Act 2, Chapter 26: Daddy
Starlight Over Detrot
Act 2, Chapter 26: Daddy
Lots of magic influences emotion. One of Equestria's princesses specializes in magic of the heart. It is possible to check out books with emotionally manipulative alchemical recipes with nothing more than a library card. While malicious use of emotional magic (e.g. Discord prior to 3 L.R.) is appropriately punished, well-intentioned abuse of it is not considered more serious than a foalhood misdemeanor. It is not widely considered strange, unusual, or worrisome that anypony has this kind of power over the free will of other ponies.
And yet, what moral questions fail to arise in the presence of emotional magic seem to leap to everypony's lips when magic alters thought or memory.
The wariness here is hardly unwarranted.
Memory alteration is very much like surgery. It is invasive. It is messy. It leaves scars. It is unpleasant to watch. And done incompetently or haphazardly, the results can be utterly horrific. Memories, like organs, are connected to one another, linked by an intricate web of emotional tissues and associative logical capillaries. To hack them out willy-nilly and replace them with substitutes without a lot of careful sewing will leave a barely functional drooling patchwork mess.
Unlike surgery, however, pony memory alteration is not near so advanced. The only positive use ponies have managed to discover for it has been the excision of memories and events so traumatic as to be utterly crippling to the individual pony, an act akin to the amputation of a gangrenous limb. There has been research into attempting to install additional memories in order to impart skills or information, but this has presented difficulties, again because of the interconnectedness of memories. You try to copy somepony's memory of attending a major arcane conference, you'll also copy thoughts about the trial separation they were fretting about and the cute flank of the pony in the next row, and if you connect things wrong you'll wind up with a pony unable to think about elementary thaumic particles without getting both an aneurysm and an erection.
None of this stops some ponies from trying substantial alterations, however, often for substantially less noble ends.
-The Scholar
Good ponies do bad things. Bad ponies do good things. In the end, we’re all just ponies. Those are the facts.
Every now and then, something has to come along to balance the scales.
****
Junior leapt up the stairs of Shiny’s house and was reaching for the doorknob before he stopped. His brain had finally caught up with whatever high powered intuitive process was driving his hooves and decided it needed to kibitz before he threw himself into a crazy pony’s house at top speed.
What am I doing? he asked himself for the sixth or seventh time that day.
The answer was obvious and sitting right there waiting for him, like it had been every day since the day he was born.
He was going to set things right.
Taking a deep breath, he reached for the handle again, then shook his head..
No sense in doing this like a dummy, though...
Edging sideways, he peered in around the edge of the floral print curtains. He got a good look at the living room. It was surprisingly spartan. Though he’d never been over, he expected some concessions to personal taste, but there weren’t any pictures on the walls. The sofa seemed to be a thrift store purchase and the only picture that was there had a smiling stallion Hardy didn't recognize with his leg wrapped around his equally grinning marefriend against a backdrop of flowers and windmills. A stock photo, then; the one that came with the frame.
Looking down, he froze. Something was laying in front of the sofa… No, it was somepony.
Junior couldn’t see much of her, but some of her yellow fur was matted and sweaty. She wasn’t moving. For a moment, he thought it might be Shiny, but the shape was too big. Her ‘mother,' then. In the gathering evening, the light from the sun cast everything in a dim orange
Pressing his ear to the window, he listened as hard as he could.
Somewhere, far off, he could hear a noise. It sounded like a drum, or maybe clapping hooves, except they were clapping really slowly. There was also a muffled squeak that followed every clap. It was hard to tell just what he was hearing.
Putting his hoof up on the door handle, he breathed in, clutched his baseball bat a little tighter, and worked it open, careful to cushion the click. He didn’t know what he’d have done if it were locked, but then, most ponies in his neighborhood felt no need to lock their houses. It was a safe place to live.
Pushing open the door, he stepped over the threshold, ready to run or do battle or...something. He wasn’t sure. He stood there, looking over his shoulder at his house across the street.
His mother was still inside, jerking at the door handle. He must have broken the latch when he kicked it. She raised her head and frowned at him.
Dove Tail opened her mouth to call to him, but he gave her a little shake of the head and somehow, in that special way only mothers can, she understood something was wrong. She went immediately back to hauling at the door knob with renewed vigor, then wheeled and ran for the back door.
Junior sighed and shook his head. He should wait. He knew he should wait.
The force drawing him in was less patient than his good sense.
He stepped over the threshold and gently nosed the door shut behind himself.
He pressed himself to the wall beside the living room, easing out with as soft a clop as he could make. It wasn’t easy to be stealthy on hard-wood floors. Hooves aren’t meant for sneaking.
The walls were painted a cheerful, if slightly faded green, with not a speck of dust in any corner. His eyes darted over the couch, then the television, which was still showing one of those soap operas his mother liked to watch now and then when she thought nopony was around.
The lump on the floor still hadn’t moved.
Junior cocked an ear. He could still hear that slow clap sound, a little louder, along with the soft squeak, but it was no more identifiable than it had been outside. Moving deeper into the house, he eased around the edge of the living room, trying to get a look at the poor pony who’d been pretending to be Shiny’s mom. Her face was half obscured by a bottle leaning across it. Something about her seemed a little bit... strange. It took him a moment to realize exactly what.
Her sides weren’t moving.
She wasn’t breathing.
His eyes widened and he darted forward on tip-toe, gently pushing the bottle off of her face.
He immediately wished he hadn’t. Under her fur, her face was blue. Her tongue protruded from one side of her muzzle. Now that he was close, he could see the thin wire wrapped around her neck, sawing into her throat. It looked like a tiny snake, biting off the circulation.
Her eyes were wide and blank. She was, unquestionably, dead.
How? How had it happened so fast? She’d been alive that morning!
His stomach roiled and he scrambled over to the sofa, burying his face between the cushions so he could vomit as quietly as possible. It was disgusting, and his throat hurt. Junior had never seen a dead pony before, and he took an instant to hunt around inside his head for his fear. Why wasn’t he running home? Why wasn’t he waiting on his mother?
Sweet Shine needed him.
Again, that thought swam up from the darkness and any fear he’d felt died immediately.
He wiped his muzzle on the couch cushion, glancing back at the dead mare. His stomach lurched, but he shook it off. He could be scared later. He’d no doubt that he was going to sleep real poorly that night and maybe for a few hundred nights after, but his purpose remained; a shining beacon for him to follow.
Thankfully, the hallway was carpeted, so sneaking was considerably easier.
He moved down the hall, feeling like he was on autopilot. A smart part of him didn’t want to know what those sounds were. That bit knew, somehow, he wouldn’t be a happier colt if he found out.
There were six rooms arrayed on either side of the hall, five with their doors open. The one at the far end was shut; the noises were coming from there.
