//------------------------------// // Jumping the rails // Story: School of Hard Knocks // by Hoopy McGee //------------------------------// I’d finally done it. I’d managed to convince someone that my situation was real, that I wasn’t just some delusional little filly with aspirations towards joining the police force. I felt a grin spread across my muzzle as I looked at the teacher sitting across from me. “All right, then. Let me start at the beginning.” I said. “I’d like you to know the full story.” After all, I didn’t want to leave her with any doubts. She nodded and motioned for me to continue. Just to give her a little more context, I played her the tape with my voice on it, though I stabbed the stop button in time to spare us both my attempt at singing. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the tape machine and me, probably trying to reconcile the voice she’d heard and the tiny pink filly who was sitting before her. “Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “That’s what I really sound like.” “That voice made my eyes water,” she said. I snorted and then started my story from my time as a police officer in Ponyville. I ended up glossing over some of the more unbelievable details of how I’d ended up this way in the first place. Miss Persimmon finally seemed willing to believe me about the poison joke, and I saw no reason to stretch her credulity by trying to explain Pinkie Pie. I don’t think anypony can explain Pinkie Pie. Instead, I just explained that my partner and I were chasing an escaped mental patient through the Everfree forest. How we wandered through the patch of poison joke, and how I woke up the next morning, a tiny, bright pink filly. I didn’t say anything about how that damned lunatic had probably lured us through that patch of poison joke intentionally. Then I got into the details of my first slumber party, where the teacher interrupted me for the first time. Not with a question, but with a snicker. “Oh, you must have enjoyed that, you big stallion, you.” “Ha, ha,” I said drily. “You want to hear the story or laugh at my misfortune?” A single eyebrow went up. “I can’t do both?” she asked. I found myself grinning at her in spite of myself. I hadn’t expected snark from Miss Prim and Proper. I liked it. “Don’t see how I could stop you,” I said, my voice as dry as a desert. I launched into the rest of the story. How Figgy Pudding had stopped by in the middle of the night and tried pushing Mulberry into passing something through customs. How I’d nabbed the shipping manifest, and how I’d decided to go there and see what was up. “You should have just gone to the police,” Miss Persimmon said with a frown. “Yeah, ordinarily I’d agree with you. But, even if I’d been taken seriously, I didn’t want to get Mulberry caught up in whatever was going on.” “You’re assuming she didn’t already know?” I was suddenly on my hooves without realizing it, and when I responded it was with more force than I’d intended. “Hey, she’s a good mare!” She opened her mouth, hesitated, then shook her head. “Never mind. Let’s just get through what happened, okay?” Grumbling, I sat back down and started my story again. I went over how I’d arranged another sleepover the next night, and how I’d gotten my mom to put together a dark outfit to help me hide. How Plum had seen it and brought out her own costume, thinking we were going to play superheroes. “What does this have to do with anything?” she asked. “Getting to it,” I said. Her eyes narrowed, and I realized I said that much more sharply than intended. I sucked in a breath and held it for a few seconds before letting it out. “Sorry.” She nodded. I picked up the story again, explaining how I’d sneaked out of the Pudding house and over to the warehouse late that night. How Plum had followed me, and how she convinced me to let her tag along when I went inside the warehouse. “That wasn’t the smartest idea,” she pointed out. I glowered up at her. “Well, it wasn’t!” she said defensively. “Yeah. If I’d known what was going to happen next, I wouldn’t have ever gone there in the first place.” I fixed my eyes onto hers. “This is where things really started going wrong.” Then I told her about finding the box. She let out a low whistle when I mentioned the false floor and the fifty jars of aldavii nectar, and gasped when I mentioned the smugglers showing up. There was real fear in her face when I described our escape, and my confrontation with Chains the unicorn. “I think I might have met him,” Miss Persimmon said quietly. “He did a talk at our school last year, speaking to the students about community safety. You’re saying he’s a criminal?” “On their payroll, at least, if not in their actual gang. That’s why I can’t just go talk to a detective. If they have one crooked cop on board, they may have more.” Real fear was in her eyes when she nodded. “I can agree with that.” I continued, recapping the information I’d gotten from Tapioca, including what he knew of the gang members, the Zebrican contacts, and the mysterious Mister Sunshine. “That’s it,” I said. “That’s where we are now.” Miss Persimmon rocked back a little as she levitated her glasses off of her face and placed them on her desk. While she rubbed at a temple with a hoof, she said, “That’s a heck of a situation you’re