemed a bit chunkier than the last time I’d seen her; she was probably wearing some type of body-armor underneath that tux. Behind her, the teamster’s manager stood with a derringer in his teeth and the poor druggie’s horn still sitting in his front pocket. I narrowed my eyes, wishing I could get a message to Swift to put one in each of that prick’s knees.
Snicket’s voice rose above the clamour of the school trying to clean up the chemicals. “I don’t know who you are, friend, but you picked the wrong place for a nightcap! Throw down your guns or we turn your friends here into blood custard!”
I considered our options. None of them were especially good, but they were worth considering. Shouting for Swift to kill all of them would probably have ended very poorly. Bake and Boil seemed disinclined to cause injury, or they’d probably have already charged the stage and proceeded with some head stomping. Their skills seemed mostly focused on absorbing damage. Zeta’s abilities were primarily in stealth and misdirection and Edina, wherever she’d gotten to, was probably better off there; as much fun as watching her try to disrupt that line of fire might have been, we were looking to maintain as close to a zero bodycount as possible - though at that point I was sorely tempted to recalculate that stance.
That left me, Taxi, and an extremely complex tactical conundrum. The twins weren’t in any special danger, but it’s never wise to show all of your cards at once. We had an advantage in range and position, but not in firepower.
There was only one thing for it, then. I slowly stood, putting a big smile on. I found myself looking down all six of the gun barrels that weren’t otherwise occupied in keeping back Bake and Boil. “Good evening, Miss...Snicket, was it?”
The Red Hoof tilted her head to one side. She asked icily, “You know who I am?” In the acoustically perfect space, I could hear her without her even having to raise her voice.
“One of your people mentioned your name while we were coming in.” I replied, trying to sound unworried by the array of death dealing devices aimed at my cranium.
“Mind if I ask who sent you?” Snicket wanted to know. “I’ve already narrowed it down to ‘nopony smart.’ You’d have come with more guns if you had half a brain in that grey-ass head. I just want to know whose employer I’m going to have to kill, later. If you’re lucky, I may send you back as the messenger, while I kill the rest of these idiots who came with you.”
I trotted down the stairs, the guns following me each step. At that range and unless one of those ponies was some type of sharpshooter, I wasn’t worried about a lucky headshot, but there were plenty of other places they could put holes in. “I’m with the Detrot Police Department.”
Snicket’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait. Aren’t you... You’re the fool that walked into the casino yesterday morning and asked to see the boss!?”
I tipped my hat. “The same.” I then yawned loudly, to the mild consternation of the small army with its guns trained on me. “Oh, do excuse me; I have had a truly exhausting three days, so I’ll get to the point: I’m here to disable this drug lab and your employer is going to be leaving town soon. If you want the protection of Detrot Police Department once that happens, give yourselves up. Otherwise, I’m sure the Cyclones will be overjoyed to know the King is gone and you’re unprotected.”
The enforcer-pony tilted one eye closer to me, then looked down at the Tortellini twins, who’d sat down to wait for something interesting to happen. She seemed warily perplexed as to why we all seemed so nonchalant in the face of certain doom, which was good; that wariness was keeping her from advancing further right away and mercilessly abusing her superior firepower and numbers. Instead, she tried to keep puzzling this out from a distance:
“I’ll believe you’re with the pigs, but I’ll be damned straight to Tartarus if these two are cops. And whatever did that—” She indicated the gently swaying thug dangling from the balcony, “—wasn’t an ‘officer of the law’, either. Besides, if this is a police raid, how come there aren’t a dozen squad cars worth of pigs knocking down the doors? You’re working freelance, aren’t you, buddy boy? Who bought you?”
A hoof lightly tugged at my coat and I half-turned to see Taxi crouched and nosing towards a spot directly above Snicket’s head. Doing my best to look like I was just stretching my neck, I glanced at the spot and it took less than a second to pick out Swift alongside Edina, creeping along the stage-lighting catwalk. How the griffin’s dual psyche was having a quiet enough time of it to manage ‘sneaking’, I couldn’t say, but there they were.
