Stroll

by re- Yamsmos

Suspension

Rehearsals were one of the most important things when it came to a job such as hers. Every witching hour of every waking day of every single week, the Canterlot Symphony all filed onto the stage of the nearby theatre, set up their jet black stands, unfolded their creaky old chairs—in the case of the cellists, at least—propped their music folders onto the first, and absolutely disregarded the second—again, in the case of the cellists.

It was there, in that dreadfully large room, that every one of their pieces of music came to life with the crack—literally, as their conductor broke many—of a baton and the setting of fine mane hairs against equally finely rosined strings, from C to G to D to A to E and sometimes to another A if they all felt like it during their ritualistic warm-up. Section by section, they would go from the first violins, then to the second violins, to the violas, to the cellos, and finally ending with the double basses in a harmonized A, which would go down to D and then G and by then everypony got the point so they just started finagling the whole thing as Dan, their ever-so wondrous conductor, bobbed his head, grinned, and anticipated his lovely retirement at the ripe age of thirty-four.

Rehearsals were, well, they were where the screw-ups happened, were brought up, laughed at, snorted at, made fun of, ridiculed, joked about, brought up again, improved upon, fixed, generalized, hypothesized, and then brought up again. A viola cracked at a soli, made a distressing bird call to the demonic denizens of Tartarus below, and roused suspicion from the audience? Crack the whip, focus on it for a whole hour at least, play it under pressure, then clap hooves when they nailed it. A cello's G string snapped during Neightoven's Luna's Moonlight Sonata? Send them out to the street, corral them into the nearest string shop, get a new one, bring it back, settle back in their chairs because they were practically—very effectively—useless without them, place the replacement into its new home, tune it, put compound on their pegs, and resume Bar 85 where they'd left off. A double bass screeched, a rare occurrence thanks to her constant hawkeye–

"Hey, chop chop. Focus."

Octavia blinked away her thought bubble, which burst into the night sky and flew into the heavens.

She hated rehearsals. They were boring, and stupid, and unnecessary because they were the Canterlot Symphony and somepony was going to muddle it up anyway. She was going to get to that, but the uniformed mare standing next to her with a glare crossing her brow and a wrinkled nose was a very leading cause to her not doing so. For now, she stowed the thought and decided she'd get to it later. Pursing out her lower lip, cocking her head, and attempting to look interested, Octavia opened her mouth to reply cooly.

"Did you even listen to a word I was saying?"

Octavia shot her eyebrows up. "I'm here to buy a Largemouth Bass for fifty whole bits. The doorpony's name is Wallaby Way, which, might I add, sounds horribly familiar to me somehow, and he'll be standing guard next to me as the others get my order. I am not to stare anywhere but the floor, wall, door, or street, and certainly not at the blatantly active police officer hiding in the bushes nearby, and my fifty bits are hiding in my ballcap."

Hail smirked, but turned her cheek and screwed up her face as she leaned forward and asked, "Aaaand?"

"Oh, and my parents are dead so I desperately need a kick."

"And you're also a drug addict, so..." Hail flicked a hoof, "...act jittery."

Octavia shuffled on the floor. She suddenly felt a lot smaller than the two story warehouse they were standing in front of. These street lanterns weren't doing a very fine job of keeping her mind at ease, Gods, was it hot in here or was it just the room in here? Eyes panned upward, settling on the admittedly beautiful job that Princess Luna was doing tonight, then plummeted to the ground and splattered to find Razor Hail still looking at her with the expression of somepony waiting for the late bus.

Oh Gods she was suddenly really scatterbrained–

Hail flashed a grin that shone in the light of the street lantern above them. Leaning forward, she reached a hoof out and gently patted Octavia on the side. "Heeey, you're doing a good job already! Keep it up!"

Octavia cleared her throat and lifted her chin. "My high school Orchestra teacher said the exact same thing to me."

"Yeah–"

"He did this with us as well. Lined us up like animals."

"Okay, that's–"

Octavia turned her head. "Then he shot us."

Hail took a step back, watching Octavia out of the corner of her brown eyes. Her badge, catching the lantern, glimmered at her and caused her to grind her teeth and shy away for a second. "Okay, what's wrong with you? You don't act like this; are you okay? Are you just nervous?"

