Chapter 17: Meet the Gang
Starlight Over Detrot: Chapter 17: Meet The Gang
Congratulations on your departmental purchase/happenstance acquisition/black market smuggling of a Minotaurus Mk II 12-Gauge Saddle-mounted Semi-automatic Shotgun. Treat your weapon well, and it will provide you with years of service and maiming on demand; Treat it poorly, and there are a few documented cases where these weapons have sought revenge.
The Mk II can be equipped with a variety of optional features, including ghost-ring sighting, anti-telekinetic trigger guards, and filigree styling. It is best used in close-quarters or against fast-moving aerial targets; it is capable of stopping a berserking griffin even after you have insulted their progenitors.
-Do not store loaded, especially not with any form of magical round. They may get Up to Mischief.
-Given the proximity of the barrel to the pony ear, always wear ear protection when using this weapon.
-Keep out of reach of foals.
-Not to be used for the ballistic distribution of party favors.
-Not to be used for the ballistic distribution of party guests.
-This is a highly inefficient way of making cupcakes.
-Though we appreciate the business, do not stash all over town in case of shotgun emergency.
--Instructions from the manufacturer of the Minotaurus Mk II 12-Gauge Saddle-mounted Semi-automatic Shotgun
Paying our hotel bill at the High Seas quickly embedded itself in my brain as one of those memories you call up in the middle of the night to lambast yourself when sleep just won’t come.
The concierge didn’t even bother to fake a smile as Taxi handed her the room keys. Her facial expression resembled a pinched goldfish as she pushed the freshly shined and polished wooden box across the front desk and into my waiting legs. I picked it up, putting my ear to the top. It was probably my overactive imagination, but the faint beat of the organ inside sounded vaguely apologetic.
Explaining why we had left a still juicy and apparently very excitable pony heart in the car - an explanation that included the badge and the words 'need to know basis' far too many times to earn the trust of the not-unreasonably wary staff - was only half so awkward as when we passed the employee lounge to find the valet sobbing into a veggie hoagie in the corner. Taxi, being Taxi, made to go comfort him, and he very nearly stuffed himself in the refrigerator trying to get away from her.
In the end, our retreat from the villa High Seas was less than graceful, but it didn’t matter. I’d rested and showered, and while I did still smell like cheap shampoo, I was feeling measurably more myself. The heart wedged into my breast pocket squirmed and jumped occasionally and, while I’m ascribing an enchanted organ emotions, seemed enthusiastic about being out for a walk.
One of the other valets (not one that my thoughtlessness had traumatized for life) pulled the car around, dropped the keys into Taxi’s hoof, and held out his hat expectantly. I tossed him a half dozen bits. He frowned. I threw in six more and he rewarded me with a polite sniff, slapping his cap back on his head with the soft jingle of currency.
Luna’s moony tail-end, I hate these places...
****
After briefly consulting a map of the city to find Scarlet’s hidey hole and lay down the best route, we piled Scarlet, Swift, and myself into the back of the Night Trotter. Taxi slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and lit some especially nasty incense.
Long years of acquaintance were giving me vibrations of ‘trouble in paradise’ from my driver. I couldn’t tell if it was an actual disturbance in her emotional state, but she was definitely hiding something. I tried to catch her eye in the mirror, but she quickly glanced away, covering the evasion with a burst of speed and noise from the engine.
My partner was using Scarlet for a cushion, one huge wing draped over him while the other became a makeshift blanket. I was grateful she’d opted to sit between us, if only because I didn’t fancy any more little ‘incidents’ that might involve the need for kinetic demonstrations of my disinterest in him getting under my tail. Or vice versa.
For his part, the red stallion appeared to just be relaxing, but now and then I caught him peeking at me out of one lidded eye.
We turned into the early evening traffic just as the sun dropped low enough under the cloud cover to light up the streets in a vivid amber glow. It seemed like the whole city was holding its breath, as though it could see the violence about to ensue.
While Taxi had neglected to mention what sort of ‘magical contamination’ might be at our final destination, it was a good bet that any building condemned for severe enchantment was likely to make our assault an interesting affair. There were a few possible reasons the city might not have been willing to pick up the tab for a clean-up or demolition; the work might have been very dangerous, very costly, impossible, or some combination of all three. Buildings left to rot in Detrot tended to become havens for criminals, and space was at a premium. Sunny Days Foster Care Facility was therefore a rarity, and smart ponies are wary of going into any potential combat situation without enough information.
These characters the dragon was lending me were another unknown, and the most I could get from Scarlet was that they were ‘skilled.’ The wide range of distressing things that might have meant wasn’t helping my blood pressure any. Worse, Taxi’s slowly expanding enthusiasm for the job was starting to make my mane prickle. Since she’d left the force, getting her onto crime scenes wasn’t hard, but the actual policing of criminals was one line she was rarely willing to cross without considerable bribery. Something about Cosmo was changing that.
I realized then that I’d just assumed she’d be joining us for the assault; when I brought up the number of ponies going along during my conversation with Scarlet, she’d done nothing to dissuade me of that idea. She’d once been an extremely competent cop, aside from her total disregard for procedure and desperately poor marksponyship. I was glad to have her along, but we were going to have to sit down and have one of our little ‘talks’ about why she was so interested in Ruby Blue’s case.
****
Fifteen minutes later, we were pulling up to Scarlet’s ‘Vivarium Annex’ just inside the line of slightly nicer houses on the Heights’ outermost borders. There were a few ponies and various other beings hanging around under the street-lamps, but all were well dressed and none looked to be working.
I couldn’t describe my relief when I saw where we were going.
It wasn’t a public sex dungeon or a seedy porn shop. There weren’t any semen stains on the sidewalk or the overpowering musk of sweaty, heated bodies you could taste from a block away. It was a coffee shop; simple, friendly, and familiar. The sign over the glass door was stenciled letters with a little picture of a steaming cup beside it: Darling’s Morning Brew.
It sat sandwiched on the end of a row of shops just off the main thoroughfare. A whiff of fresh-baked bread tantalized my nose, and I decided that no matter what sort of terrible adventure we might be walking into, I wouldn’t do it on an empty stomach, nor uncaffeinated.
With a yawn and a big stretch, Swift raised her head and sniffed at the air. “Mmm... what smells good?”
Scarlet pulled himself up on the back seat with some full body yoga that involved far more butt wiggling than was probably necessary “We’re here. I hope Edina didn’t make a scene. Darling still won’t sell anything with meat in it.”
“Meat? I'm guessing Edina is our griffin?” I asked, pushing the car door open and stepping out onto the sidewalk. The scent of toasting bread was even stronger outside.
“That’s right. Bit eccentric, but she’s very good at what she does. Don’t let her scare you. She’s only half as crazy as she sounds.” Scarlet thought briefly, then added, “exactly half as crazy, come to think of it. Just don’t mention her height or she will hurt you.”
“I’ll remember that. What about the others?”
Tapping his chin with one rubberized hoof, the secretary considered his reply. “Let me see... The Tortellini twins are a bit on the quiet side. They both used to play hoofball with the Detrot Manticores. I don’t really know them personally. They tend to prefer to work ‘out of house’ when they’re not on guard duty. I do know their specialty is masochism and submission; somepony wants to work out some stress, they make good bucking bags, apparently. Funny thing... I’ve never seen them actually injured.”
“Should they have been?” I asked, shutting the car door as Swift and Scarlet stepped out the other side.
“If somepony is hitting you in the face with a hammer? Typically, yes.”
That brought me up short. I raised one eyebrow, squinted at him, then decided that this was not a line of inquiry I wished to pursue at the moment. “What about this zebra?”
“Mistress Zeta? She’s–” Scarlet bit his lip, trying to find the words, “–very... unusual. You may find a kindred spirit in her, Miss Taxi.”
At that, my driver’s ears perked up. “Really?”
“You and she share a certain joie de vivre.” He twirled his hooftip in a foppish circle, but before he could carry this comparison any further, he was derailed, presumably by the audible gurgle in his stomach. His mind followed. “Mmm, I wonder if Darling made bagels this morning.”
