Chapters Next
Close
Chapter 11,957 words
Chapter 21,971 words
Chapter 31,727 words
Chapter 41,567 words
Chapter 51,697 words
Chapter 61,653 words
Chapter 71,629 words
Chapter 81,729 words
Chapter 92,517 words
Chapter 101,747 words
Chapter 112,696 words
Chapter 122,358 words
Chapter 132,114 words
Chapter 141,823 words
Chapter 151,969 words
Chapter 162,326 words
Chapter 172,045 words
Chapter 181,868 words
Chapter 192,056 words
Chapter 202,600 words
Chapter 212,533 words
Chapter 222,200 words
Chapter 231,585 words
Chapter 241,816 words
Chapter 252,244 words
Chapter 262,567 words
Chapter 272,159 words
Chapter 282,517 words
Chapter 292,203 words
Chapter 302,129 words
Chapter 312,128 words
Chapter 321,898 words
Chapter 332,195 words
Chapter 341,954 words
Chapter 351,978 words
Chapter 362,564 words
Chapter 371,445 words
Epilogue: 90 Years Prior1,415 words

Chapter 1

Sleeping in the Light
Chapter 1

The silence was broken by the rumblings of an empty stomach. She jumped in surprise at how loud that had been, almost wanting to shush her stomach, though, that would have been far more embarrassing than anything.

'Damn', called a voice from the other end of the room. 'I heard that from over here!'

Ana Kelso frowned as she looked back down at her stomach; she had gotten distracted by her work, and had allowed the time to slide by her. This was not an uncommon occurrence for the earth pony mare, when she got into her work; there wasn't much that could interrupt it. Except for the clarion call of her stomach to food, so it seemed. Kelso looked up at the clock on the wall; she discovered that the time was 1835. Not an unreasonable hour for dinner, in fact.

Kelso looked up to the origin point of the voice. The voice, of course, belonged to Viola Auditore, the odd combination of being Kelso's room-mate, boss, and lover at the same time. The olive coated earth pony mare trotted over to her, and sat down next to her on the sofa, brushing her chestnut mane out of her violet eyes. Viola Auditore always had the high class look about her; Kelso had always liked that, though she expected that might have something to do with her upbringing. Viola was the granddaughter of Octavia Auditore, who, a hundred years ago, was regarded as the finest, and really only good, earth pony cellist ever to grace Equestria. From description, Octavia Auditore had been a high society mare, and nothing less than a true lady. Viola seemed to have inherited that straight from her grandmother. Kelso had always liked that about her.

'Oi, I know you're hungry, but stop looking at me like that!' Viola said with a grin. 'Our oven is still broken, so we're looking at take out again'.

'What?' Kelso asked raising an eyebrow. 'I thought the repair pony came out today?'

'He did. The problem wasn't what he thought it was, and he needed to special order a part that I can't remember the name of', Viola said with a shrug. 'We may be eating Māo Xióng take out for a while'.

Kelso frowned, but nodded her head in agreement. 'I'm going to go take a shower and go out and get some', she said as she rose from her seat on the sofa and trotted off into the bathroom to get ready.

'Get spring rolls! I love those!' Viola called after her.

Kelso nodded her head, and trotted into the bathroom; she stepped over to the shower and turned the water on, allowing it a moment to heat up before risking stepping inside. She stuck out her hoof and felt the water, satisfied that it was warm enough; she took a step inside and allowed the water to run over her. She grabbed a scrub brush with her teeth and set it on the floor, allowing it a few moments to get wet before grabbing a bottle of liquid soap and squeezing some of it out onto the brush head. She picked the brush back up and placed it against her back and began to scrub herself clean, running the brush back and forth, struggling to get every square centimetre on her body. Eventually satisfied, she raised the brush up near the shower head and allowed the water to wash over it, rinsing the brush out completely before returning it to its place on the wall.

Kelso sat down and reached out for a bottle of shampoo, and fumbled with it in her hooves as she struggled to squeeze some onto her mane. Kelso grumbled, this was the only time of the day that she was annoyed to not be a unicorn. She raised her hooves up and began to scrub her mane clean.

After a few moments of scrubbing, she was eventually satisfied, and she stood back up and rinsed herself off, before turning the water off completely. She stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel to dry off, and trotted over towards the bathroom mirror and looked into it; her cobalt eyes looked back at her. In the mirror, she discovered one of the half circle giant combs that were popular with earth ponies and pegasi. She took the comb in her teeth and ran it through her teal mane and tail, allowing her hair to fall back into its normal shape. Satisfied, she stepped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. Opening the closet and pulling out her black overcoat and matching fedora, skilfully dawning both despite her lack of unicorn telekinesis. She glanced into the mirror, and straightened her hat, smiling as she balanced it perfectly, using where her teal mane met her yellow coat for reference. She fiddled with the buttons on her black overcoat and snapped them shut, she was ready to go.

Kelso trotted back into the main room and smiled at Viola as she picked up a small headset that was sitting on the kitchen counter and placed it in her ear. 'I'll be back soon', she said.

'Don't forget the spring rolls!' Viola cried out after her.

