• 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 2, Chapter 14: Champion of Right, Swoops out of the Shadows...

Starlight Over Detrot
Act 2, Chapter 14: Champion of Right, Swoops Out of the Shadows

"Mane. Con Mane."

Just the name evokes images of fine suits, high-speed import chariots, and attractive, scantily dressed, and potentially deadly mares and stallions. Or, rather, it certainly did before and during the Crusades, but these days, Equestrian covert operations are themselves in a bit of an embarrassed decline.

During the Crusades, the Celestial Intelligence Agency, along with its domestic counterpart, the Department of Barnyard Security, were responsible for some major coups; The Appaloosa Valley Massacre would not have been possible had the dragonflight not been coaxed right into the ambush by Celestial agents, and the DBS prevented more than a few Draconic Birthday terrorist attacks. But with the fall of the dragons and the subsequent economic surrender of the diamond dogs... what was there left to do?

Make no mistake, recent times have not exactly been peaceful, but Equestria's enemies have changed in nature. No longer do whole nations, such as the changelings and dragons, eye Equestria as some kind of vulnerable prize; The greater threat comes from arcane mishaps and rampaging beasts, which A) are individualized and disorganized; B) offer little in the way of usable intelligence, and C) are very very hard for a covert operative to usefully seduce.

Faced with decreasing relevance and budget cuts, the intelligence community grew uneasy; While scouting and spy chariots remained relevant, their talents in subterfuge and sabotage were going to waste... until they hit upon the brilliant scheme of manufacturing new enemies.

For about 4 years, Equestria was menaced by the "Kelpies," water-dwelling seaweed-draped horselike beings with a hydrosupremacist attitude. It was quite an elaborate staging, too: The DBS created photos, documents, and intelligence gathered from Kelpie sources. They held uncomfortably S&M-like 'interrogations' of 'Kelpie agents.' They even went so far as to choreograph chariot chases through major metropolitan marketplaces, including setting up fruit stands manned by DBS agents, stocked with fruit designed to tumble and splat as dramatically as possible.

Equestria bought it. Eventually, Equestria bought it all too completely; The CIA and DBS became victims of their own success, because this house of fishy-smelling cards only collapsed when Luna decided that the Kelpies were so great a threat that a show of force was needed. She took several hundred of her finest Night Guards, flew to where the Kelpies supposedly nested... and found her armies descending upon a plot of land containing a kelp-strewn pond, an abandoned furniture warehouse, and a handful of very sheepish earth pony agents covered in naught but seaweed.

Equestria's covert services have yet to completely recover from the scandal, either in terms of public credibility or financial support. Even some of the more secretive agencies, the ones the regular populace barely know exists, have been feeling the pinch.

--The Scholar


The dank, smelly alleyway was scant shelter against the rain, but beat cops have few options. My hooves ached and I wanted caffeine. More than that, I wanted a beer, but drinking on the job was a big no-no.

“Two years. Two years and you can’t be on time.” I grumbled to myself, checking my watch for the sixth time. A voice in my head was surprised to see that watch. I’d lost it almost ten years ago.

There was a clatter of hooves, and I stuck my head out of the cavernous alley to see a young mare in a short skirt and fishnet stockings ducking under the awning of a nearby shop. She caught sight of me, and her face filled with fearful resignation. A prostitute expecting me to bust her on a cold, rainy night as she tried to make her way home. I shook my head and tipped my police cap to her, pulled back and glanced at the time again.

“What’ve you gotten yourself into now?”

The voice made me jump, but it was familiar. Juniper, his green face almost black in the dim light and the rain matting his face fur until he looked like a drowned rat in a trenchcoat, stepped out of the deep shadows in the alley.

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I was wondering when you might show up. Aren’t we going to go bust those fools on Sixteenth street tonight?”

“We busted them a long time ago.” He waved one hoof, dismissively, shaking water out from under his coat collar. “I’m not here about that. Tonight, you nearly ate a concussion-enhanced flashbang.”

“Oh…This is a dream, then? I was sort of hoping this would be one of those calming conversations where you tell me I’m doing great and I should keep up the good work?”

“Yeah, sure. I just came to warn you, or rather, Gale asked me to warn you. That’s incidental, though.”

I opened my coat and patted the buckles of my gun harness under my forelegs, giving one wayward strap a slight tug. “Warn me?”

“A few things, I guess. Mine and his.” Juniper sighed, pulling his sodden coat off. I opened the side of mine and he slipped under. I rested my head on his neck as we shared the warmth in the cold alleyway, just a few hours before dawn. “I hate this cryptic shit, but causality is slipping. You could die soon. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe not. I’m worried. Going into that hole after Bari was a stupid move.”

“Any more than anything else I’ve done lately?”

“Look, that kid worships you, and Sweet Shine would follow you into Tartarus. I don’t know about the blue dickhead, but he’s at least got sense enough to question you.”

“What’s your point, Juni?”

“I’m just saying you need to be careful. You don’t have any kind of destiny here, much as I know you love that Shining Armor crap. You die in a way that bug’s heart in your chest can’t fix, that’s the end of the line.” Juniper shuffled from one hoof to the other and groaned. “Ugh, why’d you have to pick a night where my hooves feel like they’ve had nails driven into them?”

“Don’t know,” I replied with a shrug. “I pissed in someone’s cereal in a previous life and they’ve been making me pay for it with visits from my dead partner who gives me gloomy warnings about impending doom and reminds me of my own mortality, all evidence to the contrary. What’s your excuse?”

At this, Juniper laughed, slinging his leg around my neck and ruffling my mane with his free hoof. “Damn right! So if you get to be the cunt with a second chance, you don’t get to waste it! There are things moving on this side. You can consider this a warning from your magically hyper-sensitive organs, or a hallucination, or a sign to lay off the strong cheese before you get hit with a flash-bang, but the upshot is going to be the same. Causality is keeping me from telling you terribly much in case you bugger everything up. I’m telling you, though, you’re on the right track, but if you die, you won’t be the only one. Got me?”

“Nothing new there.” I tried to sound grumpy, but couldn’t help myself as I pushed his hoof away from my mane and snatched my cap up off the ground where it’d fallen. “Now, you want to shove off so I can wake up with a splitting headache?”

