//------------------------------// // 7: The Helping Hoof // Story: Do Changelings Dream of Twinkling Stars? // by Sharp Spark //------------------------------// The rest of the folder only confirmed more of the same. There were copies of dossiers on several ponies tied to the Day Guard who Star had ‘taken care of’, long transcripts of conversations, bank records that detailed payments with some extra sleuthing that traced the source back to Night Guard discretionary funds. A wave of vertigo hit me, and I stumbled, concentrating on keeping the papers firmly grasped in my magic but almost falling down the next flight of stairs in the process. I leaned against the cool wall as my head felt like it was going to split open. It changed everything and it changed nothing. I closed the file and set it on my back before gritting my teeth and pressing on. At ground level, I opened the door to the lobby and shut it again. A whole squad of Royal Guards filled the entrance, blocking off the exit there. I don’t know how they had gotten there so fast, but I didn’t have the time to waste making guesses. I weighed my options. Trying to bluff my way out the front, maybe in a Guard disguise. But if they were here for a changeling – and why else would they be? – that didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Tartarus. Going back up would just bring me muzzle to muzzle with Star again. I could theoretically pass by and take to the roof, shifting into a pegasus form… except I didn’t know how the hell to fly, and with the percussion section in my head going to town, I was having trouble even walking straight. That left one direction. Down. DEqSec wasn’t where most criminals ended up. We never claimed to keep the peace, handle the day-to-day like the Guards. But we kept the city secure too, and that meant bringing in all manner of suspected spies or illegals – ponies, changelings, and otherwise – who needed to be kept locked up until they could be processed. Hence the cells in the basement. It took me a couple of tries before I was able to shift into the guise of Starry Sky, one of the big detectives Star had called in to subdue me. My handle on the shifting was getting worse, feeling at the same time some sort of slick slipperiness and deep soreness, like I was sticking my hoof into a fresh cut. I could only guess that the stuff was wearing off. I would have to make it count. “Hey,” I grunted as I strode into the holding area. There was a desk down here for the officer stuck on duty watching everything, a boring but not particularly strenuous task. Today that was Bear Claw, a good guy but far past his prime. He still showed a hint of the muscle in his legs that had made him a terror in his day, but his gut spoke to softer times. “What’s the word?” he asked. “The new boss shuffling things around again?” “Nah. Just following up a lead. Need to have a few words with…” I let the sentence trail off and was gratified to see him pick up the lead. “That changeling from earlier this week?” Good. It would have been much harder had the cells been empty. “Yeah.” “Grab the keys, sign in, you know the drill.” I bent down to grab the pen in my mouth and scrawl something illegible on the clipboard he pushed towards me. With the assurance of plenty of time spent down here, I turned to the wall where a heavy keyring hung on a hook. My ears flickered when I heard him gasp. I turned in a flash but his eyes were already wide with alarm, mouth open as he drew in breath to yell in full force. I didn’t have much choice. I jerked forward and one hoof wrapped around the back of his head to slam it down into the desk. He went quiet with a gurgle. I owed Bear Claw so many donuts when this blew over. If this blew over. A quick look back showed what he had seen: a splotch on my flank showed black exoskeleton. My transformations were getting even sketchier. I offered a silent thanks to whatever deity might have been listening that I hadn’t tried to bluff my way out the front. It wasn’t worth wasting any further time. I tried to lift the keys with my magic, but my hornglow flashed a sickening green before sputtering out, triggering a whole new wave of vertigo. I settled for my teeth instead, and stumbled into the hallway flanked by the cells. Halfway down I stopped. There was a pony in the cell to my right, laying curled up into a tight ball on the thin mattress, her tail wrapped protectively against herself. She looked thin and gaunt, her red coat patchy and pale. My head spun. Did I know this pony? I felt like I did, and the name Ruby Quartz bubbled up from somewhere in my subconscious to confirm. Something seemed wrong – why had they locked her up? When had I last seen her? It felt like an eternity to me. From the looks of things, she would have agreed. Something hit me square in the stomach, something apart from the pulsing in my head and the groaning soreness of my bruises. It wasn’t pain, but something worse. Guilt? The key was in the lock before I could figure out quite why. At the sound of the metal clicking, she looked up at me, eyes wide. “W-what are you…?” she asked, her voice hoarse. “I’ve told you, I don’t…” I kicked the door and it swung into the cell. She jumped as the metal bars