• 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 58 : Ships Passing In The Night

"It's not who you know, Senator. It's what you know about who you know. For instance, I know that you have made deals with certain weapons manufacturers to take control of large military contracts in exchange for boosts to your re-election campaign. My sister and I take a dim view of bribery. After tonight, you may find your prospects looking somewhat bleak."

-Princess Luna, transcribed from the records of the Night Court. The senator in question - one 'Drained Quill' - chose not to run for re-election and subsequently moved to a shack in the woods. He lived out his remaining days with a perpetually egged front door.


To be clear, my brain was still full of cotton and I hadn’t really woken up enough to be called ‘conscious’. I was in that unpleasant in-between state where everything is a little too plausible. I think I can be forgiven for howling like a filly who just found her lingerie drawer full of spiders at the distant prospect that I’d somehow spent the night in bed with Iris Jade.

----

I don’t remember how I got on the floor on the opposite side of the bed, but Jade was lying there cackling like a madmare as I rolled upright, struggling to get my trigger bit free. It took me a minute to realize my gun was on the bedside table, beside Jade. The ground suddenly swept away from my hooves and I was deposited squarely back on top of the pillows. Jade draped one leg over my waist and pulled me against her.

The panic that’d already subsumed all rational thought threatened to loosen my bowels.

Then, the door of the bathroom banged open and Lily stood, framed in the light, her horn blazing with the makings of what was probably a very dangerous spell. A toothbrush was still stuck out of one side of her muzzle. She took in the image of me with Iris wrapped around my middle and her jaw went slack.

There was a flash of light from overhead; I struggled against Iris Jade’s magical field, but couldn’t move far enough to see what had caused it. After a second, a camera levitated itself down into my vision.

“Good, that is a perfect picture! Jade, you can let him go.”

My heart stopped entirely for about five seconds at the sound of that voice. Iris casually slid off the bed, her telekinesis releasing me. I scrambled at the blankets, managing only to tangle my forelegs in them as I tried to crawl off the other side with all the coordination of a drunk infant. Finally, I gave up and lay still. Escape was likely a non-option. Best let death come quickly.

“Miss Cuddles, if you’re going to tear my head off, could you please do it quickly?” I muttered.

Somepony’s horn hummed, and my legs were unbound.

I rolled onto my stomach and lifted my head.

Swift’s mother stood in the doorway, her yellow fur shaded red by the dim light coming from the hallway. She wore the same flowery apron she’d worn the day the sun went dark and her mane was in the same conservative bun, but she couldn’t have been more terrifying if she’d had three heads and eye-lasers. Her expression held a sort of psychotic glee I recognized well; Swift wore the look every time somepony put a new gun in front of her.

“You two!” Lily barked, having recovered enough to get a good head of steam.

“Yes, what about ‘us two’, hmmm?” Jade chuckled, trotting over to stand beside Swift’s mother.

“Do you have any idea what Hard Boiled has been through today?” Lily demanded.

“I don’t know,” Miss Cuddles snapped, tucking the camera into a bag around her neck. “When Stella sent us down here, it looked awfully much like he was sleeping with a pretty mare. Which he should be ashamed of, considering that poor colt-”

That is absolutely none of your business, Miss Cuddles! Scarlet knows we were here together, and you do not get to judge me, him, or Hardy!”

“I damn well do get to judge the pony who is supposed to be keeping my daughter safe!” Quickie barked, throwing out her aproned chest. It should have been intimidating. Anypony who knew Quickie should have been intimidated.

Tossing her toothbrush over her shoulder, Lily marched across the room and stuck her nose in the smaller mare’s face. “Your daughter is alive because of this stallion, Miss Cuddles. We are all alive because of him!”

“And that is why I am not choking the life out of him, right now!” Quickie retorted, glaring in my direction with all of her meter of height. “That said, if he is going to keep interfering with mothers, he will get what he deserves!” Hefting her camera, she brandished it at me. “In this case, it’s these pictures going in my family photo album to be distributed to every living thing in Equestria if he fails to bring my daughter back unharmed!”

“You do know he didn’t really make her pregnant, right?” Lily huffed, yanking her mane up into a ponytail.

“And how would I know that?” Swift’s mother grumbled, tucking her camera away in a pocket of her apron. “Swift has been avoiding me since the second she got back! She keeps using those wretched ponies with the special marks to keep tabs on where I am! Her father and I have been worried sick!”

