• Published 26th Jun 2012
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Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale - Chessie



In the decaying metropolis of Detrot, 60 years and one war after Luna's return, Detective Hard Boiled and friends must solve the mystery behind a unicorn's death in a film noir-inspired tale of ponies, hard cider, conspiracy, and murder.

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Act 3 Chapter 28 : All's Well As Long As No One's Been Shot

"Ponies, griffins, dragons, dogs, and a hundred other species of intelligent creature all have one thing in common that defines them from the dumb beasts of the wilds. Some might say it’s ‘culture’ or ‘art’ or ‘will to improve themselves’, but plenty of intelligent creatures lack those things or lack them in appreciable measure.

No, what all intelligent beings have is a will to destroy themselves. You can’t claim to be intelligent until you’ve stood on the cusp of life and death and thought ‘I wonder what happens if I take just one more step.’ That is what we do today, my friend! Forward! To victory!"

- Gorgas The Bone Splitting Philosopher at the battle of Appleton, 631, Old Pegasopolan Calendar

Footnote: Gorgas and his entire invading force of ogrekin brute-lords were routed before reaching the gates of the city of Appleton when Princess Luna personally took the field and impaled him with his own hat. While he survived, the humiliation influenced ogre fashion for centuries thereafter, and Goras is considered one of the last ogres to wear a phallic symbol on his head.


“Could you run that by all of us again, please?”

I’m the File Cloud, Hardy. At least, I am now. I wasn’t always. Like I said, it’s complicated.

Uhuh. I need a sandwich.”

I can make you one, but I can’t promise it’ll be from this dimension.”

“No, thank you. I’ve already been attacked by extra-dimensional food once this week.”

“Twice, Sir. Once on the first trip on the Bull, once when we were coming back. Taxi had those cheese doodles with the feet on them, remember?”

“Shut up, kid. Go find somepony to make me a sandwich.”

----

Mmm...Feta cheese, a thin layer of slightly expired mayo, a mildly freezer-burned tomato, and some pickles on a piece of moldy rye. All in all, not bad for something thrown together by a panting, frightened intern who’d found herself assigned as the Prince of Detrot’s—and consequently also my—gopher. She’d almost pissed herself with relief when all I asked for was a sandwich.

Chief Jade sat behind the remains of her desk, eyeing the hole in the glass as though it were a hungry tiger about to bite her. Seeing the Chief frightened was a new experience, but a lightning bolt at close range tends to rattle anypony with a lick of a survival instinct. I suppose the fact that I was sitting on the floor beside her munching on a questionably edible sandwich probably said some things about my state of mind.

Swift was sitting in the corner, eyes rolled back and the Ladybug sitting on her nose. I’d gotten bored after drawing some big, bushy eyebrows on her, but Taxi was still in the process of giving her a looping mustache and monocle.

Precious was lying on his back, one leg crossed over the other and his cane across his slightly paunchy stomach as he used Limerence’s belly for a pillow. The old stallion had declared a nap about two minutes after my sandwich arrived, but I suspected he was still keeping a metaphorical eye out to see if Iris Jade decided to do something murderous. Telly was beside him, huddled down and staring at the carpet as though he might somehow protect her from what was surely going to be a long, unpleasant debriefing.

I tucked the last bite into my mouth and slowly, meaningfully, wiped my muzzle with the back of my leg. Taxi, sensing dramatic tension, put one more freckle on Swift’s cheek and capped her marker.

I cleared my throat. Telly, Jade, and Taxi looked up, though Swift remained in lala-land. Probably better that way.

“Alright. Gypsy?”

Yes, Hardy?”

“You’re going to explain your situation, right? Because I think we all have some questions.”

“Questions? I don’t mind questions. If you want to actually understand, though, you’ll come upstairs.”

Iris Jade pushed herself up from behind her desk.

“Not you, Iris,” Gypsy added with a touch of undisguised smugness.

The Chief paused halfway to standing. Her mane was still sticking up in all directions, but a bit of fire was finally returning to her face. She threw her shoulders back and glared out the window. “And why, pray tell, not?”

Because I know where all the bodies are buried. You deserve to be stuck in the lowest pit of Tartarus. Your hooves are soaked in blood, and while none of it is innocent, not all of those people you killed or had killed deserved to die. You’re stubborn, prideful, and you don’t think on your hooves, so I’m going to put somepony who does in charge.”

Jade’s eyes blazed with fury. “I’m not turning over control of this police force to this idiot, nor to some construct, no matter how powerful they might be. If you expect that, you go ahead and hit me with another lightning bolt and then see if you can keep this police force together!”

“You are barely holding the police together as it is. You lay a hoof on him, I’ll fry you like an egg. He’s the pony we need right now. Not you. These ponies don’t need a monster anymore. They need a hero. You know that’s not you...and you might be a bully, but you’re not a fool.”

I swallowed and began backing away from Jade’s desk. Her horn was glowing brilliantly, and thin tendrils of uncontrolled magic began to creep into the walls, where control runes lit up to absorb them.

“You...can’t do this!” Jade snarled, rising a few inches into the air.

“I’m doing it. Your daughter is safely tucked away. Your police department is broken. Your power is gone. You can die right here, right now, without ever seeing your child again, and it won’t make a damn bit of difference.”

“You can’t dictate terms—”

“Yes, I can, Iris Jade. I can dictate any terms I like, because you have nothing on me. This is for all the little cruelties you made me witness since the day I awoke from my long sleep. These ponies might be afraid of you for now, but I hear their whisperings. I’ve heard three separate plots to murder you this week alone. You’re going to sit there and wait, until the Good Fight needs you. Meanwhile, the police department belongs to Dead Heart. Suck it up, buttercup! You are not in control!”

My only warning was the scent of ozone before I was forced to do a quick step back from the Chief’s desk. I’d seen Jade throw the desk, split it in half, and blast it with all manner of magical spells. I’d never actually seen it spontaneously explode before.

I barely had time to dive onto the carpet before the ceiling and every inch of the room above head height was full of wooden shrapnel. In the silence that followed, paper confetti and bits of shattered candy peppered my back as I held my hat down over my face.

I slowly uncovered my head and peered around. Jade was still standing where she had been a moment ago with a small shield bubble around herself and the remains of her desk slowly raining down on it. Precious had thrown himself over Limerence, and Taxi was shielding both her own face and Swift’s with the top of one of the boxes of ammunition. Telly had her own shield up, but it was flickering fitfully and died a moment later.

