Prompt #556: "What Once Was"
"What fire stirs in this lonely hearth?"
Alternate Universe
Twilight Sparkle: a hardened investigator on the streets of Vanhoover
Pinkie Pie: owner of a curios shop in a back alley of the big city
+ + +
"I'm sorry, Miss Pie, but I'm afraid I just don't understand what you're trying to tell me." Twilight Sparkle pushed her magnifying glass--and, subsequently, her face--ever closer to the broken pane of glass before her.
"I told you, silly goose! They stole an idea right out of my display window!" Pinkie Pie said. "Honestly, I thought an egghead like you would understand right away!"
"Egg--what do you mean, egghead? How would you know I'm an eggh--that I'm well-read?" Twilight replied, shifting herself to look at Pinkie. Pinkie merely gave her a strange look and went back to talking.
"Those crooked ponies smashed this glass right here and nabbed the idea right out! It was one of my best ones, too! I could'a sold it for a pretty penny..." Pinkie said.
"If this...idea..." Twilight said, "was so valuable, then why would you put it on display in the first place?"
"Well, duh! How else would anypony know that I had it in stock?" Pinkie chirped.
Twilight decided not to deign that one with a response. Instead, she simply straightened her legs, saying, "Well, if you can't tell me exactly what was stolen, and you don't know who did it, then I'm afraid I can't help you, Miss P-"
"Wait just a second! Who said I can't tell you who did it?"
+ + +
Standing in the back room of Pinkie's very, very cramped little shop, Twilight stared. She gaped. She gawked. Indeed, her mouth was ajar in awe.
The focus of her attention--and her disbelief--was the stack of folders that lay before her. Pinkie Pie stood next to the stack--or, Twilight thought, did the stack stand next to her? For it was taller than them both--peering at it. After another moment or two of thought, she stuck out her hoof, grabbed a folder--at random, it seemed to Twilight--and pulled it out fast enough not to topple the whole massive pile.
Twilight finally regained her voice. "And you're saying that these are files on all the criminal activity in Vanhoover?"
"Yepperooni! I started keeping them right after my first break in a couple years ago. Trust me, sister, when you run a curio shop in one of the biggest and most criminal cities in Equestria, it pays to know who's up to what," Pinkie said, opening the file folder she had pulled. She leafed through a few pages of it, and then pointed to what looked to Twilight like a mugshot--not that that made any more sense than the rest of her time with Pinkie, as she knew for certain that no pony had ever been apprehended by the Department of Justice who bore those characteristics. For the mare staring angrily back at her was missing both ears, and her left eye, and she had a bright scar running across the middle of her face, from one side to another, right over her snout.
"...so you're telling me this mare was the one who stole your...idea?" Twilight said. Pinkie looked up at her from the page.
"Yeah. But not just her! No, she had help. Help from none other than...!" Pinkie turned the page dramatically, revealing another mugshot, another file, and another greatly-disfigured pony--this one a stallion, also missing both ears, but with his right eye gone instead of his left one, and a vertical scar instead of a horizontal one.
"I had no idea our city was so rife with horribly-mangled criminals," Twilight grumbled.
"They're twins, Twilight! Twins, and partners in crime," Pinkie said, lowering her voice. "Word on the street is they've been looking for a way to fix their faces so they can blend better, y'know? Which is why I think they stole my idea! You see, it has all kinds of secrets about these really powerful-" But Twilight had heard something she thought she might understand, and had latched on.
Cutting in, she said, "Wait, so what they stole was some kind of book? Or paper?"
"Well, kinda, but it's sorta more abstract than-"
"Paper I can deal with. What do you know about where these two live? And what else can you give me on them? I need names, here, Miss Pie. Names and numbers."
+ + +
Revolver holstered at her side, Twilight perched atop one of the many apartment buildings of Vanhoover. The skyline was beautiful this late at night--but Twilight didn't notice, intent as she was on what was below her. She had cast a neat little trick of a spell she learned during her time in school, one that allowed her to bend her vision down and around through space.
Essentially, she was peeking through a window.
Squinting hard against the darkness, Twilight wished the spell came with some night vision. But against the odds, she did manage to catch a glimpse of a pony as they swept by the mostly-curtained window. They...might've been the same color as one of the twins; Twilight wasn't sure. But this was the address Pie had given her, and the mare certainly seemed to know her stuff (something Twilight would be looking into, as well as why nopony else had ever made mention of her to the Department).
"So there's somepony down there... Invisibility and a quiet teleport?" Twilight mused to herself. It would be dangerous, but she trusted her own magical skills. She wouldn't be able to do both at the same time, but, as she knew, it was dark down there, so she would probably have enough time between the teleport and slipping on the invisibility spell...
Undoing the vision spell, she relit her horn and readied herself for a break-in. With a nearly-silent pop, she vanished.
Reappearing in the apartment below herself, she immediately cast her invisibility spell.
[TIME]
Just in time, too, for a moment later a pony came hustling along, almost knocking into Twilight. She hadn't managed to get a very good look, but she could definitely tell by the form that the pony was missing both her ears. Twilight slipped forward, following the shadowy figure.
She didn't have far to travel.
Almost immediately the pair came to a door--wooden, from what Twilight could tell. The pony in front of her opened it with her mouth, and walked through. Twilight tail-gated as best she could, cautious of bumping into her target or accidentally stumbling and making noise. She managed to slip through the door and past the pony, who then shut the door. Twilight and the pony turned in unison to look into the room they had just entered.
One of them hurried off, and one of them dropped their jaw--for the second time that day--in awe.
Before Twilight lay an intricate series of runes, painted with the precision of a seasoned unicorn, and lit by a dim bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. They formed the shape of a star--but, Twilight thought, it looked almost as if the star was reversed. Something about the angles looked wrong. The more she stared at it, the more uneasy she became. The ponies she was looking for were Earth ponies--why would they be messing around with magic like this? For that matter, how could they be messing around with magic like this?
Twilight shivered, despite herself. And, luckily for her, stepped forward a few hooves--for the door opened again, and another pony entered. This one also seemed to be missing his ears. He walked up to the runic circle, joining the other pony.
They began to chant.
The words sounded wrong to Twilight's ears, alien in some sort of horrific way that defied logic and explanation. As they continued, the feeling in her gut only worsened.
These two were up to something, and they were up to something bad.