4 - The Secret of Bluebeard
Despite the large size of the dining room, breakfast in the Sparkle house was a crowded affair. Sonata made breakfast tacos for everyone, and had even recruited Tirespin to work bacon duty. The end result was what Troubleshoes could honestly say was the most delicious breakfast he’d had in a long time, and made sure that both Sonata and Tires knew it. For her part, Tirespin actually seemed pleased by the praise before apparently remembering that she still wanted to be mad at him.
Noticing that his daughter wasn’t the only teenager avoiding his gaze, Troubleshoes swallowed his bite of breakfast taco and addressed the plum-haired girl with the magenta streak running through it. “Hey, I’m sorry if my presence startled you last night,” he said. “We cool?”
The girl—who had since been introduced to him as Twilight Sparkle—looked up from her book and smiled. “Yeah, sorry for shrieking at you. I just wish certain siblings and/or cousins had told me we had guests before I started walking around the house practically naked!”
Twilight shot a dirty look toward Sunset Shimmer as she spoke, who had the courtesy to return said look with a suitably guilty one of her own. “Sorry, Twily. It honestly completely slipped my mind!”
“But you’re a Goddess! How does anything…!” There was an unusual pause as Twilight glanced over at Troubleshoes and Tirespin looking somewhat alarmed before resuming in a much quieter voice, “How does something like that just slip your mind?”
Sunset replied with a casual shrug. “A Goddess I may be, but nobody’s perfect!” she said with a grin and a wink towards Troubleshoes.
Unsure of what else to do, Troubleshoes simply smiled back at her. Twilight’s sudden change of demeanor mid-sentence stuck out to him. It looked as though the girl had said something she wasn’t supposed to say, but nothing really struck Troubleshoes as unusual. Perhaps she was shy about showing how much she clearly idolized her sister in front of strangers?
Night Light then came in with a thermos of coffee in one hand, a set of keys in the other and a brown leather bag full of books over his shoulder. “Alright, I’m off to work. Bye gang!”
A chorus of young voices replied with either “Bye, Dad” or “Bye, Uncle Night” as the man squeezed past the table, stopping only to bend down and give his wife a kiss, the two wishing each other a good day.
After he left, Twilight Velvet took a look around the table, a frown slowly forming on her features. “Sunny, where are the triplets? I’ve barely seen them at all this morning.”
“Oh, since their usual routine with Sable was cut short last night, they’re getting some target practice in down in the bun… uh, down at the range. I’ll text them to get their butts up here,” Sunset said, pulling out her phone. Again, Troubleshoes noted the awkward way she cut herself off mid-sentence, but he paid it no mind as what she actually said piqued his interest.
“Oh, you guys have a shooting range?” he asked. If they did, their house must have some top of the line sound-proofing because Troubleshoes hadn’t heard anything remotely like gunfire, and he had developed quite the ear for it.
“Uh… yeah!” Sunset answered, giving him a serene smile that seemed just a touch anxious.
“Mind if I use it? Been awhile since I went shooting, and considering why I’m here in the first place, might be good to make sure my skills are still sharp.”
If Troubleshoes wasn’t sure she looked anxious before, she definitely looked the part now. “Oh, uh… maybe. It’s just, uh, a bit of a mess right now. Maybe give us some time to, uh, set things up down there.”
“Okay, sure.” Troubleshoes wondered how bad it could really be if her cousins were supposedly using it, but decided not to push the issue.
It was then that Troubleshoes noticed the young boy—Spike—staring at him with wide eyes. Slowly, the boy held up a comic book with the words POWER MAN in big bold letters on the cover, and looked back and forth from the hulking black superhero on the cover to Troubleshoes.
“Spike, what did I say about reading comics at the table?” Twilight Velvet warned. Troubleshoes had a sneaking suspicion that simply having the comic book wasn’t what concerned her, judging by the nervous apologetic glance she sent his way.
“But you’re letting Twily read at the table!” Spike protested.
“Twily is reading for school, Spike, which you’re more than welcome to do if you just have to be reading something.”
“But that’s not fair! Twily enjoys schoolwork!”
“And I’m happier for it, Spike,” Twilight said, reaching over to ruffle her little brother’s hair, eliciting a groan from the boy.
Beside him, Tirespin leaned closer to Spike and asked, “Is that an original issue Power Man #1?”
Spike looked at her with awe. “You read comics?”
“Hell yeah, Power Man’s one of my favorites! That issue’s super rare, where’d you find it?”
The biggest grin appeared on the young boy’s face. “Found it at a garage sale on my way home from school. Got it for like two dollars!”
“Fo’real?”
“Yeah, clearly the lady selling it had no idea what she had!”
After a moment’s consideration, Tirespin asked, “Can I borrow it?”
Spike looked from the comic to the girl seated across from him, and Troubleshoes could swear he saw a hint of a blush on the little boy’s face as he passed it over. “Sure, keep it as long as you like!”
It was as Troubleshoes was appreciating the genuine smile on his daughter’s face that Night Light unexpectedly returned to the room looking frustrated.
“Everything alright, hon?” Velvet asked him.
“Well, not entirely. Think you can drive me into work today, Vel?”
“I suppose if I left a little earlier, sure. Why, what’s wrong?”
Night Light sighed. “Well, my car was making a weird noise as I was driving it home yesterday and now the damn thing won’t start at all!”
“Uh oh, did you call the dealership?”
“Not yet, but I’m worried the warranty isn’t gonna cover it. I’ve had it a long time, after all.”
“Well, sounds like quite the rut you’re in,” Troubleshoes said, giving them an easy smile. “If only there was a trained mechanic staying at your house willing to look at it for free!”
Night looked at him and shook his head. “Oh no, we couldn’t possibly trouble you….”
“It’s no trouble at all, Mr. Light. I need something to keep me busy if I’m going to be sequestered here for a while, and it’s the least I can do to thank you for your hospitality.”
“Well… alright. Just as long as you stop calling me ‘Mr. Light’.”
“Fair enough.” An idea then occurred to Troubleshoes to possibly bridge some of the distance between him and his daughter, and he looked over at Tirespin. “I might need some help. Up for a little project, Tires?”
