“It was a lazy Saturday afternoon, and with no work to do, I was lying around in the office, killing time using whatever I had lying around. I was bored out of my mind. I was almost debating going to sleep so that I’d at least be doing something when there was a knock on the door, and…she came in.
“She had legs that seemed to go forever, starting at the ground and going up all the way to her body. I’d never seen anything like them. Later, I would find out that she played the cello. I’ll tell you what, in those moments when I first saw her, the only thing that I could think was ‘I’ll play your cello.’”
“Vinyl, what are you doing?” Octavia asked, an amused smile on her face. She had just entered Vinyl Scratch’s room, where the unicorn was lying on her bed speaking out loud.
“The dame questioned my narration like it was something unexpected. Cute. The only answer I had for her was more narration, describing my actions as I performed them right in front of her bemused eyes.”
“Seriously now: what are you doing?” Octavia asked.
Vinyl Scratch shrugged. “When I get bored, I narrate.”
“…No you don’t,” said Octavia. “Since when?”
“Since I lie around in my bed feeling bored, that’s when,” replied Vinyl.
“Well, could you please stick to narrating in your head?” Octavia asked. “With all due respect, I can picture it getting on my nerves if you keep doing it.”
“Sure thing, sugarlips,” replied Vinyl. This mare was good, questioning my narration like a professional. Was it innocent, or was she challenging my defences, testing me out to see how much of a threat I was? I figured it was time for a little testing of my own. “What are you doing right now?”
“I finished reading my book,” Octavia shrugged, climbing up onto Vinyl’s bed, “and I thought I’d see what you were up to.”
Was this mare telling the truth, or was she prepared for my question and answered with a carefully constructed lie? It was too hard to tell at this stage in the game. Vinyl stared at Octavia, scrutinising her with a careful eye.
“…Anyway,” continued Octavia as Vinyl stared at her, “I was thinking that we could maybe do some pasta for dinner tonight – what do you think?”
“Sure, sounds good!” said Vinyl, snapping out of her intense stare. “You want me to make that sauce you really like?”
“You know me too well,” Octavia giggled.
“What time is it now?” Vinyl asked. “I might get started soon, seeing as how I’m not really doing much right now.”
“I think it’s around half-past six,” said Octavia after a brief moment of thinking.
“Cool, looks like I’ll get started then,” Vinyl said, getting up from her bed and jumping to the floor. “Unless something disturbs us, we should be eating in about –”
There was a loud set of knocks from the front door.
Both Vinyl and Octavia looked at each other for a moment in confusion. Although the two were hardly introverts, they nevertheless rarely got visitors, let alone visitors in the early evening. After neither of them said anything, Vinyl commented, “I’ll answer it.”
I stepped out of my room, every hoofstep decreasing the distance from myself to the door, Vinyl internally narrated. Neither Octavia nor I were expecting anyone, which begged the question: who could be visiting at this hour? Vinyl opened the door to find an Earth pony with a blonde mane and a cream coloured coat outside. She was wearing a red scarf and had a heavy coat on.
“Oh thank Celestia, I got the right address,” said the pony, stepping into the house without being invited. “If this had been the wrong one, I wouldn’t have known what to do, Vinyl Scratch.”
Who was this mare, stepping into my house as though she owned the place? What was she doing here, coming to Octavia and my house of all places? Every question sparked new ones. “Who are you?” Vinyl asked, frowning slightly. “How do you know my name? I’ve never seen you before.”
“Your name is on the letterbox, the door, and you once handed me an advertisement for a gig of yours whilst saying ‘My name is Vinyl Scratch,’” the mystery mare said.
“…I see I’ve underestimated you,” Vinyl commented. This mare was good. Maybe even better than Octavia. Well, not really, because even if Octavia wasn’t my marefriend, she’s still way hotter and cooler. But this mare was certainly good, being able to deduce my identity from just those few clues.
“Vinyl? Who is it?” Octavia asked as she emerged from the corridor.
“My name is Winter Snow,” the mare answered. “I’m a barmaid in the downtown district of Canterlot, and I need your help.” Seeing the confused expressions of Vinyl and Octavia, she added, “I can tell that you’re both wondering what I’m doing here, so I’ll start at the beginning.”
As we headed to the lounge room to sit down, the mare told us that she would begin her tale at the start, Vinyl continued narrating internally. I silently wondered why. What was there at the middle or the end of her tale that she didn’t want us knowing? How would the context differ? What did she have against in media res? The desire to know the answers to these questions burned inside me, but I waited patiently for her to explain.
“So, Winter Snow, you said you were going to start at the beginning?” said Octavia as the mares all sat down on armchairs.
“Yes, of course. I apologise for my hesitance, it’s just that this subject matter is quite…personal,” said Winter Snow. “I’m trying to work out where exactly to begin.”
This mare was definitely hiding something from us, that much was obvious. I had a hunch about it. “How about you tell us why you came to us?” Vinyl said. “Neither of us have met you before, and unless you need some music played somewhere, I don’t see how we could help you.”
“Right, right…” Winter Snow said, clearing her throat. “I guess that’s a good a place as any. Well, Vinyl Scratch, Octavia, I’ve come to you two because I need your help in finding my husband – who is currently suspected of murder.”
Octavia gasped as I sat there, pondering it. I knew it. I knew that she was hiding something from us. Well, she told us basically as soon as we asked her what it was, but still!
“I’m sorry…but what in the hay?! Why are you coming to us with this?” Octavia asked. “Shouldn’t you be seeing a lawyer, or a private investigator?”
