The Girl From Tulsa
Dusk Shine didn't stay late that afternoon. They were between faculty meetings; there'd be more as the school-year wore on, but everybody had exhausted themselves with the first day's marathon session, and that second day, people were trying to settle down into a routine.
Dusk handed out some fairly heavy preparatory homework to her students after lunch, just to see how they reacted to the challenge. Also to see who would hand in clearly copied work, and copied from whom. It'd help her identify the clusters and the standouts down the line.
It would also bury Dusk under her own paperwork over the weekend, but she'd never minded wading through that sort of sea of paper. Nobody went into teaching if they were afraid of getting ink on their hands.
But burying the children under with assignments meant that she finished off the school day with nothing in her hands. She was free and clear, and as soon as she picked up a bored-looking Skyla from kindergarten, so was her 'daughter'. Dusk drove them both back to the apartment, and parked out on the street, arriving early enough that the parking meters were still running; she'd have to get into the habit of keeping a pocketful of quarters, the meter ate the last of her change from lunch.
"What kind of homework did they give you, Skyla?” Dusk asked as she helped the little girl take off her shoes.
"It's kindergarten, Mommy. Missus Blocks didn't say anything about homework. Nothing but songs. I think I'm gonna get bored of singing.”
"Blasphemy! You need practice, anyways.”
"It's not as fun when we're singing about counting fruit.”
"Come on, I have some work to do, and some new packages of beads and stones you can sort.”
"'kay.”
They settled themselves down at what was quickly becoming the work-table in their little dining-room, and Twilight Sparkle gave Flurry Heart the bag of supplies she'd swept off of the shelves at the Hobby Lobby down in the Switch Yard. The little girl started sorting the loot, whistling to herself.
Twilight untangled her recording arrays and the charging gem-batteries from where she'd haphazardly piled them where the sun could play over them in the now-departed morning sun. The recording gems were full of hours of interrogation captured while she and Skyla had been at school, and she had a couple hours until her appointment with Poppy Seed. Perfect timing!
The new interrogees sounded tired. These people had been kept sitting and waiting, some of them all night long. As before, the room she'd bugged was being used for the actual persons of interest. Twilight delighted in the luck which had led her into that room, and not some other interview-room full of confused mourners and uninvolved neighbors swept up by the police for having the bad taste to hang around watching the wrong street-drama.
Twilight raced through the recordings of tight-lipped bikers and confused mortuary cosmeticians, listening for keywords at half-again speed, and then double-speed. She jerked in surprise as Flurry Heart suddenly climbed into her lap and leaned her forehead against the side of Twilight's cheek, making bone-to-bone contact, so that she could hear what Twilight was listening to.
"Ha! They sound like chipmunks, Aunt Twilight! What does 'desairology' mean?”
Twilight honestly had no idea, but from context… ”Something to do with the way they make up the bodies for viewings, Flurry. I don't really know, this is the lady the Waxes hire to paint up their clients for the last time their families get to see them. Everybody wants their loved ones to remember them looking good, don't they?”
"I guess so? Can I listen in? There's stuff here, you can make another earpiece!”
"No, honey.” Twilight slid Flurry off of her lap, and broke contact, cutting her out of the circuit before she heard something traumatizing. Well, more traumatizing. "These aren't stories that little girls should be listening to, OK? Why don't you go get a book from the shelf?”
"Aw, I've read all of them already.”
"Pick out one you liked, and re-read it. And we'll have to go back to the library and trade in for some other books, won't we? This weekend for sure.”
"'kay.”
Twilight went back to the recording-obsidian rings. They didn't retain their charges as long as proper magnetic tape, so she had to get through these before they degraded beyond audibility.
"…Blitz. Naw, just Blitz.”
"Mr. Rider called you 'that Rainbow bitch', though…”
"He would, wouldn't he? Aw, yeah, some people call me 'Rainbow' Blitz, but I say I'm just Blitz. It'd be a waddya call it, a cliché otherwise, wouldn't it?”