The heart in its box beat just a little faster against my breast and I couldn’t help but agree; Scarlet had said the magic word.
“Bagels?”
****
A little bell announced us as I pushed open the coffee shop’s front door and led my companions into a whole world of wonderful sights and smells. Darling’s couldn’t have been more inviting if the counter was made of solid gold. As it was, I had to just stand there for a few seconds taking in the ambiance.
The cafe was dotted with sagging, lightly coffee-stained sofas and armchairs which looked to have been looted from a thrift shop, reminding me of good friends gathered around the bar to exchange gossip after a hard day’s work. Every wall was covered in shockingly poor local art that might have been surrealist interpretations of sewer crawling or possibly bowls of ground meat. The floor was bare stone and tile of the sort that’s easy to wash with a hose if the owner is feeling ambitious.
A shaggy-maned professor in a threadbare vest crouched over stacks of ungraded tests on one of the private tables, slurping a cup of piping hot tea, while a doe-eyed unicorn with a badly dyed mane and about two dozen piercings tried to peck out the next great Equestrian novel on a typewriter at a booth.
The long counter was plastered with crusty, yellowed news articles about the shop; behind it, a fat, smiling buck with a bizarre mottled coat the color of bleu cheese was taking entire rows of bagels out of a wall-sized brick often and slapping them onto a tray beside the register. My tongue felt like it’d melted in my mouth.
I wanted bagels. I needed bagels.
I pulled my hat off and breathed deep, filling my lungs until I was lightheaded. The barista straightened the row of scaldingly hot bread rings and grinned as he recognized in me the hallmarks of an enthusiastic patron.
“Welcome to Darling’s, Detective!" he called out. "I’m Darling Brew. We’ve been expecting you!”
I had to stop myself from running to the counter like an over-eager foal in a candy store, which I managed to do just long enough to wonder, “Wait, how did you know I was coming?”
Darling showed off his cutie-mark with a turn to one side. Upon seeing a bowl of batter with a bullwhip dangling over one side, I froze my brain right there. Unless directly relevant to a case, I have long since learned not to ponder nor ask how ponies get their cutie-marks in this city. The answer often ruins my appetite, and I wasn't about to wreck the one I had.
“I used to work for Miss Stella. He called ahead.” Darling waved to Stella’s secretary, who’d come in behind me with Swift and Taxi fast on his heels, noses up high. “He said the police pony who was bringing Scarlet was to be given top tier treatment and all the bagels he could eat.”
If that gorgeous lizard had been in the little coffee shop at that moment, I would probably have given him a very public and extremely unwise show of affection.
“We’re waiting on four others. Could you let us know when they arrive?” I requested, pulling my tie a bit looser.
“Oh! Two of them are already here, in the back. The Stilettos use my employee lounge sometimes when they need a planning space outside the club. Can I get the three of you something to eat first?”
"Yes. Yes, you can." My belly felt ready to chew itself to death if I didn’t do something soon. “A basket full of your best onion, chive, and garlic bagels, plus a big pot of coffee. Let’s see this lounge.”
Darling lifted the counter on one side of the bar and held it open for me as I called over my partner and driver, who’d begun inspecting the truly awful art on the walls. We slid through and into the shop’s storage area.
****
The poorly lit halls weren’t deep but, even so, I was sad to leave the coffee shop’s main floor and its raft of delightful smells; It was the closest thing to a ‘homey’ environment I’d encountered since toppling off my bed to discover my apartment had been stripped of its character by a maniacally cleaning-obsessed cabbie.
We followed Darling’s chubby rear end through the halls and I began to hear raised voices coming back from somewhere up ahead. Soon, I was able to discern that it wasn’t really multiple voices; it was just one voice and it seemed to be arguing with itself.
“No! You stupid, stupid bird! You’re not listening! We can’t eat their livers or they’ll toss us in the clink!”
The pace of the speech changed to a marginally more languorous entreatement: “But I want pâté with a bit of honeyed kidney. Can’t we have honeyed kidney?”
The voice shifted back to its previous, sharper cadence. “You fool! You don’t serve kidney with liver! Now be silent! I hear someone coming.”
Stopping in front of my three companions I let out a long, exasperated sigh and flipped my coat off of my rear hip, glaring at my cutie-mark.
Well? I thought.
It was either being extremely stubborn or we were reasonably safe. While my cutie-mark and I’d had ‘disagreements’ in the past, most often when I really wanted to shoot somepony who’d cut me off in traffic, it didn’t often let me walk into a situation with a dangerous lunatic without at least a heads up.
I noticed Scarlet was staring at my flank as intently as I was, so I flipped my coat back over my my butt.
“Hardy?” Taxi murmured, sensing my concern, “I think we’re okay. Stella is looking out for number one.”
“Do you want to bank on his self-interest meaning we’ve got useful ‘volunteers’ for this insane mission?” I asked as Darling waited a bit further down the hall. The door to which he was leading us was at the end, with a hand-lettered sign that said ‘Employee Lounge’ on a bit of cardboard.
“I would.” She shrugged her saddlebags higher on her thighs, lifted her hoof, spit in it, then held it my way. “If he thought we were incompetent or incapable, he’d have someone besides you handling this. As is, I get the impression he likes to use minimum necessary force whenever he can, and he does seem to be a good judge of what ‘minimum necessary’ means.”
I thought about this. “...Fine. You're not wrong. For now, I’m not betting against that serpent. I think I’d end up poor very quickly if I did.” I gently pushed the proffered leg aside. “Though, if my liver ends up in a pâté, it’s your fault, Sweets.”
I strode after Darling, trying to radiate a self-confidence I didn’t really feel. No reason to let our little squad think we were anything less than absolutely assured of victory.
Then the coffeeshop owner pushed the lounge door open and a flying ceramic mug hit me squarely between the eyes.
****
Pain.
Pain is useful.
In my job, I’ve often experienced pain and, therefore, I’ve become familiar with its various flavors. There’s the pain of watching some rich jerk walk out of a court-room, after you had him dead to rights, because his lawyer found a procedural loophole. There’s the pain of being flung through a plate glass window by a prescription drug-abusing unicorn. There’s the pain of losing a partner.
Pain tells you that you’re alive and that your circumstances have become exciting.
My exciting circumstance, just then, was that I’d been pegged me in the face with an especially solid ‘Saving The World One Bit At A Time’ charity coffee cup. I was in pain, sitting on the floor holding my forehead with both hooves, with all airs of confidence gone, and the only thing keeping me from trying to shoot someone that I’d forgotten to reload my gun when I got in the car.
As the dizzying spin of the room slowed, I could finally see my attacker.
Having spent years around Sykes and his ilk, I’d taken for granted that huge size was a genetic side-benefit of being a griffin. This, as it turned out, was untrue. The snow-white beast standing on the coffee table with a cup in her claw and a second one clutched in her tail, ready to throw, was tiny even by pony standards. Her fluffy mane gave her enough height to be technically taller than Swift, but not by much.
Every inch of her body from the neck back was wrapped in enough whips to make her a walking advertisement for sadism. The various handles bobbed like wind chimes with every twitchy movement.
“Edina! Look what you’ve done!” Darling scolded, shoving the little griffin off the table. She squawked like a squeezed chicken and flopped onto the carpet, struggling up as the coffee shop owner tore the mugs away from her and set them back on the sideboard underneath. “If you want to make a mess in the Vivarium, knock yourself out, but in my place, you are not a top, you are not a domme, and you do not get to break the cookware!”
“You can’t do anything to me! I’m invincible!” Edina shrieked, tearing a cat-o-nine tails from around her neck and brandishing it threateningly. Her wings rose and her voice shifted into a screechy rail that felt somehow more avian than feline as she shouted, “Yeah! She’s right! You can’t touch us!”
From somewhere in the darkened back corner of the small room, a ball of light-blue yarn sailed out and bounced across the carpet in front of the griffin.
