June 9th, 1013 AN - 1:24 PM
Ditzy lay on the couch in the kitchen, a sheet of paper pressed against her chest, her eye tracking the shadows of the palm trees swaying outside. Dull clouds obscured the sun, and the wind came in cool, gentle currents, granting relief from the relentless heat. The lava lamp on the coffee table illuminated dozens of papers stacked on its surface. Among them were two books and several piles of sheets that had a dark orange hue to them, similar to the one the mare was holding. She stayed in the dim haze of the cloudy afternoon, her mouth slightly agape. The paper in her grip had gotten stained by the sweat that had congested on her coat.
Blinking drowsily, Ditzy lifted the sheet off her chest and sat up on the couch. Her body swayed, wings hanging limp. She glanced at the windows facing the beach, blinking her good eye awake. One of her hooves lifted to help close the other eye, nudging her snout on the way. Slowly, her iris moved back to the sheet.
280603, Muffin Corner. Reported violence, got lethal by arrival. Just a drone, flowerpot on head. Ruling an accident so far, will get homeowner to come by and pretend they got the talk. Com says this may be connected to bug hunting in the area, like the Cricket Hunter case. Better for morale if there are less of those, though, so stay quiet. - VP
The mare put her hoof against the bad eye and stared out the window, glaring at the orange blot, and at the waving ocean behind it. Street vendors and regular ponies sat and stood there, under quivering umbrellas and covers, as a bright green, crystalline vehicle stood by the beachside, accepting the long line in small groups.
010703, Sparkleshine Road. Syn and pony found dead middle of road at 0400. Blunt trauma on both, seems mostly hooves, syn got cortex kicked into paste. Questioning says neither knew the other, but ruling self-defense by the pony. Bugs been rowdy in the area, ES/AS is asking questions. May throw this to them, turn it into a civic thing. Com still insists on link. - VP
She threw the sheet on the table, where it landed among the rest, covered in scribbles with most of the typed text redacted. The sturdy, old folder they originated from leaned against a wall, placed on a stool next to the door that led to the hallway. A red circle with four symbols within it, the paint still not fully dried, caught the light of the lamp.
Flexing her drooped wings, the mare slowly got off the couch and on all fours, stretching her neck. With a raspy heave, she grabbed a water bottle by the refrigerator and stuck it in her mouth. She held it there until the water began to streak down her chin and onto her coat, eventually overflowing her mouth and causing her to spit and cough, tapping herself on the chest.
The mare dropped the bottle, letting it rattle off to the table. Catching her breath, coughing, she looked up at the window in front of her. In the pre-rain dimness, a faint reflection of herself looked back at her, cast by the lamplight. Ditzy stared at the glitter of her own eye, eventually blinking at herself and briefly touching the glass with her forehead.
When she opened her eyes again, both of them were looking forward.
“Are you seeing a pattern here?”
Behind her, a large shadow stood, its wide, unmoving grin glistening off the surface of the window, right above her head. The pegasus blinked again, staring directly at it. The green wagon on the street below took off, leaving behind several earth ponies in orange coastal uniforms. They moved to restrain a flickering figure that tried intensely to wriggle away in its direction.
“Does this interest you?”
The mare pressed her hooves against the window, drooping her head. She heaved for a few moments, then breathed calmly. Her head turned around, into the gloom of the hallway which the lamp did not pierce. In the intensifying shadow, it glowed a much stronger orange.
Ditzy stepped toward it, her stiff wing shoving the folder with the case files off the stool. Several wads of pink and yellow banknotes followed suit as the wing dragged them along. Ditzy leaned with a forehoof against the wall, staring into the darkness, the doors to Dinky’s room, her room and the bathroom to her side. The motionless, oversized grin shone at her where the peephole of her door would have been.
“Is there something you’re waiting for? There are things that could have been done. Why wait until now? And why do this?”
The pegasus walked on into the dark, side-stepping a duffel bag filled with wads of similar banknotes. She bumped into Dinky’s locked door, disturbing a post-note written in crayon. Breathing sharply, she came face to face with her entry door, looking at the glittering peephole. She shook her head and furrowed her brows.
“Is there someone at the door? You should answer.”