“Simply put, I don’t have enough money to afford either of them,” Winter Snow said, blushing slightly. “And as for why I came to you two… well, Vinyl Scratch did say that I could see her whenever I needed help.”
“I’m sorry, but when did I ever say that?” Vinyl asked. “I’ve never even seen you before!”
“You probably don’t remember me because you were so drunk at the time, but one time you were drinking at the bar I work at and you ended up saying it to me,” Winter Snow explained. “That’s also when you gave me the advertisement for your gig.”
Could it be? Was my own damn drinking habit blocking my memory of Winter Snow? It sounds true, but something about her seems too fishy. The dame was up to something, but I didn’t know what.
“So… you’re saying that because Vinyl drunkenly said to you who-knows-how-long-ago that you could count on her if you were in trouble, you’ve come to both of us for help in finding your husband and clearing his name of murder, rather than hiring a lawyer or a private investigator because you can’t afford either?” Octavia asked.
“That’s right,” Winter Snow said, nodding. “I’d go to my friends or family for help, but…the murder allegation has caused me to become a bit of a black sheep at the moment. Please. You two are literally my only chance.”
“Why should we help you?” Octavia asked. “You’re a stranger to us.”
“So you’re saying you won’t help me?” Winter Snow asked slowly. Her lip wobbled slightly. “You’re saying that… I’m going to have to go back to my empty house, to await the inevitable announcement of my husband’s arrest? That two kindly mares like you two won’t help a friendly face, who one of you swore to help?” A single tear rolled down Winter Snow’s cheek.
I’d seen this act with all sorts of dames. Crying, accusing me of being heartless, claiming they needed me…it was all old-school to me. “Winter Snow…” Vinyl began. But there was a problem with it…even though I knew it was all an act, I still couldn’t help but fall for it every time. “We’re sorry – it’s just that this is all kinda unexpected. But we can help you find your husband and clear his name.” I guess I care too much is my problem.
“We will? I mean, we will!” Octavia said.
Winter Snow nodded. “Thank you, you two. I know that this is a big ask, and that you two don’t have much reason to help me, but I assure you that I’ll make it worth your while, somehow.” She reached a hoof inside her coat and withdrew a folder. “The murder occurred two nights ago. Here’s all the information I have on it.” She threw the folder lightly onto the coffee table.
I recognised the type of folder that the dame threw onto the coffee table like a metaphor about throwing. It was the same type that guards kept about high-profile cases – very highly guarded, I should add. Who was this dame, and how had she gotten this restricted information? This highly suspicious, shady-looking… oh wait, it has a price sticker on it. She must have bought it before coming here. Never mind.
“Do you think that this will help us find your husband?” Octavia asked, flipping through the folder and skim-reading its contents.
Winter Snow shook her head sadly. “I don’t know. But any way that you can help Giovanni-”
“Giovanni?”
“That’s my husband’s name,” Winter Snow explained. “There’s a picture of him in the file.”
“Right, got it,” said Octavia, flipping through the last few pages. “Well, Miss Snow, it looks like this file has all of the information we’ll need to help you. We’ll start investigating this as soon as possible and contact you with whatever information we get.”
“Thank you,” said Winter Snow, writing out her contact details on a scrap piece of paper. “And… Vinyl, Octavia…whilst investigating this, you might hear some nasty rumours about my husband… about some of the things he’s supposedly done. Don’t believe them, whatever you do. He’s a good pony, I swear.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” said Octavia. “If we’re all done here, I’ll show you to the door.”
Even as Octavia led the dame to the door, I couldn’t help but be worried. There was something suspicious about her that I couldn’t put my hoof on. Was it the information she procured? The odd decision to come to us of all ponies to help her? The way she carefully planned her words before speaking?
“I will secretly betray you both later.”
For some reason, I just couldn’t help but think that she was going to secretly betray us later. But why? What was the clue, staring at me right in the face? Or was I just being paranoid?
“Well, that was certainly odd,” said Octavia, returning to the lounge room. Vinyl was lying on her favourite couch, deep in thought. “Can you believe that she came to us of all ponies?”
Vinyl shrugged slowly. “It’s weird, but her story makes enough sense. And hay, she seems nice enough that I don’t see why we shouldn’t at least try and help her.”
“Mmm, I was thinking that if after a day or two of trying to help her we don’t find anything, we’ll just tell her that we tried our hardest but failed,” Octavia replied.
Vinyl nodded. “Sounds like a plan,” she commented. She sat up on the couch and glanced at the file Winter Snow had put there. “Any idea where we should start?”
“I was thinking that we could have dinner, like we were planning, and then at least have a read through this file,” Octavia suggested. “We can work out what to do from there.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Vinyl agreed. “I’ll get started on dinner right now.” She gave Octavia a quick kiss on the cheek and then headed to the kitchen.
For the next hour, Vinyl and Octavia cooked and then ate dinner, before settling down on the couch together to read through the file that Winter Snow had given them.
“See anything useful?” Vinyl asked after a few minutes of reading.
“Mmm, I do,” murmured Octavia. “It says that the murder was of Switch Blade, a small-time gangster. He was stabbed to death seven times, and his body was found in an alley in downtown Canterlot.”
“Any chance of a connection to Giovanni? Any motive for why Giovanni could hypothetically murder him?” Vinyl asked.
Octavia frowned. “Vinyl, you’re sitting right next to me and looking at the same file. I’m not reading the entire thing to you because you’re too lazy.”
“Fine, fine,” Vinyl said, grinning. “Right… from the looks of this file, there’s no connection between Giovanni and Switch Blade. It says that Giovanni is just a bar owner – the same one that Winter Snow works at, probably.”