"What are you doing in Dashville, Miss Blitz? And what's so funny?”
"Nah, nothing, man. I wanted to see my boy's hometown, before I said goodbye to him. And make sure that nobody messed with him before he could go to his folks. Not that I think mucha his folks now that I've met the bastard.”
"You and Wind Rider not getting along?”
"Ya think? He's a prick, no wonder Soarin moved a thousand miles away from his stank ass.”
"Your knuckles are broken.”
"Ain't that bad. Had a bit of a spill from my hog. I'm gonna have to tape them, though, you think?”
"Yeah, I think so. Wind Rider's face was kind of beat on, too. You think he had a spill off of his bike, too?”
"I don't wanna talk about that old man. I was seeing to Soarin, not his asshole dad. I almost wish I didn't come up here, but my boy needed his honor run, didn't he?”
"I'm havin' a bit of difficulty seein' how you and a Steel Horsemen were an item. Aren't you-"
"Hey! Soarin wasn't a Steel Horseman! His people might have been, but look, he was wearing a Hussar cut when I met him, and he was wearin' one when he caught that damn bullet. We ain't outlaw, that just wasn't our thing.”
"I was thinking of the whole 'Sapphist' thing, hon.”
"Oooh, Oh. Yeah, that. Look, it's the way things are done down our way. The old bulls can get bitchy about who gets to drive the hogs in their chauvinistic bullshit outfits. Sometimes you gotta ride dyke if you want to be the one with the engine between your thighs, you know? And the girls like me, I'm good advertising.”
"You don't dye?”
"Naw, man, this is all natural. And don't get me wrong, I'm all for the cause and all that. But nobody cared about Soarin and me. He was cool, the girls liked him, too. Hell, we met cross-riding for the Screaming Mimes.”
"The screaming… whats?”
"It's something we did now and again down in Austin. A charity thing, you know? And occasionally for loose cash for kids' parties. Painted up in greasepaint, dressed like cross-dressin' fools, clown noses, the whole nine yards. Biker clowns! Soarin liked to dress up like a clown bitch, and I'd wear a big fake beard, and stuff my vest like I was wearing an extra fifty pounds a-around the gut, y-you know?”
"Aw, honey, don't cry, come on, you're gonna make me… sounds like you two would have fit in just fine back home.”
"Yeah? Snkt, haa… where y'all from?”
And at that point the recording went off in a pointless digression as the clever biker got her interrogator bragging about his hometown instead of what Twilight cared about. She fast-forwarded, and found the next biker…
"Gilda.”
"Yeah, that's my name, don't wear it out.”
"What kind of a name is Gilda?”
"What kind of a name is Soft Eyes?”
"We're talking about you, Miss Gilda. What's a Sapphist doing escorting a Steel Horseman body into Virginia?”
"Aw, just riding escort. We do that sort of thing, you never heard of us?”
"Yes, actually, I have, or at least, outfits like yours. But usually it's more… political than this.”
"Yeah, the big city dykes do their political thing. We're more… social down in the sticks. Look, Texas ain't like out west, or some parts of the rest of the South. The clubs, they ain't nation-states, you copy? More like actual social clubs. Ain't nobody give a shit if your mom belongs to the Masons' ladies auxiliary, and your pops is Odd Fellows, you know? Maybe a couple goes and joins the Moose when they get hitched, but that's their business, they don't cut ties with the parents' clubs or anythin'. We got along fine with the Hussars, and the Sisters, and the Christers and the Sambos and even the Heathens, when they weren't bein' assholes that week.”
"Sounds like a Lone Star Paradise. What about the Salvajes?”
"Every Eden's gotta have a snake, man. Fuck the Salvajes, I say. Soarin had it right, he was all Love and Tolerate, he was righteous.”
"So you liked him, too?”
"Aw, it wasn't nothin' like that. Blitz and him were cute. He was good for the scene, you know? Before the war anyways.”
"Yeah, the war. That's why we're here, isn't it?”