The walls were just as bare as the living room; no pictures of family, no furniture nothing to distinguish the house from any one of the show-models on their street. It felt like he was walking through some kind of doll house, perfectly assembled to look bland and unassuming. His mind couldn’t really process the dead pony in the living room, though every few steps he had to stop and swallow a muzzle full of bile.
Slowly, the sounds resolved into soft weeping, followed every few seconds by another crack and a shriek as something landed against something else.
Junior gently turned the doorknob, hoping, praying that it had all just been some kind of fever dream induced by too much hot sauce and too many bowls of his mother’s soup. He opened the door just an inch, pressing his eye to the crack, and if he’d had anything left in his whole body it would have left via the nearest exit just then. As it was, his sides heaved and he staggered back, collapsing on the rug. The door swung slowly open.
Stone Shine’s back was to him, and Sweet Shine lay face down across a low cot. The enormous stallion towered over her, his fierce eyes blazing with fury. Clenched between his teeth, was a long metal rod or crop.
For her part, Shiny just lay there on her side on the bedsheets, her little frame shaking with agony. Ugly red stripes cut across her sides, back, and even face. The weight on her collar seemed much larger, for some reason, than it had the day before. Junior’s eyes widened as he saw her flanks.
They’d been beaten so vigorously the yellow fur was stained orange and brown by freely flowing blood, but that wasn’t what drew his attention, or at least, was secondary.
Sweet Shine’s cutie-mark had appeared. It was a dark, staring eye with a dove of some kind taking flight, rather than a pupil. A nasty slash ran right across the middle of it.
Stone Shine spat his crop out and snarled at his daughter, “The Girl does not question! The Girl does not demand! The Girl does not beg! The Girl obeys!”
Shiny just shook, her tail and hooves twitching spasmodically. She was past crying, although tears ran down her nose and dripped onto the bed-spread. Her eyes were glazed and was puffy and swollen, the eyelid bleeding.
Leaning forward, the enormous, enraged stallion put one hoof on the side of her head, pressing it into the bedspread and shouted, “Say it!”
The filly’s body jerked as he slowly applied pressure, her neck muscles creeking. “...spa...tha…” she grunted, though it might just have been the air leaving her lungs.
“Say it!” Stone thundered.
Set it right.
The voice was somewhere far off, a whisper in the recesses of his mind.
How? he asked.
Come on, dummy! You’ve got a bat!
Oh...
Sweet Shine’s face was contorted with pain, but it wasn’t until her jaw popped that she started to struggle against the pressure on her head. It wasn’t like a child fighting an adult. It was the panicked flailing of an animal feeling death oncoming. Stone Shine’s weight was inexorable, crushing the little filly’s skull.
Junior hefted his bat, feeling its weight.
‘Now or never!
He could have died. Stone Shine might have seen him just then, grabbed his bat, snapped his neck, and that would have been the end of Hard Boiled Junior. Later on, of a quiet evening, he’d think about that possibility and it would bring a smile to his face.
He could have died.
He didn’t.
Stone Shine must have caught the movement in a reflection on an empty picture frame sitting on the bed-side table. He started to turn, just as Junior’s first swing caught him squarely across the side of the head.
It was a mighty swing, a swing to fell oaks and manticores.
It didn’t fell Stone Shine.
It gave him a good rattle, though.
The stallion dropped the crop, stumbling sideways off the bed into the wall. Shiny gasped as the pressure came off her head, but Junior didn’t have time to check on her. He was amazed to find his bat still in his jaws. He’d never actually swung it quite that hard, and he’d managed to hold onto it!
Wild thoughts were swirling around in the back of his head, but the one that crystallized out of the fog was:
He hurt your friend! Hit him again!
Stone was recovering, his dark eyes not quite focusing as he searched for his attacker, when Junior’s second shot connected with his front knees. The power of the hit finally tore the bat out of the colt’s mouth. It skittered off under the bed. Stone staggered, pitching forward onto his face as the boy scrambled back out of the way.
For a moment, there was total silence in the tiny bedroom. Junior stared at the stallion he’d managed to bring down. By all rights, he should go get the bat and give him a few more whacks for good measure, but he was unconscious and Shiny was injured. That quickly rearranged Junior’s priorities.
Hopping up onto the bed, Junior gently nosed at his friend’s side. Her eyes were shut and he thought she must have passed out. Up close, she was even more of a mess. She’d wet herself at some point, and her canary yellow fur was so bloody it stuck up in all different directions. He shut his eyes and braced himself. He knew it was going to hurt. There was no way it wasn’t going to. He just prayed she was as comatose as she looked.
Junior jammed his nose under her side and tried to will his hearing to shut off.
It didn’t help.
Shiny screamed as Junior forced his head under her little body, hefting her over his shoulders. She was lighter than he thought she should be, but he just tried to focus on the lifting. He wasn’t a big pony, although he was still an earth pony and that helped. The stupid collar was throwing off the weight distribution, so it took an extra second to find a balance. He didn’t have time to figure out how to get it off of her.
Shiny didn’t have another shriek in her. She slumped, panting heavily, as he crawled off the bed. Junior’s mother had hammered into his head how he wasn’t supposed to move an injured animal or pony, but he didn’t have a choice. Stone Shine was coming around.
The big stallion’s left eye opened, slowly spinning in its socket until it centered on the two foals. He started to rise, but his forelegs weren’t entirely cooperating.
Junior bolted, his hooves scrabbling at the hardwood floor. Unfortunately, he had to pass Stone Shine, who reached out to catch the little interloper and smash him into a red goo. Junior dodged the tree-trunk sized leg, barely avoiding the edge of the door. That motion almost ended it for the colt and filly as he felt Shiny begin to slide off to one side, but he hoisted her higher on his back. His muscles ached, but he knew he had to keep going.
Behind him, he heard a bellow of rage as Stone Shine managed to stand. The blow to his knees slowed him, but a raging minotaur probably wouldn’t have stopped him completely. Junior was regretting not taking the time to lay the big meanie out more permanently.
In the hallway, he got some traction on the carpet and could finally do a sort of stumbling gallop. His breath was coming in stricken gasps as he rounded the corner into the living room, sparing only a glance for Shiny’s dead ‘mother,' before realizing he had a problem.
With Sweet Shine on his back, he couldn’t reach the front door’s handle with his teeth. If he tried, he’d tip her off.
That was when, like an angel out of the evening light, his mother’s face appeared. Dove Tail was just outside, peering in through the window in the door and down at Junior. Her eyes widened at the sight of the bloody filly draped over him and she slammed the door open with one mighty kick.
“J-junior! What happened?!” she shouted, but he couldn’t answer. He just loped passed her, desperate to be out in the open air again.
It was then that Stone Shine rounded the corner.
He didn’t resemble a stallion anymore, so much as a living engine of anger. His face was swollen across one side, and several teeth were missing. His front knees had started to swell, making the joints move poorly. He charged towards Dove-Tail, who had only an instant to look at the condition of her foal and his friend, before making a snap decision.