“That doesn’t mean that there’s no connection, Vinyl,” Octavia pointed out. “For all we know, Switch Blade could have been running a protection racket on Giovanni’s bar, or he might have been a frequent customer at the bar.”
“Good point, good point…” Vinyl agreed, looking at the contents of the folder again. “You know what I think, beautiful? I reckon we should head down to Giovanni’s bar and see what the regulars there know about Switch Blade – if they know anything at all.”
“Tonight?” asked Octavia. Vinyl nodded. “Well...okay…but we’d better make sure not to get into trouble.”
“I don’t get into trouble,” said Vinyl coolly. “Trouble gets into me.” She paused for a moment as she went over what she said in her head. “Well, that is to say… I don’t get into trouble, trouble gets…in… no, I get… okay, this is not going anywhere.”
As my partner Octavia and I prepared to head down to Giovanni’s bar, I asked Octavia to get me my hat and coat. She replied that I didn’t have a hat or coat. I laughed at her response – that mare always knows what to say to get me going. After a few minutes during which I failed to convince her to give me her hat and coat, we set off to explore the seedy underbelly of our city.
============================
They say that when you live in a city like this one for long enough, it begins to corrupt you. To turn your soul black, and make you into a mere shadow of what you once were. I don’t believe that though. When I mentioned that the princesses of Equestria live in Canterlot, the pony I was talking to said that that was a good point, and we agreed that Canterlot isn’t actually that bad.
At least, that’s what we’d agreed back then. Looking around the downtown area of Canterlot, I was beginning to have second thoughts. All around us was poverty, filth, and more crappy hotels than you could shake a bag of bits at. It disgusted me. To take my mind off it all, I picked up a discarded cigarette from the ground, since I didn’t actually smoke, and lit it with my magic. I breathed the cigarette in, the chemicals from it blackening my lungs burning my throat. Actually, it burned quite a lot.
“You alright?” asked Octavia as Vinyl started coughing and spluttering.
As I opened my mouth to tell my partner the foolishness of what I had done, I accidentally breathed in some of my own backhand smoke, and started coughing even harder. Whoops. Luckily, I could count on Octavia, who hit my back a few times whilst I coughed. I managed to end my coughing fit with her help.
“I hate this city,” Vinyl said as she threw away the cigarette, her voice low and gravelly. “It tears away at you, eating all that you-”
“Just last night you were saying how glad you were to be living in Canterlot, since you get the best gigs here. You also said that you love our house, you love living with me, and you’ll never regret meeting me,” Octavia commented.
Vinyl blinked. “Oh yeah, so I did. Well, I guess Canterlot is pretty awesome after all.”
But even though the city hadn’t eaten away at me yet, I was still no closer to the truth than I had been at the start of this little adventure. There were still so many questions to answer – who was Winter Snow, really? Why had she come to Octavia and I? Vinyl looked around the street she and Octavia were heading down. And where the hell was I?
“Octavia, where exactly are we?” asked Vinyl Scratch. “You do know where you’re going, yeah?”
“We’re nearly at Giovanni’s bar,” said Vinyl. “See that building down there?” She pointed somewhere down the street at a nondescript building, indistinguishable from those around it. “I’m pretty sure that that’s Giovanni’s.”
“And once we’re in there, we’ll what? Question the regulars?” Vinyl asked, ensuring that she and her partner were on the same page.
“That’s what we agreed to, yes,” confirmed Octavia. “I’ve got a plan in mind, so follow my –oh my gosh, Vinyl, look!” Octavia pointed a hoof at a sign.
“‘Black Alley’?” read Vinyl aloud. “Huh, I didn’t realise that alleyways actually had names.”
“Black Alley, Vinyl! Don’t you remember?!” Octavia sounded a little excited, a little worried. At Vinyl’s blank stare, she added, “It’s where they found Switch Blade’s body! The scene of the crime!”
Vinyl literally jumped into the air in surprise. “Shit, the same one?” She glanced across the road. “The scene of the crime… right across the road from the accused’s bar. Well, that certainly makes things more interesting.”
The plot had suddenly thickened, like a bowl of cream being whipped with a fork. Although I guess a whisk would be easier to whip cream with, but I’m too lazy to buy a whisk. But hay, if Octavia wants whipped cream with her dessert, she’ll have to settle for it taking a little longer to be made… Where was I again?
“Come on, Vinyl, we have to take a look at this!” Octavia said, dragging Vinyl by the hoof into Black Alley.
“Whatever happened to going to the bar?” Vinyl asked, allowing her marefriend to drag her down the alley.
“That can wait – we can probably find more clues here! And we were going to come to the scene of the crime at some point anyway, right?” Octavia stopped as the mares came across some tape in the outline of a pony’s body, just like they had occasionally seen in newspapers. There were also some dark stains which both ponies knew weren’t due to grime, and which made them both feel a bit queasy.
“So I guess this is where it was done,” said Vinyl, breaking the silence.
“Or at the very least, where somepony wants us to think that it was done,” Octavia countered. “It’s possible that Switch Blade was killed somewhere else and his body was moved here to throw further suspicion on Giovanni.”
Vinyl grimaced. “The problem is that we really don’t know enough about Giovanni to know whether he is innocent and being framed, or whether he’s really guilty and Winter Snow has just deluded herself into thinking he’s innocent. I mean, hay, he’s missing right now, right? It could be that he’s fled from home to avoid the guards.”
“A completely possible hypothesis,” agreed Octavia, nodding, “but as you say, we don’t know that much about him.” She sighed. “The sooner we investigate Giovanni’s bar, the better.”