"Hell, I don't know. You think that's what this is?”
"The first Salvaje we've ever seen in Dashville, and he's violently dead before anyone in town knew he was here. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what this is.”
"That sucks, man. We were just doing an honor run, I don't know anything about that.”
"Soarin was shot by a Salvaje?”
"I guess? I wasn't there. I don't normally ride with the Hussars. They say so.”
"You aren't carrying?”
"Your guys patted us down, you know that.”
"Were you carrying?”
"Shit, no.”
"Ever see that Salvaje before, since you're from that end of the country?”
"Yeah, man, we all tight like sisters. No, goddamnit! We don't all know each other. And there are like five billion Salvajes, those fuckers breed like maggots.” There was a distinct pause, and then… "Also, I ain't seen your corpse. You sure it's a Salvaje, and not just some hombre in a leather jacket?”
Twilight listened closely to the back and forth, but Soft Eyes didn't get this Gilda to slip up again. Did the detective catch that? Twilight couldn't tell from just a recording.
Then Twilight looked at her phone, and realized that they'd be late.
"Damnit, Flu- Skyla! We're gonna be late, you need to go to Bubble Berry's, and I'll be even later…”
"I'm hungry, uh – Mommy! Come on, I'll be good. I don't want to go to the day care, nobody will be there now!”
"Oh, fine.”
Dusk Shine locked up behind them, and they piled into the blue Beetle, hurrying across town in the evening traffic. The restaurant was on the far side of College Heights, out towards the highway. Dusk was only fifteen minutes late when she burst through the front door of the restaurant, Skyla in her wake.
"Uh, hi?” Dusk greeted the somewhat wary-looking hostess. "I think I have a friend waiting on me?”
The hostess eyed Skyla before grabbing a kid's menu, and led the two of them into a back room, where Poppy Seed was nursing a coffee, looking more than a little tired. She looked down at Skyla, and then gestured for the little girl to take the back corner seat, opposite of where she was sprawled, sitting with her back to the mirrored glass at the back of the booth.
"Think you could have been a little less stealthy there, Shine? Thought you were going to be all squirrelly, but this is something else. Did you have to bring your sidekick with you?”
Dusk Shine sat primly on the remaining portion of the bench opposite of Poppy, her heavy purse balanced on her lap. "I ran out of time, and couldn't find a sitter. You said you had news? Are we going to have to move?”
"No hello-how-are-you, Poppy? No cheerful greetings, no talk about the weather? Where were you raised, a damn barn? Bah, west coasters! None of you have any manners.”
Dusk Shine wasn't really sure where Poppy Seed was from, but wherever it was, she didn't approve of it. Only utter boors complained like that about others' manners. Intolerable dominance power-games…
"Good evening, Miss Seed. How are your relatives-of-which-I-know-nothing? How was today's fine weather in whatever mysterious box the marshals keep you in when you're not dealing with our life and potential deaths? Have the niceties been satisfied? What is happening with that body on my front porch?”
Poppy Seed's eyes slid to the right, taking Skyla's impassive expression in with an unsettled, fading smirk. "Uh…”
The waitress, with impeccable timing, chose that moment to come swirling into the back to take their orders, and nobody at the table but Skyla was able to come up with anything. After a few minutes of fumbling, the waitress marched off triumphantly with her trophy-orders, leaving a gaping hole torn in their half-started conversation.
"Right,” said Poppy Seed. "The current headache. Nobody seems to be tying you or the tyke to the dead body. Initial word is that he'd been dead for at least a day, maybe more. Uh, should we be talking about this in front of…”
"Skyla, here's my phone, and my earbuds, listen to that album, why don't you?”
"'kay.”
"Please continue, Miss Seed.”
"Right… wasn't killed on your stoop. Might not have been killed in town at all. They're sniffing around for ways that somebody might have dumped a corpse without anyone having seen anything. You didn't see anything, right? Anything you mighta not wanted to tell local cops about?”
