Kneeling down, Sunset Shimmer began to examine the corpse, forcing her body to remain still and not shudder with terror. The unicorn was grey, no trace of colour was left in the body, the cutie mark was faded, the body was somewhat shriveled looking, and there was a small hole bored into the horn near the base.
“He is like the others we have found. All of the thaumaturgical glands have been bled dry. There is no liquid mana left in the body. Presumably drawn out through the horn. Some nefarious force has also drained him, which explains the grey colouration. This is new… the previous bodies still had colouration and their cutie marks, so this is a worrisome development,” Princess Luna said in a low voice, looking over Sunset Shimmer’s crouching form as the unicorn mare examined the body.
“This is like the manufacturing process where we extract mana for arcano-tech devices,” Bucky stated as he looked over the small hotel room.
“Yes and no,” Luna responded. “We extract the raw magical energy we need, but we do not leave holes or bleed them dry. The process is painless, even somewhat pleasurable for some. Something is milking unicorns and killing them,” she explained.
Bursting into the room, Lyra Heartstrings stood in the doorway, her black cloak fluttering in the blustery breeze. She looked jubilant, a smile was on her face, and her golden eyes flashed within her hood. “Good news. The hotel manager remembers who this stallion came in with. Bad news. It was a painted mare of the night. White unicorn, blue and pink mane, lots of makeup. But for once a hotel clerk had useful information and didn’t make the claim of not seeing anything!”
“Lyra, the things you find happiness in concern me,” Bucky muttered.
“Hey, I love my job,” Lyra chirped.
Clearing her throat, Sunset Shimmer lifted her head. “Hey… I’ve found traces of lipstick around the victim’s penis… evidence of oral sex… more importantly, I found magical signatures in the lipstick. I think we’ve found the means with which our victim was potentially put under or knocked out.”
“Wouldn’t lipstick also knock out the pony with the lipstick?” Bucky questioned.
Shaking her head, Sunset Shimmer looked at Bucky. “Master, the wearer of the lipstick might have used an antidote or had some means of immunity,” she explained.
“Fascinating,” Luna stated. “Obtain samples and have them sent to Fever Cure.”
“Shadowbolt involvement?” Bucky questioned, looking at Luna.
“Can you think of anypony better to analyse poisons or pathogens?” Luna responded, raising one imperious eyebrow of superiourity. “Fever Cure and his twisted obsessions might be useful here. Does anypony else have his encyclopaedic knowledge?”
“No,” Bucky answered. “He knows his stuff.”
“So this unicorn, he probably gets paid, goes out, finds himself a nice painted mare, she slathers herself up in red greasy lipstick, gives this pony here the sort of blowjob that sucks his tail through his plothole, incapacitates him, and then some other pony, probably not our gifted cocksucker, comes in and drains this unicorn of his thaumaturgical liquids,” Sunset Shimmer summarised.
“Minion! Your mouth!” Bucky protested, his lip curling back from his teeth as he spoke. He raised his right front hoof and waved it at Sunset Shimmer. “You kiss my foals with that mouth.”
“How is what comes out of your mouth any different, Master?” Sunset Shimmer retorted. “Minion is feeling insolent!” she said and then stuck her tongue out at Bucky.
“Enough, both of you! Mistress is feeling impatient!” Luna commanded, stomping her hoof down upon the filthy carpet. “Both of you are like foals! Annoying little foals!”
“She started it,” Bucky grumbled and then cringed when Luna glowered at him.
“Buckminster, freeze the body, be careful, we need to move it to Canterlot once Sunset Shimmer gets samples. I am going to get my guard to patrol the local dreamscape and see if there are any more clues to be dug up,” Luna instructed, looking somewhat irritated as she glared at Bucky.
Scowling, her muzzle contorted with frustration, Twilight Sparkle stood in the middle of the laboratory hidden within the depths of Canterlot castle, looking at the bodies that had been collected. The most recent was grey and faded, almost like some of the unicorns found during Tirek’s rampage.
Her gaze fell upon Fever Cure, who was busy examining something in a petri dish. Twilight Sparkle didn’t know how she felt about Princess Luna’s Shadowbolt Initiative, taking solar ponies and turning them into creatures of shadow. Fever Cure had changed considerably during his change into a lunicorn, not only gaining shadow magic, but his cutie mark had changed as well, a troubling sign that accepting the Gift of the Night had forever altered his destiny.
“This is interesting,” Fever Cure announced, peering through a magnifying loupe held up to his eye. “These crystalline compounds come from the roots of poison joke plants and have been highly refined. I think it would act like a magical purgative on unicorns, forcing the body to purge everything out of the thaumaturgical system. I need more time to study.”
“This was found in the lipstick?” Twilight Sparkle asked, looking confused.
“No,” Fever Cure snorted, looking impatient. “This was found inside of the most recent victims body, I pulled out one of his thaumaturgical glands, one of the big ones in the neck, and there were crystalline deposits in the tissue.”
“Oh… think we’ll find it in the other bodies?” Twilight Sparkle inquired, now looking curious, her brows furrowing as she stared at the petri dish that Fever Cure was holding.
“I’m betting that we will,” Fever Cure stated, allowing the loupe to fall away from his eye and dangle from a long cord that was clipped to the collar of his lab coat. “I do believe I have found the reason why the bodies look somewhat shriveled and desiccated.”
“Nice work,” Twilight Sparkle praised, looking at Fever Cure. She shivered when she saw his slitted eyes. The change had been profound and the unicorn had taken to the alteration a little too well. He was nothing at all like he once was. Even his demeanour had changed. “So this poison joke extract forces the thaumaturgical system to expel mana?”
