//------------------------------// // Good Cop/Bad Cop // Story: Dan Vs. The Magic of Friendship(Season 1) // by Barrobroadcaster //------------------------------// "They're under arrest is what they are," a voice announced behind them. Dan, Phoenix and Spike spun around to see another new pony standing in the entrance doorway. Four steel pony guards marched in alongside of him, forming up and raising steely-gray lances at the humans and dragon. "Oh, crap, what did I do?!" Firedancer curled into a fetal position and whimpered. "I didn't know flammable and inflammable meant the same thing! Honest!" "Actually, they don't," Phoenix said. "What?" "Inflammable and flammable don't mean the exact same thing," the lawyer explained. "An inflammable label means that the contents of the vessel are flammable, hence the 'in' prefix. It indicates that you should be careful with the container itself because damage might cause a leak like with certain kinds of liquids or gases that could then spill out and become inflamed. Flammable means that the object or substance itself is combustible and that it should be stored in an area where it's less likely to absorb heat." Dan wore a puzzled label on his face. He shook it off. "What kind of lawyer are you?" "One that's about to go down in flames," the other stallion answered for them again. "That is my job as prosecutor, after all." Phoenix stared back at the new stallion. "Payne." "Writhe N. Payne, Mr. Wright," the mustard-yellow pony said. His mane was two black waves that parted down either side of his face, almost seeming to connect with the dark sunglasses covering his eyes. "Of the prestigious law offices of Payne and Zuffrin, recently reinstated by FIST for legal action in the Steel Empire." "So, you're the prosecutor in this case?" Dan asked. "This trial and yours next, Mr. Dan." Payne wore a smug, close-lipped grin as he adjusted his sunglasses. "Though after I've finished humiliating Mr. Wright in the current trial, I very much doubt he'll be able to defend anyone in court again, much less himself." Phoenix flinched at the boastful statement. (Even in Equestria they have prosecuting Paynes! How many of these guys in the multiverse are there that went into law?! Okay, Phoenix… say something confident. Something to shake him up and throw it right back in his face.) "Um… we'll see about that!" "Hmm hmm, indeed we will. And it'll be one of the last things you ever see," Payne said, even smugger than before. Phoenix gulped hard. (Perfect. Just perfect. Pony Payne is even worse than Gaspen Payne! Why couldn't I have gotten pony Franziska Von Karma?) Just then, the image of a bluish mare with a gray mane wielding a whip found its way into Phoenix's mind. (On second thought, I'll take Payne over Von Karma. Or even Trixie again if that's an option. At least there's less whips…) "Wait a minute, why are we under arrest?" Dan demanded. "If this is about the security camera, I'm captain of the Sparkle Guard! I'm allowed to modify existing public structures in accordance with holiday safety if I deem it necessary for Twilight!" Writhe raised an eyebrow from behind his shades. "And what holiday did you make this modification for? I wasn't aware of one on the calendar." "How about "I'm Gonna Kick Your Pony Ass Day?" Dan asked. Payne only smirked back at him. "That's not a holiday." "We could make it one," Dan fired back. "We'll start a brand new holiday tradition right now. Bend over and get ready to celebrate." Payne's smile grew wider. "Kinky." "Oh my…" Sombra remarked. Dan stood there, dumbfounded. "Did… did you just turn what I said into an innuendo?" The prosecutor smirked. "I don't think you needed my help for that, Mr. Dan." "What's that supposed to mean?!" "Hmm hmm," Payne chuckled. "At any rate, you released Sombra, a detained suspect without authorization. That's grounds for arrest, you know." "I…" Dan stopped. He then realized the stallion was exactly right. "The Director guy tricked us!" Spike exclaimed. "This is all a trap!" Dan turned to Sombra. "And YOU! YOU KNEW ABOUT THIS!" "I thought you were breaking me out!" Sombra yelled. "Why else would you be there?!" "We said we were there to defend you! In court!" Phoenix said. "That should at least imply what we're trying to do is legal!" Sombra took a moment to process the statement. "I suppose that does explain it." "Hmm hmm," Payne chuckled again, "so you see, none of you were authorized to move or even to interact with the prisoner. Therefore, you'll be detained until we can determine the full extent of your interference." "Interference?" Dan asked. "He was in a cardboard box!" A realization struck Dan and he turned to Sombra. "WHAT WERE YOU DOING IN A CARDBOARD BOX?!!" The shadowy pony turned away. "The box had a special spell placed over it that I could not undo. I was trapped inside, unable to use my magic or teleport outside. It's likely any material would've worked as a prison with the proper magic." "Terrific. That's just… terrific," Dan said, pinching his brow. "We'll have to make sure you don't accidentally fall into a bucket of KFC or get trapped in a camping tent." "I've seen that happen before, actually," Phoenix remarked. "With the camping tent. It's surprisingly easy to get tangled up in those things. It happened to a friend of mine." "We're taking an RV if