Stone Shine only had eyes for his stolen property as he moved to bash Junior’s mother out of the way, recapture his daughter, and end that impudent little colt. Two seconds later, the only thing he had eyes for was Dove Tail’s mighty rear hooves.
His head snapped back, and all forward momentum ceased.
A deathly silence fell over everything. Even the birds seemed to stop, holding their songs to see what might happen.
The stallion glared at Junior’s mother, spit out five or six more teeth, along with a good sized piece of his tongue, then reached towards his daughter. Then, like a fresh cut tree, he collapsed at Dove Tail’s hooves, blood gushing from his mouth in a hot, sticky torrent.
Junior felt movement on his back. He lifted one ear, turning to look at his friend.
Shiny lifted one hoof, reaching out towards her father.
“D-Daddy?” she whispered, her voice broken from screaming. “Daddy?!”
The colt had no idea what was going on, but he knew he had to get her away from there. She began to struggle, trying to climb off of his back, her rear hooves flailing as she fought to get to her father.
“Daaaaddddyyyy!”
****
Shiny and Junior lay together on a double-wide hospital bed. The bandages around the filly’s middle and the cast on her foreleg made cuddling difficult, but they managed to at least maintain a little contact, toe to toe. The doctors had a momentary discussion of separating them, during which a gun was nearly pulled and Hard Boiled Senior had to be talked down by his wife.
After that, the nurses just wheeled in a bigger bed.
The hours had seemed like a whirlwind of activity, but mostly for Shiny and Junior, it’d been quietly laying together while the hospital staff worked them over with horn, bandage, and wash-cloth. Junior’s parents stayed with the children as long as they could, but, at last, the staff insisted they go out to the waiting room so they weren’t underhoof.
Junior only managed to pick up bits and pieces of what’d happened after they got home and the ambulance was called. The police had arrived first, with Hard Boiled Senior in the lead. They’d searched Stone Shine’s house and hauled him away to another hospital, cuffed and manacled, though they were none-too-gentle with him after one good look at what he’d done to Shiny and the dead prostitute. Then they’d wanted to ask Junior what happened, and his mother put her hoof down, until her husband gently led her away and asked his son if he would mind telling him.
Junior described everything, in as great a detail as he could, to his gently frowning father. Then the tears came. He cried and held his dad, while Shiny hung around his middle, for what seemed like ages.
Sweet Shine refused to speak, except to wail whenever Junior was more than a couple of hoof-lengths away. That’d started to calm down a bit, as time wore on, at least enough so that the colt could make it to the bathroom.
Sometime during that period, a kindly old unicorn had come in to take a complete inventory of their injuries. Junior only had a couple of scrapes, bruises, and a loose tooth from the blow he’d delivered to Stone Shine’s head.
When the doctor reached Shiny, his expression became grave. She was asleep, at last, but clutched Junior to her chest like a stuffed animal, her face buried in his mane.
The doctor’s horn glowed, running over every inch of her from top to bottom. It winked out, and he gave Junior a light pat on the head, before turning to leave the little hospital room. The door was cracked, so Junior could hear the conversation outside, though he couldn’t see who was being spoken to.
“-indications of severe injury and signs of repeated magical healing on every inch of skin. We removed that collar and the flesh underneath was infected. She’d been wearing it for several days, continuously. There was some form of enchantment on it as well. There’s also deep muscle scarring indicative of years of this treatment.”
“The colt mentioned something about memory alterations when we spoke to him?” a mare, who Junior assumed to be a police officer, asked.
“Severe and endemic. Whatever this child endured, it was beyond anything a pony many times her age could have survived while keeping their sanity. It’s best she doesn’t remember.”
“What about the collar? It’s...magical?”
“Mmm... sickening. Truly sickening. It is a simple device based on something the dragons used during the war. The weight grows heavier the more rebellious thoughts the wearer has. When she was at home, I imagine he made her wear it continuously.”
“How could...somepony do these things to a little filly?” the other mare asked, shocked.
“I don’t know. Truly I don’t. It’s the worst case of child abuse I’ve ever seen. If that colt hadn’t been there and stopped Mister Shine when he did… well, the inflammation alone would have probably permanently paralyzed her. I don’t even want to think on the rest of it. He saved that girl’s life.”
“And… he got his cutie-mark, too,” said another pony, who seemed to be part of that conversation but had remained silent until that moment.
He knew that voice. It was his mother, out there, listening to the doctor alongside whoever the other pony was.
He smiled to himself and nestled deeper into the blankets, pressing his cheek against Shiny’s shoulder.
His eyes popped open.
Wait, what did she say?
****
“They found Sweets’ real mother a few months later. She was another dead Jane Pony, just like the girl that Stone Shine strangled. No extended family, nopony to come looking for her, and...sadly, no story we could find other than that she was young and fell in love with the wrong stallion. My mom and dad wanted to adopt Sweets, but the foster care wouldn’t allow it. They said it would be unhealthy for her to live so close to where the trauma took place. Miss Goodie took her in, instead, believe it or not. She lived a couple of blocks over. She was an alright mother, although Sweets spent most of her time at our house anyway.”
Swift and I sat on one side of the underground pond, while Taxi and the Warden sat on the other, studying the reflection of the fake stars on the still water’s surface.
“What...happened to Stone Shine?” my partner asked, curiously.
“Supermax, then Tartarus when it was built. We… thankfully, we didn’t have to attend his trial. Once the investigation began in earnest, they uncovered a lot of… bad things… including the governor’s daughter. They found the murder weapons in Stone’s ‘toolbox,' in the outside shed. He killed her.”
“Sweet Celestia!”
“Yeah, trust me, my dad was all in favor of bringing back the death penalty just to see that guy burn. Either Stone’s ‘contacts’ left him high and dry, or there's some crap that not even friends in high places can pull you out of, but he never said a word about them after he was arrested. He’s been here ever since.”
“Eesh… that makes my cutie-mark story sound so lame…” she murmured, tracing her hoof back and forth through the water.
“Take the lame and be happy with it. Almost dying after watching a friend get tortured is not a good way to remember what should have been one of the happiest day of your life.”
“What about… the Jewelers?”
I groaned and flopped onto my side in the grass. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask about that. I couldn’t identify those ponies and the word of a traumatized child wouldn’t carry much weight in court even if I had. You know the rest of what happened, though, I’m sure.”
“The Jewelers became the meanest criminal syndicate in the whole city... because of Taxi’s dad?”
“Probably not just him... but... yeah. That’s the long and short of it. She had to work about six times as hard as anypony else in the academy and when it came to it... when she’d finally made it... her cutie-marks... well...”
I let that sentence hang.
“Did...you ever ask Taxi why she got that talent?” Swift asked, hesitantly.
I scratched at my ear, thinking. “I did-”
“I stood up to Him,” Taxi’s voice right beside us made my partner and I jump. She and the Warden stood a few meters away, side by side. I hadn’t heard them come up. My driver looked none-the-worse for wear, but it’s always difficult to tell with her. “That day, when he came to me and told me to get my clothes, put them in a trunk, and get ready to leave immediately...I stood up to him. I told him I didn’t want to leave Hardy. That damn collar got so heavy it almost broke my neck, but I still told him no.”