“Meh, Gale is handling the headache. Incidentally, you’re about to wake up tied to a chair. Don’t be an arse or somepony might shoot you before you can remedy that.”

“Wait, tied?!”

The night faded. The rain stopped. I opened my eyes.

****

Ow.

The headache was there. It was fading at record speed, but the sensation still reminded me of being shot.

I'd opened my eyes. Why couldn't I see anything? I shut them, then opened them once more. It didn't seem to be doing much good. Maybe two hits right in the face with disabling magics in a day had finally fried my optic nerves and I was blinded for life. That cheery thought had just enough time to drag my spirits into the gutter before a light popped on above my head.

I stared up at the lightbulb for several seconds. The ridiculous notion that I must have had a good idea I wasn't aware of passed through my scattered mind. The bulb was bare, white, and coated in a thick layer of dust.

My legs feel awfully stiff, I thought, sluggishly, I should go for a walk.

My forelegs jerked, but didn't seem very willing. Glancing at them, curiously, I noticed a bit of what seemed to be very tough string tight behind my fetlocks. It looked too thin to be restraining, but as I tugged on my knees, there wasn't any give worth mentioning. The fiber shimmered and shined as I moved my head back and forth. Shutting my eyes, I flexed the muscles in my rear calves, forcing my toes into the chair. Most things either explode or break or something under the weight of an earth pony’s muscles. The chair didn’t so much as creak.

Now I’m a little worried.

Lifting my head, I tried to get some estimation of my surroundings. Outside of the sharply lit little circle, there was only that terrible, scary variety of dark that interrogation rooms and the space under a foal's bed really have.

My trenchcoat was gone, along with my gun, hat, and harness. Somepony had even unzipped my cardiac chest pouch. The pocket hung open in a way that made me feel somehow even more naked.

The bastards hadn't even left me my tie. Had I been wearing a tie? I couldn't remember.

They hit you with a flashbang in training, just for demonstrative purposes, but the side-effects of that particular spell include bouts of hazy memory regarding the events just preceding it. Most officers forget about precisely how awful it is until after they’ve dropped one on their hooves or tried to toss one through what turned out to be an unbreakable window.

I tried to crane my neck down enough to see if my chest was flashing, but it was hard to do from a sitting position. It didn’t seem to be, but then, considering the recent damage to my eyes I might have been wrong.

Haaard… Boooiled.”

The voice was like an industrial sized nail-milling machine somepony had applied to a mountain of chalkboards, reinvigorating my prior headache.

“Ahhh, is that Miss Iris Jade I hear? Or is she busy?” I inquired of the dark.

You’re a very difficult pony to find, Hard Boiled,” the voice continued. “Former Detective of Detrot Police Department. Apparent assassin of King Cosmo, the Ace dealer. The only pony I’ve ever met that we couldn’t magically track. We’re still figuring out that trick, but make no mistake, we’ll piece it together eventually.”

I raised one eyebrow, though there wasn’t anything to raise it at.

“I'm fairly certain Jade doesn’t know about the King of Ace. At the very least, Detrot P.D. doesn’t know about that.” I murmured. “Besides... she’d put me in a holding cell. She’d want me to beg. She’d want me to know it was her from the moment I woke up.”

There was a long, awkward pause.

This is not Chief Iris Jade, Hard Boiled. I represent a group with interests in the armor of Nightmare Moon.”

I leaned back as best I could in the chair, making myself comfortable. “Oooh, so you’re the ones behind all those murders? I was starting to wonder when we might meet.”

What?! No! We would never-” The voice quickly recomposed itself. “...I mean, no, we’re not.” My ears pricked as a hoof crossed the boundary of the light. It was the color of the night sky, black as pitch, with flecks of grey around the fetlock. A leg followed it, then a chest. The pony stopped before its face might be revealed. “We want to know what you know about the armor, Hard Boiled. You will tell us!”

Two golden, shimmering orbs appeared, with vertical slits down the middle; it was a second before I realized they were the creature’s eyes. Its lips slid open in a vicious smile and two sharp fangs jutted down from its upper jaws, hanging over thin, rictus lips. A pair of black, willowy wings spread open on its back, covered in a thin layer of translucent skin. It hissed, a sound straight out of the subconscious, and a thin jet of mist curled from its muzzle.

It was so over-the-top that I almost choked on my own tongue, laughing somewhere between incredulity and relief. The creature frowned, which didn’t improve its looks much.

Is something amusing, Hard Boiled? I assure you, I am deathly serious.

“Bwaahaaahaaa! Oh, Celestia, you think that's going to scare me?!” I laughed, wishing I could pound my legs. “Sweetcakes, if I had two bits for every thing I'd seen this month that was uglier than you, I could buy Celestia's palace and a night in her bed with Luna to top it off!”

The creature narrowed one yellow eye. “We have your friend! He will die if you do not tell us!” it said, its voice rising - but there was a note of desperation there.

“I assume you mean the prig in the vest?”

“...Yes! We can destroy him! Do not test our will, Hard Boiled!”

“You know what? I could use a nap. You mind having room service leave me some clean towels?”

The being’s wings snapped shut and it sat down hard.

You are insane,” it said, softly, still half masked by the shadows.

“Yeah, that guy will gleefully agree with you, but-”

Without warning, a door banged open and the room was flooded with light. My eyes didn’t thank me for the experience. Spots danced at the edges of my vision as I blinked quickly, trying to clear the glare.

“Hey, Night Bloom! You want your hay-fries with pickles again? Oh! Hey, he’s awake! Why didn’t you come get me?”

Standing in the doorway was a second, taller and slightly broader creature, who might have been a pony if not for the dark coloration, bat wings, and similarly golden eyes. He held a spatula in one corner of his mouth and wore a white, stained apron that said ‘Bite The Cook!’ in big black letters. He was maybe a head taller than I, with the same nasty teeth, though with an enviable jawline and strong cheekbones.

The creature I presumed to be Night Bloom was angrily rubbing her eyes. Now I got to see her in the light, telling her gender was pretty easy. She actually had a certain exotic beauty, even if her ears looked like they’d been stretched several inches longer than they should have been and her canines could have been used as letter openers.

“Dammit, Cereus! I told you, I'm interrogating the prisoner!” she snapped, trotting over and trying to push the male out of the room with one hoof on his chest.

