• 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 76 : Last Orders

"If there is one thing that will always be true in Equestria it is that our curiosity shall always exceed our wit."

- Princess Luna : Musings On The Moon, Chapter 237.


I coughed, spitting out a chunk of something rancid. My mouth tasted like a combination of skunk fumes and boiled garbage water from the back of a dialysis clinic. I gradually opened my eyes and found myself staring at a hunk of something furry, pink, and covered in blood. Reaching out, I carefully flipped the object over with the tip of one hoof.

It was an ear. An ear that looked like it’d been torn out by the root. There were wide, flat teeth marks right around the base.

I quickly tried to scrape my tongue off with my toe, but my hoof didn’t taste any better than the ear.

Why did I have an ear in my mouth? No clue. It wasn’t one of those things a pony wants to contemplate for too long. Certainly it suggested I’d torn it off of someone or something with my teeth, but that was more Swift’s realm of expertise. My jaw hurt, though, suggesting I’d definitely put it through its paces.

The only nearby things I might have gotten close enough to rip an ear off were all incredibly deadly and vicious, which seemed to indicate that for some period of time I’d been the most dangerous thing in the immediate area. Considering nothing was chewing on me, there was a bit of strange cognitive dissonance. I’d gotten all too used to being the thing getting munched on.

Taking stock of myself, all my limbs were in the usual places. No fresh holes. No bite marks. Minimal damage to my clothing. I was lying on broken pavement, chilly rain washing up and down my body and soaking into my flanks. My magic resistant combat vest was drenched and sticking to my chest. My trenchcoat was still warm enough that I wasn’t shivering, but if I spent much longer outside that might change.

On instinct, I checked my revolver and discovered all six cartridges discharged.

Mentally pushing the bit of torn ear to the back of my mind for a later bout of the screaming mimis, I braced a foreleg and pushed myself up into a sitting position. My thoughts were muzzy and I could only conjure fragments of recent memory. Mostly some fairly creative violence. There was a short segment of a screaming, burning mutant trying to scramble out the rear of the Dragon Flagon Wagon with me latched onto its back.

‘Speaking of my transport, where is it?’ I thought.

There was only silence in my mind, which I supposed most ponies would be accustomed to but for various reasons I found extremely unsettling.

‘Nightmare? Are you there?’

I waited.

She said nothing.

Sitting up cautiously, I peered at my surroundings. The DFW was a few meters behind me, leaning haphazardly on the curb in front of a burnt out record store. A trail of blood led from the end of my coat up to the driver’s side door; it was quickly disappearing in the heavy rain. The vehicle appeared to have grown a few strange protrusions from the front bumper, including what looked worryingly like a pair of enormous fangs, but it seemed otherwise unharmed. Even as I watched, the fangs were quickly shrinking back into the steel.

How’d it gotten there? Why was I on the ground outside? Had I been thrown through the windshield? Impossible. That glass could stop rockets.

Too many questions. Keep searching.

About ten meters ahead and stretching across the entire width of the street there was a glistening field of brilliant white energy. Beyond, I could see nothing, just vague shapes that might have been buildings or mountains. All was obscured by the spell, and it stretched into the heavens until forming a gentle curve which suggested it might be the shape of a dome. It pulsed from time to time and I could feel the gentle thrum of magical feedback in my jaw and neck.

Still too many questions. Leap of logic time. Nightmare wasn’t responding and I’d somehow stopped before I hit the Shield and crawled out of the vehicle, ergo she’d somehow taken control of my body without my say so. Or maybe there was something else at play.

Gale?’

A sense of gentle awareness radiated from my heart but my personal ghost was still silent. I wondered what’d happened to him while I was checked out. Ducking my chin, I checked for a blinking light; my power level seemed okay. I’d charged just before I left.

Leap again: Nightmare was injured in some fashion by having taken control of my body. Gale was focused on her wellbeing. Good enough.

Pulling myself up, I felt my back twinge and looked back the way I’d come.

I immediately wished I hadn’t.

The road looked like a parade was hit by a giant blender. Down the long straight stretch of road leading up to the Shield there were piles of bodies littering the street. Some were hanging from walls and lamp posts. Others were piled in heaps against the sides of buildings. Most were mutants, though a few griffins were amongst their number.

How many had we killed? At a quick count, more than a hundred on that street alone. Had I done all of that? Couldn’t have. One pony couldn’t possibly. There were griffins, right? There were griffins fighting alongside me.

Without thinking I shouted at the top of my lungs, “Sykes! Sykes, are you out there?!”

I limped towards the DFW, ears cocked for an answer.

“Oi, boyo...voice down, eh?” a weak reply came from somewhere nearby.

Mareco!” I called, again.

Another pause, punctuated by the sound of pounding rain running off the brim of my hat.

“Polo, ye mad gob. Oi’m in the alley.” This was followed by a worrying bout of wet coughing.

Gathering my coat around myself, I trotted towards where I thought his voice was coming from. Peering into the space between a looted candy shop and a collapsed shoe store I found Sykes lying slumped on his back against a dented dumpster. He’d seen better days. One claw was clutched across his stomach and half of one of his wings lay nearby while the other remaining chunk flexed pathetically against the air.

“Oi, boyo. Ye gots a drink on ye?” he asked.

“Sweet Celestia, Sykes,” I muttered, digging a hoof into my trenchcoat pockets until I pulled out one of the remaining healing talismans we’d taken from the Supermax basement all those weeks ago. “Where’s the rest of your platoon?”

Clicking his beak, he gratefully took the talisman and pressed it against his ribs. It hummed, then sputtered as the magic sank into his wounds. His eyes brightened a little. Not enough.