“Maybe, whatever.” At this point, it was about as good as Troubleshoes could hope for.
It was at that point that the triplets emerged from wherever their range was and grabbed some breakfast tacos for themselves.
“Everything good?” Sunset asked them.
“More or less,” Adagio answered. “Aria is still hitting pretty consistently but Soni and I could use some improvement.”
As Sonata nodded with a mouthful of taco, a somewhat devious idea occurred to Troubleshoes and he said, “I hope you kids are taking proper care of your range.”
“Of course! We’re professionals, Mr. Clyde,” Aria said.
“Keeping our equipment in top shape is just part of what we do!” Sonata added.
Troubleshoes elected not to point out the contradiction this posed with what Sunset just told him, but he did exchange a meaningful look with the girl, who for her part kept her expression remarkably neutral.
The rest of the breakfast passed relatively uneventfully, and soon enough most of the family finished and left the table, taking their dishes with them. Troubleshoes took his time, waiting around until he was alone in the dining room with the triplets.
“You mind if I ask you a question?” he asked.
Adagio, having just taken a bite, indicated non-verbally that she didn’t mind, so Troubleshoes asked, “What’s your background?”
“Chinese-Canadian,” Aria answered immediately.
“No, I don’t mean that,” Troubleshoes said with a chuckle. “I mean, what’s your military background?”
Adagio waited until she swallowed her bite before answering, but Troubleshoes noted her chewing slowed a bit beforehand.
“We don’t have one,” she finally answered. “I mean hell, we’re not even out of highschool yet!”
“Uh-huh, and that is exactly why your apparent level of knowledge and skill is bothering me.”
“We’ve been huge fans of military stuff since we were kids,” Aria explained. “We’ve done a lot of reading on the subject growing up, and our cousin Shining Armor has been kind enough to teach us a few things.”
Sonata looked at them. “Plus, our uncle on our mom’s side’s a stuntman in Hong Kong.”
Adagio took that ball and ran with it. “Yeah, he kinda was an influence as well, admittedly.”
Troubleshoes only shook his head. “Listen… I’ve been in for a long time. I can tell the difference between an overzealous army buff, and someone who’s had training…. Not to mention someone who’s seen action.”
The three of them looked at him silently, their meals forgotten. Troubleshoes looked deeply into each girl’s eyes in turn. The truth was there: reflected in those eyes were a dozen battles and sights that would clearly haunt those girls forever.
“You really want to know the truth?” Sonata asked quietly. Troubleshoes nodded, and Sonata explained, “We’re child soldiers who were part of a black project created by the Candian government. Our outfit tried to rebel and got involved with a sorcerer who tried to summon a demon to take over the world. Our cousin Sunny, who’s actually a magical pony from another dimension, fought the demon and died, so her grandmother who’s a goddess brought her back to life by creating an alternate timeline and now we live here. Also there were fish monsters.”
Troubleshoes stared at her in a stupor for one moment, then another. For their part, both Adagio and Aria were staring at their sister looking just as utterly shocked as Troubleshoes imagined he himself must have looked. Sonata just stared straight across the table at him, her eyes lidded in a deadpan expression.
With a sigh and a shake of his head, Troubleshoes stood from the table and gathered his empty plate. “Okay, fine. If you don’t wanna talk about it, you could’ve just said so.”
Troubleshoes stood over Night Light’s car, a 2012 blue Hyundai Genesis, and looked down at the exposed workings of the engine beneath the popped hood. As discussed, Night Light had gotten a ride to work from his wife, while the rest of the kids had left for school. Only one of the triplets remained, Sonata. Sunset apparently wanted one of them home with him and Tirespin at all times, just in case Los Perros managed to find them. Though, Troubleshoes wondered whether she was also there to keep an eye on them. In their shoes, he would certainly be suspicious of any stranger he let stay over with a story as crazy as his. Of course, even with how hospitable this family had been, they clearly had their own share of secrets, and Troubleshoes wondered if perhaps their story was even crazier.
Troubleshoes tried not to think about any of that as he surveyed the innards of his host’s Genesis. It was easy to do once he fell into the comfortable routine of troubleshooting. With every aspect of his life currently out of his control, it felt good to immerse himself in something he truly understood. Unlike his situation with Los Perros, or his relationship with Tirespin, a broken down car was something Troubleshoes could do something about.
“Okay, try the engine,” he said, and from her position behind the wheel, Tirespin hit the ignition.
The engine turned over like normal, but then died just as quickly as it came on. As Troubleshoes suspected, it wasn’t a battery issue or a problem with the starter. Troubleshoes next got to work removing the spark cables, and when that was done, asked Tirespin to try the engine again. Troubleshoes saw the sparks immediately, so it wasn’t that either. He glanced over at Tirespin as she got out of the car and walked to his side.
“So how’s it look?” she asked, looking down at the engine as Troubleshoes reconnected the spark plugs.
“Well, I’ve ruled out the battery, the starter, and the spark plugs as the source of the problem,” Troubleshoes said. If only moody teenagers were as easy to figure out as cars.
“So what do we check next? Fuel pump? Compression?” Tirespin asked, her light, conversational tone actually surprising Troubleshoes.
He decided not to question the miracle—doing so might set her back to her old ways—so Troubleshoes remained focused on the task at hand. Perhaps it was the same for Tirespin: with all the problems between them, it was easier for her to just focus on something she could fix.
“Can you hand me the compression tester from the tool cabinet?” he asked, and Tirespin set to the task immediately.
Sonata had been instrumental in showing them where all of the tools were. Troubleshoes had actually been surprised by just how much the family had. To hear her tell it, Sonata was somewhat mechanically inclined herself, and Troubleshoes had even asked if she wanted to help out. She had politely declined, citing the necessity of “patrol duty”. They really were an odd bunch of kids.
Tirespin returned with the tester. To his surprise, there was a nostalgic smile on her face. This time, Troubleshoes couldn’t quite ignore it.
“Haven’t seen you make that face in a while!” he said jovially, taking the compression tester from her and getting to work.