'I won't!' Kelso said as she pushed open the front door to their flat and trotted down the stairs and outside onto the street. Kelso looked up at the horizon of the late august sky. The sun was setting, and it glistened off the tall buildings of the Ponyville skyline. The capital city of the Equestrian Republic had always been known for the impressive architecture. Equestrians were a hardy people, they weren't ones to be told no. Someone says that something is impossible; an Equestrian will prove them wrong. It had been a hundred years since the founding of the Equestrian Republic, and in that time, Ponyville had swelled from a small village in the middle of nowhere with a population of under one hundred, to a bustling metropolis with four and a half million people living here.

Kelso trotted down the sidewalk towards her car, and froze. Her car was in its usual parking spot, to be sure, however. There was someone sleeping on the hood. Sleeping! Kelso was mortified, and trotted up the person sleeping on it. ‘What are you doing on my car!?’ Kelso shouted.

‘Huh?’ the sleeping pony said groggily as she lifted her head up. ‘What?’

Kelso took the moment to take a better look at the perpetrator. She was an earth pony, her coat was an obnoxious pink, and her mane was a completely frizzled mess, a darker pink than her coat, but a still obnoxious darker pink nonetheless. The earth pony mare rubbed her sapphire eyes sleepily, and let out a yawn before poking her head up and taking a look around. ‘Where am I?’ she asked groggily.

‘You’re sleeping on my car! Get off!’ Kelso shouted at her.

The pink pony took a look around, and discovered that she indeed was on the hood of Kelso’s car. ‘Oopsie!’ she said as she climbed down off from hood and onto the kerb, and began to look around. The more she looked around at her surroundings, the more confused she got. ‘This isn’t where I took my nap!’ she said eventually.

Kelso frowned, this was just perfect, and this mare was lost. She’d probably been at a party or something nearby, gotten drunk out of her mind, wandered over here, and fell asleep. Kelso would have to help her out, damn her morally inconvenient line of work! It was going to delay her from filling her stomach! Kelso was a police detective, a Detective Sergeant in the Ponyville Police Service Serious and Organised Crime Group. Viola Auditore was her Detective Chief Inspector, and the head of their group, and she would have words for Kelso if she didn’t help this earth pony mare out.

Of course, not that Kelso was actually considering not helping, that was a deplorable thought and she hated her stomach for thinking it. It’s no joke that the stomach becomes the brain when hungry. ‘Are you all right? Do you know your name?’ Kelso asked.

‘Pinkie Pie’, the mare said, nodding her head.

Wonderful, even her name was obnoxious. Kelso reached up to the ear piece in her left ear and gave it a light press. A holographic display materialised before Kelso’s eyes as she turned to look at Pinkie Pie. This, was her Police Information Processor, it would be able to pull up Pinkie Pie’s police record and tell every vital statistic on the pink pony before her, most importantly, a home address.

Kelso frowned however, when she discovered that it did not bring an address up. In fact, it didn’t bring up anything! No name, no address, nothing! Pinkie Pie did not have a police record with the PPS. She expanded the search to include Equestria’s other major metropolitan areas. Nothing in Manehattan, nothing in Fillydelphia, nothing in Canton, and nothing in Ponyville, not a single traffic ticket, not a single drunk and disorderly, not a single anything. According to what Kelso was able to pull up, which was nothing, Pinkie Pie was an upstanding citizen.

Wonderful, the only time that not breaking any laws, ever, had ended up being inconvenient.

‘Ooooh! What is that?’ Pinkie Pie asked, pointing to the PIP over Kelso’s eyes.

‘Uh... it’s my Police Information Processor; it lets me look up your police record... which is something that you don’t seem to have’, Kelso said.

‘It’s got pretty lights!’ Pinkie Pie said, in reference to the holographic display.

‘Yes’, Kelso said, nodding her head with disinterest. ‘Do you know where you are?’

‘Um...’ Pinkie Pie said unsurely, the pink pony glanced around the street taking in her surroundings; she studied the street for a very long time, absorbing every detail of it before turning back to Kelso. ‘No’, she said, offering the detective a small shrug.

Kelso frowned at her. Pinkie Pie didn’t appear to be intoxicated, but she might as well have been with how helpful she was being. ‘What is the last thing you remember?’ she asked.

Pinkie Pie closed her eyes for a moment as she thought back to her last memories. Kelso didn’t know why, but she had a feeling that whatever she was going to say, it was going to be obnoxious.

‘I was skipping through a field full of flowers...’ Pinkie Pie began, pausing as she thought about it some more. Kelso was right, it was obnoxious already. Why had she expected anything different? ‘Then I felt really tired, and there was a tree with plenty of shade, so I sat myself down underneath it and took a nap! Then, I woke up after you started yelling at me!’ Pinkie Pie said. Kelso opened her mouth to respond, however a loud stomach rumble interrupted her. That wasn’t Kelso’s stomach, it was Pinkie Pie’s.

Pinkie Pie looked down at her stomach and offered an embarrassed smile. ‘I’m sorry, I guess I’m hungry’, she said as she rubbed her hoof against her neck.

‘Well, I think that’s something we can agree on... come on, I was just heading out to get food, we can get you something too’, Kelso said.

Pinkie Pie’s face turned to a bright smile, and she yipped loudly in excitement as Kelso unlocked her car door and took to the driver’s seat.

Kelso was going to regret this, she could already tell.

3,594 views

232

Chapters Next