Regulators: Frost and Me
I bit nervously on my lip. Frost looked at me, his gaze cold and calculating. He always was looking two steps ahead. I looked away from him, from the hallway we found ourselves in, and stared at my chest. The still shining badge that proudly called me a Regulator gleamed against the dusty overcoat I wore. Tied to my side in a makeshift battle saddle was an old Zebra shotgun. I had told Frost that I didn’t need the saddle because I was a unicorn, but he told me to trust him, so I did.
He stood, in the same attire as me, across a doorframe. His body was held tightly against the wall. He’d placed his ear to it, hoping to hear the other side. His mouth was open just slightly in concentration. Frost was a polar opposite of me. He was shorter, but thick with muscles and a few scars here and there. His mane was cut short, a little above an inch from his scalp and back, was raven black. Frost’s coat was a light blue. I hadn’t seen his cutie mark yet, and I wasn’t sure I ever would.
On the other hoof, I was taller and gangly, with little muscle to back me up if I got into unarmed combat. My mane was a mess at all times no matter how much I took a comb to it, and it was a deep red. My coat was a light pink, which I tended to hide under hoods and coats. Being a Regulator gave me a long coat, but Frost had forbidden me from wearing a hood when I was working, he said it obstructed the work of justice.
I saw Frost trying to get my attention, and I looked straight at him. He’d had his laser pistol floating lazily above him. I wondered why he wasn’t using a battle saddle, but I didn’t bring it up.
“Look alive, Simmer,” he said. His voice was gruff, but understanding and calming. He’d been a Regulator since before I was born. I imagined that’s why he kept his mane cut short, to keep the grey out of sight. “You know what we’re doing here, right?”
I nodded and spoke. “We’re just doing our job,” I said, repeating what I’d been taught so many times.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because we need to make Manehattan a better place,” I said. I winced, already knowing he’d correct me.
“Not just Manehattan, all of Equestria.” I nodded again. He seemed almost satisfied so I continued.
“The ponies we’ve been looking for are...” I stopped, not wanting to finish the sentence at all.
“Say it, Simmer.”
“They’re rapists and slavers.” He scratched his head and pulled me aside, away from the door.
“Look,” he said honestly, “I know this is your first hunt, and that’s rough. But we’ve been training you for a long time, Simmer.” Frost looked back at the door anxiously. “You have your potions? Standard doses?”
“Yes,” I said. I could have found them in my bag with my eyes closed. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to.
“This is going to be all over in a couple minutes, Simmer. Just let me do the talking, and if we need to shoot, you just shoot too. Alright?” I nodded some more and he gave a little sigh. “We’ll talk more after. I promise.” He smiled and walked back towards the door and opened it. He and I walked in side by side.
The room was a dilapidated, one-room apartment. We walked into a half kitchen, all of the drawers missing and the oven door jammed open. The other half of the room had two stained beds on either side, both occupied by a sleeping pony, one mare, one stallion. They hadn’t roused by use entering the room.
“Excuse me,” Frost said to the room. The mare sat up in her bed and glanced at us. Her eyes widened as she saw the badges. She leapt over the bed, away from us, and shouted to the stallion. He woke up quicker and turned to us as well. Frost wasn’t having any of his tricks and shot the stallion with his laser pistol. The stallion winced as the red beam touched his flesh. His mouth dropped open as the red energy began to envelop him. He screamed and started to writhe on the bed as he turned to ash. Frost and I turned to the mare. She was standing up behind the bed, careful not to move.
“You know who we are?” Frost asked above the howling stallion..
“I do,” the mare said nervously. By now the stallion was just ash.
“Then you know what has to happen.” Frost shot her once and then twice for good measure. I felt sick to my stomach. I turned and hurried out of the apartment and threw up onto the old carpet in a corner. I felt a nudge on my back and I caught my breath. I turned to see Frost holding a water bottle, outstretched in his magic. I picked it up with mine and took a long drink, trying to wash the acidic taste from my mouth.
“It wasn’t that bad, I thought,” Frost said.
