Chapter 23
Being an adult. Holly gave the concept of being an adult a lot of thought. Being an adult meant having a house, paying your bills, eating sensible meals, being responsible, and having adult relationships with other adults. Other responsible, sane adults. Being an adult meant not banging the help. Oh, sure, plenty of adults banged the help, but it was something you never heard spoke of in a positive light—it was one of the things that adults did that other adults around them would shame them for. One simply did not have a fling with the hired help.
Besides, Alfredo was only attractive and eye catching because he was there. Every day. Day after day. Going about the house, doing what he did, with his long shapely legs, his silver blue mane, his little white socks and his fine tuxedo pelt.
“Madam, shall we have delightful coitus until you are very much like a screen door?”
Holly grinned upon hearing those words, but felt confused. “Huh?”
“The more I bang you, the looser you shall get—”
Blinking, Holly snapped herself out of her daydream fantasy. She shook her head, feeling out of sorts, and realised that she had no idea how Alfredo might talk dirty. She was probably way off. Alfredo was a kinky sort, of that there could be no doubt, he was a transvestite after all, but she had no idea what he might sound like if he was talking dirty.
A part of her wanted to find out.
Oh yes, she wanted to hear that fine, cultured voice saying dirty things in her ear.
The Stony Scary Cinematic Review was coming up. There were plans to go out and have a good time with Toot Toot and Knock Knock. Alfredo kept practicing his lines and singing while he did housework.
A very adult voice in the back of Holly’s mind reminded her that adult relationships focused on more than sex, ponies were supposed to know one another. They knew each other’s past and knew things like a pony’s favourite colour, favourite food, favourite song, a plethora of somewhat useful trivia, the mechanical nuts and bolts that fastened a relationship together and then needed some maintenance at regular intervals to keep the relationship tight.
Holly realised that she knew next to nothing about Alfredo. A little voice warned her that she shouldn’t know very much about Alfredo, he was the help. This was not the responsible thing that adults did. Plus, if things didn’t work out, Alfredo was bound by his contract—things would get awkward if there was a falling out and he had to keep working here.
Not to mention living here.
Holly wasn’t certain that she could kick him out if there was a falling out, she knew how expensive it was to live here in the city, or at least she was getting an idea. She was lucky. Others not so much. If she wanted to make money, she could rent out spare rooms for two thousand bits or more a month and there were ponies who would pay. No, a falling out would make things awkward and messy and it just wasn’t worth the risk.
Was it?
For Holly, the days began to blur together, much as they had when she was a roller derby star. Her hours had changed; she was now working from noon until midnight, volunteering for extra hours, plus being on call for when she was needed to assist Knock Knock in his investigations. The firehouse was a different place in the evenings than it was during the day. There was dinner together, which sometimes they didn’t get to finish. There was a movie projector and a collection of reel to reel movies; the surest way to relieve the boredom was to put a movie on, a fire was certain to happen at some point.
More importantly, Holly was given her own bell, something that was kept with her at all times. If she was needed, the bell would ring. With her bell, Holly was also given a silver badge, something she adored and treasured. On the top of the shield were the letters M.F.D. Near the bottom in fine script were the words Manehattan Fire Department. Her name appeared on the badge and below her name were the words ‘Junior Arson Investigator,’ a rank given to her not so much because she had worked hard to earn it, but because she was one of the few foolhardy enough to accept it. The city was desperate for ponies willing to do the job. With it came a minor increase in pay scale, which left Holly wondering if she was making ‘good’ money now. She supposed she was, she was living in a house that was paid off after all, and the money she made was more than enough to pay what few bills she had.
With the badge came the authority to arrest, detain, and question.
It was not a privilege that Holly was comfortable with.
“I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this,” Holly said as she gulped down a swallow of coffee that had been cooled with milk. She leaned back against the soft cushion of the booth and then looked down at her empty plate—the meal had been spectacular. Some kind of zebra dish with rice, beans, spicy stuff, corn, and strange vegetables, something called okra or something weird like that.
“Mister Silver Farthing was found inside of his bank vault. He’s dead,” Cornflower said as he held his coffee cup between his front hooves.
“So… he’s finally found and he’s dead. Somepony whack him?” Knock Knock eyed the blue pegasus with one raised eyebrow.
“We ain’t never seen nothing like it… he was all burnt… the bank vault was sealed from the outside. A bunch of stuff in the vault was burned as well, we found a lot of ash from burned paper, and all the silver and gold bars melted into puddles.”