A wave of heat hit me that seemed to be coming off of Iris Jade, but before she could demonstrate her rage on a populated room, I sprinted over to Limerence and wrestled him onto my back.

“Taxi! Get Swift! Telly, carry Precious! Out, out, out! Don’t stop until you reach the stairs!”

----

Anypony with half a brain who saw us tear out of there decided it would be wise to be as far from the Chief’s office as equinely possible. We quickly found ourselves sprinting at the head of a small crowd of ponies.

Peering back over my shoulder and above the heads of the ponies following me, I could see emerald green lightning arcing from underneath the door of Iris Jade’s office. Whatever was left of the magical shielding inside her office must have been holding, because we made the stairwell safely. At the far end of the hallway, I grabbed the rail and galloped down the steps, pausing to shift Lim off my back and onto the floor once I reached the first landing.

What followed couldn’t quite be called an explosion, since there was no blast-wave, but a wash of tingling energies shot down my back and more shouting followed from the crowd. A couple of the unicorns around me cringed and stumbled.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem anypony was panicked. Just doing the smart thing, like an orderly evacuation from a burning building. I thought I’d be heading up a stampede.

Glancing over at the other side of the hall, I found Telly holding Precious in a bubble of magic. The elderly stallion was looking a bit indignant as he tapped at his confines with his cane.

“Precious, how many times has Iris Jade blown up in the last week or so?” I asked, above the murmuring crowd. They seemed much calmer than proximity to the Chief on a rage bender usually leant itself to.

“Five or six times,” he replied, sliding onto his rump and adjusting his coat. “Usually Ah’m there to keep the property damage to a minimum. Ah hope she didn’t destroy those supplies. We’re gonna want for bullets if she did.”

“No, we won’t,” I replied. “I’m getting us out, but I think we’ll need Gypsy on board. I want to go see her before Jade recovers. Can you handle keeping this lot from rioting?”

Telly took a cue, quickly lowering the bubble to the ground and dispelling it.

“Don’t worry about me, Hardy,” the Prince replied. Turning to the crowd, he raised his cane in the air. What I can only describe as a powerful presence seemed to radiate from him, crashing down on the herd of the frightened ponies huddling against the walls of the stairwell. Their eyes all snapped to him, like the sun had suddenly lit up in a darkened room. Stepping forward, he seemed to swell in stature, brushing a hoof back to smooth his greased mane.

“My friends! That was something, wasn’t it? Heh! You all know Detective Hard Boiled?” Reaching out, he grabbed me behind my shoulders and pulled me to his side. “He’s been a thorn in Iris Jade’s side forever, but today, my friends...today, she bows to him, because he controls the File Cloud! Let’s all hear it for Dead Heart!”

My brain locked up, and my heart started pounding so loudly I could hear it over the whispering of the nervous herd.

“D-dead Heart?” a little filly standing underneath her mother on the edge of the crowd murmured, taking a couple steps forward. Her mother ducked her head over her, protectively, still giving me a dubious look. “I-is it really you? I heard t-the stories!”

“That’ll be him, kiddo! He’s got a plan to save us all and bring back the sun!” Precious chuckled, letting go of my neck. “Now, we’ve got to start getting ourselves ready for it, and he’s got to go to work! Tell your friends downstairs to start packing what they can! Ah want everypony ready to move out by tomorrow! Now come on! We need to leave him be while he puts his plan into motion!”

The Prince might wear a sparkly jumpsuit and wield a pipe wrench rather than a scepter, he might be blind, and his mane might be greying, but no one would ever dare question that he was royal. Precious began moving through the crowd, doling out instructions and encouragement. Whatever magic he was using to keep their attention was still working, because the herd began following him down the stairs, leaving me and my companions standing there on the landing. I must have had an expression like a stunned chicken.

“W-what just happened?” I stammered, slowly sagging against the wall.

“Come on, while they’re all distracted. I know a way to get upstairs to one of the commissary rooms on the other side that can bypass the throne room,” Taxi murmured, adjusting Swift on her back. Reaching up to a spot on the wall, she pressed one of the bricks. One of the wooden panels, barely wide enough for one pony, popped open.

“Y-yeah, but w-what just happened?”

Telly—who’d realized quicker than I that her best friend just spanked the most powerful unicorn in the city and sent her to bed without dinner—was grinning ear to ear.

“Hardy, I’m pretty sure Gypsy just handed you the police department.”

----

I followed my driver and the radio pony without really registering where we were going. It was a slow walk through the exterior wall of the Castle, but considering the cobwebs, we weren’t likely to meet anypony going the other way. Taxi was in front, with Telly behind her carrying Swift. For once, I’d been left without the physical burden, although my brain felt like it’d just been dragged over hot coals.

Taxi was counting wall panels until she found the right one, then gave it a firm shove. It swung open on a small storage room. The space was just big enough for four ponies and a few boxes but was blessedly unoccupied save a couple of mats on the floor; whoever’s kip we’d stumbled into wasn’t home.

Swift yawned and sat up, letting out a frightened gasp as she found herself flailing about in midair. “Buh?!” Telly set her on her hooves as she stared around at the room. “Sir, where are we and what just happened?”

“Gypsy just nuked Iris Jade and gave Hardy control of the Castle,” Taxi murmured, laying Limerence against the wall. “Hardy, give me that Ace. Lim’s going to wake up soon.”

I slumped onto the floor and rolled onto my side, pulling one of the mats over so I could hug the pillow at the end of it. Taxi tugged my hat off and pulled my coat away from my shoulders. I didn’t have the strength to fight her.

“T-Taxi, could...could you get me something to drink?” I asked, softly.

“You want alcohol right now?”

“Give me something that’ll melt my brain before it liquefies my organs.”

“Whiskey it is, then.”

“Whiskey, with a hemlock chaser,” I added.

Ignoring my whinging, Taxi grabbed one of my forelegs, using it to open one of my magically sealed pockets. I didn’t have the strength to fight her as she pulled out the syringe full of Ace and poked around on Lim’s foreleg until she found a vein. He relaxed visibly as she pressed the plunger, and his sleep seemed to become a little calmer.

“What happened to him?” Telly asked.

“Magical burnout,” Taxi replied. “He overcooked it trying to channel the power in my cab through his body after the inverter failed.”

