A Cinepony Studios Production!
Starring!
Coroner Slip Stitch - Played by - Himself
Juniper Shores - Played by - Himself
Chief Iris Jade - Played by - Herself
Radiophonic Telegraphica - Played by - Herself
The Stained Glass Killer - Played by - *Uncredited*
With Detective Hard Boiled Jr
in:
Truth and Justice!
A story of mayhem and murder in the streets of fair Detrot!
Produced and directed by Hard Boiled Jr.
In the boroughs of the great equine city of Detrot—a city on the edge of Equestria’s influence—the streets are a dangerous place for the unwary, but the crime waves that characterized the post-boom years have broken. There is a momentary calm. The mighty gangs that remain—the Jewelers and the Cyclones—still wage war on one another, but it is a cold one.
Between them, the Detrot Police Department stands as a light in the dark wilderness, keeping the innocent safe and evil at bay. Though the newly minted Chief of Police, Iris Jade, is a determined mare, there are many who would tear apart the fragile peace that reigns.
In these dangerous times, two detectives have stepped forward to take up the banner of righteousness against those who would further corrupt their home. When the fighting heats up, they are there to make sure that the public always sees justice. When Death stalks the streets, snatching victims at will, they are there, fast on his heels. Their names are Hard Boiled and Juniper Shores.
This is the story of their last day.
Set: Mid morning, several years ago.
Two ponies lay, side by side, in a dirty apartment on a rumpled bed surrounded by beer bottles.
Scene:
Hard Boiled shifted in his sleep, moaning softly.
Surely, there had never been, in all of Equestrian history, a more pitiful pony than he. His head ached. His hooves ached. He had to pee and that meant getting out of his nice, warm bed and away from the nice warm hooves wrapped around his middle.
‘Hooves around my middle?’ he thought, blearily trying to open one eye and finding it covered by strands of soft, emerald mane. “Oh...right. Juni was too drunk to go home last night. Nothing new there, I guess. At least it’s not hot out.”
Shifting his head back into the pillow, he sighed and ran his hoof through his partner’s green mane, thinking back to that first night they’d ended up piled on the bed, a heap of autopsy reports and a bottle of scotch between them. Waking up with his legs around another male had been a bit of a shock. At first, he’d put it down to the booze, but it happened again a week later. Then a week after that. After the third month, he’d stopped trying to figure out whether or not either of them was gay.
‘In the trenches, it doesn’t really matter,’ he thought, as he had a hundred times before, letting his eyes slide shut.
The other stallion let out a soft snort and buried his muzzle in the crook of Hard Boiled’s neck. The blankets were tangled around both of them and it was going to be tough getting loose with an uncooperative pony hanging on to his waist.
“Come on, you old fool,” Hardy grumbled, wiggling his hips sideways in the hopes it would get Juniper moving. “I need to piss and unless you want a wet leg, you best let me up.”
Juniper, for his part, was fighting the oncoming wakefulness because the waking world is where hangovers live. Far better to spend his time with the comfortable and familiar body heat pressed against his side than go out and face the agony. Sure, his pillow smelled a bit like spilt beer, but beer was a good thing in the grand scheme.
Hardy gritted his teeth as the painful pulsing in his temples got worse and finally overshadowed his desire to stay where he was.
Carefully disentangling his partner’s legs from his barrel, he slid to the edge of the bed and pushed himself up, letting his hooves hang over the side as he studied the sleeping stallion in the bed beside him.
There was some debate around the office as to whether Juniper was green or some shade of olive; it changed a bit depending on which angle you were looking at and whether or not he’d brushed lately. His mane tumbled down his neck in a messy pile the color of clover deep in the season and a bit of scruffy beard clung to his prominent chin. Hardy had always envied that a bit; he’d never had any luck growing so much as a mustache.
“If you’re not up by the time I get back, I’m gonna go in the hall and get the firehose and blast your ass out of bed with it,” Hard Boiled murmured, wiping sand out of his eyes.
Stepping off the bed, he put his hoof on a bottle and almost hit the wall as his hung-over mind tried to compensate, overcompensated, then undercompensated and gave the floor time to sneak up and swat him in the chin.
“Ow.”
Flopping onto his side, he rubbed his jaw with both hooves until the pain in his teeth was displaced by the pain in his skull and bladder.
“Awww, kiddo...you’re always so graceful in the mornings,” his partner commented dryly, propping his head on his hoof.
“And you drank my entire case of that good dark stuff I got from Requisitions for closing the Dart Sing case,” Hard Boiled grumbled, picking himself up off the carpet. His floor needed a vacuuming, but it was a cop’s floor. Hardy had always been of the opinion that if a cop has time to do more than the dishes, he’s not doing enough copping and, even then, good cops have long since discovered paper plates.
Juniper plucked a stray sock off the pillow he’d been laying on, shaking his head as he tossed it towards the laundry hamper in the corner. “Have you considered burning this place? I think it would benefit from a small fire. Maybe a big fire.”
“Now and then, yeah, but then where would you drink and sleep?” Hardy grunted, heading into the bathroom. He cocked his back leg over the toilet and shut his eyes against the sun pouring in from the little window above the shower stall.
“I don’t know, kiddo. Probably find a nice classy gutter someplace with a pillow that doesn’t snore and will get me coffee in the morning. It’d be a step up, I think,” Juniper sniffed, pulling a weapon harness off the end table and holding it up. “Is this yours or mine?”
“Does it matter? I was sober enough to put our guns away.”
“Probably not.”
