Back In Town

by totallynotabrony

Chapter 4

In the morning I was awakened by a tapping against the window. I rolled over and heard a faint shout, “Come on buddy, I don’t have all day!”

Outside, a bushwoolie was on the windowsill holding a small envelope that was still almost as big as he was. I got out of bed and crossed the room to open the window. He dropped the envelope on the sill and scooted away before I could ask questions.

Bushwoolies are small, rather amorphous creatures that are fuzzy and generally not too smart. Something about living in the city also makes them kind of disagreeable.

I had never gotten woolie mail before, but I wasn’t surprised the Shades were using it for emergency communication. It was a lot harder to track than a phone call or email, and it was faster than regular mail. I picked the envelope up and opened it. Inside was some information and a list of things for me to look into.

I had breakfast and went to get started on what they needed me to do. The doorbell rang. Wary of possible attack, I kept my body to the side of the door. “Who is it?”

“White Feather.”

I paused for several seconds before asking, “What do you want?”

“I want to talk.”

“We’re talking.”

“Or we could do this face to face,” she said from behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I tried to turn and face her, but she grabbed the back of my neck and pushed my face into the wall. She had a messenger bag with her.

“How did you get in?” I demanded.

“Window,” Feather replied. After getting into Silver’s high rise office, my first floor apartment was probably a piece of cake. She steered me over to the table and we sat down. The note the bushwoolie had given me lay on the tabletop where I had left it.

“I’d like to know what you’re working on,” said Feather. She picked up the envelope. I made a grab for it and tried to get up, but she twisted my leg until I sat down again.

“Why do you want to know what I’m working on anyway? I’m a nopony.”

Feather put down the note after reading it. “Well, I tried to ask this guy.” She pulled a glass bottle out of her bag with the bushwoolie from earlier crammed into it.

“You can’t do this! I’m a government employee!”

She shoved the bottle back in the bag. “But he’s just the messenger. For a nopony, you sure seem to be in the middle of things.”

“Have you considered that my partner is Forest freaking Song, somepony with tons of experience and ability?”

Feather shrugged. “Even if it’s just luck, the fact remains that you’re getting results. You probably know more than most about what’s going on.”

“Aren’t you working for these ponies? Don’t you know?”

“Sure, but I want to know how much of a hint you’re going to need to catch up.”

I couldn’t believe it. “You want to help me?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

“I’m asking the questions.”

“What if I won’t talk?”

Feather rolled her eyes. “I knew you were going to cause problems. Just tell me what you know and I’ll tell you what I know.”

“What’s the catch?”

Feather reached across the table and grabbed me by the neck, jerking me out of my seat and face to face with her.

“Listen up, asshole! I am trying to help you. Do you want to take a look at my mind and make sure I’m being honest?”

Suddenly, the floodgates were open and I was being pelted with her thoughts. I wasn’t just having a look, she was forcing them on me. I was overwhelmed and didn’t notice for several seconds that I had fallen to the table after she had let go of me.

I sat up, dazed. I’d never been attacked like that and didn’t even know it was possible. Feather had locked down her mind again, but the afterglow was giving me a headache.

I realized that I had only learned one thing from her, and that was that she was indeed telling the truth. Instead of allowing me full access to her brain, Feather had just taken that one thought and fired it at me hard enough to almost burn my mind.

“Holy hell,” I muttered. Deciding that she wasn’t going to ask again, I cleared my throat and told what I knew. “A few of our agents have been killed by a gang we think is called the Street Angels. We traced their leadership up the chain. The top two that we uncovered were Silver Anniversary and Chip Module, both of whom were killed by you. Personally, I think there’s somepony else out there, but we haven’t found them yet. I don’t know any kind of motive for trying to kill Shades, either.”

“The guy at the top of the food chain is named Settee,” Feather said.

“Did he hire you to kill everyone?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“Are you going to kill him too?”

“He paid me not to.”

“Why is he after Shades?”

“Settee is aware that the supernatural exists, and apparently knows a psychic. With what they’re up to, they were probably going to come to your attention eventually, so they decided to strike first. They contracted the gang to take hits at you, but didn’t tell them what they were up against.”

“What is Settee working towards?”

“His legal business is setting up gambling, sports betting mostly. However, he’s got something big coming up at the end of the month.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“What sporting event happens in October every year?”