I decided to keep Snicket talking while they got into a better position, praying none of those on the stage decided to look up. “Oh, nopony bought me. I’m just doing my civic duty with a group of friends. You’ve heard of civic duties, right? They’re what you do when you’re not busting some sad addict’s horn off his crown like that piece of garbage hiding behind you.” Pointing at the teamster, I growled, “That’s right, shit-eyes! I see all and hear all, and I’m coming for you once I’ve taken this stupid trash out to the curb.”
The manager took two steps back, lips peeled back in a silent snarl. Snicket gave him a disgusted look, then shook her head and tapped one armored hoof against the other. “I don’t think you will, cop. I’m counting and I only saw six with you and three guns. I’ve got nine and every one of them has a shooter. These two, right here, are dead, if you don’t chuck your piece over.”
I kept a poker face. Taxi was pulling at my coat again. She whispered, lower than could be heard across the auditorium, “Hardy, I think I can hit the stage from here.”
I mumbled back out of the side of my muzzle. “You can’t hit the broad side of a double-wide barn, Sweets.”
Unsnapping the underside of her gun, she removed the drum, pointing at the remaining six shots. “I can throw this. I think I can land it on the stage. Can you shoot it from here?”
I shook my head slightly. “I’m good, but not that good.” But somepony was. My eyes drifted towards Swift and Edina, who appeared to be having a very quiet argument in the rafters. It seemed to involve my partner keeping a tight hold of Edina’s flight feathers with her teeth. “Wait a second... alright, I have an idea. Be ready to throw.”
Draping my hooves over the balcony, I flicked one toetip at Bake and Boil as I addressed Miss Snicket once again, “You can shoot those two, if you like. They’ll probably enjoy it. I was just wondering where you were keeping those lovely recordings? You know the ones.”
At that, Snicket’s eyes widened and she flicked her gaze at the manager who cringed visibly. He started to move sideways off the stage.
“That’s what I needed to know.” I smirked at the Red Hoof and her band of thugs, making sure their guns were still all pointed at me. “You really do need to get some better help. If my partner were here...” Up on the catwalk, Swift lifted one ear then turned to peer down at me, listening attentively. Edina took the opportunity to free herself and begin straightening her feathers. “...we might have a shot. I can see, of course, that we’re outgunned by miles and miles, so... I surrender. Everypony, you ready to surrender?”
I admit it; I couldn’t have been more obvious if I’d held up a flag with a picture of flying bullets. Swift already had her bit between her teeth, ready to fire, as Edina selected a whip with glinting metal near the tips, coiling and uncoiling it in her claws.
Blessedly, the ponies holding the guns weren’t the sort that’re hired to think. Snicket was, and she wasn’t buying our ‘surrender’ for a second, but she hadn’t thought to look up for winged assailants.
Stomping twice on the floor behind me, I ducked as Taxi jumped up from further down the balcony, spun in a circle to gain momentum, and chucked her ammo drum in a near perfect arc towards the stage.
In that second, I’d have laid her against any champion shot-putter in the Equestrian Games for that particular launch. I had plenty of time to ask myself: Why did that super-natural spatial awareness, that let her navigate our rabbit's-warren of a city and make tosses like that beauty, not translate into being able to fire her gun straight? Only the Princesses may know.
The drum rolled rolled end-over-end through the air and bounced off the stage.
“Now! Kid! Hit it!”
Everypony in the room had just enough time to draw a quick breath.
Masamane roared. It howled. The gun had shouted loudly and proudly before, but in the absence of any other noise, the sound was the very heavens themselves opening up and Celestia herself descending on solar wings to undo the enemies of the righteous.
It was a sound to make composers weep with envy.
Swift’s bullet tore into the side of the Hush Now canister, ripping straight through several of the shells and setting off the others. A cloud of sleeping powder burst in the middle of the stage, spinning in a circle and spurting thick smoke.