The radio pony sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Oooh, poor boy. Too bad. He’s kinda cute, but I don’t date idiots.” She waved a hoof over me. “What do we do about Hardy? I think he’s checked out for the evening. Was that really so traumatic?”

“What did Gypsy do?” Swift asked, scratching her mane. “I mean, you said some words, but they didn’t make sense in the order you said them in.”

“Gypsy struck Iris Jade with lightning, then relieved her of command,” Telly replied, a little smirk on her face. “She’s back in her office, probably screaming her head off and straining the magical wards. Meanwhile, we’re stuck here with a catatonic idiot, a drugged idiot, and you...who slept through it all. On the upside, I’m not half so dead as I thought I’d be when I got up this morning.”

“I...I slept through Chief Iris Jade being relieved of command! Tourniquet and I were just—”

“I don’t need to know what you and Tourniquet were doing!” I yelped, backing up against the wall and dragging my mat with me.

Swift’s ears lay back. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Like I said,” Taxi answered. “Gypsy gave him the keys to the Castle. He’ll be fine in a bit, but I think we should go find him something to drink.”

“I’ve got to get out there and find out what’s going on,” Telly said, pulling the door of the little closet open and peering both ways down the hall. “Gypsy? Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you,” my juju-bag replied. Telly gently levitated it from around my neck and peered at it. “This is a radio. It’s running on a strange network, but I found the frequency. The Prince is keeping things fairly calm out there, for now. How is Hardy? You’re somewhere I can’t see him. And who is doing all the heavy breathing?”

“That would be Hard Boiled,” Telly replied, nudging me with her hoof. “I think he’s having some kind of panic attack. He’s just lying there watching us and twitching now and then whenever anypony moves.”

Hrm...not surprising. Alright, I’m sending you some help. It’ll take them about two minutes to get there.”

Trotting over and snatching the juju bag, Taxi asked, “Gypsy, Chief Jade is out of commission, right?”

“I’ve made it fairly clear that if she tries to leave her office, I’ll cook her alive,” she replied. “She tore some things up for a few minutes, but now she’s eating some baked beans from a can and...mercy, she’s smiling. That’s creepy. Either way, she’s just sitting there.”

My driver looked down at me, then shook her head. “Hard Boiled is doing something similar, but with more...quiet sobbing. I don’t think he’s moving anytime soon. Hardy’s plan involved retrieving and retrofitting my car. Do you think power has changed hooves quick enough to let us get a group together for a move to the parking garage across the street? We’ll need to get the Night Trotter.”

Swift settled on her hooves beside me, wrapping her forelegs around my neck and one wing across my flanks. I couldn’t really feel it, but I knew she was there. It was pretty hard to feel anything at that given moment. I mean, besides terror. I was feeling lots of terror.

“Your cab is safe, for the moment,” Gypsy said. “I have pretty good tracking capabilities inside and around the Castle, to a short distance. The Biters’ radios run on an encrypted frequency, but I can at least tell you when they get nearby so you can make a safe run across the road. Something is interfering with many of the enchanted sensors inside the building, though. Weird. I really hope this isn’t a prelude to an attack."

“That would probably be Hardy. He’s got some magics that block tracking and scanning spells. Only works when he’s upset.”

“He’s probably pretty mad at me, huh?”

My partner touched a hoof to my forehead, then murmured, “I think the only reason he didn’t pee on himself is because he hadn’t had anything to drink since last time he went to the bathroom, Ma’am.”

I hugged my mat a little tighter. Mat was good. Mat would never betray me or make me insane. Mat would never put all those lives in my unreliable hooves, because it knew better.

My ‘help’ is almost there. Telly, can you come up and see me?”

“Are you sure I should leave him like this?” Telly asked, gesturing in my direction.

That bolt of lightning drained three entire control runes almost to zero. Do you want to take a chance on not having a second shot if Iris Jade decides to test me?”

“Right, I’ll be up there soon. I’ve got to make a pitstop by Requisitions first,” she replied, trotting over to the door and cracking it open. Peering out both ways, she settled her headphones on her ears and wrapped the trailing cable around her neck. “Can you direct Hardy up to the platform once he’s on his hooves? I want to hear his plan, and I bet Precious will, too.”

“Will do. Too bad the Biters damaged the main antenna. Now that he’s here, I guess I can shut off that message I had looping through the police comms. It’s not like it was getting very far anyhow.”

My driver put a restraining hoof on Telly’s shoulder. “Could you avoid telling anypony where we are?”

“Do I look stupid?” the radio pony snarked, then pushed open the door and vanished into the hall.

Putting her wings around me, Swift rested her cheek on my knee. “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Are you crazy right now?”

“I...I have never wanted my mother so much in my life, and she’s been dead for years.”

“Oh. Th-then, can I brush your mane?”

“Sure. Do you know you have a mustache?”

“What?!”

----

There was a knock on the storage closet’s door.

My mane was looking better than it had in weeks, but my state of mind wasn’t much improved. I couldn’t even bring myself to look up as Taxi opened the door to see who’d come in. My mind felt like it was swimming in a deep puddle of mud, flailing about as it tried not to sink under its own weight but without enough energy to escape.

She exchanged some soft words with somepony. I couldn’t hear what was being said, or maybe I just didn’t care.

‘Why isn’t Taxi kicking me?’ I thought, still clutching my mat to my breast as I stared vacantly into space, ‘It would have been nice if she’d kicked me a few times. I could use some kicking. Somepony snap me out of this.’

The brush moving through my mane stopped, and my partner’s warmth vanished from my back. I hadn’t really been aware of it until it was gone, but now that it was, I found myself missing it. I shut my eyes and shivered in the cool air, before a set of soft forelegs wrapped around my barrel.

“Could you give us a little while?” a voice asked. That voice. Where’d I heard that voice?

“Alright,” Taxi murmured. “We’ll be right outside. I’ve got to go see if I can get a group together to go retrieve the Night Trotter and commandeer some radios so we can talk to Gypsy. Swift, wait outside.”

“But—”

“No buts, Swift. This is what Hardy needs,” my driver said, firmly. “Miss Blue? Take care of him.”

The door shut, and I opened my eyes to find myself looking into a kind, beautiful face.

Miss Blue? Ruby Blue? How could she be there? She was dead. No. No, not Ruby.

