Act 2, Chapter 15: Right to Remain Silent
Starlight Over Detrot
Act 2, Chapter 15: Right to Remain Silent
Since the dawn of the species, and especially since the dawn of the Equestrian Revenue Service, ponies have sought not to be found, and other ponies have sought to find them. It's another one of those delightfully evolutionary arms-races that have resulted in the diversity we see today out of the many and varied forms of magical tracking.
As discussed earlier, one popular method is to plant a magical or electrical broadcasting device or substance on - or in - a pony. It's reliable once initiated, but the biggest weaknesses of this method are the fact that utilizing such a device requires you to have found that pony once by some other means, and that they might be able to remove the offending object if discovered.
Sympathetic tracking remains highly reliable for finding individuals; get a mane-hair or hoof scraping from the individual you intend to track, and put it in an alchemic concoction or zoodoo doll, and you should have an easy and reliable way of locating somepony. The key, of course, is to ensure your sample is from the correct individual. Mane transplants have become popular not only amongst aging stallions, but spies as well, to fool exactly this kind of tracking.
Emotional tracking is useful, make no mistake; the power of ambient emotions renders each sentient being a beacon to the right sort of eyes. But those eyes are A) expensive, and B) somewhat nearsighted, better for determining number and position than identity. Emotions being what they are - analog, nebulous variables - they sometimes have trouble distinguishing between specific entities in similar mindframes. This has resulted in problems, such as when authorities attempted to use a prototype to track down an enraged domestic abuse suspect and wound up in the cave of an Ursa Intermedia attempting to pass a kidney pulsar.
These are just some of the most popular methods. Suffice it to say, however, that any circumstance, device, or property that could successfully evade all forms of arcane tracking would be the sort of prize that could spark full-on wars.
--The Scholar
What’s a pony to do when they have no answers? I’d died for my answers and only gotten more questions for my trouble. Juniper’s little visits weren’t improving that situation much.
Faced with such a direct demand for answers, I found myself just standing there with Night Bloom’s slightly venomous breath blowing in my face, unable to come up with anything solid.
Explaining all the vicious things I’d seen during the last month... would it have helped? Trying to make sense of how I’d become a ghost to enchanted hunters of every stripe was pointless without more time to think and even had I had that time, I wasn’t certain I wanted to tell anypony besides maybe Taxi and Swift, lest I end up strapped to a table somewhere. The ability to avoid magical tracking was one that ponies would kill for.
Maybe they already had.
I was forced to fall back on the world’s oldest standby.
“You want to debrief me, then we’ll do a debrief. I’ll tell you what’s gone on this last month as best I can. I won’t promise not to leave some things out, but I need a drink and you need information, so we’ll do this my way. Got any more of that vodka you gave the Red Hoof around here?”
****
“You hung your badge on her horn?!” Cereus said incredulously, turning over his fifth shot-glass and setting it beside the row in front of me. “I’m surprised she didn’t shoot you!”
Night Bloom was still half-way through her third and every now and then would let out a little squeaky giggle. She might have been a super secret agent, but she’d turned out to be a cheap date. “I’dda shot’em! I’dda shot’em in the butt and it... itta be funny!” she slurred, then slid to one side and lay her head on her foreleg.
Survey wasn’t the most comfortable place for a picnic, but we’d dug out a couple of old chairs, a card table, and a bottle of what I presumed to be old moonshine some M6 agent from history had left behind. It tasted like death and smelled worse, but drunk is drunk and I was starting to feel a little warm and fuzzy. I’d begun with the death of Ruby Blue, leaving out as much of Stella and the Don as I could while still telling my tale.
Night Bloom wasn’t especially happy about that, but she accepted it after the first drink. Though, by halfway through the second one, I think she’d have been okay if I’d asked for one of her kidneys.
“Sho...like, you ran away, then stuff, right? We know all that, cause...cause things. I wash...washled...wa-t-ched th-the camerash. S-shaw when you left the Shkids, shaw you at the show, then caught the sh-toopid reporter lady.”
“Yeah, I followed some leads. You found me at Bari’s place. I think the tracker turned back on probably because I left the bugged tux in the car and...got...maybe far enough away from it? I don’t know. The upshot is, we got some pretty good information from the perverted little bastard.”
“This law firm, Umbra and whatever. Have you been able to find anything about them? They sound kinda important,” Cereus asked.
“No, and believe me, they’re rising quickly on my list of priorities, but I don’t know precisely how I’d go about it. Direct investigation is right out. The death of Miss Ruby Blue is wrapped up in all of this, somehow. So is the theft of that armor. I left her diary at the Nest and I still need to get into it. She was running from something that caught her, poisoned her, and ripped her horn off before she died. The same thing or things killed Fizzle.” I sucked on my teeth, contemplating my empty shotglass and the half-full bottle on the table. “I do have...one clue that Bari spilled right before you nailed me with that flashbang, though.”
“Wash-at? Cluesh? I like cluesh!” Night Bloom shoved herself upright, which only resulted in a slow slump onto her other side.
“Well, I don’t know how much this one will help. Bari said the pony who paid for the fake armor and took delivery was wearing robes of the Lunar Passage. That’s...basically what I’ve got, right now. I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with that.” I groaned.
“Oooh...yikes. You don’t do anything the simple way, do you? I tried to find some information on them when I was compiling a list of possible suspects, but I didn’t have all that much luck,” Cereus murmured. “You’d think, for a group that big, that we’d have more information, but they’re mostly a Detrot phenomena and they’re super insular. That and they don’t seem to like non-pony... well, non-unicorn, pegasus, or earth pony species and it’s not easy to hide... um…” He gave me a sharp toothed smile.
“Truly. My leads have pretty much dried up. I need to call Taxi before she has a little freak out. You mind if we go see if Limerence is awake?” I asked.
“I... think I’m going to leave Nighty here for a nap,” Cereus said, glancing fondly at his superior officer whose head was lolling against the cushion she was laying on.
“Good. Can I have my gun back, now?”
****
As Cereus and I left Survey, out through Holding and past an irate Sugar Lace, I tried to set my thoughts in some kind of order. I won’t say I was taking pleasure in seeing that awful mare behind some bars where I've wanted to put her for years, but it was certainly not hurting my mood. The alcohol wasn’t either, nor was having my coat and weapon returned, though sans bullets it was mostly just for personal comfort.
I pushed open the holding area door to discover Limerence sitting just outside on his rump, a massive folder of paper between his knees and a pencil clutched in his teeth.
The dusk pony’s eyes widened as he stared at my companion, who hadn’t yet acknowledged our presence.
“H-how?” Cereus squeaked and Limerence looked up. “We bound you with aurora! That... you... you still have the restrictor ring on! You were asleep! How did you-”
The librarian tilted his head, then dismissed the question with a wave of his hoof and returned to reading through his folder. “Aurora is only as good as the chair it’s affixed to. The six-oh-eight-three FlimFlam Inc interrogation chair has a structural flaw. Twist far enough to the left and the front legs will come off.”
Cereus’s muzzle opened and closed several times as he tried to find words to go with his confusion. “W-why aren’t you-”
“Surprised to see dusk ponies? The magic string was a clue. Am I right in pre-supposing you are Princess Luna’s agents, sent to guard the armor of Nightmare Moon?”
He nodded, weakly.
“The ‘agent’ is drunk off her flank at the moment,” I replied, glancing back the way we’d come. “Can’t blame her, really.”