“I don’t think it was that good either,” I told him through gulps of dirty water.
“Your parents?” he said quickly, but he cut off with regret. My back stiffened when he said it, but it wasn’t wrong.
“Yeah,” I said solemnly. I recapped the water and tried to give it back to him, but he didn’t take it. I put it in my bag.
“Do you want to-?” I cut him off.
“No,” I said, “not really.” He knew my story, as well as anypony did really. I was only a baby when my parents were killed by slavers, and they were looking to kill me next when Regulators showed up and killed the slavers. They took me in and taught me their ways, gave me a home, food, safety.
But I couldn’t get around killing ponies. Sometimes I could do it they shot first, but Regulators didn’t let other ponies shoot first.
“Simmer, please. We’re partners,” he insisted, “We have to trust each other.”
“It’s not that I don’t you trust you,” I said. “Just seeing those ponies die...” I trailed off.
“You think I liked killing them?” he asked. “Not really, but they were bad ponies, Simmer.”
“I know they were bad,” I said defensively. Maybe he wasn’t getting the point. Either that or I wasn’t. Before I could continue he spoke again.
“This is a lot different from the ponies that killed your parents. This isn’t cold blood. Ponies who do bad in Manehattan know to expect us, we always come in the end.” He had a point, a point that made sense. Begrudgingly, I had to accept that. Maybe I just didn’t like killing, but as I’d been told before, it was that or be killed. Neither option was great but I knew which one I liked less. Frost could see I was thinking hard.
“If you don’t think you can work the field with me...” he said, trying to help. We both knew that for me, it was either going with Frost, or leaving the Regulators.
“I just need a little time,” I said. He grinned lightly.
“You’ll have what I can give you.” I walked down the dingy hallway and stopped next to an old, broken window. We’d come to the Hoof Apartment building to get those two slavers, but we’d gotten another mission too. The two targets were close together, and relatively easy.
From the window I could see a vast swath of Manehattan. We were easily ten stories above the street. Everything seemed small from up here. We were on the southern tip of Manehattan, where the smaller houses and buildings had been. Ten stories had been rather large. It was even larger after the bombs had hit and leveled the other buildings in the Hoof apartment complex.
The two of us would have to go a few blocks north to the next target. All we knew was that the mare we were looking for lived in an old grocery store. The store was the Manehattan Foodmart. The mare in question sold chems out of the store. That in itself wouldn’t be so bad except he put a little Buck in all her products. We were just going to ask her to stop. If she continued, Frost and I would be back.
But first we had to get down to the ground level.
Hoof Apartments had done pretty well during and since the war. For the most part, it was standing. That didn’t mean anything on the inside however. Frequently the stairs had collapsed, the elevators were unusable, floors could break with just a feather’s touch. It was a mess when you actually went inside. None of that stopped ponies from going in and trying to live there.
We were close to stairs that would take us down five flights, the only surviving ones, and then we had any amount of choices. We took the stairs down, seeing nopony on the way down. Regardless, Frost had his laser pistol out as we walked. Frost wasn’t one to be caught unaware. Ever since I’d know him he was cautious, maybe that’s why I’d been stuck with him. Or was he stuck with me?
At the sixth floor landing he stopped me.
“What’s going on?” I asked. He kept his eyes on the fifth floor doors. They were just barely ajar. Beyond the rusted, metal doors I couldn’t see anything, but Frost had good senses about these things.
“I think there’s some ponies beyond that door,” he said quietly.
“What do we do?” I asked, in the same volume that he used.
“It’s either we go for it or we stay here until we die.” I swallowed hard. “What do you think?”
“Huh?” Frost turned to me.
“What do you think? We’re partners now.”
“Well,” I said, “I think we might have to go for it. Not that I’d like that.”
“I don’t like it either, Simmer.”
“But sometimes we have to,” I said, finishing his thought. He nodded in agreement.
“I guess you finally started listening then.” We didn’t talk anymore. Frost went first down the last flight of stairs, but I followed close behind. Stepping over rubble and discarded items Frost found his way to the threshold and he stood off to the left side of the door, where he wouldn’t be seen if he opened it.