He turned around too quickly to see whether her expression had changed when he pointed it out—perhaps that was by design—but Tirespin still sounded like she was in a good mood when she continued, “Yeah, I was just thinking… this reminds me of when I was a kid.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, remember when Mom’s car broke down, and you and me spent a whole afternoon fixing it in our old driveway?” Tirespin laughed; a light, warm sound that Troubleshoes missed hearing. “Well, I say ‘we fixed it’, but it was more like ‘you fixed it while I passed you tools and watched.’”
Troubleshoes chuckled, “Yeah, how old were you then? Six?"
“Seven.” Tirespin’s voice became more whimsical as she went on. “It was summer. We were outside. You had your shirt off, and I was wearing my dorky overalls. I remember ...” Tirespin’s voice started to tremble. “I remember Mom came out with slices of watermelon and when we were done with her car, all three of us sat on the front steps, ate our watermelon, and… w-we watched the cars go by….”
Finally, Troubleshoes turned to look at her just in time to see her wipe away tears from her eyes.
“I miss that,” Tirespin sniffed. “I miss when we were all together.”
“Yeah, me too,” Troubleshoes said, thinking of Placeholder, and that fact made their mutual betrayal all the more painful.
The uncomfortable topic of his ex-wife was always a conversation that Troubleshoes was almost ready to have with her, but every time they had a moment together he found some excuse to put it off. Well, we have all the time in the world now. The rest of my secrets have already come out anyway….
“Tires, there’s something you need to know about your Mom,” Troubleshoes started, and Tirespin’s melancholic demeanor returned to the standoffish one he was more familiar with. “You see, the reason Mom left is….”
“I know why Mom left you, Dad! The real reason, not just the one you told me,” Tirespin all but spat. “You always had your little secrets, so here’s mine: I heard you two talking the night before she left!”
Troubleshoes tried to think about what he and Placeholder had talked about that night he thought Tirespin had been asleep. “Okay, Tires, I don’t know what you think you heard….”
“I heard you talking about the affair.”
Just like that, Troubleshoes realized the full extent of how badly he’d screwed things up. He’d always avoided telling Tirespin the truth of what happened between him and Placeholder. Maybe it was out of shame, or maybe he didn’t want to hurt her, but the truth was Tirespin had known all along about the affair. And she knew he had kept it from her for all these years. As if I hadn’t given her enough reasons to hate me already….
“Tires, I’m so sorry,” was all Troubleshoes could say.
For her part, Tirespin no longer looked like she was ready to throw down. She just looked downcast. “Yeah? Well, it’s a little late for that, huh?” She then turned to go back into the house. “I have schoolwork to do. We can’t all just shirk our responsibilities to do what we want.”
Troubleshoes had a mind to raise his voice at Tirespin as she departed, but ultimately decided it wouldn’t do any good. Troubleshoes was reminded of the expression about throwing stones inside of glass houses. Instead, he just turned back to the open engine of the Hyundai Genesis, but found less comfort in the work than he did several minutes ago.
“Sorry Sunset, you know I can’t do that,” Shining Armor’s voice said through Sunset’s cellphone speaker. “Sharing classified case information is sorta the number one thing you’re not supposed to do in the FBI.”
Sunset had given her brother a call as she arrived at Canterlot High, and because there was still some time before first period classes started, she was just hanging out in the hall by her locker.
“Did you tell them that as the Alicorn of Earth, I don’t answer to their authority?” Sunset asked with a grin that she was sure Shining could see in his mind’s eye.
“Very funny.”
“Look, I’m not asking for the minute details of any specific case. I just want to know if your office is aware of the danger. From what I’ve been told, this new mercenary group means business.”
“Right, and what did you say they were called again?”
“Los Perros de Guerra,” Sunset answered, inflecting a perfect Spanish accent.
There was a moment of silence on the other end, and Sunset could see the frown on Shining’s face in her own mind’s eye as he sighed and said, “Okay, I’m not even going to ask where you heard that name, but let me assure you: If there is another militarized group operating in Canterlot so soon after the incidents in the summer we heard about in the news, the FBI will do everything in its power to deal with it.”
Sunset noticed the carefully chosen words Shining spoke with and wondered whether their conversation was entirely private.
“Good, that’s all I ask.”
“Mind if I ask you my own question, sis?” Shining asked, before proceeding with his question regardless. “Why are you so interested in this group anyway?”
“You mean besides the obvious?” Sunset asked in return. She knew that Shining didn’t need her to elaborate any more than that. She didn’t exactly know who else was listening. “Just looking out for a friend.”
“A ‘friend,’ huh? And would this friend happen to be one of the mysterious strangers you took in last night?”
“Sorry Shiny, sharing classified information is sorta the number one thing I’m not supposed to do as the Alicorn of Earth.”
Shining chuckled. “Alright, fair enough. Now, shouldn’t you get going?”
“Yeah, probably.” An idea for a plan started forming in Sunset’s head.
The two of them said their goodbyes, and Sunset hung up. The call hadn’t exactly been the most promising lead, but maybe Cadance would have better news from the DA’s office. She didn’t.
“Are you kidding me? A warrant?!” Sunset hissed, trying not to draw too much attention from the other students and faculty in the hallway.
“Sorry Sunny, but there were multiple eyewitnesses who saw this Troubleshoes guy chase down and beat this other guy to a pulp. The video’s all over social media,” Cadance explained. “It doesn’t matter if the other guy was a criminal, Mr. Clyde will definitely be facing assault and battery charges.”
“But they were assaulting his daughter! Isn’t that, like, justifiable self-defense or whatever?”
“If we can find any credible witnesses to that assault, then yes it is. But right now nobody saw what happened before the recorded incident.”
“What about Tirespin?” Sunset asked. “If she came forward about the assault—said her dad was only protecting her—wouldn’t that work?”
“Normally yes, but due to the, uh... nature of Tirespin’s criminal record, it might not be enough. A history of blackmail has a habit of tarnishing one’s credibility.”
