In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

Clamming Up, or, The Interrogation

SBMS131

"So I can't pull my usual witch-doctor shtick, he's seen me being normal."

"it's cute that you think you're capable of being normal," sniped Dancing Shadows.

"And I was there when we captured him, so 'good pony' is probably right out."

"It's even cuter that you think you're capable of playing the 'good pony', you madpony!" Cup Cake piled on.

"Are we done having fun yet?" I asked, irked. They both shook their heads in tandem, smirking. "Fine! You all want to run this interrogation, that's all you. I was just going to suggest-"

"Interrogating him pro forma, and set him up for something sneaky?" asked Cup Cake.

"Terrorize him to his face, and leave him an 'escape' with a saviour to confide in?" asked Dancing Shadows.

"Clearly I don't need to be here," I grouched. Then Feufollet spoke up from her corner.

"But sir, we still need a heavy. You can play heavy all you like, can't you?" the growing jenny asked.

"At least somepony knows how to give respect to their elders! Yeah, I can do that. Let's see how clean the current occupant keeps her surgical tools; 'showing the tools' is always a fun way to pass the time."

"Sir, simple intimidation first, maybe? The Annals suggest that feinting a torture-session should come… later?"

"Who said anything about feints? No, I'm joking. Well, mostly. Let's start by talking at the spook, maybe 'Earth Listens' will crack like a dry stick at the first poke."

"More like bend like tall grass at the first blast of hot air," muttered Cup Cake.

"What was that?"

"He will tremble before your mighty bellows, oh master of the chronicle and lord of the interrogation!"

---

Earth Listens decided to be boring. Catatonic withdrawal can be a valid evasion technique, but it's deathly dull for interrogators. They get bored. If they're disciplined, then your gambit will succeed.

If they're me, they'll sock you in the face just to see you jump. Everypony has a plan until they get bucked in the face. Pull their cork, and you'll see the pony under the plan, if only for a second. Earth Listens glared, with a bottomless rage simmering somewhere behind his startled eyes.

I let the others pull me out of the chamber, yelling and fuming at the restrained pony, Feufollet dabbing at the blood running from Earth Listen's battered nose. After the door closed behind me, I dropped the act.

"Think he bought it?" I asked.

"Bought what? You got mad, you beat a restrained prisoner. Are you still under house arrest?" asked Dancing Shadows.

I looked around at the infirmary of another doctor in which we were standing. "I do not seem to be at home. I guess I am not?"

"Nopony but you bought into that house arrest business, Sawbones. I was more under arrest than you ever were, and they let me wander half the province," observed Cup Cake. "Although that gives me some ideas. Think he knows about your history, murdering foals and random servantry?"

I sat back on my haunches, unsettled. "Why would it matter? I just came the heavy at him, any legend on top of that would just be painting the lily."

"The thought of something is far more intimidating than the physicality of it, the fear of a hypothetical more real than the fact of the thing itself."

"Did the hypothetical of being beaten bloody by angry townsfolk eclipse the actual beatings themselves?"

The pudgy little earth-pony looked abashed. "Touche. But beatings makes everything real. We need to drown him in 'maybes'. And I'm a little worried that if he does get away from us, we'll have made him a better spy."

"You consider your capture by the Raviners to have made you a better spook?"

"Madpony, it was the making of me. I was a silly little thing before they beat the tartar sauce out of me. If I ever get back to Academy, I'm telling them they need to include at least one severe beating in SERE training. Nopony should get sent out into the field without getting the jam beaten out of them at least once. It focuses the mind masterfully."

The door opened, and Feufollet came out, holding something in one of her hooves. A bloodied rag.

"Well, I've got the materials if we want to do anything manipulative to him," she confirmed. "I don't know about mind-magic, though. I can put 'em down, and I can make 'em see what isn't there, but mucking about in their wrinklies? This is more the Princess's domain, and Cherie."