Snicket, all bluster aside, had spectacular reaction time. She dove off the stage, leaping over Bake and Boil, who just watched her without so much as raising a hoof. Once she’d passed, they turned back to the stage, raised their hooves, slapped them together, then shut their eyes in anticipation. Their horns flashed green.
“Kill them, you thick-headed geldings!” The enforcer screamed at her cohort. I couldn’t see the stage, which was obscured by the thick purple smoke, though there was a distinct reverberation of gunfire. A volley of hot lead spewed at the hoofballers from inside the cloud; they weathered it like two rocks in a tsunami, with ridiculous smiles plastered all over their destroyed faces. A thin mist of blood spewed up around them, splashing across the nearest set of tables along with bits of shattered bullets ricocheting off their sub-dermal shields.
Edina let out a war-cry so loud it made my eye sockets ache, launching herself from the catwalk. The rush of her wings blew the remaining powder off the stage, revealing six ponies still standing, who’d managed to take cover before the canister burst. Twirling like a top, she dropped on them with predatory intent. Her whip snapped out as she dove by and leveled out, moving too fast to for the eyes of the remaining guards to follow. The metallic tip caught one stallion across the lips, splitting them open before almost taking off the end of his ear. The look of surprise on his face was nothing to the wail of agony that rode its coat-tails. Edina shot past him before he could even hit the ground.
“Taxi, go around the other balcony! We’ll set up a crossfire!” I called out. My driver nodded, sprinted back the way we’d come, her duo-chrome tail disappearing down the stairs. As I was waiting for her to get in position, I raised my head, trying to get a look down at the stage.
It seemed Bake and Boil had abandoned their rather passive way of doing things. The hoofballer with the oven cutie-mark was helping his brother onto the stage. He wiggled his flank as a number of shots burst against his tail, then together they turned to face their attackers. Advancing slowly, they singled out a stallion who was almost as tall as they were and marched in lockstep towards him. The other remaining guards spread out, trying to get away from the seemingly invulnerable twins and to get proper angles on Taxi and I. A bullet skipped off the balcony inches from my head, sending splinters down the back of my neck.
Raising my leg, I shoved my shotgun’s barrel between two vertical slats. I kicked my trigger, catching it in my mouth. It tasted of sweat and sawdust, but it was a flavor worth the payoff.
The Minotaurus boomed in my ear.
Briefly, everything else - the crackle of the guards guns, the ongoing cyclone of school related objects dissecting the lab, and the sounds of combat - were muted by the explosion of sound and fire spewing from the end of the shotgun. My shoulder jerked and the recoil flowed down my spine. Nothing sounds like a twelve gauge Minotaurus unloading a high powder, low pellet shell in an enclosed area. The auditorium just amplified the effect and sent all of the guards diving towards the nearest bullet-resistant object, with the odd exception of the one that Bake and Boil seemed to be menacing.
My shot was high and wide; I’d been aiming for one of the light fixtures above the stage. It dropped with a resounding crash directly onto an olive-coated gunmare who’d decided one of the old set-pieces was a good place to hunker down. She cried out, struggling to drag the heavy light off of her rear legs.
Another one down.
I hesitated before moving on to another target. The two giant Stilettos seemed to have what I could only think of as their ‘chosen victim’ backed up against the rear wall of the stage. He was curled up in a ball on the floor.
Now what the hay are those two doing? I want a closer look.
The ladybug hiding in my mane made a beeping sound that resonated inside my head. Terror struck me when I realized what that meant.
No, that’s not what I-
My correction came too late. My awareness exploded into points of light, then sank into darkness.
****
Dropping into Bake’s body must go down as one of the strangest experiences of my entire life. Every part of his body seemed to bulge against its armor, as though barely restrained; though initially, I didn’t have much time to appreciate the newness of his body because I was too busy trying to find new expletives and coming up short.