Autumn in Ponyville. “The Running of the Leaves,” I said. Thinking about it, it seemed like a great idea. Loads of ponies would come to watch the race, and many more than that would be watching it on TV. With psychic help to predict the finishing order, there was a lot of money to be made.

“Where can I find Settee? And what’s the psychic’s name?”

“He paid me not to tell anypony anything that might locate him,” said Feather. “And I never met the psychic.”

“But if he paid you for silence, then why did you tell me what you just told me?”

“Loophole in the contract. He didn’t pay me not to tell you about what he was up to.”

“But why are you telling me this at all?”

“I don’t like him,” said Feather. She stood up and turned to go. “Have fun.”

Did that mean that she did like me? What had I done to deserve that?

After White Feather was gone, I picked up the envelope and reread it, scribbling on it with a pen to add the information I had just learned.

I grabbed my laptop and began looking for pictures of Settee. It wasn’t easy to decide which one I was looking for, but I eventually narrowed it down. He was an older pegasus, maybe sixty. The top of his mane was bald, but the sides still held some hair. He didn’t look like an evil mastermind, but then, they rarely do. Especially if they’re named after a synonym for a couch.

I printed out the picture and a map of the city. Then, without bothering to get dressed, I went next door to see if Kimmy was home.

Seated on Kimmy’s couch, surrounded by her pink décor, I was suddenly less confident that my idea would work. She smiled and asked if I had ever used a focus circle before.

“No. I’ve never tried to home in on somepony like this.”

“Maybe I can help,” she said.

I placed the picture of Settee and the map of Ponyville in the center of the circle. Kimmy adjusted a few things and told me the circle was ready.

I closed my eyes, concentrating. A focus circle was a little bit like an antenna. It could both send and receive. Magic users could use a circle to direct their energies more easily, and psychics could use them to help fine-tune their visions.

I had a vague idea of how to use a circle, but had never done so before. As I concentrated on it, some of the voices in my head began to fade out. Little by little, I whittled it down to just one. It was practically labeled "Settee."

Okay, I could hear him. Now what? I searched for some clue that could tell me where he was. I pondered my mental map of Ponyville. After several minutes, I was beginning to get frustrated. Suddenly, I felt another presence in the circle, but on my side of it.

I realized it was Kimmy. It was somewhat uncomfortable to be sharing a vision with a neighbor that I’d known less than a week, but I could feel her quickly sizing up the situation. After a few moments, I felt the couch shift as she moved and I heard with my ears the sound of a pencil scratching on paper.

Kimmy touched my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw a mark that she’d made on the map.

“Is that it?” I said.

“That’s really impressive,” she said.

“You aren’t so bad yourself.”

“I’m good with finding things, but finding one pony out of so many is really good. What do you do for a living?” she asked.

“I fight crime.”

She smiled. “We should team up.”

I wasn’t in charge of recruitment, but she did have some talent. “I’ll have to get back to you on that. Right now I have some business to take care of.”

I said thank you and went back to my place. On the internet I found a closer view of the area she had marked. I checked it against a list of property that Settee owned. He had a house there.

I felt unprofessionally excited as I dialed Forest’s number. When she answered, I simply said, “We need to meet.”

She understood as well as I did that no wireless phone was ever truly secure. “My place,” she said.

I said I would be there and hung up. I got dressed as quickly as I could and drove over. Forest was waiting for me when I got there. She climbed in and we took off again. Just in case the truck had been bugged, we opened the windows and turned up the radio to mask our conversation. Not being paranoid enough had gotten us into this situation, so we might as well go all out to compensate.

“Feather visited me this morning. She wanted to talk.”

Forest looked surprised, but didn’t interrupt.

“She told me we’re after a stallion named Settee. Working with my neighbor, I was able to find him.” I handed her the map and a sticky note with the exact address written on it.

“Your neighbor?” Forest asked.

“Long story. Anyway, he’s home, and I think we need to get some ponies together and go visit him.”

I expected her to argue or point out something that I had missed. She was far more experienced, after all. Instead, she nodded and pulled out her phone to make some calls.

Shortly after that, we were meeting in a public park near where I had traced Settee to. Water Drop, Lock Box, Ivory Hammer, Earthquake, Chapstick, and a few other Shades were there. We spoke in whispers and used creative body positioning to avoid exposing ourselves to lip reading.

