From Gander to Gendarme

by HackamoreHalter

Chapter Four: Hangovers

Something was wrong.

No, his enfeebled mind struggled to form the thought. Not just something. Many things were wrong. Wrong was bad. This simple concept was like a beacon of light to his as-of-yet unconscious thoughts. With wrongness came danger, and with danger came the necessity of awareness. His instincts rallied together, clamoring for attention and change. They forced him from the blackness that enveloped him, pushed him out of the void and into the light of day.

Gander's eyes fluttered open and then immediately clenched shut from the blinding aura that seared the vision straight out of his skull. The light of day sucked, he informed his instincts as he attempted to retreat back into the soothing embrace of unconsciousness. They refused to give in, denying him a peaceful rest no matter how he longed for it. There was something wrong, his instincts told him once more. Face it, they said. Hiding was for the weak.

That was the affront that dragged him back to the waking world. To be called weak was an insult that could not be ignored, even coming from his own innermost thoughts. Gathering his resolve, Gander willed himself free of the haze of slumber, forcing his eyes open against the loathed light once more.

The first thing he noticed was that his instincts, as cruel as they could be, had a point. His blurred vision slowly resolved itself into the image of an unfamiliar ceiling of bleached white tiles and a host of professionally set electric bulbs that put out an even light. As his mind dragged itself from its dormancy, details began to flood in about the nature of his alien surroundings. The bedding beneath him was nearly cloudlike, his body sinking into its soft and fluffy material - dreadfully uncomfortable for one more accustomed to sleeping on solid surfaces. Heavy blankets were piled overtop his prone form, which lay sprawled out on his back. The air reeked with a cloying pall of solvents and cleaners, overpowering his nostrils with their unnatural odor. It all blended together, the strangeness surrounding him, and only fed his unyielding sense of unease.

Somewhat oddly, the least unusual feeling in Gander's opinion was the staggering amounts of pain that gripped much of his body, blossoming forth from his guts and trailing down his bones like some sort of torturous vines beneath his skin. Pain was familiar to him, almost comforting in a way. It was something he knew quite well, and he went through the mental motions of blocking off the worst of the sensation until it was slightly less unbearable. Even so, he still could not quite manage to keep himself from hissing sharply as he shifted slightly in his bed.

"Huh, look who's awake."

Ah, that was the feeling of wrongness his instincts warned him of. This was not his bed at all. The voice that spoke was familiar, a male's voice with a hint of southern twang, but he could not quite place it. Nor could he summon up the energy to turn his head even slightly to see where it was coming from.

"Whur..." Gander attempted to speak, but his mouth felt as if it was full of cotton. He swallowed and tried again. "Where?"

"Saint Hagnes Hospital," the voice helpfully informed him as Gander continued to struggle against a grogginess that was entirely foreign to him. Despite his best efforts, his muscles and mind would not listen. Possibly noticing his restless shifting, the voice solved that mystery as well. "Don't bother getting worked up, now. The doc wasn't sure how much anesthetic to give a hippogriff, so he just kinda kept sticking you 'til you stopped squirming."

"Why?" Gander croaked. The voice gave a wry chuckle in response.

"It's not easy working on somepony your size that don't feel inclined to sit still. It took most of us to drag you here in the first place."

"Not why for the drugs." Whatever he'd been given, it was far too much and still not enough. The pain was constant, the room was still spinning, and he felt like vomiting from either the motion or the lingering effects of the medication. On the plus side, his focus was slowly returning. What was not returning was his memory. The last he could recall before a blurred kaleidoscope of nonsensical images was staring the others down at a table, and fragments of memories of a glass castle. Gander wondered to himself if he'd somehow made it to the Crystal Empire last night before ending up in a hospital. "Why for being here?"

"Huh. Guess that shouldn't surprise me, you were more soaked than a salmon upstream."

"There was water?" Well, that raised even more questions, as Gander knew himself to be a strong swimmer. Also, the Crystal Empire had no rivers nearby that he knew of.

"What? No. I'm saying you were deep in the cups. Two sheets to the wind. Blitzed like the hoofball quarterback." Each euphemism that flew over his head only complicated Gander's mental image of the last night's events, which now included organized sports on the deck of a pirate ship, before the voice finally offered an explanation that made sense. "Drunk. You were absolutely drunk when those gang enforcers jumped you."

That spurred a few memories from the murk of the night's events. He recalled a door with ponies on the other side. Another of Ducky's housewarming parties. They were dancin- no, they were trying to hit him. It was much like a griffon celebration, with traditional ritual duels, but that made him pause. Now that he thought about it, ponies probably don't even have celebration duels.

"That... was not a party."