Ditzy prodded the lock and pushed the door open. It opened up a creak, then slowed down. After a brief pause, the mare peeked out into the much cooler hall. There was a cardboard box right in front of her apartment door. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, then pushed the door further open, walking out and grabbing the box. It was light enough for the mare to grasp it with a foreleg and get back inside her apartment on three legs. Ditzy locked the door and brought the box closer to lamplight, while the thick clouds outside began to rumble.
The top of the box opened up easily, the carton was unsealed. The mare looked at the contents, and the eyeless head of a pinkish-orange dove looked back at her. Leaning against it was a big printed note, marked with red pen. Ditzy stared at it for a few minutes before picking up the note.
It was less of a note and more of a small poster. Three helmet-clad pony heads looked at her, drawn in sharp, jagged lines, with a rising sun behind them. Below ran the text:
CITIZENS OF CAROL CITY
The Equestrian government has left you to fend for yourself in the continuing Wedding War. You have been fed a lie of peaceful coexistence, and forced to bear the scars of the abuse. Unlike us, you were never told that your own Princess has given up on you.
The hornet’s nest has been crushed, but more remain among you. They will not die easily, and they will not die alone. Your government would rather they don’t die at all. Everyone knows what that leads to. Your city is now officially under the protection of the Emergency Situation Attack Squad. We will deliver the finishing blow and keep you safe.
Follow these tips for safety in the coming times:
MAINTAIN CONTACT WITH EVERYONE CLOSE TO YOU
BE WARY OF CHANGELINGS WHOM YOU THINK YOU KNOW
STAY HOME AT NIGHT
A large, carefully drawn watercolor circle containing a crescent, a star and a heart obscured the rest of the list. However, a patch of text visible in the uncolored heart was circled out with red pen. It was part of another list, which began under the first one.
...44-46, 58-69, 90-111 Sparkler Street, the area of the south-western docks…
The rest of the addresses were redacted with red, drawing multiple lines through the large symbol. Only one last piece of the note was untouched by the drawing, albeit it bore the final additions in pen:
THE ES/AS WILLNOTPROTECT YOU
BUT WE CAN HELP. YOU FIRST, DOVE
Ditzy closed her eyes, her bad eye retracting to its usual displaced position. She took a breath and grabbed the mask, leaving for her room, where she opened the wardrobe and put on the cleaned, repaired postal outfit, fitting her wings before leaving the apartment.
***
Ditzy strolled along the sidewalk, passing by quiet shops and staring at an empty road ahead. The sky above rumbled, with small flocks of weather pegasi scrambling to hold off a large black cloud. Her nearly empty bag brushed against the plain stone and glass of the many similar buildings at both sides of the long street. The rumbling and splashing of the ocean’s unruly waves overrode most of the noise made by the occupants of apartment blocks and shops. Ditzy’s good eye stared straight ahead, where several passenger carts have been lined up to blockade the road and the sidewalk. There, a congregation of ponies were raising noise, which got louder and louder as the mare approached, eventually overpowering the waves and thunder.
Having reached a crossroads just in front of the gathering, she turned her head to the buildings on the opposite her. Nearly all were apartment blocks eroded by weather, regular brick falling to the elements, the surfaces and premises covered in trash, some houses more than others. Squinting, Ditzy noticed the street marker on one of them and exhaled, closing her eyes. She shook her head and stretched her neck to see how far the row of buildings went. The apartments did not continue much further than the makeshift blockade.
As the pegasus crossed the street to the housing buildings, a crash of glass and a series of loud shouts erupted from the other side of the road. Ditzy turned around, eyes fixed on the noisy gathering. She tilted her head, slowly backing into a narrow alleyway between the nearest blocks.
Two equine figures stood behind a crashed window, the crowd shouting at them. Several had banners fastened to their sides, others were pointing at them and hollering at the top of their lungs. The crowd looked to be a mix of older ponies and young adults, both behaving relatively the same way. Ditzy paused when she saw that several of them, the ones farther away from her, were wearing what looked like postal uniforms, though not exactly true to the one she had in her bag. Her movement stopped completely once she saw one of them reach into a bag of his own and pull out a cheap plastic bird beak, turning to shriek at the couple inside the shop.