“I’m just an intern, really,” Cereus added. “I might get to be an agent one day. I hope I do, but with how things have been going...”
“I see. This is a most interesting location, I must say.” Lim’s eyes roved over the various shelves. “I see many unique and interesting artifacts. A shame they are locked away here. I would love to study this collection in depth.”
“Sorry, Lim, but we’re short of time. I need to call Taxi before she storms the Castle by herself. Cereus, could you get that ring off my friend’s head, then point me to a phone?” I asked the dusk pony.
“I’m... afraid there’s no local phone service. We’re in the Wilderness,” he explained, trotting over and plucking the restrictor ring off of Limerence’s head with his teeth, then spitting it on the shelf. The unicorn let out a a barely-noticable relieved breath. “The only connections we have go directly to Canterlot, and Nighty was right. The Royal Guard blocked our contact protocols. If we make any kind of public scene to get noticed, whoever stole the armor is going to vanish. I’d totally bet they’re monitoring the morgue and the police station. You’ll have to take the tram back to make a phone call.”
“Shit. Sweets is going to have a cow - possibly an entire pasture. Alright, no big deal there. I’ll try to keep you apprised of the situation. Before we go, how should I get in touch with you?” I asked.
Cereus rolled his eyes up, sinking into thought. After a moment, he moved down a row of shelves, looking at labels. “I did find a... I guess you’d call it a toy, really. It’s a super long ranged walkie-talkie. It only works with one other walkie-talkie. It’s kinda useless and the designer’s dead, so we’ve just got the two. I could… maybe let you have one. Don’t tell Nighty, though! She wouldn’t like it at all. Oh! Here they are.” Picking up a small metal box, he trotted back and laid it at my hooves. “You press the button on the side to talk to me.”
Limerence levitated it with his horn, turning it over to examine the back. “I don’t feel a power source.”
I pointed at a sticker on the side. “What’s that say?”
The Archivist squinted at the tiny print. “Warning: Powered by Quantum Entanglement. Do not open casing ...or a planet-killing singularity may result?!” His horn winked out and he dropped the box, hopping backwards from it. I braced for death. Several seconds later, my atoms were still mostly in the same places they’d been. I relaxed.
“Yeah, that’s probably why we only have two,” Cereus said. “Don’t worry, though. I’m pretty sure the the case is made of some kind of hyper-alloy. According to the card, it’s water proof, bullet proof, bomb proof, dragon fire proof, lava proof, magic proof, and foal proof.”
I gingerly picked up the box and tucked it into one of my pockets. “Basically indestructible, then. I’ll... take your word and do my best not to test that. Hmmm... heh. Alright, before I leave this fantastic place, I’ve got to try out those cameras you’ve got in the Castle. You think Night Bloom would mind if I had a peek at those?”
“I’m sure she would-” Cereus gave me a conspiratorial grin. “-but the chain of command passes to the next available agent in the event an agent in the field is incapacitated.”
“Did you not say you were an intern?” Limerence asked.
“Yes, but I finished all my courses!” His tufted ears fluttered as he leaned in close to me and said, “Besides, it’s sooo cool!”
****
Night Bloom still slept in the corner. Her dark mane lay half across her pillow and in sleep, with the lines of fury and worry gone, she seemed almost at peace. I felt a touch of real envy for her dreams which weren’t haunted by dead partners or horrible, city eating monsters.
I shook myself and left the filly to her snooze, turning back to Cereus, who was poking around a box covered in switches and toggles underneath the giant map of the warehouse.
“You’ll have to give me a second to remember how this thing works,” he muttered.
“Take your time. My driver’s not likely to go completely postal unless I’m gone for more than a day. Speaking of that, how long was I out?” I asked, watching Limerence, who was bent over the map of Detrot with a notepad held in his magical grasp, scribbling something. He’d been scribbling since we left the warehouse itself.
“Six hours, maybe?” Cereus replied, absently tapping at the control box. “You had a good sleep. Sorry the chair wasn’t very comfortable, but Nighty insisted.”
“Flash-bang sleep is never good sleep, but I’m fine. How is it going?”
“I think... Oh! Sorry, forgot to set my entry parameters for the Castle. Here...goes!”
Flicking one last switch, Cereus stepped back. The entire wall buzzed, popped, then the map of the warehouse faded to blackness, to be replaced by an overhead view of the Castle itself. Dozens upon dozens of tiny lights moved back and forth through the halls, up and down the aisles, all going about their important policing business. Cereus wasn’t done, though. Picking up a stick or rod of some kind, he pointed it at the map. It vanished, turning into an image of the back of an irate radio-pony who was shouting the ears off somepony through her microphone.
Seeing Telly, back in her natural environment, doing what she was born to do, made me feel a sort of crushing nostalgia.
In my heart, I knew I was doing the right thing. My death and the deaths of who knew how many others needed to be investigated. There was no walking away… but some part of me wished I was back there, fighting with Jade, expressing my disdain for paperwork, and walking through that vast hall as the conquering hero once more.
For now, it was not to be.
“You weren’t kidding. That’s nice bit of kit,” I said, examining the picture. “Show me the Police Chief’s office.”
“Coming right up!” Cereus answered, flicking the screen back to the map of the Castle, then pointing his little rod again. He frowned at the map for a second. “Um, it’s empty. Do you still want to see it?”
“Jade’s not in there? Is there any way to figure out where she might actually be?”
“Yeah, I could flip through the screens,” he answered. “If she’s in the building, we’ll find her eventually. It might take a few minutes. Sorry... I’m not very good with this thing, yet. Nighty says training on these systems is still limited because they’re illega-” His ears lay flat and he added, “Er... Could you forget I said that, too?”
“Consider it forgotten. Couldn’t hurt to look around the Castle anyway, “ I sighed. “I might never get to see the inside of it again unless Jade manages to chase my ass down.”
“Right, here we go!” Biting the button on his remote rod, Cereus began sifting through images; behind a desk, underneath a drink machine in the employee breakroom, Jade’s empty office, some space that was completely dark, a hallway, the inside of a set of armor.
The pictures shifted, one after another, until I got quickly bored. Grabbing a chair, I pulled it over and sat, resting my chin on my forelegs. Seeing a place you’d spent years in only holds so much wonder. A few minutes after that, I felt my head starting to nod and tried to force myself awake without much success. Flash-bang sleep is just no replacement for the real thing.
“Eep!” Cereus let out a distressed noise and dropped the rod, which kept scrolling images. It rolled over to my hoof and I lightly kicked it back to him.
“Eep?”
The dusk pony nodded vigorously. “Eep!... I mean, oh... bother. I think you should just… uh… I, er, found Chief Jade...”
I narrowed my eyes at Cereus and he quailed, fumbling to pick the control rod back up. “You found Chief Jade... and what?”
Raising his muzzle, he tongued the button.
A scene appeared.
It seemed to be the Castle’s dungeon holding cells. In all my time with Detrot P.D, I’d only seen them with any prisoners on two occasions; once after a riot and again, after a labor strike turned violent.
Chief Jade was marching up and down in front of a cell half-way down the hall. Her silver mane was loose, falling in lank ringlets around her olive green shoulders. She wore her blouse half-unbutton and her eyes were bloodshot. Her lips were moving, but there was no sound. The angle was wrong to see what or who she was talking to inside the cell.
“Those holding cells are supposed to be unused. The last time we put prisoners down there, half the social justice leagues in the city wet themselves with glee, then sued the city for unpony-like treatment. Can you get me an angle on the cell itself?” I asked.