I flicked my eyes toward Jade, only to find her smirking in my direction. This had her hoofprints all over it: harmless, but extremely obnoxious interpersonal chaos with a hint of revenge mixed in. I supposed it was probably what I deserved for getting any part of me involved in her relationship with Cerise.

“Do you not think there are some more important things going on, just now that might preclude the playing of pranks?” Lily admonished, angrily.

“Oh, this wasn’t just a prank! We were sent to fetch Hard Boiled. Stella wants to see you before you leave.” Jade chuckled, smoothing at the corners of her suit-jacket. I realized, just then, that she’d managed to find herself an almost identical suit to the one she usually wore in her capacity as Chief of Police. It was pressed and sharp, minus the rumpled character it’d taken on in her last days as head of the department.

“Sent you or you volunteered?” I asked. “And what do you mean ‘leave’?”

“Six one, half dozen the other, and I don’t know what the dragon meant,” Iris replied, glibly. “I may have promised not to murder you, but that is all I promised. Particularly since Stella has saddled me with helping those mad gangers teach the civilians how to fight. Do you have any idea how many of those unicorns out there can’t find their own horns with a map and a sign hanging off the tip?! How many pegasi can only fly if you stick a fan under their butts?! How many earth ponies can barely bench press their own weight?!”

I sat up a little straighter. “Huh. You haven’t thrown your hooves in the air and killed somepony, yet?”

“I didn’t throw my hooves in the air and kill you, did I?” she bit back.

I swallowed and slid off the bed. “Those pictures-”

“-are going where you’ll never see them, unless I need to take a very personal shit in your life, one day.” Jade jerked her head toward the door. “Miss Cuddles?”

“The same,” Swift’s mother added, flicking one eartip. “You, Hard Boiled, will get my daughter to at least speak to me, or so help me-”

I picked up my revolver off the end table along with my gun harness, deciding to get it on later when I could find a private moment for all the contortions necessary to get it around my legs.

“Swift isn’t avoiding you, Miss Cuddles,” I said. “At least, not for the reasons you think. She’s scared you’ll try to stop her from doing what she needs to do. She doesn’t want to hurt you by disobeying you.”

“And what does she need to do that I would want to try to stop her from doing?!” Quickie seethed, narrowing her eyes at me.

“Save the world, maybe the city, or die trying,” I replied.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lily wince.

‘Hard Boiled, if you want me to keep us alive, I would appreciate if you stop saying things like that to unicorns who can rip all of your composite molecules apart,’ Nightmare Moon murmured in the back of my thoughts.

Quickie’s horn light shimmered for a moment then died, flickered, then died, as though she were going down an extremely long list of ways she could respond and not finding one with adequate self-expression. Her face was frozen in a mix of shock and outrage, wavering back and forth. Like a collapsing house finally settling into its own foundations, she dropped onto the carpet.

“Until just now, I did not realize why my daughter looked at you with such admiration,” she whispered. “But it’s not bravery, is it? You’re insane. You want to die.”

I grinned at her, tipping my hat back. “Of course not. I want to live a long, happy life with my loved ones in safety, comfort, and peace. I want to play with my children at the park. I want to go home to a warm hug and kiss at the end of the day.”

Quickie’s lip twitched as she scooted back a little on the carpet. “You think we’re all going to die...and...a-and you’re okay with that?!”

Iris Jade rolled her eyes. “Of course he is. He’s Dead Heart, remember?”

“You know I never took that crap seriously,” I grunted.

“No?” Iris quirked an eyebrow, then swept a hoof out to encompass the whole building. “Those people out there do. They see you waltz in here smelling of bodies and they see a saviour who will deliver them. I don’t have that luxury. I know you, Hard Boiled.”

“What does that mean?” Lily asked, stepping over to stand beside me in a slightly defensive position, much good might it have done if either of the other mares decided to attack me. “He’s done more to save this city than you have, Miss Jade!”

“Oh, yes. And that is one more thing for me to hate him for,” she growled, tugging at her own collar as she glared in my direction. “Nopony has ever made me feel as helpless as this sack of stinking feces in a trench coat. Not my ex-husband. Not the ponies who stole my daughter. Not even my daughter. He’ll burn this city and everyone in it to save the rest of the planet. I hate knowing that, even if this crisis is somehow resolved without all of us dying, he’ll still be out there, somewhere. He’ll still be that pony who once held my life in his hooves. The drunk. The cop I wanted to fire. The mopey sad wreck, clinging to life because he’s too stubborn to die. How pathetic is the world if it needs someone like him to save it?”