“WE’LL PUT YOU ALL IN THE FUCKING NEWS SOON ENOUGH!” the pony’s shrill voice echoed through the alleyway.
“BUG OFF WHILE WE LET YOU!” more voices yelled, steadily turning into a chant.
“SHOVE YOUR REGISTRATION UP YOUR LEGHOLES!” an older voice screamed, throwing a newspaper at an intact window.
The figures inside the shop tried to reply, causing a very slight drop in volume from the crowd, which made the police sirens in the distance audible. A glowing smokestick landed next to her into a dumpster, tossed down by a grey-coated pony with a thick, low-cut mane, wearing a silver everyday vest, coat cut up with tattoos. He had a lower posture than the ponies below on the street, and his cheeks were more bulky as well. Several others similar to him were visible in the windows and on the balconies overlooking the protesters.
Ditzy opened and closed her mouth, blinking her good eye. She emerged from the alleyway for a moment, looking at the other apartments, and saw similar ponies in the building on her other side. The rest were visibly dominated by ponies in street or work clothes, as well as undisguised changelings, who swiftly retreated once they realized what was happening. Finally, on a nearby third floor balcony, she noticed a sturdy pale grey unicorn with a thick, fringed, auburn mane peek out, chuckling and covering his face up with a hoof as he watched. He wore a full silver suit, up the left side of which ran the stylized marking of a dragon. The stallion said something in a foreign language, looking back at the room behind him and chuckled some more. Ditzy turned away and disappeared behind a dumpster in the alleyway, where she put down her bag and unzipped it.
She paused as she saw a newspaper glued to the wall, a hastily drawn heart-star-moon symbol covering up most of it. She then held her breath and nodded to herself, opening the bag to reveal the visage of the dove staring up at her.
The shape of a dove emerged from the alleyway, pinkish head turning left and right to glance at its sides. To her left was a group of tattooed ponies wearing silver suits, as well as various items of silver jewelry. They conversed in a foreign tongue, most of them moving around packages from a large mound of items covered with tarp. A unicorn mare with half of her mane shaved entirely, the other tied into a long braid, was leaning against the front wall of the compound, going through several glowing smokesticks at once. She let out a stifled cough, moments before a pair of forehooves grabbed her from behind and pressed in harshly on her neck. A puff of bluish vapor shot out of her nose, while red droplets trickled from her mouth. The postal mare remained unnoticed until one of the workers heard her hoofsteps on the pavement, turned around, and alerted the others.
She hit him with a mace, shattering his teeth and nose while turning the shout into a gurgle. The heavy ball flung around, chained to a leg bracer that she had looted from the braided unicorn, and hit several of the approaching tattooed ponies. Purplish brain matter splattered all over the sidewalk in front of the apartment block’s entrance. Another was sent head first into the cart, leaving a small dent and a red blot. The four that had dodged a high-aimed swipe closed in, splitting into pairs, circling the dove from either side. Each had a concealed bracer on one foreleg, a curved knife sticking out from them.
When the first pair closed in, the postal mare quickly took to the air, leaving them staring in confusion as she leaped on top of the cart they had been loading. The other pair gasped as she then pounced on them, not giving them time to raise their weapons. A bare-chested metallic stallion with a sprawling tattoo on his right foreleg was the first to go, the mare’s forehooves crushing his neck. Immediately afterward, his partner was flung several feet away as the pegasus rammed into him, flapping her wings, once again making the other two miss.
The pony hit the pavement, breath knocked out of him, while the other two turned to shout loudly in the direction of a docked ship nearby, as well as the apartment block itself. They quickly rushed the mare, both leaping into the air, aiming for her wings. She simply crouched and bucked her hind legs, hitting them both and knocking them onto the pavement. The gangsters writhed on the ground, scrambling to get up, only to fall again as each one now had a limp, bleeding foreleg. The mace smashed both their heads, adding to the gore coating the weapon. Another sprinkle of blood stained the ground as the mare doubled back and smashed her hind hoof into the face of the nearly recovered stallion that she had rammed into prior.