Sunset swore under her breath. Her plan had been to have Troubleshoes go to the FBI and have him testify everything he knew about Los Perros from his brief time with them. A good lawyer could have probably gotten him a very good deal, but now there was a warrant out for his arrest for an unrelated incident (or so the authorities believed). Sunset knew better, of course, but the chances of finding any evidence linking the incident with the gangbangers to Los Perros was slim to none.
Sunset glanced up just in time to see the new vice principal giving a rather terrified looking freshman a stern lecture a little ways down the hall. Mr. Neighsay briefly looked up at her and with a glare, held up his wrist and tapped his watch. He seemed to have it in his head that Sunset expected a free ride through school, and looking at the clock, Sunset could almost see why as the first period bell rang. She had totally lost track of time.
“Look, I gotta go, but if you can figure out a way to help out Troubleshoes on your end, I’d really appreciate it,” Sunset told Cadance.
“I can try, but no promises.”
Sunset hung up, and as she did she heard a familiar voice behind her say, “Wow, that sounded pretty serious.”
Turning around, Sunset saw a familiar blonde girl with golden eyes behind corrective lenses. “Oh hey, Derpy. What luck, you’re just the girl I was hoping to talk to!”
“I am?”
“Yep,” Sunset said, ignoring the uncomfortable pit in her stomach as a new plan formed in her head. It was bad enough she had to lie to a friend (again), but now she was betraying her brother’s trust in the same stroke. “I was just on the phone with my brother, and he told me the FBI wants to test their cybersecurity again. Up for another little freelance job?”
Having done what he could with Night Light’s car, Troubleshoes left the garage. He checked the time: not quite noon, but Troubleshoes could eat, so he headed to the kitchen. Sonata was there, evidently preparing her own lunch.
“Heya,” she said casually as he entered.
“Hey yourself,” Troubleshoes said. “How’d the, uh, patrolling go?”
“Perimeter secure. No sign of Tangos.” Sonata then frowned. “A lot of new beehives though. Looks like we’re gonna have to call in those exterminators again.”
Troubleshoes only chuckled as he took out some bread for a sandwich, and when Sonata asked him what was funny, Troubleshoes replied, “Oh, nothing. Just wishing some of the troops under my charge had your diligence.”
“Well, contrary to popular belief, not everyone in my generation is lazy.”
“True,” Troubleshoes said, smiling. “But not everyone in your generation has such… military discipline.”
The two shared a knowing look, and Sonata awkwardly cleared her throat and asked, “So, did you find out what’s wrong with Uncle Night’s car?”
It was an obvious subject change, but Troubleshoes allowed her the escape. This time. “Looks like it’s a bad cylinder. He’s probably going to have to replace it.”
Troubleshoes sat down at the table with his PB&J sandwich and he and Sonata ate in silence for awhile.
“So, where’s Tirespin?” Sonata asked.
“Dunno. The guest room, doing her homework, I assume.”
With a sympathetic frown, Sonata asked, “You two have another fight?”
“Well… I wouldn’t say ‘fight’ exactly, but we’re not exactly on great terms.”
“That’s too bad. You seem like a decent guy, and she seems cool. She was a great help in the kitchen.” Sonata was quiet for a bit, then ventured to continue. “Seems to me like most of the resentment is on her side. Forgive me for asking, but… did you do something to earn it?”
“Yup,” was the only answer Troubleshoes deigned to give her.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me about it,” Sonata said, thankfully subverting Troubleshoes’ expectations that she was going to press for details. Then she subverted his expectations even further by saying, “Look, whatever it is you may have done, it’s clearly in the past. It may seem like she hates you right now, but I know there’s a part of her that’s crying out to be your daughter again.”
The girl seemed to push away some deeply buried sadness on the verge of surfacing, in order to give him an encouraging smile that filled Troubleshoes with more comfort than he’d felt in a long time. “Just keep showing her you care, and she’ll come around. Eventually.”
Troubleshoes didn’t know what to do but smile back. Wisdom beyond her years. Just what have those raspberry eyes seen?
The two of them chatted some more before they finished their lunch. Sonata said she was going on another patrol, and unsure of what to do with the rest of his day, Troubleshoes elected to get the lay of the land. Thus, Troubleshoes went on his own patrol, first taking a walk around the exterior of the property. He found some gardens that were starting to get overgrown, a small greenhouse, a gardening shed, and a swimming pool that was already covered for the winter.
Back inside, Troubleshoes hoped to find out where the shooting range was that the triplets had been using that morning. His first instinct was to check the basement, but that turned out to be strangely small for a house this size, and held only the boiler and several boxes of junk. Next Troubleshoes explored the main floor. Apart from the kitchen, dining room, and living room, Troubleshoes found a study with bookshelves filled to the ceiling, mostly with books on theoretical physics that Troubleshoes knew without opening them would go over his head.
Upstairs was nearly all bedrooms (and with the amount of kids living in this house, Troubleshoes wasn’t surprised). He was impressed by the sheer amount of art decorating the entire house. There were a few sculptures here and there, almost entirely new age and abstract in nature. The paintings were more to the man’s simpler tastes: lots of sweeping landscapes full of depth and life. A lot of the paintings featured horses quite prominently, and Troubleshoes wondered whether one of the teenagers living here was a horse girl.
But after searching the whole house, Troubleshoes was puzzled that he couldn’t find where the shooting range was. Surely something like that would be fairly obvious. Troubleshoes was ready to let it go and head downstairs (perhaps to see if one of those physics books was really beyond him after all) when something on the landing by the stairs caught his eye. Between an antique press and a wall-mounted guitar with the name “Discord” scrawled flamboyantly across its body was a mirror.
He’d noticed it before, passing it on the upper landing a few times, but it was only at that moment that the mirror’s placement struck Troubleshoes as odd. It was a large, full-body mirror, as tall and wide as Troubleshoes himself. Functionally, it made no sense to have such a large mirror on an open landing—it wasn’t exactly an ideal place to change—and it made no sense from a decorative standpoint either. The mirror itself was fairly bland—at least compared to the other decorations Troubleshoes had seen—lacking any designs or adornments on its frame. For a family who seemed to put such emphasis on thoughtful decoration throughout the rest of the house, the mirror just felt… out of place.