slammed into the wall with a clanging crash. “I’m leaving,” I said. “But—” “Go, stay, I don’t care.” I don’t know if I would have done the same if I had been thinking straight. I could barely think at all anymore. But I had survived these streets a long time by relying on my gut, even when everything else said otherwise. I kept moving forward, past another set of cells, before I glanced back over my shoulder to see her peeking out into the hallway. I concentrated on the ground in front of me. One hoof down, then another. When I looked all the way down the hall in front of me, it seemed to swim and twist. Better to look at the floor. I almost ran into the back wall that way. I heard the voice from behind me, still hoarse but showing some iron beneath the soft facade. “There’s no exit here.” I turned to the right. Cell #15. It took me a minute to find the right key for it. We didn’t put ponies into Cell #15. It’s not like we needed to. We hadn’t had that many changelings all together here in one place since the aftermath of the Royal Wedding incident. Those were the bad times. That was when we kept six or seven to a five-foot square box, and they were all slavering fangs and thrashing limbs, going mad with the loss of their queen. That was when a pair had dug down and down and down, ripping their fangs to shreds to get past the hard rock. There was a reason the bed was out of place in Cell #15, sitting in the center of the room. There had been a small drain there once. And now there was a pony-sized hole, down to a drainage pipe and the city’s expansive sewer systems. We didn’t have the budget to fix it. We just never used that cell. Until now. I kicked out to send the bed toppling over, revealing the gaping hole in the stone floor. It was only barely big enough to squeeze through, and there was no telling how far a drop there would be to what was below. Or whether that below ended in stone, water, or something else more unpleasant still. “This will get us out,” I said. Ruby Quartz looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read. “You first,” she said. I nodded, that motion causing the room to spin again, and squeezed my eyes shut, swallowing hard as I tried to regain my bearings. The nausea passed and I leaned forward, peering into the darkness. I couldn’t see anything. I paused, considering whether this was really a good idea in the condition I was in. And then I felt Ruby expertly hit me in the back of the head with one hoof as she shoved me forward with the other. I tumbled into the pitch-black. “Here, bite down,” the voice said. Out of instinct, I obeyed, my teeth cutting into something that gave under the pressure. Sour flooded my muzzle and I choked, gagging. The acidic sharpness cut through the fog in my head and my hooves jerked forward out of instinct. When they slammed painfully against the ropes binding them, I realized my situation. I was on my back, both forelegs tied to the headboard of a ratty bed. The room was tiny. Drab. At my side, Ruby Quartz had quickly backed away from me, a lemon falling from her grasp to wobble its way across the floor. With the return to consciousness, the memory of just where I had seen her before came swimming back to me. “You trying to kill me?” I said, my voice coming out in a strangled rasp. She shook her head. Kept her eyes wary as she looked down at me. “I’m trying to help.” I pulled hard against the rope that kept my forehooves in place. As a rule, not many ponies know how to tie someone up securely – too easy to screw up the knots, put slack in, use something makeshift that’d snap under solid pressure. Quartz was the unlucky exception. “The citric acid will help you feel better. I’ve never seen somepony—” She hesitated, eyes skittering away. “Someling with that bad a case of love poisoning.” “I’m not a changeling,” I said. Silence bloomed, marred only by the muffled yelling of a couple of ponies having a domestic dispute on the other side of a thin wall. “No, really,” I elucidated. “I appreciate your dedication,” she said, “but as somepony who’s tried to fit in for a long time now, I have to warn you... Turning-into-another-pony is a pretty big tell.” “I took a drug, something called Chrys.” Her eyebrows shot up at the name. “You’ve heard of it, then.” She stared hard at the my restraints before answering. “That explains the love poison, alright. An overdose of that would burn you out fast.” “I guess. It was some experimental blend meant to work on ponies. I don’t know much about bug biology.” I remembered my situation. “Changeling biology.” “I heard you the first time,” she said, voice cold. “Hey, I’m not looking for trouble,” I said. “I’m not going to turn you in again or cause problems. Just let me go and—” I tried a simple spell, something to reach out and feel at the knots on the ropes. A prelude to actually getting out that would still look innocuous. I almost blacked out at the feedback. “Your magic isn’t going to work. Like I said, you burned out hard, and that means anything connected with shaped forms will take a while to get back to normal.” I must have had the juice still working its way through my system, or else the effects had been internalized in the form of severe magic exhaustion. I