To Hunt a Beast

by Blackdrag-rose

5: There and Back Again

Manehatten, the ever growing mechanical city of Equestria, was home to some of the most hyperactive ponies and an even stranger crowd. It was here that Wisdom and his group had enlisted the help if Copper three years ago and had come to her again to find some way to locate their target. It was by her designs that Manehatten had grown to be one of the safest cities in the world and one of the most active next to Canterlot.

The dragon train rolled back into the train house, which Copper actually owned and wouldn't admit that it had been given to her as a gift, and eventually stopped. Copper smiled and locked the wheels into their ports, allowing the train to cool off as the warpstone dimmed to a normal light blue color. For her it should have been good to be home, but the fact that Pinkie had told them that the one they had been hunting was in her home chilled her bones. Or at least it chilled the remaining bones that she had left, seeing how about half of her body was already converted to the mechanical state like her leg.

"There is no way that Eclipse could have hidden from me for three whole years without giving himself away," Copper growled, mostly to herself as her guests got off her train, "I have scoured every inch of this city, gone over every blueprint available to be, and have bested every shadow somepony could have hidden in, but still no sign of him. I don't care what Pinkie said, there is absolutely no way that Eclipse in hiding somewhere in this city."

Pinkie, however, was paying more attention to the ponies that were wandering around the train station then she was to the ponies she had accompanied to the city. Not that Copper minded, she really didn't want to deal with Pinkie after Sunset Shimmer had ridiculed her flying train for the majority of the trip. If it wasn't for the fact that she was supposed to be an ally then Copper would have left her behind in the Crystal Empire and let Princess Cadence deal with her.

"Settle down Copper," Wisdom remarked, eying the city as he wondered where Eclipse could be, "Pinkie is random, but when she says something like this then it is worth the look. We'll search the city, get back together in your store or some other place, and then we'll decide our next course of action."

"He won't be here," Copper insisted, trying to put Pinkie's comment out of her mind, "that I am fairly certain of."

~The Market District~

Peachy looked around her and wondered why she was traveling with a group of three werewolves instead of three vampires. She was the head vampire and wasn't used to the ways the ponies, for that was what they were at the moment, were staring at the stands. Their minds were elsewhere, not on the task that had been set before them by Wisdom, who was hanging with Pinkie and Lyra in the Club District.

Copper had explained to them all, once upon a time, that there were four districts that surrounded the central Housing District. Those were Market, Club, Train, and Labor. The Market District was all about the stores that sold, bought, and traded all sorts of goods to ponies that lived in or visited Manehatten. The Club District was for all the various restaurants that had moved in, some of them being the loud musical businesses that Vinyl was known to hang at. The Train District was where all the trains docked, entered, and exited the city, which was why it was considered the busiest part of the city. And the Labor District was where ponies turned raw materials into pieces of art or pieces of everyday life.

And Peachy was stuck in the market with a bunch of mutts.

She considered summoning her shadow powers and swallowing the stupid mutts, so she could leave them in a place that would teach them to behave when they were on a task and not stray from what the rest of the group was doing. She couldn't do it to them, because Tick would know they were missing and would blame her if she came back without them. To heck with what Wisdom had said, she was going to visit the Club District and she was going to see if Eclipse was actually hiding out there. There was no way Eclipse was hiding in a market stand.

~The Club District~

"I'm surprised that there are so many ponies out and about," Wisdom commented, there being at least twenty ponies around them at the moment, "Its going to make finding Eclipse hard. Almost like a needle in a haystack."

"Don't worry sillies, he's around here somewhere," Pinkie spoke, sniffing the air as if she was searching for something, "If you pay attention you'll find what your looking for."

What that meant was that they were going to find something that would lead them to Eclipse, but what Wisdom noticed was that Peachy was walking their way. That and the three werewolves that were with her seemed utterly bored with what was going on around them, much to the disappointment of Peachy. She must not have found anything, otherwise she would have been much happier and might have done a little skip in her step.

"I take it you guys found nothing?" Wisdom asked with a sigh, fearing that he already knew the answer.

"There is no way he's in the Market District," Peachy answered, "With three blood sniffing werewolves we would have found something, maybe not blood, but something none the less and there was nothing. If he's in this city then that means he's using superior level magic to hide himself without leaving a magical trace like most ponies."

"Come on sillies, you'll miss him if you keep chatting," Pinkie teased, making them turn to watch a group of five ponies leave a club called Night Life.

Four of the five were changelings, four scouts that seemed to have no concern that their queen might be worried sick about them. Even though they had black chitin coats, fangs, and light green eyes they seemed to fit in with the crowd like they belonged there. Two of them had bags on their backs, bags filled with what looked like supplies or even jars of food stocks. All of their wings flickered in excitement, as if they enjoyed whatever they had just finished doing in the nightclub.

The fifth pony, however, was not like the changelings. The stallion's coat was an unnatural ashy grey color and both his mane and his tail were coated completely black, almost like it was a mass of darkness. He had looked their way once, revealing what had in one instant been blood red eyes and then changed to light blue a second later. The air shimmered around him for a instant and it revealed a monster that was a cross between werewolves and vampires. The large bat wings appeared on his back, fading into non existence as a regular black coated stallion with a light blue mane appeared in his place.

The stallion's cutie mark was what looked like a skull cross, but it was missing the skull as the x hung fresh in their minds. One line was what looked like a quill, one of the most common instruments in the writing world to this day, while the other line was a scary blue crystal. Wisdom and Peachy couldn't believe it and they wouldn't believe it, but the cutie mark was enough for them.

"See? What did I tell you?" Pinkie laughed, just as the group disappeared into the crowd, "Eclipse has been in Manehatten the entire time you sillies."