Chapter 4: Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do
Starlight Over Detrot
Chapter 4: Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do
There are reasons that DPD investigative procedure seems haphazard at times. The first is that modern policing only got its start in the last few decades, with the stamping of the Royal Order Preservation Act into law. The Royal Guards and loose association of local sheriffs that used to keep the peace were only deemed inadequate to this task when a Los Pegasus crime wave crested so high that it generated a physical embodiment of larceny, one that actually managed to make off with the city itself for about a week.
This brings us to the second reason: The varied and often bizarre nature of Equestrian crime. Just when the DPD got used to Cutie Mark Fraud and Grand Theft Pastry, they learned that there were ponies making empathy drugs using semi-toxic runoff from the rainbow manufacturing plants, and acts of terrorism involving draconic birthday parties in populated areas.
Most important, however, is that ponies who become police investigators and detectives often do so based on their Special Talents. Some ponies rely on calculation, others more on intuition. Some ponies use spells and artifacts to gather clues, and others are known to have solved crimes with the aid of trained wildlife. The methodology involved in the application of these talents varies far too widely for tightly written procedure to be effective. Case closure rates tend to be higher when investigators are afforded greater leeway for their personal idiosyncrasies, and at this point, Equestrian civilized society needs every closed case it can get its hooves on.
-The Scholar
Sykes muscled the hotel’s revolving door faster than it wanted to turn, letting out an unpleasant squeal from the gears as we all stuffed ourselves into a single cell, which was an extremely cramped and feathery experience. The four of us spilled out into the lobby in a heap of fur, limbs, and tails.
Shoving Swift’s flank off of my face, I dragged myself upright and then began helping her and Taxi up. Celestia was smiling on us in at least one respect: The lobby of the High Step was empty.
It continued the awful thematic failings of the outside in a more reserved fashion. Instead of the ridiculous statuary I’d been expecting, the interior borrowed more from the country ski lodge. The rows of pillars were simply great trunks of oak trees and the sole decorations consisted of a fake Hydra’s head flanked by two dead and mounted cockatrices over a roaring fireplace. Mass produced wooden chairs made to look hoofcrafted ringed the hearth. In every corner of the room and entirely out of place, huge planter pots bursting with all manner of colorful flower added a touch of light and life to the otherwise reputable but unpleasant atmosphere of the place. I spared a thought to how on earth somepony had managed to get them to grow inside a building, particularly in a city that saw sunlight as rarely as Detrot.
Strangely, there were no porters waiting to take our luggage, and the service desk was empty. A divine scent wafted from somewhere, and I realized just how hungry I really was.
Sykes whooped as he spotted a small buffet of breakfast food set in an alcove to one side, which included a few plates of cooked meat. Most of the omnivorous species in the city had their own private restaurants; The hotel must have played regular host to griffin dignitaries. The flesh on display likely hadn’t come from any sentient species, but in Detrot, you can buy almost anything if you know the right creatures.
The griffin tore off his poncho and threw it over an umbrella stand, then shot over and began heaping a plastic dish with heavily spiced morsels from some animal. Taxi went for a dainty dish of strawberries.
At the sight of the food Swift’s stomach growled so loudly I almost thought somepony had left a window open to the thunder outside. She looked longingly at the trays of cooling comestibles, but seemed determined to wait until I pointed her in a direction. I gave her a little shove. “Go on, kid. Let that be ‘cop lesson’ number one. Eat free when you can.”
Stacking a plate with slices of fresh red delicious apples, I flopped down on one of the lounging couches in front of the fire-place. Taxi slid onto the thick shag carpet right in front of the fire and Sykes hunkered down beside her. She gave him a sharp look, but he was either oblivious or ignoring her as he tore into a hunk of something, coating his beak in grease. Eventually, she just huffed and began stuffing her face with strawberries as hunger trumped principle, which I understood. In a cop’s life you’re lucky to eat two solid meals a day during an investigation.
Swift returned from the buffet a minute later than the rest of us, her plate covered in a small monument to excess. I saw no less than six peeled oranges, the cracks between which she’d stuffed with cream and the entire thing was covered in a coating of syrup and cheese. She buried her nose in the mess and I was put in mind of a manticore I’d once seen, feasting on a particularly gruesome kill.
“Hah! Lassy! Oi knew ye was a soul after me own kin!” The griffin officer beamed at the little pegasus who, despite the vicious and voracious way she tore into her food, somehow managed to keep the cream off of her ears.
“What? Ish good!” She said between mouthfuls. Tilting her head she sniffed at the plate in front of Sykes. “Whash zat?” Swallowing half an orange she repeated herself. “What’s that?”
“Ooh, this, lass, is proper food! Ye ponies an yer damn squeamish ways are never willin’ ta give foine cooking it’s due.”
Cocking her head at what she took as a challenge, Swift reached out and picked a piece of meat off the carnivore’s plate, dangling it above her lips.
“Well, I’ll try anything once.”
At that moment both Taxi and I were mid-way through a bite. Panicked horror crossed our driver’s face and she began chewing faster, trying to clear her mouth as quickly as possible. I calmly dipped part of my apple in a bit of ranch dressing and bit off another piece, watching with interest.
Swift dropped the bit of prepared flesh into her muzzle, sucking on it for a moment to get the juices out then shifting it around to the side so she could properly rip it apart. Pony teeth aren’t properly designed for that so it took her a moment, but soon she had it soft enough to talk around. “Mmm... it’s really salty. I kind of like it though.” She swallowed and grinned as though she’d passed some test.
Taxi just sat there with her eyes wide, her mouth open, and her half masticated lunch on her tongue. She started to speak, then fell into a bout of furious coughing as a bit of her meal went down the wrong tube.
I finished my bite, setting my plate aside and carefully out of vomiting range. “It’s meat, kid. Griffin ‘foine cooking’ is meat.”
I wish I’d had a camera just then. Swift’s face cycled through interest to comprehension to disgust then back around several times in a fraction of a second.
“That’s what I taste like?!” She squeaked.
The griffin slurped down another bite and nodded. "Aye. More?" He held out his platter with a cheerful grin on his face. To my surprise, Swift started to reach out; Only Taxi's sharply disapproving frown halted her hoof and stopped her from taking another slice.
"No, that's... okay. Thank you."
I couldn't help but laugh. "Hah! Kid, you're going to have to explain your stomach one of these days. You threw up over a little blood on a wall but eating another mammal doesn't toss your cookies?"
Her nose wrinkled and she scowled at the floor as she went back to her oranges. Taxi set her last few strawberries aside as her appetite left for the moon.
I crunched an apple seed and Sykes continued eating, totally preoccupied, with warm fat dripping off his face feathers. Celestia save us from the insanity of predators.
A loud bell rang somewhere nearby, and an aging, patchy black cow in a tiny red fez and big horn-rimmed glasses toddled through a pair of swinging doors behind the check-in desk. Her mooning brown eyes watched us for several moments before she said: “Can I help you, gentlebeings and fillies?” She spoke with a barely audible Fancee accent; It was just enough to give the impression we were invaders into her realm of suede, fake wood, and high class dinners. “If you’re just coming in to use the bathrooms then I’m afraid those aren’t for anypony but the paying public.”
Sucking apple juice off my toe I tugged my coat open, flashing my badge at her. “Detective Hard Boiled. We’re here to see the manager who was here early this morning. You mind pointing us at him or giving us his card?”