Ladybugs, I swear...you, me and a big flyswatter are going to have a very brief but poignant discussion!
The network didn’t respond, except with a slight psychic judder so I turned my attention back to what was going on.
Bake’s forehead was itching, almost burning. I realized that was his magic in operation. I expected pain, but that was far off in the background, behind a very high wall of endorphins that would have had me grinning like a drunk monkey. The stallion on the ground was a soft beige, with a leaf green mane, and a set of crossed shovels on his flank. His jaws flexed again and again as he tried to pull his trigger. His eyes were tightly closed and he didn’t seem to realize the machine pistol’s pin was falling on an empty chamber.
Bake moved slowly forward and put his toe lightly, almost tenderly, beneath the cowering thug’s chin. The pony’s bright magenta eyes opened, and he stared up at the hulk of muscle and lacerated skin looming over him. Blood dripped onto the gun-pony’s face from the dozens of grazes where bullets had skimmed the surface of the megalithic hoofballer’s nose and cheeks, bouncing off the protective spell underneath. His trigger fell from his mouth, swinging down and smacking him in the knee. He was too transfixed to even feel it.
Boil came up on his brother’s side and picked up the bit with his magic, gently sliding it back into the guard’s teeth. With great deliberation, he put his muzzle next to the softly whimpering stallion’s ear.
With the care of a lover coming to his lady’s bed, he whispered one word.
“Reload.”
The pitiful goon’s eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped over, in a dead faint.
‘Okay, curiosity satisfied! Now let me out!’
****
Vision faded back in and I came back into my own body just in time to see a hazy pink hellion charging down the carpeted balcony towards me, murder in her eyes. The long, nasty points on the insides of her hooves flashed in the overhead lights. Her bow-tie was loose and hanging to one side as she hammered down on me with terrible purpose.
Seeing her up close, she might have been a sweet faced, girl next door type, but the eyes had seen too many sad stories. Lots of them had doubtless ended on the tips of her hooks.
The smart part of my brain was already getting me upright as she leapt for my throat. If I’d tried to back up, rather than ducking, she’d have neatly torn my head off and my tale would have ended there. As it was, she sailed right over, taking two steps off my armored flanks and landing facing the other direction. I swung around and her forehooves were dropping towards my face.
****
Fighting in close combat as an earth pony is always a tricky proposition.
If you’re fighting a griffin, they’ve got claws that can tear through everything but metal armor and a beak that will neatly snap bone. If it’s a unicorn you’re in combat with, you’re going to go for a flight or, if you’re really unlucky and wind up against an actual magician, end up turned into something nasty. Pegasi won’t attack you unless they’ve got positional advantages, and if they do, it’ll be quick strikes then darting back out of range.
Guns were the great equalizer for earth ponies, and those who chose not to use them were either psychotically confident or so skilled it didn’t matter. Still, fighting another earth pony has a certain pleasing symmetry.
****
Not many options. I jerked my gun up, catching her first strike on the casing rather than my cheek. My revolver, like most weapons from my grandfather’s time, was built a damn sight sturdier than she needed to be; even the smash of an earth pony’s hooves didn’t so much as scratch the finish.
Rearing up again, she drove her other hoof down, slamming it onto my shoulder. The hook caught in my armor, ripping a long tear in the thickened fabric. After all, it was bulletproof, not stabproof; If she got one good poke at my neck or chest with those claws, it might very well go right on through.
Hopping back several steps, I parried another blow aimed at my head, wincing as she slashed the top of my fetlock. The blood welled up as I staggered away. I bent my knee, shaking droplets off on the cushioned carpets, but the cut didn’t seem to have affected my range of motion. It just burned like a bad date.
Her sneer of triumph was short-lived as I put my hoof under my coat, smacking a buckle release before grabbing my shotgun’s barrel in my teeth, tearing it out of its holster straps, and smashing the stock across her cheek. Snicket stumbled away, spitting a muzzle-full of blood onto the carpet. A tooth came with it.