A hunched over, semi-bipedal figure looked at her from the big passenger boat nearby, their stares crossing. It emitted a low, coughing laugh and disappeared in a dark flash. The mare continued to stare where it appeared, tilting her head. Lightning flashed above, casting a shadow on the blood and corpse-stained pavement, and she headed for the open door of the four-story apartment building.
A light brown unicorn with an auburn, left-facing fringe on his head peeked lazily out the door, the dove mere steps away. His bloodshot eyes widened, and he shut the door in her face. The door was immediately kicked back open, toppling a couple of decorative plants near the entrance, while the unicorn hurried back up via the main stairway. His escape was assisted by an apron-wearing, burly, matte stallion with a braided beard, who nearly bumped into the postal mare as she ascended the steps, making her way to the platform that connected to the other apartments.
The hammering of hooves was already up to the fourth floor when the mare pushed the sizeable stallion back and stabbed him with her wings, piercing his chest and causing him to waddle back into the room he came from, then fall on the floor, gurgling. His blood stained the richly ornamented carpet, and with his fall, he knocked several plastic wrapped statuettes off a drawer.
The other denizens of the three-room apartment were in the large kitchen, two sweating stallions on a couch, and a long, dark-maned mare by the stove. The stallions were already reaching for a pair of bludgeons behind the couch when the dove entered the room, but in their rush they fumbled and blocked each other, giving the mare time to smash the head of the first one with the mace still attached to her leg. She then used the chain to crush the neck of the second, after which her wing swung to topple the big kitchen table. It hit the mare by the stove, covering her in sliced tomatoes and spreading rice all over the floor.
The dark-maned mare kicked the table back just in time, and she reached for a drawer, trying to grab a holstered gun. Her forelegs were cracked apart by the ball and chain, and the postal mare turned around to kick the other mare’s face in. While she was speeding out of the apartment, filled with wrapped pieces of foreign furniture and other decor, loud shouting was audible from the floors above.
Another gangster emerged from the open door to the apartment in front of the one she left. He was dressed in a silver suit, a firearm holstered around the bend of his foreleg. His sweat-covered face contorted as a shot meant for the dove missed narrowly, and further still when the beaked head smashed into his snout. She bashed her locked forelegs against his head several times, and he stopped moving. The only other occupant of that apartment, clothed identically to the other one, was a tattooed stallion with his dark mane in a bun, lying in a bed, two pillows pressed against each side of his head. The mare looked at him for a few moments, then around the room he was in, packed up foreign luxury contrasting the rest of the cheap living room.
She slipped off the bracer, replacing it with another she found on the nightstand, on top of which was a snub-nosed device with six chambers fitting to its side. It fit around her foreleg, and the mechanism gave a sharp click as she pointed her foreleg at the stallion and pulled on the trigger strap. A hollow, puffy sound rang out, barely audible among the clamoring and the clopping of hooves above, but the hole in the pillows and the spreading red pool indicated the weapon worked.
The remaining two apartments were empty, cleared out completely, lacking either mobsters or any sort of furniture or decoration at all. When the mare took the steps to the next floor, a pair of suited gangsters in drenched sweatbands had set up their foreleg-long, composite firearms on the railings, aiming where she was to come from. A pair of bayonets reflected the dull light of the crystalline bulb in the middle of the platform, sparkling at the dove as she came face to face with them. The rifles fired, and the gangsters were knocked clean off their hooves as the pegasus flew straight into both of them, flying directly between the rounds aimed at her.
A loud roll of thunder, followed by an encore of smaller ones, drowned out the haphazard swearing as the two were stabbed repeatedly, one’s eye getting impaled, another having a curved wing-knife stick in his forehead. Three more gangsters closed in, having heard the shots. The crouched mare, with her wings sprawled out and contorted to work the knives, had her back against the wall, while the mobsters stared at the blood-splattered bodies of the gunners. Two of them, wearing similar weapon bracers with bludgeons attached to chains, avoided a sudden approach. Instead, they conversed loudly in their language and quickly shifted, placing one of them to one side of the mare, while the other was in front of her, every other path blocked by the railing of the stairs. They had their weapons at the ready, doing swirling motions with them, eyes squinted and teeth gritted. The third gangster, a dark colored mare with silver, braided hair, spent some time staring at the corpses of the gunners, her own leg-rifle hanging limp as her eyes darted around. The killer’s own eye alternated between the three of them, while her body was motionless, only the stomach heaving.