Pistol in his magical grip, he threw open the door with a burst of magic. There was nopony on the other side. We stood still for a couple seconds that crawled to an eternity. Still, nothing happened. He lowered his gun and stuck his head around the corner. He turned back to me and waved me on with him. The two of us walked around the corner and started down the hallway, hoping to see another staircase before we met anypony.
“I guess I left the door open a bit,” Frost said jokingly.
“Guess so, Frost,” I said, humoring him. “How many ponies do you think live here?”
“Hmm,” Frost thought, “I’d say over one hundred.”
I was about to ask another question when there was a shout ahead of us. Three doors down a door was wrenched open and a grizzled stallion stumbled out. Close behind him was an earth-pony mare swinging a bat at his flank.
“Fuc’ off, woman,” the stallion slurred drunkenly. He was loud, and I knew ponies would be looking around to see what was happening. That was something I didn’t want to happen. The mare dropped the bat after she saw the stallion stumbling away.
“You fuckin’ pig. Get the fuck out of my sight!” she screamed. Frost and I stood back, not getting any closer. She turned to walk back to her room when she saw us, and our badges. “Well are you going to stop that fucker?” I tried to catch Frost’s glance, to guess what he was thinking, but he didn’t turn to me. After a long silence, well after the Stallion has disappeared down a staircase, Frost spoke.
“Why would we do that?” he asked the mare.
“He’s nearly a damn rapist,” she said, trying to nonchalant. I could tell she was a little scared.
“Nearly?” Frost asked.
“Well I was able to get a bat before he did anything,” she said.
“He looked drunk.”
“He was,” she said, “that don’t stop a rapist though, just a bat to the balls if you know what I mean.” I cringed a little.
“So he didn’t rape you, he just got drunk, and you assaulted him.” Frost voice was serious, but I couldn’t tell why. Maybe he was just doing his job as a Regulator. Would I have to be this serious if I ever worked alone? What if I had a partner one day? I shoved those thoughts aside, this was too important to miss.
“He would have had me between th’ legs if he’d had his way,” she said defensively.
“Did you know that stallion? Why was he in your room? While he was drinking?”
“Hey, mister regulator, you can go fuck yourself if you’re not goin’ to help.”
Frost slid out his pistol. “Oh, I’ll help. I just didn’t want to give the wrong pony a raw deal.” She eyed his gun nervously. All her bite was gone now, or maybe she was only bark once she’d dropped the bat.
“What?” she wondered. Frost checked the battery in his pistol, flipping open the side of the pistol, he slid it out and gave it a look over. He put it back just as calmly.
“Simmer,” he said, “this mare was trying to rob that stallion, and worse, I imagine. What say you do the honors?”
“What?” I asked with a small yelp of surprise. I hadn’t seen that possibility at all.
“This is one of the bad ponies I talked about,” he said, never losing his signature coolness. “We need to do what Regulators do.” I looked at the mare, she was scared stiff. Frost looked at me for just a second, and he probably saw the same thing I saw. He spoke again, quieter. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to make sure the mare didn’t hear or if he was just trying to be a mentor.
“Simmer,” he said quietly, “just a squeeze, a bite, a magical pull.”
“I don’t... I can’t...,” I said.
‘What if it had been you? What if it was me? Or your parents she’d had in there?” That did it. I pulled the trigger, and the mare died with eyes as big as dinner plates. She fell back, one of her hooves held tightly to her chest. I don’t think she even lived to hit the floor.
Frost sat on his haunches for a moment and put a leg around my back.
“I think I’m proud,” he said. I wasn’t, not at all. Before I had more time to feel bad, Frost was back standing up and pushing me forwards. We didn’t even stop to check what had been in her room. He was that sure. We turned down the same staircase the stallion had taken. It wasn’t one of the one’s we’d taken to come up. Luckily the stairs went all the way down. On the way we saw the stallion passed out in the corner. His mouth had white foam spilling out from it. Frost stood next to him for a moment, examining him. He just shook his head and walked away. I knew better than to ask.