“Y-yes...I can. But you have to promise not to freak out, okay?” Cereus squeaked.
“I am promising nothing. Picture. Change. Now!” I growled.
The dusk pony bit his lower lip, looking extremely dubious as he aimed the device again, then tapped the button.
The scene shifted.
Freaking out seemed like the only proper response.
Huddling against the far back corner of the cell, her huge wings bound to her sides and both forelegs and rear legs shackled together, my partner lay on her side like an orange ball of misery. They’d unbraided her tail, taken her tactical vest and Masamane, and left her bound in her cell. The shackles were enormous on her, and I doubt she could have moved more than a few body-lengths. They’d gone the full medieval route, including a heavy ball of iron, though somepony had the foresight to bandage her injured wing. She must have put up one heck of a fight.
As I watched, Swift shivered against the cold of the stone dungeon, straining at the binders on her wings for a second or two before giving up. Dried tears streaked her face. She didn’t seem to be acknowledging Jade’s presence.
I snarled, pouncing on Cereus, pushing him onto his back and standing over him with one hoof poised over his chest. “When?!”
“I don’t know!” he yelped fearfully, drawing his rear hooves up. “I don’t know when they caught her! Sh-she was in the area, right?”
Stepping off of the dusk stallion, I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. “She... called from a pay phone. She must have stuck around to make sure the ambulance could find the place. Damn...”
Cereus got to his hooves, giving me wary sideways glances. “W-what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I need some leverage. Even if that leverage is me.” I put one hoof against my forehead and shuddered. “I can go to the Castle, give myself up, and beg her to let Swift go. Stella might be able to bust me out, or the Don.”
“Noble as that may sound," said Limerence, "what I know of Iris Jade would tend to suggest she would suspect such an attempt and be ready for it. I believe, if you fall into her hooves, she will have her way with you before any such mission might be launched.” His lips curled into a half smirk. “Pardon the poor choice of words.”
I almost gagged. “I’m… going to have trouble shifting that image…”
Cereus made a soft sound half-way between contemplation and curiosity. “What sort of...um...what sort of leverage would work, do you think?”
“I’ve no idea, but unless you’ve got some thoughts, I’m running on empty!” I snapped, feeling my frustration start to boil over.
Cereus sucked on his lower lip, pinching it with one fang. “Well, I know...one thing. It might be important. Maybe, since you’re going to be investigating the Church of the Lunar Passage, you could check it out?”
“If you’ve got something that I can use to get the kid out of that cell you have got my attention here.”
Turning back to the giant image of the cell, Cereus twiddled the rod in his teeth, then bit down on one of the buttons. We flashed back to Chief Jade’s office, this time to a spot above and behind her desk. The room hadn’t changed since last I was there, with the exception of a framed picture of a smiling young filly that I didn’t recognize sitting on the desktop. She must have borne some close relation to Jade. The filly looked almost like a smaller version, complete with tiny police cap and minus a few thousand wrinkles and a vengefully psychotic expression.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
“That’s Chief Jade’s daughter, Cerise,” Cereus replied.
“I… mmm. I didn’t know Jade had a daughter,” I murmured.
“From what intel we could gather, which wasn’t much, they’re estranged,” the dusk pony said. “However, her daughter is a member of the Church of the Lunar Passage. After she joined, their relationship got really bad. I talked to a ‘Sergeant Sing-Song’-”
“Lemme guess... poker night?” I said, sardonically.
“How’d you know?” he inquired, raising one eyebrow. “Buy-in was only fifty bits and he seems to know everything that goes on in Detrot P.D.-”
I tapped him on the forehead. “Focus. Chief Jade’s daughter. Church of the Lunar Passage.”
“Right, sorry. Chief Jade’s daughter apparently got roped into the Church a few months back. A little less than a month ago, Cerise stopped talking to her mother completely. Nopony has seen her, although she left a note saying she’d joined one of the Church’s convents.”
“A Bride of Luna…” I mumbled. “Crap.”
“This gentlepony may be right, Detective,” Limerence put in. “You mentioned the Chief’s emotional state has been somewhat unstable?"
"Yes. Every day for as long as I've worked for her."
Limerence rolled his eyes. "Allow me to be more specific: You said she was recently in an emotional state unusual for the median course of her personal pharmacokinetics, and that she did not respond to your 'Sun Tyrant' scheme the way you extrapolated she would; by closing the door to her office and possibly having a sobbing breakdown rather than, say, levelling the Castle with apoplectic rage. Am I right?"
"Ah. That. Yeah."
He nodded. "It occurs to me that the two may be related.”
I had a thought. “During that conversation with Cosmo, I heard that the law-firm was going to get some kind of... leverage in the Detrot P.D. Could this be what they meant? If the church has the Chief’s daughter, and they’re responsible for the deaths, we might be facing a worse situation than we thought.”
Limerence shook his head. “I do not… believe this situation is merely a power grab from a group of mad religious zealots. It is too careful. Too well calculated.”
“Calculated or not, I need to call Taxi, now. The kid needs me. I do not intend to let her down. We’ll split up when we hit town. You go see your father. Apprise him of the situation. I’ll meet you later on at the Nest.”
Cereus flicked his gaze at Night Bloom. “Wh-what should I tell her when she wakes up?”
“Tell her I’ll be in touch and to keep watching the monitors in the Castle.” Turning back to the screen which had reverted to the map, I stared for a long moment at the single light in the area signifying the deep dungeons. “I’ll be there soon,” I whispered.
****
The tram ride was a strange experience. It was less a train and more a mine-cart with electric rails. The tunnel was largely unlit, though somepony had the foresight to hang magical lanterns at intervals. Whatever the warehouse had once been, at least that part of it was a gemstone mine of some description. I don’t know how long we were on that train, but it felt like a half hour at a pace good enough for the moving air to blow my ears back against my head.
As we rode along, Cereus blabbered on about his detailed analysis of possible pancake recipes, a desire to meet Swift and play that card game with her, and progressively more outlandish speculation on what exactly might really be going on. When he got to ‘lizard people’, Limerence threatened to tie a piece of rope to him and toss him off the back of the cart. That shut him up for about three more minutes. After that it was Lim’s horn.
The tram stop was in the bottom of an abandoned junk shop. Up a set of stairs, we stepped out onto the cold, early morning streets of Detrot.
Sunlight was just starting to peer over the far horizon, though it was grey and promising another rainy day. I inhaled slowly, letting my eyes drift shut. Detrot. My city. When I opened them, I felt a chilly calm. All those years spent in a trance-like state, stumbling from case to case, bar to bar after Juniper’s death were slowly coming back to me. The ponies who wanted me dead would be coming for my partner, if they knew she was there. If they had real control of Chief Jade, they would soon know. A daughter is good leverage. So is a partner.
Some little voice somewhere in my cowardly subconscious insisted I surrender. It was an animal voice, a fearful voice. Maybe they might leave us be, stop hunting us, stop killing, if I gave them the damn diary. Maybe they’d leave my city alone.
I smiled as I caught a brief scent of coffee and gun oil. That little voice was snuffed. It died screaming.
Limerence sniffed at the air, then shook himself and fit his bowler back down over his ears, flicking the brim with his toe. “May I assume that we are about to be faced with another ridiculous show of extremely dangerous vigilantism that will inevitably explode in our collective faces?”