in.” “Yeah. And, since I’m the one who got the Puddings into this mess, I have to make sure they get out again.” “It’s not your fault,” the teacher said. She sighed and unpinned her mane, the black silky tresses cascading down her neck as she shook her head. “Ah, that’s better.” She looked like an entirely different mare with her glasses off and her hair down. I couldn’t help staring. “Uh… Sorry, what did you say?” “I said it’s not your fault,” she said as she ran a casual hoof through her mane. “I’d blame the bad guys first, and Tapioca second. Even if you’re sure he was telling the truth.” “They can’t go to the cops,” I pointed out. “They don’t know—” “They can go to the press, then. Or write a letter to Celestia’s court.” Her voice was prim and matter-of-fact. I grimaced and nodded. Those were both pretty good suggestions. But Persimmon wasn’t done. “And, if you’re right about Mulberry not knowing anything, then I have a hard time accepting that Tapioca is a good guy in all of this,” she said. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to protect Tapioca, but I did. “He’s trying to protect his family.” “Mulberry is an adult mare. She needs to know what’s going on. If she doesn’t know the situation, how can she protect herself? Or Plum?” I didn’t want to admit that she had a point, so I changed the subject instead. “Look, did you want to hear the plan or not?” I asked. “Okay, fine,” Miss Persimmon said with a note in her voice that let me know she was only dropping the subject temporarily. “If it’s to help my students, I can do anything.” She considered that for a few seconds and amended her statement to, “Almost anything. Within reason, of course.” “Right,” I said with a humorless smile. “Well, I don’t have all the details worked out, but my plan so far is to get closer to Chains or Figgy. I’ll get them to give me more information, and I’ll get it on tape. When I find out enough to get them all put in jail, I give it to you and you go to whoever is the highest ranking H.P.D. officer not on the bad guys’ payroll.” She just stared at me, her eyes unreadable. Thinking that maybe she didn’t understand her part in it, I clarified. “It has to be you that goes to the police. They won’t take me seriously, recording or no.” “And how do you plan to accomplish all of that?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “Easy,” I said with a slightly manic grin. “I’ll use myself as bait.” The clock ticked off a few seconds. “It sounds like a really bad idea,” Miss Persimmon said with a shake of her head. “No, it’s simple,” I countered. “I look like a filly, but I’m not. They’ll underestimate me. I’ll talk to Figgy or Chains. I’ll tell them that it was me that took the nectar. I’ll tell them I want into their gang, so I can earn some extra money. But I’ll want them to introduce me to the boss, first. I’ll get them talking about their operations, then I’ll get out when I can. And I’ll have the whole thing on tape.” “And when they search your saddlebags and take the recorder away?” Miss Persimmon asked archly. “Or when they decide to tell you to take a hike right away? Or if they take you to meet the boss but they don’t let you leave again… ever? What then?” I felt the heat of humiliation crawling up the back of my neck. “I told you I still had some details to work out,” I muttered. The mare sat back down and leaned back against the wall with a sigh. “Well, parts of it might work. The tape recorder is a good idea, if we can figure out a way for them to not find it.” She gave me a level look and said, “The rest of that is a really, really poor idea, though.” “Fine, then! If you have a better plan, I’d like to hear it.” “I gave you a couple already,” she said. “Go to the press, or write a letter to Celestia.” “That won’t work,” I said stiffly. “Why not?” “Because there’s no time!” I was shouting again, back up on my hooves. And, judging by the way she was leaning back, a little inside Miss Persimmon’s personal space. I took a deep breath and stepped back. “Look, it’s the only way I can think of to get the heat off of the Puddings.” I said, reigning in my temper. “I don’t have time to wait for those other things to work. I have to get it done quickly.” “You can’t do that,” the teacher said. “Cinnamon, you’re only a filly.” My eyes narrowed, but she cut me off before I could respond. “I know, I know, you’re an adult,” she said as she held up a hoof. “But you’re also only a filly. You can’t put yourself into that kind of danger. You don’t have the capacity to…” She trailed off, tilting her head and frowning as she looked at me. I decided to try again to convince her. “I know what I’m doing, and I can handle myself. If it comes to physical violence, I can run. I’m hard to get a hoof on. You’ve got to trust me. I can deal with this, and I’m tougher than I look!” She kept on staring at me the whole time I was talking. When I was done, she shook her head and sighed. “Oh, I get it now,” she said softly. “It’s starting to make sense. That’s what this is, isn’t it?” “What do you mean?” “This whole tough-guy routine. You having to solve all of this by yourself. You only came to me because you have no other choices for adults to approach the police.” She gave me a crooked smile. “You think you have to do this on your own to prove to yourself