we go camping," Dan stated. "Maybe after we demolish all the Magic Gears, we can make a winnebago and go on vacation." "That's assuming your parole will allow that," Payne said, adjusting his glasses again. "Of course, if they banish you to the sun, moon or Tartarus, you could think of that as a permanent vacation." "Maybe I'll send YOU on vacation with a-…" Dan stopped himself. The others noticed it. Payne stood with an eager smirk on his face, Dan could tell he was waiting to turn around whatever he was about to say. "With a… with a, uh… and I'll…" Payne's eyebrow raised again. Phoenix grabbed Dan by the shoulder. "Dan, be careful what you say to him. He could use anything we say against us in the trial." "Gnrrrrrrrrrrr," Dan growled, rage building. "Hmm hmm hmm," Payne laughed, turning his back to them and exiting. "Don't worry, Mr. Dan; I won't disclose your expressed desires to the courtroom. But I do appreciate the confession- it will most certainly help my case." "C-confession?" Phoenix asked. "But then… oh no… this whole conversation is being recorded!" "Thanks for noticing, Mr. Wright!" Payne waved. Dan's blood began to boil. His limbs vibrated and his entire body shook with rage. His fists balled, he threw them up into the air and shouted "ACE ATTORNEY!!!!!!!!!!!!" Payne looked back over his shoulder and smiled at the group. "You just got turned about!" "Wow…" Firedancer said. "That guy's a prick. I'd hate to be on his bad side." He looked at Dan and the others. "So what are the guards here for?" None of them answered him. The guards pointed their lances, which were the same lances they usually used in jousting tournaments, at the four suspects. Dan reluctantly raised his arms with a scowl. "You gonna put us in a cardboard box or have we been upgraded to styrofoam?" "Move. Now," the guard instructed, his voice stoic. The others all followed suit, bipeds raising their arms/claws and Sombra and Firedancer leading the group down the hallway. They were escorted at lance-point by the guards into a small room. There were no bars and the door was sliding glass, simple but reinforced. The guards forced them in and closed the door behind them, locking it with an electronic seal of some kind. Without a word, the guards about faced and left them. Dan prodded the glass with his thumb. "Well, I could probably break us out of here if Sombra or Spike would like to volunteer their horns or claws. Or teeth." The two covered their mouths in response, shying away from the goatee'd escape artist. "WELL DON'T EVERYBODY VOLUNTEER ALL AT ONCE." "I kinda need my claws… and teeth," Spike said. "For specific dragon-related things." "I'm gonna be delicate," Dan defended. "Do I not perform every action with carefully calculated precision and finesse?" Spike's lip trembled. "D-do I have to answer that question?" The three of them began a deliberation about various escape plans that may or may not have involved using them to break through solid material with varying degrees of success. Phoenix turned his attention to Firedancer, who was busy occupying himself with a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic coloring and activity booklet that even came with stickers. He laid down in the middle of the floor and went to coloring in a picture of Sunset Shimmer. There was a shelf of books and even a magazine rack in the room, along with a few chairs for furniture. It looked more like a waiting room than a jail cell. "Looks like they left us with some entertainment," Phoenix said. "Yeah but the box of crayons is missing a few colors," Firedancer said. "I was in here before you guys showed up." "The trial's that sensitive they're detaining the witnesses, too?" Firedancer rubbed his neck. "Well… not all of us. Just me, actually." "Why is that?" Firedancer shrugged. "I guess the six of us just make other ponies nervous," he said with a light chuckle. "Me and my brothers, well… we kinda have our quirks, I guess." Phoenix crouched down next to him. "You and your brothers seem very unique. There are six of you?" The stallion nodded while coloring. "Yeah; me, Lightning Claw, Ice Pick, Rock Saw, Wind Tunnel and Wave Runner. Vice says we're like a new set of elements or something for the new Equestria but I don't really get it. He says he doesn't like magic but then most of his stuff involves a lot of magic. It gets really confusing sometimes," he said. "Hey, could you pass me the box? "Sure," Phoenix grabbed the box and handed it to him. "You're drawing a blue Sunset Shimmer?" "Yeah," Firedancer said, holding up the booklet. "They're missing a few of the colors so I have to make do with what I have. So, viola! Sapphire Sunset!" Phoenix nodded, impressed. "Not a bad name. It looks pretty nice." He lowered it back to the floor. "Thanks. I wish I had a lighter blue for her eyes, though. But they don't have that color." "Maybe you could make that color," Phoenix suggested. "How?" Phoenix picked up the blue crayon which curiously matched the color of his suit. "May I?" Firedancer nodded. "Sure." The ace attorney colored in Sunset's eyes with the blue crayon, carefully coloring inside the lines. "Sometimes you can combine two colors together and make something new, even what you need. Sometimes, it's even a little better than just using one color." He then picked up a yellow crayon