Swift’s ears fluttered. “What does that have to do with your talent, though?”
Taxi sucked in a breath, and when she spoke it was in a voice so soft we all had to lean forward. “I’d been what he needed for years and years. A victim. A scapegoat. A good, obedient daughter. I became, in that... very brief moment... what the most broken, screwed up little pony I’d ever met needed. I became my own creature, separate from him. I defied him... and he broke me for it.”
She didn’t look back at the scars on her flanks, but I knew that was where her thoughts were.
I reached up to adjust my hat, which was feeling awfully loose on my ears, and remembered it wasn’t there. I tried to cover the motion by plucking at a couple of loose hairs in my mane. “Sweets… you and I both know this is a bad idea. The bastard nearly killed you.”
“I… I know,” she whispered. “You kept him from killing me even though the odds of you walking out of that house were spectacularly low. Miss Goodie slept with my mother, even knowing she was being abused. She knew it wasn’t safe and that my mom was a screw up. She loved her anyway. Heck, she wasn’t even my real mom. After she died, Miss Goodie gave me a place to live, and paid eight years worth of therapy bills. She was under no obligation to do that.”
“So what you’re saying is that ponies are insane, right?”
Taxi snorted. “I’m saying ponies don’t always make sense and that even the unhealthy things we do are usually for a reason. I know Daddy needs me. My talent’s been humming since we hit the tarmac outside. Besides… he’s going to die, so what can he do to me?”
I jabbed my hoof in the direction of the cabin. “That old slag is dying and she sure seemed to do a few things to you-”
She sidled over and gave me a good bump with her hip. “-and you’re more broken up about that than I am, so leave it be. If you want to wait, I’ll buy you an ice-cream from the cafeteria and you can sit outside.”
I shook my head. “I’m coming. Under protest.” I glanced at the Warden, then gestured to my bare head. “Can I at least have my clothes back?”
****
My hat settled over my ears and I patted the brim, hauling my coat tight around my shoulders. The trip back up through the depths of Tartarus seemed to take much less time than the trip down. There was little time for conversation, but when I asked the Warden about it she admitted she’d slowed the elevator to give the unicorns upstairs more time to scan us.
Noble as that might have been, she was visibly annoyed when the technician handed her a report saying that the magical scanning systems throughout the entirety of Tartarus had decided to all simultaneously go on the fritz. It’d happened before, but usually only doing especially nasty arcane weather. They’d only headed off an alarm and lockdown at the Warden’s command, when nothing else seemed to happen. The non-magical systems were apparently still working fine, giving all clears at every corner.
Taxi, Swift, and I stood together just outside the first security checkpoint, putting our various clothings back on. Taxi’s saddlebags were still locked shut with some kind of tiny padlock and my partner’s vest had been emptied of everything, including the lint. It’d taken a direct order from the Warden for security to release our luggage. They hadn’t quite finished scanning it and I thought the unicorn in charge of that effort might still refuse when she told him to give me my gun back, sans ammunition. He did not look like a happy pony as he helped me strap it back to my leg.
The Warden was signing the paperwork for our equipment and as she finished, she waved us towards the elevator up to ground level.
****
The prison hospital was only slightly lower security than the rest of the place, thus we did get to leave behind the control collars.
A simple fact of the matter was that nopony would get treatment in the hospital unless they were so weakened, so injured, and so provably incapacitated that treatment in their cells was no longer an option. Escape attempts from the less secure areas of Tartarus would probably have required a willingness to run with only two legs and double pneumonia. Not that it hadn’t been tried.
Warden lead the way, out across the courtyard and exercise areas. Nopony but the guards were out at that time of night. Most prisoners were safe in their cells, unless they had permission to be elsewhere.
The rain was long gone and the forest smells were returning. I sneezed, violently, then yanked my kerchief out of one pocket and blew my nose. Allergies are yet another reason I am a city pony, through and through.
We stepped into the central courtyard just as the guard was being changed. An especially slobbery looking Captain Bramble was just passing his sponge, weapon, and keys off to a younger guardsmare who looked like she was seconds from a laughing fit. The captain just scowled at us as we trotted by.
Somewhere, in the distance, a mighty howl shook the trees. A little bit closer, a second, much squeakier one responded.
“Mmm...Cerebrus is hunting tonight,” the Warden commented.
“N-not a pony, right?” Swift asked, worriedly.
“No, no...he hunts ponies when I tell him to hunt ponies. Sounds more like a hydra crossed into his territory. With any luck, we’ll have food for him for a few weeks once we carve up the body,” Warden said, chuckling to herself.
Swift’s nose wrinkled, then her instinctive and lifelong social indoctrination gave way to her predatory curiosity. “What’s hydra taste like?”
Warden’s tail-stub flapped to one side in a gesture of amusement. “You are most assuredly a partner for Hard Boiled.”
The pegasus pouted a little, her wings clutching tighter to her sides. “At least his friends aren’t as creepy as that Saucy pony. Why do you even like her? She sounds awful.”
Warden paused mid-stride.
“I... do not like Saussurea for who she is, Miss Cuddles. She’s a demon. Her actions are nothing short of villainous.” Her shining eye flared, then dimmed until it was just a faint glow somewhere deep in the socket. “I... like her for what she can be. Perhaps, I should say, what she represents.”
“I don’t understand,” my partner murmured.
Warden inhaled and looked up into the starry sky, as though searching for answers there. “Saussurea believes, sincerely, in making the world a better place. Very few ponies are willing to sacrifice to change the world. Most like the idea in a sort of... ephemeral sense, but few actually act upon it. Saucy did. She did it in an especially vile fashion, but she succeeded.”
“That’s... but... I mean, that doesn’t say why you’re friends.” Swift persisted.
“It is, I suppose, because I need the reminder. I am very capable of turning Tartarus into a place like Supermax. The Princesses have endowed me with the power and tools to do something just like that, if temporarily, and, believe me... I have been tempted now and then. I believe some here deserve that sort of treatment, through and through. I’ve read the files of everypony under my care, at length.”
“So... why don’t you?”
Warden shifted her weight from one leg to the other, then reached out and gently laid her burnt hoof on my partner’s cheek. Swift blanched, but didn’t pull away. “I... I have a very long time to live. A very long time, if the doctors are right. I need reasons to continue on the straight and true path. Madness is a very real option. Saussurea may die soon, but she changed this world in the tiny blink of life she lived. I want to change it as well, in a way that leaves it a brighter place for my having been in it... and I have much longer to screw up.”
My partner made a soft noise and her mouth formed into the shape of an ‘O.'
“Now, then.” The Warden turned to my driver, who’d been silent through the entire trip up from the deep cells. “Have you been made aware of your father’s specific health problems?”