Not waiting for an answer, Iris stomped to the door. She paused in the doorway and waved her horn in Quickie’s direction, her magic snatching the camera out of Quickie’s apron before the other mare could react. With a loud sniff, Jade stormed out, slamming the door hard enough to send a burst of wood splinters shooting off the lock and hinges.

I sat in silence for a moment, then looked up at Miss Cuddles, who was quietly shuffling her hooves like a teenage filly who’d been caught out after hours. I supposed I could understand her state of mind; she’d just been convinced to prank a pony who she’d thought was relatively harmless, only to find she had a tiger by the tail. Nothing wrong with that, particularly as I knew exactly how manipulative Iris was capable of being. She’d probably told her it was a solid way of getting Swift to come talk. In an irrational world, lots of crazy things suddenly start sounding perfectly sane.

“Miss Cuddles, can we pretend the last ten minutes didn’t happen and you just knocked on my door, alone?” I asked, quietly.

Quickie dug at the carpet with a hooftip, then slowly nodded. “I would very much appreciate that. I’m sorry-”

“Please, don’t,” I said, holding up a hoof to forestall the apology. “Just take me wherever Stella wants me.” I turned to Lily and asked, “You coming?”

Lily gave me an appraising look. “You have that same expression on your face that you had right before we drove out to the Family’s mansion.”

I flicked my eyes toward the mirror. The stallion who stared back looked like a ghost who’d seen three other ghosts, all meaner and scarier than he was.

“That’s about right,” I muttered. “I’m about to walk into a room full of ponies with families and try to sell them on something that might be suicide.”

“Worse than anything else you’ve done?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“I’ll get a cup of coffee and come with you. Sleep can wait.”

“For me? Yes. I can just plug into a wall if I need some extra energy. You need it, but if you don’t mind keeping an eye on Scarlet, I’d appreciate if he had some company more pleasant than Applebloom. And make sure he gets some pain meds when one of the salvage teams gets back.”

Lily gave me a quick salute, then added, thoughtfully, “The rumor mill is already going, I bet, particularly with Amaryllis out there. This place has more gossips than my home town, where you could start a rumor at one end, then it would beat you to the other at a dead gallop.”

“Hence, my escort.” I jabbed a toe over my shoulder, then turned to Swift’s mother. . “Would you do me the kindness of leading the way?”

Quickie’s ears lay back. “A-are you sure you want me-”

“If I took people trying to murder or blackmail me personally, I don’t think I’d have many friends.”

Her shoulders drooped and she kneaded the edge of her apron with one hoof. “I...I think that is the saddest true thing a pony has ever said out loud, Mister Boiled. ”

“Yeah, life has been like that, lately.”

----

I don’t know why I thought I would make it out of there without being mobbed, but it wasn’t in the cards. Still, letting ponies see their hero - particularly considering what I was about to ask them to do - was good for morale. Unfortunately, it didn’t help my state of mind much.

Quickie took the lead, marching down the hallways full of the injured with me in tow, her horn letting off threatening sparks that suggested bad things might happen to anypony who delayed us. I stumped along behind her, my freshly-washed mane billowing out magnificently and my head held high, mostly so I didn’t walk directly into Quickie’s rear end if she stopped suddenly. Lost as I was, I had to settle for doing my best to look like I knew where I was going.

Thankfully, it only took the Stilettos a few minutes to get organized and start clearing all but the most injured from the main halls. That left dozens of patients, restricted to beds and cots, their nurses holding them down as they tried to get a look at the ‘Detective’. At crossways and intersections, groups of ponies had gathered to gawk as I passed by.

At one point, a foal huddled on a bed beside a mare I presumed to be her mother reached out and touched the trailing edge of my coat. I blinked down at her, and her cheeks turned bright red as her mother gave me an apologetic smile. I forced a smile before moving on.

“I knew they were going to spread some stories around about me, but I did not know it was going to be like this,” I murmured.

Somehow, Quickie must have heard me, because she replied, “Everypony listens to Gypsy’s broadcasts. She tells stories about the people in the city doing good works.”