that you haven’t lost it, that you’re still a police officer and a tough stallion, present appearances aside.” “What..? I… no! That’s not—” “Cinnamon…” she sighed again. “You know that the risk here is huge. You could get badly hurt. Maybe even wind up…” she shuddered “...dead. And maybe not only you. I don’t want to see that happen. So, tell me. Give me one concrete, good reason why you can’t go to the press or write to Celestia’s court. Or why we can’t just smuggle the Puddings out of town, if it’s really that urgent.” “They can’t leave!” I shouted, my voice hoarse with desperation. “The smugglers are watching the stations. Even if they left, Figgy knows all of the relatives they could possibly stay with, and they can’t afford a hotel!” She leaned forward and put a hoof on my shoulder, looking into my eyes with an irritatingly calm smile on her face. It took everything I had right then not to knock her hoof away. “Cinnamon, if it’s because of having nowhere to go, then I can put them up with some relatives of mine. My mother lives in Canterlot, and she has more than enough room. Then we have all the time in the world to fix this without risking yourself.” She leaned back again. “So, can you do it? Give me any reason why you have to put yourself in danger like this?” My mouth opened and closed like a fish on dry land. I had nothing. “I thought so,” she said, leaning back with a sigh. “Cinnamon… I won’t let you do this. It’s too big for you. I know now that you’re an adult, but I think you need to remember that even adults have their limitations.” I couldn’t look at her, so instead I stared at the back leg of her desk. It suddenly doubled in my vision. I blinked furiously until my eyes straightened themselves out. “And I’m guessing that’s why you haven’t told Mulberry yet about your… condition.” She gave me another lopsided smile. “You like her, I can tell.” Now, that startled me right out of whatever funk I was in. “I don’t!” I protested, waving my forehooves. “She’s a married mare, and—” “I didn’t mean like that.” The mare chuckled a little. “I meant that you respect her. You want her to think well of you. But if you told her… well, it would all come crashing down, wouldn’t it? And then you might not ever be allowed to see Plum again.” She cocked her head, then, and if I’d known the question was coming I would have run out of the room ages ago. “Why are you so fixated on Plum, anyway?” I looked away for a few seconds, considering my next words carefully. Persimmon was kind enough to give me the time. My eyes dropped to the floor as I considered what I wanted to say. This touched on my past, and how I felt about it, two things I’m not all that great at talking about. “My whole life…” I stopped, then took a deep breath and started over. “I have five brothers. It goes from me, the oldest, to Nutmeg, the youngest. That’s because my mom was always fixated on having a daughter and she never stopped trying. As a colt, it bothered me, like my brothers and I weren’t good enough. So it’s like my whole life, at least past the age of six or so, has been more or less defined by the fact that I don’t have a sister.” I took a deep, shuddering breath and finally came out and said what had been in the back of my mind for weeks, now. “And now I have a little sister, in a way. And I would do anything in the world to protect her and to make her happy.” I looked up. Miss Persimmon’s eyes were bright and wide, her mouth set in a trembling line, and I barely had time to flinch when she suddenly reached forward and gathered me into a hug. “Hey,” I said. Then I started squirming and pushing at her barrel with my forehooves. “Hey!” She let me go, pulling her hooves back as if she’d just burned herself. I fell back on my rump and just stared at her. “What the hell, lady?!” “I’m sorry,” she said with a sniffle. “That’s just… it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard!” “Right, whatever.” I took a moment to regain whatever was left of my dignity. Miss Persimmon gave me a moment before she cleared her throat. “Well, I think it’s clear that we won’t be going with your plan. So, what now?” I looked away from her, chewing on my lower lip. “I don’t know,” I said eventually. “That’s all I had.” “Right. Well, do you want to know what I think?” “Sure, why not,” I muttered. “I think that I’ll go with you to Plum’s house. We’ll talk to her parents together. You’ll come clean to both of them, and I’ll stop Mulberry from murdering you.” She held up a hoof to forestall my protest. “It’s not right that she has no idea what’s going on, and has no idea who really is spending time with her daughter. If you care about her at all, you’ll tell her the truth.” She stopped there and just looked at me until I nodded. I was defeated and directionless. Persimmon had cut straight through the lies I’d been telling myself. “Yes,” is all I said. “Then we’ll convince them that the safest thing to do is go out of town and stay at my mother’s house in Canterlot. I’ll even take some time off of work and go with them and help them get settled in. After that, then Tapioca goes to Princess Celestia’s court and makes his case.” Her eyes narrowed then, and she spoke with a grim satisfaction. “And then we make certain that the full weight of the law comes down on those