“I... um... The nurse told me. Lung cancer, from the time he spent in the mines, right?”
“...Technically, yes. Lung cancer will most likely be what kills him, but his... body... does not want for other contenders.”
I raised one eyebrow and pointed towards the hospital in the distance. It was a white, concrete building with a bright red sun painted across one wall. “I suppose that raises two questions. ‘What contenders?’ and ‘Why keep him there?’ If he’s dying, why not his cell? It’s not like you can’t keep him alive in a hospital bed in High Security.”
“Stone Shine was not in High Security, Hard Boiled,” Warden replied. “He was an ideal prisoner for his entire stay here. His condition precludes keeping him amongst other inmates, however.”
“'Condition?'” Taxi asked.
The burnt mare traced a circle in the mud with a toe. “At some point in his life, primitive, highly illegal magical mutation was used to alter your father’s appearance. Several times, actually. Those enchantments have been... breaking down. We believe the repeated damage to his genome from those transformation spells is causing the cancers to manifest. The presence of other ponies exacerbates the problem, though for a short visit the damage is likely to be minimal.”
My driver chewed her lip. “I... oog. Do I want to know what that means?”
“Honestly? I think you’re better off just getting in your cab and heading back to the city. It’s not my decision. You’re the next of kin. That does grant certain rights.”
I knew Taxi’s ‘brave face.' She was wearing it with an extra helping of ‘stoic.'
After the day I put Stone Shine in the hospital, it’d been years before I’d seen her have an honest to goodness breakdown again. There was one outside the testing office for the Academy during her final year. She’d cried for a bit on my shoulder, then went right in and aced everything. When Miss Goodie died was another. They had been close through the later years of that relationship, though more like good friends and less like family. In their own way, that meant they were closer. Taxi wouldn’t have gotten too tight with somepony who wanted to be her mom. Trust like that, once it’s broken, never really comes back.
“I’ll see him,” my driver murmured.
“Alright. It’s your choice.” Warden shrugged her scoured shoulders and set off towards the hospital ward. “I don’t know that your father will tell you anything, but Supermax’s magical construct was a mystery to damn near everypony besides Saucy, and most of our inmates from back then were either badly damaged or not the talkative sort. I might even be able to convince the city council that foul thing is bad enough to warrant releasing the funds to disassemble it entirely, if you can figure out its actual function while you’re in there.”
****
We stopped just outside the sliding glass doors across the front of the cinder block-and-concrete structure long enough for the unicorn guard inside the security hut to do yet another inspection. It ended up having to be visual, since his horn sputtered angrily when he tried to aim his scanning spell in my direction. The Warden gave him a swift explanation, then quickly scribbled her signature on the guard’s ‘responsibility release’ form when he presented it, and waved the rest of us through.
The prison hospital ward was nearly empty at that hour, though that had always been the case. Most injuries could be treated inside a cell and the more significant facilities were mostly used for prisoners who couldn’t be kept with the general populace for various medical reasons.
A long hall stretched off maybe a hundred yards, lined on either side with glass boxes, giving an impression of enormous openness and space. Each tiny room was its own cell, glassed in and soundproofed. Privacy curtains hung between the rooms and the doors could only be opened with a talisman keyed to the specific cell, all of which were kept with at the security desk. Only six of the little rooms had their curtains drawn; the rest were visibly unoccupied.
Warden looked back and forth, smoke pouring from her nostrils before she turned to the nurse’s station beside the front door. It was little more than a desk and filing cabinet with a bored-looking mare in a labcoat sitting behind it, reading a trashy novel.
“Where’s Custodius?” the Warden asked, curtly. The mare didn’t look up, but jabbed one hoof down the long hall before pointing at the ‘no smoking’ sign on the wall behind her left shoulder. Warden frowned, then inhaled the smoke with a deep breath and turned to the three of us.
“Wait here for Custodius. He’ll take you to Stone Shine.” With that, she turned to the door.
I caught her hoof. “You’re not coming with us?”
Warden shook her head and made a big show of yawning, which was like somepony opening a hot forge inches from my face. I danced backwards as the fur on my muzzle started to sizzle.
“I’ve got to get some sleep at some point and I can’t spend the rest of my night leading the three of you around.”
Taxi rolled her eyes. “We both know you don’t sleep.”
“Yes, but if it’s all the same to you, I’ve got work to do,” Warden replied, moving towards the door. “The guard will let you leave and once you’re done, you can see yourselves out of my prison. I don’t expect to see you again unless you’ve secured Cerise, and if anypony asks about your presence I will tell them you were here to see Miss Shine’s father. Will that be adequate to get you out of my fur?”
“You don’t have any f-” Swift started to say.
“Yes, yes it will!” I said, quickly stuffing my hoof in my partner’s muzzle.
Warden continued out into the prison’s darkened courtyard, trotting back towards Administration.
I pulled my toe out of Swift’s mouth and wiped it on my coat.
“So, where’s this ‘Custodius,' then?” I asked nopony in particular.
“Just down here, Detective,” a voice called from the nearest cubicle. “Is she gone?”
“Who? The Warden?” I called back.
“Yes.”
“Uh... yeah, yeah, she’s gone.”
A small, light brown head popped out from behind a curtain, peering both ways down the line of cube-like rooms. “Ahhh, so she is. Pardon, that pony offends my medicinal sensibilities something fierce.”
Custodius trotted out of the tiny room, adjusting his floor-length doctor’s coat and nametag with an absent minded brush of his hoof.
Custodius was a donkey.
I don’t know why that surprised me. I’ve met plenty of donkeys in my time in Detrot, though they’re a minority species practically everywhere. The Crusades had done unparalleled damage to the donkey homelands, and while they couldn’t be called endangered, there were fewer donkeys left in Equestria than griffins.
His drooping ears and sagging jaw gave the impression of a creature of low intelligence, but his eyes flickered with a clever interest as he evaluated the three of us.
“I see what all of the fuss was about,” he murmured, contemplatively. “May I assume the pegasus is the one with the intriguing dental configuration we detected earlier?”
Swift bobbed her head and grinned, flashing her back rows of teeth.
“And... you’re the one who was giving our scanners fits?” Custodius asked, his wrinkled jowls swinging back and forth.
“If you want an answer on that, I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong pony,” I explained, scratching at the plug on my chest. “I don’t know why magical scanning isn’t working on me. It’s going to be damned inconvenient if I end up in hospital at any point.”
“Not just you, Mister Hard Boiled,” the donkey pursed his lips. “For a few minutes there, our entire network was having issues. It appears to be functional again, though you and your friends are… insistently and perplexingly absent.”
“We’re here to see Taxi’s father, Stone Shine. Can you take us to him?” I asked, gesturing sideways at my driver.
Custodius crossed his foreknees and leaned toward me, sniffing at the air in my direction. “You reek of magic, sir. Absolutely stink of it. Phew.”