and lightly brushed over it in even circles. He just lightly touched the edge of the crayon to the blue until Sunset's eyes became not green but began turning a lighter shade of blue. "There you go." "Heh, thanks," Firedancer said. "Well, I guess it's finished. I guess there's nothing else to do with the crayons now," he said, holding the box in his lap. "I actually have something," Phoenix said. He pulled out a folded white paper from his coat pocket. "They actually forgot to color this in when they drew it," he said, unfolding it for Firedancer. Firedancer looked over the piece of paper. ""TX-99 Type VG Master Gear"?" he asked. "Where'd you get this?" "A couple new clients gave me a copy," Phoenix answered. "They like building machines, too." (I'll have to remember to ask for cash up front the next time I represent them.) "Cool," Firedancer said. He spread it over the activity book on the floor. "What color should we make it?" "How about… umm… gray?" Phoenix suggested. "Ha, same color as my coat," Firedancer said and happily began coloring. Phoenix looked over the pony's shoulder. "It sure is uh, intimidating." "Oh yeah," Firedancer said. "I've actually seen where they're building the real one." "I see," Phoenix said. "At uh… Prosperity Mountain, was it?" "Yeah," the pony replied. "It's gonna be even bigger than the Mentor Gears when they finally finish it. But Vice is only making one of them so that he and Dan and all of us can lead the Arcane Gears for the assault on Earth." "Arcane Gears?" Phoenix asked. "And those are…?" "Big battleship thingies," Firedancer said. "The sea ponies are building them underwater, two of them. All the Magic Gears are gonna be inside of them and then when they get to Earth, they all jump out and swarm all over the world blowing up everything," he made a big explosion-shape with his hooves. "Pretty cool, huh?" "And he needs Dan for this attack?" Firedancer nodded. "Yeah, most humans, like you, get summoned here by ponies when they need you for stuff. But Vice says that humans can summon ponies and stuff from Equestria to Earth if they have a strong enough magical connection. And it has to be specific, like, the only things that get summoned are whatever the pony or human really wants at the time," he explained while coloring in the Master Gear. "So, Vice Grip wants to use Dan to summon his army?" He nodded again. "Yep. He thinks Twilight or somepony summoned Dan to Equestria so they can put him back. Or Chrys can turn into whoever did it and then she can send him back to Earth. And Dan will reappear right where he was right before he came here." "I was about to crash into the ocean!" Dan exclaimed. "JEEZ!" Phoenix jumped. "Ha-have you been listening this whole time?" "Sure, Sunset Shimmer's blue now. Whatever. What's this about him teleporting me back to Earth?" Dan demanded. Firedancer got up and backed away from the picture. "I… um, I'm not sure…" "Dan," Phoenix turned to him, "I'm trying to get somewhere with the kid." "I'm eighteen." "Fascinating," Dan said to the pony. He then turned to Phoenix. "Are you sure about anything this guy tells us? He could be lying. Or worse. Vice could be listening in through him, trying to feed us false information." "I… actually hadn't thought of that," Phoenix admitted. "But there's still a lot we can learn if we work with him rather than trying to threaten him." "All right," Dan said. "So you wanna do a little good cop/bad cop? Get Spike to hold a microphone?" "No, no look… just let me keep talking to him," Phoenix said. "I think his information is trustworthy." "Okay, Nicky," Dan said, nodding. "You're good with the details so I'll leave this to you. Spike, which of your claws would you say you like slash need the least?" "I really think we should try teleporting again. It just seems like we didn't really try to teleport with every angle-" "I'm not doing that again without a helmet," Sombra said. "You heard him, Spike. Gimme the claw." "I WANNA TALK TO MY AGENT! HELP!!" Phoenix turned back to Firedancer, who was hiding behind the bookshelf with his tail sticking out. "It's all right. They went back to trying to get the door open." The stallion poked his head out again. "Oh… yeah, I can tell. I just… I'm sorry, I don't like confrontations." "It's all right," Phoenix said, patting the pony on the shoulder. "We're just trying to help out our friends. Dan might be kind of hostile but he's a nice guy once you get to know him. He means well and he cares about everypony… in his own way." "Yeah… it looks like that way involves a lot of yelling," Firedancer said. "More than you can imagine," Phoenix said. "But Dan is still my friend. Do you know how Vice Grip is planning on using him to summon the Magic Gears to Earth?" "Well…" Firedancer stepped out from behind the shelf. "Summoning spells are specific. The only reason why a human would summon a bunch of Magic Gears would be to blow up Earth. And Dan's the only person who would ever be angry enough at humanity to want to blow up every city on Earth." "How does Vice know all this?" Phoenix asked. "Vice Grip was on…" Firedancer trailed off all of a sudden. "Vice was…" He grabbed his head and shook. "Vice was on…?" Firedancer shook his head again, then looked up. "What?" "Vice Grip," Phoenix said. "We were talking about Dan and Vice Grip." "Oh