He peered over her shoulder at me, amber eyes wide. “Interrogate?" he whined. "Can’t we just ask him this time? The interrogation thing is sooo boring! Besides, we 'interrogated' that mare earlier today, got nothing, and then all I had to do was bat my eyelashes at her and she wouldn’t shut up.”

“No! Interrogation! We do interrogation, you putz! We don’t have an interrogation room so we can ask nicely!”

“Alright, alright… no need to call names.” Cereus drooped a little, like a puppy who’d been told he couldn’t have a treat, but then brightened again. “But if he were to answer our questions, would he want some hay fries? I made extra and the other mare only had two plates and his friend is still asleep.”

Night Bloom slapped herself in the forehead so hard I winced. Turning to me, she shook her head and muttered, “...interns…” then kicked the door shut in Cereus’ face.

“Got yourself a rookie?” I asked, casually, wiggling my rear legs a little.

She stared at the space between her hooves and replied without thinking. “He still thinks a sleeper cell is a small apartment. Last night he accidentally pepper sprayed himself. I don’t know how he managed to sneak you out of that hole in the ground-” her head came up and she snapped her mouth shut. “Questions! You! You will answer them!”

“Uh...sure.” I replied. “What do you want to know?”

This was apparently the wrong answer, because Night Bloom stomped over and slapped me. Maybe slap is a strong word. Maybe patted across the cheek with intent. If it’d been a slap, I’m pretty sure it should have hurt more than that.

“The prisoner will speak when spoken to!” she barked, then… aggressively patted me again, before shaking her hoof, staring at it. Smacking an earth pony when you aren’t one is one of those little experiences most ponies don’t get to have if they’re smart. “Ouch… dammit, they make that look so much easier in the training films…”

“Night Bloom… Night Bloom’s your name?” I cocked my head, working my jaw a little.

“Yes, dammit… that moron.” She glared towards the door, then flopped her rear hooves out, sitting down hard, and putting her hooves over her face. “I should just go get another flashbang, hope it erases your memory completely if I double up on them, and start over in a few hours...”

“You know, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.” I said. “Seriously, what do you want to know?”

Night Bloom’s left wing half-unfurled and she used the tiny claw tipping the joint to scratch her fluffy eartip. “I don’t… ugh!” she groaned, plaintively. “Couldn’t you act a little intimidated?”

“I’m not good at ‘intimidated’, I’m afraid.” I would have shrugged if my tied knees hadn’t precluded that possibility. “The pony who drives for me can stop an equine heart by poking you in the right place, my partner could happily chew her way through a hydra if she was allowed to take small bites, and the guy you have tucked away in here drove a sword through a diamond dog before stapling a pony to a desk. Speaking of ponies...what exactly are you and, come to think of it what do you have tying me to this chair? It’s awfully strong.”

The bat pony sighed and dropped her chin to her chest. “Luna damned... I didn’t need this. A ‘milk run,’ she said. ‘Take a vacation,' she said. I know when I need a vacation, dammit! Eight years isn’t so long to go without time off...” she grumbled to herself, then lifted her head and replied, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you haven’t heard of my species. Dusk ponies aren’t common this far from Canterlot and we do our best to keep to ourselves.” She gestured at my legs. “You’re tied with a piece of ‘aurora.' Princess Luna makes it out of some rather pretty magnetic fluctuations in the atmosphere, then spins it into that form somehow. I never asked her exactly.”

You know the princess?” I asked, a bit flabbergasted.

Night Bloom’s long, fuzzy ears flattened to her head. "rrrrghdammit, why am I answering questions here?! You’re the one being interrogated! We need to get the armor of Nightmare Moon out of the city and it’s stuck in that stupid magical case and the only pony who knows how to open the case is dead!”

That gave me pause. “The… armor… is stuck in its case?”

The door banged open again, and Cereus jammed his dark snout around the side. “Hey, Night Bloom? These hay fries are getting cold. Could you untie him now? Didn’t you say he was probably on our side?”

Night Bloom glowered at the young stallion over her shoulder. “I said we would find out, you half-wit!”

I shook my head. “The best I can say is I’ve been tracking the being or beings who killed Fizzle and there are several pertinent facts you need to know about what I’ve discovered, but I’m starving and I talk poorly on an empty stomach.”

Cereus looked hopeful. Night Bloom’s brows furrowed. “Rookie, I’m going to kill you one of these days.”

“Not before breakfast, though, right?”

****

“How did you spice these? They’re delicious!” I asked, wolfing down another muzzleful of the delightful hay. It was just greasy enough that, would my cardiologist not faint at the sight of the insect organ residing in my chest, he’d definitely punch me for making his job that much harder.

“Hint of nutmeg, little bit of garlic, whole bunch of cayenne pepper!” Cereus exclaimed, snatching a bottle of hot sauce from the middle of the table and upending it over his own plate, then messily burying his muzzle in the feast.

Night Bloom hadn’t let me untie my hooves, but she’d agreed to let me eat, and now sat sullenly munching on her meal beside Cereus. The little picnic in an interrogation chamber was going to end up being one of the weirder meals I’d ever eaten, but at least it was tasty.

“So, tell me. You two are… what? Royal Guard?” I asked.

The male bat pony raised his chin, proudly. “Ha! No way! Those Royal Guard guys are wimps! We’re from M6!”

His partner smacked him across the back of the head. “Does the word ‘prisoner’ mean absolutely nothing to you?!”

“Oh...right. Sorry…” Cereus rubbed the spot on his skull where she’d hit him, then smiled at me amiably. “Could you forget I said that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “I’ve no idea what M6 is anyway. Some kind of special ops group?” I asked.

Night Bloom pulled a face. “Dammit...Would you just eat up so we can get back to this interrogation?”

“Ah, right.” I took another bite of my hay-fries and munched them as I contemplated the two beings in front of my chair. Cereus definitely didn’t radiate ‘secret agent,' but then, I’d never met any secret agents, so I couldn’t have said with certainty. Bloom might have, if she’d gotten everything she knew about secret agents from Con Mane movies.

“So… you work for… who?” I asked, carefully.

“Can’t shay. Nighty will shmack me again,” Cereus muttered, chewing noisily.