scum.” Now that was something I agreed with. I gave her a shaky smile and stood back up. Miss Persimmon stood as well, helping to steady me on my suddenly-wobbly legs by placing a hoof on my shoulder. “I guess we’re going now?” I asked. She nodded. “No point in putting this off. Things have gotten far enough out of hoof as it is.” I sighed. I gave one sharp nod in agreement. “Let’s go, then.” The walk to the Puddings’ house was quiet and somber. I didn’t have much to say. My mind was too busy running through all the things I would have to tell Mulberry. I tried not to dwell on what her reaction would be to finding out who I really was. I didn’t succeed too well. Now that I really thought about it, having Miss Persimmon there probably would stop the mare from murdering me. It wasn’t long before the Pudding’s cheery house loomed over us. It seemed huge, or maybe it was just me feeling smaller than I’d ever felt before in my life. We stopped outside the door by some mutually unspoken signal, both collecting our thoughts. I took a deep breath and braced myself. Just as Miss Persimmon raised her hoof to knock on the door, I spoke. “It wasn’t a bad plan, you know,” I said wistfully. “It actually could have worked.” She looked down at me and gave me a considering look. Then she smiled. “Thank goodness we’ll never have to know,” she said. She knocked, three firm raps on the wooden door. And then we stood there, waiting. After nearly a minute, Miss Persimmon cleared her throat and knocked again. I shifted on my hooves as more time crawled by, and I found myself staring at the door, caught in a strange mixture of dread and eagerness while waiting for it to open. “Do you think they’re out?” the teacher asked me. “I don’t know,” I said. “They said they were coming right home after the spa.” “Well, I think we should—” Whatever she was thinking will have to remain a mystery, because it was then that we heard Plum’s voice from behind the closed door. “Go away!” she shouted. Persimmon and I looked at each other, startled. “Plum?” I called out. “It’s me.” “Cinnamon?” Something was wrong. Plum’s voice was cranked higher than normal. I heard her scrabbling at the door handle, a single desperate sob coming through the wood as she fumbled at it. I felt my heart rate climbing even before she got the door open. The Plum Pudding who opened the door wasn’t the happy and pampered pony I’d seen as we’d gone our separate ways outside the Happy Hooves Spa. Her eyes were wide and scared, rimmed with red from crying. She was shaking, her ears pressed down flat back against her head. Once the door was open she flung herself at me, both forelegs going around my neck as she buried her face into my shoulder and sobbed. I put a hoof on her back out of reflex. “Plum! What’s wrong?” I asked, beyond scared now. Next to me, Persimmon had knelt down on the walkway. She was stroking Plum’s mane in an attempt to calm her down. The filly was bawling into my neck as she tried to talk, making most of what she was trying to say incomprehensible. The only words I could make out were “gone, gone”. My heart clenched, and in my mind I remembered Tapioca’s hacking cough and trembling hooves. I also remembered a day many years ago before, when my father’s partner Shamrock had stopped by the house later in the afternoon. I’ll never forget the look on his face when I answered the door. When I asked where my dad was, all he’d said was that I’d better go get my mother, he had something important he had to tell her. I barely remembered the rest of that day. Flashes of my mother sobbing. My brothers and I all holding each other, lost and confused. If Plum had come home from her day of pampering to find her father dead, I knew she was going to need a good friend right now. I’d been through the loss of a parent myself, and I intended to help her through this. But first, I needed to know for certain what was going on. “Plum,” I said as gently as I could, “I can’t help you if I can’t understand you.” I pushed her back slightly so I looked her straight in the eye as she cried and hiccuped. “Take a deep breath… okay, good… now let it out. Now, what’s wrong?” She wasn’t calm, not by any stretch of the imagination. I could tell that she was devastated. But the next time she spoke I could understand her. “They took Mom!” she wailed. The bottom dropped out of my stomach. The blood in my veins turned to ice for a half-second only to flash into a boil an instant later. I clamped down on it. I had to remain calm. “Who did?” I asked as gently as I could. “Th-that p-police pony… That unicorn, and some others.” She snuffled and hiccuped again. Then she was back to wailing. “They put her in a cart and took her away!” “Did they say why?” I asked, gritting my teeth and reminding myself that I had to stay calm! Her mane whipped back and forth as she shook her head frantically. “N-no… Maybe to Daddy.” She hugged me again. “Cinnamon, I’m scared,” she whispered into my mane. “I know, Plum. I know.” I closed my eyes and stroked her back. “But I swear to you, we’re going to get her back. She’s going to be alright.” She drew back and looked at me doubtfully. “You promise?” “I promise,” I said. I looked over at the teacher next to me. Her face had faded several shades towards white. She had the look of a mare who’d