With another series of thunderbolts, now followed by loud, hollow booming noises, the dove rolled to her side, knocking over the stallion next to her, and she sprung up back on her hooves to plant a hind leg through his chest. At that moment, the riflemare shrieked and threw herself right in the killer’s direction, holding up the bayonet to gore through her. The one remaining stallion joined her, charging in to block any retreat. Instead of dodging the bayonet charge, the postal mare dove in herself, wings raised, effectively leaping over the attacker and landing on her back instead. This caused the gunner mare to fall to the floor as she slipped on the blood of the mobster with a heavy dent in his chest.
The one tattooed pony went for the dove, dashing forward, bludgeon at the ready, but did not get to swing it against her skull - his snout all but mashed into the outstretched snubbed nose of the gun, which left a mess of the side of his head. The gunner underneath the killer nearly began to throw her off before the gun leg pressed against her rising head and the muscle pushed back again, the bullet clinking against the tile of the platform once it passed through the matter and bone of the mare’s head. Expanding as the dead mobsters’ bodies leaked more and more, the blood puddles on the second floor reflected the postal mare’s static form for a few more seconds, after which she twitched her head, stretched her gun leg, and made a quick dash from apartment to apartment to check for others. They were empty yet again, devoid of furniture. Boxes lay in the corridors of the apartments the gangsters came out of, toppled over. Police sirens could be heard over the rattling of the rain on the metal rooftops, and the mare proceeded to the third floor, wings already spreading.
She cantered swiftly up the stairs to another identical floor, and was met with four corpses of gang members right in the middle of the platform. The ponies were surrounded by smashed boxes with ruined furniture inside, more wrapped up trinkets littering the tile around them. There were massive, steaming holes in them. Two were missing their heads entirely, while some were left with only their heads and flanks, barely anything left to connect them. The walls were splattered with red as if it were paint, chunks of barely identifiable meat sticking all over the place. The dove stared at the reflective surface of the wall in front of her for a moment, the sulfuric and slightly ozone-like odor of this floor seeping through her mask. Her bad eye twitched, and her head tilted as the mare walked closer to stare at the reflection that towered over the devastation, but her waddling walk ceased sharply as heavy hoofsteps and a loud, raspy breath came from a corner apartment to her left.
A large, bipedal figure, all jagged black chitin with a stunty snout that sprouted thick black growths, and a pair of luminescent horns on its head limped out of a room that had its door kicked in. It stared at the mare with its bright green eyes and swore to itself, raising one hand, the other lowering to to hold up a large, jagged object at her. Its horns grew even brighter as green light coalesced around the object to turn it into a huge pistol-like firearm with a chamber roughly the size of the masked killer’s own head. She acted quickly, her eye unblinking, standing completely still, except for her gun leg - it raised in the blink of an eye and jerked back thrice, leaving two more holes in the bovine changeling’s chest. It toppled over the frame of the apartment door, coughing in an booming, echoing voice, and went limp moments later, dropping the weapon on the floor with a heavy thud.
Another series of thunder rang out, and the sirens in the distance got louder, followed by a distant voice through a loudspeaker: The mare lifted her head and turned around, heading straight for the last floor. The volume of the noises layering over each other got more intense as a gangster noticed her mounting the steps at a swift pace, and he started shouting at her. The fourth floor was completely barren, even the tiles having been removed, leaving the walls as bare bricks. It was dark, the only light coming through glassless windows that peeked into the desolate apartments.
Despite the volume of rumbling noise coming from all sides, including up, there was no presence on this floor, excluding the gangster that started shouting - a sweat-laden pale grey unicorn in a full dark metallic suit with a curving dragon crawling up the side of it in white thread. The unicorn grit his teeth, eyes wide as they stared at the dove, and he levitated multiple knives in front of him, forming a circle. He slowly backed away, the mare following him at the same pace. They kept eye contact, until his eyes turned away when the mare’s one looked right through him. He continued to shout, his horn flashing brightly, and the circle of steel swirled faster and faster. Neither tried to attack, however, and eventually they made their way up the final stairway to the roof.