“What?” Knock Knock leaned over the table, a look of utter disbelief etched upon his face. “Gold melts at almost two thousand degrees and silver at about seventeen hundred.”
“We found faint traces of magic in the vault, so we suspect we know the cause, but it isn’t unicorn magic.” Cornflower took a sip of his coffee and then stared at the mustachioed unicorn. “Claybourne, I’s tellin’ ya what I told my boss, this is weird stuff. Mister Stokes is still missing.”
“Mister Farthing was supposed to get the stuff printed on the printing press in the basement of that sweatshop,” Holly said, reminding herself of the little details. Her face became pinched and thoughtful.
“The fake banknotes.” Knock Knock shook his head. “So what are the odds that Mister Stokes had the pony who stiffed him torched?”
“Well, Mister Cooper is still at large, his accomplices too. He has a couple of cronies. The whole department would like to get our hooves on him… he might’ve torched that fat bastard Mister Farthing.” Cornflower sniffed, his nose running somewhat from the spicy meal, and then shook his head. “Princess Luna is getting involved… she has her Wardens and her Agents investigating the bank already… the evidence is piling up that the bank had plenty of shady dealings. As it turns out, the bank is part of a bigger company, an insurance company.”
“Hmm.” Holly’s ears stood up.
“Even better, said insurance company had policies for the warehouse where the sweatshop fire took place and a very large life insurance policy had been taken out on Fink Apple, along with a number of known goons for Mister Stokes.” Cornflower tapped his hoof on the table.
“You think somepony might have wanted to bump off poor Finky?” Knock Knock asked.
“Sure looks that way,” Cornflower replied, “he’s lucky that we got to him when we did… poor colt didn’t know much, but he knew enough. I think somepony was going to clean house and poor Finky was going to go out with the trash.”
“Did you find anything out about Seabright?” Holly asked.
Cornflower snorted. “Seabright was more than a union organiser… low ranking enforcer for the Capstone crime family… dirty pony. Worked up the workers in an outfit, got them to form a union, and then sold them a protection and assistance racket to milk them of their wages.”
“This city is rotten… why don’t the princesses do something?” Holly, confused, took a sip of her coffee.
“Holly, love, this city has several million ponies living in it. As powerful as the sisters are, there are limits to what they can do. This is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Crime is a fact of life… and the truth is, a number of the crime families are what keeps order round here… the Capstone family deals with what they call ‘harmless’ crimes, rackets, gambling, extortion, embezzlement, stuff like that. They keep the dope pushers and the violent criminals out of their territories. We come down too hard on the Capstone family and everything goes to bad. Like it or not, the city needs them to keep order.” Cornflower turned his head and looked out the window, watching ponies go by on the sidewalk.
“Necessary evil,” Knock Knock said.
“No evil is necessary,” Holly replied, shaking her head, “sorry, but I just don’t believe that, no offense, Knocker.”
“None taken.” The unicorn set his coffee cup down on the table. “Holly, as bad as it sounds, organised crime keeps the city safer and better.”
“Explain that to me… ‘cause I just don’t believe that.” Holly set down her coffee hard enough to make it slosh out of the cup and onto the table. “I’d like to know how crime makes this city better.”
Sighing, Knock Knock reached up and began to rub his nose. He looked at Holly for a moment, sighed again, and then looked at Cornflower. The pegasus shrugged and let out a snort. “Holly, it’s like this,” Knock Knock began, his face stern and serious, “we still have crime, but it’s corporate crime. Families like the Capstones, they keep the city presentable to big businesses. Dope fiends, pimps, prostitutes, muggers, while all of those things still exist, they are kept in check by the enforcers and agents of the various crime families. Having a bunch of flea bitten prostitutes selling themselves on the sidewalk does not make businesses want to put down roots here in Manehattan. So the pimps and the prostitutes disappear and high class escort services spring up to replace them. Violent crime goes down because violent crime is bad for business. Shoppers do not wish to go where purse snatchers or bag grabbers might prey on them, so purse snatchers are beaten to within an inch of their lives and are told to go elsewhere.”
Holly gave the unicorn beside her a blank stare.