“About me?” I asked.

“Frequently. I don’t listen much myself, but it has been going on for some time.”

Huh...What’s she saying these days? I’m afraid I haven’t had time to listen to the radio, lately.”

Quickie looked over at a young Aroyo stallion, his face covered in tattoos, staring at me from a wheelchair. Further down, several more sets of eyes watched from corners or cracked doorways. At our attention, they all snapped back to what they’d been doing.

“She...She says you went to Supermax and rooted out a cult of Nightmare Moon...and somehow turned them into your servants while doing it. You saved the police department. You have griffon clans that bow down to you. You died and came back to life...a couple of times.” Frowning, Swift’s mother turned to look up at me from her diminutive height. “I’ve no idea how much of that is bull-hockey, but Iris Jade seems to think you’re only one step away from being as bad as those monsters out there who sent the beasts to attack us. Should I believe her?”

“Swift thinks I’m alright,” I chuckled.

“Swift is-” Quickie drew in a deep breath, halting whatever thought had been about to come out of her mouth. “My daughter is a smart mare, but she’s not above being blinded by loyalty. Her safety is my foremost concern.”

I was about to respond with something trite and probably not very comforting when the colt in the wheelchair suddenly sat up straight. His eyes began to shimmer with inner light.

“I’ll be safe, Mom.”

Swift. That was Swift’s voice, coming out of the little stallion’s body.

Lifting one foreleg he revealed a red crescent burned into the fur on one side of his barrel.

Quickie’s breath stalled as she stared into the colt’s glowing eyes.

“D-detective...ex...explain t-this right now, p-please,” she stuttered, spinning to glare up at me.

Em...complicated?” I replied, lamely.

“Un-comp-lic-ate it!” Quickie growled, enunciating each syllable.

“I don’t think I can do that, Ma’am.” I coughed into my hoof, gesturing at the colt. “You wanted to talk to Swift? Now is your chance.”

“Mom, it really is me,” the possessed pony said. “I’m taking care of...well, a lot of things right now, but you’ll get to meet me at Supermax real soon, okay?”

“Kid, where exactly are you?” I asked.

The colt looked down for a moment, then grinned at us. “I’m downstairs, in the Vivarium’s power room. Uh...I have one hoof in an energy transformer at the moment and I don’t know how long Tourniquet is going to want to keep pumping me electricity just so we can talk, but-”

“T-transformer!” her mother squeaked. “Why do you have your hoof in a-”

“It was the only way for me to talk to a friend of mine.” Swift shook her head and sighed. “I’ll explain later, okay, Mom?” The colt looked up at me. “Sir, I’ve been coordinating the marked ponies, but this takes a heap of energy. Tourniquet had to brown out most of south town, but...we’ve got partial communication anywhere there is a major power backbone. I’m heading to Fortress Everfree to interface directly.” The stallion’s expression grew apprehensive, then he added, “C-could you bring my mom? I think it’s time she met Tourniquet.”

“Kid, we’re about to have a meeting with all the major players right here,” I said.

The colt shook his head. “The Vivarium isn’t safe, Sir. I convinced Stella to get everyone to Supermax.”

You, kid?”

“Executive decision, Sir. Particularly since you made me deal with that stinky tunnel full of slippery goop earlier today.”

Swift’s mom went stiff as a board. “L-little bird, what are you talking about?”

The colt’s eyes flicked up and to the left, then his face turned bright pink. “Nothing, Mom! I gotta go! See you soon!”

As the glow in the young stallion’s eyes faded, he grinned up as us. “Oyo! Deadheart! I and I did not see ye!” He blinked, then his expression lit up. “Ah! De Brethren says I and I be ridden by de Warden herself! That be an honor. When ye be seein’ de Shadow Lady, tell her I and I be grateful!”

“Can’t you tell her that yourself?” I asked.

“Aye, and I does every day! But it do be meanin’ more if ponies that be not in de link of minds say it, yeah?” he chuckled, then turned his wheelchair and pointed at the hall. “Go! De sea serpent, he wish to be seein’ ye.”

‘Never going to get used to that,’ I thought, then gently tugged at Quickie’s foreleg as she stood there, stunned, staring at the injured stallion. He gave her a saucy wink, then set off down the hall in the direction we’d come.