Octavia flexed her chin and gave the most overly exaggerated shrug ever witnessed in Equestria. "I've never bought drugs before, officer. This whole 'act cool so I don't get shot' thing is a new event to me."

Hail fell to her haunches with a deep groan, then threw her face into her forehooves so hard that Octavia swore she'd injure her eyes. "You're not gonna get shot– they're not gonna shoot you." Still cupping her cheeks with her hooves, Hail looked up at Octavia from underneath her blue hat and asked, "Do you really think I'd take you here to help me if I knew you'd get hurt? I've scouted this place out for the past few weeks, all they've got is, like..." she fumbled with the mane draping over her eyes from her cap, then swept the hoof out and tilted her head at Octavia, "...box cutters, and I doubt anyone in there is smart enough to even hold one."

Octavia padded the cobblestone beneath their now seven hooves.

"They're all Unicorns."

Octavia reached a hoof up and adjusted her bowtie. Shutting her eyes as the fine cloth grazed along her fur, she puffed out her cheeks and began steadying her breathing. Ears twitching here and there, she felt a small pit suddenly make itself known in her stomach. It opened the door for her alcohol, gave it a hoofshake and an earnest smile, invited them in for tea, then sat down and talked about Mozart awhile. As she transferred her area of breathing from her mouth and to her nostrils, she sent a new guest knocking at the pit's door. When the pit opened it, it was suddenly tackled to the ground, stabbed by a pair of filly scissor blades, thrown against the nearby petunias, slammed into the fine mahogany coffee table, dragged along the carpet of booze, and kicked down the stairs toward the bladder because that's how anatomy worked maybe. Triumphant, the lungs, waving their dirtied scissor blades and bunching up their cheeks at the alcohol still gawking at them, clapped hooves and went about their business in peace.

A moment of the purest zen coursed through Octavia's body, causing a very drawn out moan to escape her lips.

She opened her eyes when she realized just what had happened.

Hail was standing on three legs, the fourth pressed against her lips as she gave Octavia a Kubrick stare.

Octavia's eye twitched, and a bead of sweat dripped down her forehead.

Hail's next words were quick, quiet, and, seemingly, afraid to emerge. "Octavia what the hell was that–"

Octavia sprang forward, teeth grinding against one another as she delightfully—and simultaneously nervously—began nudging Hail away from the door. "Hey, I believe that I'm all right now, why don't you just go hide in the bushes and make yourself useful for once–"

"I'm a cop, Octavia–"

"Shut up," she replied, spit flinging.

Hail's response, as she trotted over to the bush, was immediate. She snickered like a schoolyard bully.

"And stop laughing!"

Hail let out a whoop, almost tripping into the shrubbery where she most certainly belonged. Octavia swiveling about and tugging at her collar, felt the lump escape her stomach, climb up her trachea, and lodge itself deep within her throat. She suddenly struggled to swallow the lump already present in her mouth down. Oh Gods that was embarrassing. No that was more than embarrassing that was just awful, and weird, and oh Gods it was really hard to breathe again.

With her hoof shaking a mile a millisecond, her smile clearly fake and much too wide, her stance not as proper as she would've wanted, her bowtie at an eighty-nine point nine-degree angle, her breathing hitched and plagued by fits, and her self-esteem plummeting by every perturbed, powerful, deafeningly loud heartbeat, Octavia knocked on the door to the warehouse, minded the sign near the knob that said 'knock twice', and knocked again before she'd have to repeat the code.

Almost immediately, a navy blue stallion, his tan mane slicked back with more grease than Sesame's favorite weapon, cracked open the door by just a bare inch and a quarter, gazed at her through the crack, then narrowed his eyes. From inside, newly unveiled, came the sounds of a very obviously busy establishment. Plates clanked, hammers smashed, voices spoke, and hooves stomped. If she didn't somehow bear the knowledge that this warehouse was the site of a very illegal, seafood-disguised drug joint, she would've wanted to enter this pretty... shady looking bar next time she was in town for a night.

"Hello?" The stallion asked in the most innocent-sounding voice ever, as if he were a child answering a door for the local neighbors while his parents were out.