“Ordered’em out,” he explained. “Did us’n a number on them beasties, we did, but Oi stayed back ta make sure ye reached yon shield. Ye seemed ta have it sussed, till onea dem big bastards comes outta nowhere and catches me wi’ his claw.” He pointed off to one side where a heap of larger-than-pony-sized smoldering bones lay. “Me bonecage feel loike a beanbag.” Letting out another wracking cough, he spat a stream of blood out of one side of his beak. “Aye, methinks that’s not good.”

The wing was a mess, still leaking a steady stream of blood. I could make out the slight indentation of his ribs on one side, too. He must have hit the dumpster going right quick. It’d only broken his fall in the loosest sense of the word. How he had the strength to kill the monster before he collapsed was beyond me.

“Can you drive?” I asked as I worriedly inspected his wounds.

He shook his head and waved a claw at his shoulder where his severed wing dangled. “Why would oi need to learn to drive? Oi dares not ask what in the Egg’s name ye did ta make Miss Shoine’s roide turn all feisty. Did more killin’ that alla us griffs put together.”

Rising, I turned to the mouth of the alley. “Wait here. I’ll get you a medic. We can still get you somewhere safe. Slip Stitch can patch you up.”

I flipped the hem of my coat open and lifted out one of my ladybugs. It was dead. I quickly checked the others; they had also expired. Either proximity to the shield or perhaps whatever had happened to the truck must have been too much for them. Turning around, I sprinted to the DFW and slammed the door open, clambering in and reaching for the radio, flicking it on. All I got was a hiss of static. Flipping through the channels, one after another, I hunted for an open one, but was met with nothing. No voices, no signals, nothing.

“Horsecrap,” I muttered, struggling back onto the ground before dashing back into the alley. Sykes was where I’d left him, though the flow of blood from his wing was starting to slow. He coughed again, the red smear on his chin having now leaked onto his chest.

“No luck then?” he asked.

“I...the damn Shield must be interfering. Maybe I can drive a little farther out—”

Reaching out, Sykes put his claw around my shoulders. I stepped close to him, slowly putting my forehead on his blood soaked chest. His armor was torn and a great rent across his kilted middle revealed yet more claw-marks. His breathing was starting to rattle as he pulled me against him, gathering his remaining wing around me.

“Ye can’t droive that thing again, boyo,” he chuckled, patting my back.

“Sykes, you can’t do this right now,” I groaned, shoving my hat back and looking up at him through teary eyes. “Maybe in fifty years, when you’re old and grey and have a bunch of chicks, but not right now.”

He glanced down, then reached out, picking up his battle-axe from the ground where it lay. “Oi’m afraid we don’t all get to choose, lad. ‘Ere. Ye moind givin’ this to me brudder? Oi promised ‘im Oi’d come back or Oi’d send me axe. It moight come in ‘andy, too.”

I carefully took the axe in my teeth. The leather-wrapped handle tasted vile, but it was surprisingly light. I suppose it didn’t pay to carry extremely heavy weapons in air-to-air battles. Tucking it over my shoulder, I holstered it into one of the loops on the rear of my trenchcoat. It hung comfortably across my back.

Reaching up, he chucked me under the chin with one talon.

“Oi, lad. No worries. Oi lived a good loife. Oi’m a little sad Oi’ll never see the sun on this soide but if ye succeed, ye best believe Oi’ll be waitin’ ta congratulate ya in the afterloife when ye get there.”

My eyes burned as I lay there against him. His heart was beginning to flutter.

“You feathery shit,” I growled, without any real heart behind it. “I’m watching you die. You know that means I’m going to have to sing the death song as your memorial.”

He snorted, his damp tail slapping against the pavement as the driving rain ran down his bloodied face, sending streams of icy water down my back. “Aye. Oi’ll look forward to laughin’ me arse off at that. Ye canna sing for shite.”

I shook my head and my throat caught. “Y-you owed me a drink.”

“Moight have to take a rain check,” he whispered, then nodded toward the Shield. “Oi want an evil bastard fer me funeral pyre. Oi figures there’s one left in Uptown. Yer the last good copper in Detrot. Now. Go. Finish it. Bring me sun fer moi...grave...”

----

And with that, Sykes of the Hitlan was gone.

There was no great seizing or twitching. He simply exhaled one more time, his final breath steaming the air around us before he went very, very still; a warrior’s end in the final battle. His claw fell against his side and the light left his eyes, leaving me terribly alone.

I’d always suspected Sykes was unhappy being a cop. At heart, he wanted to be back in the highlands with his family. He’d never wanted to lead, but to stand beside his brothers in battle was his greatest desire. Living among ponies made him long for home and no amount of booze or friendship could entirely take away that need to be with his own kind.

I lay there for a few minutes, my body quivering as I sobbed unashamedly into his quickly cooling arms. Nightmare wasn’t there to scold me for wasting time, though I’d have probably mentally stuffed her head in a portapotty if she had. Sweets, Swift, and Limerence were somewhere out there in the darkness, no doubt doing some damn fool heroics, but I couldn’t bring myself to worry about them just then.

Sykes deserved better. He deserved to get old and fat and lazing around an eyrie somewhere with a couple kids flapping around and a beautiful wife with eyes only for him. He deserved to see the sunshine again. So many people had died; the city would bear the scars of the Eclipse for decades to come.

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, but still it felt like an eternity as I lay there hugging his corpse against my chest. The chill was starting to dig its way into my bones when I finally extracted myself from him and stepped back, reaching up to gently push his eyes shut.