Hardy plucked a tie off the carpet and gave it a sniff, then tossed it over his head. It wasn’t quite rancid yet and he was pretty sure spots were catsup, rather than blood spatter. Hard to tell some days.
“No shower?” Juniper asked, pulling his worn faux-leather police jacket off the bedside table. The brown vinyl was ripped and bits of stuffing showed through numerous patches on the elbows. He threw it around his neck, letting the legs flap against his knees as he plodded into the bathroom after Hardy.
Hardy nodded towards the clock in the living room. “No time. Telly called before I hit the hay last night. They found a body.”
“A...body we’re interested in?” Juniper asked.
“A griffin body,” he added. “Specifically, a young hen of egg bearing age in unusual condition. Sound familiar?”
Juniper paused, his leg in the air as he stood over the urinal. Slowly, he set it back down. “Well, I mean...you know what they’re like. Griffins turn up dead in those crazy honor fights—”
“The word Telly used was ‘shattered’,” Hardy interrupted. "The body was a wreck. They found her just outside the city and forensics did a full work up on the crime scene. Get this...it looks like she was transported there and dumped, but they found trace evidence. No identification possible, but...I don’t think it matters. Juni, I think we’ve got him. The bastard finally made a mistake!”
“Mmm...don’t soak your panties just yet, kiddo. We’ve thought we had the Stained Glass Killer before,” Juniper mused and went back to finishing his business. Hardy snatched up one of the two toothbrushes beside the sink and applied a healthy dollop of paste. “Eighteen months since his last victim. I’d almost hoped he got himself killed trying to snatch some griffin who didn’t care to be snatched.”
“Him? Not a chance. Too careful. Come on. We can get coffee on the way. Speaking of that, did I tell you Sweet Shine is coming back in town in a few weeks?”
Juniper laughed, snatching up the second toothbrush and nudging Hardy aside with his hip. “You didn’t. That nutty filly off humping zebras or giraffes or something again?”
“Not a clue. Last I saw her she was calling herself ‘Ootona’ and wearing a grass skirt to cover up the scars. Granted, she was so stoned I had to foalsit her for two days straight, but then she was off again. I woke up the first night with her licking my hooves.”
His partner shook his head, running a hoof through his cropped mane. “She was a damn fine cop. Narcotics has been a wreck since she left. They say she had some kind of ‘gift’. You think she’s lost it?”
“I don’t think Sweets ever had ‘it’ to lose, but if you’re asking if she’ll ever be back on the force?” Hardy spat his toothpaste and washed his muzzle out. “She can’t stay away, Juni. Ever since we were foals, she’s had to be in the thick of things.”
Juniper glanced back at his cutie-mark; a torch with a gleaming eye instead of a fire. “Kiddo, I don’t know how exactly to bring this up, but...you know she was lying in her report about what happened to Fox Glove, right? Whatever has her out there chasing buffalo was ugly. Uglier than a gang war and some thugs somehow making her and her partner.”
Wiping his muzzle on a towel, Hardy stepped out and headed for the coat-rack to get his hat. “Yeah, but that’s your talent talking, not mine. Sweets wants to keep something a secret, her jaw might as well be a steel trap. Nobody at the office liked Fox Glove besides Sweets, but whatever happened out there, she did the right thing. She wouldn’t abandon him unless he was already dead. That I know. My talent didn’t so much as tingle.”
“Ehhh...I’ll take your word for it. So, breakfast?”
----
Scene Change: The camera pans away from our characters into the calm morning air outside the apartment window. The image fades away.
Set: A battered police cruiser speeding down the highway in the calm morning air.
----
Hard Boiled hung his leg out the passenger side window, one rear hoof up on the dash. Sure, it was a little undignified always riding shotgun, but going to the afterlife on fire and upside down was probably worse.
Juniper, meanwhile was grinning like a mad pony.
“You know if you keep making that face, it’s going to get stuck like that, Juni,” Hardy muttered.
“I should say the same thing, Mister Scowls-At-Everything. You’ll pardon me if I’m a little pleased at the prospect of catching this prick. It’s no wonder you haven’t had a date in three years.”
“Half the office thinks you and I are going at each other. Waking up with you in my bed four nights a week isn’t doing much to dispel that notion, either. Fluff in Requisitions asked Telly if we’d set a date for the wedding.”
Juniper threw his head back and laughed long and hard, then gave the beaten police cruiser a little more speed. An alarming wail issued from the hood that would have meant ‘service-me’ to most ponies; to Juniper, it was a sign that the mechanism lacked for gumption and discipline.
It was a subject of some amusement amongst the newer mechanics at the Detrot Police Department that Hardy was supposedly a less desirable name to see at the top of your work orders; not that any of them had in the last few years. The older mechanics would just reply when asked why that was the case that Juniper had never managed to turn a car inside out.
“So...what? You prefer I sleep at my place?” Juniper sniggered. “You know what the neighbors are like. Might as well try to sleep on the dance floor of a night club.”
“I didn’t say that. What I meant was that I’m a cop. If you’re going to give me crap about not dating, then you’ve got to acknowledge that whoever I date is going to be competing with the job. That means they’re going to be competing with you. That and I think my bed is a little small for three.”
“So, kid...what you’re saying is you need a bigger bed?”
Hardy tossed his hooves in the air in defeat, slumping against the window. Grabbing his coffee, he took a sip of the lukewarm liquid. “Yes, of course, Juni. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I need a bigger bed.”
His partner braked just in time to avoid driving up the rear tailpipe of a city bus and settled back against the car’s flank rest. “Eh, I figure if you were going to shoo me out, you’d have done it two years ago.”