"I am not at all sure at this point what I have seen, nor what it might mean. I believe a white panel van passed us while we left the house that morning, but in retrospect that must have been the biker boy they were holding the viewing for at the funeral home.”
"Yeah, Soarin, late of the Steel Horsemen. One-percenter outlaws.”
"Was he?”
"Yeah, that's what they tell me. Got killed in a shootout in some nameless burg down in central Texas last week, and they released the body to family. No big mystery there, there's a gang war going on in Texas right now, between your good friends the Salvajes and pretty much everyone else who isn't a Salvaje. "
The waitress arrived with an order of garlic breadsticks for the table. They waited until she left before Dusk Shine began again.
"So, a random gang war. Charming. Are my in-laws involved, does anyone know?”
"Who knows? The Salvajes are a huge damn outfit, and the various parts don't necessarily communicate with each other. Literally tens of thousands of members, and hundreds of chapters. Did you ever see any out of towners during your time…”
"The bikers was always the business of Sombra's other organization, not the one I was involved in. We saw them now and again, whenever things went truly south. But in general, we did not mix, no. And I never saw a patch mentioning any town more than a hundred miles from Port Crystal.”
"So you know how their cuts work, then? The patch system?”
"What I've read in the popular media. And heard here and there. The basic club logo and motto, a home chapter designation, and additional 'rockers' designating ranks or posts or additional associations, I believe?”
"Yeah, you've been reading those websites. Eh, close enough. Anyways, the stiff was a waste of oxygen named Stormbringer. Had a pair of outstanding warrants in his jacket, and plenty of priors, including two different sexual assaults. Bad guy, nobody's going to miss him. So there's that, we know who he is, and who he isn't, which is anyone associated with your little girl's gramps' particular brand of Salvaje. Far as I can see from his jacket, he's never been north of Denver or west of the Pecos.” Poppy Seed paused her monologue to take a deep drink of ice-water.
"Anyways,” Poppy continued, "the local cops think that their local big-swinging-dick – a choad named Wind Rider – is somehow at the center of all this bullshit, but they're being locals. Wind Rider is a small-fry meth pusher, a local bully-boy in a local market. Everybody always thinks their own troubles drive the world, but the Salvaje's war against the rest of Texas isn't about the damn Steel Horsemen. They probably haven't even heard of them, if you ask me.” She paused to shove a breadstick into her mouth, chewing furiously.
"I'm trying to get a hold of a Salvaje expert from one of the Texas districts, but you know bureaucracies. Dashville PD are being cooperative, but they're curious about what my interest is in this. I'm going to have to figure out a reason for the marshals to be interested in a mundane biker gang war. It'd help if one of the local bikers had been outstanding on a federal warrant, but the closest was one of the old bulls not paying his child support like a good boy.”
"Which one, might I ask?”
"Why on earth would you care? No, I'm not telling you that. Keep your nose out of local police affairs, Shine. You're here to be quiet, and to not make waves. Go be a schoolteacher. Forget about this, it isn't your damn cultists.”
They were interrupted at that point by the waitress returning with the pizza, and then the conversation sputtered as they dug into the food. The conversation was further limited by the fact that Dusk Shine had made Skyla take her earbuds out, so that she could eat like civilized people.
Just before the waitress returned with the check, Poppy Seed tried to wrap up her interrupted speech. "I'm serious, Dusk Shine. You're a civilian now, stop bugging me about this. There aren't any ghouls hiding in the shadows, here. It's just stupid, brutal people being awful to each other in the darkness where they think nobody else can see them being horrible. Let it go.”
Dusk Shine drove Skyla home, as the little girl, her stomach full of rich food, nodded off in the passenger seat. Dusk didn't believe Poppy Seed; she didn't believe in coincidences. That body - that Stormbringer had been left on her front steps for a reason, and she was going to find out what that reason was.
Dusk Shine looked down at the sleeping girl. She would never let them be surprised again.
