An Artist Among Animals

by Bandy

5: An Old Stallion in a Barfight is the Most Dangerous Stallion in the Barfight

Noir, head pony of the Neo-Equestrian Marefia, was not a sentimental stallion.

He didn’t care too much that there was beer spilling into the lap of his favorite pair of pants. What bothered him more was the awkward lighting of the bar, the past twenty years of his life, and the griffon sitting next to him.

He looked down at the stain and muttered, “Shit.”

A griffon. It had to be a griffon. What a life, Noir thought. What a life to put a griffon next to him at this exact point in time. There were contraband rock-candy peddlers in one corner and anti-Celestian nationalists in the other and thieves all around, and the griffon had to sit next to him. He picked his mug up, straightened in his stool, and wobbled as he remembered the lack of a backrest. The beer sloshed in his stomach. Lights flashed in his periphery. He grasped onto the bar with all his might, pulled himself forward, and slammed the mug down onto the table. It took another ten minutes for the griffon to leave.

After Noir was sure the griffon had gone, he turned to the bartender and in a low voice asked, “Hey, did that pissbeak spill my beer?”

The bartender winced. His eyes darted towards the other customers. “That griffon,” he emphasized, “did not spill your beer.”

“Would you rather me say Griffonese-Equestrian?” he asked with a chuckle. “What a mouthful. Griffons may fly, but ponies control the sky.” He lifted his empty glass to toast, them pressed it into his lips and tipped his frame back with the mug. His face peeked out from behind the mug, blinking back confusion.

The bartender’s eyes flickered to the door again. “I think you should head home. It’s late. I’ll collect your tab.”

“I think you’ll do no such thing.”

“Tally up now and I’ll be too distracted to charge you for the last round.”

A sack of bits hit the table. “Well, if it makes your life easier.”

The bartender took the bag and tossed it behind the register. His eyes stuck on the door.

“Hey, aren’t you gonna treat those things with some respect?”

“I think the visors are here,” the bartender said.

“What?” Noir chuckled.

Then a battering ram flew through the door.

The massive steel bar skittered across the hardwood before rolling to a stop at Noir’s hooves, nearly knocking the stool out from under him. The ponies of the bar stared at it for a long moment.

The bartender rolled his eyes and ducked behind the bar. Somepony screamed. Then the door exploded.

The lights went out. The world fragmented into panes of opalescent glass. Light from the outside streamed through the windows in blocks and beams. Black shapes manifested from the shadows. They twisted into ponies in terrible black armor, with visors over their faces.

Noir kicked the stool out from beneath him. He hit the ground hard and stayed down. They didn’t need to announce their presence. The EQUIS had arrived.

Raw sound morphed into silhouettes. They rose and bolted for the exits only to be met by a mass of armor by the doors. A seething crush. Cops and robbers. The lucky ones on the fringe of the scuffle pushed their doomed friends into the fray and disappeared, carried by the crooked shadows into the dark.

Noir covered his ears and forced himself to get up. Two large ponies launched themselves between Noir and the bar, knocking him onto two hooves. He stumbled across the floor, over empty bottles and screaming ponies who didn’t know any better. Here was the past, knocking down his door! Coming to get him, swallow him back up where he belonged! Run, little pony, run! the walls seemed to scream. You don't stand a chance against time. It'll just keep kicking down doors until it catches you in the bath and drop a toaster into your lap.

Noir's legs were old. They popped as he ran. His lungs heaved. Acid burned the back of his throat. There were many ways to run away. Individuals blurred into a repeating theme. Legs, arms, part of a face. A tooth. A spatter of blood. Repetition on a theme. Violence? The stuff of the Marefia. Except now he was stuck in it. He remembered for a marvelous moment that he was, in fact, utterly trashed.

And then Don Noir, head of the Neo-Equestrian Marefia, tripped over his own hooves and careened into an EQUIS agent waiting by the exit.

The agent rocked back on his hind legs to keep from falling over. Noir scrunched his nose to keep it from pressing into the agent's cold, metal cheek. “Get off me,” Noir muttered.

Bottles sailed through the air. They caught the moonlight for a moment as they flew and glowed amber. The agent let out a roar of effort and threw Noir to the floor. More ponies tumbled past, locked in a near-death struggle. One of them was winning.

Noir noted how it was impossible to see an EQUIS agent’s eyes unless he was on the ground at their hooves looking up.

The agent paused, his hoof high over his head, then punched Noir in the belly. Half the detail lunged for a writing, cursing mare in the corner. Contraband rock candy from the irradiated western farms fell from her pockets and shattered on the floor.

Noir winced as the agent pinned him down. "How is the war on smuggled sweets going?"

"Good, for the nation's dentists,” the agent replied as he reached for his handcuffs. The mare screamed again. The agent's grip tightened. "When you go on trial, it will be the sweetest day of my life. I’m gonna squeal and you’re gonna squirm.”

“You’re pathetic.”

The sounds of the fight around them obscured Noir's chuckle. In the darkness, the agent couldn't see Noir's free hoof reaching for his sack of bits.