“When Matilda Mascarpone was arrested, it’s been about ten years or so ago, she was the matron of a powerful crime family. When she went down, the city sank into chaos. Violent crime skyrocketed. Pony on pony crimes were so high that the police could not deal with them. There were so many fires that the fire department had to decide which buildings to save and which buildings to let burn down. Rape and murder rates reached an all time high. It got so bad that Princess Celestia sent the royal guard and placed the city under martial law. That made things worse if you can believe it.” Knock Knock looked Holly in the eye as he spoke, his voice wavering from emotion.
“Those were dark days,” Cornflower said as he tossed a generous tip down on the table.
“In the end, it wasn’t the police or the royal guard that brought the city back under control. It was the Capstones—they rushed to fill the vacuum and brought order and law back to city.” Knock Knock looked away from Holly and added a few more bits to the tip on the table.
Holly, who was feeling very hurt and confused about the heels being left in charge, shook her head and added a few more bits of her own. The rent was too damn high and waitresses needed to make ends meet too. “I don’t want to talk about this any more… come on fellas, we have an investigation to do, let’s get to hoofin’.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.021 seconds
Total duration
1,095 users online
2,159,534 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Holly is starting to see what she's up against... even her own coworkers.
6590319
How does one fix a problem like the one the city faces?
6590335 I had a few ideas, then I realised they wouldn't really work against that type of crime. Do you have something in mind for future chapters, or will you have to spend some sleepless nights coming up with stuff?
6590427
I have no plans to fix it.
6590335
6590427
The problem is we're not strictly talking about crime anymore. Once it has become societal like this, then you have to look at what is causing the conditions in the society that lead to crime.
We know the rent is high, we know that, if draconian measures aren't taken, people are violent and criminal en masse.
So... who's making the rent high? Who's causing the other problems to cause that? At this point it's not about how to stop crime. It's about how to cure desperation.
And that doesn't discount that with this breadth of crimes means there are a lot more things that could be causing them.
Fighting this crime isn't arresting more people. It's changing society.
(... At a guess)
pity Princess Luna can't simply give them all a case of the scaries every night. All you need to do is looking for the ponies who haven't gotten enough sleep, and put them on surveillance.
6590437 You can actually have some change by making the city feel less stifling. I.e wider streets, shorter buildings. Sadly I guess those are not really feasible in a place already jam packed full of houses. You can for example take a walk through some european cities, and by simply having more space around you, you can feel a bit more secure. Though it might only be me, who grew up in a place like that.
I laughed so hard I cried. Holly wont know till she tries though
6590437 And changing the society may not be desirable. Rent is high because demand to live in the city is there to support it. As Holly said, she could rent out a room for 2000 bits a month and ponies would pay it. That's indicative that there's enough money to be made to justify that kind of living expense.
Organized crime is, unfortunately, a by-product of law. Whenever there is a service or product that is desired, regardless of legality, an organization will arise to provide it. That is inescapable. The only ways to prevent criminal organizations from doing so is to either A) remove the desire for said product or service, which is a tall order of societal change (and may not really be possible), or B) remove the impediments to legal distribution of the product or service; legalize it.
Option A may require generations of societal value shifting and may never be 100% successful. Look at the tobacco industry for a good example. Option B has its own challenges, most of which are dependent on the nature of the product in question. Though it does have the almost universal benefit of lowering the price of whatever item or service, as the threat of legal repercussions cannot be used to limit supply and inflate cost.
Society is complicated and messy. And it grows exponentially more complex as population increases. You have to pick your battles and sometimes accept that somethings will be bad to prevent other things from growing worse.
Ooooo Holly, you're in for one heck of a time~
hehehe, crime families and such.
...
I'm briefly reminded of Gotham
Nicely done man, nicely done!
6638841 I'm still reading The Chase Dx Only read 200 chapters so far :P
I want more of MFD :D
Noooo I've caught up on another Kudzu fic. This was a page turner thanks!
6643471 yeah i hear ya i just started this a day ago just finished it. Hope kudz continues
6686430 I saw :P
6757670
16th century English for the win!
6757700
http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/leaped-or-leapt
*Raises eyebrow*
Edit 1)
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/76167/lept-vs-leapt-vs-leaped
*Raises eyebrow further*
Edit 2)
Comes to conclusion that archaic word usage is not a good defence, but is a legitimate one, and this has educated self, still not gonna use lept in any of own stories though. Plus it's not as bad as the redefinition of Literally to also have the same meaning as figuratively
as this story is older i feel safe with giving away who i am pretty sure the bade guy is.
Mr Mariner.
granted i have read several of kudzuhaiku's story's so i have a pretty good hint.