“Probably should have, ya decrepit coot. It would have saved me all those mornings waking up in a puddle of your drool.”
“Who you callin’ ‘coot’, colt? I mighta got five years on you, but I’ll whip you up one side and down the other!”
Hardy shook his head, but couldn’t hide a smile as they headed for the Morgue.
----
Scene change: The camera flies out the back window of the cruiser. In the distance, a giant pink dome looms over an empty parking lot.
Set: Twenty minutes later.
The two detectives stand side by side over a body covered by a sheet in a sterile surgical chamber. The atmosphere is belied somewhat by the poster of a kitten in a party hat on the wall and the coroner, in a white lab coat, who is also wearing party hat.
----
“Tell me the good news, Stitch. You think you’ve got something?” Juniper asked, resting a hoof on the edge of the gurney. The body under the sheet was a slightly odd shape, but he could make out the general outlines of a beak and claws lying limply on either side.
“My, oh, my do I ‘got something’, my friends!” Stitch crowed, brandishing a little pink plastic party trumpet over the body. He was unusually animated even for Stitch, his tail twitching spastically back and forth behind him and his back legs dancing to a tune only he could hear. “Many bodies I’ve seen, but this one is magnificent! Do you know, it took me a full seven and a half seconds just to identify the gender? Eighteen more to get her approximate age! As to cause...well—” Grabbing the edge of the sheet, the coroner yanked it back.
Hard Boiled prided himself on a stiff upper lip and a strong stomach, but his guts twisted in knots as he fell back from the sight on the table, throwing his leg over his muzzle.
“Sweet sunny skies, Stitch! Warn a pony next time!” he barked, picking himself up off the tiled floor. He glanced at Juniper, but his older partner hadn’t moved. He was just standing there, studying the corpse with the same intensity a modern art student would study one of those splatter-paintings that always seemed to sell for insane sums of money. Steeling himself, Hard Boiled eased in beside Juniper and forced himself to look at the corpse.
Most of the body wasn’t terribly recognizable anymore. Stitch had been right about the difficulty identifying the gender. Most of her skull was misshapen and twisted, like it’d been wrenched one direction, then another. Beneath her fur, he could see splotches of bruising that seemed to follow very regular lines across her belly and neck, splitting and returning to one another almost like a cracked mirror.
Her beak was split in four separate places, giving the impression of a puzzle barely held together. Both back legs were still there, but had far, far too many joints.
Hardy shuddered as an image of a bean-bag full of organs drifted through his head.
“What could do that to...to anything?” Hard Boiled asked, a bit dumbfounded.
“Truth be, I’ve no idea,” Stitch replied, using his trumpet to lift one of the girl’s arms. It sagged in the middle like the entire limb had been turned to rubber. “Nearly every small bone in her body and most of the larger ones seem to have been crushed, but the bruising patterns don’t suggest such a thing. It’s as though she were...somehow shaken apart. As you’re well aware, the Stained Glass Killer gets his name from the rather unique patterns left on the flesh of his victims. We still aren’t certain what causes them.”
“So...magic, then?” Juniper asked.
The coroner shook his head, the party hat falling down onto one eye. He shoved it back in place and smiled. “No! Delicious mystery, isn’t it? I show absolutely no traces of magical influence on this body! The Stained Glass Killer tends to leave his victims in crystal mines or places with high ambient magic. We only found the last three because city workers were doing an inspection of an old mineshaft. They’d definitely been laid out for them to find, too. Unfortunately, the number of ponies with access to those inspection plans is probably upwards of a thousand, so that won’t help you narrow them down. There have always been trace arcane signatures all over the crime scenes, but this young hen was delivered just outside of town. I say delivered, since she was simply left resting in a ditch, claws over her chest.”
“No magic,” Hardy muttered, poking at what he was fairly certain was the girl’s side. It set a wave through her flesh like he’d just prodded some gelatin and he had to swallow a few times to get his stomach under control. “Alright, so, besides the bruising patterns and the...condition of the body...what makes you think this is the Stained Glass Killer? The others were crushed, right?”
“Yeees...I thought that myself, until this one arrived! When I went back over my own autopsies under the assumption that it wasn’t magic of any kind. I used some fairly recent techniques that I must write a paper on—” He paused, snatching a notepad from thin air and quickly jotting down the words ‘Get Name On Trademark For Investigative Process Of Squishy Stuff’ with a pencil held in his teeth before tucking it carefully away in his lab coat.
“—pardon. As I was explaining, in my reexamination, I was able to determine that the bones were broken down in a very consistent fashion. What caused these deaths was significantly more thorough than simple weight or crushing force! Even a unicorn as powerful as Iris Jade would have trouble exerting this level of damage on a body. It went right down to the cellular level! That would also appear to be what causes the strange patterns on the flesh.”
“So what you’re saying is that...what was done to those other poor hens, it was...what? More complete?” Juniper asked, stroking the tuft of fur on his chin.
“Yes!” Stitch jabbed his party trumpet at the older stallion and swept his party hat off, plunking it down on the remains of the griffin girl’s beak. “Exactly that. Your investigations were predicated on the notion that you were tracking a unicorn, were they not?”
“Well...you get a body that’s been electrocuted or dropped out of the sky, it’s usually a pegasus. You get a body that’s been beaten to a pulp or has a bullet in it, it’s probably an earth pony. Torn apart, it’s a griffin. You get someone incinerated or turned into a liquid—”
“—or a bean bag!” Stitch chirped and Hard Boiled clutched his stomach, gulping air.
