Starlight Over Detrot Chapter 50
Dog Day Afternoon
...in summary, I don't think that this 'megafauna' classification is such a good idea. Really, even the most massive ursa major can have a family, and even the scariest creature can be made into a good friend. I think it's wrong to treat them as different from bears and squirrels and ponies just because they have big teeth and spiked tentacles and... ovipositors... and… and...
-Heard at the 4th Canterlot Zoological Symposium
I should have known what Tartarus would have in store for us. You don’t name a place after Equestria’s most famous pit for the storage of nasty, demonic forces without having a little baggage attached, and I should have seen what was coming a mile away when Taxi’s father was brought up. Nothing good happens comes from cracking open a can of beans that old.
Of course, had I somehow known and decided I didn’t want to make that whole side trip then, in all likelihood, I’d have died, puking up my guts from a neurotoxin in the sewers or maybe some variation of whatever happened to Stone Shine.
Rosey thoughts.
Taxi didn’t say a word to me when we arrived back at the Nest. She just collapsed into a bean-bag chair in one of the bunker’s bedrooms and was asleep in seconds. It didn’t seem like a particularly pleasant sleep. Limerence still wasn’t back from whatever errands he was on.
Swift, on the other hoof, couldn’t seem to get back to sleep once she’d woken up. I was exhausted, but my thoughts wouldn’t stop racing.
That left my partner and I, alone and restless, mulling over the night’s events.
We lay, side by side, in separate chairs, listening to my driver whimpering and talking to herself in the next room. I’d plugged myself into the mains and was laying there letting my heart juice up.
“Sir, can I ask what happened in the hospital room? I wasn’t going to say anything before because Miss Taxi seemed really upset, but I do want to know,” Swift said, rolling onto her side and propping herself on one elbow.
“I’m not entirely sure myself. Taxi’s father was on his last legs. It might have all been the ramblings of somepony on lots of pain medications,” I replied, adjusting the wire on my chest.
“Come on, Sir… I wasn’t born yesterday,” Swift said, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, alright, kid. It was bad. Her father was some kind of… experiment… by whoever is running Detrot’s criminal underground. They were making assassins using transformative magicks. Sound familiar?”
I felt slightly guilty, for some reason, neglecting to mention what else I’d seen, but I don’t imagine there was a need to tell the kid that Taxi had killed her father. Rolling that conversation around my tongue, I found it not to my taste, and set it for another date; preferably sometime after Celestia went into a nursing home.
Swift was silent for a minute as she considered the question, then bobbed her head.
“Okay, I understand why you didn’t tell me all of that until we were gone, I guess,” she said, then narrowed her eyes at the carpet. “I... Sir, this might seem totally out of left field, but maybe it was that law-firm?”
“Armature, Umbra, and Animus or whatever it was?”
Swift nodded. “Didn’t you mention hearing Taxi’s dad talking to the Jewelers about a law firm with ‘vast influence’ or something, when you were a kid?”
I scratched at my neck, thinking. “I… yeah… eesh, I must be slow on the uptake, lately. I hadn’t drawn that particular connection until just now. You think? It’s been more than twenty years since then. That’s a long time.”
“I think Princess Celestia would disagree, Sir,” Swift answered, flexing her wings. “We’ve seen an awful lot of crazy stuff lately. I mean, getting a major religion in on corrupting the police department? Trying to collapse the entire city government with a mob boss for a pawn? Doing it all at the same time? Whoever these ponies are -- if they’re even ponies -- they don’t think small.”
I was momentarily taken aback.
“Kid, if you’re that smart, how come you’re a cop?”
Swift’s nose scrunched up, then she giggled and stretched out one wingtip to flick my badge, which I hadn’t bothered to take off when I lay down. “I dunno. Bad luck, I guess.”
“Alright,” I said, with a smile. “So if we run under the assumption it is the law-firm, where does that leave us? We can only investigate them directly after we’ve recovered the Chief’s daughter. If we find out they’re actually behind this mess, how do we go about arresting them? They’re a law firm. Their professional appointment is avoiding arrest. Then there’s the sheer weight of influence they can probably drop on us. They could have Mayor Snifter, or any one of a dozen judges in their pockets. Then there’s their street level connections. That they haven’t picked us up already suggests a very conservative approach, that we’ve been lucky...or that they think can nab us any time they need to. Short of bringing in the Princesses themselves-”
“-Which we can’t do until we have the Chief’s daughter-” Swift added.
“-so our jobs haven’t changed.”
Swift scratched her hip with one wing. “Sir...do you ever feel like we swat down one terrible thing and another one just… pops up?”
“Believe me, kid, I know the feeling. We will see the other end of this. That or we’ll end up dead. Cases end one way or another. We’ll see what Limerence has for us tomorrow.”
‘
“What about… what about Taxi? Do you think she’s...okay?”
“Just watch. She’s probably in the next room crying her eyes out right now, but she’ll wake up tomorrow and you’ll never know any of that happened until she gets pissed off. I’m just hoping the next thing she gets angry at is something that we need shot and not...you know...me.”
“Is that why we’re going to Supermax tomorrow?”
“Stress relief for my driver? No, but...two birds, one stone, you know?”
With that, I rolled onto my side and shut my eyes. A few minutes later, I heard Swift flipping onto her back and the sounds of soft snoring. I smiled and let myself drift off to sleep.
----
There was a frantic banging somewhere nearby. I didn’t need frantic banging. Frantic banging is terrible early in the morning.
I buried my nose in my beanbag chair and felt around until I grabbed something soft, then dragged it over to hide under. Whatever ‘it’ was, squeaked. I jerked my head up, then realized I’d pulled Swift off her beanbag and had my forehead nestled against her stomach. Her rear hooves flailed at the air.
“Siiir!”
I grinned and rolled out of the chair as my partner staggered to her hooves. “Sorry, kid. You don’t want to end up being a pillow, you should maybe try being less fluffy.”
She turned bright red and growled at me, “Sir, if you want a cushion, there’s plenty that don’t breathe!”
“Yeah, but none of those are quite so warm.” I left my partner scowling at my back, snickering to myself as I snatched up my gun harness and tossed it across my back. I didn’t feel like putting it on just to answer the door, but having my gun nearby was comforting.