Troubleshoes was ready to let it go and continue on his way, but something about the mirror was making his instincts all but scream at him. It occurred to him as he was halfway down the stairs that there was a very good reason for that: his instincts were incredibly well honed over years of service in special operations. His instincts were screaming at him because those same instincts had pointed him to more than a few hidden rooms over his career, each hiding some manner of unpleasant surprise.
So Troubleshoes went back up the stairs and stood before the mirror, looking past his own reflection as he studied it. Indeed, the mirror’s simple, bland appearance made it seem as though someone didn’t want anyone to look at it too closely. So grabbing it by both ends, Troubleshoes grunted as he lifted the whole thing off the wall. He set it down a few inches to the left of where it had hung, and sure enough, when Troubleshoes stepped back he saw the drywall give way to steel. A door? Troubleshoes moved to grab the mirror again.
“What are you doing?”
Troubleshoes turned around and saw Sonata standing at the bottom of the stairs. Gone was the sweet, personable girl with wisdom beyond her years. Her stance was low and her legs were spread, a hand moving instinctively to her hip. Her kind eyes turned cold and hard; a soldier’s eyes.
“I’m sorry for snooping, but your aunt and uncle did say I have free run of the house while we’re here,” Troubleshoes said defensively, before nodding back to the half-uncovered door. “Were you aware that there’s a secret door behind this mirror?”
Sonata’s calm yet strangely menacing expression as she climbed the stairs indicated that she did. “Let’s make one thing clear: You and Tirespin can go wherever you like while you’re staying with us, but that door there is strictly off-limits.”
Troubleshoes took a step towards Sonata as she approached and stood tall, dwarfing the girl as he met her challenging gaze with his own. “Mind if I ask why?”
To her credit, Sonata didn’t back down, looking him right in the eye as she answered, “For your safety.”
The two of them stood there for several seconds, silently sizing each other up, before Troubleshoes relented. “Okay then. This is your house. I’ll follow the rules.”
All the tension left Sonata’s body then, and she smiled. “Thanks!”
Troubleshoes turned and got to work setting the mirror back into its original place. As he did, he found his mind turning to an old story he’d heard when he was a kid. He couldn’t remember what it was called, but it was about a woman who married a wealthy nobleman. The nobleman had given her the key to every room in his mansion, but warned her not to go into one room in particular. Troubleshoes couldn’t quite remember how the story had ended, just that the room held a terrible secret that maybe the woman would have been better off not knowing.
Tirespin’s father hadn’t bothered her for the rest of the day since their talk in the garage, and that was fine by her. Telling him that she knew the truth about just what kind of man he really was turned out to be quite therapeutic, and Tirespin honestly didn’t know why she hadn’t done it sooner. That pest she called her Inner Critic was quick to come up with a number of reasons why she hadn’t thrown that knowledge in Troubleshoes’s face sooner (as well as a number of reasons why she should feel bad for doing so), but for once Tirespin didn’t let it bother her. She was entitled to some vindication.
So why don’t you feel any?
Instead of lingering on her feelings about her father (and about herself), Tirespin whiled away the day, distracting herself with homework, her phone, and that comic she had borrowed from Spike. She could hear her father’s heavy footsteps as he wandered the house; evidently he was just as curious about their mysterious hosts as she was. So as the house’s residents started arriving home at the end of the day, Tirespin elected to do her own investigating.
“Hey Spike,” Tirespin said, standing in the doorframe of the young boy’s bedroom, knocking on the door for good measure.
Spike, who was sitting at his desk with a math textbook open in front of him, quickly straightened up and turned in his chair, a nervous blush finding its way across his cheeks. “Oh, hey Tirespin! What’s up?”
Tirespin caught the way the boy’s eyes lingered just below her own, but didn’t hold it against him. He was at that age where he was just starting to notice girls, and Tirespin was, in the words of her generation, a legit snack. Suffice to say, she was more than used to it.
“Not much. Just thought I’d return the comic,” Tirespin said, holding up the issue of Power Man.
“Wow, you finished it already?” Spike asked as he took it from Tirespin’s outstretched hand.
“Not like there’s much else to do when I’m stuck here all day,” Tirespin said with a shrug.
The boy gave her a sympathetic look and said, “Well, if you want you can borrow more from my collection.” Spike gestured to the shelf on the far wall of his room, which held an honestly impressive collection of comics.
“Foreal?” Tirespin asked, and Spike nodded as he peeled his eyes off of her. “Thanks, man!”
When Tirespin walked over to the shelf to survey Spike’s collection, the thought occurred to her to use the boy’s apparent attraction to her as a means to find what she was really after (much to the protest of the Inner Critic). So, she made a show of bending down to look at one of the lower shelves, sticking her ass out and letting the tight jeans do the rest.
“Ooh, some good stuff down here, huh?” she asked, lacing her casual tone with a hint of one more sultry.
“Yeah,” Spike squeaked, his voice audibly cracking.
Seeing a comic that would suit her goals, Tirespin took it and stood. “Ooh, Daredevil. This one’s a good one!”
Tirespin held up the cover, with the titular hero in red standing dramatically on a rooftop overlooking a cityscape.
“My favorite thing about Daredevil is how he always knows when people are lying,” Tirespin said. “I have something of a knack for spotting bullshit myself.”
Silence lingered as Tirespin let her words sink in.
“Well, I should probably finish my homework,” Spike said, discomfort clear in his tone.
Seeing that she was about to lose her chance to find out more information on this strange family, Tirespin realized she was going to have to use a tactic she’d become all too good at.
When she first started changing from a girl to a woman, she’d noticed the way that men and boys alike would look at her body when they thought she wasn’t paying attention. It had been annoying at first, but Tirespin had quickly learned she could use it to her advantage. The nerdy kids in class became more receptive to letting her copy their answers if she offered to let them touch her breasts in return. She’d gotten through an entire semester at her old school this way. Word got around, and before long Tirespin had several of the boys (and even one girl) doing her homework for her, all for the price of letting their curious hands fumble across her body for a few minutes.