My left ear flicked at a buzzing fly. “I’m going to detonate this one in as few faces as possible.” I waved my hoof in what I hoped was the direction of the Archive. “I’ve got the number for a pay phone down the street from the Nest. The Aroyos always pick it up and they will let Taxi know where to get me if she’s there.”
“Is there no way I can dissuade you from this destination?” Limerence asked. “Your partner is a secondary player in this mission, and I believe she will be safe-”
“You don’t need to be there,” I interrupted, cutting him off.
Pursing his thin lips, the librarian regarded me with a curious expression on his light blue face. “I didn’t ask if I was going along. I asked if I could dissuade you.”
“No,” I replied.
His eyes narrowed. “Good. I would see little purpose in following a pony who would abandon his family, mission or not.” Straightening, Limerence started off at a stroll down the street, calling over his shoulder. “I will attempt to prepare some form of getaway, should whatever madness you have planned fail to pan out.”
I smiled at his back, then started in the opposite direction.
****
Finding a working payphone in the strange little suburb on the outskirts of the city that Cereus had dropped us off at was more difficult than I’d anticipated.
I found one outside of an all-night diner with a piece of neon-lit pie in the window. The Aroyo on the other end was curt, until I gave him my name. He warmed right up after that and promised he’d fly right over to see Taxi.
The waitress of the cafe was a whole stack of crazy with a side of emotional issues, but I sat while she rambled about her day, her marefriend, and some band she was obsessing over, sipping a cup of coffee that tasted like bile and munching on a piece of pie that was better than it had any right to be. Under other circumstances, I might have actually enjoyed myself, but each time I thought I might be about to relax the image of Swift crying on the floor of a dungeon came back and the pie turned to ashes on my tongue. She should have been there with me. Sending her out on her own was a recipe for disaster and I should have seen that one coming.
Of course she’d call the office. Who else could dispatch an ambulance to diamond dog territory? Jade would be monitoring the main lines. She’d have heard Swift. She might even have one of those voice recognition talismans hooked up to the phone system in case I called. Maybe the kid said something to tip her off, or maybe Jade just knew. None of that was keeping me from kicking myself.
It was whoever was pulling Jade’s strings. It must have been, or they’d just have tossed Swift in amongst the normal prisoners.
They’d caught her.
They’d bound her.
They’d stuck her in a hole, and soon they’d be coming for her, probably in hopes to use her to draw me out.
Who was I to disappoint them?
****
Taxi didn’t so much ‘drive’ up as she burned the Night Trotter down the road at something like the speed of light, throwing arcs of magical electricity onto the pavement that sparkled in the morning sun of the lonely street. Braking so hard she left two streaks of rubber in front of the cafe, she was out of the cab before the engine had died, all but bucking open the door of the little diner.
When she saw me, sitting quietly, alive and well, she drew in several deep breaths then screamed like a howling banshee for a few straight seconds, leaving my ears aching and the waitress cowering under the counter. This was good. For Taxi, it was a fairly cool, level headed response.
I expected some act of minor, affectionate assault, but she just staggered to the table and sank into the seat across from me. The waitress was staring at us, though mostly at the monstrous gun attached to my driver’s back. I waved her off with one hoof and she retreated behind the counter, peering out from behind one of the coffee machines.
Taxi'seyes were red and her mane was unbraided and tousled. In her rush, she’d even left her saddlebags behind. The scars on her hips would have given a diamond dog a sour stomach, but she didn’t seem to care who saw at that particular moment.
“Hardy... where…”
I held up my hoof, then took a sip of my coffee before I said, “I don’t have time for a complete explanation and you’d just think I was losing my mind if I summarized. We’ll leave it at that we have fresh allies and this day has been very stressful and is only likely to get worse.” My heart clenched in my chest and I swallowed.
Taxi caught the look of discomfort. Her face softened and she asked, softly, “What’s wrong?”
I tried to take a deep breath, but my lungs felt like they were full of glue. Opening my mouth to speak, all that came out was a faint choking sound. I downed some more of the coffee. It was awful, but it was liquid.
After draining half the cup, I found my voice. It was a weak, anemic little thing, but it was there.
“Iris Jade has Swift.”
My driver’s right eye twitched and I had time to finish the other half of my swill before she managed to order enough thoughts to form sentences. I wasn’t inclined to help on that front. Nothing she had to say could be any worse than the hideous beating my own guilt was perfectly happy to give my already battered ego.
Lowering her chin onto the table, she turned her cheek sideways, looking up at me out of one eye. “So… that’s it, then. Game over.” Her shoulders slouched as she went on. “We… had a good run, right? I mean, if we ditch this now, we can probably get Swift out if you give yourself to Jade. Might get you a few years in prison. We could get it halved if we split up the charges evenly and get a good plea. They can only prove… slander of a public official, a few… uh… hundred… speeding tickets, illegal use of police materiale, abuse of authority, theft, impersonating a police officer, causing a public disturbance, criminal trespassing, and maybe conspiracy of some kind-”
“Oh can it, Sweets.” I put my hoof on her forehead and pushed her back off the table. “You know me better than that.”
Taxi smacked my leg away. “Yeah? What exactly are you going to do? Call up Stella and storm the Detrot Police Department?! Swift might as well be on the moon!” She buried her face in both hooves. “I know you, too. You won’t let this lie. You should. She might be in there a few months, tops, if she just kept quiet. She could just pin it all on you and walk, probably, but that silly child is going to confess to everything if we leave her there long enough, won’t she?”
I coughed, softly, and murmured, “Probably, yes. There’s that, and the ponies hunting me will probably try to use her to get to me.”
“So, what then?” My driver stomped on the table, rattling the silverware. “Tell me you got something out of Bari that we can use! Tell me your ‘new allies’ gave us something that will magically teleport your partner out of a guarded, teleportation proofed cell in the basement of one of the three most secure buildings in Detrot?”
I lowered my chin to my chest, covering my face with the brim of my hat. “I’ve got something.”
I could feel her eyes on me, boring into me, seeking good and deep. That was Sweet’s speciality, after all. Finally she said, “Whatever it is, it scares the piss out of you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, it does. If this doesn’t kill me, I’ve got no guarantee it will even save Swift… but it’s better than nothing.”
“How much better?”
“Not much. I’m short of plans, time, and options. It’s this, or we put a bow around my neck and trot me down to civic center for whoever wants to lay claim.”
Taxi wiped a tear from the corner of one eye and nodded. “Okay. Okay, fine. Sorry, I haven’t slept. We’re going on that vacation as soon as this is over, right?”
“Absolutely.”
She gave me a wan smile, and reached across the table, grabbing my handkerchief out of my front pocket to loudly blow her nose before she asked, “Where were you? Really?”
“A warehouse full of magical pre-war artifacts owned by a secret agency of bat pony spies under the direct orders of Princess Luna to guard the armor of Nightmare Moon.” I replied.
“...Yeah. That… that summary does kind of make you sound insane.”
“Can we go?” I nodded towards the door, then toward the area behind the counter, which was empty. “I think the waitress is somewhere, probably talking to Telly as we speak.”
“Right.” Taxi squared her shoulders. “Where are we headed?”
****
“I’m coming.”
“No, no you’re not! If this is a bust, I need somepony on the outside to take the diary to Stella and have him bury the damn thing. Don’t take it to the Don. He’s too practical. He’ll crack it and try to use whatever is inside for his own benefit. I don’t want to give it to them until it’s our last resort, because frankly, I’m not sure how much less pragmatic the dragon is.”