"There's no way in Tartarus I'm exposing that spy to the Spirit, or Cherie to that spy," I objected. "We're here to get information out of the spook, not fill him to the brim with freebies like 'the Company has a terrifying magic-mist mind-controlling monster, it ate my brain!'"

"But I got better!" giggled a slightly punch-drunk and exhausted Dancing Shadows.

"Good point, we'd have to put him back together with bits missing afterwards if we wanted to do anything at all with him. Do we want to do anything with him down the line? Cup Cake?"

"What, turn another spy in another network? Long, painful, stupid process. Look how long it took with me, and I'm using you fools as much as you're using me."

"What! Shock! Horror! We are betrayed!" giggled Dancing Shadows. She really needed to get some sleep.

"It depends on who he's working for, and we're no closer to that than we were five hours ago. The check-out is a long-term tactic, we could be here another week or two before he breaks," said Cup Cake.

"You two might have two weeks to putz around with this dingus, but Feufollet and I have other business to attend to, eventually. And for all we know, the militia-conference is about to upend all of our lives. Maybe we really ought to bring the-"

And Cherie squeezed out from under a desk beside the open door leading into the patients'-ward across the hallway from where we were speaking.

"Monseiur! I thought I heard you thinking about me! Patrol is over, I am free now! Did you know you have a weird pony in the next room? He took one look at me and started gibbering! I followed the wrong trace, and you weren't in there!"

We looked at each other, and ran for the door. Heavy Bucket, guarding the prisoner, looking alarmed at being rushed.

The spy was shouting and screaming, raging. 'Blasphemy' this, 'heathen' that, lots of ranting about 'devilish mockeries' and frothing about demons quoting prophesy for their own purposes.

So I cracked him one across the muzzle again, and then shoved my hoof into his mouth. He glared at me around my arm.

"Want to repeat that once again, in a single, coherent sentence? Before I go get my surgical tools and start carving the swagger out of you? One. Sentence." I took my slightly-gnawed hoof out of his mouth, and wiped it against my jacket.

"What did you think - pfeh- intend to accomplish - from haunting me with that imp pretending to be a corrupted Princess? Where did you get the prophesy? Where did you get the details? Is this some skill of devils? Is this how you destroy ponies? Are you looking into my soul even now?" His demeanor, unsettled before, now shook into a chaos of darting, terrified glances, looking all over the darkened room, staring at what I have no idea.

"Ha! You're a silly pony, Mr. Weirdo! I don' think anypony's ever called me an imp before! Let alone a Princess! I don't look anything like the Princess! See? No horn!"

"Cherie! Get out of here! Now!"

"But Monseiur-"

"DAMN YOU, DEVIL! STOP PLAYING AT PROPHESY AND TAKE OFF THAT SEMBLANCE OF THE WHITE ROSE!"

The prisoner's scream filled the small quarantine room like the cracking of ice under the hooves of a patrol caught out on a frozen river.

"Well," Dancing Shadows said, breaking the echoing silence, "I guess we know who he's spying for now."

Comments

[Dorath]

Little Cherie is the prophesied White Rose that will destroy the Bride? Am I the only one who sees all sorts of bad coming from this?

I reiterate my suggestion to Sawbones and friends that the Company should bug out to some other part of the Chain ... maybe even Equestria itself (who would look for them there?)

[Mitch H]

7847114 The Equestrian foreign service and the Guard, for two. And Sawbones has his own prophesy suggesting the Company will destroy the universe if they go back home, so there is that.

And they literally found Cherie under a rosebush, I didn't think I was being subtle about that. Not to mention she's very loosely based on Cook's Darling, whose entire character arc was exactly this, give or take a bit of muteness and magical nullity.

I haven't gotten into White Rose dogma, but note you this: in the source material, Darling's purpose was to put down the Dominator; the Lady was just part of the evil blob who rebelled against her assigned role and set up as her own dark overlordship and left the original to seethe in magical lockup.

[DoomManta]

I'd been starting to wonder if she was actually the White Rose. You'd certainly made it seem obvious, but then nothing came of it for so long.