Sykes contemplatively cracked one of the bones on his plate, teasing the marrow out and licking it off of his sharp talons. The snooty cow watched him do so without so much as a flicker of emotion, then turned towards a sign that said ‘Hotel Restaraunt’ in big, looping silver letters. “He’s in the bar, last I saw. Not that it matters. We’ll be lucky to last a week after this. We’ve had four months worth of pre-arrangements canceled in the last hour. Do mind the carpets.”
With that she turned and wandered back into whatever hole she’d crawled out of, slamming the door with her tail.
“What did she mean by that, sir?” asked Swift, polishing off the last of her oranges.
I hopped down from the sofa and stood in front of the fire, straightening my tie. “You think a hotel where somepony got killed is going to get a lot of business from the nobility or the elite? This is a roach motel for big spenders as it is. If it were in Baltimare or Trottingham, it might weather something like this, but here? No way.”
****
The bartender was a youthful and very slender female griffin who was listlessly cleaning already spotless glasses with a perfectly white rag behind a polished wood bar. Canteens and containers of immensely expensive liquor sat behind her, most of them unopened. Sykes eyed her with a certain broad interest, then, at some avian signal I didn’t pick up, his attention was gone. I dragged myself up onto a bar chair.
“Morning, miss.”
She didn’t look up from her pointless little project; she merely dipped her chin to show she’d heard. I dug around in my coat then reached across the bar and put a hoof on the back of her foreleg with a ten bit piece balanced on the back of my knee. Her eyes snapped to the glimmer of metal, then in an instant, it was gone.
“We’re looking for the manager. You know where he is?”
With a loud snort she pointed at the rows of pristine pool tables in the back room alongside yet another fireplace. It must have cost a fortune in wood to keep this place going, unless those fires were magical.
Taxi sat down at the bar and tossed her saddlebags across it, fished out two shot-glasses from Luna knows where, and pushed one across the bar to the young griffin. The bird looked at the glass then up into our driver’s expression. If there had been any pity in Sweet Shine’s face for her impending unemployment, I’m sure the bartender would have tossed it in her face, but there wasn’t.
A tear slowly rolled down her cheek and she grabbed a quart of rum from behind the bar that could have neatly paid my salary for two weeks, upending a shot into both glasses and pushing the farther one back towards Taxi. As Swift, Sykes, and I headed for the games room they shared a last toast to the bloody end of the High Step Hotel.
We found the hotelier in a heap on one of the pool tables, clutching a two-thirds empty bottle of Sweet Apple Acres Whiskey and snoring so loudly he drowned out the crack and rumble of the weather. At first I thought he was an older pony; he wore a heavily tailored, blindingly white tuxedo top and pink cumberbund that might have stepped fresh off the train from Canterlot, if it weren’t such a mess. His sapphire coat had a tinge of silver around the ears, but with roots showing through; a bad dye job. His bushy mustache would have been impressive if it had been real; As it was, it hung half off of his face. A tiny swimming pool of drool ran from his muzzle into the right side corner pocket of his impromptu bed.
I tried to pry the bottle away from him but he clutched it tighter to his chest. “Mrrrergle... towels ‘re in the fuggin’ hall... pish off...”
I waved Sykes over. “Can I get a ‘Griffin Good Morning’?”
“Oi think so... ahem.” Inhaling deeply, he climbed onto the pool table and stood over the manager. I put my hooves over my ears, gesturing for Swift to do the same.
Sykes let out an eardrum-shattering, heart-stopping shriek that echoed through the restaurant. It was a sound used to terrify prey and ward off competitors in the dangerous mesas of the griffin homeland, but in a pinch, it’s also a great adrenaline shot.
The drunk stallion came awake with a yelp, wiggling sideways off the table and tumbling onto the floor. “Whaddafug?!”
Reaching down I casually yanked him up and began brushing off his suit, probably more roughly than was necessary. He made to bat me away, but couldn’t seem to figure out the complicated mechanisms involved in standing on only three hooves and almost pitched onto his face again. I read his nametag quickly.
“Wakey, wakey, Mr... Budding!” Giving him a shake, I pointed my tail at the bar. “Kid, could you go ask the bartender for a Detrot Hangover Cure Number Three and a big cup of black coffee?”
Popping off a quick salute before she could stop herself, Swift zipped back towards the breakfast buffet. Our patient waved his hooves feebly at his whiskey, trying to get it back until I sighed and had Sykes hold him upside down by one leg. This did nothing for his disposition, but in the state of mind I’d started the day, it did wonders for mine.
My pegasus protege returned with a bright green, bubbling concoction balanced on her head and a mug of coffee in her teeth, weaving back to us and carefully setting both down with the practiced ease of a professional waitress. I couldn’t see Swift in one of those little aprons, but then, she was turning out to be one continuous surprise.
“Sir, what’s in this stuff? It looks like squished alligators and smells like gasoline.”
“If she made it right, that’s not a bad guess.”
Grabbing the glass of near-toxic liquid I pulled the manager’s lips open and tilted his head back, pouring the lukewarm go-juice down his throat. He swallowed reflexively, then gagged as his entire body went stiff. His dark blue tail shot out straight, almost smacking my partner in the nose.
We all took two steps back as Mr. Budding suddenly let out a noise like a strangled cat and galloped to the nearest flower pot. For the second time in a day, I waited while somepony finished puking their guts up; a situation substantially improved by them not doing so onto my coat.
Ten minutes later I sat by Mr. Budding on the floor by the vomit soaked planter, feeding him sips of coffee every few seconds as he came around. He held his head between his hooves, moaning unhappily as the after-effects of the whiskey wore off, with a little help from the semi-magical hangover cure. It’s not a cheap way to recover from overindulgence, but the Detrot Number Three is a miracle worker. If you can afford it, I highly recommend it as an alternative to feeling like shit all day.
At last he took the mug from me and downed the scalding liquid all in one go. I’d only found out he was a pegasus when he saw Sykes and his wings shot straight out from his back, further disarranging his wrinkled tux.
“Alright, Mr. Budding, I’m Detective Hard Boiled.”
“Not so loud.” He whimpered, pressing his toes to his temples. I noticed he wore slip-on rubber horseshoes, which were becoming the norm. Probably to keep from scuffing the marble floors. Permanent nail-on shoes were long out of style except among cops and work-horses.
I pulled my badge out and set it in front of him. “We need to ask you some questions. We can either do it here or we can take a quick ride down to the station and ask them there. Our radio pony loves these jazzy tunes with a beat that’ll take the chrome off a police cruiser’s bumper. If you like, I can get her to pump some into one of our interrogation rooms just for your listening pleasure.”
His ears pulled back and a terrible melancholy seemed to settle onto his thin shoulders like a millstone dragging him down. “What’s it matter anymore? A month. I spent a month teaching the staff to speak with a Fancee accent, getting flower arrangements that’ll grow in this awful light, and setting up agreements with local monster hunters. Then what happens? A guest dies on my watch.”
As I got up he remained on the carpet until I gave him a gentle nudge. “How do you know the victim was a guest?”
The answer not forthcoming, I nodded at Sykes who grabbed a pool cue and quietly lined up a shot on one of the tables. The fierce crack of balls colliding with one another jerked Budding back to reality. “Ahh... She... she checked in late last night. She booked the penthouse for one day and one night.”