"There’s no marefia to run to anymore, little guy. You can’t buy them back from death.”

"A lot of ponies seem to share your opinion. What a shame. If only they know--if they truly desire a change, they need only purchase it."

Noir leaned in and kissed the agent on the nose. Then he swung the sack of bits with all his might at the bottom of the metal visor.

The helmet cracked and rolled across the floor. The agent gushed blood all over Noir as he dove after it. By the time another agent had rushed to his aid, Noir was gone, stumbling off through the back alley into the night, trailing the lucky and the clever as they fell backwards into the night, beating a drunken retreat towards his hideaway.

By the time he knocked on the door to his den of smoke his lungs were dry husks squeezed into his throat. "Snow," he coughed, "Snowdrop. Snowdew. Somepony!"

The slit on the door opened. "You didn't do the rhythm right--"

"Snowdrop, you idiot--it's me!" he wheezed.

"But you didn't play the rhythm right. You just sorta hit the door with your whole body once."

"It's the EQUIS. They were at the bar. Let me in right now."

"How do I know you're not a spy?"

"I got your name right, didn't I? How else would I know that, huh?"

Noir couldn’t see Snowflake's eyes flicker for just a single second with hesitation. For the first time, he realized he had something like power over Noir. Something like a choice.

He opened the door. "Sorry, boss," he mumbled, "lemme get you in here."

"There's a good boy." Noir shrugged Snowflake aside with his shoulder as much as his stench and opened the second door. "Put the carpet in front of the door. We need to lock this place down in case somepony followed me here."

"Boss, is that your blood?"

Noir looked down at his shirt. “Shit, it’s cold in here.”

Snowflake averted his eyes by grabbing the woolen runner partially rolled up at the base of the wall. He shook the dust free, coughed, and bunched it up in front of the door. “No one’ll get in now, boss.”

“Darn right,” Noir nodded. “Not even the strongest, deadliest military force in all of Equestria can get past a door with a rug in front of it. Now--you two,” The stallion rushed past the second door and into the main room, kicking up a fuss to wake the underworld. “Idiots. You’re still sleeping? Get up!”

The two goons on the couch jerked to attention, sporting groggy half-smiles hidden behind professionality.

“You weren’t,” Noir deadpanned.

“No, sir,” the larger of the two replied.

Noir groaned. “If there’s one thing I hope alcohol does, it’s make me brain-dead. Get your things together and lock the building down. And you--” he pointed to the second henchpony, “I’m freezing. Do something about it.”

Any trace of happiness disappeared from the goons’ faces. They saluted, turned, and ran right into each other.

Noir gurgled and belched. His head ached. He walked across the room and over to his desk. In one practiced motion Noir swept everything on the desk into the topmost drawer before locking it and throwing the key into the pot of a nearby ficus.

In all the clamor, Noir found a strange moment of silence. His ears twitched as he leaned towards the desk, raising a hoof to knock against the mahogany. The reverberations warped with undertones, muffled by the contents on the inside. Five times he knocked.

Great prophetic lights flashed in his mind. Gunshots. He tapped the desk as the past consumed him. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. One pony who brought him as low as dirt and tried to bring him six feet lower than dirt. A revolver. Armed and dangerous. Shoot on sight. Wide and terrified and filling with tears and lining up the front sight between the rear sight. Five slugs, buried in the front side of the mahogany desk. He knocked on the desk and felt each one slam into the desk while he cowered behind it, trembling hooves clutching a revolver as long as his foreleg, flinching as each bullet hit home. One of them found a weak point and went all the way through the desk. If he hadn’t slipped to his knees and tucked his head into the ground to muffle the sound of his weakness it would have went right through his temple. But it wouldn’t have been the first time dumb luck spared him, so he didn’t think too much about it.

Noir’s eyes shot to the door. Still closed. But for how long would it save him? He reached for the bottom left drawer and yanked it open, ignoring the tremor in his hoof as he did. Out came a comically large revolver and five oversized bullets in a plastic bag taped to the butt of the gun. They fell on the table and silenced everything. There were many ways to run away.

Something in the drawer jingled as Noir closed it. He blinked, opened the drawer again, and slid it shut. Same sound.

He frowned. Nothing else was supposed to be in the drawer. It was the “Last Resort” drawer. The label under the lock said so. What kind of last resort jingled? In a moment of weakness he forwent the revolver and dug around in the cabinet.

He pulled out a small, five-pointed star pin. Run through the pointed end was a photograph of two ponies. One of them waved a bottle of whiskey at the camera, sporting a drunken smile. The other wore a crooked helmet, its visor only partially down.

Snap, went the revolver.

Noir looked up--and look at that! The revolver was in his hoof.

Snap, it went again.

Using the desk for support, he slid to his knees.

Snap.

He buried his head into the carpet to muffle the sound of his weakness.

Snap.

From outside came the faint sound of sirens echoing off the low rooftops and spilling into open space. The clock chimed softly in the background. Another Wednesday had begun. The old night ran away without any trace.

Snap.