grunted in response. “Don’t worry, it’ll be back to normal in a couple of hours. I think.” She turned and paced the very short distance to a counter at the other side of the small room. “Which gives us enough time to figure out what we’re going to do.” I pulled my hooves forward hard as soon as she had her back to me. The rope cut into the flesh, but there was no give. Figures, the bed would be old but plenty sturdily made. “I go my way,” I said. “You go yours. We never see each other again. Everypony wins.” When she faced me again, she held a familiar folder. She had my evidence. Her eyes narrowed, gauging my reaction. “You’ve been out a long time. It took me a while to get out of the sewers and haul you back here – you’re welcome, by the way – but I still had the chance to take a look.” “A little light reading?” I said. “Or do you know the outlines already?” She stared back at me, and I once again thought I saw something in that face, some kind of weariness beyond her years. “This is bad,” she said, without any trace of humor. “Real bad. What were you going to do with this?” I didn’t see a reason to lie. “Get it to some ponies who could make a difference.” “You can do that? This can be stopped?” “Had to at least try.” My lips pulled back against my teeth. “Not much chance of that now, huh?” The bickering couple had settled down, leaving an uncomfortable silence to stretch between the two of us. “Detective Slate,” she said. “I’ve lived in Equestria my whole life. I grew up alongside ponies. You— You might not believe me, but I moved to Canterlot because I thought I could make a difference somehow. For ponies and changelings both. This is my country we’re talking about. This is my home.” “I see. And that’s why I’m tied to a bed.” “I don’t trust you.” She shook her head. “How do I know you’re not on their side? Trying to get rid of the evidence?” “What other choice do you have? No one’s going to believe you. It’ll just look like some kind of cooked-up changeling scheme.” She frowned at me harder. “That knife cuts both ways, Detective.” “I’m sorry?” “Let’s just say that I also had time to look at a paper. You’re not winning any awards for Canterlot’s favorite pony right now.” “Maybe so, but—” A loud series of knocks sounded from the room’s single door. We both glanced over, then back to each other. “This… all this is your old apartment, isn’t it?” I asked, voice pitched low. A flash of panic washed over her, but she clenched her jaw. “I didn’t know where else to go!” “Well the good news is that it if were the guards, I doubt they’d be polite enough to knock.” She nodded jerkily. “The bad news is, it could very well be someone worse. I don’t have a lot of friends at the moment, and I’d suspect neither do you.” To her credit, she didn’t ask any stupid questions or waste any time. All she offered was a low “Keep quiet!” as she made her way to the door to turn the deadbolt. The door immediately pushed forward until it thudded against the length of the chain locks. I couldn’t see outside from my angle. But that meant they couldn’t see me either. I knew the voice though. “Pardon me, ma’am. Looking for a friend.” There was no attempt at charm. The unspoken threat behind the gravelly monotone wasn’t hard to spot. If Red Harvest hadn’t been looking for me specifically earlier, he certainly was now. And I still had no idea who was covering his paychecks. “Just me here, sorry.” Ruby came across as tired, not showing any of the tenseness she had to be feeling. Convenient dividends of a life of secrecy. “You must have the wrong address.” She made to close the door but it didn’t budge. “I’m pretty certain this is right.” Red’s voice, if anything, sounded resigned. Weary. “How about I just take a quick look, and then I’ll be out of your tail?” “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” she said, more firm. “Then I’m awfully sorry about this, ma’am.” “About wh—” I heard the loud pop just as Ruby’s whole body jerked. She fell back away from the door, her muscles spasming, one hoof flying out to grasp wildly at the countertop. It only succeeded in knocking everything to the floor, and with a crash Ruby landed in a twitching heap next to an overturned pan and the broken remnants of some plates. The bastard was a pegasus, but I knew his M.O. well enough. Red Harvest fancied unicorn-made spellcrystals, meant to restrain, subdue, neutralize. In certain situations, maybe even permanently. He kicked the door, hoof slamming against the wood so hard that I could see the whole frame shudder. The chain locks keeping it from opening wouldn’t hold, not for long. I gingerly reached for my magic, but felt a cold cloud of thorns where I’d normally direct spells through my horn. I was defenseless. Grunting at my aching muscles, I inched back, pulling myself up and as far back against the headboard of the bed as I could. It was all I could manage, but it was a chance. If he gave me an opportunity, came a little too close, I could try to make him regret it. With a crash, the door burst open, busting out one of the hinges in the process. Red Harvest’s eyes were hard as he slowly walked inside. “Long time no see, Slate.” I let a grimace creep across my face. “The pleasure is all yours.”