“Was she alone? How did she pay?”
Smoothing his rumpled tux, he picked up the whiskey under one wing and took an impressive swig. “That’s all in the ledger. I’m not a memory machine.”
He was about to suck down a second hit, but I snatched the alcohol. I thought he might actually cry.
“Let’s go get that ledger. Then, I want to see the penthouse and the roof.”
****
We led the morose Mr. Budding back to his office, half guiding him and half propping him up. He stopped in the restroom just long enough to wash the taste of the hangover cure and stale drink out of his mouth; when he came out, his suit was in a slightly more presentable condition. Considering how I’d woken up that morning, I could certainly sympathize.
The office was tiny and packed with mementos. Both walls were covered with pictures of Budding standing beside various important looking griffins and zebras, holding up various dead animals. There were also more rarified collections of flowers, each healthy and either blooming or about to.
As he turned to open a tiny wall-safe, I got a look at his cutie-mark; a brilliant light blue rose sitting in fresh soil. Another floral mark; Those could mean just about anything.
“You mind if I ask what your talent is?” I inquired, nosing in the direction of his flank.
He reached back and touched his cutie-mark as though making sure it was still there, before answering disconsolately, “I ‘realize potential.’ Some potential, huh? Last place I was at I was working in an ambassadorial hotel for griffin tribe-lords.” He listlessly set a stack of wood-bound notebooks on the table and flipped to the last page with writing on it. “I wish I was still there, even if it meant some stupid bird trying to lick me once a week.” Sykes let out a guttural rumble and Budding quickly added, “No offense to present company, of course.”
Our beaked compatriot went back to boredly playing with the water-cooler in the corner, flicking the tap up and down while Swift and I leaned forward, scanning the ledger. At the bottom of the indicated page it said, ‘Cash paid, Princess Luna, Penthouse, 1 Day.’
I sighed and shoved the book back across his desk. It was too much to hope she’d used her actual name; if anything, such an obvious fake saved me time. “Did your staff already clean the room?”
He nodded, picking up the notebooks and tucking them back in the safe. “It’s one of the little guarantees we give at the High Step. Privacy and discretion.”
“Was there any blood?”
Grabbing a watering can from behind a small bush he began making a slow round of the room, dabbing the soil in his flowers then giving them quick splashes. “Who knows? I’ve seen every bodily fluid that comes out of a creature in those rooms... and a few I’m pretty sure were made up on the spot just to make my life difficult. The cleaning staff don’t keep records of the messes they clean up and we buy carpeting and mattresses in bulk. If there was anything, you can bet it’s been bleached to death by now.”
Before I could stop her, Swift, the voice of innocence, asked, “Why do you need new carpet and mattresses so much?”
The blue hotelier seemed to be someplace else as he stroked an unusual flower that looked like a smiling face. “Oh, we go through them like you wouldn’t believe. Virginities, estrus, messy eaters, weak bladders...” He said it like he wasn’t actually hearing his own words. My full stomach did a little flip as I considered the range of things that get spilled anywhere lots of ponies happen to live one after the other. I had an irrational urge to pick my hooves up off the carpet.
“You know, I moved here because I saw big things in this city? I thought I might save this hotel. The red ink was so thick on the books you’d think the pages were printed that color. I thought I might set up hunting tours with the PACT. See the real frontier, come back with a timberwolf or a quarry eel to mount on your wall! Except the frontier has been the same frontier for over a hundred years and you ponies... you damn ponies!” He all but shouted that last part as he twirled to face us, holding out one hoof protectively over the flora behind him. “You don’t hunt unless you have to! You don’t eat meat! All you want to do is drink and screw and devour my babies!”
Swinging back to his plants, he began gently touching stems. “It’s alright darlings... I won’t let anypony hurt you. You know me... fruits only... I’d never eat one of your precious flowers or roots. It’ll be over soon... they’ll never wipe their dirty juices on you again...”
My well-honed danger sense was ringing like a bell in the back of my head. The thought crossed my mind that the distraught fool in front of me might have killed our filly, but somehow, that didn’t feel right. He’d had all the opportunity in the world to move the corpse and wipe the ledger. Nopony would have been the wiser. Regardless, I decided to get us out of there quickly. “You mind showing us the penthouse?”
Budding finally seemed to realize he had an audience for his crazed botanical ranting. Straightening, he began pulling what remained of his badly frayed sanity back together. Tugging out his cumberbund he tossed it on the desk then pulled a huge ring of dozens of keys off his file cabinet, wincing at the loud jangling as he tucked them under one wing.
“Mmm... Apologies. It’s been a stressful day. Yes. Certainly. I really ought to go back to work in school guidance. I never had to clean sperm off my daisies...”
Swift was huddled up behind me again, peering around my shoulder like she was trying to decide if she wanted to flee or put a bullet in Budding’s kneecaps just to be safe. Again, I couldn’t much blame her. I was tempted to apply a coup-de-grace to the poor fellow’s broken ego myself. It might have been kinder than letting him wander off and try to ‘realize potential’ somewhere else in my sun-forsaken city.
****
Taxi was still back in the restaurant, now with laying on the floor with the bartender’s feathery cheek in her lap. The hen’s beak was streaked with tears but her eyes were closed and she seemed to have passed out a little more peacefully than the hotel manager. The rum was half gone, sitting on the bar.
Budding stopped over them, a chastisement forming and dying on his tongue all in the same instant. Instead, he snatched up the bottle and took a quick swallow. Swift watched the scene with an emotion I couldn’t place; pity, maybe. Sykes just looked uncomfortable.
“Sweets, you know what booze does to you.” I groused, wrestling the expensive drink away from the depressed pegasus before he could down the whole thing.
Taxi lifted the griffin’s head and slid out from under her, easing the hybrid’s cheek onto the carpet. “I just had both hooves up a dead mare’s dress. You, of all ponies, do not get to give me a line of shit about excess alcohol intake.” She got up steadily, putting one knee on the bar for balance and working the others to get her blood flowing. “Besides, I’m good to drive. She had most of it. Are we leaving already?"
“Not yet. I need your eyes. We’re headed up to the roof. Might be the one place our vic’s been that hasn’t been scrubbed with ammonia or had press ponies all over it since early this morning.”
Sykes scratched at his chest feathers. “Ye need me still, laddy?”
I shook my head. “Go organize a few of those lazy asses out front to canvas the neighborhood and see if anypony actually saw our Jane Pony fall, or if anypony knows her. I’m going to stop off at the Vivarium once we’re done here, see if I can get anything resembling an ID.”
Swift’s breath caught. I turned to see her doing her best to maintain a neutral expression.
“Something you’d like to say, kid?”
“N-no, sir... nothing.”
Sykes raised one eyebrow. “The Vivarium... yer goin’ to see Miss Stella then?”
“Who is Miss Stella?”
Sykes opened his beak to educate me when Taxi eased over beside the towering griffin and gently rested a toetip on a spot just below his left foreleg. He winced and his beak snapped shut like a bear trap, almost clipping off the end of his tongue. Before he could recover the cab pony answered for him with a quirky grin, “Oh, Stella’s the madame. I think you’ll find the meeting very interesting, and I don’t want it spoiled for you. I’m sure you understand.”
For emphasis she drove her hooftip a little harder into Sykes’ side. He let out a distinctly kitten-like mewl.