“Hard Boiled...That was my daughter’s voice coming out of that pony’s mouth,” Quickie breathed.

“Yes, it was. I can’t say that’ll be the oddest thing you’ll see, today,” I said, then gestured at the hall. “Shall we?”

“B-but those were just rumors!” she protested, stomping a hoof. “I mean, I thought maybe they used walkie-talkies or something to speak to each other, but none of the brethren or Aroyos or whatever they call themselves would tell me how they kept informing Swift of my whereabouts. They would only say she’d see me when she was ready!”

Gently taking her shoulders, I lead her to one side of the hall, away from the prying ears of the various ponies still watching us. Lowering my voice, I said, “I can’t really prepare you for what you’re going to see when we get to Supermax, Miss Cuddles. You are not walking into a sane situation, but I will say this: your daughter might be the safest person in Detrot.”

“How?! She spends every day with you!”

“She’s very good at making friends,” I replied.

“What sort of friend allows her to use ponies as...as puppets?!”

“A very good one. Now come on. Stella is waiting.”

----

Quickie tried to press me for more answers, but I just marched along with my head down until she trotted around in front of me and went back to sulkily twitching her horn at anybody who got too close. It was awkward, but preferable to trying to explain the events of the last few weeks to my partner’s mother. She already thought I was insane; no need to confirm it.

At the stairwell, a fresh guard nodded us through the ‘employee only’ door with nary a moment wasted.

Down in the catacombs, I could finally breathe.

I hadn’t realized it, but the scent of blood and disinfectant was starting to claw at the edges of my sanity. Of course, everything was clawing at the edges of my sanity. My sanity probably looked like the rug of that cat hoarder Juniper and I found dead in her flat some years back.

Lost in thoughts of cheerier times, I was brought up short by a firm yank on my tail. Glancing around, I realized Quickie had my backside firmly grasped in her magic and a determined expression on her face. It was odd how closely that look mirrored her daughter’s. Or maybe not odd at all.

“Mister Hard Boiled… before I formulate a proper response to what I heard upstairs, I need to ask you something,” she said.

“Ask away, Miss Cuddles. It’s not as though we’re on a twenty-four hour time frame to keep the world from dying in ice and fire.”

“You were just in the bath! I’m pretty sure you can spare me a minute, here!” she snapped, prodding me in the chest with her hooftip.

I took a deep breath. “Fine.”

“I need to know, for the sake of everyone who is counting on you, if you believe there is a chance of success with whatever this plan of yours is.”

I shook my head. “Do you want an honest answer to that?”

“Yes, if you please.”

“Then...I have no idea,” I replied, drawing circles in the air beside my head, “What I am about to do is so far off the end of ‘may work’ or ‘may not’ that there’s no good metric. I’m expecting to lose people. How many? Maybe most of them. The only number I find unacceptable is everyone, but that’s only because it means I have failed entirely. Do you have any more questions with answers I’m doing my best not to think about?”

Quickie’s ears flattened to the sides of her head. “You’re...you’re going to try to save everypony, though, right?”

“Yes. And I mean that. If I could die once for every good pony who may die tomorrow, you best believe I would. But I can’t. I can only die for me, and I’m pretty bad at that.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So it’s true, then?”

I gave her an uncomprehending look. “What’s true?”

“My husband...my husband wouldn’t tell me what he did when you came in last time. Only that you were alive. I’ve heard the rumors and stories, though. You don’t die.”

“Oh, don’t mistake me. I die. I die and die. Death and I are getting to be good friends. Last time, I was...well, I was indisposed when it happened. The time before-”

The memories hit me like three tons of bricks dropping out of the sky.

I breathed in and suddenly smelled the scent of my own searing flesh for an instant. My tongue suddenly felt several sizes too large as the memories burst up from the dank, filthy well they spent most of their days in and I was back on that gurney, my flesh regrowing, my eardrums reknitting themselves. I heard my own screams echoing in my ears and felt Broadside’s hot breath on my ear as he told me his plan to rape and murder everyone I cared for. The fear welled up inside me and became a tide, roiling across my mind.

Time slipped.

Muzzle flashes lit up the air. Smoke billowed. The flames licked at my backside, boiling the skin off my body. Blood pooled around my face.

A murderer grinned at me, his mouth full of too many teeth. I heard my useless, unanswered screams as the familiar stairs of my family home burned around me. I clawed towards them with my one functional knee, trying desperately to crawl away from the fire, though it clung to me like an obsessive lover.