The rest of the trip down went without notice. The lobby of the Hoof Apartment building had been turned into a small market. Only three ponies regularly sold here as far as I knew. Two separate gun merchants, Stock and Loaded, and a food merchant named Berry, all of them mares. Stock and Loaded were busy arguing as we entered the cramped lobby. There weren’t any customers, which I was beginning to think could be a common occurrence. Only Berry paid us any attention. She smiled.
“Hello boys,” she greeted, “need any Cram?” I held back a small gag at the thought of Cram. Age had not done the processed meat justice, not that anything did it justice. I’d eaten it a few times in my life, anypony ate what they could.
“No thanks,” I said before Frost said anything. I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling he didn’t like Berry that much. Not that we’d met her before today. Berry just looked at inquiringly.
“Well do you need anything? I’ve got low prices for good-looking ponies,” she said.
“And regulators,” she added before I could respond to her. I grinned at her.
“Do you have anything fresh?” I asked hopefully.
“How fresh are we talking?”
“This century, hopefully,” I said.
“You kids never want the old stuff,” Frost spoke up.
“There’s a reason for that,” I said. He gave me a playful look at looked back at Berry.
“Is there anything fresh-ish?”
“I have some mutfruit,” she said.
“How much per?” I asked.
“Ten caps each,” she said.
“We’ll take two for the road,” Frost said. He took out his pouch of caps and put twenty on her table. She scooped them up without counting and passed the two fruits. We took them with our magic. We each said our goodbyes and Frost and I walked out the door.
The Hoof Apartments sat on the corner of 15th street and Tumbler Avenue. I had a vague idea where the Manehattan Foodmart was, but I knew Frost would know for sure. Tumbler Avenue, which stretched on ahead of us, was a broken street that lay mostly concealed under a highway that towered above us. In some of the windows of the buildings or rubble around us I could see the devil-ish green of Balefire Phoenixes. A few ponies, all of them sticking together in groups, walked the street heading south, out of the city itself and into the suburbs. Most of them eyed us gave us wide berths. I couldn’t blame them.
Frost started his way north, but I didn’t notice at first. When I did see I had to hustle to catch up to him. He saw me taking long strides to keep up with him and I thought I caught a grin, but I wasn’t sure of that. I wasn’t sure of much around Frost.
“How much do you know about chems?” Frost asked.
“I paid attention when I was taught about them by Digger,” I said dutifully.
“I mean about taking them,” he said.
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “I did have some med-x when I had my leg broke.”
“Do you know why Digger taught you about chems?” I shook my head. “He’s taken every chem and more under the sun. When we found him, he was dying and dying fast. Normally we don’t take kind to Fiends, but something was lucky for him that day. Or lucky for us. He’s the finest chem mixer I’ve ever seen in all of Manehattan.”
“So he had a first-hoof experience?” I asked. Frost chuckled.
“Digger might as well have created the damn things for how much he knows about them.”
“You know I appreciate that,” I said, “But why are you bringing it up?”
“I’m just saying that we put a lot of faith in you,” he said. I knew what he meant without having to say it. In a way, I owed the Regulators a lot, even my life. They had given me the best they could even though they didn’t know if I would or could be anything. As I was thinking, I look at the avenue we walked. I tried to think back to the survival classes, to put Frost’s words out of my head. I didn’t want to think of myself as property, or a slave.
Throwing all that away I did go back to my survival classes. I took in the rooftops, and then each row of windows one by one, looking for what could be a rifle-scope, a bomb, anything. Seeing that it was all clear, I was never the best at those lessons, I scanned the ground. There wasn’t anything that caught the eye, so I just looked ahead. Somehow I still couldn’t evade Frost’s gaze even with my best attempts.
“I know,” I said. He didn’t seem satisfied. “Can’t you just let me before for a few moments?”
“Simmer,” he said, in a fatherly tone.
“I never asked for the Regulator’s help,” I said finally. He stopped. I’d never said that before. I stopped too.
“What?” he said, barely even a question at all. He scrunched his brow tightly. “You never...”