“I don’t care about the stupid diary, Hardy! Do you not get it? This is not about you!”
“Nor is it about you. So you’ll wait, hear me? Drop me off, then park the Night Trotter somewhere. If I’m not out in an hour, go report this mess to Stella. He’ll make sure Swift and I have a decent lawyer.”
****
We’d ridden downtown in the frigid quiet Taxi projects when she’s really pissed off. I suppose I couldn’t blame her for being mad. She’d gotten me back after a month in a meat locker and there I was, about to do something that would probably put me back in it. At least once, a traffic enforcement cruiser tried to flag us down, but some light application of Taxi’s rear hoof soon left them with clouds of dust and feelings of penile inadequacy.
When the engine stopped, I was half asleep; if they could bottle the Night Trotter’s ride, they’d have the perfect sleeping potion. Pushing my hat brim back, I leaned forward and put my hoof on Taxi’s shoulder. She covered it with her own for a half second, then jerked her head at my door.
“I’ll be waiting,” Taxi muttered. “You die in there, I am just going to use your corpse for a coat rack next time.”
“I’m sure I’ll make a pretty coat rack. Now go, find a place to hole up. I’ll call you in an hour.”
“You better, you hear me?”
I didn’t answer, but opened my door and slid onto the pavement. Taxi was watching me in her side-view mirror. I gave her a subtle nod, then turned to face a dastardly fate once more.
The Castle seemed to slump in the long shadows of the early hours, but I knew Jade would already be there. She worked a schedule that would have made most farmers beg for time off and considering recent events I felt certain she wouldn’t be sleeping much.
Nopony was in the courtyard, though a few were coming and going between some of the side buildings ringing the central spire. A passing secretary noticed me standing there under the portcullis and her eyes almost popped right out of her head. The clipboard she’d been holding in her magic clattered on the paving stones, but she didn’t stop to pick it up. Rather, she hurried on into the building she’d been aiming at and slammed the wooden door behind her.
That didn’t bode well. Most of the other ponies I could see wandering the Castle grounds also had an air of tension. They goose-stepped about, looking over their shoulders like a voice might call down Celestia’s fire on them at any moment.
The ancient wooden doors of the Castle, which had seen dragon fire and cockatrice gaze, seemed to glare down at me like the disapproving eyes of some ferocious head-mistress.
Behind me, the Night Trotter revved and tires squealed. Taxi might have said goodbye, but I didn’t catch it if she did. My entire attention was riveted on those doors. Somewhere behind them, Swift was locked in a dungeon. I might soon be joining her. Cheerful thought, really. If I joined her, I might be out of this particular game. Then I could rest, right?
For some reason, I doubted that would end up being the case.
Nothing else for it. It was time to put one hoof in front of the other. I started up the cobbled walk, stopping in front of the doors again and putting my toe on their oaken surface. I pushed and a cool wind rushed out, making my coat billow. Part of me wondered if I looked like one of those heros in a western, trotting into the saloon for the final shoot out. More likely I looked like a drowning victim standing too close to a fan.
Pushing the door open, I eased around it into the air conditioning. I had to smile. So little changed in Detrot Police Department. The cubicles were back in place after Jade's dinner as though they'd never left. The File Cloud still rumbled and spat lightning, spinning lazily beneath the dome. Telly was in her usual seat off to one side, behind the console that controlled the central radio system and the File Cloud. One hoof pressed to her temple, she was apparently explaining something to somepony who just wasn't getting it. She sighed and pulled her headset off, laying it on her desk. Two others glittered in her magical grip, with their own conversations ongoing. Telly’s multi-tasking skills would have put a hydra to shame.
I hadn’t noticed it at first, but silence was gradually descending on the office. Telly picked up on it before I did, and looked up at the door, then at me standing there. Her muzzle sagged open and her horn flashed, sending both head-sets sailing end over end out over the cubicles. She stood, slowly, and half raised one hoof, then let it drop. I grinned and bobbed my chin at her.
By then, the entire room was frozen in place, staring. Dozens of equine eyes peered over tops of cloth dividers at me. A pony could get used to creating that sort of quiet wherever they went, but I got the distinct impression that if somepony sneezed, I might have had a stampede on my hooves.
It was now or never.
You do realize you could have just called ahead, right? Juniper whispered in the back of my head.
That would be so much less fun, though! I thought.
I threw my chest out, raised my chin, and shouted, “Chief Iris Jade!”
Since everypony in the room was simultaneously holding their breaths, those three words echoed and reverberated off the columns, bouncing around for several seconds in the ancient chamber.
There was no response.
Silence reigned.
All eyes swiveled to look at the window. I rolled my lower jaw, then called again at the stained glass window stretched across the back of the Chief’s office above the throne dais.
“It’s Hard Boiled! You’ve got something of mine!”
Again, nothing happened for several agonizing seconds. I took a deep breath, preparing to repeat my challenge.
The stained glass window with the likeness of lady Justice, her flaming sword shining and blind eyes watching all those who passed through the halls of the Detrot Police Department, exploded. If the doors hadn’t been ‘pull only’ from that side, I might have tumbled out onto the street and made a run for it. Shards of glass burst out of the window, shooting over the crowd.
Ponies started to scream.
Every single piece of glass stopped in mid-air, hanging over the crowd like a glittering field of beautiful, prismatic death. The shrieking slowly died, replaced with frightened murmuring.
An olive colored shape appeared in the broken remains of the window, her horn glowing and spitting streams of green fire. I couldn’t make out the details of her expression at that distance, but there was no mistaking the vibration that seemed to spread through the room.
Chief Iris Jade stepped into mid-air. A brilliant shine wrapped itself around her body and she drifted down from the rafters. Her face, as she got closer, resolved into a cold, empty-eyed glower.
It’s amazing what a month in a freezer will do for somepony’s confidence. I expected to be frightened. I expected to be fighting the urge to run. I wasn’t. I felt calm. Almost at peace. My heartbeat was steady. Underlying that, there was the ever burning fires of my rage. She had Swift. She would give me my partner, or there would be a reckoning. I knew that like I knew my own fetlocks.
Her rear hooves, shod in black heels, touched down first. If she’d been a wreck when I saw her last, she’d become a veritable disaster area. Her face was drawn and lined. She wore no makeup. Her silvery mane was loose and her eyes bloodshot.
A piece of me wished I had an impudent smile, but it was only a string of self control that kept the anger out of my voice. “Chief Jade.”
The unicorn’s lips peeled back. “Hard Boiled.”
Above us, the glass window was reassembling itself, one shard at a time slipping back into place until I couldn’t tell the stained fresco had been shattered at all. It was an act of supreme telekinetic control, one I hadn’t seen in all the years I’d known her. She was impressive, yes, but this was something else. Even her most fearsome acts of telekinesis didn't display close to this level of precision.
“Jade. We need to talk,” I said, just low enough that the gathered office workers couldn’t hear.
“We’ll talk,” she growled. Her nostrils flared and she took a threatening step forward. “Immediately after I burn every scrap of fur off your body, cuff you, and find a nice comfy cell for you.”
I shifted my weight from one leg, to the other. “Actually, that sounds like a good idea. Minus the fur burning part and the cuffs, mind you. Shall we adjourn to the dungeon?” I dropped my voice on that last word. “I believe you have something for me there…”
Jade’s expression didn’t change, but I detected the subtlest hint of surprise. It was buried in an instant. “The dungeon. Yes. Your partner has been a model of stubbornness. She might have been a good cop, if you’d ever given her the opportunity. I will find out where you get your information.”