Now, it should be said that there are a few impulses remaining in the equine hindbrain that I find genuinely embarrassing. I’ve never liked thunder all that much and hated going to the farrier since I was a foal, but after seeing Edina react to a bouncing ball of string, I had to count myself momentarily lucky that I wasn’t even a little bit cat.
The griffin’s pupils dilated until they almost filled her eyes, then she was off, rolling head over tail, yarn in her beak, flopping back and forth on her back. It was a gruesome sight as the mighty hunter tore at her prey until she was so tangled up all she could do was wiggle her rear toes and chirp helplessly at us.
A cold, soft voice spoke beside me. “Edina, you really must control your feline half, or she is going to get you in trouble.”
I jerked back in alarm. My head spun around and I almost tipped off my hooves, catching myself on the door. The source was of the voice was a zebra mare who was very suddenly beside me, standing just over my shoulder. My driver, who is a pony normally known for strict observation of everything around her, let out a very un-Taxi-like squeal and rose into a fighting stance. Swift was teething her gun-bit, apparently not having gotten over the shock of seeing me brought down by a mug. We can only be grateful that her safety was still on, which prevented her from blowing a considerable hole in the creature I presumed to be Mistress Zeta.
She was odd even by zebra standards. Her mane was cut into a standard short, tight mohawk, but instead of the traditional tribal bangles or tattoos, she wore an elaborate dress made of coils of thin, fibrous rope layered one over top of another. Each length of rope was attached with a snapping button, for easy removal, to some sort of vest. Her hooves were wrapped in odd, tightly woven shoes whose bottoms looked like some kind of soft fabric.
I blinked and she was gone. Vanished, like a whisper of smoke in a high wind. Scarlet was just standing back with a pleased and slightly smug smile, watching the proceedings.
Taxi’s ears flattened against her head as she started to relax, then she let out a shrill yelp as Zeta reappeared beside her and said, matter-of-factly, “Your form is excellent, pony, but you must place your rear hoof slightly farther forward or you will lose balance on the return kick.”
Lightning isn’t that fast, and it’s definitely not that quiet.
My driver self-consciously moved her rear leg a few inches, then dropped back onto all fours and tried to tame her breathing. She muttered something in zebra, as she often did when whatever she had dancing around her tongue-tip was likely to cause stress in her friendships.
Zeta’s eyes widened and she said something back in the strange, flowing language.
Taxi raised one eyebrow then tentatively lifted her front leg. The striped mare bent forward and put her forehead against it briefly, then stepped back and raised her own hoof. Lowering her head, my driver rested it against the tip of Zeta’s toe. A wide smile broke out across the zebra’s face.
“Pony! You have been to zebra lands!” Zeta exclaimed, almost bouncing on her front legs.
Taxi looked abashed, an impression aided when she lowered her two-tone tail to the floor, “Actually, I just spent some time in a zebra commune a few years ago. I learned the language from a mare named Zarathustra. Her mother was one of the first zebra immigrants. Still rhymed every other sentence.”
Nodding sagely, Zeta quirked her mouth in a private grin. “Yes, yes. Her mother is quite the piece of work. Zarathustra is one of my cousins. I am glad she abandoned her mother’s habit. It makes conversation in Equestrian very awkward.” Spreading her forelegs wide, she rose up on her rear ones and bowed her head. “I name you ‘friend’. You may call me by my tribe name; Zeta.”
“I’m Taxi. Tribe name is Shine,” she replied, mirroring the gesture, “and I name you ‘friend’ as well.” Turning, Taxi pulled me forward with one leg for introductions while I rubbed my still-aching head. “This rude ass is Detective Hardy. Please pardon him if he’s too thick to perform greeting rituals. The uniform is Officer Swift.” My partner bobbed her head and cracked a small smile. “She’s still learning diplomacy.”
Zeta looked me up and down then studied Swift for a second before turning back. “Most appreciative of meeting you and your partner, Detective. Stella spoke highly. I do wish to apologize on behalf of my co-worker.” She inclined her nose in the direction of the trussed up griffin, who was still writhing on the carpet. “She is very competent, but is often of two minds, neither of which responds well to caffeine.” She gestured at a half-emptied coffee brewer sitting on the side-board.
The little griffin, seeing her private addiction, attempted to claw her way in the direction of the pot, although some weak scrabbling at the carpet was all she could manage still tied up. She tried a screech of furious defiance, but with the yarn wrapped tightly around her beak it came out as a sort of pissed-off honk.
When I looked back to where Zeta was just standing, she’d disappeared again, reappearing on the couch sometime between blinks, with a magazine in her hooves and the coffee pot on the cushion beside her. I peered over at Taxi and my teeth hurt with the effort not to laugh; her muzzle was set in a determined frown as she tried in vain to track whatever moves the zebra had just used. She wasn’t getting anywhere, and who could blame her? Zeta was spooky fast.
I was going to ask where the ‘Tortellini twins’ were when a noise like a small herd of elephants tromping down the hall sent Scarlet and Swift scattering out of the doorway. The two beings who came in after them stopped in the door, and their mere presence made the entire room feel smaller by half.
They were unicorns only by virtue of having four legs, a horn and cutie marks. Any resemblance to the equine form ended there. Edina might have been insane and Zeta unsettling, but those two were just plain scary.
Both of them wore full body hoofball uniforms, including face enclosing helmets with the Detrot Manticore emblazoned on the sides. At first, I thought they were wearing some type of pelt-suit with weird texturing underneath the outfits, but on closer inspection I realized that they were covered in a thick layer of stomach-turning scars.
Every inch of their bodies, from the backs of their eyelids to the tops of their rust colored hooves, was a mass of puffy, pink lines the like of which one could only receive from prolonged and very thorough torture. Some were newer than others and where tufts of fur did grow, they were grassy green. Just looking at the two of them made me ache.
Their horns jutted up through their helmets a good two inches each in total defiance of every hoofball safety rule I’d ever heard of, but since I hadn’t heard of any recent impalements on the field, I assumed they had a method. Peering around their sides against my better judgement, I flicked my eyes at their cutie-marks, which turned out to be a relatively innocuous: a pot of boiling water and an oven.
“Scarlet,” the one on the left rumbled. The giant stallion’s voice sounded like he had an industrial quarry in his throat. “We come when called. Where is the pain you promised us?”
Scarlet gulped audibly and sweat popped out on his forehead. “Errr, pain is coming, boys. Detective, these are the Tortellini Twins-” He nodded at the one on the left, then his brother. “Bake and Boil. Boys, this is Detective Hardy. He’s going to be directing things.”
The two stallion’s lifted scarred eyebrows in close unison, giving me a skeptical once-over.
“He’s so puny,” said Bake, holding his hoof at his chest height, which came just above my head.
“I could break him with my face,” Boil replied, tilting his helmet back to show a slightly flatter spot just below his horn.
“What pain will you give us, little stallion?” Bake wanted to know.
There was a moment’s silence punctuated only by the soft rustle of a griffin on too many stimulants trying to untie her leg from the side of her own head.
Policing, in my experience, is all about finding out what motivates people. I’d long ago discovered that motivations for most are relatively simple. But now and then, one runs across an individual or group of individuals whose needs and wants are completely foreign. In those instances, what makes a good cop is whether or not he can adjust to a given situation fast enough to take advantage of an opportunity.
I am a good cop.
I casually adjusted my tie, smoothly using the motion to allow my gun-bit and badge to swing between my front knees. As I guessed, two sets of piercingly green eyes followed the dangling objects. Stepping between them, I put my forelegs around their necks, drawing their heads together as I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Gentlecolts, the pain I'll give you lies within a drug facility in a magically contaminated hellhole guarded by some of the most dangerous, heavily-armed mobsters this city has ever seen. Your two bodies may be all that is between us and flying lead, crushing hooves, and whatever unspeakable damages the arcane can dream up.” I stepped back, holding my hooves wide as I gave them my fiercest grin. “You two want pain? I’ll throw you right into the dragon's teeth."