"Well, that's one way of putting it. And here I was about to call it an ol' fashioned ass whuppin'." If the voice was aware or concerned about the racist undertones of that phrase, he didn't show it. "If it weren't for the little lady saving your hide, the rest of us might have found a corpse for the morgue instead of a patient for the hospital."

The mental exercise of recalling past events had strengthened his mind enough to work through the persistent medication, allowing Gander to turn his head slightly towards the voice. He caught glimpses of a small room, hardly larger than the bed he found himself in, with a table nearby covered in equipment he could not identify. Small window above with blinds drawn closed casted a pattern of shadows on the polished floor. Next to the table sat a single chair, which was currently occupied by a dark grey pegasus with a rolled-up newspaper beneath a wing.

"Sergeant Smokey," Gander couldn't quite manage a salute yet, but he gave his most respectful nod. "I am surprised of your concern, to wait for my recovery. I did not think us so close."

That won a raised eyebrow and a friendly grin from the sergeant, who gave a quiet snort. "Don't feel too grateful. The captain has us taking watches, in case the Skinflints try again while you're out of it. I had a similar impression to yours. I figured you didn't even know my name."

Gander closed his eyes, as it seemed to help him gather his thoughts. Thinking remained incredibly hard at the moment. "Legal name Shash'łit, alias of Smoking Bear, birth name is not known," he recited thickly, as his tongue was defying his orders to work properly. "Pegasus stallion, thirty-five years of age. Mark is of fire. No living relatives. Arrest record of three counts vigilantism in border territories. Five year sentence, released on good behavior to program for reha-"

"Read my file, huh?" The friendly grin was gone by the time Gander opened his eyes once more. The stallion's expression was somewhat colder, and he eyed the griffon with a narrow gaze.

"Records are public, and I read of coworkers to know of them." Gander was confused by the change, although even without the fog stubbornly clinging in his mind he was never the best at reading social cues. He was excellent at picking up hostility, though. "A griffon would know of who they hunt with. This is problème?"

"Some ponies like to leave the past buried," Smokey said quietly. Whatever had happened those decades ago still remained a sour spot for him. "It's not all that friendly to go digging into what don't concern you. Next time, just ask."

"Interesting to learn this." Gander would have scratched at his chin in thought, but he had only recently regained the ability to twitch his toes. He settled on blinking in what he imagined to be a contemplative way. "Friends do not do background checks without permission."

Smokey kept a level stare on him for a long time before sighing. "For everypony's sake, I'm just gonna try not to take that personal. The little lady was right, you are kinda hopeless when it comes to friends."

"You speak of Ducky, yes? What did you mean," Gander asked curiously, "when you said she saved my hide?" He honestly couldn't imagine the cheerful mare in combat, though her tenacity had surprised him before. "I remember little of this fight. What happened?"

"Shucks, I'm not too clear on it. I was drunk as a skunk my own self." Smokey shrugged. "Serves me right for agreeing to that fool contest. Anyhow, the two of you left early. When the rest of us stumbled out a few minutes later, you were looking like you met the wrong end of a stampede, and the little lady was standing over two downed mobsters with the fiery wrath of the sun in her eyes."

There was a healthy measure of respect in those words. And a small amount of fear. Gander was inclined to agree with the sentiment; Ducky could be downright scary. Perhaps this was a similarity to bond over, he thought. A shared viewpoint was one way of making friends, or so Ducky had told him. She'd also told him to compliment others, even if he thought they were weak or pitiful. Considering she was apparently able to overwhelm criminals, Gander felt it wise to follow her advice. "You handle your liquor well, Sergeant."

"Eh? How do you mean? I reckon that contest wasn't even close."

"Perhaps, but you have recovered quickly, yes?" Gander gestured towards the window with his head, with rays of sunlight streaming through the blinds. "The morning is still young."

The pegasus didn't even have to answer. He merely tossed the newspaper under his wing onto Gander's chest. Keeping himself from wincing at the impact, which stung a lot more than the griffon remembered paper capable of, Gander glanced at the front page.

"I... have been asleep for six days." He noted, taking the news in good stride. "Interesting."

"Yeah, there was a lot of anesthetic. We couldn't get you into a bed," Smokey admitted. "You kept saying you'd walk it off."

"That sounds reasonable. Griffons are strong. Few injuries are serious," Gander said with pride. He was answered with a flat look.

"You had a collapsed lung, a ruptured kidney, and a detached retina," Smokey shuddered at the thought. "You don't walk those off."

"I have a spare of each."

"Huh. So I guess it wasn't the booze that made you stubborn as a mule and twice as stupid." Again with the racism. Smokey snorted as he got to his hooves. "Anyhow, you just sit tight. Read the paper, maybe. The captain wanted to talk to you when you woke up."

"Should I be worried?"

"After the mess she's been cleaning up?" The stallion paused at the door to consider the question. "Personally, I'd rather face the hitponies."