I rubbed my temple with one hoof. “Am I the only pony in this entire city who’s not intimately familiar with this damn whore house?!”
Tapping her chin, Sweets considered the question, then her grin grew a little wider. “Seems like. Anyway, I would like to get out of here sooner rather than later if you don’t mind. This place is clogging my heart chakra.”
****
Sykes left shortly thereafter, stopping just long enough to grab another few savory treats from the lobby as he went out to hunt up the locals and see if there was anything to be gleaned from a thorough questioning. Taxi might have intuition in spades, but knowing when somepony is lying isn’t the same as being able to convince them the truth is the best thing for their health.
I frog-marched Mr. Budding to the elevators, using the rum like a carrot on a stick, before finally passing it to him once we were in the empty hallway leading up to the penthouse. He fumbled with his key-ring outside the door, which simply had a silver knocker rather than a number like the other rooms.
He managed, eventually, to wedge the correct key into the lock, but he turned it so hard that as the door opened it snapped off in his teeth. He hung there, staring at the broken metal jutting out of the keyhole for several seconds, then his brain seemed to shut down and he slid onto his stomach.
Swift started to reach down to pick him up, but I caught her bright red tail in my teeth, “No, kid. We’re here for the filly in the alley-way. We don’t fix the living. Not while we’re on the clock. If you want to do that, go be a therapist.”
“But, shouldn’t we do something?” She murmured discreetly, though I doubt the sloshed pegasus would have heard her if she’d shrieked in his ear. He was in that special alcoholic fugue state that can only be achieved when despair and defeat have had time to fester, burning away everything and leaving a peaceful void. A smile crooked the edges of his muzzle.
There are a few ugly truths in my fair city. I’d watched plenty of idealistic young stallions, carbon copies of Mr. Budding, ground underhoof by the implacable tides of fate and the perverse version of the free market that lives on the borderlands. For many of them the happiest ending they’d ever have was dying too drunk to care. A survey of any halfway house or shelter in the city would net you a dozen stories of ‘might have been’ that the pitiful pony pitched over in the doorway would fit neatly beside.
I didn’t have an immediate response for Swift, though, so I stepped around Buddings prostrate form and into the suite. Taxi gingerly hopped over him, shuffling her bare hooves on the luxurious carpeting. I muttered out of the side of my mouth: “Anything you can do for the poor guy, Sweets? I’d like to go up to the roof and not worry about him taking a dive.”
Taxi’s deep, soulful eyes were full of restrained compassion as they rested on the bottle he was clutching like a life-preserver. “Honestly, I think he’ll be fine. That nestling in the bar had nopony and she needed a kind hoof just then. Budding has his little jungle in his office. His plants need him if nothing else and sometimes that’s all it takes.” I nodded, and turned to examine the sumptuous room before us.
To describe the penthouse suite as ‘big’ would be a crime against opulence; The living space was vigorously and unnecessarily huge. It could have neatly fit my apartment in just the in-room kitchen. The mini-bar was the size of my entire fridge and the bed could have comfortably slept ten or eleven ponies my size.
The carpets were almost bedding by themselves. The floor felt freshly scrubbed, and everything had the sense of having been recently laundered by a professional cleaning crew with a centuries-old vendetta against dust. My heart found a new place in my throat as I realized we were unlikely to get so much as a useable hair from the entire room.
Princess Celestia herself would have found it reasonably comfortable if she could have gotten over the stifling scent coming off the innumerable jasmine and lavender flowers crowding every non-essential surface. The penthouse was easily the worst victim of Mr. Budding’s gardening fetish.
Swift noticed this when she stepped in and almost immediately sneezed a miniature tornado. She blew herself back into the hallway, stumbling backwards over Mr. Budding and tumbling onto her behind. The tornado picked up and scattered a few leaves about the room, but soon dissipated.
“Kid, you really need to take an anti-allergen if you’re going to work a crime scene.”
“Sorry, sir...” She apologized, picking herself up and trying to smooth down her feathers. Mr. Budding did not seem to notice nor care.
I pushed open the door to the bathroom, and let out a groan. Just like the bedroom, every inch was stuffed with blooming greenery. Whatever mad alchemy Budding used to convince rose blooms to open so completely out of season also kept even a single petal from falling. The bar of soap might have been arranged with a ruler. The bathtub was damn near the size of my bedroom. It was dry and didn’t look to have been used.
I stepped back out of the bathroom, letting the door swing shut. “Taxi, you got anything?”
The cabbie moved around the mattress then stuck her nose under the edge of the blanket, sweeping it up on one side so she could take a look underneath. “Mmm... well, whoever cleans these rooms deserves a pay raise. My mother would find this place too clean, and you remember what she was like.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “I remember she almost bucked me in the face when I got my muddy hooves on that precious Neighponese carpet when we were eight. Then she grounded you for three weeks.”
A haunted expression crossed my friend’s face, but she quickly buried it under her facade of indifferent professionalism. “This floor has been vacuumed. The lab might find something if they’re willing to shred the carpet and bedding then go over every one of the shrubs with a fine tooth comb. If her horn was removed in here we might find fragments, but considering the environment we could end up pointing the hoof at every rich or noble pony in the city. Every piece of evidence in this room wouldn’t last one round in the ring with reasonable doubt. Not that I condone such violent action."
“Sure, you don’t. Who won last week’s match?” I grinned, bumping her hip with mine.
“Strike Bison, knock out in the fourth. Sunny Piston never had a chance.” She deadpanned, turning back the covers and pinching the pillow between her hooves, lifting it with practiced care then settling it back in place.
Swift was examining what looked like a hall closet, poking her nose around the door. “Sir, there are... um... stairs over here. They go up and down; I thought this was the top floor?”
I glanced down at the hotel manager who’d found a position from which he could lay and nurse at the rum without expending the effort to lift it. “Where do those stairs lead?” I asked, putting my heel on the mouth of the bottle, pushing it away from his lips.
Budding lifted his head shakily, his eyes taking a bit to focus on me then on the door Swift was inspecting. “Heh... night... shpot. Garden onna roof. Only doors are inna penthoushe and through maintenance in my offishe.”
****
Leaving the manager to his quiet self-destruction, we started up the narrow stairwell. It was just wide enough for one pony comfortably and the floor was uncarpeted. Clearly a place ‘behind the scenes.’ A white light-gem dangled from a string, providing sharp illumination.
As we ascended, I felt a sense of deja vu. The filly laid out on the concrete ran up these stairs early that morning. She was exhausted from her ordeal and running on a terror-stricken adrenaline surge. Every step must have been agony. The bone torn off of her forehead sent shooting pains through every inch of her body as she dragged herself along, away from her tormenter. Why she’d chosen the roof rather than the hall is anypony’s guess.
Five steps up, I paused, then put my back leg on Swift’s chest to hold her back. She tilted her head. “Sir?”
“I’ve got dried blood here.” I informed them, swirling my hoof in a circle over the spot.
Taxi pulled her magnifying glasses out and eased them on then squeezed around us. It was a tight fit; Swift had to inhale just to let her by. I ended up with more of Taxi pressed against me than I wanted to think about. Stopping above the blood, our part-time CSI leaned down and sniffed it lightly. “Doesn’t smell much anymore. Seven hours maybe? It’s totally coagulated.”