For a moment, I just stood there feeling like a lost colt whose mother had accidentally left him in the grocery store. The weather wasn’t helping my state of mind, nor was the silence. For the first time in what felt like years, I couldn’t hear gunshots in the distance. The streets were empty and all those who might help me were hunkered down, waiting for the outcome.

By some miracle, we’d killed or driven off nearly all of the remaining mutants. The remaining dragons had scarpered off into the hills to lick their wounds. Most of the population of the city had survived. Was it enough to keep the wish machine from becoming active? Somehow, I doubted it.

That left one tiny step.

One final bit of the jigsaw to slot into place.

Stumbling out of the alley where my dead friend lay, I looked up at the blazing shield once more. Standing there studying the massive barrier surrounding Uptown, it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d laid eyes on it properly. The field oozed across the street, never seeming to hold still. It scorched and blackened the edges of buildings where it intersected them, scouring the brick clean of life and liquid. A constant stream of fog rose from its surface as the torrential downpour from the storm overhead was vaporized on contact.

Simply knowing it’d survived direct magical blasts from nearly every unicorn in the Detrot Police Department didn’t quantify the power behind that shield nearly so well as just standing in front of it; it felt like a slash across reality where all the things on one side didn’t exist to all the things on the other. It felt primeval, a law of nature writ in magic.

Gathering myself, I limped towards the wall, doing my best to keep an eye on where it was moving. It never seemed to fluctuate more than a few meters in either direction, but that was likely to be enough to cook me if I wasn’t careful. My eyes kept sliding off of it, as though its shape was unhealthy to spend too long observing.

At last, I stood as close as I dared. I wondered if Diamond Wishes could see me through an arcane monitor of some sort. My gun should have protected me from such things, but there were no guarantees anymore. Despite not being a unicorn, I knew some of the generally accepted rules of magic and too many of them had been broken lately for me to take anything for granted.

I glanced back at the alley and swallowed, trying to get my mind back on the job at hand. Sykes’s death didn’t feel entirely real just yet. Maybe that was a good thing.

Reaching into my coat, I pulled out the remaining crystal bullets, then cracked my gun open, tipped out the spent casings, and slotted the enchanted cartridges in. If Diamond Wishes kept his word, I was in for a stroll of a walk to Starlight Tower. If he hadn’t and there was another army on the other side of the shield, I intended to take as many of them with me as I could before the end.

Strangely, I didn’t feel angry. My anger was gone, snuffed out by rain and the death of a friend. I just felt a bit sad. No more waiting, then. Time to either nut up or head home.

Scholar,” I shouted at the magical wall.

At first, nothing happened.

I had just enough time to start wondering if I was about to have to wander back to Supermax with my tail between my legs for a rethink when the shield seemed to thin in a place right at ground level. A tunnel of sorts appeared in the surface, sinking back into the depths until at some distance inside it faded away. I could make out a bit of asphalt and darkness on the other side. The passageway was just tall and wide enough for a stallion of my size if I put my head down a little.

‘Good boy, Limerence,’ I thought. ‘Now, we see if Diamante’s word is good or if I have to kill a bunch more today.’

Ducking down, I carefully stepped forward into the tunnel of light. The ground under my hooves was hot. Too hot. I quickly danced backwards, holding my frog up so the cold rain could cool it. The heat had gone right through my horseshoe. The asphalt was almost molten where the shield crossed it.

The tunnel wavered, seeming ready to collapse on itself at any moment.

“Oh...Gale, I really hope you’re up for some heavy work tonight. I think this might hurt.”

Giving the bottom of my hoof one more mournful look, I braced, swept my tail in tight, and took off at a gallop towards the hole. One moment I was in the pouring rain. The next, I was hit by a wave of stifling heat, followed by burning agony that shot from my toes right up to my flanks.

----

One would think knowing that few of my injuries were likely to be permanent would make the notion of dashing through a superheated tunnel a little more palatable. It didn’t. There was no getting used to the varieties of torture, because it always came in new and horrific flavors. There’s a part of the equine mind that takes comfort in the knowledge that, eventually, your nerves will be overloaded entirely and you’ll be left numb to everything. I’d no such comfort.

The death of Sykes. The deaths of thousands of ponies. My own death. Each little sting was alive and rich. They called out for justice that only I could give, but that meant burning. Again.

----

A thousand instinctual responses spread all through my evolutionary history were doing unhappy little horse dances as the pain almost sent me skidding onto my face. Falling didn’t bear thinking about. My school gym teacher would have been proud as punch of the time I set, but it wasn’t enough.

The end of the tunnel was approaching, but my vision was starting to dim. I charged toward that dark hole, the wind whistling by my ears and sparks flying off my shoes. Risking a glance back, I couldn’t see the entrance anymore. In fact, the wall of light behind me looked awful damn close.

There is nothing in the world like feeling your flesh begin to boil nor smelling your own fur roasting away to motivate a person to greater feats of speed.

Just as the pain reached a shattering apex and my next breath was nothing but the smoke off my own hooves, I shot out of the far side of the enormous barrier. My legs went suddenly wobbly as I collapsed, tumbling end over end into total darkness. I lay there on my side, taking deep breaths, though the agony wouldn’t subside; my shoes were still nailed on and short of tearing out the heated nails with my teeth, there was no getting them off. It was a short moment later when I realized I wasn’t being rained on anymore. More's the pity.

Struggling onto my side, I looked all around, but there was no light to be seen. I was sitting in perfect, complete, and pitch black darkness.