Grabbing my coat, I slung it over my shoulders. The banging was getting a little more insistent. It was coming from the front door.
“I gave Limerence the key. I...wonder who that is at this hour?” I asked, glancing at the Princess-Celestia-smoking-a-joint clock. We’d only managed about six hours rest. Most ponies wouldn’t even have been to work yet.
I staggered over to the door and drew back the bolts, letting it swing wide.
A panicked Jambalaya, Wisteria Aroyo’s oldest daughter, blew past me into the bunker.
“It be in-de-vincable!” she whimpered, tumbling over Swift, who scrambled to get out of the way. “We must be gettin’ de Aroyo down here and de Nest sealed!”
Outside, now that the door was open, I could hear frightened shouts and pounding hooves, along with a strange yelping sound that sent shivers down my spine. Swift cocked one ear towards the noise.
I turned to Jambalaya who was quivering in the corner, her horn glittering with unspent magic.
“What exactly is out there that a lightning bolt or a few bullets isn’t handling for you?” I asked.
“De beast! It come! It chase us and...and it lick us!” she shuddered. I noticed for the first time that the fur on half of her body was matted and sticky.
Swift was still listening intently to the sounds outside. Her eyes brightened.
“It... can’t be!” she gasped, then zipped by me and up the stairs. I trotted after her, unholstering my pistol and adjusting the tongue grip so I could use the trigger with my muzzle. Jambalaya didn’t seem inclined to get up from where she was, so I left her there and went to see what all the fuss was about.
The shouting was getting closer. I opened the gate, and was almost run down by two shrieking mares running in the opposite direction.
Outside was a scene of panic. Ponies hid behind dumpsters, under upturned cans, and a few even peered out of the sewer grates.
A massive, vaguely familiar ball of black fur crouched over something in the street.
“The horror! The horror! It’s eating her!” somepony shrieked.
Overhead, three Aroyos with thunderclouds in tow were repeatedly blasting the creature, lighting up the entire street and nearly deafening everypony in the process. It didn’t seem to be doing much good. The creature was ignoring them in favor of whatever it’d found to play with. There was definitely laughter coming from that direction, which contrasted strangely with all the terrified whinnying coming from everywhere else.
Moving around so I could get a look at the actual activity, I groaned and clicked my safety back on.
Amidst the frightened hard of Cyclones trying desperately to drive the creature away, my partner lay on her back, giggling like a maniac as Goofball ‘attacked’ her with all three tongues.
I was too tired to even consider how the hound of Tartarus had managed to get into the city, past the Shield, and avoid the PACT patrols. Another crackle of lightning shot across the street and the giant dog’s back fur stood on end for a second, then settled. I’d seen pegasi put down small hydras with that power, but Goofball didn’t seem to have even noticed, aside one of his heads turning to snap at a tail that got too close.
Looking up at the Aroyos still circling, their thunderheads looking awfully empty, I shouted, “Stand down!”
An errant lightning bolt snapped down and burned the sidewalk only a few feet in front of me.
“Dammit! Drop the clouds or I swear, you’ll need a rectal exam from a meteorologist!” I snarled, leaping backwards before I could be turned into an equine light bulb.
I’ll say this for the Aroyos; they were, at the very least, well trained. The three pegasi shoved their clouds together, then gave them a collective buck that dissipated them.
A rush of wings announced Wisteria dropping from the rooftops to land beside me. She stumbled, holding her heavy, pregnant belly so it didn’t smack against the pavement.
“I and I! Who be ye to order de Aroyo?!” she snapped, angrily. “We be defendin’ ours from stompa!”
I shook my head and sat on the sidewalk, then called, “Kid? You got that thing under control?”
My partner had managed to wiggle out from under Goofball and was furiously rubbing a spot behind his right and middle head’s ears. Left head was chewing on his own foreleg.
“I think so, Sir!” she yelled back. “Could somepony get some of my snacks? I might need them!”
I turned to Wisteria, and smiled, placatingly. “Sorry about this. We took a side trip tonight and I think that followed us home.”
“I and I should be smackin’ ye for dis! Aroyo ye be, but we do not be needin’ de attention of de PACT stompas here!” she barked, then unslung the tiny pouch from around her neck and began speaking to it in low whispered tones.
“I know, I know. Could you convey my apologies to the Ancestors? We’ll return him as-” I looked out towards the street where Swift had managed to work her way down to Goofball’s neck. The enormous puppy toppled onto his side, laying there panting, all three tongues dangling. “-as soon as I figure out how.”
“Ye be not callin’ de PACT in here! Not if ye be wantin’ de Nest another night!” Wisteria growled, though her anger seemed to be abating now that the situation was in hoof. Aroyos were starting to emerge back onto the street, forming a ring of curious onlookers at a respectful distance from Goofball and my partner.
“I don’t know how he even got into the city. The Shield usually keeps the bigger megafauna out, doesn’t it?” I thought aloud.
“He not be de ‘bigger’ megafauna.” Wisteria frowned at Goofball, then clapped her hooves together three times. There was movement from the rooftops. I looked up as a dozen ponies appeared up there with various weapons, though they held their fire. “We try de bullets. We try de lightning. I t’ink Miss Catarang even try de spell fire. He not even singed. What be he, and speak quick?”
“Ever hear of Cerberus?”
“Dem what guards Tartarus?” she asked, raising one eyebrow as she watched Swift playing with the huge animal in the middle of the street. “I and I be under de impression he were… bigger.”
“He’s getting on in years. That’s his...erm...replacement.”
Wisteria squinted at Goofball, then shook her head.
“Dat? Ye doggy looks...eh...I and I be tryin’ to find a nice way to be saying ‘stupid’.”
“Believe me, I couldn’t agree more, but I’m pretty sure he’s harmless. We’ll get him home… uh… as soon as... um...”