“Right,” said Vinyl. “But first we look around here.”
“Agreed. Make sure not to touch or move anything which could be vital evidence.”
Silently, the two of us worked, looking for anything that could be an important clue. Of course, seeing as how this was the first time we had done something like this, it was sorta hard. Was a small pebble on the ground proof that somepony had been through here after the murder, unknowingly kicking it to the side as they walked? Was a pair of paint-stained overalls we found in a bin a clue to the murderer’s disguise, or had somepony just gotten rid of their clothes once a cleaner solution had arrived? It was boring and mundane work, but in the end Octavia and I were able to find a few clues that we hoped would help us.
“So what have you found?” asked Octavia after a good ten or fifteen minutes worth of searching. “I’m not sure whether I’ve found all that this scene can tell, but I’m certainly bored enough of it to take a break.”
“Same here,” said Vinyl. “I’ve found two things which I reckon are clues. But you tell me what you’ve found first.”
“Why?”
“That way when I show cooler evidence it’ll blow you away more,” said Vinyl, grinning.
Rolling her eyes, Octavia led Vinyl over to the stain where the tape was. “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really find anything. At least, nothing which is decisive evidence. But I did note this.” She pointed a hoof to the dark stains, averting her eyes lest she feel queasy again. “The file says that Switch Blade was stabbed seven times. I don’t know how much blood that would leave, but if he was killed here, then there certainly seems to be enough blood to suggest that this really is the scene of the murder.”
“So you’re saying that because there’s a lot of bloodstains, the murder was probably done here,” Vinyl confirmed. “That seems reasonable enough.”
“It’s also backed up by the fact that there are no blood trails, scrapes, or something else to suggest that the body was moved here,” Octavia added. “Unless the body was moved with a tarpaulin or something similar, but if that was the case, the blood would have dried onto the tarpaulin, and there wouldn’t be so much here.”
Vinyl nodded. “So unless we get some other contradictory evidence, I reckon we can conclude that the murder was done in Black Alley.”
“Agreed,” said Octavia, nodding. “So, what did you find?”
“The proverbial jackpot,” said Vinyl grimly as she led Octavia a few steps over. “Look at this.” It took Octavia a moment to see what Vinyl was pointing at.
“Vinyl, that’s just some hair. In fact, I think that it came from my tail, looking at it.”
Vinyl Scratch shook her head. “It’s hard to see with just the moonlight, but it’s darker than your hair,” she said. To prove her point, she lit her horn to illuminate the scene. “When I found it, I compared it to that picture of Giovanni that Winter Snow gave us, and it look like it’s a match. Sure, it could be from anypony, but given that he’s still the main suspect and it matches his tail I think there’s a good chance that it is his.”
Octavia grimaced. “That’s a good point, but I don’t see how this is the proverbial jackpot.”
“Oh, that was just the warm-up,” said Vinyl. “Wait ‘til you see this.” There were some bins in the alleyway, and Vinyl levitated the lid of one of them. “Tell me what you see in there.”
Octavia gasped as she looked in. On top of a pair of paint-stained overalls and a discarded sandwich was an identification card. The photo and information was, naturally, Giovanni’s, and it had a few drops of dried blood splattered onto it.
“How…how did this get here?” Octavia asked, trying to put together what information they had in her head.
Vinyl shrugged. “Buggered if I know. My guess is that because he got some blood on the ID card, he threw it out rather than having to explain why his card had the blood of a murder victim on it.”
It took Octavia a moment to realise what Vinyl was implying. “You… wait, do you really think that he did it?”
“I’m not saying he did or didn’t. But we don’t know much about him, and the evidence is pointing towards him as the murderer. Either that, or this is a brilliant frame, which we shouldn’t rule out.” Vinyl and Octavia both sat down, contemplating what clues they had put together.
The questions swam around my head, taunting me with their mysteries. If Giovanni was the murderer, then we’d just found more clues to add to his guilt. If it was a frame-up, we had no evidence of it, and we had no idea who would be behind it. I felt like I was drowning, with no answers to pull me to the surface. Were Octavia and I being set up? Would we even find out the truth at the end of all of this? Even though there was nothing stopping us from walking away from this case, my curiosity was now piqued, and I couldn’t have left even if- well, okay, Octavia probably could have convinced me to leave the case.
Octavia rested her head on Vinyl’s shoulder, and the two mares stayed in silenced for a few more minutes, their minds going to other things. Finally, Vinyl spoke. “Things sure look bad for our client, eh?”
“That’s true, but that’s why we’re going to keep searching for the truth until we find it,” said Octavia.
Vinyl slowly nodded. “So what do we do now?”
“What we had planned from the start: we go to Giovanni’s bar, and find out exactly who he is,” said Octavia, getting to her feet. Vinyl followed suit. As the two ponies emerged from the alley, Vinyl noticed the name of the bar for the first time.
The Eyewitness. Funny. Let’s see if it lives up to its name, and helps us shed some light on this case.
============================
The Eyewitness was surprisingly empty for a Saturday night. Anywhere else in Canterlot, you’d have stallions filling the bar to the brim, relaxing for the weekend and trying to pick up mares. Instead, The Eyewitness was nearly devoid of life. Once glance at the prices gave me a possible reason for why. In total, there were three ponies at the bar, each of them silent as they slowly drained their drinks. Wordlessly, Octavia and I split up, ready to do the jobs we agreed on. Then I walked back to Octavia to double-check what exactly my job was.
“You need to talk to the ponies here,” Octavia said quietly, “and find out two things. Firstly, whether they were in here the night that Switch Blade was murdered, and whether they saw anything. To be perfectly honest, I’m not expecting much from that. Secondly, we should find out what the ponies here know about Giovanni.”