The strap of the Minotaurus with the mouth-bit hung from the trigger-guard and short of suddenly learning Taxi’s trick of standing up, I wasn’t going to be firing it anytime soon, but it made a decent club. In a pinch, everything is a weapon. Earth ponies learned that by dying in droves back when we were on the food chain only slightly above sheep.
“Having fun, cop?” Snicket made my title sound like a pejorative, full of contempt. Somehow, even with the quick swelling in her face, she managed to crack an incompletely toothy smile, graced with a couple of holes. I didn’t try to answer around my make-shift bat, but raised my lips at the edges, mirroring her look. “Heh...doesn’t matter. I’m betting you’ve only got one of those little powder bombs. We still outgun you.”
She liked to talk. Good. Each word she sputtered was a bit of breath and focus she was wasting, and I needed every edge. I charged forward and gave the shotty another swipe, intentionally aiming high. I hoped to get her to duck so I could get a good kick in on her forehead and end this quickly. The longer the fight when on, the greater her chances of a lucky strike.
Dancing neatly into my guard, she met me chest to chest, with my head higher than hers; always a bad position in equine hoof-combat. Her claws raked up my sides, finding a weak spot in the armor just below my armpit. I had to kick out my rear leg and throw myself onto my side, or the spike would have torn neatly into my heart. She wasn’t keen to let me off, though, and delivered a punishing kick to my rib-cage that left me gasping for breath. Before I could move, she landed a second one and I felt a burning, sudden need to go to the bathroom. She’d bruised a kidney nicely. I rolled, coming back up just as Snicket was on the offensive once more.
No matter how good a pony is in any given fighting style, it can always go wrong. I was on the losing end and we both knew it.
I decided to go with something unconventional. Wrenching my neck, I tossed the shotgun into her face. The effect was less than one might wish for, but still significant. Rather than take the hit across the noggin, like I’d hoped she might, she tried to swat it from the air mid-stride. It was enough to interrupt her gait for a half second, giving me time to leap back and bring my revolver into the space between us, trigger in my lips.
Snicket stopped, staring down the barrel cautiously for a moment... before a defiant gleam set in her eyes. “You aren’t here to make bodies, cop. You didn’t kill any of the other guards. You shoot me, this all goes straight to the deep, cold moon, doesn’t it? You need this to look like a punchup between rival gangs; They find a cop bullet in me and all those inconvenient questions start getting asked, right?” She advanced again, her front teeth marbleized with hot crimson. “I’m going to take you apart, piece by piece. Then I’m gonna de-feather that little griffin and wear that orange filly’s wings for a head-dress. Then, I’m going to hunt down that lizard you’re working for! Yeah, figured it out! You’re humping for the big purple drag queen!””
It didn’t matter if she knew or not, but something felt slightly off. While it’s not entirely uncommon for mobsters and other unsavory types to fall into the habit of monologuing to cover surprise or pain, I found my attention just a little too focused on her speech. In your standard punch-up with a psychopathic, hook wielding filly, paying attention isn’t a bad thing, but there should have been other sounds accompanying it: gunfire, some breaking glass, a few terrified screams. There were not. I risked a glance towards the stage behind her.
My eyes widened. The trigger slowly dropped out of my lips, thumping on my knee.
Snicket was still going. “-then, I’m gonna hang you by your... What are you looking at?”
I nodded at the front of the auditorium. She glared at me warily... then her face fell into a moment’s confusion; Now that she wasn’t talking, I think she noticed the same silence I had. She took a couple steps to the side, then turned so she could see what had my attention, yet still keep an eye on me. Equine field of vision being what it is, she didn’t need to move far, but I’d almost have been disappointed in her if she’d actually looked away.
Bake and Boil were sitting together at center stage, a small pile of guns at their hooves, and a pair of very satisfied looks on their ugly faces. The few conscious remains of Snicket’s little army were cowering in the corner underneath a rainbow banner for what must have been the last play ever seen at Sunny Days.
