//------------------------------//
// Endless Curse 
// Story: Another Member of the Band 
// by Magic Step 
//------------------------------//

“Hey, Violet Edge?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you about your dad’s death?”
“No.”
“Oh, uh… okay then.”
Adorabelle and Violet Edge walked down the hallway of the prosecutor’s office. The Attorney General had left his family portraits in place, but in between where space allowed he added photographs of the recipients of the King of Prosecutor’s trophy.
Adorabelle paused in front of a portrait of Perfect Karma. It was taken pre-eyepatch and his mane was less gray. Odder still, he was smiling. Oddest of all, he was cradling the shield-and-sword that made up the KoP award lovingly, as if he actually cared about it. In later pictures he looked bored or unappreciative. It probably didn’t help that the only reason he ever didn’t win the KoP trophy was when somepony else had an unnaturally high profile case that year.
Then she turned back to Violet Edge. “Okay, like, it’s not really about your dad. I wondered where Teddy Ursa was.”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” Violet Edge didn’t even turn around.
“What? Don’t care? Really?” Adorabelle scrambled to catch up with him. “What I, like, totally don’t get is… you took your dad’s death super hard, but you, like, don’t care about the murderer at all. You didn’t even care that he got out on probation. I mean, like… why aren’t you more mad at him?”
Violet Edge stopped walking and squeezed his eyes shut. “Justice… was… served. I can’t… I can’t complain.”
“Why? Is it because Perfect Karma was the prosecutor on that case, too, and if you complained that he didn’t get a harsh enough sentence-”
“No!” Violet Edge’s eyes snapped open. “The justice system is one of the most beautiful instruments of civilization. Everything I’ve worked for is to uphold and protect it. There’s nothing wrong with it, so…” He took a deep breath. “So I can’t complain. I really can’t.”
Adorabelle paused. “But, like, there are things wrong with it, sometimes. That’s why your dad was a defense attorney.”
Violet Edge sighed. “I… I know.”
Adorabelle moved closer to him, letting her mane touch his fur. “If your dad was here… what would he say about Teddy Ursa?”
Violet Edge stiffened and his eyes widened with horror. “I’m not talking about that!”
Adorabelle stumbled backwards. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry.”
Violet Edge huffed. “Let’s just find your dad already.”
They made it to Iron Hoof’s study at the end of the hall. Adorabelle knocked on the warm red wood door.
A muffled voice came through the door. “Name? Business?”
“I’m King Arthur seeking the holy grail,” Adorabelle said.
“…What?”
“Is Sterling Scales there?” Violet Edge called.
“Oh, sorry. Come in.”
Iron Hoof’s study was a blue haven in a mostly-red house. The walls were a dark periwinkle at the bottom and subtly flowed into light turquoise near the ceiling. The carpet was a sandy tan, the curtains a shiny rippling royal blue. The furniture was all black, from the marble desk to the obligatory bookcase to the frames around his diplomas and important newspaper articles. In one corner of the room was a cylindrical tank full of moon jelly fish that undulated up and down like tiny ghosts. Sterling Scales was resting on the black couch near the wall; he kept a wary eye on the jelly fish.
Iron Hoof sat behind his desk, telekinetically writing on strips of paper. Then he carefully rolled each strip into a spiral and put it inside the bingo cage sitting next to him. The attorney general certainly couldn’t compete with Perfect Karma or Chief Blackclap in terms of imposingness, but he cut a fine figure nonetheless; his gray coat was always complemented by his black or navy suits, and his light blue mane was always professionally styled. His cutie mark was a scale with a sword laid across the two pans, with an unrolled scroll behind the whole thing.
“Golden Shield… I don’t know.” Iron Hoof looked up. “Can you think of anypony else?”
“Whatcha doing?” Adorabelle asked.
“Ah, Adorabelle. Greetings.” Iron Hoof gestured to the bingo cage. “As you can see clearly see… Well, ah ha ha, I guess it’s not that obvious, is it? Short version: nopony has exactly been leaping at the opportunity to defend our current… concern.”
“Terry. You… you mean you need a defense attorney for Terry,” Violet Edge said.
