For the Sake of Progress

by Lucaro

Chapter 7: Exposed

The police had arrived at the Rich mansion. Applejack shivered outside in the cold break of dawn. Frost glittered on the tips of the grass, sparkling like broken shards of glass. They all sat in the driveway, and Fluttershy had fallen asleep on her shoulder.

The paramedics pushed open the mahogany doors, and they carried out Mr. Rich’s body out on a stretcher. Mrs. Rich ran after them, wailing. She leapt at their feet, wrapping her hooves around the paramedic’s legs. “No! Please don’t take him away!”

A police-mare wrested her off the paramedic, and dragged her back inside. They slid the stretcher inside the ambulance and closed the doors. Twilight trotted over to her, “Applejack, Fluttershy, the police want to talk to you two.”

Applejack roused Fluttershy and they went inside the mansion. They walked past Mrs. Rich who was having a total breakdown. Twilight whispered, “They first accused Mrs. Rich of killing her husband, but…” Applejack saw Mrs. Rich pulling out clumps of hair from her mane, screaming. “As you can see, it obviously wasn’t her.”

“So they have no idea who the murderer was?” asked Fluttershy.

“No,” Twilight said.

A police-stallion walked up to them, and beckoned them. “Come, sit down. The investigators have some questions for you.”

Fluttershy, Applejack, and Twilight sat down on a couch and waited. Soon they dragged in Mrs. Rich and sat her down on another couch. An investigator approached them, his trench coat and fedora making him look more comical than serious. “Alright, Mrs. Rich. So your husband was acting strange when he returned from the Badlands?”

Mrs. Rich nodded. The investigator continued. “Did you know that your husband was assaulted by one of his workers at the oil-drilling plant?”

Mrs. Rich shook her head. “I had no idea.”

“The worker stabbed him with a jagged object, and did you notice a stab wound on him?” Mrs. Rich shook her head. “No? Well, the worker who attacked him claimed he was hearing voices and the voices told him to stab your husband. He’s in a mental institution now.”

“So, what’s your point?” Mrs. Rich snapped. “Is that why my husband was so shaken up?”

The investigator held up a bag with some kind of broken horn in it. “This was the object your husband was stabbed with. A piece broke off inside him.” He shook the bag. “We believe this object is cursed. Everyone who holds on to it for too long starts hallucinating and hearing voices.”

Twilight trotted over to the investigator. “So they uncovered this horn as they dug their oil wells in the Badlands? It looks like a unicorn’s horn….” Twilight blinked. “It’s black, and curved.” She blinked again. “I can’t help but feel like I’ve seen it before.”

Mrs. Rich stood up. “So, a piece of this cursed horn broke off in my husband? Is that why he was acting so strange?”

“He was possessed,” said Twilight, staring at the horn. It seemed to radiate a malignant presence. “I know who’s behind this.” Twilight stared at the ground, shaking her head. “No, we killed him at the Crystal Empire. Some part of him must have survived in his horn and when it broke off inside Mr. Rich….”

There was a loud siren that pierced the air. All the police-stallions started looking around, confused. The investigator barked at his underlings. “Is that one of ours!?”

All the police started rushing to the entrance of the mansion, and the investigator dashed after them, cursing. Twilight, Applejack, and Fluttershy all looked at one another and followed the police. Applejack caught up to the investigator. “What’s going on!?”

They all ran into the main reception room and a police-mare was holding up a radio, and everypony had gathered to listen. They could hear the muffled voices of ponies shouting through the radio static. One of the police-stallion grabbed the receiver and was yelling into it. “Alpha squad to police base, Alpha squad to police base, what the hell is going on over there!?”

The voice was muffled. “We’ve had a hospital fire! Most likely an arsonist! The fire had only affected the isolation rooms, and you won’t believe what we found…”

“Tell us!” The investigator screamed.