Slowly and doing my best not to move my tortured hooves, I reached into my pocket with my teeth and felt around for my flask. I knew it was still in there somewhere, though hadn’t had an occasion to go for it in a while. Finding it, I pulled it out and quickly unscrewed the cap with my tongue, readjusted, then poured the lukewarm whiskey over my scalded toes. They steamed and the heat subsided, though a few seconds later the alcohol hit my wounds and there was no avoiding screaming. I buried my muzzle in the crook of my leg and howled into the elbow for a solid thirty seconds.

‘Gale, I hope you’re on this,’ I thought. ‘I need to be able to walk soon. Crawling my ass to Starlight Tower won’t be a good look.’

I don’t know whether he was listening or not, but inside of two minutes the sensation that I’d trodden on an angry porcupine started to subside.

At last I’d gathered enough willpower to get to my hooves and get a good look at my surroundings. Tipping a head-torch out of my pocket, I pulled the elastic band around my hat, tucking it over top of the brim. Flicking the lamp on I gave a cursory inspection to the pristine road I’d been spat out on. The silence was downright spooky, but no more so than the abject and total darkness of the place.

Turning back the way I’d come, I played the light back and forth over where I thought the barrier was likely to be. As I did, the light seemed to drop out entirely, as though it weren’t hitting anything. The inside of the shield absorbed every last lumen, leaving only a massive black wall of nothingness.

Doing my best not to cringe, I turned up my hoof so I could inspect the bottom of it. The flesh was pink and puckered, but not nearly so badly parboiled as I was worried it would be. Still, the keratin of my hoof itself was going to take a while to recover, magical healing or not.

The magical feedback that’d been crackling around the outside of the shield was gone. It was as though I’d entered some kind of void, where the living were not meant to be. The sound of my own breathing was the loudest thing for what felt like miles.

Swinging my light around, I craned my head back until my vision started to adjust a little.

What I could see of the street was clean as could be; there wasn’t so much as a plastic bag or a discarded cigarette in the gutters. The air smelled a bit of ozone, but it was a nice change from the decay and smoke I’d somehow started to become accustomed to in recent weeks. One might even have called it refreshing, if one had recently had a concussion. Considering I’d apparently been sucking on a severed ear, that wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Funnily enough, my talent wasn’t giving off any particular indication of an injustice present. If anything, it was unusually quiet. Most of the time I was at least distantly aware that someone, somewhere needed a solid kicking for some cruel or criminal act. Inside the shield, I couldn’t feel anything.

The building nearest me stretched above and out of sight. It might have been just built for all the dirt that was on it. The rows of tall glass windows weren’t so much as dusty, nor was there a hint of scoring on the steps where careless hooves might have worn down the quarried grey stone.

I hadn’t been in Uptown in some time; murders tended not to happen where the money flowed. If a murder needed to be committed, the white collar sleeze generally preferred to do it somewhere they wouldn’t get blood on the bits. It didn’t help that the place always gave me the willies.

Uptown Detrot was unashamedly a place for the wealthy to be wealthy together. If it made any concessions to the existence of the rest of the city, it was in trying to build taller and taller skyscrapers to give themselves a better view over the horizon of something less depressing than their poorer fellow citizens. While Diamond Wishes’ particular methods were generally appalling, a small, vindictive part of me refused to be as sad as my more idealistic self told me I should be about the outcomes of all those rats who’d chosen to flee into Uptown to leave the rest of us to die when the Eclipse began.

Besides. The bastards killed Sykes,’ I thought, then mentally kicked myself for it. There were innocents who’d died along with those who deserved some form of justice. Still, there was no time to work through all the moral implications of massacring those creatures. There was still a world as needed saving.

Digging into my pockets again, I pulled out a map of the city. Unfolding it, I found the circled section of Uptown where Starlight Tower lay. Quickly checking the metal placard beside the glass turnstile doors of the nearest building, I hummed thoughtfully. Part of me expected an echo, but the dome seemed to absorb sound just as readily as light.

Alright, that’s the Central Bank of Detrot. Starlight Tower is one block down and one block back.’

I tucked the map back in my pocket and set off into the darkened remains of the city. My hoofsteps were all the company I had and even they were muted by the strange magics of the barrier.

The unnatural silence of the city’s center made me wonder somewhat where the mutants were keeping themselves all that time. It wasn’t until I came across an open sewer cover in the middle of the street that the answer finally became apparent. The smell coming up from below was enough to choke a timberwolf.

I checked my gun, then took a deep breath and covered my nose before shining my light down below. At the bottom of a short ladder, I could just make out the brickwork and—lying like a dropped doll—the broken remains of a heavily chewed corpse. There was no telling what the species had been originally; the skull had been crushed into about a million pieces. It might have been a small griffin or an especially large pegasus for all I could make out.

Darting back a few steps to breathe, I listened carefully for any movement. Part of me hoped for a bit of skittering or maybe something to indicate a rat had somehow survived the onslaught of monsters into their domain, but the sewer was dead as a tomb.

Oh Nightmare, if ever there was a time for you to pop in with a complaint or a grumpy comment or one of those naive-as-Tartarus assessments of pony socialization, now is that moment,’ I thought.

Unfortunately, my mental roommate was still not feeling talkative.

‘All you have to do is get to Starlight Tower. He said he’d let you get there if you made it inside.’

Then what?

Hope Diamond Wishes and whatever godlike power he seemed to think was controlling his actions were feeling reasonable?

Doubtful.