“Or that—” Juniper acknowledged, tipping his head, “—it’s generally a unicorn. No magic means we’re tracking something else, right?”
“Well, I shan't say that, but...someone has gone to great lengths to dispose of these bodies in places they’d be found—active crystal mines, areas being cleaned of magical contamination and so on—but usually it takes some time before they are discovered. Scavengers got at two of the victims and until very recently, the forensic evidence was spotty. Do you know, that monumental moron who delivered me the last girl left a half eaten sandwich in the body bag?”
Hard Boiled ignored that as he studied the body, glad he’d skipped breakfast. “I wonder. He wouldn’t be the first serial killer to fall in love with the press. Still seems odd, though. Juni, thoughts?”
Juniper shut his eyes and sucked a breath, then laid his hooves on the gurney, lightly touching the empty shell. “You said this body was found outside the city? Did he make any attempt to display it or anything of the sort?”
Slip Stitch shook his head. “None, aside the crossing of the forelimbs over the breast. That was also odd. As you know, the others were laid out, almost ritually, their limbs splayed as though taking flight. This poor child was simply strewed in a ditch. I doubt she’d have been found before the wild life destroyed the body were it not for a couple of nature enthusiasts out for a morning explore. If it can be called that, they got very lucky.”
“Then...this isn’t his usual fare. I mean, we had to go down in a mine for the last three, but you could practically eat off that crime scene. Something about her was wrong. Maybe something in the process?” Juniper squinted at the corpse.
Hardy’s eyes widened slightly as his cutie-mark let out a burst of sensation so strong he danced sideways at the table, catching himself on a tray of instruments. “Scrap paper!”
“What, Detective?” Stitch asked, cocking his head.
Righting himself, Hard Boiled jabbed a toe at the hen’s forehead. “The psychological profile for this guy said ‘older, patient, highly creative’. All those griffins in different poses, placed in spots where they’d be found! Think about it. He must see this as some kind of artistic enterprise. She didn’t fit the bill. She’s scrap paper; a canvas he didn’t like. Was there anything unusual about her?”
Stitch bit his lip. “I...did find something in my examination that was somewhat different from our other victims…”
“And that is?” Juniper asked.
“Well, I didn’t think much of it until you said something just now, but...the other bodies were all Highland griffins, yes? From the plateaus?”
Hardy thought back to the other reports he’d read, then slowly nodded. “I think so, sure. We only got positive I.D. on one of them, and nobody claimed her body. The rest were vagrants or didn’t have many local relations. We went through all the griffin soup kitchens and so on. No dice.”
“These personalities are obsessive and detailed. Highland griffins are known for some very distinctive patterns of plumage. Our girl here is, however, not a Highland griffin.”
“How can I tell?” Juniper asked, poking at the girl’s limp, tufted tail as it lay between her back legs. “I mean, Sykes aside, most griffins don’t exactly look all that different to me.”
Hardy swatted at his shoulder. “You say crap like that around Sweet Shine when she gets back and she’ll break your ankles and tattoo the word ‘Speciesist’ on both our foreheads!”
“Well, I can’t help it if it’s true! Dammit, kid, I wasn’t born in this city! Baltimare wasn’t exactly teeming with griffins.”
Slip Stitch smirked, picking up his clipboard and turning to the body. Lifting a broken mass it took Hardy a moment to identify as a wing, he pointed to a patch of scars in a very tightly woven pattern around the base, near what was left of the joint. “This hen is originally from the old griffin homeland. Again, no positive identification, but she was not born in Detrot, either. That’s a mark, signifying a daughter in line to inherit the providence of her family gods.”
“Huh. I’m going to have to check Sykes next I get him drunk,” Hardy muttered.
“I wouldn’t bother. It’s a tradition the Highland griffins don’t hold to. Still, do you think such a thing might be enough for this fellow to consider her an ‘unworthy’ effort?” Stitch asked.
“I don’t know. What else have you got?”
“Well! Now we come to the truly gruesome part! Most gruesome! Morbidly horrific, even!” Stitch twirled in a little circle, pulling another clip-board out from under the table. “Detective, this poor child was alive and conscious for some period after the process began!”
“Conscious?!” Hardy’s tongue felt like it’d grown a couple sizes too big and he had to gulp a few breaths as the implications began to sink in. “Are you sure?!”
“Quite! There are enzymatic reactions to fear and pain in the body that are only produced by a conscious brain,” Stitch answered, picking up his party hat and gesturing to an autopsy report hanging on the bottom of the table. “My newest technique is far more accurate. I must remember to thank the Buzzing family for the use of their grandmare. One can learn so much from putting a corpse in a bucket of drain cleaner for a week or two!”
Hardy glanced at a big, metal bucket that was sitting in the corner. “Do I want to kno—”
“No, kid,” Juniper murmured, “You don’t ask him. Rule one. We’ve been over this.”
“Alright, alright. So, what about the other bodies?”
Stitch tossed his clipboard towards the wall where it hooked neatly over a nail. “Unfortunately, the specific enzymes my latest test looks for decay quickly after death. Those bodies were all somewhat decayed, but this body was found within hours of her death.”
“So...what is it had you excited enough to get us down here at this hour?” Hardy grumbled.
“I am so pleased you ask, Detective! Ahem. Since Iris Jade did her little ‘cleansing’ of the fools who used to run the forensics lab and brought in Miss Muddy Mix, we’ve been getting some quite reliable information. Almost all of the murder sites before were badly contaminated and in areas where there was guaranteed to be some traffic at some point. This one wasn’t,” Stitch wiggled his flank, shaking with cheery excitement. “We a found timberwolf slivers in the soil.”