Plans were quickly made and we drove away in separate directions. In a coordinated move, we would all arrive at the house simultaneously. After that, it depended on what kind of defenses there were. It wasn’t much of a plan, and I think everypony was nervous about implementing such a thing on short notice, but we didn’t have time to be more thorough.

Forest and I had been assigned to drive past the house beforehand so I could attempt to determine if Settee was still home. It had been close to an hour since Kimmy and I had found him, and there existed a possibility that he had slipped away.

I sat in the passenger seat of the truck while Forest drove. I wanted to be able to put my full attention on the house. It was easier to pick up Settee now that I knew what his thoughts sounded like. As we rolled past, I heard him. Our plan was working.

When the time came, we pulled up outside the house. There were six of us covering the front door, and some more at the back. When Forest heard the glass in the back door break, it was her signal to buck open the front door.

The heavy wood door slammed open, nearly falling off its hinges. I went through the open doorway right beside Forest, both of us with guns drawn. The others covered the rear.

We found the stairway and started up. The other group concentrated on the main floor. At this point, I would have expected to find somepony in the house. Even an alarm system. Instead, it was dead quiet, with the lights shut off.

We covered the second floor, checking all the rooms including closets. There was nopony there. Furthermore, it didn’t look like anypony had been there recently. The beds were made and there were no clothes, toothbrushes or anything else that might indicate that somepony lived there.

We came back downstairs and met with the other group. They hadn’t found anything either, so we went back to our individual cars and left before somepony called the police to report breaking and entering.

I felt like a fool. Our only lead, a lead that I’d come up with, had been a dead end.

“What the hell were you thinking?” said Forest. “You tried to get help from your neighbor?”

“She pointed me to a neighborhood where Settee owned a house. I’d call that helping.”

“You said yourself that Settee has a psychic. She could have led you there just to throw us off.”

“What are the odds that I would move in next door to his partner in crime?”

“They’re predicting gambling odds. Do you think it’s so farfetched that they could know beforehand where you were going to live?”

She had a point.

Forest told me to turn the truck and around and take us back to my place. When we got there, she didn’t even bother with a knock before kicking in Kimmy’s door much the same way she had done at Settee’s house.

Kimmy wasn’t home. We did a quick check of the place. Nothing appeared to be missing like she had packed up and left. Still, it didn’t prove anything. Her whole apartment could very well have been a ruse.

The focus circle was still on her coffee table. Looking at it, I got an idea.

“What are the odds that she protected herself to stop me from finding her?”

“Probably pretty good.”

“Still, we won’t know until we try.” I sat down and resumed my place in front of the focus circle. Forest closed the door, hopefully concealing the splintered frame.

It took almost ten minutes, but by concentrating on Kimmy’s face, I was able to track her down. I didn’t know where she was, but by the looks of it, it was a mall. She was buying more pink things.

“I found her,” I said to Forest. “I don’t know where, but she’s shopping. Of course, that could have been set up, too.”

“Any other ideas?” she asked.

“I’d like to try for Settee one more time. Maybe the results will be different without Kimmy here to change things.”

I was able to get a lock on him a little more easily this time. It felt very familiar, and I soon realized why.

“He’s back at his house.”

“We’ve got four Shades covering the place,” said Forest. They should have seen him go in.” She dialed one of them and put the phone on speaker for my benefit.

“We didn’t see anything,” said the phone. It sounded like Earthquake.

“Can you check?” I said. “I can see him. He’s sitting in the living room watching TV.” It was the exact same picture I had gotten from earlier.

I heard the sounds of ponies moving and then Earthquake came back. “There’s nopony here. We checked the lights, and the electricity isn’t even hooked up.”

It suddenly hit me. “It’s like a recording! Somepony took a few of Settee’s thoughts and set them up to play in a loop.”

It was slightly confusing, even to me, to be mixing telepathy and electronics terms, but everypony understood. Suddenly, the case had taken a new step forward.

Comments

[BlueNinja]

What had I done to deserve that?

Just being your normal handsome self, I suppose.

He didn’t look like an evil mastermind, but then, they rarely do.

And that's why he's not a super-villain - presentation!

Just in case the truck had been bugged, we opened the windows and turned up the radio to mask our conversation.

Or you could learn how to broadcast. Telepathic conversation has got to be pretty hard to overhear.

[totallynotabrony]

3667796 Presentation Got to remember that one.