Night Bloom grunted at her partner, “He’s going to look up M6 in the public registrar the second he gets out of here. We only do secret things. That doesn’t mean we’re invisible.” She turned to me. “We work for Her Majesty Princess Luna. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll tell us everything we want to know or the full wrath of the night will descend upon you!”

I rubbed my muzzle against my leg, trying to scratch a sudden itch on my nose. “Bat ponies-”

“Dusk ponies, dammit! We are not bats!” Night Bloom growled, flaring her wings.

“Fine, dusk ponies, working for Princess Luna, interested in the armor of Nightmare Moon?” I canted my chin in their direction. “You know, I was wondering why the Princesses didn’t have somepony guarding the armor. You two are the one she sent to do that, aren’t you?”

The mare stopped chewing and swallowed, uncomfortably. “I guess it doesn’t matter if you know. All our indicators say you’re deranged and will end up wrapped in a strait jacket or a funeral shroud within the month.” Rising, she put one hoof on her chest, lifting her nose in the air with the proud air of somepony either full of her own authority or trying to get a ladybug to crawl up and out of her nostrils. “Princess Luna sent us to... handle... the transit of the armor. We are her trusted agents; her personal guard!” Her pointy ears fell slightly and she mumbled, guiltily, “At least… I thought I was trustworthy...”

“Right…” I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

I didn't quite succeed. Night Bloom huffed and dropped her leg. “It was a damnably simple job until we got to this moon forsaken city! I was supposed to be taking down time and training him-” She waved leg at her companion. “-not chasing stupid police ponies!”

“Not working out then?”

“Oh hush! Like you’ve done any better lately!” she snapped. “You almost got caught by that psychopathic druggie who runs the police in this crazy city! If we hadn’t needed you, I’d have been inclined to let her have you!”

“I’m sorry, I’m trying to get a grip on what’s going on here,” I replied. “You don’t seem like you get much time in the field.”

Night Bloom’s lower lip quivered and she covered her face with her knee. I thought, for a moment, I was about to witness a very undignified emotional collapse, but she mastered herself after just a few sniffles. “I’m not a field agent, Mister Boiled. I’m logistics.” She stuck out her rear leg, flashing a cutie-mark that looked like a clipboard on her hip at me. “This isn’t the kind of gig I wanted, but it’s what I have. I’m stuck with this situation and I’m stuck with you, until I can get that wretched armor out of that stupid, awful box!”

I nodded, quietly, then laid my head on one foreleg and thought.

The two of them presented an interesting conundrum.

On the one hoof, they’d tied me to a chair after cold cocking me and I’d never so much as heard of a dusk pony before. On the other, his questionable intelligence aside, nopony who made hay fries that good could have an evil bone in his body, and Night Bloom, to date, hadn’t actually successfully injured anypony. She was about as good an interrogator as I was a driver and, her racial oddity aside, there were many intelligent species in Equestria; not every one of them went out of their way to get on television.

If what she’d said was to believed, they’d also apparently saved me from the wrath of Chief Iris Jade.

I decided to take another little gamble to extend my winning streak. I realize there are those that will say getting smacked around by a paranoid unicorn, beaten up by a professional hoof-boxer, attacked by school supplies, fired from my job, rendered homeless by arsonists, and eventually killed is not a winning streak. Well, I challenge them to say that with a belly full of some of the most fantastic hay-fries the world has ever seen!

Setting my shoulders, I sat up. “I… suspect we’re working towards similar ends here and since I think my options are ‘sit here and rot’ or ‘trust the two of you not to plug me the second I tell you this,' I believe I can afford to let this particular cat out of the bag.” Night Bloom pursed her lips, giving me a critical eye, and Cereus’ ears tilted in my direction. I braced myself and said, “The armor in the case in the museum isn’t the armor of Nightmare Moon.”

I wished I’d waited for them both to finish what they had in their mouths.

I cracked one eye to see two stunned faces staring back at me through a thin glaze of spittle and chewed hay fries.

“O-of course it’s in the case! We checked it earlier! I mean...we...um…” Night Bloom sputtered while Cereus apologetically wiped my face of the spray. “It’s...I mean, nopony could even get into that box! We can’t get into that box! Fizzle was one of the greatest ward smiths in Equestria! There’s just no way…”

“You know the guy in the vest you have tucked away somehere?” I nodded towards the closed interrogation room door. “He’s the son of the greatest collector of magical artifacts outside of Canterlot itself. If he says it’s fake, trust me, it’s fake. We’ve met with the pony who did the counterfeit, too, and, oh, that scum-bag with the drum on his ass down in the hole you dragged us out of? Yeah, he was the one who arranged the production and delivery of that piece.”

Stunned silence.

A bit of half-mushed hay-fry fell from Cereus' lower lip onto his hooves. Bloom’s forehooves gradually slid forward until she reached a tipping point and collapsed onto her belly. The two of them peered at one another, then back at me, then at the shut door.

“I told you we should have called our superiors…” Cereus muttered.

“I tried, dammit!” Night Bloom shouted, then leapt up and began pacing back and forth. She went on in a quieter voice, “Our line to the Royal Court is 30 years old, and half the electrical systems are burned out down here. I even tried a phone call to the back line at the Royal Guard quarters! They said Princess Luna had told them not to take my calls until my vacation is over! Then they blocked the number!”

Cereus raised one wing. “So, why don’t we fly back there and tell them in person?”

Bloom shook her head. “So the trail will be ice cold instead of just chilly by the time we get back?”

I shut my eyes, trying to remain calm. I really was getting tired of being tied up and I’ve long held that incompetence should be painful. Mixing incompetence with cruel coincidence is miles worse. “I don’t know much about ‘secret agencies’, but you couldn’t possibly have come to Detrot without some sort of back-up plan.”

“Nopony thought the armor was even a target!” Bloom protested. “It’s worthless! You couldn’t sell it.” Slowly, she lowered her eyes. “B-but the Princess...did give me a contact list in case I needed help with anything.”

“So? What are you waiting for?!” I blurted. “Go call them!”

“I...tried,” she murmured, sliding back onto her belly.

“You tried? How did you ‘try?' Did you try hitting them with flashbangs or tying them to chairs?!” I snarled, shaking my seat back and forth.