Juniper and Hardy glanced at one another, then back to the coroner. Hardy shifted his weight from one leg to another, waiting for Stitch to continue, but he seemed to be waiting for a prompt.
The silence stretched until Juniper rolled his eyes and said, “Maybe you better assume neither of us can read minds. Timberwolves are pretty common wherever magic has time to soak into some trees. What’s special about these?”
Slip Stitch rose right up on the tips of his hooves and did a little dance with all four toes. “Oooh, my dear sirs, I realize they are a fairly common occurrence, but it is very unusual to see Golden Wood timberwolves in an area where Golden Wood doesn’t grow!”
“Wait...Golden Wood? That’s an exotic, isn’t it?” Hardy asked, scratching his forehead.
“Precisely!” Stitch was almost vibrating as he scooted over to one of the tables against the wall, snatching up a vial and depositing it in Hard Boiled’s outstretched hooves. The detective held the vial up to his eye, giving it a little shake. Two shining, yellow slivers of wood rattled inside. As he watched, they glowed a faint green, then tried to wiggle closer to one another. “Wherever the body was transported from, it was an area surrounded by heavy magic, yet the body contains none. It was a place with Golden Wood, too. It was in a dead zone, but a dead zone with powerful arcane influences nearby and trees...”
Hardy sucked his teeth and his cutie-mark twitched. Slowly the pieces fell into place. “You mean...outside the city. Somewhere with a grove of rare wood nearby, but that is itself not magically active. That...that means—”
“We’ve got a crime scene!” Juniper finished. They both stood in stunned silence, then Hardy clapped Slip Stitch on the shoulder hard enough to make him cough, but not enough to break his effusive smile.
“Hot damn! So, we’re looking for a magical dead zone with a zone of heavy magic between it and Detrot that contains Golden Wood trees,” Hardy murmured, then jabbed a hoof at the ceiling. “We need to call Jade and see if she can get us some access to the P.A.C.T. survey information for the Wilderness. Thanks, Stitch!”
“My pleasure, Detectives!” Stitch replied, throwing the sheet over the misshapen body as they headed for the exit. “Oh! The two of you are coming to my ‘Death Under The Stars’ reception in a few weeks during the Summer Sun celebration, yes?”
“Stitch, if we catch this guy, I’ll stuff the kid here in a slinky black dress and he’ll be my date!” Juniper called over his shoulder as he pushed the door open.
Hard Boiled made to swat his partner but the other stallion had already bounced ahead several steps out of range. “We catch this Stained Glass guy and I’ll do it, plus a kiss at the end of the night. You’re buying dinner and as much wine as I can drink, though.”
“So it’ll be like most nights then?”
----
Scene Change: The camera fades into the distance as the two detectives make their way up to the beaten police cruiser.
Set: On the road again, they roll towards the noon-day sun which perches above an ominously looming building that strongly resembles an ancient castle.
----
“You honestly think she’s going to give us permission to go snooping around out in the Wilderness?” Hard Boiled asked, leaning back in his seat as the cruiser blasted towards the Detrot Police Department main office. “I mean, she might, if she thought we’d both end up getting eaten by bears. You know she’s still sore about those Zap brownies that somehow ‘appeared’ in her office after she took that deal with the district attorney on the Tar Pits case. She can’t prove it, but she’d have had both our hides for that one if she could.”
Juniper grinned, rooting around in the center console until he found a bag of month-old jellybeans. Setting them in the cup holder, he tossed a couple in his muzzle. Up ahead, the Castle grew in the distance.
“Mmm...you miss the point, kid. Ponies like Jade need ponies like us or their butts start to squeak when they walk. She’ll give us authorization, if only because the good press she’ll get could let her shove that budget increase right down Snifter’s throat. It’s not her I’m worried about. It’s the P.A.C.T. records office. Dealing with them is like pulling entire mouths full of teeth.”
“You’d think the most organized monster hunters this end of the planet could somehow manage not to lose essential documents every time the police department needs them…”
----
Scene Change: The car zips off towards its destination in the background on the long, empty road.
Set: The Castle, A.K.A. Detrot Police Department. Our heroes pull into one of the ‘officer only’ parking spots just up the street. The cruiser makes one last, wheezing gasp, then the engine lets out a blast of steam as life finally leaves the old beast. Juniper gives the tire a firm kick as they get out, then turns to the sidewalk. The two detectives casually stroll towards the mighty gate of the stone fortress, idly kicking a couple of pebbles back and forth to one another as they go.
----
Hard Boiled eased the giant double doors of the Castle open and stuck his nose through, peering in both directions. Everything seemed reasonably normal for an early afternoon. Papers were still being pushed and nobody was hanging over the cubicle farm by one leg, screaming and begging for mercy. That was a definite step up from some days.
Overhead, the File Cloud seemed to be rumbling ominously, but if there was a Post-It Note storm coming it hadn’t arrived yet. A few ponies were trotting between the rows of desks and a pair of griffins were slumped drunkenly against one another in the holding area, but the office was quiet enough that he felt the need to make sure his gun’s safety was off.
Juniper pushed past him, aiming at the radio desk off to one side of the door. Hardy followed him, a little cautiously, making a mental note to at least try to finish one of his recent reports so as to stave off violent death.
The desk was empty, but a very pretty flank was sticking up from a heap of wires spilling out of one of the control consoles.