“Lily?” I whispered. Her legs tightened around me, and she rested her chin on my shoulder. A lock of her bright red mane fell across her forehead, and I reached up to gently brush it out of her eyes.

“It’s me, Hardy,” she murmured, putting a toe under my chin and lifting my head. “This silly little griffin had just crept into the medbay, and after I caught her and gave her a cookie, this disembodied voice told me you were here. You look like you could use a bath.”

I shuddered and hid my face against her neck. “G-gypsy. Her name is Gypsy, and th-that...awful bitch...promoted me.”

I’m a little ashamed to say I was weeping by that point. All stallionly manners gone, I hung on to Lily Blue like a foal lost in the mall. She smelled of hospital disinfectant, but I couldn’t have cared less.

You might ask yourself why it was the idea of being in a leadership role that had finally broken Mister Hard Boiled. My conscience was already bleeding heavily from multiple stab wounds, and the thought of taking on a leadership role which expected me to save the entire police department from hideous, violent death or slow starvation was a bit more than I could have been reasonably expected to handle on short notice. If I’m honest, I’d found myself thinking heavily about Officer Gem Sing’s corpse.

I stepped over her frost-burned body an hour ago like she wasn’t even there.

How many more bodies was I likely to have to step over now?

I suppose it’s fortunate then that Lily was a patient pony and didn’t seem to have anywhere better to be than hugging my broken flank while I wept myself into exhaustion. I wanted to push her away, toss off some smart remark, and march out there with my head held high to face the reaper, but it wasn’t happening. The foulness in my veins would take longer than one good cry to bleed out.

Still, time moved on. I could only lie there and feel sorry for myself for so long before my mind started to find other places to be.

Something she’d said at last lodged in my brain long enough to fire a few liquored up, depressed neurons into action. I noticed, finally, that she was wearing a nametag and clean, pink nurse’s scrubs that matched her pelt.

“Tiny...griffin?” I asked, a little weakly. “You caught Mags?”

“So that’s her name,” Lily replied with a tiny smile. “She said she was a friend of yours, or...well, she said you were hers and that you’d do really horrible things to me if I didn’t put her down ‘this instant’. She almost shot one of the male nurses in the kneecap with the smallest pistol I’ve ever seen before I caught her with my magic. She calmed right down when I gave her a cookie, though.”

“You...you do have somebody watching her, right?”

Lily rolled her eyes and levitated a little medical bag from her side, setting it in front of me and pulling out Mags’s gun. “Of course. She’s with the other children in the nursery.”

“No...no, she’s probably already planned an escape attempt or is currently executing one,” I grunted, drawing in a slow breath. “I hope nopony down there is armed. She’s a frighteningly good shot if she manages to sneak their gun off them.”

Resting a hoof over mine, Lily leaned her forehead against my neck. “Detective...Hardy, you didn’t have a child with a gun following you around the last time I saw you. What’s happened to you?”

I let out a short, humorless laugh. “What’s happened to the world? I had a pretty good thing going! I was going to drink myself to death before all this began. What about you?”

Lily dismissed the question with a flip of her hoof. “What about me? Ruby still dead and I haven’t seen my parents since this all started. You saved my life, though. I can’t really ask for more than that, except maybe the head of whoever killed my sister.”

“I’m...still working on that,” I muttered.

She giggled and bit my mane, pulling my face around to look at hers. “Really? It looks a little bit like you’re crying in a closet.”

I sat back. “Yeah, well, I’m the boss now, right? I need my closet time.”

“No you don’t, Hardy,” she replied, pulling my forehead against her chest.

I lay there, listening to her heart beating, trying to come to grips with my reality. What had changed?

I still had to save everypony. That hadn’t changed. I was still responsible for everypony. That really hadn’t changed. Now, I just had a little more authority to get something done. No problem, right?

I gulped and felt my testicles trying to crawl up the back of my throat.

“You’re scared of leading, right?” she asked. Clever girl.

“Of course!” I huffed, resting a little more of my weight against her. “I can’t stay here. I have to give orders, set things in motion, then bugger off to a place I’ll probably get killed, and hope somepony else can handle things. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a bit of a control freak.”

“You’re saying you’re going to do a worse job than the ex-junkie who throws people around with her horn when she’s upset?” Lily asked, giving me a light nudge. “I heard lots of stories about Iris Jade. I don’t think you could be worse if you tried.”

“That’s...comforting. Sort of,” I mumbled, then gave myself a shake. “So, what, then? I’m the nitwit wearing the captain's hat. What do you think I should do?”

“You’re asking me? I’m a cherry farmer’s daughter, Hardy.”

“And I’m just a cop!” I groused, rocking back on my rump. “Smarter people than you and I are dying left and right out there on the streets. I don’t know what to do. I had some hair-brained idea of begging Iris for the use of one of the anti-megafauna vehicles in the basement to get out into the Wilds on a lead, but...now I can just take the damn thing. Ugh, I have to leave Taxi because the cab is wrecked. I promised her she could fix it. Limerence is suffering magical burnout again and we had to inject him with enough Ace to flatten a timberwolf, so I’m down my driver and a unicorn. If I drive, I’m half likely to get us all killed, and Swift’s hooves would barely reach the pedals, even if she knew how.”

Lily pursed her lips, and I had a momentary, irrational urge to kiss them; I quickly buried it.

“What is this lead?” she asked.

I turned my head to the door and sighed. “Some mad notion about a Shield Pylon we might actually be able to get into.”

“Oh…well, I suppose...I could...No, I guess it’s a silly idea...” She trailed off, staring at her hooves contemplatively.

“What? What is it? You know somepony who can help?” I asked.

“Help? Maybe. I mean...I can drive.”

I almost choked on my own tongue. “You?”

Lily shot me an irritated look. “Why does everypony assume that just because I was raised on a cherry farm I’m somehow useless?”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” I protested. “I was just surprised. Not even that many city ponies know how to drive. Most take the bus. Heck, even Iris Jade takes a cab. Those anti-megafauna vehicles are complicated, too.”

“Not really,” she replied, tugging at her lower lip with the tip of her toe. “I’ve been bored down in the medbay, taking care of the other unicorns, so I poked around some of the vehicles. You’re talking about the armoured ones with ‘A-M-V’ painted on the side, right? The controls are mostly the same as pickup trucks, with some extra switches and dials. I could drive one, easy.”