walked out into the middle of a frozen lake and then heard the ice crack. “Can you look after Plum for a minute?” I asked her. She nodded as Plum noticed her for the first time, giving her a confused look. “Miss Persimmon?” the filly said, confused. “What are you doing here?” The mare’s mouth opened for a moment as she considered what to say. When she spoke, it was in a firm and confident voice. “I’m here to help Cinnamon get your mom back,” she said, pulling the filly towards her in a hug. “Thanks,” I told her, and got a nod in return. I looked back at the filly she was hugging to her. “Plum. I’m going to go talk to your dad and see if they said anything. I’ll be right back, okay?” She nodded and managed a weak smile. I gave her a quick one back. As I turned and walked into the Pudding household, I heard Persimmon gently urging Plum back into the house. When I reached the master bedroom, I didn’t have to knock. The door was wide open. Tapioca was sitting upright on the bed, hunched over and staring at the hooves in his lap, his face slack and expressionless. “Tapioca,” I said. And when he didn’t respond, I said it again. “Tapioca.” He looked up at me with haunted eyes, a large bruise darkening over his left one. Confusion ran across his features, there and gone again so fast I might have almost imagined it. “You,” he said, his voice dull. It was a statement of recognition, not accusation. I still flinched inside when he said it. “What happened?” I asked, stepping into the room. “They took my wife. Some trumped up charge of obstructing justice.” His voice was monotone as his eyes returned to his forehooves. “Chains… Shale… Another pony I didn’t recognize, a unicorn with a lantern cutie mark.” “Three of them?” I asked. At his nod, I continued. “Were they all in police uniforms?” “Yeah.” His voice was dull, disengaged. I wanted to rage at him, to shout and scream, maybe even shake him until I got answers. But my gut was telling me that I was looking at a broken stallion, and any aggressive move I made could shatter him. “What did they want?” I asked. “They want the jar of nectar,” he said. “And they want who took it. I told them I didn’t know.” “And they took Mulberry to… what, to convince you?” “To ‘help me remember’, they said.” He laughed bitterly. “I told them I didn’t know.” “You should have given me up,” I said, unable to hide the heat in my voice. “You should have let them take me!” “I couldn’t,” he said, looking confused. “I… you’re just a filly.” “Better me than Mulberry!” I shouted, my calm shattering like glass. That shook him. He flinched and looked over at me. Then a spark of hope kindled in his eyes. “Are you really a customs agent in disguise?” he asked softly. And, just like that, the weight of my sins came down right on my head, bowing my neck until my nose almost touched the floor. “No,” I said quietly. I heard a soft sigh, or maybe a sob, from the stallion. I thought of Mulberry, lost and alone in some den of thieves somewhere. My focus came back to me. My resolve hardened. “No, I’m not,” I said in a firmer voice. “You want to know what I am?” Tapioca Pudding looked over at me once again. “I’m a friend to your wife and daughter. And I’m a sergeant with the Ponyville Police Department, on temporary unofficial leave after a chance encounter with a plant called poison joke. And I’m also the last thing that the bastards that took her will ever see coming. I will keep Plum safe, I’ll get your wife back, and I’ll see the ones who took her in prison.” My mouth settled into a grim line. “You have my word on that.” Something like hope kindled in the stallion’s eyes. “Poison joke, eh?” he said, his voice still quiet. His spine straightened slightly and he managed a hint of a smile. “That’s a nasty little bugger. Turned you into a filly, then?” I stared at him in shock for a few seconds before I nodded. “Figures you’d be the only one in this town who’s heard of that damned weed,” I muttered. “And you have a plan to get my wife back?” he asked, either ignoring or not registering what I’d just said. I considered my conversation with Persimmon. The mare had a point when she said this was too dangerous for me to handle on my own, but the situation had changed. There was no running from this, no heading to Canterlot and safety. Not when they already had Mulberry. There was no time, either. Whatever had to be done, it had to be done now. “I do,” I said. Tapioca took a deep breath and nodded as a ghost of a smile drifted across his muzzle. “Did they tell you when they expected an answer?” I asked him. “They were going to let me think on it overnight,” he said, heat kindling in his voice. “They’ll be back noon tomorrow.” “Good,” I said. It was still late in the afternoon. “We have time, then.” “So, what’s the plan?” he asked. “The plan? Well, the first part of that is easy. We get Plum somewhere safe.” “Where?” “Either she stays at my house or she stays with her teacher,” I said. “Who, by the way, is talking to Plum right now.” Tapioca sagged as at least some of the tension left him. “Thank you,” he said. “You got it,” I replied with a nod. “For the rest of the plan, I need something from you.” “Anything,” he said instantly. “Just name it.” I gave him a hard and humorless grin. “I need to know where I can find your brother.”