The room's reaction to my theatrics was focused silence. The twins themselves simply stared at me in stoic contemplation, while Taxi was pretending to be engrossed in the ceiling tiles. Swift just watched intently, with one of those uncomprehending looks she was going to be famous for if she wasn’t careful. Even Edina, sensing tension in the air, stopped struggling with the snarl of yarn long enough to look up and watch.
At last, the twins appeared to reach a decision. They straightened to their full height, then lowered helmeted heads to the floor, leaving their rear ends in the air. It took me a second to recognize the gesture for what it was: total submission. They replied with perfect synchronization, in voices that could grind stone. “We will have your pain.”
Thus far, since meeting the best the Stilettos had to offer, I’d been startled, assaulted, and insulted. It was indicative of the last few days of my life that I considered two enormous, scarrified hoofballers offering themselves to me for physical abuse only a mild aberration. The nap had mellowed me a bit, however, so using their scrotums for bucking-bags was less appealing than it might have been earlier in the day.
Instead, I gave them my best approving nod and turned to Darling Brew, who’d been standing quietly outside. “How about those bagels?”
****
Per Mistress Zeta’s warnings, we waited to free Edina until the proprietor returned with refreshments. Unlike our briefing at the Vivarium, the more relaxed atmosphere of Darling’s did lend itself to sitting down with coffee or, in Edina’s case, a flask of booze and calming herbs that Zeta nearly had to force down her throat. Whatever magic chemical was in that stuff calmed the griffin enough for us to cut her loose; sadly, it didn’t stop what seemed to be an ongoing argument.
“Detective is meat. We don’t work with meat,” Edina muttered in the voice I’d come to associate with her more predatory half.
“You work with meat all the time, you silly, flapping ninny!” her other half bit back.
“Yes, well, we don’t have to be happy about it!”
Zeta had the griffin propped up on the couch cushions and was gently cutting the last of the yarn out of her white leg feathers while the rest of us were gathered around the coffee table, devouring a mound of bagels and other pastries on a plastic tray.
The Tortellinis had, for reasons I preferred not to contemplate, elected to sit on the floor at my hooves whilst Scarlet curled up beside me, giving them slightly jealous looks now and then. Taxi was nibbling at a piece of fresh toast with one of her amused smiles, watching my discomfort as though etching it into her memory. Swift, meanwhile, had managed to get cream cheese into her feathers.
The zebra mare let out a long-suffering sigh as she plucked another piece of string from between her co-worker’s talons. Edina was still grumbling at herself as she snatched up a croissant and began tearing it to pieces, getting crumbs in her chest feathers. She seemed to have sunk into her own mind and was barely reacting to the presence of other beings in the room.
Swift was just ripping into her second pastry as I finished my third. After setting the last bite back on her plate, she gave voice to a question on all of our minds:
“Miss Zeta, what’s wrong with her?”
Neither the zebra nor the griffin considered this the faux pas it might have been; Zeta'd been anticipating the question, and reacted no more strongly than to run her hoof affectionately down Edina's neck. “Most take for granted that two animals can magically coexist within one body without there being... issues.” She turned Edina’s snowy face up to hers and the griffin simply continued to chew, her eyes unfocused. “In most griffins, those take the form of cravings. In her, it is distinct personalities. You ponies call it ‘moon touched’ when a mind fails to agree with the body upon what is real, yes?”
“So why isn’t she in a hospital?” Taxi asked, sweeping cream off her lower lip with her tongue. “She would probably benefit from therapy.”
“What therapy would you give her?” Zeta inquired, twirling her hoof in a circle over the griffin’s head. “A doctor telling her she’s mad? She knows that. Drugs? She would not be Edina, then. Her clients accept her as she is. They would miss her.”
Edina lifted her head and her eyes centered on me; they were sapphire blue, cool as a winter morning. Against my breast, Cosmo’s heart began to pound against the sides of its box like it was attempting escape.
We watched one another for some time and I slowly got the oddest sensation of being an animal, trapped behind glass, being watched by a child on a parent’s leash. That I understood my course made it no less binding. I was about into walk into the depths of a heavily enchanted bastion of criminality to face down an unknown number of opponents with only a small circle of volunteers at my back. Her psychosis meant she did as she pleased, even when that meant to follow a madpony like me to nearly certain death.
I envied her just a little.
“That’s it, then? You just let her be like that?” Taxi sounded slightly offended by the idea, though I couldn’t say why.
“She fights for the Vivarium,” Zeta answered, lowering her chin onto one of the throw pillows. “Like many there, she is safe only within the confines of Miss Stella’s protection. Otherwise, I’m certain she would be locked away and her skills... nay, her very being... would be wasted in attempts to ‘fix’ her.”
“So why this mission?”
Zeta chewed at her tongue self-consciously before she replied, “Edina volunteers for every mission. Safewords don’t matter in combat situations.”
****
For a while, the seven of us sat with our cups and munched on the heap of excellent pastries. I had the thought that my job might just be a lot more pleasant if I worked with prostitutes all the time; at the very least, I’d eat better.
When we were down to patting full bellies and slurping the dregs from the bottoms of coffee cups, Taxi pulled open her saddlebag and spilled a heap of rolled up papers across the table.
“While Hardy was asleep, I went by the Castle and spoke to the city planning office,” she told us, checking the numbers on each corner of the rolls until she found the one she was looking for. Unfurling it across the table, she used two coffee cups to hold down the top and bottom edges. It was a blueprint of some large, single story building. “This is Sunny Days Foster Home. I’m afraid I couldn’t get plans from anytime in the last ten years before it was closed, so these are a little out of date. Those files were ‘removed’ from the city archives. I’m betting some bits changed hooves to make that happen.”
“If Cosmo is running an industrial level drug operation, I doubt he’s leaving essential information in the hooves of the DPD,” I groused, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “I would have thought a half decent map wouldn’t be too much to ask, though.”
“You want a half decent map, you give me a half decent planning department. I flirted with the receptionist-filly for fifteen minutes just to get these.” The cabbie slapped the paper with the back of her hoof in irritation. “As it is, all she could tell me was there was ‘additional construction’. There’s not even a record of what sort of contamination is in there other than an estimated clean-up bill of something like twice the cost of rebuilding elsewhere.”
“So, scouting then. Zeta, you’re it.” I nodded towards the zebra. “We need entrances, exits, number of guards, and if you can a possible route of entry. Think you can handle that?”
Zeta clapped her hooves together excitedly, which didn’t make any noise with those special shoes but the sentiment was there. “I will be the eyes! I am most proficient!”
Swift raised her knee for attention. “Sir... what about the ladybugs?”
All eyes turned to me.
“What about them?” I asked, one ear tilting towards the rookie. “If my last look at what they’re up to is anything to go by, they’re sitting in my apartment messing with the radio and reading my case-files by now. They get nosey. It’s part of the price of doing business with them. I told you we can’t use them for advance scouting and we know the building is dangerous.”
The pegasus scratched her neck, thinking, which smeared more cream cheese into her throat fur. “Couldn’t we... I don’t know... couldn’t we have Miss Zeta wear one?”
“Yes, what are these ‘ladybugs’ the little one speaks of?” Zeta wanted to know.
Deciding showing was better than telling, I patted my mane until I found one of several tiny lumps still lurking just behind my left ear and wiggled it free. The insect had taken on the color of my pelt, most likely out of instinct rather than necessity, and was whirring quietly to itself; it was fast asleep.
“Oi! Wake up!” I gave the bug a light shake. It lifted its head, opening its jeweled eyes and giving its wings a quick buzz. “We’ve got a drug den in an extremely nasty magically infected environment and what might be a very lethal group of mobsters guarding it. We need to destroy all of it whilst probably outnumbered and outgunned. You in?”
The essy let off a piercing whistle and exploded into the air, doing a series of wild loops before settling back on my hoof.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’, then. When we leave here, you make sure one of your little friends is on everyone in this room. Got it?” The creature turned in a circle, taking in all the faces around it before buzzing back to me and tilting backwards and forwards, imitating a nod.. “Excellent. You’re riding the stripes.” Turning to the zebra, I held the bug out. “Thinks of it as a camera that will pee in your mane if you leave it on too long. Keep it on you and we’ll be able to see your every move.”