Blowing his head off was probably my best bet, though that did assume a great many other variables lined up first. Arresting him and dragging him to Celestia for her to stick in the statue garden of Canterlot Castle had a certain appeal to it. So did delivering him in a potato sack to the Warden of Tartarus Correctional. If those failed, there was always calling Mephitica and having her kick him out of the back of the Bull in a distant dimension made entirely of paper cuts and lemon juice.

All good options, but many, many steps were between me and them.

I reached the first turn in the road and shined my light down towards where the many-decades-old construction site was purported to be. Manipulating an entire city's worth of ponies into ignoring evil wasn’t so difficult, but having them ignore a bureaucratic inconvenience like a half-built skyscraper on prime real estate for almost half a century? That was the real feat.

My frayed nerves kept trying to convince me I was hearing something besides my own frightened breathing and the *clickity-clop* of my own steps. I could have started to run, but I had the worrying notion that if I did, whatever my imagination was frantically insisting must be out there would actually pounce, rather than sneaking about. I kept to a casual stroll, wishing I’d thought to save a bit of the liquid courage in my flask rather than using it all to chill my burning hooves.

Another crossing. I turned right and a huge white sign faded out of the darkness, plastered against the side of a temporary fence covered in cheap plastic. The fence stretched in both directions, off into the distance before being lost to the dark again.

The sign read, in stark no-nonsense black letters:

‘Starlight Tower Economic Park: The Future Is Brighter In Starlight.’

I started to turn, then hesitated, squinting at a smaller sign which I’d almost missed which was pasted to the fence with a bit of tape just below the larger poster. It was written in looping, practiced hoofwriting with something like a calligraphy pen. It said:

‘Welcome, Hard Boiled. The entrance is to your right. I look forward to our encounter. - Diamond Wishes.’

I sagged onto my flank and yanked my hat off, wiping my forehead with my sleeve. I hadn’t realized it until just then, but the air inside the shield was almost stiflingly hot compared to the terrible chill creeping over the world outside. I caught a whiff of a familiar scent and sniffed at the interior of my hat; there was just the barest hint of Scarlet’s perfume still there, under all the unpleasant smells.

Mercy.

Scarlet.

Whatever was I going to do with him? Did I love him? I’d no idea what that would even look like. Did I want a stallion to love?

Juniper and I were...close. Closer than I’d been with almost anyone except Taxi. Still, we’d never had sex. We’d never even kissed. It wouldn’t have been appropriate to fall in love with my partner, no matter the circumstances.

What about Lily Blue? What was she to me? A mare I took comfort in. A sweet, altogether too-gutsy-for-her-own-good farm pony. A fighter who wanted the kind of life all good soldiers want: a life of peace. Somepony I didn’t deserve any more than I deserved Scarlet.

I shoved my hat down over my ears and stood. No time for thoughts like that. I had a mission.

Of course, when would be a good time?

For weeks I’d pretended like there was no future. Every mission was almost pure improvisation and every plan was strung together with hope and terror. Now, in too-few minutes I was likely to be dead. That put a certain impetus on self-reflection, particularly being as I didn’t seem to have Nightmare there to interrupt.

What was likely to be left of Hard Boiled when all was said and done? My grandfather seemed to have discovered a comfortable middle-ground in simply enjoying the finer things in life, regardless of whether he still counted as ‘alive’. I was a post-traumatic-stress riddled mess whose best bet was a few years of therapy and retirement to a nice, quiet straitjacket.

Reaching into my coat, I pulled out the lanyard with my badge hanging from it. I flipped the wallet open and stared down at my name: Hard Boiled, Chief of Police. That was never going to sit right, true or not. Resigning my commission felt like a cop-out, pardon the pun, but the city deserved somepony who was a little saner than me holding those reins. There were plenty of worthy persons who would suit the role nicely if I were to crawl off into a cabin somewhere on the edge of nowhere.

Would my talent even allow that? Could I stand by and let others do the work? I looked down at myself—at the pouch on my chest and the gun on my foreleg—and knew the probable answer to that.

Tucking the badge away, I looked up at the brim of my hat, the hat Scarlet had given me. The hat that still smelled like him. My thoughts couldn’t help drifting back to the last time I’d seen him: short two rear legs, lying in bed shivering in pain, still managing to keep a stiff upper lip despite his condition. I wanted nothing so much as to lie there beside him, holding him close until he was healthy again. If anyone deserved the sunlight, it was him.

Turning, I trotted down the length of the fence, no longer worried about what might lurk in the dark. Diamond Wishes knew I would make it to him. He knew we’d see each other, face to face, one last time. What form that would take was beyond the both of us, surely, though he probably had a better handle on it than I did.

What was his god?

What did I even know about it?

It offered the heart’s desire in exchange for sacrifices and loyalty. It would allow generations of its minions to die for its own survival and somehow survived locked to an altar whose purpose seemed to be to eat the very energies of life itself. It’d rendered my grandfather little more than a heavily enchanted skeleton who’d only persisted by dint of sheer willpower and Apple Bloom’s engineering prowess. It’d somehow created the Web of Dark Wishes and empowered the armor of Nightmare Moon over a thousand years ago, yet it’d taken that entire length of time to repair its magics enough to make another bid for freedom.

Freedom from what? Who had imprisoned it? What crimes had it committed to warrant eternity below the ground? Why had whoever or whatever locked it away left the key to the prison?

Why had it waited so long? Was it waiting for a creature like the latest incarnation of Diamond Wishes to be born? A perfect worshipper?

Diamond Wishes was such a contrast to his lieutenants. He seemed too sane to have done the things he’d done. I’d sat across from him, shared a drink, shared an altogether pleasant conversation, and he’d even flatly told me of his intentions to throw down the alicorns, yet it’d practically had to be spelled out before I figured out the truth. Some detective.