She shook her head and the edges of her golden eyes glittered with barely suppressed tears. “I’m… it’s… not like that! I swear, I’m doing everything I can here!” Rising she moved over to my chair and slid one wing-claw around, hooking it in the string around my right hoof. “If I let you up, do you promise you’re not going to do anything that’ll make me have to bite you?” Night Bloom wiped her eyes with her free wing, then hooked her teeth over her lower lip and smiled in a way I think was supposed to be disarming, but made me wish desperately for my gun.

“I… think I can restrain myself.”

She twisted her claw and, with a faint pop, the string exploded into a green misty light that quickly dissipated into the air. I couldn’t hide my surprise.

“Wait, I’m an earth pony. How did that hold me down?” I said, dumbly.

“Aurora was one of Princess Luna’s gifts to the dusk ponies for our service! We served her even before she became Nightmare Moon!” Cereus said, proudly. “It’s stronger than steel, bendier than rubber, and you can cut it just by thinking about it!” He amended after a moment’s thought, “Well, we can.”

Hopping off the chair, I shook myself from nose to tailtip. “Nice. You mind if I ask, how long I was out?”

Cereus scratched his head. “Well, lemme see… I found your cab after the bug came back on about-”

My ears perked and I took a step forward. “Wait...bug? What bug?! You bugged me?! When?!”

The intern rubbed his snout with one toe. “We didn’t. We just used the bug somepony else placed. We’ve got the pony who bugged you in another room here, if you want to see her.”

“Which her?” I narrowed my eyes at him and he shifted nervously.

Night Bloom waved one leg. “Cereus, just tell him about how you got him out of there. Reunions can wait.”

“Oh! Right… um… the bug came back on and your cab showed up on our radar, so I went to see if I could snag you,” he said, gesticulating the act of catching a fish on a hook, “I was watching from the rooftops across the street and saw your yellow friend coming out of what our intelligence records said was some kind of club, with another filly. They got in that weird cab and left, but nopony else was with them and we’ve been watching you for days, where we could.”

“Where you could?” I asked.

“We… uh… those ponies in the Skids are scary,” Cereus stammered. “We saw you on television, though, and the guard said he’d seen you there too. When we acquired him, he told us you were asking about things and had tried to get into Fizzle’s office. We...thought maybe you killed Fizzle, at first, but our logistical report-“ Night Bloom smiled at that. “-said your… er… 'pattern of behavior was more consistent with investigation.' It was really hard tracing back your behavior over a whole week, but you weren’t exactly stealthy.” He paused, then clapped his hooves together. “Where was I? Oh, right! Yeah, anyway, I heard over the police radio that your partner, Officer Swift, had called an ambulance from the phone box up the street-”

“She what?!” I bellowed and Cereus shrank back against Night Bloom’s side.

“S-she called the police… from up the street?” he repeatedly, cautiously. “She said there we-were injuries in.. inside the club on the lowest level and to, uh… come quick.”

I put one hoof to my forehead. “Swift… called an ambulance using the standard police communication protocols. Sweet mercy, I deserved to be caught. Right, go on…”

“T-the chief of police was really angry when she got on the radio and said the pony who brought you in would get an... immediate promotion.” He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself as he continued. “They dispatched a dozen cars, plus fliers from the nearest precinct. I snuck in immediately to get you out. The police were coming, so I flash-banged that little office, then put both of you in garbage bags and dr-dragged you into one of the side rooms. They ignored me and went s-straight for that office! I saw them dragging this pony with a bloody ear out. I went passed them, and pretended to be taking out the garbage for the club. The officers at the door just ignored me...” Cereus giggled, which was a very odd noise that reminded me of a whoopie cushion being punctured. “What did you do that got the chief of police so angry, Detective?”

“She just doesn’t find my natural charm all that appealing, I’m afraid,” I said, trotting in a slow circle, unkinking all four legs. Coming back around, I dropped to my heels in front of the two secret agents. “Whew...that’s better. Alright, I think we might be able to work together, and I can probably fill in a few holes in your investigation, if you don’t mind filling in some for me.”

“Who said that was an option?” Night Bloom growled. “We don’t need-”

“Nighty-” Cereus interrupted with a quiet tone of warning. “-we haven’t got hardly anything. Our superiors won’t listen to me either, and unless one of the Princesses themselves come open the box, we’re stuck. Even if we tell them Fizzle died, they’ll want to know how and why. Do you want to explain to Princess Luna that the armor was stolen and we didn’t even notice?”

A look of apprehensive horror crossed her face. “I...um...geesh. I know Princess Celestia doesn’t banish ponies anymore, but Princess Luna…”

“Is less tolerant of failure?” I offered.

“-will dump both of us in a deep hole in the farthest post she can find from her, filing paperwork until we’re old and grey. Grey is just not my color.” Night Bloom glanced at my pelt and her cheeks noticeably reddened. “No offense.”

“If I were going to take offense, I think it would have been when you stripped me naked and tied me up,” I grumbled, reaching down and zipping my chest pouch shut. “Either way, doesn’t matter. We have a job to do and I need to get in touch with my people. Where’s Limerence and my gun?”

Cereus’ nose wrinkled. “I had to put your coat through the laundry. The trash-bag I put you in kinda...smelled funny. I hope you didn’t have anything valuable in the pockets…”

“Don’t worry about it. The pockets are magical. What about my gun?” I asked.

“Your weapon is in one of our lockers, along with… all those knives that other stallion was carrying. What sort of pony is he? He had one hidden in his tail!”

“I’m sure it’s a thing you hear in the intelligence gathering profession on a regular basis, but you’ll be happier not knowing,” I answered. Moving to the interrogation room’s door, I pulled it open and stepped out into a land of wonders.

****

Detrot's state of advanced decay makes it an epicenter for the keeping of secrets. If a pony wants to hide something, there are few better places to do it than in the body of a city clinging to life by bare, bloody hooves. Who, after all, wants to search a stinking, disease-ridden husk when there are so many easier places one can live, where the most dangerous truths are easy to ferret out because, if we’re all very honest with ourselves, they’re not terribly dangerous?

This ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach lets the monsters fester in their caves, but now and then, gives rise to brilliant works whose creative spark could only be lit in the darkest places.