Seeing Spike’s clear precocious attraction, Tirespin knew that such an arrangement would be just as easy to make with him. She just had to close the door, lift her shirt and lay it all on the table. But when she moved to do just that, something more than her Inner Critic stopped her. Tirespin thought about the way her whole system came crashing down. When her math teacher, Root Factor, had kept her after class to tell her that she was failing. That he knew all about her little “system.”
But Tirespin had known his own secret: she’d noticed the way he looked at the girls in his class, including her. She couldn’t deny that Mr. Factor had been cute, so Tirespin had decided to create a whole new system, exclusively between herself and Mr. Factor. That had been when their “private tutoring sessions” had begun, but Root was a man in his 30s—he had long grown out of the phase where merely touching a woman was the height of his sexual aspirations. The “sessions” they’d had together were both fun and beneficial, but then she felt her body changing again, this time in a way most girls her age didn’t normally experience. From there, her very life fell apart.
What stuck with Tirespin most, even now, was when she went to Gram-Gram with her troubles. Tirespin may not have cared much for her father, but her Gram-Gram meant the world to her. And when Tirespin confided all of her problems to her, the look of disappointment on her face was so crushing, Tirespin wondered whether her decision to turn her life around was for Gram-Gram as much as it was for her new daughter.
So when Tirespin reached out to close Spike’s door and start the whole cycle over again, all she could see was Gram-Gram’s disappointed face.
“Hey, Spike?” Tirespin asked with a sigh.
“Yeah?”
Tirespin looked down at the Daredevil comic in her hands. Maybe it was time to find a new system. “Does your family ever… lie to you?”
Spike looked up from his homework. “Why do you ask?”
“You don’t need Daredevil’s super senses to be a human lie detector when your dad’s been lying to you your whole life,” Tirespin said with a sigh. “About my Mom, about what he was doing in the military….”
Spike nodded, seeming to understand. “There’s a lot my family doesn’t tell me, even after….”
When Spike trailed off, Tirespin thought she was getting close to something. “Even after what?”
“A-after we adopted Sunset.” It seemed more like a hasty correction than an answer, but Tirespin let it go. “But even after everything that happened, nobody really talks to me about it. It’s like… they think I’m too young to understand. And like, yeah, I don’t understand everything, but I know more that’s going on than they think!”
It seemed like there was a lot being bottled up inside the young boy, and Tirespin was fine with letting it all come out. Not just because she wanted answers, but because it looked like he really needed it.
“And what is going on exactly?”
“A lot. It’s kinda hard to wrap my mind around it,” Spike sighed. “Like, the triplets aren’t really our cousins. But at the same time… they’ve always been.”
Now this was what Tirespin wanted to hear about. “Yeah, what’s the deal with those three anyway? They’re really into army stuff, huh?”
“Yeah, they’re weird. But cool, I guess.”
“You guess?” Tirespin asked. “They seem like total badasses to me. I’d think a kid like you would be all over them asking if they could teach you how to fire a gun, or something.”
Tirespin thought Spike would get all excited over the prospect, but instead he frowned. “Nah. The kind of stuff they were involved with… it isn’t as cool as comics and video games make it look.”
Then Spike rubbed his arm nervously, and once again his eyes drifted away from her own. But rather than focus back on Tirespin’s chest, they zeroed in on something far away. “The stuff they and Sunset have faced… it’s scary.”
Tirespin was on the edge of her metaphorical seat now. She was so close to finding out whatever secret this family was hiding.
“What kind of scary stuff are you talking about?”
There was some hesitation, but Spike opened his mouth to answer. What came out though wasn’t his own voice, but that of a woman.
“Spike?”
Realizing the voice did not, in fact, come from the boy in front of her, but the doorway behind her, Tirespin turned and saw the fiery hair and hourglass figure of Sunset Shimmer standing there.
“Hey, Tirespin,” Sunset said. “You mind stepping out for a minute? Spike and I need to have a talk.”
“No problem,” Tirespin said, disappointed at being interrupted when she was so close to finding something out but not wanting to piss off Sunset. Something about the girl triggered Tirespin’s danger senses—even moreso than the three teens who ran around with guns. “Thanks for the comic, Spike!”
When she was sure Tirespin was gone, Sunset turned to Spike and asked innocently, “So what were you two doing in here?”
“Nothing. Just… talking comics and stuff.”
Sunset scrutinized him for a moment so brief it hardly happened, then said, “That’s nice. It’s cool that you and Tirespin get along. But I wanted to talk to you about her for a sec.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong. It’s just… you should be careful of what you say around Tirespin. Troubleshoes too for that matter.”
Spike frowned. “I know. I didn’t tell her that you’re, y’know… whatever you are. I’m not stupid.”
Sunset put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a little rub. “Hey, I know you’re not, Spike. Hell, I’d say you’re a lot smarter than some of us give you credit for. But people like Tirespin… they have ways of getting into your head. Of tricking you into saying just a little too much.”
“‘People like Tirespin’?” Spike said with a sardonic smile. “How bigoted of you!”
“C’mon, Spike. You know I didn’t mean it as a race thing,” Sunset said, and Spike’s playful laugh indicated that he knew, but was having no less fun messing with her. “What I meant was… Tirespin hasn’t exactly lived life on the straight and narrow. Don’t get me wrong, I can tell she’s a good person and she’s trying to be better. But she’s not someone to underestimate.”
“Gee, wonder who that reminds me of.”
“Hey, don’t get cute,” Sunset said, lightly slapping his shoulder.
“But I’m so good at it!” Spike said with a shit-eating grin that was, admittedly, pretty adorable.
So with a grin of her own, Sunset reached over and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Alright, well you can clearly look after yourself. Just wanted to make sure you’re careful, okay?”
“Okay, now can you stop messing up my hair?”
Sunset had been about to stop, but then decided to double down and ruffle his hair with both hands. “Why? You trying to look good for someone? Huh?”
“Quit it, Sunset!” Spike groaned, smiling in spite of himself.
Once she felt she had tormented her little brother enough, Sunset left him to finish his homework. It was almost 6 in the evening now, which meant it would nearly be time for the day’s SIREN training session.