I reached the end of the fence. My light gave me little more than a circle on the sidewalk for me to follow. Even the building across the street seemed oddly fuzzy when I tried to get a look at it.

I turned onto a broad avenue of recently laid asphalt that still smelled fresh out of the mixing truck. With a strange reluctance, I raised my head and felt my stomach twist as my destination came into view. A powerful, almost animal will screamed at me from the corners of my mind to flee from it.

Nothing good could come from being there.

This is a place where only things beyond your ken are welcome.

It is going to eat you.

Best run away.

‘Run, little pony. Run.’

Even as the fear rose and the adrenaline surged, I felt the familiar sensation of magic coursing through my veins. The terror started to abate within seconds. I was starting to get tired of the bastards using the same tricks over and over; strange how the subtle and subversive could become loud and obnoxious when you ran into them enough times. A simple fear field discouraging interest in the building was probably enough to keep all but the authorized from becoming too curious.

The enormous structure stretched higher than any of the adjoining skyscrapers, and were there any clouds, its head would surely have been in them. Making out its shape was easy enough; it seemed the largely darkened tower was covered in tiny, glittering sequins at irregular intervals that were somehow catching the light of my torch, but after a moment I realized they weren’t shining where I was pointing the light. As I moved a little, though, the lights followed in a way that suggested they were reflecting something, rather than sitting at fixed points.

Starlight Tower.

Diamond Wishes must have enjoyed that little joke.

It was the only source of illumination I’d seen since entering the darkened streets of Uptown and even then, the weak light brought me no comfort. The damn thing was reflecting the sky outside the shield, a sky that didn’t exist within the barrier. It might have been pretty, if it weren’t simultaneously giving me a powerful urge to turn tail and scamper off to find some bed to cower under.

I took a moment to feel about inside myself, searching for anger. It was my usual defense against what I’d long ago come to class as ‘weird magical bullshit’, but the fury wasn’t there. Sadness was squatting under a proverbial willow tree and writing angsty poetry in the spot where wrath usually spent its days snarling and kicking various psychological stones.

Sadness over Sykes was foremost, though he was only the latest victim.

Somehow, and for reasons that didn’t make any good sense, his death was hitting me harder than almost any of the others in recent months. Maybe it was because he’d been the first person I met on my first day out of the Academy. Maybe it was because the big idiot was the one who’d dragged me out of more than a few scrapes back in the day when homicide and narcotics worked together on various cases. Maybe it was because Sykes kept Juniper from kicking my ass the night after our fifth case fell through, when I got drunk and said his beard looked like a shrub.

I tried to hold it in, but a sniffle snuck up on me and when it did, it came with another round of burning tears. I didn’t really want to keep Diamond Wishes waiting, but when was I likely to have another chance to cry where literally no one could possibly see me? Most likely I was soon to die in the teeth of some demented beast summoned from somewhere beyond equine understanding; bare minimum, I wanted to be composed enough to hold my gun while it chewed.

Sitting there on an empty street in a darkened world wailing into my coat sleeves, my thoughts eventually drifted to my father. It didn’t help the tears much. His death was still as raw as the day I’d put him in the ground. A good pony taken before his time. Another in a list, but why did I have such a damned long list? Don Tome. Juniper. My father. Sykes. Half the ponies of the Detrot Police Department.

Fortunately, the way the equine brain is programmed, there’s only so much crying a person can do before it’s had enough. While still I felt I might weep forever, the sharpest of the pain finally abated and I found an odd peace waiting for me just behind it.

Dying wasn’t so bad, right? I’d done it plenty of times, after all, and seemed to have the knack worked out. Maybe, if it finally stuck, I’d get to see Juniper at last.

With a sudden, strange lightness I hopped to my hooves and trotted toward the giant building. The magical fear pressed in on me again, but fear exists to keep a pony alive. I was a bit beyond being scared by such trivial concerns.

The avenue stopped in front of a small cul de sac beyond which were a set of extremely utilitarian stairs with none of the gaudy stonework that tended to characterize the rest of Detrot’s skyscrapers. They looked as though they’d been built almost as an afterthought and led up to a single door in the dead center which was little more than an ugly slab of metal with a knob. There were no turnstiles, no shining engravings, no carved statues, no placards, and nothing to suggest that the building was ever even meant to be open to the public. The only thing that even hinted that it was something more than an especially ugly vertical warehouse was the bizarre reflections in the windows.

Marching up the stairs I paused again in front of the simple door and stared at those reflections, finding myself momentarily lost in their beauty. The distant stars flickered, shimmering furtively in the tower’s surface. They looked like jewels, trapped in glass. It was a neat bit of spell work, wasted without an audience to appreciate it.

Reaching out, I turned the knob and gave it a shove then danced backwards, lifting my gun in case there was a surprise waiting for me on the other side.

The door swung open on an empty, black hallway of unfinished sheetrock with another identical door at the other end.

I panned my light back and forth, then down to the ground. Sitting there in the center of the hall there was another hoofwritten note lying alongside a police issue walkie-talkie. The transmit light was on and the button taped down.

With all due caution, I stepped forward and picked up the note.

‘I’m afraid you have a bit of a climb. I am on the rooftop. The stairwell at the end of the hall will bring you to me. - Diamond Wishes’

Picking up the walkie-talkie, I carefully peeled the tape off the transmit button and coughed, trying to think of what I wanted to say.

An opponent who knows you’re coming is far and away the most dangerous variety. One taking the time to be polite about it was unusual, however. He could have left a stick of dynamite taped to the door.