Shuffling forward, Zeta sniffed at the little creature. “It’s... a parasprite?!” She did a quick walk backwards into the wall and slid to the floor.
“Errr... no. Just smells like one. They’re breeding-restricted by their enchantment and their autonomy contract. Go on.” I encouraged, flipping the essy off my toe.
The ladybug alighted in the zebra’s mane and wiggled down amongst the spiky black and white fur on the back of her neck. She reached back to touch the spot, then thought better of it.
“You police ponies have some most interesting equipment,” Zeta murmured.
“Tell me about it,” I replied, turning back to the blueprints and tracing the spaces one at a time. “I see two options here for our drug lab. The cafeteria or the auditorium.”
“What do you mean? Couldn’t he just use a classroom?” Scarlet asked, pointing at the rows of empty rooms. “If somepony wanted to be inconspicuous, that would be best, right?”
“Best for a small time operation, sure, but for a big one? No, that’s about efficiency,” Taxi pointed out. “Remember, King Cosmo hasn’t been worried about inconspicuous up to this point. That school is his. His version of ‘inconspicuous’ is making sure there’s nopony checking in on it. Spread a few bits around the school system and toss some at D.P.D.’s good-ol'-colt network and he’s got nothing to worry about. Nobody so much as goes to look.”
“Which means he’ll use the largest possible space with the best ventilation system,” I finished. “My money is on the auditorium. There are four easy exits, plus it backs up to the road on the far side.” I pointed at my partner, who popped to attention. “Swift, Zeta will point out guards up high. You need you to take down any she can’t immediately reach. I doubt they’ll have more than a lookout. Do it quietly, if you can. No shooting.”
The pegasus rose up on the tips of her toes, her chest fur standing up. “You can count on me, Sir! I’ve got an idea for an approach already!”
“Fine.” I waved towards the zebra’s mane where the ladybug hid. “Everyone gets a bug so if you can’t handle what’s up there yourself, order them to signal me or Zeta to assist. I have little doubt things are going to get loud, but I want us to have an advantageous position by the time they do.” I looked over at the Tortellini twins and Edina. “You lot, I assume, are for when things do get loud?”
The twins covered their muzzles with one hoof and chuckled heartily, before Boil replied, “Bullets sting.” Their horns began to glow and a mint green shine crept over the unicorn's body until he glittered like cut diamond; the shimmering field then sank into his skin.
“Ooh! Ooh! Let me do it!” Edina screeched, leaping up and unfurling two of her whips from her wings. They were an especially vicious looking pair, covered in bits of metal and tipped with a twist of barbed wire and a lead weight. Before anyone could stop her, she swung them both back, almost clipping my nose off, then brought the lashes down across Boil’s face.
I cringed backwards, expecting a spray of blood and the sound of crunching bone; the lead weight should have shattered a good chunk of the stallion’s cheek. Instead, a noise like a chiming bell rang through the lounge. The whip left a thin cut through the top five layers of skin before it stopped like it’d hit a brick wall and dropped to the rug.
The stallion just wiggled his nose and wiped a bit of blood onto the back of one fetlock. Swift, in fact, reacted far worse to the wound than its recipient.
“...What... Why wouldn’t you just leave the force field... you know... outside your skin?” she said, cringing.
Boil looked at her blankly, as though she’d just asked what music tastes like. “What fun would that be?”
Trying to recover my composure, I dusted my perfectly clean coat with my toe and said, “Right. Bulletproof. Lovely. You’re on point then. Just how good is that spell?”
Bake lifted his heavily padded shoulders and let them drop. “Don’t like being hit in the eyes.”
“Then you’ll like being shot in them even less.” I snatched up a pen from the table, drawing a line through the maze-like school building to the auditorium. Moving back along that route some distance, I found what I was looking for. “Here. This is the entry point for the ground pounders. The gym has an exterior and an interior entrance to the lock-rooms. It’s underground and off the likely patrol routes. There’s a maintenance tunnel that runs back behind the gym teacher’s office, through the boiler room, and comes up in what I’m guessing is a closet off of room one-oh-three.”
I tapped the classroom with my pencil then circled it.
“There’s a couple of windows the external scouts should be able to get in through. We regroup here before we hit the auditorium. If anypony doesn’t show or an alarm has gone up and they know we’re coming, we have the ladybugs call Scarlet.” The secretary sat up straighter at his name, listening attentively, as I continued. “He’ll call The Castle and tell them there’s a hydra’s nest or a swarm of parasprites breeding in there. Maybe a Mood Bomb. Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Something to make ’em jump.”
“Sir...” said Swift, “I thought we were trying not to involve the rest of the DPD in this?”
Taxi gave me a concerned expression. “Yeah, I’m with Swift on this one. It’s not like we’d be able to call the cops on them then mysteriously disappear. You know standard operating procedure in an emergency raid situation. They’ll stop flight traffic and block off the road, then set up a series of shield and alert spells over the whole area. We won’t be able to sneak out. Even the fliers won’t be able to leave. So why tip off...”
“Because if things go all parasprite-shaped,” I explained, “our highest priority will be to keep the recordings from leaving to where we can’t trace them. If we tell them about a situation that requires them to bring out the riot squads, then they should be able to prevent anyone or anything from leaving the area - such as, say, certain blackmail recordings taken from the inside of a whorehouse.”
Swift looked at the address on the top left of the school map, then grimaced.
“Wait, is that... Chrysanthemum Lane?... Sir, there’s a PACT and D.P.D. pegasus station-house at three hundred feet above sea level less than a mile from there,” she protested. “I know, I trained there! Response time was less than eight minutes last year. They’ll have the building surrounded before you could get out of the detection perimeter!”
I lifted one of the last bagels on my hooftip and peered at it for a while. “Which is what we want. If it comes to that, we hope Stella or one of her agents can get the recordings from Evidence before Cosmo does. I won’t have any of you die here if it can be avoided. Anypony doesn’t show, we ditch. No sense in walking into a meat grinder.” I bit the side of the bagel, chewing the delicious doughy perfection, and added, as an afterthought, “Explaining why I’m in a drug den in the company of a bunch of ninja prostitutes will probably mean my job, though... so let’s keep it as a last resort.”
****
Fitting seven creatures into the Night Trotter involved a more intimate experience of my companions than I was hoping for. At one point, Zeta volunteered to ride on the roof if necessary. But by moving the front seats forward a few inches, putting Edina on the floor with another ball of yarn to keep her indignant squalling to a minimum, and letting Swift spill half across my back and half across Scarlet’s, we were able to get everyone in. The engine turned, and we were off.
Bake sat beside Taxi, eyeing her horribly scarred flank with intense interest. After some minutes, she noticed his gaze and shuffled her saddles up to cover her rear end. Rather than take offense, he gave her a broad, if extremely ugly, grin.
Rather than risk conversation with him, she raised her voice and asked, “Hey, Hardy? What’s the plan, assuming we pull this insanity off?”
I pushed Swift's wing off of my head, ceasing to use it for a sun visor. “The plan? Cosmo volunteers for Tartarus or leaves the country for the rest of his life. I’m afraid I haven’t thought much past that.”
“Goodie. I want a raise once this is done...”
“You want to back out, you can always go take that job at Luna Cab.”
“Nahhh, I’d have to handle actual passengers then.” A note of irritation entered her words. “I wouldn’t be able to punch any of them in the crotch if they didn’t stop staring at my ass!”
Boil’s cheeks flared bright red and his brother smacked him on the back of the head.
“Am sorry.” The big hoofball player apologized, fixing his helmet, “Most interesting scars ever seen. Very pretty. Never saw cutie-mark not grow back before.”
“Keep your eyes to yourself, kiddo,” my driver snapped. “I might be half your size but I’ll find a way to make you hurt that you won’t like.”
The stallion held out his hoof. “I give you coupon if you want to try one day, pretty lady.”
My driver looked ready to plow us into a fire hydrant; I hurriedly changed the subject. “Could we swing by Requisitions, while we’re on the way? I don’t think my revolver is going to cut it in there.”