Dusk Shine carried Skyla back to the apartment, juggling an armful of sleepy girl and her purse and keys before getting the door open. Skyla woke enough to get her own shoes off, and then stumbled into her room and slammed the door behind her.
Dusk locked the front door behind them, and took her own shoes off, and then Twilight Sparkle went back to the dining room to continue playing her recordings.
More bikers, and then an extremely dodgy-sounding driver for the funeral home who admitted to being the one who'd driven the late Soarin's body home from Texas. Twilight stopped and listened closely to his interrogation. Then she rolled back the recording, and listened again.
What kind of sadistic monster names their darling baby boy 'Hayseed Turniptruck'?
"So you get to Texas, you pick up the body, and then you turn right around and drive straight back here. No stops?”
"Well, I spent the night down thar, in a motel, like? They pays for it, I'm nawt alwawed ta drive that many hours in a row, yeah?”
"And you picked up these ladies as escorts while you were there, in Texas?”
"Aw, uhh, uhuh? Yup. The dykes. Nice ladies.”
"You call nice ladies 'dykes'?”
"Well, yeah? Thaas wat dey said ta call em? Why, what's it mean?”
"Nevermind, hon. Where do you live when you're not driving for Lost Wax?”
"I's got a room in one a the painted ladies over on Nob Hill.”
"One of the efficiencies?”
"Yup.”
Twilight went through the rest of the interrogation of the dubiously named Turniptruck, but there was nothing, nothing she wanted. She wished she could reach through time and space and shake the foolish detective for getting distracted by how dumb the driver sounded. They're missing something there.
And then there was the third of the Sapphists…
"Hey, there, hon. How're ya doin'? What's your name again?"
"Bu-Butterscotch."
"Uh-huh. And where are you from?"
"Tu-Tulsa."
"Really? 'cause your girlfriends say that you're from Texas. Why's that?"
"Oh, I just met them a couple weeks ago. They've been so good to me."
"Really? Where'd the shiner come from? One of your girlfriends a little fast with her fists? I saw broken knuckles on both of 'em."
"You shouldn't say things like that about people you know nothing about. Uh, you know, I guess. Gilda's been very good to me."
"Gilda do that to your face?"
"Nobody did this, I fell while riding. See? Roadburn, too. I'm still learning how to ride."
"Those look newer than the shiner."
"It's nothing. Really. Gilda's been the best boyfriend I've ever had."
"What was that?”
"Nothing."
"So, Tulsa. That's not a Tulsa accent you've got going there."
"You've been to Oklahoma?"
"Well, no, but I've talked to folks from there. It's a drawling state.”
"It's a big state, Oklahoma. And Tulsa's got all sorts. I'm from Tulsa."
The detective got frustrated, and passed the interrogation over to his mostly-silent partner, the awkward Whet Stone. But that dim boy got no more from the sweet-toned, quiet voice on the recording, which Twilight was pretty sure belonged to that tall, beautiful girl in the demeaning t-shirt. She thought about something she remembered from the recording of Gilda's interrogation, and checked her notes.
Then she spooled up the relevant obsidian gem, and brought up the section she hadn't paid proper attention to before.
"Nah, that's not it, man. Only folk who matter in the clubs are the riders. Nobody gives a shit about the bitches.”
"You came in with two others, a… Blitz, and a Butterscotch?”
"Yeah, we talked about this. Blitz is solid, but she don't have a savage bone in her body. She's cool.”
"No, I wanted to talk about Butterscotch. Why is she with you all? Why is she on an 'honor run'?”
"Aw, she don't matter. She don't ride. She's just a bitch. Don't mind the big dweeb. She's sweet, but don't think too much about anythin'. Just said she wanted to see the Smokeys, that she'd never seen proper mountains. Forget about Scotchie, damnit, lemme tell you about the time Soarin and Blitz went and grabbed a protest sign from these church dorks down in Austin…”
Twilight stopped the recording, and sat back. Butterscotch doesn't ride? Where'd the road burn come from? None of the rest of them had roadburn, you don't catch that from riding on the back of a bike, unless the biker wipes out the same as you. And there's something about her accent that I don't like. Like, it kind of sounds she's putting one on.