Coming to a decision, I went with the safest option.

“Mister Wishes, I’m here,” I murmured, then released the button.

The walkie-talkie crackled before a jovial voice echoed out of the speaker.

Detective! Or should I say ‘Chief’? With the police commissioner dead, you might even be next in line for that role as well. I am so glad you made it. My benefactor said you would, but there’s always that hint of doubt that remains in the minds of even the most faithful.”

I edged further into the dark hallway and started for the door at the other end.

“You know, my partner would probably have started this conversation by reading you your rights,” I said, limping along on three legs while the fourth held the radio.

Diamond Wishes snickered and I heard something rattle in the background.

Your partner is a smart little mare,” he replied, unnerving calm dripping off every word. “Being as you’re here and the storm outside seems to be abating, I imagine my brother is dead. Her sense of betrayal must have been immense when she discovered precisely who unleashed our mutations upon the city. Did he die at her hooves?”

“I watched her kill him,” I answered, cracking the far door. Behind it was a dank stairwell of undecorated concrete steps. I looked up between the railings, and it disappeared well after the end of my light. “He died hard.”

Wishes chuckled as though I’d told him an especially good joke.

Really? Do tell! I wondered what it might take to finally put him down. His plan for ‘apex evolution’ was always set for failure, but he’d made some impressive modifications to his own body that were nothing short of ingenious.”

With a grim smile, I started up the stairs, taking my time. There were no doors at the first landing, nor at the second. It seemed the stairwell existed exclusively to go straight to the top.

“Modified or not, every stallion has a weakness. Swift froze his penis, then she tore his throat out and threw him in a storm generator.”

Wishes let out a good humored snort.

He never did know when to keep that particular anatomy to himself. Mother broke his nose when we were children after he made a pass at her for the third time. She only had eyes for our fathers, if one can be said to have ‘eyes’ for those you knew would eventually murder you in the most horrific fashion imaginable. A shame, really. She was quite an attractive mare.”

I paused on the eighth landing for a moment to catch my breath. I wasn’t even remotely tired, but it felt like I ought to be. If nothing else, it was a good excuse to stop and prepare myself.

“How many floors does this place have?” I asked, a hoof on the railing as I went back to gamely climbing towards the roof.

Last I checked it was approximately fifty, though it may have grown since then. So long as my apartments are unchanged, I rarely worry about such things.”

I stopped short, then shook my head and kept going. “You’re an earth pony. How do you put up with being up to your ears in all this nasty magic? I thought we were supposed to shepherd the land.”

Wishes clicked his tongue, thoughtfully. “In my own funny way, I suppose I am. Equestria is a tiny fragment of so many greater things. Fulcrums of power greater than you can imagine turn right here on this miniscule world. Though, speaking of ‘nasty’ magics, I am curious how you killed Zefu and destroyed the Scry. That was an advantage I thought sure to see us through even the most extreme situations.”

“Not me. Limerence Tome used some spell to trap his brother in his own sword. I don’t entirely understand what he did to The Office, but whatever built that place is going to be pissed if it ever comes back. There’s probably not enough left to fill a lunchbox.”

Mmmph. It was useful, but at the end of the day I suppose you and I were always going to find ourselves here. I barely knew your name just a few months ago and now it feels like we’re old friends. If I may, one more question and then I’ll happily answer one of yours.”

I looked up at the next landing of stairs and sighed. “I’ve got nothing better to do for a few minutes unless you left me a lethal whoopie cushion somewhere on these steps. Why couldn’t we meet downstairs?”

Set and setting, Detective. Now, then. Being as you killed Astral Skylark and managed to retrieve the armor as well as the helm of Nightmare Moon, did you ever put the armor on?”

I shrugged, then realized he wouldn’t be able to see that.

“I didn’t have much say in the matter at the time,” I answered.

Did the...governing intelligence talk to you?”

“My turn,” I interjected, pausing again to wipe my forehead. The stifling heat had followed me into the building. “You still haven’t explained to me what you get out of all this. You don’t even sound like you intend to live through today. What is your reward for causing the end of the world?”

That...is an extremely long answer, but it does boil down to ‘vision’. My deal was for a glimpse of all that which is beyond. Even should I die, I will have witnessed true glory. If there is an afterlife in store, I will take my vision with me. As you have seen, death is little more than a stepping stone for some.”

I shook my head. “I was hoping you’d say ‘I want to bang Princess Celestia’ or something. What does your benefactor want, then? Freedom?”

“It is my turn once more, I believe.

I slumped onto the steps and turned to sit for a moment. “Go ahead?”

Nightmare Moon. She talked to you?”

“She tried to take over my body. We fought. I won. We made a deal. I kill you, she gets a pardon from Celestia for helping me. Not that it matters, now.”

Diamond Wishes sounded a bit pensive as he asked, “She does not remember her original purpose, does she?”

“She seemed pretty scrambled. Her memories were broken up. I figure that’s why I was able to beat her.”

No doubt. The armor was not designed to operate in pieces, so far as my family records indicated. Your turn, then. Do you still want to know what my benefactor desires?”

“I figured out part of it. This...thing wants to be free. That pylon wasn’t the only prison, though, was it?”

“Truly not. We did not sacrifice our weak to the pylon so much as give the pylon another target upon which to work its magics. Thus, my benefactor was able to recover enough to eventually survive its escape. Beyond that simple goal, I’m afraid further explanation is more complicated. This world is a seed that was meant to grow many different things. I am to be its final fruit. If my benefactor sees fit, I will survive to witness ascension and the remaking of all existence into a truly just universe. You can appreciate that, no?”