yeah, sorry," Firedancer said. "Vice Grip was on Dan's plane. The Trans Toler-whatever thing." "Vice was on the plane?" Firedancer nodded. "Yeah and the Director, too. He even looked right at her but he didn't recognize her." "Her?" Phoenix asked. "But the Director's a guy." Firedancer shrugged. "I dunno. She seems like a girl to me. But she wants to seem like a lot of stuff… anyway, Vice actually wasn't there spying on Dan but the Director was. But Vice got Dan's text message after he fell out of the plane." "A… text message?" "Yeah," Firedancer said. "Dan made like a list of all the things he wanted to get revenge on, which is pretty much everything. He even put "Everything" on it so Vice can pretty much use that as a spell. If he puts Dan back in the same situation, makes him that mad again, he can summon all the Magic Gears to Earth and they can blow everything up. Pretty specific, huh?" "Incredibly specific," Dan said. "I tried to send that message to Chris. I've been pissed off at everything- clothing stores, shopping malls, golf courses, hotels, people who text while riding bicycles. And there are people like that, things like that in every city on Earth. The way the message is formatted… it does make it look like I want revenge on the whole world," he remarked solemnly. "I guess I didn't realize it at the time." Dan pulled out his cell phone. The message, still registering as unsent, was preserved in its entirety in his phone's memory. He hadn't been able to use the texting function of his cell phone since arriving in Equestria; the message was still unsent, trapped in a limbo between Equestria and Earth. As he scrolled through it, he remembered the way he felt, the way he would feel again even now. Thinking about things in different ways changes how we feel about them. Looking at something from a different perspective or in a different context can change our opinion of it, interpreting it in a different way. But how we feel about it in a certain context can still remain; rather than changing an opinion, another one is made. Like universes overlapping, your opinion can incorporate both positive and negative- yes and at the same time no. It's contradictions like this that cause friction and at the same time, resolve for individuals like Dan. Everything. It was a list of things that Dan hated… and at the same time loved. And it was only since coming to Equestria that he realized it. "I am just like Vice Grip," Dan said. He slowly put his back to the wall and slumped to the floor. "All this time… he's doing exactly what I've been doing. Trying to make his world a better place by any means necessary." "Dan," Phoenix put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Don't let him get to you. You're not trying to blow up or hurt anything… are you?" He looked at Dan's eyes, still staring into the distance. "Dan?" Dan looked up at Phoenix. "Of course I'm trying to blow up somepony. I'M TRYING TO BLOW UP VICE GRIP!! 'Let him get to me?'" Dan stood up. "Did you forget who you're talking to, Nicky?" Phoenix exhaled, along with Sombra and Spike. "You… you did have me kinda worried for a second." "Ha, I'll have you worried for longer than a second before this is over, Nicky," he patted the lawyer on the back, which somehow consoled him and made him even more concerned at the same time. Which he ultimately found reassuring. "Well, we got good news and bad news about the door." Phoenix looked at the door, covered in scratch marks that blurred the glass. There were even scorch marks where Dan had apparently tried to use Spike's fire breath as a makeshift blowtorch. "You guys weren't able to unlock it?" "Actually, it was open the entire time," Dan said, rubbing the back of his neck. Phoenix noticed Sombra and Spike in the corner, curled into balls. "We probably would've noticed that if we took two seconds to examine the door. But the guards are right outside in the hallway. So we're still stuck here." Phoenix raised an eyebrow. "But couldn't we take out the guards or just teleport past them or-" "Shhh," Spike climbed on Phoenix's back and covered his mouth with his dulled claw. "The audience has to have something to complain about." "And that's the message of this chapter," Sombra said. "You can like and hate something at the same time." "Then why wasn't Flash Sentry here?" Spike asked. Badum tiss. "Now, before the trial tomorrow, I have a few questions of my own for Firedancer," Dan said, walking over to the stallion. He hid behind the shelf adorably in response. "Oh no," Phoenix said, predicting what Dan was about to do. "Don't tell me it's good cop/bad cop time." "Not exactly," Dan bent down and picked up the piece of paper off the floor. "Firedancer," he said, holding the picture of the Master Gear up to the pony, "If you were me and you wanted to break one of these things, where exactly would you hit it to make it blow up?" Firedancer smiled at Dan. He went over with all of them the details of Vice Grip's Master Gear and what his plans. He told them all he could about FIST, even Vice Grip, the mysterious Director and his brothers. He was still intimidated a bit by Dan but he found that he was a nice guy, too, and gained a new respect for him. It was a strange feeling at first but then it started to feel natural. He was just happy to help his new friends.