***

Five years. There was a time when that number had not seemed so long. When she was younger, five years went by in the blink of an eye. She'd had moxie back then. She'd had that undefinable, energetic get-up-and-go that had pushed her through the ranks with an overwhelming ambition matched only by her recklessness. She'd lived on the razor's edge, and she loved every minute of it. There was a time she'd toppled criminal empires. There was a time that cutthroats trembled at her name.

Gumshoe held back a weary sigh as she caught a glance of her reflection in a nearby window. There was a time she didn't count every passing second until retirement. It was almost funny; she'd spent years walking the beat with the threat of a knife in her back, and now it was sitting behind a desk that was killing her. She didn't see the horror of one case and one crime at a time- no, she saw everything. Every last wretched act that the worst of her species was capable of crossed her desk. Ponies were still inherently good, she believed. She had to. It was the only thing keeping her steady. The vast majority of ponies were good, but there were always a few that went wrong. A few that were driven too far or somehow devoid of the caring soul that Equestrians were known for. A few was still too many.

Her reflection stared back in the form of a weary mare bereft of joy. Dark circles under tired magenta eyes. A dull champagne-colored coat and an aging body rapidly deteriorating from stress. Wrinkles and crow's feet, love handles that had much more to do with seething hatred, and a formerly tightly pleated manestyle that now resembled a rat's nest. She attempted in vain to bring some order to the braids of her silvering -most definitely not gray- mane. The many hairs that had sprung loose now hung limply, as if they too had seen too much.

Abandoning the attempt to salvage her appearance, she continued on down the wide hospital hallway, her hooves clacking smartly against a floor so clean she could probably eat off it. All hospitals tended to look the same to her, and Gumshoe had seen the interiors of more than a few. They always seemed to have the same shining floors, the same bland walls, the same overly bright lights and the same sort of mares in reception who were infallibly polite in conversation but devoid of true emotion. They'd seen so many patients that they just couldn't care anymore. It was a survival trait; eventually would come the day when the sight of blood and carnage simply did not horrify any longer. In a way, they were just as much a reflection of her as what she'd seen in the window.

Dying in a bust gone bad seemed a far kinder fate to Gumshoe than that. Empathy was what defined a pony. She shuddered and prayed once more that retirement came before she too became deadened to the filth of the underworld. The only solution she'd found to not caring at all was caring too much. She hardened her expression into an angry scowl as she not-so-gently knocked the door open of the private patient room. She strode in and shut the door behind her, not quite slamming it but certainly not being gentle. Inside was another reason for her anger. Her newest officer, and by all rights a decent enough fellow, bedridden by a cowardly-

"Officer le Gannet," Gumshoe said, her wrath momentarily forgotten in surprise. "Why are you not bedridden?"

The griffon hybrid was out of his bed, midway through a set of push-ups on the floor. He looked, well, like he shouldn't have been moving, much less exercising. Strips of white gauze bandages covered much of his brown-and-white torso, working their way up his neck to his face. A butterfly bandage held a pad on his bill, and a patch obscured his left eye. Gander's newest injuries, combined with those he'd been collecting from before, gave him a mummified appearance that did not engender faith in his physical health. He looked up at her from the floor with his remaining good eye.

"I am rid of the bed, capitaine," he said, as if stating the obvious. "Too much resting makes one weak."

"No, I meant... forget it, just take a seat." There were times she wondered if the griffon was attempting to rile her up, but Gumshoe wasn't in the mood to fall for it today. "You'd better have gotten clearance from the doctors to be moving already."

"I spoke with the doctors, yes," Gander grunted as he returned to perching on the edge of the far too comfortable bed. He'd been laid up for nearly a week; he could feel his muscles atrophying. He was hardly a match for any of his own kind on a good day. He hated to think of how he would fair in a traditional duel in his current state. He shook off his concerns for now, as his superior officer came first. "I am to wear the eyepatch for some days and not do strenuous activities that strain the ribs and bring pain for some weeks."

The captain raised an eyebrow. "Exercising counts as strenuous, officer."

"For ponies, maybe," he snorted.

"No." Gumshoe was adamant, and her expression practically dared the griffon to disagree with her. "You follow the doctors' orders to the letter, or so help me I'll stick you on medical leave for a month and chain you to that bed."

If only Ducky were here, she could have had a field day with that image. As it was, the accidental innuendo flew straight over Gander's head. He only fought to keep his displeasure from showing and answered with a simple, "Understood."

"And I'm assigning you a partner."

That was over the line. Gander's scowl broke free. "I am not needing a partner, capitaine. A pony will only slow me down."

"Tough cookies, officer." She struck down his objections without remorse. "I've got two new additions to my lock-up, and that tells me you need back-up. You got off lucky, and those injuries aren't exactly convincing me otherwise."