“I’m not certain the exact system, but the series of vessels that connect the various mana glands appear to be shriveled… if they shrink, they squeeze out all of the liquid in the system and it has to go somewhere… I do believe it comes out of the hole in the horn,” Fever Cure postulated as he slipped some protective goggles over his eyes.
“So this allows whomever is extracting the raw mana to get a few more drops?” Twilight Sparkle asked as one wing extended and began to rub up against the back of her head. “That makes sense, I suppose if you were after the fluid, every drop would help. There isn’t much to begin with, even a few more ounces squeezed out might be useful.”
“Exactly,” Fever Cure agreed as he slipped the petri dish into a large arcano-tech machine. “Um, you might want to put on protective eyewear,” he suggested.
Springtime in Las Pegasus. The city was rebuilding. New construction was going up in the devastated areas. Bucky hoped that his current visit here would not be like his last visit here. He had made a new year’s resolution to cause less collateral damage. Frowning, Bucky stared out over the city from the high balcony, trying to figure out what was causing this current worrisome crisis that had taken him away from home.
Something out there was draining unicorns for raw mana, a difficult substance to work with, meaning that somepony had to have some sort of facilities to work with the volatile stuff. What was being done with it? What was it being used for? Was it intended to power some infernal device? Were the mirror travelers hard at work again?
There was nothing. No leads. All they had to go on were bodies, drained bodies with tiny little holes bored into their horns and the thaumaturgical system bled dry. There had been no leads from the local painted mares, there was just nothing to go on at all.
“Bucky!” Lyra shouted as she burst into the high rise hotel room they were staying in, she was breathless and flustered, her nostrils flaring as she took heaving breaths.
“Is everything okay Lyra?” Bucky questioned.
“We’ve found a dead hooker. The local police found a body. She’s been murdered. She matches the description from the hotel, it was a long shot, but it paid off, Sunset Shimmer sent me here to tell you that she’s found magical traces in the lipstick on the mare’s lips. She’s the one,” Lyra explained breathlessly.
“Any guesses on how she died?” Bucky inquired in a soothing voice, hoping his calm would spread to Lyra.
“Oh, that part was pretty obvious,” Lyra stated, her eyes blinking rapidly.
“Obvious?” Bucky asked, now beginning to feel slightly impatient.
“Well, her head was torn clean off. Not a clean beheading either… something actually twisted and ripped her head off,” Lyra gushed, entirely too excited about what she was saying and bouncing in place.
“Oh dear,” Bucky gasped.
Standing in the Las Pegasus morgue, Bucky made ready to freeze the body for transfer to Canterlot. The severed head was on a tray on a table near where the headless body was sprawled out. In the corner, one of the coroner assistants was busy puking into a trashcan. Bucky tried to muster pity for the poor pony, but found that he had none. Clearly, the pony had gone into the wrong career field.
“Damnest thing I’ve ever seen,” the coroner said in a gruff voice, a soggy looking cigar hanging out of the corner of her mouth. The mare was middle aged, maybe older, had an iron grey mane and her pelt was stained with nicotine, leaving it a dingy faded yellow.
“Can you tell me anything?” Bucky asked, looking at the cigar chomping mare hopefully, not at all bothered by the smoke.
“Well, her guts were full of cum. So she’s been servicing customers. I suppose she also had a diet rich in protein,” the mare answered, chuckling at her own sick joke. “Seriously, that much cum being digested causes a horrible amount of gas in a pony. She has terrible corpse farts. You’d better freeze her quick before she rips ass once more.”
“I will take your advice into consideration,” Bucky remarked, looking at the mare as she inhaled deeply, causing her cigar to glow.
“I have no idea what ripped her head off,” the coroner stated, shaking her head.
“Personally, I would suspect a golem, which troubles me,” Bucky said in a low voice that revealed nothing of his feeling of worry.
“Oooooh… that makes sense,” the coroner said as smoke trickled out of her nostrils. “Wait, that’s terrifying… there’s a murderous golem loose in the city that doesn’t have proper controls in place about not killing or doing harm.”
“Exactly,” Bucky stated as he moved closer to the body.
“Your apprentice… she left here and went off to look at the crime scene. She took a couple of officers with her. She’s scary… she’s almost as scary as you are, begging your pardon, Lord of Winter,” the coroner said to Bucky, watching him as he studied the head.
“What did she do now?” Bucky inquired in an exasperated voice as he studied the severed head, hoping to find some detail that would prove interesting.
“She didn’t want to wait for a chariot… she was impatient. The crime scene was halfway across the city… she transformed into a dragon, snatched up several officers in her talons, and then flew away with them,” the coroner reported.
“I will have a word with her,” Bucky sighed, sounding more weary than angry.
“There was a lot of screaming and one of the officers soiled himself,” the coroner stated in a low voice as she approached the table to look at the head with Bucky.
In the corner, the assistant finally finished puking.
“Usually there is a lot of screaming and panic when a dragon just appears. Like I said, I will have a word with her. Bad Minion,” Bucky said as he noted a rip in the ear. “She only has one earring. The other one has been torn out.”
Nearby, on the examination table, the headless corpse farted, letting out a truly vile funk and soiling the air. Bucky paused, his nostrils flaring, taking note of the foul aroma. The coroner grunted, muttering something about “not again” under her breath.
And in the corner, the assistant was once again puking into the trashcan.