"Uh, good evening sir," Octavia began, feeling her heart steady as she felt herself approach slightly familiar territory once again. Puffing out her chest, lifting her chin, tossing her mane, and clearing her throat, she continued, "I was out and about this past hour and I... well, I got..." she leaned forward and tilted her head away from the stallion still peeking at her from behind the door, "...the itch, you see–"

"We don't sell bath salts, mare," the stallion replied, drowning out the unmistakable sound of Hail slapping one—scratch that—both her hooves into her face.

Octavia felt her cheeks go rosy, "No no no, sir, not... eugh, not that. I meant," she coughed, "you see, that I... well, I need a kick."

At that, her adversary's face lit up. Disappearing for a second, he reemerged in a sea of yellow light that created a huge rectangle on the shadows that lay around Octavia prior. Chuckling, he asked, "Well, geez, shoulda just said that earlier." Bringing out a hoof and leaning forward, he added, "Don't worry about the bath salts thing, seriously. I get nervous when I come in for work here all the time."

"Ehhhh..." Octavia attempted to laugh, ending up looking like the one awkward, corner-camping mare at Prom. That wasn't a personal anecdote; she didn't go to her Prom because she was practicing her double bass. There were better things in her life at that point, but she would've much rather liked staying home, eating ice cream, and arranging a new piece that she'd just burn in her parents' fireplace later. The more she pondered on her younger years, the more she realized she hadn't really changed an ounce. For better or for worse was a suspect line, but at least she wasn't bothering anypony–

"Anyway, what would ya like?"

Octavia snapped back to reality, shaking her head like a wet dog and scrunching up her eyes to the point of seeing stars when she cracked them open again.

"Oh," she oh'd, "I'd like a Largemouth Bass, if you wouldn't mind."

The Unicorn hummed, his clipboard (when did he have a clipboard?) flying toward the front of his face. A pen, chained forever to the block of wood by a simple piece of twine, floated up alongside it, dropped down, and quickly checked off something before the Unicorn lowered both objects and winked at her, "All right, we'll have it out in a second." Taking a step backward to crabwalk back into the warehouse, he sucked on his teeth, looked at Octavia, mirrored her suddenly frightened, if curious expression, and asked, "Hey, hope ya don't mind if I get a guy to watch you while I go and get it." Noticing Octavia's crackling beginnings of disapproval, he violently waggled a hoof, "It's...! It's just company policy, don't worry. He's not gonna... rough you up, and sink an ax into your side." Octavia's frown widened. The Unicorn noticed. "I'll... just go get it."

Trotting back into the building, and apparently high-hoofing somepony on the way in, the Unicorn was replaced with, to Octavia's infinitely genuine surprise, another Unicorn, this one a sage green and sporting a shaggy blonde mane. Taking—literally—the exact same place as his coworker, he scuffed up the floors with both his gaze and his hooves, then looked back up at Octavia and smirked.

"Hi," he greeted her, his voice gruff but his word sincere.

"Evening," Octavia replied, though rather hesitantly and shakily.

Her interesting conversationalist of a temporary companion raised a hoof up to his mouth, coughed, then clip clopped back onto the ground. Pursing out his lips and looking to his left—which almost revealed to him the protruding police officer hat of one Razor Hail through the dark—and then to his right, he clucked his tongue and began swaying to and fro with a tune tooting through the salty, very rubbish air. Razor Hail, realizing she'd almost been seen, fell back down to her haunches and rustled the bush in her wake.

The Unicorn's eyes darted over to it, but he said nothing and continuing whistling.

Just when Octavia felt like her head was about ready to burst into some kind of British water balloon, her adversary suddenly perked up, lips still in an 'o' shape, and half-turned around to find who Hail claimed to be Wallaby. They exchanged a flurry of hushed words that tried their hardest to catch Octavia' ears, then switched places yet again. The sage Unicorn fled back into the warehouse as Wallaby ran a hoof through his greased mane, his magical aura simultaneously surrounding a small plastic bag floating in the air next to him.

"Here you are. One," he paused, bringing up his recently sticky hoof and flexing it at the end, "'Largemouth Bass'."