Taxi waved her hoof at the rear seats, indicating the trunk. “I went while you were asleep. There’s extra firepower for you and a vest. I managed to find a couple of clips for Masamane,” a little smile touched her lips, “...plus a little something I scrounged together for myself,” she added, in a much lower voice.
“What?!” I barked and tried to leap to my hooves, jostling Swift, who nearly pitched over on top of Edina’s bound-up body down on the floor.
“Hey, I followed your guidelines!” Taxi replied, defensively, “Nothing lethal!”
My back was starting to ache from having my partner’s neck pressed into my vertebrae with the constant motion of the car grinding them together, so I wasn’t much in the mood to argue.
“...Fine. What about the Chief?” I asked, poking my head up to see where exactly we were. There wasn’t much to see. The evening was coming on quick and night would soon fall. The weather factories were still running, but must have been working on a shipment of rain-clouds because it was still dry out. “I assume you couldn’t avoid a report.”
“I avoided a report just fine,” Taxi sniggered. “Swift’s report has us gallivanting off to some hunting cabin outside the city. Jane Pony ‘may have stayed there.' It’s off the PACT patrol routes.”
“Hence, the weaponry.” I pawed at my partner’s shoulder until she lifted her head. “I assume you were using ‘may have stayed’ in the same cosmic sense I ‘may’ have one day breathed the same air as Princess Celestia, right?”
“Errr... yes, sir.”
“Good kid.”
****
During the boom years, Detrot was a center, not only of industry, but of education. The Arcane Academy decided to make its home here, instead of Manehattan or one of the other cities most likely to host a grand university. While they might have regretted that decision in following years, at the time it seemed like a brilliant idea.
We were the heart of innovation for the war effort and the greatest defensive bastion against the dragons. The name ‘Detrot’ meant something, as a point of culture and development.
Ponies back then understood the essential truth that their children were their only hope for a grand future. Those children had opportunities that were envied across the whole of the world.
Those were good years.
The Sunny Days Juvenile Foster Care was a heaped-up cadaverous construct, full of desiccated dreams. They were tasked with making sure even the least amongst them, the orphaned foals of dead miners, city workers, and soldiers lost in the Crusades, would have an education and a home.
They failed.
Had it been abandoned because of the collapse of the economy or because it was no longer needed, then letting it sit fallow might have been reasonably justified as a monument to a great experiment.
Sudden magical contamination had all the poetry of being pasted by a bus while crossing the street. It reminded ponies just a bit too much of their own, extremely potent mortality and that the supposed destinies granted by cutie marks could still all be wiped out in an instant if one failed to look both ways before crossing, and hence it was shoved into one of the city’s innumerable back drawers; too difficult to reclaim, and too depressing to eulogize.
****
“Stop the car,” I ordered, waving one leg in the rear view mirror.
“What?!” Taxi pulled back on the throttle but didn’t brake. “We’re still a mile from the school!”
“We’re walking the rest of the way.” I answered, as she steered us to the curb. “Zeta needs time to get ahead and scout our approach. That and I don’t know if you noticed or not, but a souped up hack isn’t exactly a sneaky vehicle. Quietly, remember?” At that, the cabbie’s expression grew full of apprehension and I knew, then, that something was definitely off the rails. “Quietly... isn’t... a problem... is it?”
“N-no,” she stammered, as she found six sets of eyes on her. “...We should get out now.”
Rather than fuss with opening doors, Swift just rolled down the back window and crawled out onto the pavement. Scarlet had to flop onto his back, then shimmy his hips down until he could roll forward. I dragged myself out after them and found Zeta, having somehow squirreled passed me, already helping Taxi unwedge Boil from the passenger seat; fitting him in the front really was a minor miracle. Bake, meanwhile, backed out and picked up Edina by the scruff of her neck, slinging her over his shoulders like a sack of grain.
In the growing darkness of mid-evening, I looked up over the skyline, trying to see where exactly we’d pulled up. Taxi was always my sense of direction and location and I’d often had to trust that she’d brought me within throwing distance of wherever I needed to be.
We seemed to be in some kind of industrial park. The surrounding buildings were the sort of nondescript, boxy warehouses built by architects uninterested in city beautification. Their sole aesthetic virtue was that they radiated ‘purpose,’ but there was little else.
Smoke stacks, silenced until the morrow, bit into the starry horizon like deformed teeth. I shivered, despite the unseasonable warmth of the evening. The thick storm clouds directly overhead boiled and belched, but held their peace. A street lamp further up the road buzzed, then flicked on as it got dark enough for the bulb to decide we weren’t getting enough of the bleak details of the empty street.
I could still hear the vibrantly active parts of the city, in the distance. Out there, ponies were laughing, fighting, screwing, and living, but in the desolate after-hours of the manufacturing district, with all the workers gone to pub and hearth, the area around Sunny Days felt like it was in a lonely sleep, waiting for the mercy of dawn.
Lost deep in my introspection, it was some time before I noticed the others were watching me, waiting for orders.
“Whew... alright, Sweets.” My own voice sounded very loud in my ears. “Pop the trunk. Let’s see what you got.”
With a very telling hesitancy, Taxi reached under the steering wheel and hit a catch. The car’s boot snapped open smartly and there was sharp intake of breath all round.
I resolved then and there: Screw a death threat. I’m sending Requisitions a cheesecake full of dynamite.
And I resolved this because what my driver had ‘scrounged together’ was a Mark V PEACE Cannon.
****
Usually when PACT and the Detrot Police Department are forced to work together for any reason, there is considerable tension. While regular drilling against the chance of a rogue marauding dragon attack does lend both groups the chance to let off some steam, nothing really manages to completely quell the upset caused by having two policing forces with overlapping jurisdictions.
Despite this, there have been documented times in the history of both agencies where they worked together brilliantly.
One such instance happened during an especially bad run of city-wide unemployment which included a speculative boom and bust in food stocks that left the price of bread sky high. The DPD were ‘encouraged’ to find some means of dealing with civil unrest that didn’t leave lots of dead bodies for the evening news to turn into a morbid collage. As the Castle’s entire arsenal was already largely bought wholesale from the ‘low collateral’ section of the PACT weapons catalogue, it meant new research, and while we didn’t have the labs for that, the eggheads at PACT were more than happy to throw their brains at coming up with non-lethal alternatives.
Their magnum opus was the Polite Enjoinder Against Criminal Enterprise.
****
Taxi hefted the huge blaster out of the trunk and slung its strap around her neck, grunting at the added weight. The PEACE was a modified riot gun, almost a third my driver’s body length in size, with a barrel I could stick my whole hoof into. There was a bottom mounting for saddle fire, and I noted she’d gone for the drum-fed option rather than clip fire. Weirdly, she’d kept the mountings along the weapon to be fired by creatures with fingers, and simply tied a string around the trigger with a bit for her teeth.
It was a gorgeous weapon, all things considered, and in the hooves of any other pony I’d have been pleased to have it along.
“A PEACE Cannon?! Are you out of your little yellow mind?!” I shouted, slamming my forehead against the side of the car.
My driver lifted her nose and sniffed, haughtily, “I’ve taken the training course on this firearm, thank you very much! I passed with flying colors. You’re just jealous.”
“Who in Equestria let you on a gun range long enough to take a training course?!”
She rolled her eyes and patted the gun like an old friend. “You remember that pegasus mare I dated last year? Placid Skies?”
“The PACT twit with the lisp?” I sneered, shoving my hat back on my head.
“Yes, that’s her,” she acknowledged. “She took me to the range. Her special talent is patience! Something some of us, who shall go unnamed, could do with!”
“I... how... how did you even get that thing?!”
“Requisitions likes me, apparently.” My driver gave an impudent little shrug. “At first I told them it was for you and they were... for some reason, very reluctant, but then I said it was for me and they practically dumped it in my lap. I’ve got all different kinds of ammo, too!”