“Agreed.”
There was no covering that look.
“What?” she said, dumbly.
I shook my head and held out one foreleg in the direction of the basement stairs. “We’ll talk there. Too many prying ears here. You hear me out, then you can do whatever you want. Got me?”
Jade’s teeth flashed. “I can do whatever I would like to right now. Is there something stopping me?”
It’s funny how, now and then, a pony can realize just how precarious their position is in life at the least opportune moment. Life is short, frequently messy, and tends to end violently for those trying the hardest to make a difference. It also necessitates a gamble now and then which could save or damn, depending on which way the dice fall.
I whispered a word. It might have saved me or might have damned me, but my future rested on that one word. It was a name.
“Cerise.”
****
Jade hadn’t killed me outright, but ten seconds later, I was wishing she had. I dangled upside down in a field of magical energy, my fore legs and rear legs bound tightly to one another. All of the blood had rushed instantly to my forehead and whatever good Gale had accomplished for the flash-bang induced headache was undone in a matter of seconds.
My muzzle was bound shut with a strip of glowing light and my gun hung in the air just out of reach. I squirmed uncomfortably, kicking one rear leg. Jade stomped along in front of me, her gaze straight ahead and her horn spitting occasional flares of light and crackling sparks that bounced off the stone walls.
I suppose things could have gone worse. She might have broken out the kitchen implements right then and there, in the door of The Castle. Telly had looked on helplessly as Chief Jade dragged me, hooves flailing, off the floor, and marched towards the stairs down to the dungeon. My heart was still oddly calm, but that might have been my coronary passenger trying to keep me from doing something undignified.
Down a side-passage off of the main hall, my captor tore open one of the old service entrances and stepped down onto cold stone steps. There, the only illumination was her horn, bobbing and swaying in front of us as I trailed along behind, gripped tightly by immutable telekinesis. Chief Jade might not have been Granny Glow’s match for sheer power, but for finesse, she might have blown the old mare out of the water.
The stairs descended in a tightening spiral into tunnels older than the city itself in which the earliest pony settlers had sheltered from the attacks of great beasts. A biting chill started to creep into my fur, but still, Jade stomped silently along.
Abruptly, the journey ended at an arch with a faint, flickering glow beyond. The stink of mold and long-congealed bodily fluids hit my nose and I swallowed, lest my stomach decide it was going to pick the worst possible moment to rebel. Jade swung around the corner and I winced as my flank bounced off the wall, setting me spinning.
At the other end of the long row of empty cells, each one able to hold twenty ponies and every one fronted by rusted iron bars, a lantern hung from a wall sconce. Moving at a leisurely pace, Jade trotted down the long, echoing hallway towards the lamp. I wanted to call out, to beg or maybe just scream at her to put me down, but I couldn’t even scratch the vicious itch on my nose that’d been getting worse the deeper we went.
Jade stopped, but I continued floating until I was right beside her, looking into the cell across from the light.
The cell was a disaster area. Bits of what I presumed to be a cot lay scattered along the walls, broken into tiny pieces. The bucket, which I supposed was meant to be used for bodily functions, was upturned against the bars and a torn police blanket was draped over a small lump that breathed very slowly as it lay in one corner.
My throat tightened at the sight of several long, orange feathers laying just behind the bars.
Jade’s horn guttered and I dropped the half meter onto my back with a soft ‘oof’ as all the air in my lungs rushed out. The blood pumping back into my extremities left them tingling. I struggled to get my breath back, looking at the shape under the blanket. It hadn’t moved.
“Miss Cuddles,” Jade said. “Get up.”
The blanketed body didn’t move, but a defiant voice said, “Why should I? You want to tell me how The Detective isn’t coming for me again and how I’ve ruined my future? You… y-you go straight to the moon!” She pulled the blanket tighter around herself, clanking as the iron ball attached to her rear legs shifted. “You go straight to the moon!"
I could have cried, I was so proud of her.
Chief Jade considered this, then flicked her eyes at me. “I rarely say this, because I’m not often surprised by this city, but I was wrong about that. If this stallion with me wants to remain a stallion, however, he’s going to provide me with some very quick answers in a more forthcoming fashion than you did.”
Swift shifted onto her other side, rattling her chains, and looked up. When she saw me, I think her wings tried to spring out from her back because she winced, then struggled upright. Her tail dragged the floor as she limped towards the bars.
I stepped up to the front of the cage as she stood there, gaping at me.
“S-sir?” she squeaked.
“Hey, kid,” I whispered, though not for stealth’s sake. “I’m here to get you out. Are you alright?”
Her light blue eyes shined with moisture. “I’m pretty far from alright, sir. This place stinks and the food’s lousy.” She hiccuped, then jerked her head in Chief Jade’s direction. “You’re...not trading yourself for me or something stupid like that, right?”
“I’ll admit, it crossed my mind, but no… not today. Granted, that’s not saying what I’m doing might not be end up being pretty stupid,” I answered and Swift managed a weak giggle.
Magical energies wrapped themselves around my chest and forced me around to face Jade, who stepped up nice and close. “Hard Boiled. The only reason you’re not furless and locked in that box with your protegee is that you… mentioned my daughter.” At the last word, there was a slight catch in the Chief’s voice, though she covered it well. “I go well out of my way to keep my private life out of my public officiation, so I can’t think of any reason you’d mention her unless… unless you knew something about what’s been going on.”
Lowering myself onto my haunches, I leaned my shoulders against the cold bars and shut my eyes before replying, “Chief, if I could actually tell you everything that’s happened during this last month, I’m pretty sure you’d still have fired me or at least put me on a section eight. I wish I hadn’t set you up the situation at the museum, but I needed you looking elsewhere and to buy myself some cover.”
Jade punched me.
I don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t be painful. Possibly because the last pony to deck me had been Night Bloom, who hit like a filly fresh off of her cute-ceanera.
Iris Jade had spent years terrorizing the police force, but she got things done most often without the need for violence. She and I had never come to blows, though it’d frequently been a close thing. More often than not she’d toss me about a bit with her horn when I needed reminding just where the bounds of insubordination really were, but she’d never actually hauled off and socked me, no matter what I’d done. I suppose she’d been saving up, because my head snapped back against the iron bars as her hoof made contact with my jaw and if I hadn’t already been sitting, I’d have wound up on my back. I tasted blood.
“So you thought you would link me, publicly, to that wretched church?!” Her horn blasted a thin jet of fire that cut into the ceiling, leaving the stones glowing. “Do you have any conception of what they have put me through?!”
Wiping my muzzle on the back of my hoof, I stepped to one side, putting a little distance between us. “I deserved that. Still, there are things going on that are bigger than you and me.”
“Do you not think I am aware of that, you damn fool!” Jade’s horn ripped me off the floor, dragging me close again. “Do you think someone just absconds with the Chief of Police’s daughter as a prank?!”
I blinked as I looked into her reddened eyes, tears hanging at the edges. A thought slowly crept across the front of my brain. It was such an odd notion that I almost dismissed it, but five seconds of awkward silence later, it was still sitting there like a bad smell in a phone booth.
“You're... clean…” I murmured.
Jade’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“You’re clean,” I said, a little louder.