“Telly? That you?” Juniper asked. “I don’t get to see you from this end all that often. Gotta say, it’s a nice change.”
Radiophonic Telegraphica’s head hit the underside of the desk and she snarled, clutching a spot just below her horn. “Ooow...ugh...Juniper, I swear! One of these days I’m going to give you a good smack when you sneak up on me! A smack straight to the moon!”
“Yeah, but you’d miss me. What’s got you in a tizz, Telly? Your mane looks like it hasn’t seen a brush this week.”
Telly ignored the little jab and waved towards the open panel full of wires. “I’ve been fighting the File Cloud for the last twelve hours.”
“Looks like rough weather. What’s wrong with it?” Hardy asked, cocking his head to one side as he peered up at the bubbling, roiling thunderhead.
“Right now? No clue,” Telly huffed, trying futilely to sweep her unruly mane out of her face. “Nine times out of ten, it’s fine, and then I send up for a file and I get this crap.” Turning to the desk, she levitated a stack of papers out of her ‘in’ box and pushed them at him. He picked up the top one and squinted at row after row of tiny print. It said ‘Hello? Are you there? Please answer me. I’m so alone.’ again and again, filling the page from top to bottom.
“Whoever thought up that one has way too much time on their hooves,” Hardy muttered.
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to figure out how they’re doing it so I can nip it in the bud! I’d like to get back to that, if you don’t mind. What did you two need, or were you just here to make smart comments about my mane?”
“We’re here to see Jade. She in a good mood?”
“I don’t know as you could call it a ‘mood’ so much as it’s a caffeine fueled explosion waiting to happen. Requisitions is making entire pots of espresso just for her and I think she’s on her third one this morning.”
Juniper winced. “Eh, goodie. Come on, kid. Let’s go face the beast.”
----
Set: Our two detectives sit, side by side, in the uncomfortable chairs set before the desk of the chief of police. Chief Iris Jade paces back and forth in front of the window overlooking her domain.
----
“He’s a bucket of steaming Ursa piss on a good day, Detectives. Convince me,” Iris Jade commanded, pulling her chair out from behind her massive oak desk and sliding into it with a soft grunt. Her pressed suit was sharp as ever and the look on her face was the same unreadable scowl, but Hardy had a sneaking suspicion she was pleased to see them. “If I’m going to call down to Broadside for anything, I want specifics.”
Juniper put one back hoof up on the desk and leaned back, with a casual smile. Jade’s horn lit and she gave his leg a shove, sending him and his chair over onto their back with a loud thump. Juniper coughed as he hit the ground, but made no move to get up, instead crossing his forelegs behind his head and sighing contentedly.
“Yeah, that’s going to help our case, Juni,” Hard Boiled muttered, pulling his hat down over his face.
Juniper ignored his partner and wiggled on his back, giving his tail an impudent little flick before answering, “You know, Chief, I don’t know that I’ve ever mentioned how lovely your ceiling is. Either way, we need Broadside’s survey data. I’m fairly sure we have an actual, useful lead on the Stained Glass Killer.”
His chair glowed bright green and Juniper was yanked upright so fast he let out a surprised yelp. Jade’s horn flickered out and she leaned forward in a way Hardy had discovered indicated either eagerness or imminent violence. Most things indicated imminent violence with Iris Jade, but they could indicate other things as well.
“Are you certain, Detective Shores? I’m going to need you to be real sure,” Jade murmured. “If I call down demanding information from Broadside and I find out this is an elaborate scheme to have a picnic in the woods with Hard Boiled and a full P.A.C.T. escort—”
“Chief, we’re not frater—” Hard Boiled began to protest, but Juniper cut him off.
“If I wanted to take Hard Boiled on a picnic, I can think of plenty of places nicer than the Wilds!” Juniper laughed, enjoying his partner’s blushing discomfort as the other detective sank low in his seat. “Anyway, Stitch found some fairly specific forensic information on the latest body. If we can get access to the P.A.C.T. land and flora survey, I’m pretty sure we can pin down where Stained Glass is making his kills. No escort necessary.”
Jade’s horn lit and the desk phone levitated over in front of her. She rested her hoof on the black receiver, but she paused there and regarded her two detectives. “Assuming your information is right, the Wilds are dangerous, even in the areas covered by the outlying Shield pylons. You two idiots might not get eaten by a hydra, but there are still plenty of things out there that only get pissed off when you shoot them, particularly beyond the farm country.”
Juniper raised his hoof and crossed the other over his chest. “I just want to take a look, Chief. We’ll take one of the bogie-wagons and stick to the protected roads. This is pure recon. If we find the guy, we’ll call backup.”
“The last ‘pure recon’ mission you ran involved that fire in Uptown,” Jade growled, kicking the drawer of her desk which was reserved for damage reports and insurance forms. “A city block covered in molten lime juice. The Market district still smells like rotten mojitos.”
“I’m a sincere believer in active reconnaissance,” Juniper replied, grinning cheekily as he sat back. “Point being, it’s our case. You want to assign it to someone else, bring them up to date, and maybe have another dead griffin, be my guest.”
“It’s been...what? Nine months since his last confirmed kill?” Jade asked, picking the phone up. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“Eighteen, but...yes. Sure enough. If the Stained Glass Killer is active again, we both know he’s in town for a reunion tour.”
“The griffin consulate is still pissing and moaning over the last set of bodies we failed to identify,” Jade said, shrugging as she levitated the phone receiver to her ear. “It’s your case, but it’s also your skin. You bust the transmission in a bogie-wagon and it’s coming out of your paycheck.”