Swift was going from one to the next along with one of the braver technicians, attaching hoofcuffs to the thugs' foreknees one at a time. Where she’d gotten enough cuffs for the job is anyone’s guess, but every time one of the guards looked like they might struggle, Bake or Boil just shot them a leer of interest.
Taxi was covering proceedings with her cannon propped on the balcony from up high on the farside riser-box, though what efficacy it might have at that range was somewhat questionable. I was definitely going to have to make finding an alternative to aiming a priority if she was going to carry that blaster around with her everywhere.
I turned back to Snicket, whose lips were half-parted, her eyes roving over the diorama, seeking some edge that wasn’t there. Beaten is beaten, and she was beaten. She had the particular facial expression I tend to associate with a puppy that’s lost its bone; on any other pony, I might have felt a twinge of sympathy. Her mind was winding its way down a path towards an unpleasant conclusion, followed by a nasty consequence. Something told me there was unlikely to be a hug-and-a-kiss ‘forgiveness scene’ at Cosmo’s place, where she’d cry and he’d pat her head and tell her ‘just do better next time.’
I lazily scratched at the shallow slice across my foreleg. “Looks like your particular jig is up, pumpkin. We can offer you protection. You want it, or do you still want my head?”
I knew what coming before I posed the question; Snicket’s body-language could have been a neon sign. Her shoulders bowed and she bellowed until her voice cracked. There was a touch of creeping madness in her face, of old psychosis coming unchained, as she dug her heels into the carpet and prepared to charge.
My back legs were tight, and my front were loose; I was going to catch her for a full body slam into the nearest pillar. Despite that wiry strength coiled up behind cutting claws, I outweighed her. The slam was likely to leave some broken ribs, possibly a damaged spine, but she would live.
She threw herself towards me, hooked shoes outstretched for the kill. Blood streamed down her chin, staining her teeth red. A pony notices those little things, when facing imminent death. I tensed, inhaling a breath thick with chemical fumes and sweat.
A thin, shiny line of cable fell from the rafters, with no particular hurry, landing neatly over Snicket’s shoulders. She had an instant to realize what it was before the knot pulled taut and the Red Hoof’s eyes bugged out of their sockets. She was bodily yanked backwards into mid-air, all four legs milling uselessly in circles. Raising her knee, she tried to hack at the cable with her claws, but it was too strong.
Zeta, one hoof in a loop of the cable on the end, the other wrapped around it, slid down from somewhere in the shadows up above us, riding the rope to the ground. As she did, Snicket flew up towards the ceiling, hanging there trying desperately to draw breath. The zebra settled on the carpet, holding on until there was a bubbling gasp.
Stepping off the rope, Zeta let the enforcer drop. The body hit the ground with a wet thump, then lay frighteningly still. Trotting over, the zebra leaned down and pressed her head against the Red Hoof's chest, then held it over her muzzle. Nodding to herself, she unfastened the cable and began looping it around her leg.
I was too rocked, for several seconds, to do more than incoherently stutter. When I found a few words, they weren’t exactly gratitude and grace.
“Are you insane?! We need zero dead!” I shouted. My partner looked up from the stage, and Taxi, momentarily took her eyes off the rounded up guards.
“The beast lives.” Zeta shrugged, indifferently. “She will not recover for some time, but she lives. If I did not work for Miss Stella, be assured, I would have made certain that was not the case. This is not a being worthy of life. It is a rabid animal.”
Snicket’s breast rose very slightly, the dropped again. She was breathing. It was weak, but it was breath.
“I’m going to pretend you weren’t doing that exclusively to make me have a heart attack.” I gandered over the railing down at the stage. “Speaking of things that’ve given me a heart-attack... where’s Edina?”
A shriek of mortal fear picked that precise moment to ring through the auditorium.
“Ahhh... right. Let’s go get her before she pulls off something important.”