Her horn released me and I fell onto my rear. “I don’t know-”
I cut her off, unable to restrain my amazement. “You haven’t taken any pills today, have you?! Or yesterday? You’re not even shaking! You’ve been off the junk for a week, at least, right?”
“Hard Boiled, you are not making a convincing case for keeping your fur!” Jade snapped. “You will-”
I slammed my hoof down hard enough to shake the floor of the cell block.
“Dammit, Jade! You want my help, tell me what happened!”
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Oh I am liking where this is going
“Warning: Powered by Quantum Entanglement. Do not open casing ...or a planet-killing singularity may result?!”
Yep. No chance that THAT gun is going unfired. Let's hope that "may" includes "may not".
3624495 well the whole time and space defying clouds aren't exactly a big plot point. though far as we now those things are more likely to produce a cake or bring an alternate version of pinkie pie as an alicorn into their world. obviously they did not exactly test it to see if it would destroy equistria....... hoping it is less a gun and more a prop, like said causality defying clouds.
.............. though seriuosly, where in the world di you get the idea for a walkie talkie powered by quantum physics? it is just hilariously ridiculous. gotta love it, though i am curiuos why anyone let something like THAT just laying around. could kinda udnerstand how they figured out how to do it, unicorn teleportation perhaps, someone messing with theories from some Star Swhirl tomes. still, all that for a walkie talkie? i would say it was ridiculous if it weren't for the fact pony tech is always eclectic. what are we gonna do with these quantum particles? make a walkie talkie out of them of course!
3624796 Heh, the walkie-talkie was a giggle. The warehouse is basically for technology either too useless or too dangerous to be used anywhere, which amount to more or less the same thing. A walkie-talkie which could only talk to ONE other walkie-talkie and, if you open it, the world ends...well, not useful in most circumstances.
-Chessie
...........exactly HOW strong is hardy and earth ponies as you view it? kinda hard to pin that down. it seems to me it is almost like some kind of enhanced strength deal, the ponies being much stronger than their bodies would tell, even combatants that do not train their bodies regularly like hardy. hardy simply stomped on the floor and shook the cieling at the end there. i got a grasp on their limits in strength, but how does that strength compare to other pony breeds?
3624995 that or teleports celestia's cake........ from the future........ phsyics in equistria are already probably hard to predict thanks to magic and its ability to make scientists weep. far as one would know, the destroying the world thing was the least likely outcome, but also the only outcome that did not sound utterly ridiculous....... can almsot imagine the scene
"Why are we labeling that it might destroy the world? i thought it was less than .0000001 percent likely?"
"Because the other chances are stealing celestia's cake from the future, creating a female draconqus, or possible it opening a portal that drags a alicorn Pinkie Pie into our world. The whole reason we are making the casing impenetrable is to make sure that we do not get an alicorn version of the Pink Menace.
3624995 ... well of course YOU would know if it would destroy it. just saying, if equistria has clouds that defy space and time in very useless ways, ther is a risk of a pinkie pie alicorn somehow ending up there.
after reading: wow, I am litterally shaking, that was one of the best chapters yet, the walk-in scene was everything I'd been hoping for ever since they were on the lamb
post evaluation: also, I didn't expect Hardy to have the hangers to just walk in unannounced, instead, i thought he would try to either contact jade, and use "rescuing" cerise as leverage, or the dummer idea of using cerise as a hostage, but hardy went all nope.avi on us and just strolled on in. in his position, honestly, i would have just gotten all of his assets so far (glow, stella, aroyos, wtc. to cause a huge distraction, to then which he taxi and lim would infiltrate the castle and rescue swift, and make a daring escape, only to have Jade be the final boss battle
3625027 I've left the strength thing a bit variable. The interrogation chair is obviously designed to hold earth ponies.
I'd call earth ponies about 30% more physically capable than pegasi (judging by the Iron pony competition, and in particular the places where RD had to use her wings to win) and 60% more capable than unicorns. Durability-wise, they're much harder to kill than either of the other two and in melee combat, they're extremely powerful. A pissed off earth pony is a thing to behold if you don't have the benefit of magic to defuse the situation.
-Chessie
3625128 Hardy has BIIIIIIG hangers...and a bit of a hero complex. He's also a touch self-destructive. It all compounds into a big, nutty ball of nutty with fruit. Jade said it best. He stomps around with his big-boy horse-shoes on, with no regard for what he steps on. It makes him simultaneously the best and worst possible individual to attempt to foil the plans of villains.
-Chessie
Wow
Ya got my attention!
3624675
3624796
Actually if it's the kind of quantum entanglement that results in closing the distance between two places on a quantum level regardless of physical distance, breaking one of them or releasing whatever restraints keeping the two isolated quantum-linked points apart would cause a metaphysical rubber-band effect that would result in all of the space between them collapsing in on itself simultaneously as the universe tries to correct itself resulting in a hyper-density point capable of producing a singularity that, in theory, should be able to maintain itself long enough to devour enough matter to propegate it's existence just enough to eat the planet. No guesses as to what it would do to the moon or if it would collapse before then. It most likely wouldn't be able to reach outlying planets, though, so make sure to set it off from Mars.
I love the walk in. Perfect.
3625490 I...am impressed. It was a throwaway joke. Heee! I love our readers.
-Chessie
3625128 I was going for "I can help rescue Cerise" as well, definitely didn't expect him just barging right in. Of course, considering Hardy's history, I wasn't entirely surprised.
3625505
We know. We're awesome.
Ah, the pieces come together now. Now Jade's break down in her office makes some level of sense. Estranged or not even she cannot stop loving her daughter and Hardy's stunt likely disrupted whatever balance she has with those Lunatic ponies. I thought that Jade was a player in all this like Stella or the Don but it turns out she is just another miserable pawn and the Lunatics are not as harmless as they seemed to come off before. Even I cannot speculate as to what will happen next. The drama! The suspense! The intrigue! The next chapter I await eagerly.
3625490 of coure that is talking about physics when we do NOT have the presence of physicist tormenting supernatural energis and beings able to turn clouds into chocolate raining cotton candy and other more cmmon beings able to basically bend space to move instantaneously.
just saying that in a world where time travel is possible, but totally useless, and chaos beasts that seem to arp reality, there is no telling what exactly account for normal phsyics then.
and I knew all of that, and as I repeat, uselss time travel and chaos beasts turning rain to chocolate and destabilizing reality...physics are questionable at best with such elements present.
3625214 think lim might have put it best a few chapters back. the only reason he isn't some kind of king pin is because he is on a certain side of morality. woe to detrot had he developed a cutie mark for manipulation rather than justice.
can't deny his effors though. ultimately his actions do make a certain level of method in madness sense. true he put himself in danger moer than once, but he seemed to have a grasp on what would happen if that risk was not taken. and it rarely seems contrived, he has an almost pinkie pie like instinct for it.
on one hand, taking up as many resources as possible and doing a raid on the Castle might have been the saner choice. yet on the other hand, he would not be getting the information he is getting now, let alone that Jade is in fact functioning under her own power rather than from being stoned off her ass. not to mention that it could have lead to a dangerous situation for the stillettos...... especially because not even if Stella duct taped Glow to his scaly gender confused ass, there would be no stopping that unicorn from taking Jade on face to face......... I would probably be leaning towards Glow in that one, cause while jade is younger, in comparison, glow is wilely, would be pissed out her mind to have her grandkid done up like a turkey in there, and just might be iwlling to go the full mile....... either ay everyone would lose should those tow immovable forces collide.
him being seld destructive.......... definitely can see that. .though he seems better off when that self destruction has to do with risking his own ass against homicidally pissed old unicorns over trinking himself into a coma..