Pushing the cannon’s empty case to one side, she dug out an entire carton of extra drums in all the colors of the rainbow. Thanks to the idiosyncracy of the ammo manufacturer, I didn’t recognize any of them by name, but ‘Tom’s Revenge’ and ‘Party Pooper’ both sounded like unpleasant things to be hit with.
Unfortunately, Taxi was already to the stage where she was caressing the multi-chambered monster like a newborn; wrestling it away from her would have required Zeta’s assistance, or a short emergency room stay. More importantly, it would also have delayed us. I wanted to get moving sooner rather than later.
Damn.
“If you ever shoot me with this gun... accident or not, I’m shooting back. Understood?”
Ratcheting the action bar back, she fitted a drum marked ‘Hush Now’ under the barrel, then stood up on her rear legs, checking the safety. “Understood. I promise, I’m a much better shot than I used to be! Just... you know, let me go first, okay?”
“By all means.” I dragged the cannon’s box out and tossed it onto the curb, then went back to the trunk. In spite of the high probability I was going to be fragged by my driver before the night was out, I couldn’t fight the big grin spilling across my muzzle; Taxi knew me too well.
A police-issue Minotaurus shotgun, a reliable oldie-but-goodie of a weapon, sat there wrapped in cellophane, alongside two boxes of mouth-loadable quick clips for earth ponies. Alongside them was a series of intricate straps, plus a second trigger bit and a full-chest flak jacket.
I doffed my coat, picking up the bulletproof vest and sticking my head through. I wrestled with the buckles until one of the Tortellini twins fastened them in place with a burst of magic. The dark blue armor covered my chest and spine to just above my tail and wrapped around my side in places it wouldn’t otherwise interfere with the firing of my gun. It wasn’t perfect protection and it definitely wasn’t comfortable, but I wouldn’t be walking bullet bait either.
Turning back, I lifted the shotgun in my teeth and laid it on the curbside.
“Oh sir! I want one!” Swift gushed.
“You can have one when you grow up, kid,” I replied, winking at her.
My partner stiffened, then gave her wings a flap that blew air right up my tail. “I’m so going to get you for that, sir.”
I laughed, cradling the weapon to my chest with one foreleg and smiling gratefully at my driver. “If I die tonight, Sweets, I think I’ll die happy.”
The cabbie just rolled her eyes, breathed on her hoof, and smugly polished the side of her cannon’s barrel.
“Your lady take good care of you, little stallion,” Bake commented, levitating the straps out of the trunk.
Mistress Zeta helped me attach the extra belts to my gun harness, expertly wiggling the new holster to make sure it was tight on my side as Boil unwrapped the beauty itself. I turned so he could fit the shotgun’s stock into place, then sucked in a breath as they connected my rear leg to the cartridge eject and adjusted it.
Draping the second trigger around my neck, I picked up the shotgun’s bit and I tugged until I heard the ear-pleasing click of the safety. Finally, I stuffed several additional cartridges in my front pocket and swept my jacket back on.
“Alright! Scarlet, front and center!” I barked and Stella’s secretary almost threw himself at my knees.
“Yes, Detective?”
“You’re waiting in the car. Don’t touch the stereo or Taxi will use pressure points to make all the blood in your body flow backwards.”
He nodded and climbed into the back seat, incidentally curling up in my warm spot.
“Swift.” My partner, who’d been checking her kit and setting her fresh clips in her vest, raised her head. I lifted my chin towards the sky. “Get up high and find the school. Scout from as high as you can and don’t get seen. Wait for my signal and watch for Zeta. Tell your ladybug to have hers chirp at her if she’s about to walk into something she can’t handle. If you feel a tingle, that’s me watching you. One chirp for yes, two chirps for no, three chirps for ‘wait’ and four for ‘attack’. You hear one continuous noise, you get out. That’s pull back. You all got me?”
“Yes, sir!” Swift splayed her wings and blew off the ground in a flash of orange, sailing off towards the rooftops, leaving behind a microburst that sent my mane flapping in my eyes.
I let out a low breath and turned to face the darkened street.
Seven against an unknown force with only surprise to our advantage. Seven to save the lives of hundreds. Maybe even thousands.
The fates had decreed a night of blood and mayhem. The thin air, flavored with smoke from the smoldering forges, felt crisp as good wine and sweet as my mother’s pie. I didn’t need Taxi’s intuition to tell me death was breathing down our necks; I could feel his rattling laughter in my bones as he toasted the seven fools coming to meet him.
It felt good.
I inhaled deeply, savoring the aroma of the Grim Wrangler's scotch... then pushed my chest out and grinned my maddest grin.
“We’re ready. Cosmo won’t know what hit him.”
****
“Hardy?”
“What is it, Sweets?”
“The school’s the other way.”
“Oh... uh... right."
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WHOOOOOOOooooo!!
Another lumping of utterly enjoyable Detrot! Storms are brewing, and more cast is developed!
I'd like to say up front that the new Ninja-whores are the oddest rag-tag bunch of misfits that have ever been on an ostensibly good side.
With that said, let's get right into it!
You can feel accomplished in life by having a rule named after you. Pinkie Pie has at least four rules just for a shotguns, she's obviously led a very full and exciting life.
Immediate mental Image:
25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6egk7IyGv1rrc57bo1_500.jpg
I've always been too cheap/self-reliant to order room service. Thus I can empathize with having no smegging idea how much a proper tip is.
The password is bagels.
Ouch, didn't see that one coming. Though I probably should have with all the stonewear that's been thrown at or otherwise intersected my head. Not a long story, but lots of little ones.
Too damn late.
...Welp! Can't argue with that one!
"Actually, if it's all the same to you, Chief Jade, can you please just shoot me dead here? Out back is okay too, if you'd rather not stain the rug."
"Um, Taxi, What's he doing?"
"Oh, it's his Noir thing. Every Detective has it, where they see the rotting pulse of the city or something like that."
"Should we... go poke him or something?"
"Nah, he'll come to in a second."
*sad tuba noise*
My trope-sense's first instinct was that there would be jack-shit nothing in the Pre-school, but on second thought, it's time to throw the poor cop-dog a bone and let Hardy & his army of ninja prostitutes get to throw rocks at a wasp nest on purpose and actually have wasps come out.
On third thought, Fuck Wasps.
damnlol.com/i/7d2ba5aefba824fb90ff7407420fb4b5.jpg
Hope that bullet-proof tacvest is pre-spending-cut era, Hardy!
Okay, its now confirmed.
Zecora is the Goddamn Batmare.
Edit: Also, how does this not have a tvtropes page yet?
I'm assuming the PEACE Cannon also has 'Don't Want It Don't Need It', 'Bucks McGillicutty', and 'Sonic Rainbomb' rounds, of course.
(And maybe 'Ursa Maxima' and 'Muffins', as well.)
Now, ordinarily, this is the point where I would demand an Adventures of Edina side-story. I'll settle for just a bunch more chapters with her, though.
2236827 Heh, Edina's was one of the most fun characters to just toss out there. She's easy to write for and I'd love to use her some more if I get the chance.
-Chessie
2236908
Man, with a character like that, you make opportunities to write her.
A miniture pure white griffon, Edina sounds kinda cute. Although all the whips are a bit of a turn-off ,for me anyway. Also not so fond of split personalities. Yeah, Swift is much more attractive.
2237350 I say again, you like'em short and crazy, don'tcha?
-Chessie
2237975 Yeah, just not Edina level crazy, and not with whips
2236908
…I'd love to use her some more too!
meerkat8472 ain't the only one who loves 'em short and crazy. EEEEEEEE featherkitten! With yarn! Ye gods Chessie (or Kasen), what you do ta me…
This ought to be 'think', I think. There's also an uncapitalized sentence following a full-stop period—oh heck, I love you so much I'll jes' tell you.
Also, oooooh, those creepy masochist ponies who wear the invulnerable force field a few inches UNDER the skin...
2238475 Just cause you want an invincible, hypermasochistic mare to beat doesn't mean I'm gonna write yah one yah perv.
-Chessie
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eep! I do?