Reluctantly, I pushed myself away from her and got to my hooves. “You’re saying you would volunteer to drive out into the Wilds with me on this harebrained chase?”

She shrugged her strong shoulders and used the wall to lift herself up. “Why not? You’ve kept me alive so far.”

I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

Her expression became momentarily haunted. “When the sky went dark and my skull started burning like I had a lit ember on my forehead, I thought I was going to die. I’d probably be in the same boat as all those other poor ponies if Precious hadn’t slapped a magically sealed length of pipe over my horn. The police ponies who came to get me a few days later said it was you who told Iris Jade to find us.”

“I...might have had a hoof in that, but this doesn’t mean you should be following me around,” I said, warily.

Lily moved over to Limerence’s side and waved her horn over him, then went about the business of checking his vitals.

“What else am I going to do?” she asked over her shoulder. “Sit here, waiting for news that you’re dead? Or worse, no news at all? You need a driver. I want to get away from here before all this gloom makes me insane. If you can somehow stay alive with all the people trying to kill you, I can drive a stupid truck for a day.”

I frowned, then carefully began gathering myself together.

How’d she done that? I’d been moments from snapping like a twig and pitching myself off the battlements. Probably some nefarious mare-secret that they don’t let slip to stallions. Of course, if I’d been in anything like a functional state of mind, I probably wouldn’t have considered taking an untrained pony into whatever I was likely to find out in the Wilds.

Lily was watching me, an expectant look on her face.

“Fine. You can come. It’s not as though this situation can be any more of a disaster. Can you use a gun?” I asked.

“I can use my daddy’s shotgun, I guess,” she replied, without really thinking about it. Her eyes widened as she realized what she’d said. “Wait, do you think I might have to sh-shoot somepony?”

“Honestly? I don’t know what we’ll be doing once we’re out of the city. The only times I’ve been into the Wilds in the last year I was drunk or unconscious.” I trotted over and put a hoof on Lim’s side. His breathing was even and quiet, and a bit of drool was leaking down his cheek. I kinda envied him. The one time I’d ever taken Ace, it was a pretty pleasant experience, at least until it wore off. “Now, I’ve got to go act like I'm not flying by the seat my pants.”

----

I pushed open the door of the storage closet and stepped into the hall. Thankfully, the hall was also empty. Our hiding place was along a row of offices which surrounded the throne room on all sides, with a balcony overlooking the room itself. I cautiously peeked over the side, being careful not to be seen as Lily crept out behind me.

Down below, the crowds of ponies were back at the work of making the indoor refugee camp work, but I could pick out Precious down there ‘holding court’ at the front on the steps of the throne. He was wearing a big smile as ponies came to him, one after another, and then left on various errands, but I could see a thin layer of sweat on his face even from where I was. Vital as he might be, the Prince was old.

The stained glass window stretching across Jade’s office was visibly cracked with a few pieces missing here and there, but it seemed to be holding. A shadow roughly in the shape of the ex-Chief was leaning against the glass, un-moving. An unkind part of me wondered if she’d just killed herself up there, but then it quickly reminded me she’d definitely have taken me with her if that were her inclination.

“What do we do?” Lily asked, interrupting my grim considerations.

My brain was finally working, but it still felt sluggish under the weight of expectations I’d suddenly found myself with.

“The first thing I need to do is pawn all this authority I’ve suddenly found myself vested with off on a few lieutenants,” I grumbled, lifting my juju bag. “Gypsy? I assume you’ve been listening to everything.”

Things were silent for several seconds, but some part of my brain which works on pure intuition knew she was on the other end.

Y-yes…” she replied. I could almost hear her tucking her tail between her back legs. “I didn’t listen to everything. I only have so many ears. I was just...you know, I was just making sure you’re okay.”

Lily’s eyes widened a little. “Where is that pony? I know the public address system is working, because Miss Jade used it sometimes, but I thought all the radios inside the building were down!”

“This radio is using a sub-compression algorithm to avoid the jamming,” Gypsy replied.

“I’m not saying you don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lily murmured.

“It’s super high tech, but the police radios don’t use anything like it. I wish they did. I’ll need to see if I can walk somepony through rewiring a few of the walkie-talkies. Wait, sorry, I’m kind of excited right now. What did you need, Detective?”

“You put me in this idiotic situation, so you’re going to help me out of it!” I snapped. “I need to know your capabilities. Specifically, I need to know how well you can track ponies inside the building.”

I...um...ugh. Give me a second... I’m kind of anxious and it’s making it hard to think. The lightning bolt took an awful lot out of me, and Telly is still fixing my control runes.”

I gave the bag a frustrated shake. “Take your time, sweetheart. It’s not as though the lives of everyone in this building are on the line. I need to find Taxi.”

“Hrm...uno momento.”

I heard hooves clipclopping away from the ‘microphone’ and wondered if she was doing that for effect. After a moment, she returned.

Your driver is downstairs in the garage, under the hood of one of the anti-megafauna vehicles. She looks like she’s taking it apart. I don’t really have an explanation for that. Your partner is with her, and they’ve got a little griffin girl holding their tools.”

“Color me unsurprised. Alright, guide me to Telly and...wherever you are. Keep us away from the crowds. Do you mind if my friend here tags along?” I asked, nodding towards Lily.

Of course she can come! Miss Blue has been working double shifts in the medbay since she arrived. If I still had hooves, I’d want to shake hers.”

----

Considering the worst thing somepony was likely to do to Limerence was steal his glasses, I left him to sleep in the closet.

Shedding my coat into a one-sided saddle-bag, hiding my gun in my mane, and putting my hat on Lily, I slipped into her nurse’s scrubs and pulled on a surgical mask she’d had in one of her pockets. My disguise was complete.

Gypsy had taken my order to try to avoid ponies very seriously. Round and round the department he goes, where he stops, nopony knows! It was a solid twenty minute journey, ducking into empty offices which had been converted to bunk rooms, stepping behind fake potted plants, and generally sneaking about. The circuitous route led down into the underbelly of the administrative offices, which were largely storage.

There were still a few individuals we needed to avoid, but my costume held, particularly with Lily’s hundred-watt smile distracting everypony in our way. Lily might have made a decent living for herself in the modeling industry if she weren’t rocking the rough hooves and muscles of a lifetime of farm work. I just thought they made her more attractive.