As soon as... what? I didn’t have time to rent a truck. I’d no idea how he escaped and since he’d obviously followed us, there was probably nothing stopping him doing it again. I didn’t know if drugging him would work, since bullets and lightning obviously didn’t, and I’d no idea where on earth I’d find enough drugs. That also left the possibility of getting it wrong and killing one of the most valuable animals in Equestria. Atop all of that, I didn’t want to even think about the Warden showing up in Cyclone territory to retrieve her pet.
“...crap,” I concluded, eloquently.
One of the foals sitting on the sidelines, a small-ish filly with a frizzy red mane, was edging up to Goofball’s side. She gently touched his tail, then darted back to her group of friends. After a moment, seeing that nothing bad had happened, several others started to sneak forward to touch and stroke the big dog.
Goofball seemed to adore the attention. His tail flipped and wagged back and forth, smacking the pavement.
“Alright, alright! Enough!” I said, loud enough to be heard by everypony. Swift and the foals all looked up. “Kid, can you get that thing downstairs?”
Swift raised her head. “Aren’t we calling the Warden-”
“Not an option, I’m afraid. Don’t make me explain it, but you get to keep the damn thing for now.”
Wisteria’s eyes widened. “Keep? Keep?! Hard Boiled, have ye taken leave of ye senses?!”
“You want the Warden of Tartarus here? Or PACT? Or the Detrot Police Department? Or the Jewelers? You think all of them wouldn’t give an eye to get a bulletproof, magic-proof attack dog?”
The Aroyo’s lips twitched, as she tried to come up with another objection, then she grabbed the pouch around her neck, tore it off, and half turned, cupping it in her hooves. What followed was a furious, whispered conversation between herself and her juju-bag.
Meanwhile, several of the braver Aroyo children had climbed up on Goofball’s side and were using him for a jungle-gym. Swift was nestled comfortably between left head and middle, while the right one who, I noticed for the first time, seemed to have a big brown spot around one eye, was nuzzling at her hooves.
“Kid? I thought I said downstairs!” I snapped.
“I thought I asked somepony to get my snacks, Sir!”
“Right, right…”
Trotting back through the gate, I headed down into the bunker. Jambalaya was still cowering in one corner, her face drenched in dog saliva. I paused to look at her for a second, then went down through the kitchen and grabbed a package of jerky from the fridge. The frightened mare just stared at me as I came back through.
“It’s safe, ya know. The dog’s with me.”
This was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Jambalaya yelped and sprang to her hooves, galloping down the hallway into the depths of the bunker, her piercings jangling all the way. I heard one of the doors towards the back slamming shut.
****
Getting Goofball into the bunker wasn’t so much a trick as was getting the foals off of him. Aroyo children were about as socialized as feral cats, at least until their teenage years, and the concept of ‘No!’ was relatively foreign unless ‘No’ was backed up by somepony smacking them across the flank.
Once Swift had her snacks, she just held one out on her hoof and Goofball trotted happily along behind her down the stairs, into the bunker. Wisteria, still snarling very quietly at her bag, came as well. Then we had to chase a whole pack of foals, along with a few griffin chicks, out of our home with judicious applications of a broom.
Swift pointed at the floor. At least one of Goofball’s heads seemed to understand ‘sit’. Right and middle were still fighting over the last chunk, but he still sat, then she tossed him another scrap of flavored meat and slumped against his chest. The enormous dog snuggled her up between his right and middle head, gently licking her cheek. “Ugh, Sir, if I’m keeping him here...how are we gonna feed him? That was half my snacks…”
“Find the number of a local pet shop supplier,” I suggested. “Miss Stella’s paying for this venture. I’m pretty sure a few bulk shipments of kibble won’t raise terribly many painted eyebrows, especially considering we've barely done more than buy food and gas with it.” I turned to Wisteria. “Sooo… what do the Ancestors say?”
Wisteria scowled and used one hoof to poke me in the chest. “I and I say ye mad! I say, ye take one too many trip to de ot’er side! I say when ye walk wid Daddy Legbaa, ye mind go to de dream place and not come back!”
"That's not what I asked."
Her ears slipped down against the sides of her head, and she deflated, grumbling. “De… De Ancestors… say de dog… be too valuable to be lettin’ run about wid dey dat would stomp us…”
“Alright, I’m...urk.” The precise weight of the load of fuzzy trouble that’d been dropped into our laps sank around my shoulders. “I hope this isn’t for more than a couple of days, but yeah, we’ll keep him in the bunker until we figure out what to do with him. Can you get some volunteers from the kids out there to walk him, make sure he craps in dumpsters, keep him fed, and make for damn sure the P.A.C.T. doesn’t see him?”
The Aroyo shut her eyes and drew in a breath. “I and I... Aye, yes, de chillun’s be fine wid diss, I sure. I be not fine wid it...but...how we are to discipline de beast when de wee pegasus be not around?”
Swift put her hooves as far around Goofball’s center neck as she could. One head nestled under her broad left-wing. “Teriyaki chicken works.”
As if on a cue arranged by Celestia herself, Taxi chose that moment to stumble into the living room. Her striped mane was a mess and her braid undone. She was rubbing at her crusty eyelids, leaning heavily on the doorframe. “Oof… I was comfortably asleep, and some Aroyo mare who smells like spicy food and raw terror just tried to climb under my bed. Somepony care to explain that?”
She paused, sniffed at the air, then opened her eyes and stared at Goofball, Swift, Wisteria and I.
Her back knees dropped out from under her as she looked at my partner and the dog, snuggled up together on the carpet.
She shut her eyes. When she spoke again, it was in very slow, measured tones. “Hardy...I want you to tell me...right now...that there isn't a miniature Cerberus...sitting in our living room.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I remembered then that she’d been preoccupied when Goofball made his first appearance.
“If I can’t tell you that, does that mean violence?”
“Yes, Hardy. Yes, that means violence.”
****
Taxi managed to hold back the urge to beat something long enough to hear a short-form explanation. Then she destroyed a pillow. Then a garbage can. Then a beanbag chair. Then she stormed out of the bunker to find -- in her words -- ‘more coffee than has ever existed’.
We hauled Jambalaya out and her mother took her by the tail, scolding her furiously for abandoning her post. The young Aroyo almost wet herself when she realized Goofball was in the bunker with her, but we managed to bundle her out before she did anything drastic or messy.