“Right.” Iron Hoof shrugged. “And Equestrian law prevents us from holding a trial without providing the defendant with proper legal counsel. I’ve… run out of ways to incentivize ponies, to be honest. It wouldn’t be fair to assign him an attorney who isn’t even trying... or worse, is actively hoping to lose.”
Sterling Scales draped his forehoof over his eyes. “It’s cruel. Cr-criminal. You can’t force them to represent him, please; I couldn’t possibly judge such a… c-coliseum event.”
Iron Hoof stared grimly ahead. “I know. I feel like I’m… like I’m picking ponies for the Rainbow Factory. Starburst must be a sociopath to take that so calmly. Ah, there I go changing the subject again…” He cranked the bingo ball a bit.
“Perfect Karma is the prosecution, and he’s never lost,” Violet Edge said. “Why are you even worrying about it?”
“I can’t go into court assuming one side is going to win,” Sterling Scales said. “Also, the trial should be about whether Terry is worthy of punishment, not the… not the…” he closed his eyes.
“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet,” Iron Hoof said. “Let me read the strip of paper and… well, let’s just wait and see.” He pulled the spiral of paper that fell into the bingo cage bucket. He slowly unrolled it in his gray telekinesis. “Hmm. Primrose…”
The door burst open and a lavender blur streaked into the room. Mystic Faerie collapsed against the black marble desk, panting heavily.
“Are-are you okay?” Sterling Scales got off the couch.
“How did you get in here?” Iron Hoof asked.
Mystic Faerie tilted her head up. “S-sorry. I only just decided…” she swallowed hard. “Terry. Have you picked somepony to defend him yet?”
Iron Hoof looked at the bingo cage and winced. “Er, uh…”
“I volunteer.”
Violet Edge’s eyes widened. Adorabelle felt like the beach room had become the arctic.
“N-no, not you,” she squeaked.
“You can’t do this!” Violet Edge said.
Mystic Faerie turned to them and gave a winning smile. “Why not? Don’t tell me you’re superstitious.”
“The curse is real!” Adorabelle squeaked.
“Twelve defense attorneys, all dead within a year of winning a murder trial, is not a coincidence!” Violet Edge shouted.
“Teflon Slick isn’t dead and it’s been over a decade!”
“But he’s, y’know, Teflon Slick!” Adorabelle rolled her eyes. “He’s probably immune to Smooze too.”
“Black Coffee isn’t dead either.”
“Not been a year yet,” Violet Edge hissed. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”
Mystic Faerie started scowling now. “You are not the boss of me.”
“Daddy! Tell her she can’t do this!” Adorabelle whined.
Sterling Scale stammered. “But she… I don’t…” He turned to Iron Hoof with a helpless expression.
Iron Hoof circled his desk and shook Mystic Faerie’s hoof. “We appreciate it, Miss Faerie.”
“Thank you.”
“B-but…” Adorabelle blinked tears away. “I don’t want you to die. Please.”
Mystic Faerie sighed and put a hoof on Adorabelle’s shoulder. “This curse has to end sometime, doesn’t it?”
Violet Edge dashed out of the room.
“Hey, wait!”Adorabelle ducked under Mystic Faerie’s hoof and galloped after him.
She followed him until he dashed into the stallion’s restroom. Then she stood outside, wondering if it was weird to wait and hoping he was just crying and not about to kill himself.
The curse had started as random newspaper speculation, just a series of strange coincidences. When the fourth attorney died, ponies had started getting edgy.
The fourth one had been Adorabelle’s mom, True Beauty.
After that, the evidence became more solid. It had taken a while to recognize it for what it was; some died in accidents, some in unsolved murders. Multiple times, the murderers in individual cases were caught, tried, and locked away, so it wasn’t the work of a single serial killer. The only thing the defense attorneys had in common was that they lived and worked in Canterlot and had successfully defended a murderer sometime in the last year or so. …All the defense attorneys who had successfully defended a murderer. Except Teflon Slick, nopony had escaped the curse, ever since that first bloody incident.
And it was the DL-6 incident, when Violet Edge’s father was killed.
That did it. That absolutely did it. Adorabelle knew exactly how she was going to spend her evening.
She dashed back the way she came and rammed straight into Iron Hoof coming the other way.
“Ow, ow, your horn hurts,” Iron Hoof whimpered, stumbling back and rubbing his chin where she’d poked him.