****

“What the… hay…?”

All four of my knees threatened to fail at once, so I put one leg on the wall beside the interrogation room, shutting my eyes until the mix of vertigo and mental overexertion relaxed and I was in control again. Then I opened my eyes and had to stand there for several more seconds, just trying to take it all in.

Cereus stepped up beside me, with Night Bloom moving on the other. The stallion sat and clapped his hooves twice. A low buzz spread out from us on all sides and lights began to sputter in the distance.

“Welcome to M6’s basement, garage, closet, and laboratory,” Night Bloom remarked, spreading her forelegs to encompass the space I’d found myself in. “Pardon the mess. I doubt anypony has been in here in the last fifteen years besides us.”

As more lights gave the area dimension, I, without thinking, reached down to stroke my gun only to remember it wasn’t there.

Vastness. I’d never felt such a vast space indoors. The fact that it was inside a building made it all the more unsettling and worse, every inch seemed to be filled with shapes and geometries that threatened to boggle the senses. Even the Archivists' home didn't seem to be quite so impossibly big.

Row after row of shelving units stretched from about twenty meters away to dozens of meters in the air. A low wind cycled through the space, ruffling my mane as I took a few tentative steps forward. Each shelf had a label and some arcane object sitting on it, each one covered in thick layers of dust. The room seemed to be some kind of corrugated metal, interspersed with bare rock, and ragged tarps stretched over gaping holes.

“What is all this...junk?” I asked, very quietly, picking up what appeared to be a cube with nine squares on each side in various colors in my forehooves and turning it over.

Night Bloom replied over my shoulder with a touch of resignation. “I doubt anypony alive could tell you. It would be the job of years to collate all of it. I’d be proud to try, but now I don’t imagine I’ll be employed long enough for that to be an option. Damn.”

Cereus sneezed loudly, wiping his nose on his fetlock. “Oh come on Nighty. We kidnapped him. We can at least be nice,” he said, then answered my question himself. “It’s a storage area... I guess I should say the storage area... for everything M6 developed as part of the war effort. We were really big during the Crusades-”

“You’re not on our roster yet, rookie. You don’t get to be ‘we’ until you’ve got a badge.” Bloom reminded him, cooly.

“Oh fine, be that way,” Cereus grumped, then went on. “Anyway, M6 was super big during the Crusades, but they were really secret, too.” He made a pouty face at Night Bloom as he emphasized the word ‘they’ and she snorted derisively in return.

“M6 were in charge of developing most of the weapons used against the dragons. That and making sure those sorts of threats never happened to Equestria again. In the end, it was Princess Luna who stopped the war, though,” the mare added, with a tinge of sadness. “We’ve ended up little more than a footnote. Ninety five percent of this stuff doesn’t work or has ‘unintended’ side effects.”

I set the cube back on the shelf and moved on, passed what appeared to be a broken toilet with steam pipes coming out of the back, a shelf with another shelf sitting on it labeled ‘Shelf-in-a-shelf’, and something called a ‘Celebration-Cannon Mark V’ that reminded me alarmingly of Taxi’s P.E.A.C.E. Cannon if it’d been designed for destroying small buildings.

“Why an old warehouse?” I asked. “It's big, but the place seems a bit... dated, really, for a secret hideout of an international spy agency. Speaking of that, where precisely are we?”

“It wouldn’t help much to tell you precisely where we are because, technically, we’re nowhere.” Night Bloom barked a sharp, short laugh. “Much like my career!”

Cereus rolled his eyes at his partner’s dramatics and answered for her, “We’re outside the city, somewhere beyond the Shield, in the Wilderness ranges...um...somewhere. The building doesn’t show up on any maps we could find except the ones in here.”

“So how did you find this?” I exclaimed, “I mean, it’s a pit, but what a pit!”

The female dusk pony trotted over to the shelf I’d been studying, which had a box of nails and a cheese grater on it with the label ‘Really Dangerous, do not affix cheese grater to wall with nails.' Strange as it sounds, I had a momentary urge to find a hammer. Perhaps it was fortunate for all of Equestria that before I could act on that impulse, Night Bloom replied, “I work logistics for M6’s Canterlot division, but since the war ended and most ponies came home from the dragon lands, there’s little call for a national intelligence gathering network. I… thought M6 had at least a few trusted agents in every major city in Equestria, but we’re not what we used to be. I tried to get in touch with the contacts on the list the Night Princess gave me when we left, and half of them are dead of old age!”

“One of the living ones pointed you here?” I asked and she nodded.

“Yes!” She waved her hooves at the far off ceiling. “The rest were pensioners or useless! The only one who would talk to me interrupted the call to go have his colostomy bag emptied. While we were watching you, I had to resort to having the doofus follow that insane cab around...”

“You have any idea how hard it is to follow around one cab? Especially one that fast?” Cereus stuck his lower lip out at Night Bloom. “I deserve a little credit here.”

“You want credit, rookie?!” she snapped and gave him a poke in the chest. “You go unlock that armor case so we can at least find out if the Detective is telling the truth or find me something in this landfill that can!”

Cereus cringed at the harsh reminder and slunk off amongst the shelves, his tail tucked between his legs. Night Bloom watched him go. Once he was out of sight, she slumped. “Damn that colt…”

“Why so hard on him?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve got my own bundle of joy who regularly makes my life interesting, but he’s trying like mad.”

“He’s trying, but I don’t have time for him to ‘try’,” she replied, disconsolately. “The police situation is worse here than I imagined it could be in Equestria. I considered trying to get Chief Jade involved, but after watching our feeds inside the Castle for a few days I decided against it. When I return, I will be discussing with the Princess a full audit of this police department. As it is, we’re on our own and I have to rely on him. Even that bunch you call the PACT are out of their minds.” She threw her hooves in the air. “How does anything get done in this city?”

“Wait...say that again? You can spy on the inside of the Castle?” I sat forward.

Night Bloom turned on her rear heels and trotted along the wall. I followed along behind her. There were a number of other doors next to the one with my interrogation room, only one or two of which was open. I peered in and saw two bunks laid side by side, while another had a small kitchen which somepony must have gone over with a dust mop because most of the surfaces were clean.