Swift hit the corner phone and made her call out to get a monstrous supply of puppy chow and three of the biggest dog-bowls in all of Equestria. It took about fifteen minutes of rooting through the phone book to find the right number, and even then, they wouldn’t actually come into the Skids to deliver. A small bribe did secure us a cart brought to the edge of the territory, though, and a promise of future deliveries as needed.
****
It was another hour before my driver came back, practically vibrating, with a gallon milk jug full of coffee slung over each shoulder and a replacement bean-bag chair. I, meanwhile, piled into the shower to try to wash all the emotions of the previous night down the drain.
Once that was accomplished, I emptied the trench coat’s pocket dimensions into a decent sized pile in what had become, more or less, my bedroom. It wasn’t strictly necessary to do that, being as the contents would have been just fine going through the wash. My coat still reeked of stress, sweat, and fear, but I felt better having it empty. It felt like starting over.
As I sorted through the pile, I found the old serpent pin that’d begun our little adventure. I turned it over in my hooves, sitting against the side of a cot, listening to my driver excitedly explaining to Swift that the universe was going to explode and her mane felt like it was crawling away. I wondered if she was on anything besides caffeine, but then, knowing Taxi it could just as easily have been sugar as Beam.
The snake eating its own tail glinted in the light as I examined it. Miss Stella’s medallion. Ruby’s medallion. Mine.
Funny thing, that.
The serpent destroying itself.
Like my city.
But then, maybe it wasn’t the city eating itself. Maybe it was us. Ponies. Griffins. Dragons. The rest. The whole lot of us, trying to hold an outpost on the edge of the Wilderness for decades on end, sprawling and screwing and killing one another, too far from the grace of the Princesses.
On the flip side, I’d certainly met plenty of creatures willing to fight for one another and try to coexist peacefully with one another.
I never believed ponies were inherently evil or corrupt. Sure, there are those who’re definitely open to corruption, but is that their fault? The Princess’ fault? The heavens?
In the end, I’ve done my job under the apprehension that evil is only what we do. It’s not who we are.
Shaking myself, I slipped the medallion back into my pocket along with Ruby Blue’s diary, an old picture of Juniper, and a few other little knick knacks. The rest of it went into the garbage. I squirmed into my gun harness, then went about the process of cleaning my gun.
There was something else for my mind to chew over. My father’s death was easy. Simple. Death in the line of duty. An unlucky day, an unlucky hour, and a bullet meant for somepony else. I remembered the funeral; Mom standing in the rain, holding my hoof and me, in uniform, with Hard Boiled Senior’s gun attached to my leg.
I missed Mom, too. Granted, I took a certain amount of comfort in knowing I would probably see them both soon if I failed at any point in the coming days.
Or maybe I wouldn’t.
I’d pulled through a gunshot wound and subsequent heart transplant. Who knew how long Gale could keep me going? Maybe, one day, it’d be Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and myself sitting there at the end of the world and the answers to questions like ‘Who is trying to kill me today?’ would seem pleasantly trivial.
These melancholy thoughts swirled around and around inside my head as I checked my gun’s barrel, cleared the breach, tested the hammer’s motion, and cleaned the chambers. Again, it wasn’t strictly necessary. It’d never been necessary. Magical weaponry is nice like that. It was just the ritual I needed. Clean the weapon. Clean yourself. Try to ignore the horrors that’ve gone before and the ones still coming.
A startled yelp from the other end of the hall brought me to my hooves, trigger in my teeth. It might have helped to have my gun holstered, but that was secondary in my thoughts.
“Mercy of Celestia, get this wretched beast off of me!” the voice shouted a second later and I relaxed, dropping my bit.
Limerence was home and making a new acquaintance.
****
Goofball had our librarian pinned to the carpet. Limerence was trying futilely to push one of his heads away with his horn and another with his hooves while the other tongued him within an inch of his life.
Swift was tugging at the giant canine’s collar, trying to drag him away from the stricken stallion while Taxi sprawled in one of the beanbag chairs, laughing so hard tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes.
“No! Goofball! Bad! Sit!” my partner shouted. I sighed and grabbed a spare newspaper off the table, brandishing it in one hoof.
Goofball’s eyes locked on the rolled paper and he whined, then slowly backed away from Limerence.
The normally very composed Archivist was dishevelled and his face-fur stuck out in funny directions as he got to his hooves, rearranging his vest self-consciously and picking up his spectacles from the carpet. He inspected them for damage before popping them back on his nose.
“Detective. I take it you have a truly excellent explanation for this?” he said, gesturing at the three-headed puppy.
“Passable. ‘Excellent’ might be stretching it. Where’ve you been? I was wondering if you were coming back at all.”
Limerence tugged his watch out and looked at the time. “I am well within the margins laid out for likely action on the part of our opponents. Besides, I believed we might need something in the event we’re caught wandering around the interior of Supermax. These things take time to acquire.”
I hadn’t noticed until just then, but Limerence was wearing saddle-bags. They looked a size too small, extremely worn, and had a tiny book for a clasp.
“Are those the same bags you were using in school?” I asked, grinning.
The librarian sneered, “I, unlike some ponies I know, am of a frugal mindset. These remain perfectly serviceable.”
Opening the silly buckle, he levitated out a shapeless blue sheet of fabric that glittered slightly, turning it this way and that.
“I...is this an actual Lunar Passage robe?” I asked.
“Indeed. I have acquired four. Fakes might have been easier to obtain, but fakery will be more easily discovered.”
“How did you get these? Don’t the Passage only give these things to their fully initiated members?” Taxi asked, leaning off her chair to feel the cloth.
“I got them same place anypony with a need, a will, and no time does. I stole them. It was a complicated procedure involving a blackjack and a few members of the church out for an evening stroll.”
I put one hoof over my eyes. “You mugged them?”
“Robbery, technically. Mugging tends to require a subject to be conscious, but I believe I made it look adequately like a robbery such that few will take more than passing interest.” Limerence sniffed, flicking a weighted club out of his front pocket and depositing it on the mantel, along with several wallets, a gold watch, and a glitzy purse. “The foal-sized one was procured at the nearby school. Difficult to find, but not to acquire.”