"A mistake, capitaine. It will not happen again." Gander hissed, a lust for vengeance in his voice. "Had I not been impaired-"

"Do tell," came a new voice from a young stallion standing at the door. Cadet Fisher, the white unicorn otherwise known as Rook, opened the door with a blue aura of magic. His multicolored mane was slicked back, and he wore a newly-pressed uniform. Fisher walked in without an invitation, his magic silently closing the door in his wake.

"Cadet," Gander said, his eyes narrowing in suspicion at the entrance. "What brings you here?"

"That would be your new partner," Gumshoe added wryly, taking a quiet enjoyment from the griffon's conflicted expression. "I was planning to assign one, and he was the first to volunteer."

“I had thought my mission to be kept dark.” The griffon still didn't know who of his coworkers could truly be trusted. Not that he exactly trusted any of them in any situation, but of the varying levels of mistrust, the cadet was hardly in the shallow end of the pool.

“Well,” Gumshoe shrugged, “it was the lesser of two evils. Fisher is the newest of our recruits, his scores from the academy are impeccable, and he comes with recommendations nearly as high as yours. I‘m trusting the both of you with this assignment.” Gander looked as if he was going to protest again, so she cut him off. “You don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept it. You need someone to watch your back, and my decision has been made.”

“As... you command, capitaine.” Gander relented, to Gumshoe’s sardonic delight.

“That griffon stubbornness of yours can be a royal pain in the dock, but I wish half of my little ponies could manage to follow orders so well.” She turned and headed to the door, which the unicorn opened for her. She called behind her without turning back, “I’ve left the cadet with the particulars of the case you’ve missed during your nap. Get acquainted.”

With that, the mare left the new partners alone in the hospital room. Both watched the other warily. Gander was the first to speak up. "Volunteering to be my partner. Your concern for my wellbeing is admirable, Cadet."

"I have concerns, Officer, but not for your good health." If Gander's tone was tinged with suspicion, then Fisher's was openly hostile. "As I said before, do tell. What would you have done if you were sober that night?"

"The criminals fought without honor," the griffon spat. His wings flexed irritably at the thought. "I would have broken their every bone so they could never have the privilege of fighting again.”

“That’s interesting,” Fisher said flatly, “because the last pony to run afoul of Stix and Stones had the same thing happen to him. That stallion will never walk again.”

“You mean to imply something, Cadet?” Gander’s feathers, what few of them that had yet to be bandaged, ruffled in agitation.

“I’m saying you’re a menace, griffon,” the unicorn answered with a sneer of his own. “No better than the thugs the force deals with every day. You pretend to be something more, but the truth is you’re nothing but a savage. You want nothing more than to hurt somepony, and you’ll take your chance the second we turn our backs.”

“And you would stop me, little pony?” Gander’s eyes narrowed to a deadly stare, one that he usually reserved for prey before the chase. He seemed to grow larger on his perch, looming over the smaller stallion and casting a shadow upon the ground.

“Yes,” Fisher was unmoved, filled with a fiery conviction. “I’ll be waiting for you to show your true colors, and when that day comes I will be there to stop you.”

Gander held his gaze for an agonizingly long moment, his single black eye locked onto Fisher’s cerulean blues.

“Good,“ he spoke at long last, turning away abruptly. He leaned back on his bed and opened up the newspaper with a loud rustle. The venom of his stance had disappeared instantly, as if it had never been. He couldn’t have looked more comfortable.

Fisher blinked in confusion. “Good?”

“Indeed,” Gander said, perusing the article of the day; a grand opening of a new skyplex. Such fascinating technological advancements the ponies were making with airships these days. He answered without bothering to pause in his reading. “I would expect nothing less.”

“Wait,” the unicorn said as he tried to collect his thoughts. “You want me to be against you?” His eyes narrowed. “This is some kind of griffon trick, isn’t it? To get me to let down my guard.”

“You are against griffons and know nothing of our kind?” Gander scoffed as he turned away from the paper to watch his new partner. Smokey, as pleasant as he was, obviously had a weak opinion of donkeys. This spoiled rich brat had something against griffons. In Gander's opinion, there were plenty of reasons to hate individuals as it was. Species didn't need to factor into it. “Fine, then. I will teach you. Griffon-kind is always against each other. Always do we fight our kin to grow stronger. Your wish to fight me? It only makes me sick for home.”

“I’m being serious, here,” Fisher snarled, but Gander grinned right back with teeth not entirely meant for herbivores.

“As am I.” The smile was gone, but the threat remained. “Let us say you are right, and I am savage and thirsty for blood. If you are right, and I am to abandon my duties to harm a pony not deserving... well, I wish you luck in trying to stop me.”

Gander turned back to the newspaper, adding in one final parting shot. “You will need it.”