“I never asked you guys to take me in, you just did. I didn’t ask to be a Regulator, you all just assumed I would.” For the first time since I’d known Frost, he didn’t have anything to say.
“I didn’t...” he mumbled.
“You didn’t have to,” I assured him, “It wasn’t any of your faults. It was mine, I should have said something.”
“Do you not want to be a Regulator?” he asked. I could tell he really wanted to know, he wasn’t asking out of courtesy.
“I don’t know. I never really thought about it.” That was true for the most part. I had thought about what I’d do if I wasn’t one, but it never amounted to much. The troubling part was that I never imagined that I could have even been one of those things. Most of my life had shaped me to be a Regulator. Frost sighed.
“We can talk with Sandstorm when we get back to the base, okay?” he said. “Just don’t think too hard about it yet. We’ve still got a job to do.”
“I wouldn’t leave you hanging,” I told him. He smiled a little, but it faded quickly.
“You can always talk to me, Simmer,” he said. I nodded, but he kept going. “I mean it, not matter what anyone or any Regulator says.”
We took a left turn onto 20th street. Ponies here were a lot different than the few we’d seen on Tumbler. These ponies were lazy, if that. Where they were they stuck to the walls, lying on the ground amongst broken or empty bottles. They didn’t move or talk. I could already see the sign for Manehattan Food mart, and frankly, was already a little scared.
From here I could see the basics of the store front. The door had a window on both sides, each with metal bars and closed up with nailed wood. A hoof-painted sign above the door said plainly “Manehattan Foodmart”. I couldn’t see beyond the doorframe, not yet. But I would be able to soon, way too soon for me.
“Worried?” Frost asked. His tone had returned to something I’d call fatherly. Old habits must die hard, even when your ‘son’ is having doubts of following you.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to include everything I’d said before in just that word. But I kept my cool, I hoped. He didn’t seem to act any different.
“This is just the same as last time, Simmer. If I shoot, so do you. Okay.”
“Sure thing, Frost,” I said. He smiled, but I had a feeling that it wasn’t completely heartfelt. We were only a couple paces from the door now, and we could hear voices on the inside. Frost pulled out his laser pistol, held it in front of him, and walked on it. I followed after him quickly.
The walls and shelves of the store had been stripped and replaced with dark, dirty clothes that seemed to have once been vibrant, but were not choked with smoke. The floor was now mostly covered with old pillows, some of which had tears in them. The voices had been coming from just one mare. She was staring into a cracked mirror that stood at the back of the building.
Her orange mane was tied up in a messy bun. She wore a nightdress that had survived past the war until now, but barely. The now grey nightdress was nearly hidden on her dark grey coat. Her cutie mark was obscured, but I thought I could make out the image of a moon of some sort. She saw us come in through the door with her window. She turned to us.
“Help, you have to stop her, she’s trying to steal all my chems,” she said to Frost in particular. She talked franticly. I bet all chem-addled ponies talked like that.
“That’s not why we’re here, Mixer,” Frost said. He was talking like normal again, with a voice that demanded respect. “We’re Regulators, and you’ve been too bad for too long.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked in a high-pitched squeal. “I haven’t done anything wrong! I just sell chems, and that mare’s trying to steal them all.”
“You’re out of your mind,” he said coldly. Frost raised his pistol to shoot. The mare ducked to the side, out of his aim.
“You two are working with her!” she screamed. The mare stuck her hoof under a pillow and began to scramble for something. Frost moved quicker than her, putting himself between her and I. Her hoof came up with a small pistol; I recognized it was a two-shot derringer. She aimed and shot twice, both hit Frost in his chest. One of the bullets must have hit a bone or just stopped, the other came out on the side of his neck and whizzed by my leg. Frost let out a yelp and fell down. The mare looked like she was about to go for something else under a cushion.