“Someone cannibalized one of the foals and a nurse, and then set the whole place on fire. We couldn’t find the remains of the other foals though, so they were obviously taken by the suspect.”
Applejack stared at Twilight, horrified. “Applebloom….”

“But that’s not the problem, it’s raining here in Ponyville and…” The next few words were lost in static, but then his voice became clear again. “They attacked us on the scene, and only a few of us made it back to the base.”

Fluttershy looked like she was about to cry again. “What’s going on?”

The radio blared. There was indiscriminate screaming in the background, and a cry of pain. “They’ve broken through the barricades!” There was more yelling, and the sound of swords being drawn. “Oh no! NO!” The stallion talking to them screamed, and the transmission was dissolved into static.

There was a moment of silence, and the police-stallion shook the radio. It had gone silent. The police captain clapped his hooves. “Alright! We’ve got to return to Ponyville and find out what’s going on!” He waved his hoof. “C’mon, move!”

They all filed towards the door, but Applejack looked through a window and realized that the sky was gray and stormy, the rain pouring down in sheets. Was it just her, or did the rain have a strange red tinge?

“Hmmm…” one of the police mares said. “Rain wasn’t in the forecast today.”

They were about to open the door, but there was a banging on the door. They hesitated. A hoof smashed through the door, and started groping around for the doorknob. Fluttershy screamed and they all backed up. Another hoof smashed a hole in the door. Twilight grabbed Applejack. “We can’t go outside,” she hissed. “The chemical contaminant is in the rainwater, and it looks like it has been concentrated tenfold!”

“So?” said Applejack. “It shouldn’t affect…”

There was large crash at the doors, and the doors went flying open. Three police ponies stumbled in, jagged outcrops of glowing red crystals jutting from their bodies. Their eyes were green, the pupils red and dilated. “Stand down!” the police captain screamed. The three ponies moaned, and shambled toward the police captain. “Halt!” the captain yelled again, backing up.

The dozen or so police ponies backed up even further, as the three crystallized police ponies reached out towards them, moaning. “Kill me…please…” one of them said.

“I knew it!” Twilight yelled. “Who other than Sombra could have done this?” The red crystals growing on the ponies crackled with energy at the mention of his name. “It was him who was coerced Mr. Rich into dumping waste into the river!”

The crystallized officer ponies stared at Twilight, grinning. They all spoke at once, they’re voices deep. “That’s right, Twilight Sparkle,” they said in unison. “It was I who made Firespark sick as a means to secure Mr. Rich’s full obedience. But when his son’s brain died, he dared to speak out against me. So I had to end him.”

“Why are you doing this!?” Applejack yelled.

“Crystals,” they said simply. “The chemical cocktail I put into the town’s drinking water, it turns living tissue into crystals. I sucked the life out of the foals, and devoured their bodies when they became ripe. It has given me all my power back and more….” They laughed again. “Now that I have increased the concentration, everyone exposed to the contaminant now will be subjugated. The contaminant crystals in the rainwater will hijack their nervous systems and they will obey my every command.”

“You’re mad!” Fluttershy squeaked.

“Well,” said the three ponies in unison. “I now have an army and all the crystals I could want, but I want more…MORE!”

The three officer ponies shrieked and charged them. The officers drew their nightsticks in defense. Twilight fired bolts of magic at the crystal ponies, and they all exploded. There were screams of pain as crystal shrapnel flew everywhere, and Twilight protected the few ponies around her with a shield.

She put down her shields, and there were ponies crying out in pain. An officer-mare was screaming, the crystal shrapnel embedded in her wings. The two ponies who had been hit by the shrapnel began to writhe, and the remaining ponies backed away. The crystals were in their blood…they had been exposed to the contaminant.

The two ponies rose up, their eyes green and pupils red. They laughed. “You all will die here!”

Author's Note:

Tell me how you like the course of the story so far,
feedback is greatly appreciated :)

Also tell me if you want me to start putting spaces between the paragraphs.
That's what all the other writers seem to be doing