Octavia cleared her throat, mouth shut firmly. She opened it, realizing she'd need to reply, "Well, thank you." Grabbing the bag from his magic and placing it on the ground next to her, she bent over to grasp it in her teeth and begin trotting away until Wallaby spoke once more.

"Now," he began, a very... distinctly low chuckle escaping his lips. Octavia's eyes widened. "I hope you and your cop friend over there in that bush enjoy this just as much as me and my boys are gonna enjoy this."

Octavia barely had time to register Hail's voice shouting, "Behind!" before she felt herself crouch to the cobblestone, press her forelegs against what she stomped on, and abruptly shoot her hindlegs out like the blast of a thousand-ton cannon. The pony previously trying to flank her, according to her judgments... and the bone she surely, horrendously bucked, instantly flew back a foot further behind her and crumpled onto the street in a daze. Not seeing a spare second to reflect on her thankfulness of being born an Earth Pony, she spun back around—disregarding her completely unfortunate opponent—and sucked in a cold breath.

Wallaby was slowly approaching her, horn lit. Coming out by his side was a rather sharp looking kitchen knife.

Octavia felt every nerve of her body freeze, but she found the urge to move deep inside her head and began to backpedal. She eyed the Largemouth Bass lying on the ground next to her, and thought of the exact way she'd reach over and swing it around in her teeth so that she could–

Clippity clop clippity clop clippity clop.

Octavia, and Wallaby, turned just in time to find Razor Hail sprinting toward them, her nightstick wedged between her frowning lips. In a bare second, she closed the short distance, lowered her left shoulder toward Wallaby, and very swiftly threw her right hoof into the left side of his head, sending him to her left, which she instantly followed by spitting out her weapon, coiling it in her left hoof, and flinging it across his right cheek before he even touched the ground, sending him back to the right in a torrent of spit. He crashed onto the sidewalk with only an involuntarily blown raspberry, then lay still and stared up at the stars. A trio of blue robins, chirping and tweeting, began flying tight circles around his head.

Octavia realized she was still alive, kicking, and breathing, then suddenly found trouble with the third. Her neck craned back and her purple eyes bugged out, she lifted a hoof to her chest and stayed it to help steady herself. Hail, still in her striking pose, slowly looked up at Octavia with her tongue lulled out and her mane swept the wrong way. Rising to a standing position, she ended her post-takedown exercise by swiping at her forehead—both to correct her mane and fling away sweat—and holstering her nighstick back onto the left side of her belt.

Either would have spoken a word to break the deathly quiet, but the inside of the warehouse was already hustling up a massive storm. Shouts for Wallaby and one Looking Glass sprang up out of the night, accompanied by a flurry of hooves against wood that sounded more like a hulking Hydra was stalking toward the two mares.

Octavia, her throat dry, quaked out, "We got the fish. Can we leave?"

Hail tapped her tongue against her lower lip, then looked down at Wallaby's body and dragged him out of the doorway. "Sec," she said, like some kind of teenager prolonging her arrival to the family dinner.

Octavia peeled her ears back and felt her hooves shake against her weight.

Another stallion suddenly burst through the warehouse door, his magic carrying with him a spade. He looked around for a split second before his eyes caught on Octavia. He bunched up his right cheek and issued a very guttural sounding growl.

Octavia eeped.

Before either could so much as think of flinching, Hail raised a hoof up once more, bashed the Unicorn in the cheek, and watched as he fell to the ground.

"I'm good," Hail claimed with an upward inflection before taking up a canter and grabbing the Largemouth Bass.

Joining her, Octavia shook her head and spat, "You've got problems, officer."

Galloping down the street, they took a right turn and disappeared from sight, leaving behind a trio of dazed ponies and a hurricane of angry dealers.

Comments

[the other sans]

Well Hail, Octavia's line of thinking is definitely worth a shot in the right direction but perhaps you who were too eager to cut to the chase probably rustled more than just those dealer's jimmies and effectively fished out the absolute worst possible way to do a stakeout. Then again, the Canterlot Symphony was more or less involved. Well, the Bass line anyways was involved but it was probably bound to screw up sooner or later. Now if only her lungs could cut the tension in the air then- Oh wait, anatomy already did that, never mind.

[re- Yamsmos]

7969312

Thanks for coming back. Keep the roll going.