“...Tell me you didn’t cold-cock someone’s kid, Lim…”
“You needn't worry.” Limerence dragged the remaining outfits out, spreading them out on the carpet. “Once located, it was a simple trade. Seven pounds of candy was a relatively inexpensive purchasing price.”
Swift sat up and asked, “Why do we need a foal sized-” She paused, then sank to the carpet and put her face in Goofball’s fur. “Oh... right.”
Turning the fabric around, Limerence found the neck hole then tossed it over my head. It settled over my shoulders and the fabric flowed over my flanks. The robe was surprisingly comfortable. I shifted my weight, and it felt like being stroked with a velvet glove, except all over.
“Mmm...huh. Nothing this nice in the police catalogue,” I commented, holding up one leg to study the cloth.
“I imagine not. It is slightly magical, though the nature of that magic has escaped me.”
I tugged the robe’s hood off of my ears, letting it bunch around my neck. “Why would this need to be magical? It was expensive enough to enchant my coat just to make it waterproof.”
Limerence shrugged. “I may need to acquire an additional robe if you want me to find out. Is it important? It seems benign enough. I doubt anypony else would have noticed.”
I felt a tingle in my left foreleg.
“You mind me asking why you noticed?” I asked, trying to ignore the sensation.
The Archivist gave me a look of hurt pride. “I spent my entire foalhood up to my flank in the most dangerous enchanted mechanisms our species could produce. If I cannot recognize an arcane signature against the background radiance of Equestria, I need to turn in my horn.”
The tingle suddenly became a burn, which mounted quickly. It crept out from my knee, spreading up my spine to the back of my neck, then down over my chest, centering around the socket on my breast. I stumbled backwards a couple of steps.
Something was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
My heart started to thump against my ribs. I felt very un-stallion like shriek trying to claw its way up the back of my throat. The ache was intense, agonizing, and constricting. I felt like I was being crushed.
“Sir? Are you okay?” Swift asked, worriedly.
I opened my mouth to say something, but all that came out was a choked gasp. Blood was rushing in my ears.
My heart fluttered.
Oooh, that’s bad... I thought, detachedly.
Something grabbed the hem of the robe, then tore it over my head, leaving me blind. My knees gave out immediately, and I tumbled onto my side in a heap, panting for breaths that wouldn’t fill my lungs.
My vision was starting to go. Black spots flickered around the outside edges.
So maybe it won’t be so long before I get to see all those ponies I was missing. Huh. Strange thing, that. Shouldn’t I be afraid?
Of course, I hadn’t been afraid the last time I died either. I felt sure that probably wasn’t healthy.
Swift’s face came into view and she shouted something about a zipper.
I decided the light hurt my eyes. If I’m honest, my eyelids were just feeling terribly heavy. I let them slide shut.
I floated in darkness.
The pain in my legs was gone. All the pain was gone. There was nothing there but the dark and the cold to usher me home...
Two perceived seconds later, I squealed like a stuck pig as sensation flooded back into my body, starting in the center of my chest. Pins and needles rocketed up my back, spun around my groin, then made my teeth feel like I’d taken a big mouth full of squirming worms.
I jerked my eyes open and sat bolt upright. Limerence stood over me, his horn shining, while my partner fussed with my chest pouch. Taxi had her legs around my neck, holding me in place.
“Get the bloody plug into him!” the librarian snapped, and Swift abandoned the attempt to open the pouch with her hooves, grabbing the toggle in her teeth. She managed to pull it open, but not without almost tearing the flap of skin off in her zeal to get it done. I wanted to stop her, but my limbs seemed momentarily frozen.
Swift slipped the plug into me, then stepped back. Lim’s horn winked out and he sighed with relief.
My heart was pounding and the ache was back, but it was quickly receding.
I found my voice.
“What… in the… whole of Equestria… was that?”
Limerence glared death at me. “You had a heart attack, you idiot!” the librarian snapped. “Did we not tell you to keep that prosthesis charged? How long has it been?”
Taxi gave him a push with one toe. “Hey, back off! I watched him charge it yesterday!”
“Unless he has been severely injured in the intervening period-”
I shook my head. “I charged it before I went to bed. Kid, back me up on this.”
Swift nodded. “I watched. It was totally fine.”
The librarian’s frown deepened. He looked down at the robe, which lay discarded on the rug at his hooves. Lifting it with his horn, he flipped the cloak inside out. With a little jerk of his head, he yanked out the threads holding the inner lining closed, then ripped the interior off.
I’m not sure who made the little gasp noise, but Limerence dropped the torn robe, eyes widening as he took a couple of steps away from it.
Live in a place like Equestria for long enough and eventually a smart pony begins to build up a certain instinctual awareness of when something shouldn’t be poked, prodded, or generally messed with. Magical things are often vindictive, on top of being dangerous. They’ve been often compared to cats, insofar as there’s no telling when one will decide it’s had enough playtime and claw your eyes out.
This particular ‘magical thing’ had the feel of an object a pony shouldn’t get within two miles of.
The entire inside of the robe, from one corner to the other, was a mass of silvery threads woven into stunningly intricate spellwork that defied the eye to make logic out of it. Whorls and swirls wove into and over top of one another in no recognizable pattern, though there did seem to be some points of intersection that were fairly common. It was the very center that drew our attention. There, miniscule and the color of wet blood, a tiny crescent moon was stitched into the fabric.
“The...red moon?” Taxi asked aloud, though nopony had an especially good answer for that.
Limerence cautiously picked up the cloak again, this time with his hooves rather than his horn, twisting it so he could peer at the various shapes. “My, my, my...I say...”
“You want to share with the rest of the class? What exactly are we looking at here?” I asked.
“Detective, I don’t like explaining the obvious.” Limerence spread the cloth out on the rug. “This is some of the most unusual spellwork I’ve ever seen and it’s on a piece of clothing being given to the general public. Do I need to explain to you why that is very probably a bad thing?”
“I picked up on that!” I snapped. “I want to know what it is and what it does!”