He stood there, raindrops drenching him in seconds and bouncing off the intense telekinetic field around the knives. The mare got to the roof quickly as well, her half of the floor illuminated by the bright police lights below. In front of her was the unicorn, now standing his ground, grinning with his teeth grit tightly. Behind him was the other apartment building, and at least six gunners stood on the rooftop, their rifles aimed at her, another pale grey unicorn with an auburn fringe leading them. The one sharing the rooftop with her raised his forehoof to wave at the blood and rain-soaked masked mare in front of him, his horn flickering slightly. The mare blinked her good eye at him, then quickly thrust her wing, loosening one of the remaining knives and having it lodge right into the bottom of his neck. As the unicorn fell, his ring of steel collapsing around him, he stared upwards, watching the mare dart into the sky mere moments before the other gangsters opened fire. The voice on the loudspeaker below got louder, more and more sirens joining in, and more thunderclaps shook the sky.
The firing brigade missed the rapidly ascending pegasus, and they tried to reload as quickly as they could under the rain, the crystal mechanisms spitting sparks onto the roof as the gangsters struggled with them. Moments later, just as their guns were ready, the mare stopped where she was in the air and let her wings go limp, dropping straight down. It made some of them hesitate, the others trying to fire as she fell, missing her again. The unicorn at the head of the brigade had been frozen still, staring at where the other had died, his jaw open wide as he looked at the rain wash away the blood. He was the first to look down and see that the mare got her wings working instantly after disappearing from view, dashing in through the fourth floor window. His croaking voice was audible, shouting incoherent orders while she touched down inside, water dripping off her coat onto the tile.
The dove paused near the stairways that led down. There was a pile of corpses there, the same mob - they were contorted and charred, only identifiable by the remnants of their silver uniforms and body features. The scene was completely devoid of odor, safe for the mare’s own sweat. While the shouting outside and up on the roof continued, the dove walked down the steps, stepping over the corpses, and peeked at the third floor. More bodies littered the platform and the apartment doorways, some charred, some with their heads tilted at unnatural angles, temples beaten in. Flicking her ears, she retreated and looked up at where the firing team was. With a raspy huff, she picked up one of the charred bodies and got it in her forehooves, using wings as support to walk up to the stairway to the roof. A brief glance showed that nobody was standing right at the steps, so she made her way halfway there, and then, with a strong wing flap, launched the charred body out onto the roof.
The gunners, who had gathered three to each side of the roof entrance, were left staring in shock from the sight of the corpse. Immediately following it was the dove, who leaped on top of it and launched herself to the right, barreling into the trio of stunned mobsters. The other team aimed their weapons, but by then the mare’s wings had already stabbed a knife in the side of two of the gunners’ heads. When the shots came, the mare picked up the one that was left on the ground and had him take the shots that would otherwise have been on target.
Staggered by the corpse jerking back at her, the mare came face to face with the unicorn. A loud thunderclap and pop rang out just to their side, which distracted him as well, but the mare stood her ground, head lowered, eye half-open, staring through him. He wavered on his hooves, eyes grown wide and reddening, his fringe, facing left, having become a thick lump of reddish hair that covered half his face. His horn glowed, making a ring of knives that emerged from inner pockets of the suit start to spin up. He lifted one of his hooves, touching it up the right side of his chest, along where the dragon crawled on his suit. The unicorn then opened his mouth, beginning to speak words that were drowned out by the noise around them. The tip of his hoof turned to point at the masked mare.
She dropped to a crouch when the horn flashed brighter. The stallion’s mouth kept moving, the voice growing louder, while the mare’s legs began to twitch from the tension. Eventually, he shouted one last time, coming through over the noise that surrounded him.
The dove stood in place, twitching, staring at the unicorn’s red blood sprinkle onto the waterlogged roof. She lifted her hooves, which shook, and touched her mask. Her wings hung limp, and she turned around a few times. Her head twitched slightly as the sirens began to decrease, some of the lights speeding away, while a voice below was repeating the same sentences through the loudspeaker. The mare’s hooves touched her chest, spreading some of the blood on her all over the uniform.