She needed to talk to some bikers.
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So, using the gender swapped names for Rainbow and Fluttershy? Interesting.
So, if Twilight is right, what are 'Blitz', Gilda, and 'Butterscotch' hiding?
"We're in the ass end of nowhere, it's common biker war practice to leave corpses on the doorsteps of civilian apartments rather than, say, ditching the body in the middle of the wild where no one will find it."
Yeah, and first week in town a corpse happens to end up on her front step. You are shit at your job, lady. Honestly, at this point she'd be better off joining one of the biker gangs. At least they're more likely to look out for their own than you are to take your job seriously.
8608147
I can guarantee there's a lot more going on here than Poppy Seed being bad at her job.
I mean, I can't really argue that she's not bad at it, but there is almost certainly more going on with the Marshalls that we aren't seeing, because that's how Marshalls roll. Telling Shine to not worry about it is most likely just a tactic to keep her from getting in the way. Little do they realize that wizards do not get in the way, neither do they avoid work; they do precisely what is needed of them, precisely when it is needed.
As for the conclusion that the detectives reached that everything is the obvious result of a biker war, these are small-town detectives. Pinning it on a gang war gives them an easy way to later crack down on the "undesirables" in Dashville.
8608140
I'd bet it's exactly like using "Dusk Shine" for Twilight; "Gilda," "Blitz" and "Butterscotch" are pseudonyms, not their actual names. And yes, "Gilda" is a pseudonym. Look at what Butterscotch says during her interview. Betcha money.
Hmmm ... Butterscotch is hiding something ... she could be involved in the dead Biker or with the cult ... it would definitely be a twist, but I'm not sure I can handle a villain Fluttershy
As for Poppy ... a member of the gang that worked for the cult shows up in Virginia when they're from Texas, has been carted across multiple states dead, and just "happens" to be dumped on the doorstep of the "traitor" who put the cult's patriarch away ... and you treat it as Twi-Dusk overreacting to nothing. Yeah. My only explanation (baring further information) is that Poppy is:
A) Completely, mindbogglingly incompetent.
B) So apathetic and wrapped-up in her bureaucratic one-upmanship games that she might as well be mindbogglingly incompetent.
C) Working for the cult.
All of which mean that WitSec is going to be either an enemy or an obstacle to be worked-around/bypassed ...
8609542
Could also be or Police are pulling wool over Twilight and putting her in position where she is the bait with which they can lure in remains of the Cult, or she is part of some other magical Cabal who is doing the same.
Be as it may, her being here in this place could also just be about "Magic believing in Twilight" more than any conspiracy.
8608140 To be fair, Dusk Shine, is the genderbent name for Twilight, but she at least has a reason for using it. As for our two pegasisters, that's going to take some investigation.
8608218
Your point about it being a small town is reasonable, but I would be pretty surprised if the Salvajes gang war has nothing to do with Sombra either. It's definitely suspicious.
Gilda... as male? (And the name is still the same, but Blitz and Butterscotch aren't?) Did I miss something? I've, uh, sorta been reading this on very little sleep because it's quite good, so a detail or two might have slipped past me. Yikes!
9076258
No, Gilda is an old school butch lesbian. Butterscotch is just kind of confused and still thinks in those terms.
9076275
Ah, that makes much more sense!
I think she might be starting to get it. I can see the wheels turning.
If Flurry can put agents who incorrectly assume they know what they're getting into in their place just by being herself, however much I might wish it were otherwise, I'm gonna exploit the hell out of it.
Literal or figurative ghouls, in Poppy Seed's mind?
Stuff's real, and messy. Everyone's got their own story going on, good, bad or otherwise. It'll take a detective to puzzle out what pertains.
Fluttershy
9076275
With all the nameswapping I'm surprised that Gilda doesn't have her name from the Pitch Bible (Grizelda, which Gilda is happily a diminutive form of)