As we walked, Night Bloom replied, “There’s a network throughout the city that’s got spy talismans in just about every building in Detrot that’s over twenty five years old. I don’t know if M6 built it or somepony else during the war. We could use the camera feeds to track your movements, though the rest of the system was downright useless. The sound systems are fried and the picture is crap, but it works.”

“I don’t think you mentioned why you started tracking my movements in the first place…” I prompted.

The mare stopped at a door we were coming up to and opened it, holding it for me. The face-plate said ‘Holding and Survey Room.' I peered through into what appeared to be a row of cell blocks lining either wall.

“Am I going back in a cell?” I asked, worriedly.

“No, dammit! You want an answer or not? I hate explaining every little thing. I’d rather just show you. Besides, your clothes are in here. You want those, right?”

“Right. Answers. Good. Pardon if my brain is still not working at full capacity, but that flash-bang fried the last few good neurons I had left.”

Stepping in, I reached over to the wall beside the door and flicked a switch. More cheap electric lights came on up and down the hall, buzzing softly. I picked out the sounds of at least two ponies snoring, plus pacing hooves.

“We got a lot of information from picking up ponies you’ve met,” Night Bloom explained. “I don’t really know what to do with them at this point, though. Letting them go before this is over is an invitation to get that mad-pony running the police involved and I’d rather not do that.”

“You mentioned you had the pony who bugged me?”

Yeeeah… she’s a right piece of work,” the dusk pony growled. “Fifth cell on your left and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t stand too close to the bars.” Night Bloom rubbed one of her knees as though it was sore. “She bites.”

I trotted down the row of cells, looking into the ones on both sides. Most were empty, but in one, I saw a hefty shape half draped in a blanket who was making a noise like a boat engine. A tiny security cap lay at the foot of the bed.

“Is that…?”

“The guard from the Museum,” Night Bloom confirmed. “Yeah, that’s him. Told us you’d been there and pointed us to Fizzle’s office. He’s been playing that stupid card game with Cereus day in, day out, and he’s eating us out of house and home. Getting into Fizzle’s office was a trip, let me say. I’m still not sleeping properly after that...”

I moved on, feeling vaguely like I was moving through some kind of weird museum. In another cell there was a pony I didn’t recognize. He, too, was asleep and his foreknees were shackled to the bed. He was enormous, big enough that the sheet didn’t cover him entirely.

“What’s his story?” I asked.

“Worked for Cosmo. Red Shoe or Heel or whatever they call themselves,” Night Bloom told me, waving at the shackles. “We had the dickens of a time finding somepony who’d seen what happened that night, but he was in a bar those sickos congregate. We just happened to be there at the same time hunting for a professional ward-breaker as he was looking for work. He was drunk and bragging that he’d helped dump the King of Ace’s corpse after you killed him.”

I nosed in the enforcer’s direction. “Why is he shackled to the bed?”

“Why do you think?” she asked, sharply. “He was bragging about gutting a stallion just for looking at him funny, among other things. We had a magical music box with a binding spell attached to it that quieted him down real good, but would you take chances with somepony like that?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” I had another thought. “How’d you get him to talk?”

“That was Cereus’ idea.” Night Bloom laughed. “He gave that beast a bottle of vodka fortified with truth syrum. He’s been sleeping it off for the last day and a half. Turned out he hardly knew anything that might have been of use to us. Now we’re stuck feeding him.”

“Maybe you should find some method of interrogation that doesn’t involve kidnapping ponies beforehand?”

Before she could reply, a hoof banged on iron bars further down the hall and a familiar voice called out, “Hey! Hey, is that Hard Boiled? You bastard, get me out of this cell or I swear, I will publish everything you do for the rest of your life!”

My ears twitched, then I quickly counted the cells down from one side until I got to the one I was reasonably sure the voice had come from. “Wait...she’s the one who bugged me?!”

Without waiting for an answer, I cantered down the hall, skidding to a stop in front of the fifth cell on the left wall.

Inside, leaning against the bars, a very irritated news pony stood there glaring at me.

“Lace?!” I burst out.

Sugar Lace still wore the little black cocktail dress she’d had on the last time I saw her at The Castle and her mane was disheveled, like she’d slept on it. A restrictor ring was fitted snugly down around her horn and duct taped in place. She looked like a wreck, but time in a holding cell had apparently not dulled her fiery temper.

“Hard Boiled! I thought that was you! Are you in cahoots with these kidnappers?! I knew you were rotten, but I never thought you’d stoop to this just to silence me!”

Night Bloom approached and sat, staring in at her prisoner. “We snatched this one right after the police ball. We’d planned to get you, but your little escape out the back door caught us off guard.”

The reporter let out a frustrated snarl and turned her back on the dusk pony, marching back to the cot and throwing herself down on it, facing the wall.

“So, a little unicorn magic? What did you put the bug in? My tail fur, maybe? The bow-tie?” I growled at Sugar Lace’s flank.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” she bit back, yanking her ragged, dusty blanket over herself.

“She put it in the tux’s jacket pocket,” Night Bloom said, smugly. “Cereus didn’t even have to interrogate her. She laid eyes on him and almost drenched her tail. A couple of glasses of wine and some quiet music and she was spilling her beans worse than an over-filled crock pot.”

“I did not!” Lace replied, snappily. “He’s just… a very attractive… um… bat… thing…”

“Dusk pony, dammit! Dusk pony! Why is that hard?!” Night Bloom snapped, banging one hoof on the bars. Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself and turned to me, “We’ve had the worst time you can imagine out here. I realize Canterlot is a long way from here, but how have you ponies let this city fall so far?”

That bowed my back up a little bit. “Now just a damn minute! We don’t happen to have multiple immortal beings sitting within train trip distance to tell us precisely how to fix these situations, day to day. Detrot’s economy is shot and we’ve got hydras, dragons, cockatrices, and every monster you can imagine on our doorsteps. These aren’t the friendly brand you can drive off with harsh language and a meaningful stare!”

Night Bloom’s face contorted with anger as she rose up on her hooftips, pressing her nose against mine. “You think it’s easy in the capitol?! We're haunch-deep in politics and intrigue! Yes, the Princesses help, but that does not excuse you letting this entire city become a festering hole!