Her whole body turned around sharply, shaking, when a strong gust of wind nearly knocked her off her hooves. It came from where the other three gunners were, and she turned to find an awkward, crooked figure there, standing on top of three charred corpses. The dove’s beak bulged a little at the bottom as the mare’s mouth opened. Her head tilted sharply, first to one side, then to the other. Her ears flicked.
“This is a sad end, isn’t it?” asked the dark, awkward figure. its mouth not changing from its persistent grin.
She shook her head, squinting her eyes. Her nostrils flared under the mask as she huffed, and her bad eye managed to focus straight ahead.
“This doesn’t seem good, no? It never does in the end. But…” the figure spread its forelimbs, while the mare’s eyes were fixated on the grin. “...the sun goes down. It's what it does in this place. It takes the past with it.”
The pegasus issued a series of raspy, gurgling noises before shutting her eyes and pressing a wet hoof against her temple. She breathed noisily for a few seconds before opening her eyes again. The grinning figure was gone.
In front of her was an albatross griffon, who stood with a crooked posture, leaning on a lightning bolt-shaped cane, one of his hind legs made of ornate wood. One side of his face was obcured by plumage, a mess of burn scar tissue visible from behind the feathers. He squinted his own good eye at her. After clearing his throat, he waved a talon in front of her.
“Do you want answers?”
The dove continued to stare, her bad eye beginning to twitch harder. The griffon sighed and reached out to touch her shoulder. With a loud clap and a dark flash, they found themselves in a big, dimly lit room, water from their coats dripping onto the ooze-stained floor.
She gasped loudly, disoriented from the teleportation, and let out a wet noise. A stream of chunky, orange bile emerged from near her neck, leaking from inside the mask. She lay almost limp on her chest, staring ahead. In the dim room - an inner deck of a boat - there were dozens of changeling corpses on the floor, their body structures varied, with many of their parts missing. In the middle of the room, sitting on a large chair, was a massive minotaur in a leather cloak, his bare chest covered with trinkets hanging off his neck. Above the neck, there was no head to be found, a meaty crater of tough muscle and bone lacking any facial features. Pieces of beard and sunglasses were splashed all over the walls. An immense taurine gun lay on the floor next to him, while another was still gripped by his large, tattooed arm. The albatross stood on top of the blasted apart remains of a changeling resembling himself.
“The price of failure is something you choose yourself,” he said. "If you feel the failure cannot be rectified. Those are quite few, but a bigger heart sees when it is the case."
The mare just kept staring, huffing loudly as her nostrils worked away the vomit inside the mask. Her eyes were locked on a faint grin in the darkness, among the disfigured changeling bodies.
The repeated demands on the loudspeaker were still audible. Ever so slightly, the shapes of the apartment buildings could be seen through the small windows that let in bits of rain and the flashes of the thunderstorm.
“We all make decisions. Me and my accomplices made ours. Failures are very relative, you know,” the griffon spoke, his croaked, accented, aged voice echoing off the walls. He sighed. “You have been making the right decisions so far.”
“Have you?” The row of teeth in the dark continued to glare at the dove as she lay. It tilted with the slight motions of the boat.
“Don’t waste them rotting in a cell. There are wrongs to right, places to be and things to do,” he told her, bending to touch her shoulder, and thumping his cane against the floor. In another dark flash, the mare was gone from the corpse room.
"But what have you done?"
...from my experiences working with the police force, that the evidence I have collected in regards to this string of murders - yes, murders - is enough for a conviction. Senior officers of the CCPD know a lot of what I've come here to tell you, but the simple fact is, they won't have the public know. They want to weaponize ignorance. This has to come to light.
- Would your move have anything to do with your recent demotion?
- I don’t see how my rank in the police force has anything to do with the [UNPRINTABLE] media masquerade that’s been...
...
...Carol City’s law enforcement was key in stopping oceanside Equestrian riots during the Wedding War. What you're saying can be seen as a severe blemish on the honor of the force, don’t you agree?
- I’m not gonna start discussing whether our cops are good or not, okay? Who did what years ago has nothing to do with this. Why do you think I came here, exactly? [Editor’s note: the interviewee was part of the now-rogue unit of Emergency Situation Assault Squads (ES/AS) that was performing its nefarious “riot control” during, and following, the Wedding War.]