Oh, I think I get it. That wasn't an oooh of "I am so stimulated by this thought", it was an oooh of "your imaginative characterization is stunning and these characters are dead-on convincing while still coming from a place that I find eerie and alien"
2238577 Yeah, well, I read your stories. I love'em, but I DID read'em and you're evil. It's one of the things I like about you.
-Chessie
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Awwww…I'm a GOOD poni
I think maybe it was HamGravy who said "sorry, my imagination's kind of a jerk sometimes"?
I can't wait for peace to be spread throughout in the next chapter. That cannon sounds awesome.
Pretty neat chapter all round, with even more characters to add to the ever increasing number in this story. 2 bulldozers and a stealth zebra with a mini-griffon. Oh and i suppose there's the bagel seller as a new background fella.
mmm bagels.
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I can't take credit for Edina; She was decidedly Chessie's brainchild. All of the Stilettos are, really, in part because Chessie's personal familiarity with kink subcultures quite effectively outstrips my own.
-CEO Kasen
I love how Hardy is simultaneously badass and a buttmonkey. It's a nice balance.
I do believe a heap of proverbial fecal matter is about to impact the proverbial fan, and I want a front-row seat.
2249997 You're not wrong. Not at all.
-Chessie
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New cover is awesome !
I do not mean that old picture is not that good, but seeing all three of them on cover is nice
btw: could you please post link to old cover ?
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Glad you like it! Here's the old cover, as requested:
http://i.imgur.com/6ANpW.jpg
--CEO Kasen
These are the songs they will fight to
2236777
Err... that's not Zecora. She'd long gone considering it's been 60 years.
2236777
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Zecora is the cousin's mother who still speaks in rhyme.
*reads intro*...Jesus Christ...what the hell was Pinkie up to!?
Oh boy! Oh boy! Just what I have always wanted! At last my very own pet pony heart!
I will hug him, and stroke him, and cuddle him and sing to him and call him George.
This would have been a good time to give the valet one of Stitch's freeze-pops. That will teach him to interrupt the brooding of an EPD detective on Serious Brooding Business.
Daaaaw!
Hardy and Heart are so happy together!
Well there is your griffon sex dwarf...
If Sykes is a combination of a golden eagle and a lion, I have this barmy picture in my imagination of Edina as part Kodkod and part budgerigar.
Hardy should bring that up with HR at the next union meeting...
I can see Hardy now, sheepishly glancing aside and nerviously tapping his forehooves together during an NAO/GAO budget audit for the funds he appropriated that day.
"Would you mind explaining to the panel Detective Hardy why you were seen in the presence of 4 very premium Vivarium prostitutes after renting out the penthouse honeymoon suite at the High Seas?"
"Errr..."
This was playing in the background as they were preparing.
One thing that has been bothering me while Hardy has been dashing around the city: does Hardy not remember that Cosmo laced the scotch he drank with the same arcano-magic tracking "stuff" Cosmo was tracking Svelte with? That could potentially turn everything pear-shaped in very short order, seeing as how their primary weapon is surprise. Hardy should really be sitting this raid out (preferably at Darling's coffee shop with a tray of bagels). Either that or he should take a massive dose of diuretics, save it all in a 5 litre jug (all the while shouting at Scarlet "NO I DO NOT NEED ANY HELP! STOP STARING AT ME! I have a shy bladder, ok?"), and send it 3rd class on a mail train to Appleloosa. That will certainly flummox Cosmo's tracking team.
I guess I will find out soon enough in the next chapter...
Chapter 17: "Meet the Gang" - no deep meaning with this one.
4206005 I hope you remember a few Chapters back, with Cosmo and UAA Dude Talking about how "The Scry" wasn't Working, as well as the offhand comment of Hardy being Smart enough to Act like his drinking with out every actually drinking.
Minor edit: I just started reading a few days ago, and I see how late my comment is suddenly.
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Heh...
As I discovered in later chapters, it is quite a bit more complicated...
Wow. Great chapter. Several things stood out.
1 I simply LOVE our little ragtag group we have heading to their deaths. Interesting balance of skills and personalities.
2 the imagery of said group. The description of all of them sitting ariund the lounge gave me the image of Hardy sitting on a small throne, Clockwork Orange style, Scarlet draped luxuriously along his lap, the Twins perched in front of him like stoic guard dogs, fully kitted out, Zeta and Taxi flanking the throne, leaning against it casually, as if daring somepony to try something, and Swift directly above, vested, wings unfurled. Just add Edina off to the side playing with yarn, and Hardy sipping casually from a coffee cup.
Such a perfect 'LETS DO THIS!!!!" moment..... Ruined by the MOST predictable common and over used but still funniest lines ever written- "It's the other way"
Only catching up with this story well after the fact, but I gotta comment on my progress so far. There've been some hints that Cosmo didn't actually kill Ruby Blue, but it's too early to say if they're foreshadowing or a red herring. Still, I have a very bad feeling that Cosmo really was framed for this. That, as much as Cosmo deserves to die, if our heroes take him out, they'll play right into the hooves/hands of someone much worse.
Am I right, or is it too late in the night / too early in the morning for me to do grammar stuff?
I love this story and regret every second it was in my read it later box. All these bdsm jokes and such are hilarious. Although, I have to say, a cat is an odd flogger to threaten someone with. Poor Scarlet, all the cuddly wants is love.
Curiosity, did you do research or are you in the community?
The Tortellini twins. Oh, I love 'em already, and nothing's even happened yet. And something tells me that the PEACE cannon is a descendent of Pinkie's Party cannon, yes?
This was some very potent imagery.
8861871 Sigh...I wish I could pump out stuff like that regularly. Much of this story is getting the characters from place to place, and the heavy imagery thing takes enormous time and energy to put on the page.
-C
Pfft, that ending!
Well, there’s no ‘death’ tag, so I think everyone will be safe, or at the very least still alive.
I thought Bake was the one in front.
I miss the Scholar.
I like how it appears company “rules” are dictated by “things we have to tell Pinkie Pie not to do” in the future.
You’re addicted, Hardy. Cool it.
What did I just say!?
Split personality griffin. I wonder if that’s common (or more common) in their race.
We seem to have a large case of the “almost shooting somebody through itchy trigger finger” in this story. Concerning.
I know a certain Rarity who goes by “Mattie” in the multiverse that would LOVE these two.
Zeta seems to be the most “in charge” out of all of them. Hmm.
I can never decide if the DPD is actually helpful or not to this entire situation.
And that’s how you end a chapter right there.
-GM, master of chapps.
lmao I love how Hardy was like: "You know what? I would like my box of heart polished!"
Similar thing with the note at the start, I'm unsure now if it's a thematic thing and as such I should stop pointing it out.
Lambast has no e.
Every new device or weapon created in the past 60 years has a list of rules, regulations and guidelines required to be printed specifically due to The Pink One, don't they?
So in addition to our normal posse of various flavors of fun crazy, we have a mini cat-bird that hasn't figure out if she's a cat or a bird, a super zebra ninja, and two literal meat shields just here for a good beating. Fun times ahead! But they are fueled by the power of coffee and bagels so the universe must be on their side!
Also Hardy, stop lying, we all know that Equestrian Ponies are at least 30% feline in make up, higher in some then in others. Also loving the getting around having to mess with your karma by lying via sticking to the precise meaning of words and that, as long as you don't have evidence it never happened there anything is theoretically possible to 'may' have happened.
Now, let's just be glad for how out numbered you all are going to be.... means Taxi has better odds of hitting one of them then one of you all!
Also, my only thought on her pulling out her new toy was of the first time they handed Schlock 'non-lethal' weaponry.
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/873742612929081374/1036062583863652412/unknown.png
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Freely admitted, I was reading Shlock Mercenary when I came up with that.
- Chessie
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One of the things I most enjoyed about writing Starlight was giving the 'flavor' of ponies to everything. The tech was all being created in semi-real time as I was writing, so there's 'improvise' and then also having to go back and make sure new stuff I wrote was consistent. Sometimes it succeeded, sometimes not.
- Chessie
...oh god. ...are you mean enough to have her show up later, Chessie?