Hardy got to his hooves, politely pushing his seat back into place while Juniper dusted off his jacket.
“Thanks, Chief,” Juniper replied, with a quick salute. “All that crap they say about you around here must be horrible lies.”
For an instant, Jade’s eyes twitched in his direction and a malevolent light seemed to shine behind them. Hardy braced to catch his partner before he could be tossed off the balcony again.
Jade flashed a toothy not-quite smile. “Get out of my office. The P.A.C.T. records department will have what you need by the time you get there. On the way out, get Telly to send me another pot of Red-Eye.”
Hard Boiled turned to the door with Juniper on his heels. As he opened it, Jade called out, “And...boys...You should be aware, that if the two of you were ever to disappear for any reason...I would be the one assigning the officers to investigate your deaths. Meditate on that, if you please.”
----
Scene Change: The sun drifts across the skyline, backlighting the great spires of the weather factories as the hours pass. Thunderheads gather and a brisk shower spills over midtown.
Set: A gritty mom & pop's restaurant tucked away from the bustling avenues down a side street of one of Detrot’s less affluent sectors. The windows are stained with old tobacco smoke and grease. Outside, the flickering neon sign has four broken lights, leaving the place with the ignominious title ‘Scrubbies S-da P-p Sh--’
The detectives huddle together with a collective of five empty milkshake glasses and stack upon stack of carefully folded maps.
----
Hard Boiled reached for his glass, then sighed as he found himself staring at the empty bottom of the cup.
“Is it my round or yours?” he asked.
“You know the rules, kid. If you have to ask, it’s your round,” Juniper replied, not looking up from the latest in the stack of papers they’d managed to wrangle out of the P.A.C.T. records office. Hardy couldn’t quite hide a little smile as he noticed a bit of strawberry shake clinging to the ends of his partner’s dark green mane.
Rolling his shoulders to work out some of the kinks, Hardy half got to his hooves and signaled the waitress, waggling his empty glass at her. She flicked an ear in his direction, then flapped her left wing to let him know she’d seen him.
“I haven’t done research like this since the Academy,” Hard Boiled groaned, settling back in his chair and rubbing his sore eyes.
“You probably bitched about it every half hour, then, too,” Juniper muttered, poking through the glasses until he found one that still had a bit of shake left in the bottom. “Come on, we’ve covered...what? Thirty square miles? There’s still another hundred and fifty to go!”
Hardy picked up another map, unfolding the attached notes page. “You’d think they’d have some means of just searching for specific landmarks,” he murmured.
“If you think the P.A.C.T. is going to take time out of their busy day to explain their filing system to a couple of lowly street beaters, you’re dreaming. They’ve got important business after all, like polishing their massive guns and rubbing baby oil into each other’s cutie-marks.”
“I’m going to do my best never to picture Broadside covered in baby oil. Burning pitch, maybe…”
“Awww, you’re just sore cuz he’s makin’ you earn that delicious, delicious pension money,” Juniper nickered, working his jaw back and forth until it popped.
“You know we’ll never retire, Juni. Ponies like us don’t get retirement parties and gold watches. Someone drags us to a hole in the ground, dumps us in still screaming, and covers it over with dirt.”
Juniper sat back as the waitress came by to top up their milkshakes, giving the sweet-faced girl one of his patented mare-killer smiles that sent a blush right to the tips of her ears. When she’d left, trotting away with an extra swish in her tail, he picked up the shake and sucked a bit of cream off the top before responding.
“Could be worse, honestly,” Juniper replied, with a sniff. “You want to sit in a home somewhere for dying cops? ‘Aunt Sandalwood’s Sweet Home For Good Officers’? Live out my last days with a bunch of traumatized, fat old farts complaining about how they just can’t hoof it anymore? No thanks.”
“So, what then?”
“I figure, when the time comes, we’ll figure it out together. You and me been chasin’ death the last few years. I’m pretty sure we’ll catch the bastard one day and I intend to give him a good lump with my truncheon before he does me.”
Hardy blew a derisive breath out of one side of his muzzle, shaking his head at his partner’s bravado. Picking up the map again, he began reading the hoof-notes.
‘—fifteen klicks east and north, patrolling standard survey routes through the Wilds for two hours. Flora seems unnaturally lush there. Private Clock Wick took the treetops while I’m stuck sucking dirt. I promise I only hate him a little bit. We had a brief encounter with a dozen or so timberwolves—”
Raising his head, Hardy tapped the table for attention. “Hey! Listen to this!”
Juniper cocked his head. “Go on?”
“—we had a brief encounter with a dozen or so timberwolves. They seemed to glitter like that time my daughter got into my wife’s golden eye-liner and decided to paint the kitchen with it. Encounter successfully resolved and survey moved on. There’s not much in the area except some old-world ruins. Proceeding to next sector.”
Hardy ran his toe down the page until he found a set of coordinates, then turned back to the map. “That’s...yikes...that’s ten miles outside the old exclusion zone, before they built the Shield Pylon over there.”
“Timberwolves that glitter,” Juniper mused, stroking his goatee. “Sounds kinda weak to me.”
His partner glared at him. “I’d rather go see some shiny trees than sit here for four more hours with my face in these maps.”
“Eh, alright, kid. I’m always down for a ‘Hard Boiled hunch’,” Juniper replied, plucking his wallet out of his coat and setting a couple bits underneath his glass, along with a healthy tip. “If the office claptrap is to be believed, your dad had some pretty good hunches in his time. Let’s go get the wagon and maybe get a snack on the way. At worst, we end up wandering around in the Wilds for a couple hours.”