I looked over at Taxi, then raised one leg and gave myself a good whiff. Aside realizing just how badly I needed a shower, I couldn’t smell anything particularly out of the ordinary.
“That’s not surprising, I guess. I’ve got an enchanted heart transplant,” I replied.
“Ah. I do swear, I should have moved to a country with less reliance on the arcane. The Warden smells so ferociously that she and I have a quiet agreement to not be in the same room with one another.” Custodius plucked at the fur on his fetlock with his teeth, then turned towards the row of cubes. “Stone Shine is at the end. Follow me. Keep to the middle; especially you, my good, stinky gentlecolt.”
I decided not to comment on that as we followed him down the rows.
Swift was less incurious. “What do you mean he stinks of magic?”
“I don’t know that anything I said was unclear, Miss Teeth,” the donkey replied, shortly. “This entire country smells of it. If the finest medical fields in the world weren’t here, believe me, I’d vacate in a heartbeat.”
“What’s it smell like?” Swift asked, raising her nose and inhaling deeply.
“Truth be, I doubt you could detect it. It’s like... burnt cheese mixed with cinnamon, and you lot don’t have noses sensitive enough to be bothered by it, so you douse everything in spells!” Custodius said, huffily.
Taxi tilted her head to one side, moving up closer to the donkey’s side. “I’ve... never been to the Tartarus hospital, but the last time I was here was for an injured prisoner who witnessed a large drug trade. I wasn’t aware Doctor Caverna had retired.”
Custodius stepped sideways around a nurse pushing a cart of medications, giving me a moment to look into one of the occupied glass cubicles. The pony inside was so swathed in bandages I couldn’t even tell if they were male or female.
“Unsurprising,” he replied. “I am the third doctor they’ve gone through in six years, though I suppose the rather unique mental condition spending any amount of time around the Warden produces in doctors may have something to do with that.”
Swift was trying not to stare -- and failing -- as we passed a bed which seemed to contain several jars, each with a different piece of a pony; wings, torso, ears, eyes. The eyes were focused on a crossword puzzle being propped up by one of the hooves which wasn’t in a jar.
“...that’s freaky…” she muttered, then quickly covered herself and asked, “Uh...I mean...’What mental condition is that’?”
“Nothing too severe, and easily managed by limiting contact,” Custodius replied, stopping long enough to scan a patient report hanging on a cell which was entirely dark inside in a way that suggested a spell. All I could make out was a pair of flashing, golden eyes at about where a pony’s would be if they were laying in bed. “Call it catastrophic cognitive dissonance. Every fiber of all but the most cynical doctor’s being calls out to heal the needs of those who are broken or in pain. I doubt you will disagree there is something very wrong about our dear Warden.”
“No kidding…”
Custodius shrugged and moved on. “I do believe Doctor Caverna’s ejection involved an attempt to bandage the Warden to a depth of eleven inches.”
“Eee…”
“...Yes. Very much ‘eee.' Now then, here we are.”
We’d reached the last cube at the far end of the ICU. The rest of the occupied cells were well kept and appeared relatively recently moved into. The last one seemed much older and more lived in. I could see a vase, with flowers in it silhouetted against the curtain. The curtains weren’t the same drab green of every other; rather they were a soft shade of sunflower with a black and white fringe at the bottom. I glanced at my driver and she’d taken note of the similarity as well. She touched her braid, pinning it to her shoulder momentarily before tossing it back.
“Now, I must issue a warning. Mister Stone Shine is quite old. We don’t know exactly how old, since his condition has altered his genome in a very disturbing fashion and he has never been terribly forthcoming. We are doing our best to make him comfortable until his passing. That, however, is not what I feel the need to warn you about.”
“If you’re going to warn us, just get it over with,” I said, impatiently. “I don’t like mysteries.”
Custodius pretended to read the chart outside Stone’s room for a moment, then slid onto his backside on the linoleum floor. “To be honest, I don’t know that warning you will even do any good. We’ve tried every containment method available to us, including the jars. Nothing works. These spells he’s been under have re-written his entire chromosome.”
I rubbed my nose, thinking back to my high school biology class. “Shouldn’t he be dead already, then?”
“In theory, yes.” The donkey nodded, sagely. “He’s alive now only because of constant monitoring. At best? His organs aren’t failing right this minute. That... may change at any time. They’ve adopted an unpleasant tendency to copy whatever they’re near. That has exacerbated the cancer. We managed to put a stop to that, at least internally, but his... skin... well, it’s just a matter of time now.”
I could see a tremor starting in Taxi’s left hoof, but when she spoke, her voice was cool and steady, “We’ve got some questions for him. My... father... won’t die until he’s seen me. He’s too stubborn. He... wouldn’t give me that kind of peace.”
“Go on in. He’s probably awake... and if previous doctors are to be believed, he’s apparently asked to see you, Miss Shine, every day for the last twenty-odd years.”
With that, Custodius held out a tiny silver box with ‘Number 1’ carved into the top of it; the door talisman. I scooped it off his hoof and he turned back down the row of cubes, leaving the three of us standing outside Stone Shine’s cell.
“Alright, this is-” I started.
“Shut up, Hardy.” Taxi cut me off, putting her hoof on my chest. “Just... just shut up.”
I shut up.
Taxi stepped up and put her forelegs around me, pressing her face against the side of my neck. She was shivering, like an electric current was running from her tail to her ears. She just held me for several seconds and I wasn’t entirely sure what to do, so I gently patted her back. When she stepped back, she was smiling.
It wasn’t a happy smile, but it held the kind of strength that most ponies assume defines my driver’s personality. She’s very good at being strong at the right moments, so nopony sees what’s underneath. Most of the time, even I don’t see it and I still, after many years, can’t say I fully understand her.
Taking the talisman from me, she pressed it against the glass door. There was a soft hiss and runes flickered softly, then vanished again as it retreated into recesses on either side.
The lights inside the little room were turned down low, and the privacy curtains surrounded the bed.
Taxi was in first, while Swift and I piled into the tiny space behind her. The door slid shut and there was the sound of sucking air as it sealed itself. Machines built discretely into the wall behind the bed beeped and hummed to themselves. I reached up to tug back the curtain, but Taxi caught my hoof, and pulled it back.
She faced the curtained bed.
“Daddy,” she whispered.
Something behind the curtain drew in a wet breath. It was strange, though. It sounded like several things inhaling simultaneously through several mouths.
There was movement. An appendage that might have been a hoof, though it seemed to have too many angles, rose from the bedsheets and touched something above the headboard. The light came up and the curtains drew back.
Swift retched, tumbling back against the glass doors with one hoof swept across her mouth. There was a bucket near the end of the bed, and I wondered momentarily if that was for the convenience of guests or the occupant of the tiny room.
The last time I’d seen Stone Shine, he was a mountain, a terror, a monolithic powerful beast that I, the tiny colt with a baseball bat, had seen fit to strike. He’d been seconds from simply ending me and my best friend. He’d strangled a mare simply for being in his way.