“Ooh, sorry. So sorry.”
“Where did… Violet Edge surprised me, running off like that.” Iron Hoof looked over Adorabelle’s head. “Is he okay?”
“Dunno. Maybe. I have a super important question-”
“Nope.”
“B-but you don’t even know what I was going to ask.” Adorabelle swished her tail angrily.
“Your dad already asked me not to tell you anything about the Missing Children Incident, and I’ve informed all my subordinates to do likewise, so don’t try to ask them.”
Iron Hoof never did anything halfway.
“Oh, like, that’s okay. It wasn’t about the Missing Children Incident. I just want to know the address of-”
“I’m also not telling you where Freddy’s is.”
Adorabelle’s eyes widened. “Freddy’s? Freddy’s what?”
Iron Hoof opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then he leaned against the wall and groaned. “Forget I said that…”
“Can’t. Ever.” Adorabelle grinned like a cat.
“Please don’t tell your dad.”
“Daddy says that when somepony says not to tell your parents something, that’s a clue you should tell your parents.”
“Of course he did.” He rubbed his eyes with one hoof.
“But I promise not to tell if you do one little thing for me.” Adorabelle stepped closer. “I want to know Teddy Ursa’s address.”
Iron Hoof took his hoof away. “Teddy? That… that’s not a very good idea.”
“You wouldn’t have let him off the star before he was cured, right?” Adorabelle asked. “And I don’t mean his home, I mean his old toy shop.”
“The other crime scene, then?” Iron Hoof paused. “I… I still wouldn’t go there. It’s in the chocolate district, so it’s not like you only have Teddy Ursa to worry about.”
“Okay.” Adorabelle turned to leave. “Guess I’ll just have to wander through the whole chocolate district looking for it…”
“No, no, don’t do that.” Iron Hoof spun her around. “I don’t care if your dad is a pathetic disciplinarian. I can enforce the rules when he’s too weak to do it himself, so if I hear you’ve been in that area at all-”
“What? You’ll make me sit in time out? This is, like, y’know… out of your jurisdiction.” Adorabelle smirked.
She shouldn’t have done that. Iron Hoof lifted her into the air with telekinesis and started down the hall.
“Ow, let go, please, you’re hurting meeee,” Adorabelle wailed, flailing her legs in the air.
“I consider that a threat that I can legally act on under the authority your father entrusted me with,” Iron Hoof snapped, throwing open the door to a board room. He set Adorabelle in one of the chairs. “And you will stay here until your dad agrees with me what needs to be done!” He slammed the door shut.
Adorabelle whimpered and felt her ribs. He hadn’t broken them when he grabbed her, at least. So she got off the stool and opened the door. Iron Hoof had left, and she didn’t feel any need to listen to bullies. She’d just have to get the address from a library directory or something.
It wasn’t until she’d left the prosecutor’s headquarters that she realized Iron Hoof had been trying to lock her in. The thought made her giggle. He’d never learn.

***

The chocolate district of Canterlot didn’t even look like part of the same city.
In a sense, it wasn’t. It was a totally different shelf of the mountain than the one most of Canterlot occupied. A few mountain paths of various quality levels were all that connected them together.
Before the chocolate factory, it used to be known as the commoner’s district or the “freepony” district, back when it was still okay to call ponies names like that. Back when mass slavery was openly acknowledged and racism was encouraged instead of fought, the aristocracy of Canterlot only allowed unicorns and slaves of unicorns to live in the main city. The chocolate district was built for everypony else.
While recent earth pony and pegasus immigrants were now allowed to move into main Canterlot, and technically there were no laws to stop current inhabitants of the chocolate district from moving out, nothing had really changed.
Adorabelle had never been here before, but she’d seen lots of pictures. Her mom had kept an album of them; she called it the “final evidence.” That is, the final evidence against the notion that Canterlot was no longer racially segregated. Things hadn’t improved since her mom’s time, from the looks of things.
The streets were littered with garbage and half of them weren’t paved. Skyscrapers huddled together for warmth, their muddy windows dark. Stores stacked on top of stores as if they were play sets put away by a careless foal.