I’m not entirely certain how I got on the floor, but several minutes must have passed. Quickie was at my side, her hooves clutched around my neck, gently rocking me like a foal. Her forelegs barely fit around my barrel.

My face was wet again. Soaked. I missed that happening.

I became aware of Nightmare Moon’s voice, strangely muted, shrieking in the back of my head. She seemed pretty upset, but what was there to do? Nothing could keep the fire away. Soon, I’d go back into the fire and they’d patch me up again and then burn me again. It was inevitable.

With a silent thought to Gale to keep the Nightmare from snatching control of my body, I buried my face in Miss Cuddles’s mane.

It couldn’t have been that long, though it felt it. The dimly lit tunnels didn’t see much traffic, but I’m sure somepony would have eventually come looking for us if I’d been terribly late for my meeting with Stella. They’d come find me and drag me to the pyre, where I’d smell my skin bubbling like last time, and the time before.

How many times had the fire been? I’d lost count of my deaths. Did I die in my sleep, sometimes?

“Hard Boiled,” Quickie whispered.

I lifted my head and, for just an instant, I thought I could almost see my mother’s face. There was no strength in me to push her away. The cauldron of emotions boiling inside me was inches from overflowing, but those kindly eyes soothed it.

She cupped my face in her hooves and gave me a tender kiss on the forehead. A mother’s kiss. A kiss I didn’t deserve, because I’d been such a bad pony. I’d failed too many times, and so many died.

The throb in my ears receded as my heart began to slow.

‘Gale, what’s the score?’ I asked. ‘Why am I losing it?’

‘I...I can’t bury all of your memories all of the time, unless you want to forget how to walk, too’

Right. Understood.’

Choking down another sob, I braced myself on the wall and carefully stood on quaking legs.

“M-my apologies, Miss Cuddles,” I mumbled.

“I don’t think I’m the one deserving apologies,” she replied, stepping back and adjusting my coat. “I didn’t recognize how much of that glibness is an act. You are…-”

“They called it ‘shell shock’ during the war. I’m aware. Nothing I can do about that right now, though.”

She raised a hoof to touch my cheek, then the pouch over my heart. “Have you been having these...these attacks for long?”

I shrugged without much conviction. “A few years. More often in the last couple months. Stress brings them on, you know?”

Quickie gave me an incredulous look. “And you just carry on, like that? You’ve been to a therapist, right?”

“My last therapist quit on the spot after I described finding a dead pony who’d died attempting sexual intercourse with an enchantment-driven vacuum cleaner.”

There was a soft, quickly buried snort. I glanced over at Quickie who was desperately trying to keep a smile off her face. She covered her mouth with one hoof.

“You’re not serious…”

Her eyes jerked wide open as she saw I wasn’t laughing.

“You are serious! How on Equestria do you keep going like this?!”

Looking over my shoulder, I pointed at my cutie-mark. “Justice is my talent. There’s a whole big world out there needing a heaping helping of justice right now.”

Shaking her head, Quickie edged in beside me as we began trotting back in the direction of Stella’s chamber. “Mercy...Well, I will say this: if I were still working, you’d have just earned yourself a couple of freebies.”

I snickered under my breath. “I’m pretty sure Swift wouldn’t approve, much less your husband.”

Quickie gave me a look that was so practiced in its steamy sultriness that, against all odds, I felt my collar start to heat up. Something in the way her eyelids dipped and her lips pursed made me start sweating, despite the cool air of the caverns. I inhaled sharply and took a quick step back.

Like a light, she switched off whatever magic she’d just done, and I was left with a disturbing sense that I’d just dodged what might have been a worryingly enticing bullet.

“My husband met me in a brothel, Mister Boiled. He doesn’t mind my hobbies. Still, you’re right about Swift. My mother and I might have taken to this lifestyle, but Swift’s a fighter, not a lover.”

“Once you meet Tourniquet, you might have other opinions,” I said.

“That’s the ‘Lady of Shadows’ the gang ponies mention sometimes, right? That’s a bit of a sinister name for someone who is...what is she? Some kind of goddess to them?”

“The short version is she used to be a pony. Now she’s something more. Some Crusades era technology and a mother with the morality of a rabid rattlesnake built us an ally. Swift made her a friend.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“Like I said earlier: time frame.”