The years had not been kind.
What lay in the bed was not a pony. It might have been a pony at one time, but only if you squinted until most of the details were lost.
The creature’s face made the Warden’s seem a right beauty. I tried to find some piece of it to focus on to make sense of the horrible things that’d happened to it. No… to him. It was Stone Shine. I remembered those eyes. They weren’t the eyes he’d had when I saw him last, but there was a look there that marked the creature I’d seen beating his daughter to death for defying him. One eye seemed to have been bisected, as though it was trying to divide like a cell, while the other was riddled with strangely colored cataracts, leaving it looking like insects swam just beneath the surface.
It was his chest and limbs that set my partner’s stomach roiling, though.
Where any sane, right-minded being should expect fur, there was a misshapen, lumpy mass of bare, pink flesh. It was as though his organs, impatient for him to rot, had chosen to burst through and get a few breaths of fresh air.
A pair of what I could only describe as lips seemed to be growing on his collar bone. They were fixed in a rictus smirk.
His face was no longer the powerful, square jawed pride of a stallion. Teeth stuck through the top of his lip, deforming it at strange angles. In several places, it seemed additional teeth had grown in spots they simply had no business being.
For all of that, the eyes were still Stone Shine. Maybe not the eyes, but the gaze. He regarded the three of us, and I felt sure he should be blind with that visual configuration, but he saw us all the same.
Where before he’d looked hardened and powerful, now he looked like a sack full of mismatched body parts waiting for the incinerator. He’d been a gigantic beast, and the enforcement of a sedentary lifestyle didn’t seem to have stripped away all of that muscle, though it was finding unusual structures to settle into on bones that reminded me of children’s building toys dropped half-hazardly across one another.
I suppose the only reason nausea didn’t catch me out was the amount of time I’d spent around Slip Stitch.
As I watched, a thin fringe of yellow fur pushed its way out of the skin above his upper lip. It was the same shade as my driver’s. Slowly, a smile spread on the old killer’s face.
“Girl…” he growled; a wet sound boiling out of a diseased gullet.
I glanced at Taxi, who was standing with all four hooves planted like she didn’t know whether to run, scream, or attack. I admit, I was having the same quandary.
“...oh...” Taxi shuddered, her eyes locked on the thing in the bed. That yellow fur was slowly spreading across Stone Shine’s face, like a quick growing moss. The effect was distressing.
“Mmm... I... knew... I would see you before the end.”
A single drop of blood ran from a place under his scalp, down across his cheek, landing on the sheets.
Swift, smart filly that she was, chose that moment to pass out.
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karma is a bitch, stone shine. karma is a bitch.
wait, magical alter................. noooo, it couldn't be.
.............
wait a damn moment. is what i am thinking what is giong on here? he was magically altered, and we know one of the parties hardy is looking for uses greatly altered agents...........
makes me wonder something as well. has that alteration had any affect on taxi?
also nice chapter.
Ooogh...
You are waaaay too good at moving from normal human/Pony interaction horror to complete Body Horror. I'm going to hide under my blankets tonight out of fear of Stone Shine both Past and Present.
Angel of Team Angelfang
Jesus....just...damn guys. You keep writing like this and the only way i'm ever going to be able to read the new chapters is if I have a close friend promise to give me cuddles and hot cocoa.
Liebersgott.
Yikes.
Still reading! Ye gods. Mighty heavy going.
The Scholar continues to be the icing on this horrid, delicious cake of a story. Please tell me we get to meet him/her in person at some point, or at least learn who he/she is.
As for the rest of this chapter, NOPE. Nope nope nope nope nopenopenopenopenopenopenopenope.
Keep up the good work, you two.
I just...
I...
*leaves*
Your writing frequently gives me shivers. This time, it's literal!
Artists: who's up for a CHALLENGE? :-D
4307461 Ooooh...too much?
4306862 In a little while, maybe answers with be forthcoming?
4306957
4307023 I swear, it's not a horror story! It...just...kinda...turned out this way...
4307259 Don't you mean 'Oh my Sweet Celestia?'
4307695 I...ugh...I do not wish to see art of Stone Shine. I'll accept it if someone does it, and I will definitely post it...but...bleh. I was more than slightly freaked out by this guy.
4307381 I promise a cute chapter soon!
-Chessie
4308115
Nah, just hits a bit close to home ... which only makes me want to read more
4308115 i must wonder the possibilities. considering the nature of stone shine, and how unknown his origins are, much can be possible.
wonder what is going through poor sweet's mind when she realized her fucker of a father looks like something from an eldritch abomination dating site.
There is one word for this: disturbing.
But, yeah magical alteration, wonder if its connected (almost certainly, I'm thinking).
Aaaauuuughhh
4308785 Did we do a bad thing to Nemryn? I am feeling guilty now...
-Chessie
OK so I did not see that coming at all this is good. Though her dad is a wee bit f'ed up. Was a good chapter thank you again.
So, Sweet Shine mentally becomes what other people need, and Stone Shine now physically becomes what other people are?
Ladies and gentlemen, karma. Well done, authors. Well done. Now pardon me while I see a man about a liter of stomach acid...
4309391 That bad, huh? Gosh, I wonder what'll happen when we get to the really bad stuff... Now I'm kinda worried.
-Chessie
I really should not be getting this angry at a fanfic character, but I do feel that I could murder Stone Shine right now. Or at least cause him lots and lots of pain.
Just goes to show how good the writers are.
Ooh boy.
4307381
Personally, my guesses so far for the Scholar are Lim, Don Tome, or really stretching it, Twilight.
4309546 Could be any of them, I guess...Or Spike. Or Slip Stitch. Or Stella. Or Rarity. Or A.K. Yearling. Or Diamante. Or Zefu.
-Chessie
4309555
Surely A, K. Yearling has passed on by this point? The conversation with Stella about her seemed to insinuate that, or at least to me it did.
Un-related: New chapter for this was the best early birthday present I could have asked for :)
There are some chapters where a reader might completely forget about the [Dark] tag on this fic. These last few chapters have not been those kind of chapters.
As always, though, fascinating.
*Reads the chapter... including the description of Stone Shine*
.... Eh. *Shrugs his shoulders* I saw John Carpenter's The Thing when I was only 4 *is going to be 30 this year*, played all three Dead Space games, and seen Akira. Trust me, creepy cancer pony's description doesn't bother me in the least lol.
4308115
That too.
4309097
I'll be okay! I just thought about Swift being adorable for a bit, that makes a good antidote.
4309628 I honestly didn't want to write some super-depressing thing like Fallout Equestria. The feeling of oppressive awfulness in that made it feel...not very Equestria-ish.
Equally, it's not a NICE place any of these ponies live. Detrot is a hole on the edge of their world and few will climb out of it. I just hope survival is an option for these characters. I do sorta like them.