The day went by relatively uneventfully for Sable Loam; explaining Tirespin’s absence for the foreseeable future to her teachers had been easier than expected. Sable hadn’t exactly made it a secret among the faculty that he had become friends with Tirespin’s father, and when he vaguely alluded to a “personal emergency” involving the two of them, no one asked any further questions.
Only Red Horse seemed to think something else was going on, as she asked if it had something to do with the video online of Troubleshoes beating up an unfortunate gangbanger. That news had been as surprising as it was troubling. Is there no end to this guy’s bad luck? However, Red apparently knew better than to ask too many questions, and Sable had convinced her it wasn’t as serious as she thought. The truth is, it’s even worse. Especially if what she said about that video is true.
So, after wrapping up for the day, Sable called a car with his ride sharing app (Celestia was working late this evening, and Sable had imposed on her enough already) and made his way to Sunset’s place for the day’s training session with the triplets. Sunset herself met him at the front door.
“Hey Sable, mind if we talk real quick?” she asked, stepping outside and closing the door behind them.
Sable had a feeling he knew what this was going to be about. “Let me guess, your brother and his girlfriend weren’t as helpful as you were expecting?”
“Shining didn’t want to risk his job for me—not that I’d ever ask him to—and the situation on Cadance’s end of this thing is way more complicated than I was expecting.” Sunset then proceeded to explain the details of her conversation with Cadance that morning.
Sable frowned, his earlier fears totally confirmed. “Well, that’s unfortunate.”
“But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” Sunset said, folding her arms. “Troubleshoes has been asking questions. Mostly about the triplets. Dagi told me he all but interrogated them at breakfast this morning. Soni pacified him in an honestly pretty clever way, but….”
“What’d she tell him?” Sable interrupted.
“The truth. Or rather, just enough of it for him not to believe it.”
Sable couldn’t help but chuckle. “Refuge in audacity. She’s always been a smart one.”
“You have no idea,” Sunset said. “But Troubleshoes is still curious. Hell, both of them are. I overheard Tirespin trying to get information out of Spike about the triplets a few minutes before you got here. I don’t like the idea of lying to them, but we have to tell them something.”
This was something that Sable knew was going to be a problem from the moment he first suggested that Troubleshoes and Tirespin stay with Sunset’s family the previous night. Unfortunately, Sable hadn’t once all day considered exactly how they were going to solve it. Inexplicably, Sable thought of his first lunch with Troubleshoes and was all at once hit with inspiration.
“Bluebeard…” he muttered absentmindedly, still thinking about how to move forward with his ultimate plans for Troubleshoes.
“Um, what?” Sunset asked.
“Bluebeard. It’s an old French fairy tale. Ever read it?” Sunset shook her head, so Sable explained, “It’s about a woman who marries a man with a blue beard, who had been married many times already. Before leaving on a trip, Bluebeard gives her the key to his mansion and tells her she can use it to go into any room she likes, but forbids her from going into one specific room. The wife thinks this will be easy: she has the run of the whole rest of the mansion, after all. But after a few days, she finds herself drawn to the forbidden room. She has to know what’s inside, because not knowing is driving her mad. So she decides to take a peek, and when she does, she finds the bloody corpses of all of his previous wives.”
“Wow. That took a turn.”
“Yep, Happily Ever After is a fairly new concept to human fairy tales,” Sable noted.
“Trust me, Equestrian fairy tales aren’t much different in that regard,” Sunset pointed out. “So, how does this one end?”
“Long story short, Bluebeard finds out she entered his secret room and tries to kill her too, but her brothers barge in and kill him instead.”
Sunset listened with a hand to her chin, and when he was finished, said, “Okay, I think I see what you’re getting at. Trying to keep the truth from Troubleshoes and his daughter is just going to make them want to know it more, and them finding it out on their own will just make things worse. But I still don’t think they’re ready to know that I’m an interdimensional being with powers beyond their comprehension.”
“And they don’t have to,” Sable said. Not yet. “But as long as they know there are things we’re holding back from them, they’re not gonna stop looking for answers as long as they’re here. And if what Cadance told you is true, that’s going to be a pretty long time.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“A show of good faith,” Sable answered. “And we can take the first step tonight.”
Sable proceeded to explain what he was thinking. As expected, Sunset didn’t like it, but then Sable explained his long term plan for Troubleshoes and she slowly—reluctantly—began to warm up to the idea.
“Cylinder trouble, huh?” Night Light said. He and Troubleshoes were sitting in the living room. “I’m guessing I need to get that replaced?”
“Yup, and the replacement usually costs somewhere in the $400 ballpark,” Troubleshoes replied. “I’d be happy to do it myself—and for one hell of a discount might I add—but I don’t think it’s going to be safe for me to go back to my workshop for quite some time.”
“That’s alright, you’ve already saved me a ton of money on troubleshooting alone. I can do the rest with my dealer,” Night Light said, smiling warmly despite his troubles. “Who knows? Maybe I was wrong and the warranty’s still good. Thanks, Mr. Clyde.”
It was around that time that Sable Loam walked into the room. “Hey, TS. Night Light.”
“Hello, Sable,” Night Light greeted. “I take it you’re here for the routine workout?”
“Workout?” Troubleshoes asked.
“Yep,” Sable said, focusing on Troubleshoes. “That and I wanted to make sure everything’s going okay here.”
“Oh, Troubleshoes and his daughter have been ideal guests. You’ll hear no complaints from me!” Night said, standing up from his seat. “Are you staying for dinner, Sable? We’re having roast chicken.”
“Afraid not. I have plans to cook with Down Luck tonight,” Sable then turned his attention to Troubleshoes. “Your mother seems dead set on turning me into a world class chef!”
“Yup. One of the side effects of sharing a roof with her, you’ll never go hungry!” Troubleshoes said with a smile.
“Fair enough, I’ll get started on the dinner then. Should be ready in an hour and ten,” Night Light said. “I trust the triplets won’t be late for it?”
“No, sir,” Sable answered, and with that, Night Light left the room leaving him and Troubleshoes alone.