Vinyl nodded. “Have you noticed how empty the place is for a weekend night? I’m guessing these ponies are the regulars. If anypony will know anything about Giovanni, it’ll be these guys.”
The two of us split up then, this time sure of what we had to do. My first target was hostile, and refused to talk to me no matter how hard I tried or how awkward the silence got. I decided to try him later. The second target, however, was much more forthcoming with information.
“Hey,” Vinyl said, sitting next to the second pony in the bar, a grey pegasus with a white mane. “What’s going on?”
“Nothin’,” he said after a moment of silence. “Nothin’s goin’ on, just like always. What’s goin’ on with you?”
Vinyl shrugged casually. “Not much. In Canterlot for the weekend and I thought I’d check out some of the bars.”
“Check out some of the bars, huh?” The pegasus gave Vinyl a look, but said nothing. “Well, welcome to The Eyewitness, the most expensive and the crappiest bar in Canterlot. If watered down beer for twelve bits a glass is your idea of a bar, then you’ve come to the right place.”
“That’s how much the owner charges? Wow, he must be one brilliant salespony,” said Vinyl sarcastically.
The pegasus scoffed. “He doesn’t care about how much the prices are. Hell, he probably lets the bartender decide the prices. This bar sure as hay isn’t where he’s getting his bits.” Vinyl raised an eyebrow in response. The pegasus gestured for her to come in closer. “It’s not really spoken of…but the stallion who runs this bar, Giovanni? Word is that he’s pretty high up in the Marefia.”
I let out a low whistle, acting the naive newcomer. Was this what Winter Snow had been on about when she said that we would hear some ‘nasty rumours’ about Giovanni? This certainly shed some new light on the case. Switch Blade had been a low-level gangster, according to the file that Octavia and I had been given. Giovanni easily could have murdered him if he was a member of a rival gang, or even because he was an incompetent underling. Was that a word? Underling? I liked the sound of it, and decided to use it more in casual conversation.
“The Marefia?” Vinyl whispered. “Wow…guess he’d have plenty of underlings beneath him then, wouldn’t he?”
Within seconds I had used the word, and by Celestia did it sound good. I think it must have been a real word, because the pegasus didn’t question it. He did question something else, though.
The pegasus gave Vinyl an odd smile. “What are you after, Vinyl Scratch?” he asked, using the unicorn’s real name.
“I – what? How do you – that’s not my name!” Vinyl spluttered.
“Oh, please, don’t sell yourself short. You’re a well-known enough DJ that I recognised you the second you stepped in.” The pegasus grinned. “You come in here with another mare, and then claim to be an out-of-towner on her own? You say that you’re checking out the bars, and come to the one the Marefia use for laundering money? For buck’s sake, you’re not even trying.”
For the first time, Vinyl looked past the pegasus’ bloodshot eyes, smell of alcohol, and slight hunch. Instead, she noticed the wrinkles around his face, the bags under his eyes. Whoever this pony was, he had experience. “Who are you?” she asked. “Are you an underling for Giovanni?”
“I’m a stallion of mystery,” the pegasus said, still grinning mysteriously. “I’ll tell you what: you tell me what you want here, and if it’s what I think it is, I’ll answer your questions.”
Suddenly, I was the one being questioned for answers, the one who needed to tread carefully. It would have been easy to walk away at that point, and leave the danger behind, but I got the idea that this pegasus was going to be a big help. I took a gamble, and decided to tell the truth.
“What do you know about what happened here two nights ago?” Vinyl asked, keeping her voice neutral.
The mystery pegasus laughed. “No need to beat around the bush, Vinyl. So, you want to know about Switch Blade’s murder?”
Vinyl winced. The pegasus had spoken a little too loudly for her liking. She looked around the bar, but nopony seemed to care about what he had said. Over in one corner, Octavia was similarly interrogating a pony.
“Have you worked out yet where Switch Blade was murdered?” asked the pegasus. “Black Alley, across the street.”
“Yeah, I suspected that much,” said Vinyl, “but you just confirmed it. Are you sure, though?”
“Am I sure?” the pegasus asked. He took a sip of his beer, laughing. “You have no idea who I am, do you? Of course not, or you wouldn’t have asked that.” He finished off his beer and waved a hoof. “Bartender, can I have-”
“I think that’s enough of that,” the bartender said, seeming to appear out of nowhere. He was a caramel-coloured unicorn with a greying black mane. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. He looked at Vinyl, giving her a stare. “I think that you and your friend should probably leave the bar now if you want to stay healthy.” As the pegasus started to get up from his seat, the bartender growled, “Not you! Her!” He tilted his head in Octavia’s direction.
Not sure why she was obeying the bartender, Vinyl meekly got up from her seat and walked over to Octavia’s corner. “I think it’s best if we leave now,” she said quietly.
“Not even drinking and you end up getting kicked out of a bar in less than ten minutes, Vinyl?” teased Octavia as she got up. “That’s a new record, isn’t it?” Her laugh fell as she realised how sombre Vinyl was. “Vinyl? What is it?”
Vinyl looked back at the bar as she and Octavia exited the building. The bartender was still watching them with the eyes of a hawk, but the mystery pegasus had gone back to drinking now that he had been served a replacement drink. “I think I’ve found our killer,” she murmured quietly.
Octavia gasped. “Really? Is it Giovanni? Or somepony else?”
“I think it’s that pegasus I was talking to,” Vinyl murmured as the two ponies headed away from the street and down an alley next to the bar. “He seemed very attentive, and could tell straight away that I was there for something. He also dropped hints that he might have been the murderer once he confirmed that’s what I was investigating – he even said ‘You have no idea who I am?’”