Hardy gave him a sly grin as he tugged his coat on.
“I dare you to put a picnic basket and beer on expenses.”
----
Scene change: The sky has darkened and evening gathers. Shadows creep out of their dens, slithering across the city-scape as the detectives take the lonesome road out of Detrot, headed for the wilderness.
Set: The Bogie-Wagon—a modified wartime transport designed to carry a couple of soldiers through the Wilds in comparative safety with a coat of red and blue paint. A bored looking Hard Boiled and a manic Juniper Shores sit side by side, with faint rock music coming out of the crackling, blown-out radio speakers.
----
Hardy stretched in his seat, trying to get comfortable. His legs were already numb again and he was heavily considering just rolling onto his back and foregoing the seat-belt altogether.
Amongst officers of the Detrot Police Department there was a sneaking suspicion that had developed that whoever had designed the bogie-wagon had an absolutely massive flank, since no-one with a normal backside could have possibly stepped back from the drawing board after creating those awkward, buttock-breaking cushions and said ‘job well done’.
The bogie-wagon looked a bit like a police cruiser with heavier tires and a chassis that required a ladder to climb into, but there the resemblance ended. It was a marvel of modern engineering and anti-fauna construction. Rows of switches with contingencies for every type of animal one might expect to meet in the more heavily patrolled areas of the Wilds lined the dashboard, from Parasprite Polka to Manticore Sprayers. The outside panels were armored against claw and fang, acid-spray and launchable stinger, while the interior had a separate air system and even its own water supply.
What it lacked was a functional air conditioner. Even with the plate-glass windows down, Hard Boiled could feel the sweat running down his neck as they sped along out of the city and into the barely lit roads criss-crossing the Wilds exclusion zone, and the vents were only blowing the same luke-warm air.
Hardy sighed as he stared out the window at the farmland and the patchy trees. In the distance, the great forests spilled in either direction across the end of the valley, foothills growing on either side. They hadn’t met another vehicle in almost ten minutes on the lonely, two lane highway heading towards the Wild lands. A black Shield Pylon stuck out of the landscape in the middle distance, just a little taller than one of the windmills lazily taking in the last of the summer breeze.
The night was warm and the storm, even so far from Detrot itself, hadn’t shown any sign of letting up.
Yanking his hat off, Hardy began fanning himself with it.
“I swear, this paycheck better come with a kitten and some cake.”
Juniper, for his part, seemed unaffected by the heat. Throttling the engine back to a dull roar, he grabbed a map off the dash, then peered out at the mile marker on the side of the road.
“Suck it up for twenty more minutes. We’re almost to the turnoff which should take us into the forest, then the far edge of the zone. These coordinates have a road running just south of them. With any luck, we’ll hit timberwolf country right around the time they start getting snacky.”
“Thanks for reminding me. I don’t know as I feel like getting my flank chewed,” Hardy muttered, reaching towards a button on the control panel that said ‘Timberwolf Repeller’. Juniper smacked his hoof. “Hey! What gives?”
“You want to find the place we need to be or not? The best way we’ll know we’re in the right area is we start seeing some timberwolves.”
“I looked it up. Golden Wood is pretty distinct. Kinda like oak that’s had a goofy paint job.”
“Yeah, well, unless you want to get out before we’re there and take a hunt around in the dark, in the Wilds, with all that hilarious magical plant life…”
“I get it, I get it,” Hardy held up a hoof in surrender. “Sweet Shine snuck some poison joke into my desk at the academy. I ended up with a white pelt and bright yellow mane for three days straight...”
Juniper looked at him out of one eye, then doubled over laughing, grabbing at the wheel with both hooves to keep them from plowing off into the undergrowth.
----
There was a veritable line in the sand between the small farming communities on the outskirts of Detrot and the deep, empty stretch where the Shield still held sway, but few ponies lived: the edge of the exclusion zone. Beyond that point, only the bravest souls lived and few saw fit to venture; after all, there wasn’t much that direction until you hit griffin lands.
On one side of the line, idyllic little fields and houses with verandas made for sipping gin-slings and waiting up for the cat to come home. On the other, the dark and foreboding forests of the deep Wilderness.
While plenty of the farther roads were protected by a whole host of expensive counter-measures, including general anti-fauna talismans here and there and small P.A.C.T. outposts every dozen miles or so, nopony in their right mind would ever have called it safe. The last truck he’d seen traversing the lonely road about five miles back had been about as heavily armored as the bogie-wagon. That said, preparation counted for an awful lot.
Hardy had started the journey with with a sense of nervous excitement. He’d never been out that far. Sure, he’d had a couple of visits to the other bits of Equestria, but the Wilds were markedly not other bits of Equestria. He’d felt like a foal in the movie-theater, covering his eyes with his hooves then peering over them just in time for the big, bad monster to appear.
The modified cruiser slowed to a speed that was still much faster than any sane pony would take on those water-slicked roads, but Juniper considered pedals to have two settings with intervening options dictated mostly by how much he could make the vehicle cry and beg for mercy. Outside, the rain picked up a bit, clattering on the windows in a steady rhythm that slowly unwound the knots in Hardy’s shoulders until he found himself nodding off.
Far ahead, an eerie red light began to blink on and off in the darkness over the treetops.
----
That’s all for this week folks! Our heroes will be back in one week’s time with more adventures!
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Tune in next week as Detective Hard Boiled and Detective Juniper Shores face: The Weathervane of Doom!
Same time, same station.