After what felt like an year of creeping around, we stopped outside another closet at the end of a narrow and undecorated hallway. The door had flaking red paint and a yellowed paper sign that said ‘Maintenance access only’ stapled up with rusty finishing nails. It also lacked a handle.

Glancing around to make sure we were well and truly alone, I picked up my juju bag and held it to my muzzle.

“Gypsy, we’re here, wherever here is. I thought we’d be coming up to see you? You have some way of letting us in, or should we just stay out here until the sun comes out?”

“Don’t get your tail in a knot! The elevator is on the way down!”

I leaned against the wall, flicking my gaze at Lily, who had the strangest smile on her face as she looked at me.

“Something funny?” I asked her.

“Yes...yes, kind of. I guess. You’re funny,” she giggled.

I frowned. “Come again?”

“Oh hush. You pretend to be this tough cop, but I see right through you. I bet you cry at sad movies!”

I had to fight a smile. Not many ponies can make me smile when I’m having a shit day, but Lily was one of the few.

“I’m not pretending to be a tough cop,” I chuckled, “but...you’re right, I do love a sad film from time to time.”

Before she could reply, the door clattered loud enough to make me flinch and swung open, revealing a metal box about a meter and a half by a meter and a half wide. It was almost exactly the same width as the door itself. Rust covered every inch of it, including the ‘last inspected’ sticker.

“Is...this a joke, Gypsy?” I asked, poking at my radio.

Is what a joke? The elevator?

“Yes! This thing looks like it’s held together with marshmallows and toothpicks!”

“It used to be a dumbwaiter for the Princesses, but it was changed to a maintenance elevator about twenty-five years ago. It’s safe! I promise! I mean...as safe as anything is these days…”

“Which is to say horribly, horribly dangerous...” I grunted, then pushed my way into the tiny elevator. It creaked under my hooves, and I heard a few pops and snaps from the superstructure.

Lily followed, a little more cautiously. It was a tight fit, and I was half tempted to tell her we should make two trips. With her body pressed tightly against my entire side, that thought gave way pretty quick. She tucked her head in against my neck, and the door of the little carriage swung shut, leaving us in complete darkness.

Before my nerves could get the better of me, Lily’s horn lit up, providing just enough light that I could make out the inside of the cage. That helped some, but nothing would keep my jaw from clenching as the rickety box started to rise. Bolts shook, panels rattled, and the entire construct felt like it would come apart if I so much as shifted my weight in the wrong direction.

I couldn’t keep the waver out of my voice as I asked, “L-Lily...if...if we fall, c-can you catch this thing?”

“It’s heavier than a cherry tree stump,” she replied. “I can probably slow it down a little, though.”

“Th-thank you.”

I rested my head against the wall and tried not to think about being trapped in a tiny enclosed space over a very, very long drop. Fortunately, the journey was relatively brief, and with a screech of the rails and a twang of the cables, we came to a halt. The door sprang open, followed by a rush of clean, damp air. I felt Lily disengage from me and wondered, briefly, why there didn’t seem to be any light up here. Then I realized I’d had my eyes shut.

Lily’s gentle hoof hooked around my knee, leading me out. Once my hooves hit metal, I let out a breath and got the courage up to open my eyelids. I really, really wished I hadn’t.

The ‘ledge’—and I hesitate to call it that because it was little more than a balcony with a short metal railing—where that elevator spat us out was high enough to give a pegasus vertigo. An ice-cold sweat broke out on my neck, and I took three steps back only for my rear end to hit the now-closed door of the lift.

Telly was standing there, one hoof over the side of the railing, her attention focused on the interior of the domed roof of the Castle which was far, far closer than it had any right to be. Her bright yellow face was pinched in concentration as she levitated a paintbrush a few meters above her, touching up a scorched section of the ceiling which was decorated across every inch with tight, elaborate runework.

“You don’t much like heights, do you?” Lily asked, softly.

“No, no, I do not,” I muttered, inching forward. A thin mist curled around our hooves, which it took me a moment to realize was the very top of the File Cloud itself. “You’d think bullets, or psychos, or invisible heart-eating demons would scare me worst of all. No, it’s gotta be ‘tall places’. I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute to get my head on straight.”

I shut my eyes again and turned my attention inward.

‘Gale...if you’re there, could you handle this?’ I thought. ‘I know you don’t want to mess with my brain any more than you have to, but I need to think. I swear, I’ll get you to a socket the second we’re done.’

A soft heat seemed to spread from the back of my neck down into my body. It didn’t stem the fear, but it definitely quieted it down enough that my mind could work again.

‘Thanks, I whispered, internally.

Moving forward to the center of the platform, just behind Telly, I sat down and waited for her to finish dabbing paint on the runes. As she set her brush aside, she turned and cringed as she realized she wasn’t alone any longer.

“H-hey Hardy,” she murmured, then shut her eyes. “Sorry. That’s stupid. I tried rehearsing something I would say when you got up here, but I’ve got nothing. It’s not important anyway. Gypsy? He’s here.”

“I can see him, you know,” my juju bag replied. “Of course, I never thought I’d see him this close. He’s kinda handsome, if you take away the nurse scrubs and maybe cut his fetlocks. I see why you had a crush on him for so long.”

Telly’s cheeks lit up, and she looked like she’d like to throw herself off the balcony. “G-gypsy! That was years ago! Besides, he was sleeping with Juniper!”

It was my turn to blush. I glanced at Lily, who was giving me a wide-eyed, very amused grin. “Juniper was your partner, wasn’t he? I remember one of the officers downstairs talking about you, and he came up…”

“Sweet mercies, Juniper Shores and I were not having sex!”

“Really now? Well, then...If he’d asked, would you have said no?”

“He never asked, dammit! He was my partner!” I barked, advancing a couple of steps on the metal platform.

“Sorry, sorry...I get why Taxi spends so much time rattling your cage. It’s fun,” Gypsy chuckled.

My nostrils flared as I fought to contain my temper. It wouldn’t do to yell at somepony who could hit me with lightning. Granted, it was a careful balance, since getting pissed off was taking my mind off the precarious heights just a few meters away.

“Alright, Gypsy. You wanted me up here. Here I am. What, exactly, do you want me to see?”

One sec,” Gypsy grunted, “This takes some concentration, and all the levers in here do multiple things...”

I felt a soft body sidle in beside me, and Lily’s tail brushed one of my back legs in a way that made me feel stronger than I had in a couple of days. Bless her, she was good at providing emotional support in a pinch.