“Then you tell me what you would have done!” I shouted, my fury growing with each word. I pushed her back against the bars of Sugar Lace’s cage with one hoof. “Go on! What would you have done?! The dragons burned every outlying village to the ground and every refugee ended up here! Then you bastards in the capitol come up with new sources for gems and glut the damn market! What were we supposed to do exactly?!”

I was breathing hard. In my rage, I’d shoved one hoof to Bloom’s throat and her teeth were poised a quarter inch above my knee, close enough to sink right in. A drip of something green had gathered at the tips of both of her teeth, though it didn’t look like saliva. Slowly, I released her and stepped back.

“...sorry…” I muttered.

Night Bloom wiped her fangs on her toe. “Yeah… yeah, me too. I’ve… just been under more stress than I think a sane pony should. Half the last week has been looking for a decent moment we could at least talk to you.” Her ears drooped. “I… maybe Luna was right. I need a vacation...”

We stood there for a few seconds as I tried to control my breathing and Night Bloom sucked the liquid off her teeth, politely spitting it into a kerchief withdrawn from a small pouch she kept hidden under one wing. It began to lightly smoke.

It’d been a while since I properly lost my temper at somepony and now that I had, I couldn’t quite figure out why, especially when I knew her horror at the condition of my city wasn't fundamentally unwarranted.

Maybe because she reminded me just a bit too closely of myself just over a month ago. I remembered having that conversation about vacations with Taxi on the day the whole mess began. If I’d gone with her mad little suggestion, might I have lived? Would I still be drinking myself to death on the weekends and dragging myself from case to case like a zombie until Jade found a proper excuse to toss me behind a desk to wither into old age without grace or dignity? The uncomfortable answer was ‘Yeah, probably.'

Stella said it best. Until a pony is prepared to take both his own life and the lives of others in his hooves, determined to make a difference, he is not truly alive. He is a pawn in a very large and complex game; a cog, moving to the meter of a mechanism he cannot possibly hope to understand.

Lace interrupted my introspection. “Why don’t you two kiss already?” she chimed in, with a big grin.

“Unless you want your dinner to come with a hot glass of my venom tonight, Missy, you keep your comments to yourself!” the dusk pony shot back, turning down the hall towards the security room at the other end. “Come on, let’s go get your gun.” I realized she was talking to me and hurried up beside her, leaving Sugar Lace to stew in her cage.

“Back in the interrogation room, you mentioned you were having trouble tracking me with magical means?” I asked. “You mind elaborating on that? You’re not the first pony to say something similar to me lately.”

Night Bloom stopped in her tracks. “Wait, no… that’s… Are you saying you don’t know how you’re doing that?!” she blurted.

I shrugged and shook my head. “I’ve got no idea. I had somepony try to use something called a ‘Scry’ on me a few weeks ago, and I’m sure Jade has tried. She’s got enough information that she could probably use an enchanted tracker, given enough time and incentive... and I’m pretty sure I gave her that. So, you’re going to have to be real specific here.”

Night Bloom’s muzzle dropped open, and for several seconds she couldn’t seem to find words. When she did, finally, it was only the one.

“...damn…”

Drawing in a breath, she spread her thin, clawed wings and rolled her neck in circles a few times before turning back to the door at the other end of the hall. “Best way is to demonstrate, I guess.”

A keypad beside the door featured ten tiny jewels. She pressed a pattern that I couldn’t have remembered if I’d had a week to memorize it, and the door made a sound of rusted bolts being drawn back before swinging inward on a heavy duty hinge the size of my head.

The room reminded me more typically of a room from movies about the Crusades where generals made their plans, than a dingy security office like the one in the Vivarium or the Museum. The hallway must have been ‘Holding’, but I wondered what precisely ‘Survey’ meant.

In the room’s center, a monstrous map the size of two Night Trotters parked up side by side dominated a table you could play street hockey on. It seemed to be a reasonably accurate representation of Detrot, though there were a few things missing here and there. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said it was out-dated by a good ten years. Behind it, on a wall that stretched nearly ten meters, there was a second map of the M6 warehouse. There was a single glowing dot in one far corner.

Both walls, on either side of the maps, were covered from floor to ceiling in filing cabinets. A broken ladder lay against one of them which might, once, have reached those at the top. As it was, the only way to access those top files was probably a pair of wings or unicorn magic.

“Welcome to Survey.” Night Bloom moved over to the enormous map of Detrot and set her hooves up on the table. “In here, we have access to every relevant piece of data regarding Detrot.” She blew a thick cloud of dust off one of the little buildings and sighed, “At least, we should. That was the theory when this unit was in use. From what I can tell, M6 tried to bury this place after the Kelpie scandal. I guess a whole building worth of useless prototypes couldn’t do much for a bureau facing massive budget cuts.”

“Not completely useless,” I murmured. “That flashbang was from here, right? Say, if you’ve got any more-”

Night Bloom’s nostrils flared. “Sure, I’d give agency weaponry to a rogue cop. Do I look drunk?!” Her expression soured further as she added, “besides, all we’ve got is about ten percent of what the armory log says we should down in the basement. Most of the weapons -- the real weapons -- are...gone.”

“One of the former custodians?” I asked.

“Who else? They had the good grace to leave about four hundred IOUs, so at least when I report this debacle I can total up all the reasons we should have left this city to the damn dragons. But I didn’t bring you in here to give you a run down of my accounting problems.” She raised one hoof and pointed at the map on the wall with the glowing dot. “No, I want you to explain that.”

I examined the map of the warehouse for several seconds. The little light moved down the aisle it was occupying, then slowly faded, before reappearing as it returned to its former position.

“What… exactly am I looking at, here?”

“That light is Cereus,” she said and pointed to the bottom of the map at a particular room which was marked ‘Survey.' “We’re here. Now, until we dragged your sorry tail in here, there were five lights. Me, the guard, Cereus, the reporter cunt, and that security moron. Five lights. Hear me? This map keeps track of every living thing that enters this moon-abandoned crater, and you’re not on it. Neither am I, nor anypony within...I don’t even know how far. It seems to fluctuate, but it’s a damn big distance of you.”

Stepping back, she pushed her muzzle against my face. “Now, I want you to tell me precisely how you have managed to become invisible to the most advanced magical tracking system the most advanced arcane wartime technological development agency in the world could come up with!”

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