The librarian sniffed at the robe, then shook his head as he traced the threads. “This... does several... things. It’s not a simple spell. It’s... layered.” He lowered his horn and waved it over the upper left section. “I recognize a portion of this. A complex masking enchantment to prevent the magics interacting with anything besides the robe and perhaps whatever is in contact with it.” He pointed to a particular set of swirls that loosely resembled a bird in flight. “This part is a...mmm...channel of some sort. Think of it as moving energy from place to place. It appears non-functional. The rest, I can’t say.”
“What about the moon?” I indicated the center of the robe.
Limerence shook his head. “It’s a moon. It's red.”
“Unhelpful!” Taxi said, poking him in the side.
“I do not recall guaranteeing all my information would be helpful,” the Archivist said, swatting in the direction of the offending hoof with his tail. “My horn, without spells to back it up, does not give me any more data than your eyes do. The altered cutie-mark of our victim suggests it has some significance, but as I said before, I am unaware of anything in the church of the Passage which utilizes a red moon in either iconography or semiotics.”
I slumped a little, teething at my lip as I tried to figure the next question. Something in all of this felt awfully important, but my rude awakening and my little cardiac episode had conspired to muddle my brain somewhat.
“Alright, Stone Shine said it was the uniforms that made Supermax work, didn’t he?” I asked and my driver nodded. I touched the plug on my chest, thinking. “If...this cloak somehow...drains...magic, then wouldn’t that have been what almost shut down my heart?”
Limerence traced a section of the cloak, then tapped the red moon. “Your heart is, to my knowledge, a unique artifact. There’s no way of saying what interactions it might have found with this spell, but I will say this magic is diverse.”
“It just looks super complicated to me…” Swift commented. “Isn’t most magic supposed to be...you know...simple?”
“Simple? I suppose that is one way of thinking of it, but wouldn't say simple so much as... focused. For greatest reliability, magic is best tasked with actions of limited complexity,” Limerence explained. “You would be amazed how much can be accomplished by ‘push’ and ‘pull’. Levitation, shields, and teleportation are all, effectively, just variations on those two actions.”
My partner’s eyebrows drew together. “How is teleporting all about pushing and pulling?”
Limerence shifted his weight and a tiny smile appeared on his thin blue lips. He apparently enjoyed the ‘lecturer’ role. “Ahhh… yes. A good question! A mage, of adequate power and finesse, may push an object into a phased state by altering the vibrational paradigm of the matter in question. He can then transport it between two points at very near the speed of light.”
Swift squinted at him, then rubbed Goofball’s neck with one wing. “Oookay. What’s...well, what’s different about that robe?”
He shook his head and flicked one toe at the edge of the cloth. “Whatever spell is here seems to...mmm...seems to act differently dependent upon what stimulus it is exposed to. I would go so far as to say, given the right channeling of energies, this might produce a quite wide range of effects.”
“A wide range…” Taxi murmured to herself, then stood, pacing in a little circle. One of Goofball’s heads followed her while the third went about the business of grooming his crotch and the other nuzzled Swift. She stopped, suddenly, and turned to face us. “Saussurea was a jailer, correct? With a talent for binding magic into objects. She used it to control her inmates, and make them docile?”
I felt a tickle in my cutie-mark, this time much less alarming. “You don’t think she’s been… mind controlling the ponies of the Passage?”
Limerence’s nostrils flared as realization took hold. “Nothing so uncivilized. No, she’s not even needed to. This… cloth… must encourage obedience. A subtle manipulation of thought patterns. A... push in the right direction, if you will. It feels quite comfortable to wear, yes?” I nodded and he continued, “I suspected as much. Spells woven into the cloth to make it feel comfortable and the wearer feel content. Happy even. Too subtle to be detected against the background magics of Equestria, but…”
“-but if you wore this for long enough, you’d get...what? Addicted?” Taxi asked.
“Psychologically dependant, certainly,” Limerence agreed. “I imagine there are supporting magics and there is… some part of this that I can’t exactly fathom.” He traced a particularly thick line of silver thread from one end of the robe to the other, then sideways in a swirl before it returned to the red moon at the center. “It is like this spell is...moving energies, but it goes...nowhere.”
“It managed to dump the entire charge in my heart in about thirty seconds,” I said, covering the plug with one hoof. “Pull off the moon. Let’s see what’s under there.”
Limerence’s horn lit and he gave the fabric a light tug, then tore it free. A tiny sliver of something white slipped out and skittered across the carpet to my hooves. He levitated it up, pushing his spectacles up his nose as he examined the object closely.
“I...mmm...Detective, I believe...this could...be wing bone,” he said, letting the word hang.
“As in...what? From a bird or something?” I asked, worriedly, though I was fairly certain I already knew the answer.
“No… no. I can’t be certain without some testing,-” he replied, “-but...I believe it’s from a pegasus.”
Taxi’s ears stood up straight. “A pegasus?”
Swift’s eyes shot open and she looked over at me. “Sir, tell me that means somepony is robbing graves.” She stopped briefly, then slapped her forehead with one hoof. “Why is that the nicer option?!”
I leaned closer, peering at the fragment. “How can you tell this is from a pegasus?”
Limerence floated his spectacles over to me, holding them an inch or so from the bone so I could peer through. Something inside them hummed softly, then the image seemed to twist, zooming in considerably. I found myself looking at a much larger bone.
“Magnifying...glasses?” I asked, tapping the ear-pieces.
“Quite useful in my line of work,” he answered, then nodded towards the picture. “Notice the hollow structure with the striations in the bone?”
“I...guess so. Why?”
“Hollow bones indicates a flying species. The striations are magical channels. The creature who owned this bone was able to make use of magic, in some capacity.”
“Couldn’t it be dragon bone?” Swift wanted to know.
“I suppose it might, but the hollowing would suggest a smaller species and I set the age, based on texture and wear, at post-adolescence. No, I believe this is... almost certainly taken from a pegasus or a griffin. Being as griffins are more rarefied... The likely conclusion speaks for itself.”
Swift peered at the sliver, then shuddered. “Are... Are we calling this another victim, Sir?”