It was only a few droplets, but further up I spotted half a bloody hoofprint, first on the step then another on the wall. She’d stopped to catch her breath. A pool of brown, mostly-dried liquid was on the landing. Turning, I pushed Swift back and warned her, “There’s more up here. Do you want to wait downstairs?”
Her eyes flitted towards the puddle then back to my face, “I’ll be fine, sir. I took my medicine.”
“Alright, but if you lose your lunch up here...”
Swift set her jaw and, thrusting her chest out, she marched past me to stand over the spilled body fluids. Slowly she dropped her gaze, looking at it intently. Her cheeks colored and for an instant I thought she was going to bolt, but then the moment was gone. Taxi and I waited, watching intently, ready to snatch her back from the evidence if she showed the slightest hint of inclement nausea.
I grumbled, but part of my scarred, wrung out psyche understood she wasn’t being sick to spite me. She was reminding me uncomfortably of myself before I’d put all of my defenses in place, when the horror and shock was still instantaneous and immediate; I’d fought enough battles with a sour belly as a rookie to know what she was going through. Even years on, though, I’d still seen a few things on crime scenes that simply took my breath away; Dead children, pregnant mares beaten with hoofball trophies, and the rare monster in the shape of a pony who felt nothing as they carved up living beings for fun and profit. Carnage and gore are ugly, sure, but nothing is ever quite so sickening as the stories beneath the blood.
Despite knowing exactly where she was coming from, though, a loud and nervous voice in my head wanted to hurry her along.
At last, Swift stepped away from the cooled blood and put her cheek against the wall, resting there with her face on the cool stone. She was breathing evenly, but the smell of nervous sweat and fear came off of her in roiling waves that collected in the tight space, filling my nose.
Taxi gave me a knowing smile. A private, silent conversation ensued between us which could only take place between two ponies who’ve known each other for many years. If one were to listen in with full comprehension it might have sounded something like this:
Taxi: Admit it, Hardy.
Me: Admit what? She was dumped on me, not the other way around. If she wants my respect she has to earn it.
Taxi: Give her a break. You were a bigger fuss-bucket when you started.
Me: Not how I remember it.
Taxi: Keep telling yourself that.
Me: I never threw up on a superior officer.
Taxi: Whatever you say, Mr. Grumpykins. You know she just impressed you.
Me: Stay out of my brain, Sweets.
Not moving from her place against the wall, Swift pulled a notebook out of the front pocket of her vest, set it down and produced a pencil. She talked as she wrote, very clinical and precise. “Hairs in blood. They’re the same color as the decedent's mane. They appear to have been cut to the same length, so it probably happened when the perpetrator removed the victim’s unus arcanas.”
I tapped the floor by her paper. “It’s her horn, kid. I’m not one of your teachers at the Academy, but it would be nice if I could read your notes without a dictionary.”
She chewed the pencil for a second, then crossed out the scientific name and scribbled ‘horn’ beside it.
The door to the roof had a single print, and the lever was wet. Using an old receipt from a local fish and chips shop out of my pocket, I turned the catch whilst touching as little actual surface as I could with my lips and teeth, and stepped out into a private, rooftop paradise.
Mr. Budding’s taste in interior design aside, I couldn’t fault his skills as a gardener, except in terms of his lack of restraint. The mass foliage spread all through the hotel might as well have been a window display for the bursting, barely tamed leafage practically consuming the entire top of the building.
A footpath of smooth stones lead away from the hutch the maintenance door was in, each rock choked on all sides with thick, healthy grass. It looked absolutely delectable. I had to stop myself from leaning down and having a bite right there even after the considerable meal downstairs. Taxi was intently watching a particularly gorgeous blooming chrysanthemum; a bit of saliva almost spilled over her lip. I gave her a swat on the nose with my tail just as she was moving over to nip the stem.
“Nooo, Sweets. The crime scene is not for eating.”
Her cream coat turned an uncharacteristic shade of cherry. “I was just going to taste it!”
“I know you were. Let’s not make Mr. Budding any more insane than he already is. No snacking.”
Taxi humphed and got out fresh rubber socks for the three of us. We all slipped them on just as a drop of water landed on the brim of my hat, splashing onto my ears. I shivered and swept a foreknee left and right along two diverging side paths in the massive abundance that blocked sight of the skyline.
“Spread out and watch your hooves. Try to stay on the rocks if you can, and let’s find where our victim jumped off. Look for blood spatter, torn fabric, and fur.”
Taxi took one direction and Swift the other. The vines and hanging pottings formed an impenetrable wall of green so thick a rabbit would have trouble squirming between the roots and creepers. Every inch was an overwhelming profusion of colors that tantalized the eyes and the palate. Half the plants I couldn’t have named without a guide-book to zebra-lands and the smell was absolutely divine.
The garden was a maze. Overhead, it was enclosed by a grill of wooden slats just wide enough to let sunlight in and for plants to twine around, but not sufficient to let even Swift through for some aerial reconnaissance.
I started trying to navigate my way towards the edges, but quickly found myself turned around. One path would start to look promising then take a slow turn, crossing over itself or leading over a tiny footbridge and then I was in a dead end. I back tracked, wandering in a direction I thought was probably towards the crime scene but that simply brought me around back of the maintanence stairs.
Eventually, coming up against a dead-end with plastic fountain and a wooden bench amidst a small clearing full of daylilies, I had to sit down and catch my breath. Raising my head, I shouted, “You two find any way through this mess?”
Taxi seemed terribly far away when she replied, “Nope! I found one edge but I had to go back around and I lost it.”
Somewhere nearby and off to my left, I heard Swift holler back, “Sir! I found the alley and the edge over here!”
“That’s great, kid! Can you get up in the sky?”
Flapping seemed to come from everywhere, giving no point of reference. There was a loud rattling noise followed by a hard thump and shaking leaves, then silence. I called out, “Swift, are you okay?”
Swift’s very meek reply came back a little muffled. “Yes, sir.”
“You didn’t look up before you took off, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you stuck in a thorn bush?”
More leaves rustled and then I heard a soft whimper, “Yes, sir.”
I began shuffling through my pockets and finally came up with an ancient baggy half full of candy that’d become a near solid mass. Banging it on the edge of the fountain I broke it apart and managed to shake a piece out. I dropped it on the nearest flat stone. Moving to the next junction I looked left, then right, then dropped another piece and moved on.
“Kid, you’re going to owe me a fresh bag of jelly beans!”
“Yes... sir?”
****
I met Taxi five minutes later coming the other direction with a pouch of shiny meditation pebbles in her teeth, dropping them behind her as she went. We’d circled around and somehow missed the trapped pegasus entirely. After a further two minutes and a short game of ‘Mareco Polo’ we found the bramble laden culvert into which she’d managed to get herself wedged, down a side-passage with gorgeous and very pointy rose-bushes on both sides. Swift and the victim might have fit through easily, but I had to wrap my coat around myself tightly and Taxi got a few fresh scratches on her dock.
Once we passed through, the space opened up and there, at the far end, was the end of the roof. Also, my new partner’s bright orange backside sticking half out of a bramble bush, covered in tiny pink blooms that looked like little bells.
I trotted over and Swift squirmed, kicking her back legs as she tried to get leverage to pull herself out.
“Oh my. Taxi, you don’t think we could get one of those news ponies up here right now, could we?” I teased, grinning sideways at the other earth pony.
“Sir, you wouldn’t!” Swift struggled harder, only succeeding in tangling herself more firmly.