- Indeed, our readers have their...
...
...are just a few of the incidents that have been hushed up. I admit to following orders that lead to the fabrication of some of these events.
- Does that mean that the CCPD believes our city is on the brink of revolt? Would you say that is why the ES/AS terrorists are here? Just how scandalous is this? Are we looking at another Packsmulle, or worse?
- Yes, and no. I think perspective is important here; the political upheavals in our Yonaguni colonies came with a similar buildup, but resolved peacefully. Right now, though, pressure is building up because of the information blackout we've been helping facilitate. You have to understand that there are different degrees of public backlash possible...
...
...gang wars, however, we have seen them before. Carol City wasn't the most peaceful of places even before all this began. The gang violence that’s reported these past few weeks? Nothing like it. This is something entirely different. How do I put this... I've seen a lot in my time. I realize my anonymity does me no good, but I've been to a lot of places, and I've seen a lot of things. What I've seen here lately is not good news, and the way the actual news have been portraying it is... troubling. I've come here to say that there are animals among us in Carol City, and no, it is not the foreign fortune-seekers, and not even the changelings.
Ditzy walked slowly through narrow alleyways, where raindrops tapped on the windowsills and fire escapes up above. She dragged the bag with her uniform and mask through the trash and mud of the murky, narrow confines. Shortly behind her, a timid unicorn filly was following close by, mouth scrunched looking at unfamiliar parts of town. Ditzy's good eye stared ahead, half-closed, while her bad eye stared upwards, static, blinking occasionally. She paused for a moment, looking at a sign at the end of the alley, a small barrel filled with short tongues of flame next to it. The words “Ocean Drive” could be seen on the sign, and behind it were palm trees and swiftly passing crystalline carts.
With a quick breath, the mare increased her pace. Her wet blonde mane obscured most of her bad eye. Her bloodshot good eye, as well as her sweat and rain-drenched snout, still covered in bits of vomit, kept pointing at the ground as her frame shuddered. The filly by her side followed up, glancing around worriedly. Her brisk pace turned into a limp just a few steps away from the sign. Ditzy leaned against a stained, poster-covered brick wall, huffing.
A figure emerged from the shadows up ahead. It had been standing by the barrel, invisible in the contrast of the dark night and the glow of the flames. It was a pale mare with a purple coat and blonde buzz-cut mane, wearing a dirty grey hoodie. Sheapproached Ditzy. Her horn was corroded and damaged, covered in bandages and patches. There were green spots near the corners of her snout.
Ditzy stared back at her. Instantly, a shaky wing shielded the filly to her side. Her bad eye crawled back into the middle of the orbit, slightly visible between clumped strands of hair.
“Hey!.. You don’t look too good there,” the mare told the pegasus. “Yknow, you should… do something about that, no?”
Ditzy stared back. The unicorn in front of her brushed her neck with a hoof and slightly opened the side of her hoodie, revealing a bundle of vials and pills strapped in there.
“Shit, y’know, you look like you need a fix… like, now. I’d normally make it seventy a pop and a hundred a glass, but looking at you… fifty and and eighty, eh? Twenty percent off if you buy a week’s worth, how’s that sound?”
Ditzy continued to stare, her mouth hanging open, with no noise coming out. Slowly, she dislodged herself from the wall and shook her head. One of her wings tensed up, and she kept her eyes firmly on the dealer.
“Really?” the unicorn said with a chuckle. “Come on, you’re not gonna get that shit anywhere else these days. Look at you, you don’t wanna get profiled, do you?” She pointed at the mare’s legs. Just above her hooves were patches of clotting blood. Ditzy glanced down, then back up at the dealer. “The big market ain’t gonna haggle with you, they're... heh... under pressure. It's this or bust, old lady.” The purple mare clinked her slightly shaky hoof against the vials on the inside of her hoodie.
Ditzy left the alleyway, letting herself get soaked by the rain, cleaning the blood off her chest and legs. She took a corner and headed home by the main road, which was all the way across the city from where she was. Dinky sighed, keeping close and quiet.