I looked ahead and found myself just two landings down from the top of the stairwell. I could have sworn the building was a little taller than that, but something in the shape of the space was messing with my perceptions.

“I can appreciate it, yes, but I don’t think anyone who would kill thousands could call themselves a bringer of justice. I’m here, by the way, since we’re being polite.”

Ah! Excellent. The roof is just through my apartments. There is some very good whiskey in my drinks cabinet. I have glasses up here. We’ll continue this discussion in person.”

The radio clicked and the receiving light faded. I dropped the radio outside the final door and left it there. I considered going through the usual rigamarole of storming in with my gun drawn, but Diamond Wishes had had far too many opportunities to kill me while I was on the way to simply be sitting there on the other side with a rocket launcher pointed at my face.

Reaching up, I pushed open the last metal bastion and stepped into what felt like another world.

Shutting the door behind me, I took a deep breath of the freshest air I’d had in days. The scent of warm cookies hit me accompanied by good cigars and a rich cologne.

Diamond Wishes’s apartments, in contrast to the rest of the building, were a lavish display of understated comfort. Whereas King Cosmo seemed to think wealth was simply size and ridiculous amounts of gold leaf pasted on every surface, Wishes seemed to understand true wealth is only demonstrated by making a space entirely one’s own. His little home-away-from-home was a study in detailed-oriented cozyness.

The space was divided into two large rooms, though with as many bookshelves as lined the walls it felt considerably smaller than it likely was. There were no windows, but gemstones that simulated candlelight set in wall sconces provided enough light to see and most likely read by. In the corner there was a wooden drinks cabinet stocked with enough liquor to drown even the most sorrowful evenings. The rich, velvety carpets were thick enough that I felt like I might sink right into them. There was even a modern enchanted stove in an open kitchenette with a refrigerator and associated cookery tools.

I leaned into the second room and spied a discreet single-pony four poster bed nestled against the wall alongside an empty traveling trunk whose top was propped beside it. Several tailored suits hung in an open wardrobe atop a few pairs of spats. In the far corner an ancient wind-up record player was rattling through one of the tunes from my father’s youth, a cheerful little swing number meant to get your hooves moving. The door to the roof access was beside it, lightly disguised with a bit of molding and fancy cabinetry.

Involuntarily, I found myself starting to relax. It was the sort of place I’d have loved to spend a weekend. Taxi loved to camp, but I was never the sort for recreational homelessness. Give me a spot to prop my legs up and room service and I’m the happiest stallion that can be.

Turning back, I noticed a single chocolate-chip cookie sitting on a plate on the writing desk, a tumbler of some spirit beside it. My stomach rumbled and I trotted over, snatching up the cookie and stuffing it in my muzzle before tipping the drink on top of it. The cookie was still warm from the oven and the drink turned out to be cognac, a good mix for freshly baked chocolate. It was delicious and burned the whole way down.

Again, the dichotomy of Diamond Wishes struck me. On the one hoof, he probably qualified as one of our world’s greatest monsters. On the other, his taste was sublime. Had he crafted the place to make me comfortable? Doubtful. It sure felt that way, though.

Much as I wanted to linger, there were still questions demanding answers and dead souls begging for justice, for a satisfying end to their tales.

The drinks cabinet was unlocked when I tried the door. I read over a few of the labels on the bottles; most would have cost me several months’ wages, and one or two probably commanded more than I’d make in a few years as a cop. Toward one side I discovered a bottle of my favorite brand: Mareson — griffin whiskey. It was young, sweet, and too cheap for its neighbors. That was also the only one that looked to have had more than an occasional tipple taken out of it.

Snatching it up, I also grabbed a bowl of pimento stuffed olives and some grapes from the fridge; no sense letting them go to waste.

Balancing my payload along with Sykes’s axe, I strolled over to the rooftop door and nosed it open, finding another concrete stairwell. Fortunately, it was only one flight, and there was carpet on the steps as well. It was blissful to climb them on otherwise extremely sore hooves.

At the top, I found a hatch and carefully eased it open, making sure not to drop either the bottle or the snacks. I expected a breeze, but the heat outside was accompanied by a stillness that put me in mind of a graveyard. Deathly, deathly quiet.

A pair of wing-backed chairs were positioned on the edge of the roof facing the empty streets of Uptown, lit by an upright lamp that seemed to have been dragged out just for that precise purpose. A short, antique wooden table sat between the chairs, a pair of reading glasses and a book with a royal blue cover atop it. I couldn’t quite make out the title at that distance, but I didn’t need to see it to know precisely what my nemesis was reading before I’d arrived; it was Princess Luna’s ancient spellbook — The Web of Dark Wishes.

“Detective?” Diamond Wishes rumbled, gracefully rising from his seat.

He stepped out from behind the chair and smiled a fatherly smile.

The elderly stallion was largely unchanged from when I’d met him weeks ago at the Police Ball. There were a few more streaks of grey in his dark purple mane than I remembered, but his white pelt looked as immaculate as the day we’d shared a glass of champagne and mused over the future.

It was not him that brought me to a stop so sudden I almost let go of the food, but rather what he was wearing.

Diamond Wishes was tightly ensconced in the armor of Nightmare Moon. The helm fit his muzzle comfortably and the chest plate covered his broad barrel without a hint of stretching or loose fit. Even the shoes seemed to have been resized somehow, such that they might as well have been part of him. It looked as though it’d been made for him.

“I cannot tell you how much waiting for this moment kept me awake nights,” he said, waving me toward the other seat.

“Won’t you join me for a drink?”

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