“And that’s why you got us to leave the bar?” Octavia asked.
“The bartender kicked us out. I think he might be worried about what the pegasus might do once we piece together the truth. Probably doesn’t want a scene in the bar,” Vinyl suggested.
I had been over it a million times in my head, and it all made sense. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together, and if we could use our logic correctly, we could find out what was going on with Giovanni’s underling. Hey! I managed to use the word again!
“That all makes sense,” Octavia agreed. “This pegasus could be a thug of Giovanni’s –”
“Underling,” corrected Vinyl.
“What?”
“Use the word underling. Doesn’t it sound so much more cooler?” Vinyl said.
“…Whatever. Anyway, I managed to find out that Giovanni is supposedly a high-up member of the Marefia, and Switch Blade was apparently from a rival family.” Octavia put a hoof to her mouth as she pondered the case. “So for whatever reason, Giovanni needs Switch Blade killed. Maybe he screwed up one of Giovanni’s operations, maybe he’s trying to join Giovanni’s family and Giovanni doesn’t like him. Whatever. So Giovanni gets this pegasus to kill Switch Blade, and that leads us to where we are now.”
“Hmm. Are you sure?” Vinyl asked. “I think that the pegasus killed Switch Blade, but that doesn’t explain how Giovanni’s ID and some of his tail hair ended up at the scene of the crime.”
“Good point,” conceded Octavia. “Although with that in mind, we’re at a bit of a dead end now. We can’t go back in the bar, we’ve found everything we can at the crime scene, and I would be willing to bet that the pegasus will take us out once he realises how close we are to uncovering the truth behind the murder of Switch Blade.”
“The truth?” said a new voice from further down the alley. It laughed gravelly. “You two aren’t as close to the truth as you think you are.”
Octavia and I looked down the alley at the newcomer. At least, we would have liked to, but it was too dark to see who they were. Hay, even their voice was mysterious – it could have been either a mare or a stallion talking. Whoever this mysterious pony was, they didn’t want us to know who they were.
“Who are you?” asked Vinyl, speaking into the darkness.
“I don’t want you to know who I am,” replied the voice.
See what I mean?
“What do you mean, we’re not close to the truth? Do you know who killed Switch Blade?” Octavia asked.
The voice laughed in reply. “Why don’t you ask Giovanni? According to you two, he was the one who ordered Switch Blade killed.”
“Giovanni’s missing,” said Vinyl, frowning. “Nopony knows where he is.”
“That’s what he wants you to think,” replied the voice. Vinyl and Octavia briefly exchanged glances. “He has an office above The Eyewitness. Head there after it’s closed, and ask him what’s going on. Ask him who killed Switch Blade, and why.” There was a pause, and Octavia knew that the pony speaking was smirking. “Maybe you’ll even find out why you two were really hired to find Giovanni and clear his name.” Another pause. “That’s all I’ll give you. I’ve already said too much. Hopefully you two can work out the rest on your own.”
“Wait a minute!” Vinyl called out into the darkness as the sounds of a cantering pony echoed. “Who are you? How can we trust you?”
“Nopony said you have to trust me,” replied the voice, sounding further away than before, “but what other choice do you have? And as for who I am…” A final pause. “Call me… Mister F.” That was the end of it. Vinyl and Octavia knew instinctively that the mysterious Mr. F was gone for good.
“What do you make of that?” asked Octavia, breaking the silence.
“I think that it’s worth having a look at Giovanni’s office,” said Vinyl. “The rest of it? I don’t know or care.”
“You don’t think it’s suspicious that we just got handed free information by somepony who we know literally nothing about?” Octavia asked. “That could have been one of Giovanni’s underlings, sent to trick us into a trap.”
“Or it could have been one of Giovanni’s underlings wanting to get out of the business, not revealing his identity for fear of retribution,” Vinyl countered. “Both are equally valid points, but one thing is the same regardless: we’re at a dead end without his information.”
Octavia grimaced. “Do you think that it’s worth breaking into Giovanni’s office to get past that dead end, though? If he’s in there, as Mr. F claimed, he could murder us for breaking in. For coming close to the truth.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that, that’s a valid point,” conceded Vinyl. “But I say that we give his office a look regardless, and at the first sign of danger, we drop the case. Fair?”
“Fair,” agreed Octavia.
============================
In retrospect, we probably should have looked into who this Mr. F was further before breaking into the office. What were his motives for helping us? Who was he? We were just accepting his help without questioning it, being led around by a pony we didn’t even know. I guess we knew somehow that we’d meet him again someday, and that we could solve the mystery of his identity then. For now, we were on a case.
“Octavia and I slipped inside The Eyewitness, the door easily unlocked with my telekinesis,” Vinyl narrated. “Behind the bar was a door saying Staff Only, which we both assumed was the way to Giovanni’s office. Wordlessly, aside from my constant narration, we jumped over the bar and opened it.”
“Vinyl, are you really going to be narrating again?” Octavia asked.
“I’ve been narrating all night, but it’s boring when it’s all in my head,” said Vinyl. “Just let me do a little more and then I’ll go back to doing it in my head.” She gave Octavia her biggest smile.
“Fine, but only because you’re adorable,” said Octavia. She leant in and gave Vinyl a small kiss on each cheek, and then the two ascended the stairs that lay behind the door.
“Octavia and I slowly climbed the stairwell, staying as quiet as two mice – aside from my constant narration, of course,” said Vinyl. “What secrets would we find? What mysteries would we solve? The answers lay in the office, which we slowly approached. We were being as stealthy as possible, the only thing that could possibly betray us being my loud and unnecessary narration.”