“Trust me, I’m thinking about it.”
Taxi suppressed a smile, then put a comforting hoof on the filly’s haunch. “Relax. Lemme see how you’re stuck.”
Swift had somehow, during her landing, managed to wrap a vine tightly around one of her wing joints and pin the other one to her side. She also had a rather nasty bump growing on the back of her head, where she’d hit the wooden canopy.
“You’re lucky pegasi are durable.” said Taxi. “Hold still. I’ve got some scissors here and unless you want your pinions plucked, best not to move too much.” Unstrapping her saddlebags, Taxi set them down and went on a short dig right to the bottom until she found a pair of mouth-scissors. Fitting them into her muzzle so the blades faced out, she climbed into the bush beside Swift and began working away at the thick vines.
I began a slow inspection of the space between the labyrinthine passages. I tried to see back along the path we’d come, looking both directions. “You know, something occurs to me. How did our victim get here? It took us... what, a half hour to find our way through? She must have been scared out of her mind.”
Swift wriggled a little as she replied, “Well, what if she’s been here before?”
I considered that, then nodded. “Possibly. That does lend credence to at least one thing I’ve been thinking.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“That our victim was a prostitute... sorry, an ‘escort.’ You said this Miss Stella gives out those pins to special ponies, right? Employees?”
There was a loud snap as the tendril holding Swift’s wing against her stomach came free and she let out an alarmed yelp. “Eeek! Hey, careful with those things! I almost lost a wingtip there!”.
Taxi shifted the scissors out of her mouth for a second. “Stop squirming then!” She turned to me, and answered, “I think those snake pins are meant to be protection of some sort. Some of the crime families have rings. Stella has those pins. They’re supposed to say ‘Mess with the pony carrying this and the Stilettos will come after you’.”
I scratched my head. “The Stilettos? Where have I heard that name? Are they enforcers of some sort?”
“I don’t know much about them, but then, nopony does. They’re Miss Stella’s personal guard. They’re mostly former escorts, or so the story goes.” My driver went on, holding the mouth scissors in her hooves to try to get a better angle on the vine around Swift’s wing joint. “The Organized Crime unit tried to nail something to them a few years ago, but the worst anypony could prove they’d done was truss up a rapist and dump him in front of the Castle with a list of his crimes superglued to his... his... um...”
Memory flickered. “Oh, wait, I remember that. Didn’t Telly get to him first and read that list-”
“Yeah, and then she got so pissed at whatever she read she magically yanked it right off along with a bunch of skin and fur.”
“Wasn’t that the scream you could hear from the basement firing range?”
“Yes. Sometimes I’m really glad I’m not male.”
At we descended into contemplative silence, I became acutely aware of every twangy snip of Taxi’s scissors.
Thankfully, she had almost finished; some complicated gymnastics allowed her to cut the last of the plant off of Swift, then she pulled herself free and then grabbed the rookie’s vest in her teeth. With a few sharp tugs, they both fell out onto the gravel, scattering pebbles against my hooves.
“Whew! Thanks.” Swift said gratefully, plucking a stray needle from between her feathers and spitting it out. Taxi gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder.
As I continued searching, I found a swatch of bright red dress. It was stuck to a branch about flank height, which seemed unusual; The path was wide enough that anypony, even one suffering from moderate blood loss, could have avoided stumbling into it.
“I wonder if she ran up here and somepony tried to stop her. She dodged around them, caught her dress, and ran off the rooftop?” I mused, examining yet another spot of blood on one of the prickly roses with a few threads stuck to it.
Taxi swung her magnifying goggles back down over her eyes and followed the same track I had, stepping from stone to stone. “Hmmm... no, there was something parked here that’s gone now. Look. She moved around it as she was running and that’s when she ran into the roses.” She traced a long, thin groove dug into the gravel, and another one a body-length away running parallel; she then pointed to two sets of sharp hoofprints side-by-side that dug deep into the surface. “That looks like a sky chariot to me. Two pegasi pulling. Definitely carrying something. Most likely another pony or a zebra.”
I moved around to one side, avoiding the prints. Another group of steps began where the sky chariot’s carriage would have landed; they looked odd for some reason. There were five marks; Four hooves, and one much deeper point out to the side that seemed to be some sort of peg or cane. The unknown equine had leaned heavily on it.
I stuck my head over the side of the roof. Big mistake. I gulped and turned away, getting control of a minor case of vertigo; the ground was a lot further away than it had any right to be. Pegasi might love the heights and unicorns adore their big towers and skyscrapers, but I’m an earth pony, and my hooves need to be on stone, dirt, or at least some real solid concrete.
Right up to the edge, the adjoining roof looked like it might be reachable with a good strong leap, but some trick of the light made it seem closer than it actually was. Down below, the corpse was already gone. The yellow police tape still blocked off the area, but the crowd of officers guarding it was noticeably smaller. Most of the reporters had left, too, and the few holdouts were looking bored.
I wondered at that, then smiled. The coroner had to have sent his assistant to pick up the body. Telly might have been trying to get me back for putting itching powder in her radio headphones a month ago, but nopony was cruel enough to actually send Stitch to a crime scene with so much of the press out front. Prank wars were generally discouraged in the office, but that’d never stopped anypony from engaging in them. Although there was one story involving Iris Jade and a whoopie cushion - Precisely one story.
I spotted something in the marks where the chariot touched down and scraped aside a little bit of the gravel, revealing tarmac underneath. Looking over to the passage Taxi and I had squeezed through, I noted that the pebbles stopped and were replaced by broad, flat stepping stones. They would make finding an actual path taken by the girl or the assailants difficult.
Swift’s face lit up. “Sir, I know what this is! It’s an old PACT runway!” She exclaimed, pointing out towards the sky-line.
I turned in a circle then rubbed my jawline. “A PACT runway? Are you telling me this hotel saw so many monster attacks that PACT needed their own rooftop parking space?”
“Oh, I don’t think this is used anymore. One of the early city building codes said every city had to have a pegasus runway for armored Turtle Class weapons platforms. They had to be able to land anywhere in the city to rest and reload if there was a big attack.” She informed us, putting her rear hooves together as she slid into that comfortable recitation pose.
With a glance towards the drop, I came to a decision. “Alright, let’s get back downstairs and call Telly, then we’ll find the lab coats and get them to at least give this area a once over. I doubt we’ll get much of use, but no sense in not trying.”
****
I left Swift on the roof to guide the forensics ponies to the site. We followed our trail of jelly beans and meditation stones back to the stairs and down, skirting the bloody hoofprints.
We found Budding in the bathroom of the penthouse, laying in the Iron Pony Competition-sized bathtub, surrounded by his ‘babies’ with a look of mad bliss on his face. Could have been worse, to my mind; I had bet pennies to bits we’d come back to find him trying to stuff himself into the incinerator.
I waited just long enough for Taxi to clamber in and pull his head up a safe level above the water, then open the drain. It was a small kindness in an ocean of bad days ahead for the pathetic soul, but I felt slightly better about myself for it. With any luck he’d come out of it in twenty four hours full of fresh ideas. Maybe murder tourism. There were certainly enough morbidly excitable ponies that would pay a pretty bit to stay in the room the murdered filly occupied.