“Much as I hate it...yeah, probably. We’ve got three victims, now, although I don’t know that identification on this one will be possible. Ruby, the Professor, and whoever this poor pony is. Probably quite a few more, ” I murmured, then gathered my coat under myself and sat. “Alright, Lim. This cloak controls ponies. That much we know is probably true. Theory time. What exactly does this cloak do, besides that?”
Limerence squared his shoulders and pushed his glasses up his nose. “I prefer to avoid speculation, but… there are certain inferences to be made here, I suppose.”
“Make ’em quick. I got dragged out of bed for this and if we’re hitting the prison today, we need to start actually planning,” I said.
The librarian thought for a moment, then pulled a beanbag chair over with his horn and settled it under himself, gathering his hooves up against his chest. “I do wish we’d get some proper chairs here…” he muttered, then took a deep breath. “Well... ahem. The cloak operates, in some way, related to Supermax, yes?”
“Yeees…”
“Supermax’s magical construct was a means of control. If I were a fetishistic jailer with a penchant for psychology with the endless resources of Princess Celestia behind me, I would design a prison of the mind as much as the body. It would encourage positive behavior and discourage negative ones. Above all, it should allow for maximum control over a range of characteristics, across a range of species.”
“So...it could keep unicorns from using magic?” Taxi asked.
“Conceivably -- if this were anything or than speculation -- it might prevent anyone in direct contact with this design-” he pointed to the ripped red moon laying on the carpet. “-from using any form of racially endemic magics. Of course, it would require that individual to be targeted to avoid a blanket shutdown, but... I don’t see why such control should stop with that, either,” Limerence mused, nodding to himself.
“You’re saying it could be worse than stripping somepony of their innate magics?!” my driver gasped.
“Significantly. The wing bones of pegasi channel magic, similarly to the way a unicorn’s horn does.” Limerence pointed to his own forehead. “It is a less conscious activity, in large part, but similar, and it enables flight for pegasi, who are otherwise not inherently aerodynamic bodies. The red moon is... in some fashion sending that magic through this analogue to... somewhere else.”
“What makes you think it’s sending it someplace?” I asked, poking at the red moon with the tip of my hoof.
“You must excuse me. This does touch on some things that I fear might be beyond you...”
I gave Lim a light prod in the hip. “Was that supposed to be that insulting?”
Limerence’s ears drooped a few inches. “Apologies. Father continues to be right about my lack of social graces. I meant this involves some very high level magic theory. No insult intended.”
“Then get on with it. I’ll try to keep up.”
“I suppose an attentive audience is the least I can ask. Very well, then… Hmmm...how to explain...?” Limerence’s glasses floated off his nose and he began polishing the lenses on the edge of his vest. “Think of the moon’s shape and color as a ‘flag’. The magic has been… ahm… trained… by the spell to recognize it.”
“Alright, I’m with you so far.”
“I suppose the simplest way would be to say that if draining magic is what this actually does, then the red moon is being used to send magic someplace once the rest of the spell focuses it into the wing bone. If it were not going elsewhere...well, the wing bone would eventually disintegrate. Too much magic flowing through an object that can’t take the stresses will cause it to melt; after all, finding cheap materials that could handle the stresses was what led to the arcanelectric revolution.”
“So what about giving me heart attacks?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure somepony would have noticed if everypony with an enchanted pacemaker died wearing one of these robes…”
“That... is most likely unique to your condition, I’m afraid. Yours is not a traditional prosthetic. To wit, it operates on your entire body, rather than simply your heart, hence the somewhat outsized power requirements. Most pacemakers go months between recharges. Yours...operates for days or hours, dependent upon the strain you place upon it. This cloak... disrupted...the flow of magic through your body.”
I lay back and tried to work the kinks out of my shoulders. The pain in my left leg was gone, but the anxiety of a brush with death sticks around like a foul aftertaste.
There was also a splash of guilt swirling around the nether-regions of my psyche; Gale, maybe. Feeling bad about letting me down. Not for the first time, I felt sorry for him. He was stuck with a grumpy old curmudgeon too stubborn to die properly and too stupid to stop trying. I wished there were something I could do for him that didn’t involve eating less cholesterol. Heck, I didn’t even know if the cholesterol bothered him or not.
“I assume, because these cloaks are… all over the city, that every member of the church is being affected?” I asked.
“It is a worthwhile assumption,” Limerence answered, picking up the cloak’s lining and stuffing both it and the robe back in his foal-sized saddlebags. “Though the degrees are surely limited by various factors. Distance, exposure, and no doubt a system of some kind designed to avoid arousing suspicion. I would think it would look quite bad if everypony who simply put one of these on suddenly lost their racial abilities or became highly suggestible.”
“Oog...I...that’s a scary thought…” Swift muttered. “I know a couple of ponies from the Vivarium went and joined the Church.”
“An optimistic and fatally stupid part of me is hoping that’s the worst that happens. I don’t want to find myself in a punch up with the entire Lunar Passage,” I said, tugging at one of the straps on my gun harness, self-consciously. “One last thing, though. Lim, what do you think the effect would be of... I dunno... tattooing this-” I tapped the shredded red moon shape laying on the carpet. “-onto somepony?”
Limerence’s nose wrinkled a little as he thought, then he shook his head. “Simply tattooing it onto somepony? Probably nothing.”
I tilted my head, confused. “I thought you said this was the focus?”
“Without the spellwork attached, it is...well, it is simply a red bit of cloth. To make something like that work you would need a space in which to focus the spell.”
“Huh. I...hmmm.” I glanced at the carpet, then looked up and asked, “Assuming you had such a space and could make the spell work, what would happen?”
Limerence contemplated the answer for a long moment, his frown deepening as whatever conclusions he was coming to edged gradually in an unpleasant direction, “If... if the spell were being channeled directly through a pony’s body rather than an analogue? I would imagine whatever effects the spell is capable of might be multiplied exponentially.”
Silence fell over the room, save a soft whine from Goofball, who was gently licking Swift’s face as she absentmindedly petted his heads. It lingered for several minutes as each of us tried to come up with something to say. Ruby’s presence hung heavy in the air. The poor dead filly who’d tried to make her life a little better, murdered for… what? The madness of zealots?