“Okay, it’s probably time to be quiet now,” said Octavia quietly as she approached the door at the stop of the stairwell labelled Boss.
“Octavia told me to be quiet, and I nodded in agreement, quietening my breathing and my hoofsteps,” narrated Vinyl. “Damn, this mare was sexy. I would do anything she asked me to, so what was staying a little quieter for her sake? If it weren’t for my loud and pointless narration, you wouldn’t even know that I was there.”
“You’re one in a million, Vinyl,” muttered Octavia as she slowly opened the door and snuck inside, the unicorn following in her hoofsteps.
As far as we could see, the office was empty. Aside from a window through which moonlight was coming, there was a desk, a few chairs, and some filing cabinets. Octavia and I checked the desk first.
“Bingo,” breathed Octavia as she pulled a piece of cardboard covered in numbers out of the desk drawer.
“What else is in there?” Vinyl asked.
“Yahtzee, Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders…it’s a veritable cornucopia of games,” Octavia said, poking around the drawer.
“So he likes to play games, huh?” asked Vinyl rhetorically. “Well, he chose the wrong game when he decided to mess with Vinyl Scratch.”
“Are you so sure of that?” asked a smooth voice. Both Vinyl and Octavia looked around for the source of the voice, and found it: a pony who looked exactly like the photo of Giovanni they had had been hiding behind the door of the office as they entered. He had a coat and mane in similar colours to Octavia’s, only darker. Next to him was the very mare that had hired Vinyl and Octavia: Winter Snow.
For a moment I was startled, and then I realised how long they would have been hiding there, waiting for us, and I laughed. It was sort of silly.
“Winter Snow…what’s happening here? Did you find Giovanni on your own?” Octavia asked. She frowned. “Are we going to get paid for this job?”
Both Giovanni and Winter Snow laughed as they stepped into the moonlight, still shining through the window. “Wow, you two really are suckers, aren’t you?” said Winter Snow. “You haven’t worked it out yet, have you?”
“What’s going on here?” Vinyl asked. “What game are you playing, Giovanni?” She glanced back into the drawer. “If it’s bingo, the joke’s on you, because we’re holding all of the cards!”
“Why don’t you tell me what you think I’m doing, and I’ll tell you how right you are?” he asked. He drew a small crossbow out from somewhere. “And afterwards, we can end this for good.”
Vinyl and Octavia glanced at each other. They’d have to do what he said until another solution could be found. “We know that you hired that pegasus from the bar to kill Switch Blade,” began Vinyl, before being interrupted by Winter Snow and Giovanni laughing.
“Which pegasus? Surely you don’t mean old Shifty Shades, do you?” Giovanni asked, still chuckling.
“He’s a private investigator, you idiots,” added Winter Snow.
“What?!” Vinyl asked. “But… he said he knew about the murder, and, and…”
“Because it’s his business to know about that sort of thing,” Winter Snow explained. “He comes to the bar to keep his ear to the ground, to get information. We let him stay because we hire him sometimes.”
“Then why did the bartender throw us out?” Octavia asked. “If there was no threat from Shifty Shades…”
“He threw you two out because he didn’t want you knowing about the murder, since Shifty was going to tell you everything.” Winter Snow chuckled. “Of course, what he didn’t know was that we wanted you to find the truth. Or rather, we wanted you to follow the case until you found Giovanni here.”
“Yes, you two have been quite the pawns in this little game of ours,” said Giovanni. “Now, before I take you two out, would you like to know the truth?”
“Well, yeah, of course,” said Vinyl. “Who killed Switch Blade? Why were we put onto the case? And why did you two want us here?”
The thing I really cared about, of course, was the survival of Octavia and I. And the longer I kept Giovanni and Winter Snow talking, the longer I had to work out an escape plan. Unfortunately, the way we were now, Giovanni and Winter Snow were in the way of the door, and there was no way past them without Giovanni shooting us with his crossbow.
“Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it staring at you in the face?” Giovanni asked smugly. “I killed Switch Blade, of course. I stabbed him with my personal switch blade for irony’s sake, in the alley across the road from my bar. I even threw my personal ID card around the scene to add to the evidence.”
“But why?” Octavia asked. “The guards would be onto you in seconds.”
Giovanni grinned. “The fact that I’m a member of the Marefia isn’t exactly common knowledge you know… and with my beautiful wife here spreading around the rumour that I’ve fled town, I can keep my head down until the heat’s off. And anyway, I’ve arranged for a body double to be killed in Manehattan, so even if the guards work out that I’m the murderer, they’ll think that it’s an open-and-closed case with my ‘suicide’.”
“By doing all of this, Giovanni becomes invisible to the guards,” Winter Snow explained. “The guards will stop investigating this bar so much, which means more laundering for us, which means more income. It’s all been thought out.”
“As for why I killed Switch Blade specifically? He was bad for business,” said Giovanni.
“So then you had Winter Snow hire us for the case of the murder, but what you really wanted us to solve was the location of your ‘missing’ husband,” said Octavia, going over it her head.
Winter Snow grinned. “Which is why there were so many clues pointing to Giovanni as the murderer. But I couldn’t say that he was the murderer when I came to you, or that he was a Marefia member, or it would look too suspicious.”
“And then when we started to fall behind, one of you sent Mr. F after us to point us in the right direction,” continued Octavia.
Winter Snow fell silent. Giovanni gave her a look. “…Who?” he asked Octavia.
“Mr. F. The mysterious figure who told us to come here tonight,” said Octavia.