Back downstairs, I found Sykes standing on the porch of the High Step, in his rain- slicker. We were just about to step outside when I was a momentarily blinded by a streak of lightning that rent the sky from the clouds to the horizon. Three seconds later, a blast of thunder shook the foundations of the building; it was as though the weather factories all turned on their rainmakers at once.
“Oi, boyo!” The griffin greeted us as Taxi pushed through the revolving door. I followed a few seconds later, taking deep breaths as I tried to clear my nose of the pervasive perfume of pollinating plants.
Taxi shoved Sykes’ fuzzy rump to one side so she could plop down on one of the ancient rocking chairs, watching the absolutely wild storm breaking over the town.
“Sykes, the eggheads didn’t leave, did they?” I asked with some trepidation. Calling them back would have involved a lot of irritated screaming over pay rates for ‘two jobs.’
Fortunately, he shook his head and pointed down the street to where their big white van was partially concealed behind a squat mini-mart. “Oi caught ’em at that deli up the street when they was havin’ some lunch and made ’em stick around for ye. Ye want Oi should go get’em?”
I moved closer so as to be heard over the ferocious beating of water on the covered porch. “Yes. Send them upstairs through the penthouse. Tell them not to eat any flowers and to ignore the crazy pony in the bathroom. I doubt he’s going to move for at least a few hours unless they start chewing the azaleas. Oh, and if they can’t find Swift, have them follow the jelly beans and shiny rocks through the garden.”
His big yellow eyes blinked as he absorbed the list of silly instructions, then he shrugged and started out into the raging maelstrom. I set myself down beside Taxi and waited for the downpour to abate enough for us to make it out to the cab.
As we sat in comfortable silence, my Cutie Mark began to tingle again.
I’ve only once tried to explain to anypony the feeling I get when I know that something is unjust, and that once I’d made a real hash of it. It had become, in recent years, easier to live my life if I ignored the squirming sensation on both flanks when somepony had suffered needlessly for the greed or cowardice of another.
But not this time. That deceased filly, now off somewhere laid out on a slab, was a tiny piece of something important. I could feel it, right there in that golden scale on my rear end. Something truly sickening had happened in the penthouse of that hotel; an act so black, so full of merciless will, that I found myself enraged.
I watched quietly as the fury built inside me, then consciously unclenched my jaw and let my shoulders slump. Anger wouldn’t help her. Nothing but justice could help her. So, once more, I would be justice because there was nothing else for me to be.
On came the rain.
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This is getting good.
Would it be terribly unreasonable for me to demand you write the rest of the story immediately and have it finished within 24 hours?
Because I really want to. In a good way :)
Hah! Oh thank you Flutterbrave! We're glad to get love. It really does keep us going.
-Chessie
Thanks for another great chapter can't wait for more.
Poor Mr. Budding! That's a tough life for a pony.
As always, dropped everything to read this
One of these days I'm going to try to work out WHY this works so well, when other attempts at this genre in poni haven't worked for me. I think it's the gentleness. It's always pulling towards sweetness while starting from noir, not starting from poni and then trying to break it. There's something really heartwarming about that. You do have to make the mental allowance of 'well, horrific ponies DO exist, OK?' but what we see is the good ones trying to cope with that.
1034080 I've always felt like, in the end, ponies are doing what people should be trying to do. We should try to be better. Hardy, Swift, and Taxi (and future characters) may not be good people (any more than the Mane 6 are) but they're really trying to be.
This story has a lot of twists and turns, some of which will be pretty dark. You might have noticed Taxi isn't a very happy pony. Still, it's an adventure and adventures are no fun if it's all misery and sadness. It won't always be gentle, but if I'd wanted to write Fallout Equestria I'd write Fallout Equestria.
Mr.Budding might suffer but in the end, I like to think he'd recover. I might use him again, I might not.
If I'm honest, the story we have is only perhaps a quarter outlined. We have an ending. I'm hoping it doesn't end up anywhere near the length of something like Project Horizons but I will promise, if it does, I will not STOP flogging myself to make it interesting. I refuse to let it be boring or generic because this is the BEST fandom I've ever been part of and you guys deserve the best.
-Chessie
Another great chapter and the whole thing works so well. "Swifts" innocence counters "Hard boiled" with his experience nicely. even some hints at banter all help to add character.
What really sells this story is how colourful and deep the orbiting characters are. Sykes, Budding, Jade, and so on all have their own distinct personalities and life-stories that give the whole story such a deliciously gritty life.
I once lived in a bad neighbourhood (East St. Louis rather than Detroit. The two places trade off every few years for highest violent crimerate per capita in the US.) I can say you've nailed that perfect balancing point of pettiness, ignorance, incompetence, naivete, tradition, determination and shadowy scheming that makes Detrot a place an unfixable cesspool too good to abandon and too awful to stay. How'd you paint such an accurate picture?
1065070I'm originally from the bad side of the tracks in Charlotte, North Carolina. I lived on a street full of eccentrics in the middle of a ghetto where murders were a weekly fact of life. In that environment, the quirks of people start to become real important. They stick out a LOT. Everyone is trying to survive and the moments when two people reach out to each other are very powerful when everything seems pointless and dark.
-Chessie
1075174 I can't wait to get your input on the later chapters. You sound like you know what you're talking about and I'm an extremely new writer. I've never written a fan-fic in my life, much less a murder mystery.
-Chessie
That promises to be quite the story after the first chapters. Eagerly waiting for more.
If there's one genre of fanfiction that i love more than deep Slice of Life, it's a good Noir-esque fic.
You, my friend, have captured the essence of the genre beautifully. I was planning to only read a few chapters, sleep, and read the rest in my down time tomorrow, but it looks like i may be taking a rain check on that sleep for the time being.
The wording of "slip on rubber horse-shoes" is a bit ambiguous -- I originally read it as "(slip on rubber) horse-shoes" before going back and realizing it made more sense as "(slip on) rubber horse-shoes". Maybe turn "slip-on" into a compound word with a dash to eliminate the ambiguity? Especially since you use "nail-on" later in the paragraph.
Since you switch speakers in the next paragraph, you're missing an endquote on this one.
"Maintanence" is spelled "maintenance".
Hah! Well put.
The part beginning with "She exclaimed" isn't a complete sentence, so it should be uncapitalized to indicate that it's part of the preceding quote.
Same thing here, the "She" shouldn't be capitalized.
Nice alliteration
Hmmm.... I've only read up to chapter four, but this isn't really a noir. I mean, it's not a bad story, but it's really not a noir. It doesn't feel like one at all. So far I can't really point out anything wrong with this, but I was promised something very different from the story I see here. Taxi kinda sums up this story perfectly for me. I have nothing against Taxi, she's pretty amusing and I can easily see her being one of the strong points in a story, but she's not a character that has a place in a noir story. In terms of tone this feels more like an episode of NCIS or Castle, than it does L.A. Confidential. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad story, but what I was promised on the tin isn't what I've found inside.
what i loved most about the chapter
Swift;
>innocent grass green pony officer who threw up twice upon seeing her first crime scene
>is offered an unkown food source by sykes (meat)
>Swift: "challenge accepted"
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Just started reading and I love this story. Haven't read too many noir stories, but this is good. I might get this question answered later, but I hope the scholar is expanded upon.