No one I’d ever met would call me trigger-happy, but when I shot at the mare it seemed like I had a smile on my face. The first shot went high, hitting the wall behind her. She shouted a hasty curse at me and dove towards another cushion. I loaded another shell and took aim as she came up. This time she had a grenade. When I shot again, my aim was bit off. The spray of pellets shredded her foreleg along the knee. The hoof, and grenade, went sailing off to her side in a spray of blood. The crazed mare let out a blood-curdling scream. I grimaced, both disgusted and ecstatic with myself, and looked at Frost. He had both his hooves applying pressure to his wounds and was drinking one of his health potions. His eyes were lazy and unfocused.
“Frost?” I asked. I could hear my voice waver, maybe the mare did too. She charged at me lopsidedly, too fast for me to bring my gun around. Her blood-soaked body collided with mine, throwing us down to the floor. In her eyes I could see hatred and pain. I couldn’t stare too long, she had gotten over the shock it seemed and was trying to jab the broken bone that stuck out from her foreleg into me wherever she could.
I had one hoof holding off her still working leg and the other was busy trying to direct the bone away from me. The mare was light, and even though I was a weak stallion, I was able to buck her off using my hind legs. She fell back with a cloud of dust and a grunt. I got onto my hooves and stood ready.
“Give up,” I said. I saw Frost stir to my side.
“Shoot her,” he said. He was angry, but I knew he had good reason to be.
“She’s unarmed!”
“So was the in Hoof,” he said. I grit my teeth, but for some reason, I couldn’t pull the trigger. She shot Frost, I told myself. It was easy to shoot her then, one for one. This situation wasn’t even so different from Hoof. And instead of some random pony, she’d shot Frost, my mentor, my friend. I took a long look at her. She knew I had her, and she wasn’t moving at all. She had the same look as the pony that wanted me dead just a moment ago, but I also saw something else. I wasn’t sure what it was.
I felt my magic tighten on the trigger, but I didn’t pull it. Not only had this mare been doing bad things with chems, she shot Frost. She could have killed him, she would have killed me. My attention focused fully back on the mare. And she was barreling right towards me. I dodged to the right and she barreled right past me. She was almost at the door when a crimson ray hit her. With just that, the life seemed to drain right out of her and she fell to the ground again. I didn’t have to turn to Frost to know he’d have something to say.
“Simmer…” he said. I could hear the disappointment drip from his voice. I couldn’t look at him no matter what. My muscles felt like they’d been turned to lead. This time, more so than any other, I knew what he was going to say. One of the top laws of a Regulator was that you never let them get away. “Simmer,” he said again. I stayed silent. “Won’t you at least look at me?” I heard him give a single heavy breath.
“Frost, I just froze,” I said.
“You froze? You were going to let her escape.”
“I swear I wasn’t!” I said, to the wall more than to him. I’d have given anything to be anywhere else. I could feel his gaze on me.
“You almost did,” he said flatly. “Maybe you aren’t cut out for being a Regulator.” Even though I’d sometimes thought the same thing, his remark cut deep. It felt like an icy dagger had been plunged into my heart.
“I need another chance,” I said without thinking. I needed to be a Regulator. There wasn’t anything else I could be.
“What if there isn’t another chance, Simmer. What if I’d been killed? Regulators look out for each other.” He’d been willing to lay down his life for me, and I couldn’t even pull a trigger for his.
“I can do better,” I said. I turned my head a little. I could just see him from the corner of my eye. “I can be better.”
“Can you?” he asked. “You’ve said that an awful lot, Simmer.”
“I didn’t understand before.” That was true, in a way. Although I’d heard of Regulators going out of their way for each other, I’d never really seen it before today. I knew how much I must mean to him for him to do that, I didn’t dare underestimate that.
“What if it happens again?” he asked. He was serious too.
“It won’t, I promise.” That was a promise I knew I’d keep until the end of my days. No one who would die for me would be killed if I could help it. I said that same out loud and added, “if that means I have to shoot a pony that’s done bad… so be it.” I turned to face him fully. He wasn’t smiling, but he also wasn’t frowning.
“I can give you another chance,” he said. “I won’t tell Sandstorm what happened.” That made me settle down a bit.
“Thank you, Frost,” I told him. He nodded.
“Regulators look after each other.”