“Do you know who she’s talking about?” Giovanni asked Winter Snow.
Winter Snow shrugged. “Never heard of the name.”
“Well… that’s certainly interesting,” said Giovanni. “I’ll have to look into this. Anyway, as you two can tell, I committed the murder… you two were hired… all for the express purpose of getting you two here.”
“Which just leaves one question to be answered… Why us? What did you need us here for?” Octavia asked.
Giovanni grinned. “I needed you two here so that I could murder you in person,” he said, raising the crossbow. “That way, I send a message to the rest of the underworld that I am not only invisible to the authorities, but I can also kill who I want, when I want, and there’s no way that they can stop it.”
“That still doesn’t explain why we are your chosen victims,” Octavia said.
“You two may not realise it, but you’re both minor celebrities. Aside from the fact that the two of you are both exceptional musicians, there’s also the fact that there’s a book written about you two…I heard about the mess you got into with Canterlot’s secret ninja clan… hay, there’s even talk that you two managed to survive one of Natural Twenty’s roleplaying campaigns,” explained Giovanni. “Killing you two shows the underworld that I’m not afraid to kill anyone, no matter who they are.” He drew a bolt back in the crossbow and pointed it at Octavia. “And now, it’s time to live up to my word.”
I grinned at this. Whilst Octavia had been keeping Winter Snow and Giovanni busy with talking, I had come up with a plan. It had taken me a while to see it, to see what advantage my partner and I had over Giovanni and Winter Snow. But finally, I had seen it.
I was the only unicorn in the room.
As Giovanni pressed the trigger for the crossbow, Vinyl surrounded the bow with a magical field, and jerked it upwards. The bolt embedded itself in the ceiling. As Giovanni swore, Vinyl shouted “C’mon, Octavia, we’re out of here!” Vinyl used her telekinesis to snap Giovanni’s crossbow in half, whilst Octavia was smart enough to kick the desk into Giovanni as he angrily began reloading the crossbow. The desk knocked him to the ground, giving the two ponies enough time to get out of the room and gallop down the stairwell.
We galloped for what felt like hours, until our lungs went dry and we both had stabbing pains in our chests. We kept twisting and turning, going down alleyways and cutting across streets, afraid of a bolt whooshing through the air and ending one of our lives at any moment. It was only when we reached the busier parts of Canterlot that we realised the two ponies hadn’t pursued us. The two of us collapsed on the streets, breathing heavily.
“Do you think we’re safe at home?” Vinyl asked.
“Where else have we got to go?” Octavia replied. “But I have a way to get rid of them.”
“How?”
Octavia smiled weakly. “Recognise this?” she asked, pulling out the file Winter Snow had given them earlier in the night. “We’ve got information about the murder in here, and we know that there’s enough evidence at the scene of the crime – plus what Shifty Shades knows – to prove that Giovanni murdered Switch Blade.” She laughed, and drew Vinyl into a hug. “We can put him away, Vinyl. If we present this all to the authorities, and listen to us, we’ll have gotten him.”
“…I think you’re right,” said Vinyl, wrapping a hoof around Octavia. “Holy crap. And we won’t have to worry about the Marefia coming after us, since only Giovanni was planning on killing us.”
“You’ve got it,” said Octavia. “With this file, we’re completely safe.” Laughing weakly, both mares held each other for a long time before eventually getting up and returning home.
============================
“So are we going to hit them in their home?” Winter Snow asked Giovanni. The two had briefly chased after the mares, but with their head start, there was no way that they could be caught, and the two criminals reluctantly returned back to the office.
Giovanni shook his head. “There’s a big difference between killing two ponies quietly in my private office and killing two ponies in a crowded neighbourhood. If we hit them in their home, there’ll be too much noise, too much attention… the guards will look into it too much, and it’ll become obvious that I’m still alive.”
“So what will we do about them then?” Winter Snow asked. “They know too much now.”
Giovanni grinned. “In the morning, we’re going down to the guard station. I think I have something that they’d like to know…”
============================
I woke up the next morning in my own bed, with Octavia half-holding onto me, still asleep. Despite Octavia’s words of comfort before bed, I had been worried about going to sleep, and I was worried that we’d be silenced in the night. But no, it seemed that we had survived the night. And just like that, I knew that we were safe. Sure, we had to go down to the guard station and tell them the whole story. We would probably have to testify at a court hearing, and it would be a lot of work. But the guards could give us protection, and we would get through it all.
The events of the previous night echoed in my mind like something that had happened in the previous night. We had gone up against a mob boss, and he had played a dangerous game: insulting my marefriend and I. But Octavia and I had gotten through it, and we were doing the right thing: avenging a murdered gangster to protect our own lives. We’d made our choice, and we might pay for it, but it felt right.
…Maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe all that matters is that I now have the ability to snap crossbows in half.
There was a knock at the door. Vinyl lay in bed, not wanting to answer it, but it continued, loud and more impatient.
“Fine, fine…” she muttered, getting out of bed. “Who is it?” she asked as she opened the door.
“Are you Vinyl Scratch?” asked the unicorn guard who waited behind the door as she opened it.
“Uh, yeah, I am… what is it?” Vinyl asked, feeling a little tense.
“You are under arrest for the murder of Switch Blade,” said the guard. Stunned, Vinyl stood there and let the guard cast an anti-magic spell on her and put hoofcuffs on her. “Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law. I hope you have a good lawyer, you sick murderer.”
Still feeling numb, both from the shock and the early morning, Vinyl could only say one thing.
“Shouldn’t you hope I have a bad one?”
THE END?