Interesting story; nice worldbuilding and empathic characters — check! Besotted noir-esque bromides — Check! Why, one could almost call this the singular testament to attest the skill and dedication of this fandom alone; with some restraints attached to it. Else the populace of Earth might be graced by a story sui generis of a particular author floating through the air with the fantastic power of an inflated head. Not that it's unwarranted. Considering how ably written your prose is and how well the flow of narrative is maintained throughout the telling; the pride you earn is far from chesty.
I guess I got some, few actually, perhaps, viable criticisms that I want to depart with; instead I rather present to you one minor huff of mine. I'm not claiming that I know anything about story- and worldbuilding; I rather, humbly, claim a preponderance of ignorance and wantonness regarding the art of writing as I put to you this semi-plaintive.
Adjectives! All those adjectives! Sometimes it feels like I'm reading a story about an army of adjectives invading Equestria! All being spearheaded by an avant-garde of similes. Sure, they add affects and limns the incidents for the reader to experience vicariously through the characters thoughts and behaviours. These functions as a opening to the unseen or distant, in time or quality, and introspective moments; therefore very actable to use and easily acting the deluge that hides what's important beneath the glut of descriptive phrases.
Why this is an complaint of mine I can hardly tell! It is infuriating that I can't corral my thoughts into a single orderly line! Either I'm confused or, simply put, feeling engorged by the dish being served with a strong splosh of circumlocutions giving me food-coma. Perhaps, I'm reminiscing and possibly projecting, unknowingly to myself, something a very good friend told me once. That, one should be leery when someone orients a story on a latticework of parables as it's the say-so anatomy of amateurism or a lack of belief in one's story to carry itself without prodigally throwing gifts on its readers in fear of losing their attention. Oh yes! I hope you see the irony in that profession of his — as he spoke this, a grin slowly did split his face and leaving him ending up chortling; irony weren't lost on him.
Myself, I'm half-swayed to agree with him as I've read many stories were similes hardly is used whilst simple and straight-to-the-point adjectives — marked by their brevity — provides to the reader the tools needed to distil the author's intended atmosphere in any given scene. Naturally it's, at the end of it, the reader's understanding that decides the feeling of the scene read. That's why I feel, that, when a author use a profusion of similes the author is either anxious or scared to let the narrative speak for itself. But I got to say: I love — to a point — the fashion parade of words-n-contexts you lead us, your eager readers, through!
I want to raise an apology in beforehand. I'm not aiming to offend. Neither am I unimpressed by your skill. I'm hardly expressing nitpickingness and the ramblings of a confused mind trying to grasp the finer points of what writing demands and means in detail. I'm self-learned and all the errors expressed in my criticism rest entirely on the discrepancies by my own understanding of writing. In the end, to drive the point to its extreme: I rather read vivid storytelling locked in a truculent gory battle, armed with a tattered shield and notched sword, battling the oncoming onslaught of bleating parables and snarling idioms!
1933656
It's almost cathartic in how intransigent you adhere to vigorously battering down on grammatical and punctuational errors. It's really interesting how you boldly correct each minor, but important, error with pathos.
Do you, by planed intention or chance, own ‘The Elements of Style’? It's a blast and great guide; that I can't help but feel I just flaunted mainly for amour propre brainy-points (hardly my intention)!
How did you end up in this interest of proofreading? It feels rarefied a choice for a hobby or job for me not long ago to consider proofreading interesting, or even fun for that matter. Nowadays it suddenly looks enticing or perhaps it's just a proof of how bored I really am.
Regardless, whenever I recognize my betters I feel an urge to ask about their reasons behind the interest. Yes, I'm unlivable like that and want to say that I'm sorry if I offended. Seeing that nowadays one can easily offend someone by innocent curiosity about an oddity or interest of theirs.
...And I've completely lost it.
Does this embodiment of larceny wear a red fedora and trenchcoat as well?
No wonder tensions are high between the DPD and PACT! You have an entire civil division chock full of Sherlock Holmes types (the slightly unhinged, drug abusing, bare-knuckle savate fighting Robert Downey Holmes, not the cold, emotionless Basil Rathbone Holmes).
She is not related to Scootaloo by any chance is she?
That is just cruel. Reminds me of the time Significant Other thought it would be funny to play Henry the 8th when I was nursing a hangover. He slept on the couch that night.
Is this like the Equestrian equivalent of having a surname of "Smith"?
Looks like Sykes is not the only one who snacks on the evidence.
I love this story, but i see Sykes as demo-man from tf2 lol.
Somehow this question mark threw my train of thoughts out of the rails?
And what exactly is a "whoopie cushion"?
Nice chapter! I like Sykes more with each line passing by!
EDIT:
6202265 It is because I am not a native speaker of the english tongue.
6049410 "you know?" can be used as a shortened version of "do/did you know?" the bit after that is clarification because "do you know?' is rather pointless without some sort of context, so it's still technically part of the question.
to make it easier for you, just read it as "Did you know I moved here because I saw great things in this city?"
6049410 How do you not know what a whoopie cushion is? You sit on it and it makes a fart sound. Looks like a inflated disc.
I really enjoy the Scholar notes at the beginning of each chapter. They're informative and entertaining at the same time. It actually reminds me of another story called Harmony Theory. And now that I think about it, there's a character named Hard Boiled in that one too.
Anyway, I thought this was a pretty fun chapter. The character interactions here were really strong, and I found myself getting cracked up at the gang getting lost in that rooftop garden. It looks like we're heading to the Vivarium next, and I'm really wanting to meet this Stella character. :)
The Scholar is Twilight Sparkle.
I bet my non-existent bits on it.
Hot damn these metaphors.
On a side note, this'd be great as a graphic novel.
- Let me say, this needs to be a short story from you guys. Because this sounds hilarious.
Doubled word.
Missing genitive.
One word or the other should be removed.
7891636
Seconded. I'd love to hear how that little debacle went down.
8846907 Welcome to the editing team! Send me your G-mail information and you'll get the story a couple days before it goes out so you can give it a full once over.
-Chessie
Oh, you sneaky...
Chapter 4 down. The actual mystery investigation begins. You're certainly making it interesting by giving everything they interact with CHARACTER. Man, he likes his plants too much.
I still have no idea what's going on, but I'm keeping a mental note of all the clues. Someone harvested a prostitute's horn at a hotel she'd been at before, but for what purpose?
Oh, and in response to your last comment, Chessie, I'll try to leave comments, though if you want to see more in-the-moment reactions I've been going over the chapters bit by bit in my discord server in a place called the #researchdivision. We tend to leave reactions and thoughts on what we're currently reading there. I generally put the highlights/what I remember in these actual comments.
-GM, master of ENDLESSNESS.
9971963
If you get the urge, feel free to join us on: https://discord.gg/As6fJW where we do similar, in addition to porn and strange conversations about philosophy.
Incidentally, you will have this urge to try to guess which tropes I'm following and what the actual mystery behind everything is.
In six years, nobody has nailed it, entirely without having it directly explained to them. The central mystery is completely explicable in the earliest parts of the second act, though, if you've been following the clues correctly. Knowing what is a clue will be tough.
-Chessie
8876799
Clearly I'm missing something here.
3631593
around the time you wrote this i was in a creative writing class
Man, you would have hated one of our assignments
which was to write a full page, proper sentences, describing a scene with as many adjectives as we possibly could.
10747486
That's a complaint from *eight years ago*. I don't think that guy is still on the site.
-Chessie
10747661
he might be *pout*
8876799
Can't believe I missed this on my first and second read throughs!
Bwahahahahaha!!