-Chessie
And this concludes our special: "A Foal Named Hardy-Boiled!" Tune in next time, kids!
Interesting take on Stone there: I suppose I'd come up with something similar to portray a meltdown of transformative magics...
4309791
Oh yeah, I was reading the Ditzy Doo Chrinicles, and as much as I liked them, they just got too depressing with everything just dying and being horrible.
Gotta mention the one thing that bothers me about this story though: if Hardy's been a detective for this long, why is he so jumpy? He's not just quick to ready the gun, he's quick to start shooting even when he probably shouldn't... I guess I can see that being a potential derangement for a cop to acquire, but it doesn't make him a very good one...
I can't help but feel like I wouldn't/haven't had the same reactions to these situations, and that the characters need to learn to keep level heads....
4310156 He's a cop in Detrot, in Equestria. The primary reason he's alive is a willingness to shoot things before they shoot him. Slow pony cops become dead pony cops very, very quickly; particularly when they have an unfortunate talent for sticking their noses in the biggest, nastiest piles of corrupted shit the city can produce.
He's also an earth pony. That's the absolute bottom of the food chain in Equestria. Sure, he's very strong, but anything with a horn or wings, anything with a gun, anything bigger than he is, anything he can't kick, anything magical -- all of it -- can and will eat him. He shoots because it is the smart reaction.
He's an alcoholic having flash-backs, nightmares, hallucinations, emotional breakdowns, and psychotic fits of rage.
I do suspect he has pretty severe PTSD as well, which can't be helping the situation.
I dunno where you got that he's 'quick to start shooting', though. I think he's only actually fired his gun like...maybe three times in the whole story, if that.
-Chessie
I can't actually name a point off the top of my head where he's pulled the trigger outside the warehouse fight, and I think that was the Minotaurus, not his revolver.
--CEO Kasen
4308115 I don't really mind the light horror (although the new Stone Shine was maybe a bit too much), just keep doing things they way they are!
4309555 I kind of like the concept of Spike being the Scholar... the writing style definitely feels like Spike's style of humor, but from a much more mature perspective.
Poor Swifty, at least she's going to be unconcious for the next bit. That was smart of her.
I don't know why Hardy stopped Swift from saying that the Warden has no fur, the Warden hasn't seemed like the kind to be offended by the truth up til now.
4310425 I know this is stupid, but for a second there I thought you had a Scootaloo emoticon...
-Chessie
4310692 Yeah I know what you mean, easy mistake to make isn't it?
4310765 Heeheeheee...I'm still waiting to see the art from two chapters from now. It WILL be epic. Swift gets some seriously adorable scenes.
-Chessie
4310767 T-two chapters from now? You are such a tease!
Well... thank you both so much for the Akira flashbacks your description of Stone Shine gave me.
At least it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
... But now that I've said that, you're going to reveal that it did happen to a nicer guy at some point, aren't you?
...I am deeply disturbed....and yet I want and eagerly await for more.
This would have been several levels darker were it not for Swift's presence in this chapter for some lighthearted comic relief. Also, Young Hardy beaning Stone over the head with the baseball bat was ultimately satisfying, especially while he was in the middle of abusing Sweet. Sick twisted motherfucker.
Now it's finally come to this. Time to confront the bastard again after all these years, and maybe get some answers.
Awesome chapter! Really well written, has both given me the shivers and inspiration for three characters (and counting...)
I will send you a note, maybe some of them can be useful for your story.
4310180 have absolutely not understanding of why an earth pony is at the bottom. what they lack inf lfamboyance they make up with relaiblity. they are enduring, strong, reasonably athletic, even if they are someone like hardy who drinks too much and does not exercise.
with magical beasts i see the other species more at a disadvantage. an earth pony wants you to get close, the other two don't. an earth pony could probably fight off if not overpower most beasts that are not far greater their size, like a hydra. even if the enemy could not be fought they would probably outpace the other two species easily as well. even then the best way to take care of a predator is to be the prey item with the most risk and least reward. a beast relies on getting close.
then again i kinda have the mindset of earth pony strength is connected to their magic as well. so there is more to them than just brute force and such. there has to be an actual balance between their attributes otherwise one species would dominate over the other. hell an alicorn is powerful because it combines all three attributes, giving them a range of potential choices if faced with a conflict.
in one of those mini comics that hsowed both a pairing of spike and celestia, and a better understanding of how celestia works, we see her relying on speed and movement during one scene rather than magic or flight.
Sad is like happy for deep people. These last few chapters made me happy.
Poor Taxi, bad ass Hardy. I love how you presented the story of how they got their cutie marks. Two chapters from now? gah now I cant wait!
4310180 If that's true, then I sincerely look forward to Hardy shooting someone deserving. Like Taxi's dad. Put him out of our misery.
Well, that's ... better than I expected, actually. Still horrific, of course.
Well, that was informative. I snickered a bit when I thought about how Stitch would react to Stone, probably some kind of energetic curiosity. This chapter really made me appreciate the friendship that Hardy and Taxi have. With all of the injury (inflicted on Hardy) and fun at each other's expense comes a bond that goes deeper than darkness and an ability to fully rely on one another even if neither of them are very good about communicating their feelings (their entirely platonic feelings, no ships setting sail from this harbor). I figured that Taxi's step into the world of necromancy to bring Hardy back was indicative of some deeper psychological issues, and now we know why and who to blame
. And if Swift is still passing out from all this craziness then she just might come out of this with most of her sanity intact.
4309791
Oh I fully expect Hardy to die at the end of this. It just strikes me as one of those stories where the main characters are not allowed to come out of it in one piece or at all. Now, just what end awaits Hard Boiled Junior is yet to be seen but my guess is some form of martyrdom.
4311303 Errr...could do?
4312455 I haven't actually figured out what happens to Hardy. I am pretty attached to him, but equally, he could get himself into something I can't get him out of. We planned for the gunshot wound to the chest, but that was MAAANY chapters worth of Chekovs guns all going off at once to keep him from death there. He's not Blackjack, by any stretch.
4311375 I'd love that! Glad to have more notes.
Oh wow. That was good. And by good I mean it was awfulness, excellently done.
I know hardy is an earth pony, and he has a base ball bat, but if stone shine is the mountain of muscle hardy says he is, that bat shouldn't have done as much as it did, unless I'm missing something... also, more slip stitch!
4313176
A baseball bat may not seem like much, but it can do a lot of damage if you don't hold back with one. The 'Mafia vs. Yakuza' episode of Deadliest Warrior demonstrated that pretty well. The size and mass disparity is probably the main reason why Stone Shine was able to keep coming after Hardy at all. Adult Hardy could probably have caved his skull in.
4313598 problem i had with that is that, well, potential skill of the fighters never was taken into account. to be able to wield sais you had to be trained to do it. meaning combat training. meaning the one thing ninety percent of all mobsters lacked.
Well that's creepy shit. One wonders exactly why Stone Shine would want to see her again and why she'd be willing to do so...