Finally, long past the moment the silence had become awkward, Taxi slid off her beanbag chair. “I’m going to drink the rest of my coffee and see if it’s possible to fall into a caffeine coma.”
****
Three hours later, breakfasted and with another hour of sleep, Limerence and I were poring over the blueprints we’d acquired from Saussurea. After the first ten minutes, I decided drinks were in order and had to pop down to the corner store for beer and gin.
Taxi was somewhere, either sleeping off her java binge or chewing on the furniture. Goofball was just chewing on the furniture, which was fine so long as he kept it to the giant upturned industrial spool we used for a table. I’d given him a good smack on the muzzle with a magazine when he managed to bust a beanbag chair. I was going to have to start putting those on expenses. Swift lay on the giant dog’s back, wings spread to keep her balance, her face in her book.
“Saussurea said there was an approach through the sewers. Am I just not seeing it, here?” I asked, turning the blueprint of the subterranean tunnel network on the east side of Supermax.
Limerence sucked in a breath, then shook himself. “I... can see several places we might get close, but... there aren’t any entrances I would term ‘unguarded.' If the passageways I see here are in any way accurate, these are less safe approaches and more paths of least resistance.”
“Let’s see... there’s the neurotoxin launchers. Those can be handled with... what? Gas masks?”
“Hardly. We’ll need filtration spells. This toxin is an offshoot of chimera venom. It’s been weaponized to a median lethal dose of around ninety nanograms. Unfortunately, that is not the worst of our problems. The area is filled with extracted basilisk eyes and heartseekers.”
I sat back from the blueprints and winced as my shoulders realized just how long they’d been in that position. “I’m... familiar enough with basilisk eyes. I thought their abilities only worked when they were alive, though?”
“They are like any other magical organ, if preserved correctly. I think we should assume that these are preserved correctly. So, we’ll need... mirrors, filtration spells...”
I ran my hoof down the list of weapons systems in the sewer, then checked it against the actual tunnels. “Where are these... ’heartseeker’ things? I don’t see them on the map.”
“Ah... yes, those are... mmm... those are our primary danger down there,” Limerence replied, levitating a gin and tonic to his lips and taking a quick sip. “The toxin launchers and basilisk eyes are relatively old technology which can be trivially counteracted if a pony knows how and expects them. I know of no effective method of avoiding the heartseekers. They are enormously illegal to import and if we encounter them, combat will be... problematic.”
“Sure, I’ll believe that, but what are they?” I asked.
“Oooh! Sir, I know this!” Swift exclaimed, bouncing off of Goofball’s back and landing on all fours at the side of the table.
I glanced at my partner, then held out of my hoof for her to continue.
“Heartseekers are also called ‘daevas.' They’re invisible monsters, except you can see their shadows. They hunt by listening for heartbeats!” Swift exclaimed, rising up onto her toetips. “I had a whole section on them in training for the PACT!”
“What was their method for handling these things?” I asked.
Swift’s shoulders sank a little. “Um... daevas are super territorial, so they don’t like to leave a place once they’re there, but... uh... there’s no really good way to get rid of them. You can shoot them, but they don’t die from it. It might slow them down, but... they don’t die from... well, from anything. The P.A.C.T. just boxes them up when it captures one and puts them in a warehouse somewhere. So long as you don’t open the box, they seem pretty happy...”
I blanched as the real horrible brilliance of that particular security system sank in. “I suppose that’s...entirely in keeping with what I know about Saussurea’s sense of humor. Basilisk eyes that turn anything they see to stone, and invisible monsters that the eyes can’t see. I’ll ask Sweets later on. Maybe one of her zebra friends knows something about how to handle the heartseekers.”
“I will check my resources as well. Regardless, that does leave us in a poor position once we’re inside Supermax. Navigation inside the building itself will be… difficult,” said Limerence.
“Yes, but we’ll all be carrying a few Ladybugs from the Collective with us. Chief Jade gave us permission to use them, so once we’re inside, we’ll spread them out a little and see if we can start mapping the place. If our disguises hold-”
“-assuming we haven’t set off every alarm in the building by then-” Limerence added.
“-then we will find Cerise quick as we can, extract her, and pull a fire alarm. The building should empty and the cells along with it. Once that’s done, the construct will shut down. After that, we can take Cerise to the Chief, get her to tell her story, then have Iris Jade arrest Skylark. Once done, we clean out the Lunar Passage, round up these robes, and set fire to them. With any luck... they’ll have the armor of Nightmare Moon and the moon guns there, too. If that doesn’t put a crimp in the plans of whoever this big smart kahuna who thinks he owns my city, I don’t know what will.”
As I finished, I realized Swift was giving me a look I wasn’t sure I liked.
“What?”
My partner indicated the map of the sewers with one wingtip. “Sir, with all due respect, that is the most optimistic load of road-apples I have ever heard.”
“Ugh… kid, you’re starting to sound like Taxi,” I replied with a laugh, pushing myself back from the table. “This is why I don’t do ‘plans.' Frameworks, action agendas, mission statements… sure. But not 'plans.' I fully realize we’re likely to go in there and everything will blow up around us. It’s entirely possible that Cerise will be dead already and we’re screwed six ways from Sunday.”
Swift shook her head. “I… Sir, I can’t believe that, either.”
“We’re not facing something you can shoot or bite with those big munchers of yours. This is Supermax. The Hole. The bottom of the world. You want out-”
“You already offered me that once, Sir.” She smiled and put her forehooves up on my chest, giving me a gentle shake. “Don’t offer again, okay?”
I paused, then tossed a leg around her neck and mussed her mane all out of shape. She giggled and struggled to pull away as I flattened all the product in her fur. “Heh! Alright, kid. No more trying to get you to back out.” I released her and stepped back to look at my friends. “Sooo... I did it last time. Which of you wants to go wake up Taxi?”
“Not it!”
“Not… Curses! You pegasi and your quick lips… If she kills me, deliver my corpse to my brother, Zefu. He’ll be able to get my last words for my headstone.”
“Are you sure you want ‘Ow, ow, please put my eyes back in their sockets’ on your headstone?”