Working up my courage, I stepped forward until my chest rested against the protective railing around the platform, then forced my eyes downward. Below me, the great black mass of the File Cloud hovered and spun, like a mass of dirty cotton candy suspended in midair. I couldn’t see the ground below it except around the very edges, but I knew it was there. Skies, I knew it was there.

A wisp of cloud swirled in the breezeless air, coiling into a snakelike appendage that swung back and forth in front of me. I took a step back, but the fog didn’t advance; it waited, hovering over the edge of the building. Slowly, it began to expand, forming into an expanding bubble which began to shape itself into familiar structures. First legs, bubbling out of the bottom to stand on the ledge, then a long, flowing tail, and finally a head which popped out of the neck. The creature even had ears and facial features, though they were a bit indistinct and flowing.

A pair of glowing yellow eyes opened on its ‘face’.

“That...is one cool trick,” Lily murmured, stepping closer and gently waving her hoof at the cloud pony. Its substance swirled in slow circles, and then a tiny jolt of electricity snapped out and touched her hoof. “Ouch! Hey, what was that for?!”

“You wanna get fresh, you better have flowers and chocolates with you, Miss Pretty Thing!” Gypsy’s avatar snickered. Her voice was completely recognizable, but there was a definite buzzing quality, like it was coming through a pair of bad speakers.

“I’m sorry! I’ve just never met a pony made of mist before!” Lily exclaimed, backing away. “Are...are you really inside the cloud?”

“I used to be,” Gypsy replied, lifting one ephemeral hoof and waving it up and down at herself. “You figure they might have checked a few minutes after sticking a pony into the Cloud, but...well, I don’t know much of what happened. I guess they thought I was in such bad shape it wouldn’t matter. That or someone went for coffee.”

“Who...are you? Or were you?” I asked, then shook my head. “No, wait a second. I remember something. About three years ago...I was just telling my partner about it the other day. It was during the mission where Juniper died. Telly had some kind of...problem with the File Cloud.”

The mist pony scratched the back of her head, and her bright eyes blinked a couple of times. “Right...that was me. Honestly, I wish I could tell you exactly who I was. Got only bits of memory here and there. I figure having your brain turn into worm food in a transdimensional convergence will do that. There’s some mighty nasty worms in the Cloud, too.”

“I’ve...heard you describe elements of your life on the radio, though. And...you know, this is going to sound like the strangest question, but what about the parakeet?”

“Ah, yes, the...the parakeet. Well, daddy-o, a girl is always looking for new hooks. The parakeet, my assistant, my home...it sure added life to the show, didn’t it? Much more interesting than a weirdo voice reciting news and spinning tunes stolen from other radio stations, innit? I guess that’ll make more sense if you know exactly what happened. I mean, Telly spent the first three months I was awake trying to annihilate me.”

“Are you going to make me say ‘sorry’ for that until I start freezing to death out here?” Telly grumbled.

A tickle of cloud reached out from the mist and ran across Telly’s cheek. She smiled and shut her eyes for a moment.

“Not a chance, Telly. If worst comes to worst, I want you in here with me,” Gypsy said cooly. “It’s not like there’s so many amazing things to do out there, is it?”

“I already promised, if it looks like I’m going to die, I’ll break the control runes and toss myself off this platform,” the radio pony replied softly. “I’m not dying yet, though, so you need to tell Hardy about yourself, then tell him what you discovered.”

“Well, there’s not much to say, is there? Besides, comprehension is real different from experience…”

“I’ve been dead before, Miss Gypsy,” I said. “Believe me, the boat from Hard Boiled’s life starts in Weird Town and just heads south. Tell me the whole thing.”

The amorphous cloud being’s face seemed to furrow inward, and a small crackle of energy danced around behind its ears. “Ain’t a story I get to tell all that often. I’m thinking how. Most of the time, when you tell a story, you’ve got a place to start. Since I don’t remember the beginning, that’s hard to pin down.”

“How about the first thing you remember?” Lily asked, trotting in a little circle around Gypsy.

I grinned. “Lily, are you conducting this interview, or am I?”

“I’m helping! Besides, you’re so gruff sometimes I’m surprised anypony tells you anything.”

Telly lit her horn, lifting a saddlebag from behind herself and plucking out a bar of chocolate. Peeling it open, she stuffed half in her mouth, then offered the other half to Lily. “She’s right, you know. If I didn’t know you have the highest clearance rate in the department, I’d be shocked you manage to get to work in the morning without somepony shooting you.”

“Hey, my method is my method! It works!”

“Says the pony who died because someone shot him,” Gypsy nickered, her vaporous tail reaching up to tug at my mane. “At least I had the grace to die without annoying half the city first. As near as I can figure from the documents I found inside the Cloud, I was a trial subject for a new form of enchanted stasis. It was some kind of experiment during the war, I guess. They—and don’t ask who ‘they’ were; they redacted like complete bastards—they stashed my body in the Cloud hoping they’d be able to use it to save soldiers injured at the front.”

“What went wrong?” I asked flatly.

Heh...well, weak is the flesh, am I right?” At my puzzled look, she added, “I feckin’ died. Pissed me off no end, but what can you do? Some time later, I woke up...somewhere. Being in the Cloud isn’t like being out there. Boundaries are only where you have the will to maintain them. It’s much bigger in here, and the little bit that connects to the world out there is...it’s like a spot of slightly dried catsup in an ocean of tomato sauce.”

I started slightly. “Stop...wait. You lost me. Why catsup?”

Gypsy hesitated halfway to the next part of her explanation, and her eyes darted sideways at Telly, then back to me. “Uh...I mean...it’s...it’s like catsup. I needed something that gets hard and crusty and is a liquid most of the time, okay? Why does that matter?”

“Yeah, but...the first place your mind went was catsup?”

“Telly, are you sure I’m not allowed to hit him with lightning? Just a graze, maybe?”

I grinned and stuck my chest out. “Aim for the socket. I need a top up. Anyway, you were telling me about waking up?”

“I’d call you insufferable, but I suspect you’re taking that as a point of pride these days,” Gypsy grumbled, flowing over to float in front of me. “Well, I couldn’t tell you how long went by before I learned to create light, or make a body for myself in here. Most of the time the only thing I had to tell myself apart from the background was a general sense of boredom. Telly tells me it was close to forty-five years since I went in, but there weren’t exactly anything like clocks in here.”

