Beneath the Canon You Settle For

by The Amateur

Chapter 4 - The City Howls After You

A bed of hot coal sat in the pit of my stomach. The cinders of years of work, toil, and blood were still smoldering in the hearth, a funeral pyre to all my life’s joys. The message might as well have appeared before me on a blinking neon sign: “Your daughter’s gone, and it’s all your fault.”

I kept it restrained though, let it continue scorching the linings of my soul. Years of experience had taught me to turn my losses into fuel for my inferno. The engine churned to life, then I had a new vendetta, a renewed purpose.

I shoved Solar Wind’s hoof away from my shoulder. “I’ve got to go now.” He and Jetstream were not my enemies: they did nothing wrong to earn my fury, but it was hard to keep myself from lashing out. The pony I once shared all my pain with pulled back his foreleg and nodded. Confusion, or perhaps fear, slipped past the mask of indifference he kept adorned.

He did not know. He had never known. What understanding we had for each other had disappeared overnight like the life I recognized.

I turned tail and started making my way to the exit, the first time I ever did so without a drop of toxin in my blood. I knew Solar Wind and Jetstream would not follow, one being smart enough to avoid following me whenever I had an agenda, the other being too impaired to chase me down.

All I had was a vague idea of my target. Something had tweaked with the workings of the world, rewiring ponies’ memories and stealing the light of day from me. With Celestia crossed off my list of potential kidnappers, I would have to start from the bottom of the ladder––the scumbags of Cloudsdale’s smuggling ring––and work my way up.

Just then, another problem entered through the bar’s threshold, a fiery red and orange bullet of a problem. “Fleetfoot! Practice started half an hour ago. The team’s waiting for your sorry hide to reach the stadium–– and what are you wearing?”

I looked Spitfire in the eyes, trying to recall what I knew of my former captain in the Wonderbolts. She was a hybrid with elements of a drill sergeant and a powder keg with its fuse lit. Her blood was as hot as the surface of the sun; her behavior was just as volatile. It took me seconds to confirm this was the same pony I remembered from those years ago, if the fact her frustration radiated off her training suit was not evidence enough.

I took a step to her left. “A leather coat.”

She took a step to her left. “Lovely, but it’s spring. Now give me an explanation why you’re here and not practicing with us.”

Just behind her, the blackened cumulus of the Pulsant District’s cloud layer invited a possible escape route. I could lose her if I flew at a sprint into its depths. “Not happening, Spillane.” Spitfire’s wings shot out and blocked the width of the threshold, and her squinting eyes dispelled any illusions I had about outflying the captain of the Wonderbolts.

I looked behind me at the counter, where Jetstream, Solar Wind, and a northern cardinal looked on like spectators at a high noon duel. Spitfire had me on the draw, and I was cornered and swiftly out of friends. Now it was time to take a beating.

I breathed in the wistful dew of the bar and faced Spitfire. The truth spilt forward, hardly punctuated by a beat, “I woke up this morning in a house that isn’t mine anymore. And apparently I’m still part of the Wonderbolts. Phones and alcohol don’t exist; my friends can’t remember that I’m a CPD detective; my daughter’s missing. I’m here, because I can’t ascertain whether I’m dreaming or targeted by the prank of an Eldritch god.”

Spitfire’s wings drooped to the floor, brushing the cloudwork with the feathertips. Her fire dissipated into flickering embers, presenting the exit I needed. “Huh. That sounds tragic… So, you have a–– you’re a detective?”

“Yeah, I sound crazy, but it’s the truth as I know it.” I knew the limits that Spitfire abided by; her loyalty to the Wonderbolts was second only to her loyalty to old friends. She would let me go, at the moment, before she had a convincing enough alibi to hunt me down. But still, every second she spent hesitating brought me farther and farther away from Lightning Bolt. I could not let her slip from my mind again.

“Call me insane if you’d like, but I have a case to break. Tell the team I’m sorry, and if he remembers, tell Soarin he’s a freeloading scumbag.”

I made my advance, physically persuading my former captain to step aside. She had her jaw halfway open, fumbling in speech and in resolve. As I passed through the threshold, Spitfire shouted after me, “Hey. Hey! Fleetfoot! Even if you’re bonkers in the brain, we can still help–– ah, Celestia be my witness. Don’t you dare fly from your captain! From your team!” Her words were for someone else, another Fleetfoot who still lived the Equestrian Dream. Or, judging from Solar Wind’s confusion, maybe not.

My wings, refreshed and longing for air to flow underneath them, unwounded for the flight. I left the pale lights of the tavern behind, sprinting headlong into the cloud layer. The walls dissipated like curtains of dust, resisting little better than an optical illusion; sun rays flooded in the gaps, and the wide blue came forward. The whole of Cloudsdale’s lower tier hovered before me.

I beat my wings to a steady tempo, taking my time in flight to plan my next move. I set a course across two parallel districts, dodging the traffic of late morning. If I really was a Wonderbolt as my friends were led to believe, then it would not take long for someone to recognize me. As though the leather coat was not already a dead giveaway. As I thought up excuses for being out here, my wings straightened out, allowing me to descend low enough to keep myself under the shadow of the stratus estates.

The more time I spent soaring under the clouds, the more I began to see how much my world had changed. Everything from the color scheme to the pegasi themselves was wrong. There was sharp contrast between every shade and edge, as though the city had been drawn over by a technicolor enthusiast. Ponies adorned smiles too lively to be genuine, especially considering how many were Cloudsdale residents. The downcast looks and purposeful avoidance had been replaced by perpetual greetings and giggles; if I had been travelling on the main airways, I would have never gotten to my destination without running into every pegasus on this tier.

The prognosis looked bad for me: insanity, intense hallucinations, paranoia of a world out to get me. And that was still being optimistic. The best possibility left me still in bed, suffering an episode that could leave me brain-dead. My other theories set the bar up in the uncanny with the daydreams of conspiracists and right-wing nutjobs.

They were all difficult to even comprehend, but seeing the world through the eyes of madness tended to make a pony more ready to believe.

A klick ahead, I spotted the sleazy hotel and tenements of Caeci District–– a business front of the smuggling ring’s high-strung underboss, Dumb-Bell. I had been there several times during my time in the force, and even with the sanitization of the world around it, the place still looked run-down and rotten.

I never had the authority to look inside the syndicate’s playhouse, but considering I was unofficially off the force, the thugs inside were fair game.

Comments

[Scootareader]

The more time I spent soaring under the clouds, the more I began to see how much my world had changed. Everything from the color scheme to the pegasi themselves was wrong. There was sharp contrast between every shade and edge, as though the city had been drawn over by a technicolor enthusiast. Ponies adorned smiles too lively to be genuine, especially considering how many were Cloudsdale residents. The downcast looks and purposeful avoidance had been replaced by perpetual greetings and giggles; if I had been travelling on the main airways, I would have never gotten to my destination without running into every pegasus on this tier.

The prognosis looked bad for me: insanity, intense hallucinations, paranoia of a world out to get me. And that was still being optimistic. The best possibility involved me still in bed, suffering an episode that could leave me brain-dead. My other theories set the bar up in the uncanny with the daydreams of conspiracists and right-wing nutjobs.

They were all difficult to even comprehend, but seeing the world through the eyes of madness tended to make a pony more ready to believe.

It was here that I got my first punch of what kind of trip this fic is really going to take us through.