----

Quickie and I arrived outside of Stella’s chamber to find the door open, but only two lowered voices murmuring in the cave. A heavenly scent wafted out, and I quickly found my mouth watering. My stomach let out a distressed grumble. How long had it been since I’d had food? I couldn’t remember.

Almost on cue, Stella called from the far end of his lair, “Ah! Is that a tummy rumbling I hear? Only one pony’s belly makes that throaty bellow! Come in, Detective!”

In the short time I’d been gone, somepony had moved the table covered in plans off to one side of the catwalk and set up a small card table with several plates on it. I sniffed at the air, and...bagels.

I don’t remember crossing the room, nor anything much for the next few minutes as I buried my face in a giant basket of bagels, smearing cream-cheese from one ear to the other. It was like being a hog in mud after all the agonies of the day. Jelly and jam ended up in my eyebrows and butter in my tail, but it mattered not; I had what I needed. Sanity would survive a little longer.

I’m not too proud to say I snarled when, after several moments of gorging, somepony touched my shoulder.

‘No! We must have more of these delicious rings of dough! Do not let them take us away to do more painful things!’ Nightmare hissed in my thoughts. I felt her trying to jiggle my legs to bat the light blue hoof off my shoulder and that was all I needed to sink out of my euphoric bagel-rage.

Following the hoof up to a leg, then a shoulder, I found myself staring into Limerence’s calm face. He still wore a bandage around his head, though it looked freshly changed. Somepony had washed his outfit and cleaned the blood off of him, but he could have done with a shower. His sword was propped against the catwalk railing behind him.

“Lim!” I dropped my bagel, leaping to my hooves. Rearing back, I put my hooves on his shoulders, turning him this way, then that. “I thought your goose was cooked!”

Awkwardly patting me on the back, Limerence stepped back and rubbed at the base of his horn. “Not cooked, no, but I will be picking things up with teeth and hooves for a day, at least. I’ve just been filling in Miss Stella on the finer details of our recent expedition. Your explanation of my improvisation with the nested portals was atrocious. Not inaccurate, but atrocious.”

“I have a rule about plans, Lim. If I need a physics textbook, then it is too complicated,” I replied, before sitting back down with my bagels.

It was then I realized Quickie was perched daintily beside the card table, tearing pieces off a pastry with her magic and stuffing them into her mouth. Without looking up she said, “If you hiss at me over a doughnut, Mister Boiled, I will turn you over my knee.”

“Right,” I muttered, then turned back to Lim. “I thought you were going to be checked out for the entire day.”

Limerence quickly covered his mouth and let out a little yawn, then gave himself a shake. “As did I, but...well, nightmares have a way of asserting themselves at inconvenient times.”

“The Office?”

“What else?” He paused, seemed to think for a moment, and then his shoulders drooped. “Ah. Right. Everything else. Well, in this case, yes, the Office was the subject of my dreams.” Reaching behind himself, he unlimbered his sword and set it down at my hooves, giving it a gentle push for emphasis.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Your murder weapon and your murderer, Detective,” he replied.

My jaw must have fallen open, because I had to close it after a moment. Studying the staff-blade, I put one hoof on the haft and the other on the sheath, carefully pulling them apart. A terrified face with an open, screaming muzzle stared back at me from the metal.

“When you said that crap about using your brother’s soul as a mana battery, I don’t think I really thought about what that meant,” I muttered.

“Is that...necromancy?” Quickie whispered, her eyes widening as she looked at the enchanted blade.

“No. Something like it, but not quite. My brother...well, as you said a moment ago: explanations that require textbooks. Ultimately the how is irrelevant. The why is very important, though. My brother is the butcher we have hunted all this time.”

I sighed and pulled the sword out of the sheath entirely. “He carried a cane. We found hoofprints on the rooftop of the High Step that suggested a pony carrying a cane. He had the poison that steals souls. He was a necromancer. He knew the access codes for control of the Archive. This...weapon…”

“Yes. Serrated, for cutting bone,” Limerence murmured, then looked up at his own forehead and added, “-or horn.”

“That is him, then,” Stella said, with a certain finality. “There is a strange poetry to the notion that he be locked away in his own weapon.”

Lifting the blade, I held it in front of me with both forelegs. “Stella? I believe our deal is done.”