3625697 jade striks me lss a pawn and more a beast stalking throw the chest board unaware that a game is even happening.
3625204 ...... that does make a bit of sense. though one would also have to figure out how much there is a difference in strength when we have trained individuals and untrained ones. that and just how much pissed off that a pony has going through their veins, as jade showed us.
Detroit? Why would someone ever to choose to live there?
In case it wasn't your fault, detective, props goes out to you for being a POLICE OFFICER in DETROIT. Good luck, bro.
The beauty.......its to much to handle!!!!
"That and they don’t seem to like non-pony... well, non-unicorn, pegasus, or earth pony species and it’s not easy to hide... um…"
…Well now, doesn't that raise some red flags? The lunar passage, turning away batponies?
This story continues to not disappoint. :D
*Aiming sniper rifle while shaking* Must resist urge to shoot author, Swift will be okay, Swift will be okay...
3628482 Cooome on, I've not let you guys down yet, have I?
-Chessie
3629085 I know, that's why I'm mad but waiting. I kind of want to be sympathetic toward Jade, but I'm just so mad at how she's treated Swift. Just like Hardy though I'm really proud of Swifty for her determination.
3629643 then again, maybe swift bit someone during the struggle........... suddenly realizing the girl has dragon teeth would make someone kinda go overboard with the restraints.
Hmmmm.
Woah that was a very interesting chapter.
But I have to get it out of the way first.
SWWWWIIIIIIIIFFFFTTTTTTT.
Couple of neat quotes from this chapter.
I was kind of expecting Hardy to draw his gun on Jade but then I remembered he had the plan with her daughter.
Hardy's return was just awesome, I can't wait to hear what's been happening to Chief Jade all this time.
3631593 I...mmm...You know, for someone who has been writing as long as I have to go need to find myself a dictionary to read a review isn't all that common, but I'm pretty pleased by this one.
Either way, per your question, signed Coandco onto our editing team because he has a sharp eye for detail. Brilliant character to have on board. I'm half inclined to pull him into the writing of an actual novel one of these days, if I thought he were interested.
As for the excess of adjectives, that's stylistic. Noir is a mixture of flowery language and absurd-ist characterization. It's made worse when you put it in a fantasy realm. I can write without all those adjectives, but it's much less fun. My readers don't seem to object, usually, and Kasen adores making people drag out those dictionaries.
-Chessie
3632066 Thou shalt not be disappointed!
-Chessie
3624995
I didn't actually mention it before, but the whole warehouse sounds kind of like Warehouse 13. Was that intentional?
3632666 Intentional? No. Inspired by? Maybe a little.
-Chessie
3631593
3632206
I can't say I own (or, honestly, have ever seriously read) The Elements of Style. My own facility with the English language comes mostly from having been a fervent reader from a young age -- I almost take a Bayesian approach to grammar, backed up by googling specific examples whenever I spot a problem.
To address the question of what motivates me to proofread in general, I've found that I'm just OCD enough to catch a large majority of the grammatical errors in whatever I read, and noting them down somewhere makes the annoyance I have at them disappear. As such, I typically make grammar notes on whatever I'm reading, and I'm always happy when an author decides that the service is valuable enough to warrant giving me a look at their work before it's published to the general public
As far as Starlight Over Detrot in particular is concerned, I've been spellbound by its penchant for grin-inducing description since the moment I started reading it. In my mind, Starlight successfully echoes a large part of the literary stylings of some of my favorite authors (Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams), and a world where I have more writing of that quality to consume is a world I want to live in. Hence, I'm more than happy to do what I can to assist those who would produce such a tasty mental confection.
3632233
Well I think this goes without saying, I haven't been disappointed in a single chapter and you've sure put out a lot of them.
3633538
Now you mention it there is a little similarity in terms of sheer zaniness to Terry Pratchett here.
All we need now are golem ponies who form a fire brigade and we'll be set.
3632206 sounds of it noir seems to fit into mlp pretty well. absurd characterization is part of its bred a butter to a point.
3632779 huh, did not notice but it DOES have that kinda vibe............... only, the warehouse actually had usable and effective items, while this one has mostly useless ones, and the most useful has the capacity to destroy the planet, and may have if they did not put it into a box that is basically made immune to the concept of destruction itself. and it only communicates two ways to.
gotta send a memo to the princesses. figure out way to dispose of potential doomsday walkie talkies.......... suggesting dsicord turn them into chocolate........... suddenly it makes sense why celestai had discord tamed. she probably saw thsi coming and needed someone who would be able to contain a dimensional catastrophy should someone being dumb enough to cause one. thankfully his chaos would make that easy enough.
Er, so what's the chapter number again?
So, the Night Guard is the NSA.
Wow, this restaurant has a really complete menu!
Jade, as much as you seem to like being the Untouchable boss lady, you really should have picked out a few honest cops (or, perhaps a private Eye?) when these nutcases nabbed your daughter. Because, scary as you may be, you're no Liam Neeson.
Luna has a harem.
3646255 Thanks for the love!
3635825 Luna...yes...god...kill me. I knew I had to do a 'bride of God' nun joke.
3642457 I love Murky and being up there compared to THAT story gives me a warm little fuzzy in my stomach.
-Chessie
Damn..... They could have just have gotten Swifts granny to bust her out, but that would have been no fun.
3655475 It'd be a real question as to whether or not Granny Glow or Chief Jade would win in a straight out punch up. Glow has ridiculous strength, but she's old and her finesse is somewhat lacking. Jade is supremely powerful and her control is insane. It'd be tough to say.
-Chessie
3655887
Ah, but what if they were just using teletecknis (teletecknis? you know, magic horn lifty glowy stuff) who would win?
My money actually on iris for that one.
3660438 Dunno, honestly. I agree. Iris Jade is just scary. We wrote her to be Cthulhu with less patience and a badge.
-Chessie
3660487 think it would all boil down to motivation. under normal circumstances, i do think jade would win, though i would add she has the handicap of a long giong addiction, if one she is currently clean of. however if the situation was less, get Swift away from the crazy policemare and more, save swift from someone who is tryin ot cause her great harm, then we are dealing with a whole different animal.
glow is an old warrior, and i get a sense that she might be looking for a battlefield to die on. think she would throw all that is lefto f her at Jade if the unicorn became a true threat to swift. and i dobut jade could stand that much. even a star younger and stronger than jade would be thrown backby the force of a dying star turning nova.
either way though.......... would be expecting a lot of property damage.
...........kay here is another idea to add to the pot thanks to todays newest mlp.............. illusionary reality. they were sucked into a pocket dimension thing through magic inside of a comic book. used for pure entertainment.......... also leaves one wondering what kind of physics mlp has when worm holes can be stored in comic books.
3660487
She is not scary.
Scary.
SHE IS THE MOST TERRIFYING CREATURE TO EVER WALK THE PLANET. SHE IS MORE TERRIFYING THAN SOMBRA, NIGHTMARE MOON AND THE GRIFFON-WITH-WHIPS-FROM-ACT-ONE-OH-BUCK-I-CAN'T-REMEMBER-HER-NAME (WHY
) ALL PUT TOGETHER TO FORM ONE DEFORMED THINGY!
Now that's saying something.
Also, Cthulhu with less patience? That's hell in a can.
All that to just put it into perspective.