“The technology behind the File Cloud isn’t especially well understood,” Telly explained, glancing up at the rune-covered roof above us. “I’ve studied the the Cloud since I was hired. Nopony knows why it was stashed here, instead of some government repository. The city made a bunch of noise about ‘innovation of our lives’ when the Cloud was installed, but that was a smokescreen, probably to cover whoever was responsible after Gypsy’s death. Get everyone excited, then quietly disappoint them until they get bored and move on to the next innovation. Nopony is much inclined to investigate a magical device that can’t be replicated so long as it’s doing its job. Kind of subtle, but it works. Since nopony knows who designed the original magics, aside from that the Princesses were involved somehow, there wasn’t anywhere to point hooves at. What I do know is that the Cloud is a natural occurrence.”

Natural?!” Lily gasped. “How can this be natural? It’s a big cloud of magic!”

“All the same, it’s apparently a sort of stellar phenomena. Somepony during the war captured it, contained it, and magicked it to sit up and dance,” the radio pony affirmed. “That doesn’t mean it always dances to our tune. So far as my deepest magical probes can tell, it’s just a big, empty, infinite space in there.”

Gypsy let out a bitter snort that sent arcs of lightning racing across the ledge. “Yeah...‘empty’. Right.”

“That’s just what my magical scans say!” Telly defended, then turned back to me. “Gypsy says there’re entire worlds floating in there.”

“And there are creatures that eat those worlds,” Gypsy added. “There are libraries with information that only exists when you’re thinking of turnips or sour cream, and colors you can’t see unless you’re blind and deaf. There are moons that howl the names of angels and wolves that make their dens inside black holes.”

“Sounds like a drug trip to me,” I commented.

“Lemme tell you, when I first started becoming aware, it felt like one,” Gypsy agreed. “I kept waiting to wake up. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. I had only flashes of memories, bits of old newsreels, and my own slowly expanding perceptions for company.”

Lily made a sympathetic sound. “I ate some raw Cherry Bomb plant once and that felt like my entire brain being turned to goo for thirty hours straight. You’re saying this went on for years? How are you not crazy?”

Heh! Who says I’m not!” Gypsy cackled, sweeping waves of cloud up to form a pillow to sit on. “You want to spin records and fight the powers that be, you gotta be a little nuts!”

Huh...there’s something missing there. How’d you go from ‘spirit dimensional wanderer’ to ‘DJ’?” I asked.

“The Good Fight knows no bounds! Truth be, though...that was her idea.” Gypsy’s avatar flicked a bit of cloud in Telly’s direction. “I was stumbling around in here and...I felt something a little more solid and familiar than everything else. I...eh...I ‘moved’ toward it and found a sweet little beach house with a palm tree and about a thousand rosebushes outside overlooking an ocean of stars. Nice place, right?”

Lily gave her an incredulous look. “That’s in there with you?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t say it made sense. I’d learned to make a body, to perceive the aether, and to move inside of it. This was a step up from dodging the more ridiculously outsized predators and avoiding insanity. Inside, I found...levers. Millions of levers. I still haven’t pulled them all. I figure that’d probably be a bad idea. Thankfully, a few of them were labeled. I started talking...and one day, the sweetest voice you ever heard replied.”

Telly’s ears lay back, and she put her hooves over her face. “You promised you wouldn’t embarrass me!”

“I did not! Besides, you thought I was some kind of magical gremlin! Even communicating with me for a month straight, you were still trying to separate me from the system!”

“It didn’t help that you couldn’t tell me who you were! You couldn’t even come up with a name!” Telly complained, then shook her head. “At any rate, we...we started to become friends. I’d try to wipe her out with a concentrated telespatial energy conversion, and she’d spit printer ink in my face. It was a friendly rivalry. After awhile, it was just friendly.”

“It was after you broke up with your last coltfriend,” Gypsy interjected. “You stumbled in at three AM and started sobbing into your headset. That was the same day I figured out how to work the speakers.”

“I remember,” Telly said, with a fond look. “We just got to talking. She helped me through the breakup. You ever have a friend you can call at any time of the day and they’ll be there? Gypsy doesn’t sleep. Not like you and I do. She kept me from doing anything stupid when I was at my lowest...”

Lily let out a little ‘awww’ noise. “That’s so adorable! So you two have been friends ever since?”

“Yep!” Gypsy lifted into the air, spinning in a quick circle. “Eventually, I worked out how to do other things with the...levers...in here. They’re not really levers, but that’s what I see them as when I look at them. I can spy. I can poke around the building’s power grid. I can read most everything that’s stored in the Cloud. That was actually what made me decide to start broadcasting.”

“The...files?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, scowling at the floor. “You’ve no idea what’s in here, Hard Boiled. There’s more evil in this city than you can possibly hold in your mind. It’s usually under the surface, hiding and creeping, but now and then it bursts free. At a point...I started to get angry. Detrot was...rotting, even before the Darkening. Just rotting from the inside. I knew I used to live there, and I didn’t want to watch it die because the head of the police was a drug addict and the monied corporate interests could stamp on anyone who dared get in their way!”

Below, the File Cloud crackled and the air filled with the scent of ozone. I inhaled in preparation for trying to dodge some lightning; fortunately, the strike never came.

“So, that’s why you decided tweaking Iris Jade would be a good thing to do with your infinite spare time?” I asked, once I was sure I wasn’t about to be smitten.

“I’d have turned her into charcoal if I’d had the chance! I’m still tempted to! You have no idea how many terrible things that mare has done down through the years to keep power and order around here!”

“I...mmm...I have one or two. If you had that kind of information, why didn’t you have her arrested or replaced?”

“With who? If I’d hosed her a few years ago, the powers that be might have installed someone worse! I know Jade. She’s a beast, but she does care. Unfortunately, caring isn’t enough right now. We needed a pony who doesn’t give a damn about power and whose talent would never give him a moment’s peace if he let everypony die.”

Telly pulled a small black objected out of her saddlebag and levitated it over to me. I sat, and she dropped it at my hooves. It was a police issue wallet. Reaching out as though there might be a snake underneath, I flipped it open. There was a freshly embossed golden shield inside, still warm with the magics that’d carved it.

It said:

‘Detrot Police Department, Hard Boiled, Chief of Police.’

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