“Our deal, Detective?” the serpent asked, reaching down to pick up the sword and hold it between two fingers like a toothpick. Tilting the weapon so it caught the light, he studied the terrified face on the edge.

“This the murderer of Professor Fizzle,” I began, then lowered my head.

“The murderer of Don Tome,” Limerence growled, clenching his fetlock to his chest as though in pain.

Reaching into my pocket to feel where Ruby’s diary still lay, tucked safely away in a pocket dimension, I felt my breath quicken. The fury was there, but it was muted by the sadness. It was all such a waste for cruel ambition.

“This is the murderer of Ruby Blue.”

----

So that was it.

We’d done it.

It’d been two months since I stood in that alleyway over the body of the poor mare who’d come to Detrot with her big dreams and found an open grave waiting for her. She died for all the wrong reasons, and the pony who’d killed her had received true justice. Zefu’s body was reduced to ash, and his soul lashed into a sword and forever at his brother’s mercy.

Blood for blood, as they say.

Sometimes justice is its own reward.

Unfortunately, the players were still at the table and the game hadn’t yet reached the final hand.

The beasts that’d once been the city’s elite were sitting in their nests, waiting for the signal to lay waste to the population. Broadside was somewhere preparing his brainwashed troops for another round of slaughter. D.W. was still waiting in his ivory tower, a spider squatting at the center of a web of dark wishes.

Some say that Justice is blind.

I don’t believe that.

Justice sees all.

It’s the actions of people that determine where her sword will fall and where the scales will balance.

She’s just waiting for someone brave enough, or crazy enough, or desperate enough to pull off the blindfold.

----

Stella set the blade down and swam back to his throne, heaving himself out of the water into the giant chair and draping his tail across one of the arms. Picking up a snifter the size of a of frying pan full something that smelled like paint thinner, he swirled it before taking a deep draught. Setting down the glass, he regarded me with those cool, slitted eyes that gave away nothing.

“I will consider our deal ‘done’, Detective,” the dragon murmured. “You have done your father proud. And your grandfather, I suppose.”

Putting my back hooves together, I swept my tail around them and stood to the straightest attention I was able.

“I’m about to ask more of you. You know that, right?”

Stella nodded. “I suspect I know what you will ask, so...my forces are yours until the sun is in the sky again.”

“Then I think it’s time for me to go meet Swift at Supermax,” I replied. “We’ll have a briefing as soon as I get there.”

Limerence put a leg out to stop me. “Detective, there’s...one last thing that we need to discuss before we go. I believe you will find this significant.”

“I’m listening,” I said, sitting back down.

“Should we keep my daughter waiting?” Quickie asked, wiping cream cheese off her muzzle with the hem of her apron. “I’m sure all of that was very meaningful to you, but I am afraid I am out of your loop.”

“I’ve learned to listen when he tells me something is important,” I answered, then held out my hoof for Limerence to continue.

Sliding a hoof under his vest, Limerence retrieved a small black satchel with a zipper and a thin, velvet covered book. “These were on my brother’s body. His spell book and...well, something else. I have pieced through the spells and they might be of some interest to academics, but unless one wishes to abandon their mortal shell, they’re of little use to us. That said, this-” He held up the bag and unzipped it, holding it toward me. “-is something worthy of examination.”

Quickie and I leaned forward to peer into the satchel. With a gasp, Swift’s mother drew back, covering her mouth with her hooves. I squinted at the strange objects inside: several variously colored cones of different sizes and lengths. I blame exhaustion for how long it took for it to click.

“Unicorn horns,” I muttered, then looked up. “These are-”

“Trapped souls, Detective,” Limerence finished for me. “The grey ones I believe to have been largely drained of their essence. Most likely gone mad. I know enough dark spellwork to break them and send them on to the beyond, but it will take considerable time. There was one, however-”

Reaching into his vest pocket, he pulled out a bright blue horn and set it on the card table between us. It glittered with inner power, shimmering like a prism in the sun. Fiery lances of energy arced from base to tip, following the thin spiral up the shaft.

I felt the circle beginning to close as a strange weight settled around my shoulders. A hint of cherry perfume wafted past my nose. I’m sure if I’d listened closely, I could have heard some mad god of fate laughing his flank off.

I didn’t have to ask whose horn it was.

There was nopony else that it could be.

Ruby…”

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