Adorabelle held her hoofdrawn map in front of her with telekinesis. She’d picked a sunny yellow dress and dark blue hair gems to wear today, but now she was realizing how much it made her stand out here. She’d often heard the fashion advice that going without clothes in Canterlot meant you were either poor or a tourist; she was having trouble believing exactly how poor the poor ponies actually looked.
She passed something that looked like it had bygone aspirations of becoming a playground: a field of dirt with a park bench and a rusty dome-shaped jungle gym. A young mare sat on the park bench, looking like she’d nodded off sitting up, her coat and mane the same dusty shade of yellow, her feathers spread awkwardly against the peeling white paint. Under the jungle gym sat two fillies, one pegasus with a coat the same color as the older filly, and one dark red earth pony. They had marbles sitting between them, but their eyes were fixated on Adorabelle. They seemed neither happy nor sad nor angry; they were just staring.
Adorabelle shuddered and wished she could just keep looking at the map the whole trip. Everything about this place just seemed fake, like she wasn’t in the real world anymore. Ponies couldn’t live like this.
She trotted up a steep, rocky path winding out of town. Two stallions sat lazily behind a fruit stand full of mediocre produce and clouds of flies; they whistled when she passed.
“Hey, rich girl?” one said. “Take an old stallion’s advice and skedaddle home. You really don’t wanna be here when the mare in the moon comes out.”
Adorabelle just walked faster.
She finally neared the end of the map. Past several boarded up shops, there was a small river with a simple wooden bridge. She crossed the bridge when she came to it and found her destination.
Teddy Ursa’s Emporium (with a name like his, saying what it was an emporium of was a bit redundant) was a strange shop built right into the mountainside. A green door was recessed into the mountain, with a large display window next to it full of dusty bug-eyed bears. Two more windows floated over the store sign, the only indication of a second floor. Both had curtains drawn.
Adorabelle looked in the display window. Nothing but bears. And a cash register. Unless Teddy Ursa could turn into a bear, which wouldn’t surprise her that much, he wasn’t around.
She knocked anyway. When nothing happened, she pushed the door open.
A bell clanked at her as she pushed her way in. She looked up and saw a bizarre wind chime hanging by the door; it looked like it was made from scrapped gears and other weird pieces. The same bent oval piece occurred over and over.
Adorabelle squinted. The bent ovals looked a bit like… jaws.
Suppressing a shudder, Adorabelle turned to examine the rest of the shop. It kind of reminded her of Perfect Aim’s room, but it was better organized and had less variety. Nearer to the floor were bears just like the one involved in the current case. They seemed to only come in brown, black, and white. Higher up were more elaborate bears; they were bigger, came in more colors, and wore different clothes. They were all different; there was a ballerina, a doctor, a granny, some bear in a tux. Their eyes were different though; they didn’t look natural. They were black with colored lights in the center, a different color for each bear. In fact, as Adorabelle watched, some of the colors shifted.
“Hi.”
Adorabelle gasped and turned towards the sound. It seemed to be coming from near the cash register.
“Hello.”
“H-hi?” Adorabelle called back.
“Hi.”
“Where- who are you?” she stepped closer, slowly.
“Hello.”
Adorabelle put her hooves on the counter and leaned over.
Lying sprawled out on the floor was a strange unbearlike abomination. Its body was a sphere, with blue and red stripes on the top half. The bottom half was dark blue, leading into two navy blue legs with long brown feet on the ends. It had two thin pink rods sticking out the sides of the ball; one was connected to a sign that said ‘balloons’ and one was wrapped around, well, a balloon. Or a plastic model of a balloon, anyway.
And then there was the head. A perfectly spherical head with the same blue and red stripes on the top and a propeller sticking out above that. A head with two huge round blue eyes and rosy cheeks. A head with a red triangle for a nose, and a mouth filled with huge, white teeth.
“Hi.” There was no doubt the sound was coming from the strange toy.
“I… I know what you are.” Adorabelle leaned closer. “You’re a human, right?”
“Hello.”
Adorabelle smirked. “You, like, don’t know anything else to say, do you?”
The toy was silent. Then it sat upright, blue eyes staring into Adorabelle’s soul.
“Do you know what happens when the lights go out?” it asked.
Pain exploded behind Adorabelle’s head. She cried out and fell to the ground; she managed to make out a fuzzy brown shape slowly approaching her, before darkness overcame her vision.