“I’ve gotta say, this is some family you’re friends with,” Troubleshoes said with a grin. “How in the world did y’all meet?”
“That is a long and crazy story that I’d be happy to tell you. As it is, the triplets and I need to get started on our workout.”
Troubleshoes raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t know you were a personal trainer on top of everything else.”
“Well, not in any official capacity. So far I’ve simply been volunteering my time to help them get to a military level of fitness,” Sable explained. “They seem to have their sights set on a career in Special Forces once they’ve graduated. I wanted to make sure they went about preparing for it the right way, so I took it upon myself to help them.”
With a smile, Troubleshoes said, “Well, not to brag, but I have more than a little experience with that, as you may recall.”
“Yep. That’s why I wanted to ask if you’d care to join us. I think a former SEAL could give them a few pointers that a Ranger might not think of.”
He wasn’t sure why, but the offer made Troubleshoes incredibly delighted. “I’d be honored.”
“Great!” Sable said. He then told Troubleshoes to meet them in the foyer before going off to round up the girls in question. Troubleshoes himself went to the guest bedroom to change into a set of workout clothes. Before long, all of them were gathered in the foyer.
Rather than take him to a room to work out the four of them walked over to a bookshelf against the wall underneath the upper landing, and Troubleshoes realized that it was directly beneath where the strange mirror is. Then Sable pulled out two specific books simultaneously and the whole shelf slid aside on a set of gimbals, revealing steel elevator doors that themselves slid open. Troubleshoes watched with uncertainty as the other four stepped inside.
“What’s wrong? Never seen a hidden elevator behind a bookcase before?” Adagio asked in a teasing tone.
“Not outside of movies,” he replied, somewhat stunned.
Troubleshoes shared a knowing look with Sonata (who for her part looked fairly sheepish) before stepping in after them. The elevator descended. Troubleshoes had many questions, but decided to save them until he saw where the elevator would take them. For some reason, he thought of the great glass elevator from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
There was no magical chocolate factory when the elevator doors opened, but what Troubleshoes saw was no less fantastical. Stretching out before them was a cavernous chamber, the corners of which were full of equipment, much of which even Troubleshoes with his extensive experience couldn’t identify. Weapon racks with accompanying weapons lined the far wall, along with some incredibly large vehicle covered by a tarp. Troubleshoes spotted the elusive firing range through a window off to one side, but most curious of all was the large vault with heavy steel doors in the center of the chamber.
“This is… wow,” Troubleshoes said, breathless. “What the hell is all of this?”
Aria started pointing at things in the chamber as she said, “Well, over there is the firing range, that’s where we keep our weapons, that’s the Valanx….”
Troubleshoes was absolutely stunned. “Okay okay… I take it y’all don’t have permits for all of this. Hell, if I recall correctly, the Valanx isn’t even in service with any nation!”
“That’s right.” Sonata looked at him and tilted her head like a puppy. “Gonna report us, Mr. Clyde?”
With a shrug, Troubleshoes said, “Honestly? At this point, I’m starting to wonder whether Tires and I were safer dealing with Los Perros by ourselves.” Troubleshoes looked at each one of them in turn. “Just who are you people?”
It was Sable who stepped forward, put an arm on Troubleshoes’s shoulder, and said, “I told you. We’re your friends. The reason we’re showing you all this is because we trust you, and we want you to trust us.”
“We’re giving you the opportunity to ask us any question you want,” Adagio said, spreading her arms theatrically. “We’re an open book.”
Where the hell do I even begin? Troubleshoes wondered, looking at the huge secret facility around him. “Do your parents—er, aunt and uncle…?”
“They know about all of this,” Aria answered immediately. “So do all of our cousins.”
Troubleshoes nodded, trying desperately to organize his thoughts. His mind then took him back to the conversation he had with the triplets that morning.
“Y’know, people say the best lies are based on truth,” Troubleshoes said, nodding at Sonata. “The one you told me at breakfast was pretty damn awful, but I think the theory still applies.”
Exchanging a brief look with her sisters, Sonata said, “You’re right about that much. What I said about having been part of a Canadian naval black project was true. Our organization became mercenaries after our flag officer was assassinated; by our own people we later found out. We came to Canterlot on a job for a client.”
“You remember the whole incident with the Dead Hand Killings?” Adagio asked.
“How could I not? I was worried to death about Tirespin that entire time!” Troubleshoes said.
“Well the good news is, you didn’t have to be. They wouldn’t have gone after a girl with a kid of her own. They were specifically targeting virgins.” Troubleshoes raised a deadpan eyebrow, and Adagio elaborated, “Our client was super into the occult. Believed that he could summon a demon through ritual sacrifice.”
Troubleshoes shook his head in disbelief. “Sounds insane.”
“Trust me, he was,” Aria said, shaking her own head. “Unfortunately, almost all of our organization bought into his crazy. What’s more, he and our CO—who I’m pretty sure were banging, by the way—injected the most zealous of our number with an experimental performance-enhancing drug. Made them fight like monsters, at the expense of their basic humanity.”
“Then they went after Sunny and her whole family, probably because someone with royal blood is the ideal sacrifice. If you believe in that stuff, anyway,” Sonata explained next. “So the three of us and a few others from our organization decided that enough was enough and took the fight to them.”
Scratching his head, Troubleshoes followed along to the best of his ability. “Uh-huh....” He looked over at Sable. “And how exactly do you fit into all of this?”
“My girlfriend and I were unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire when all of this went down. I took it upon myself to help them out after that.”
Adagio took over, capping off their crazy tale. “In the end we came out victorious, but not without heavy sacrifice. Now, all the bad guys are either dead or imprisoned, and we finally have the normal life we always wanted.”
“Except for…” Troubleshoes gestured around the equipment-laden room, “all of this.”
“Just because we’re officially ‘normal’ now doesn’t mean we want our skills to dull,” Sonata explained, earnest tears welling up in her eyes. “There could still be more enemies out there, and we want to be able to protect Sunny and our new family!”
It was certainly a lot to take in, and Troubleshoes didn’t think he would even be able to process all of this new information until later that night. But there was one more thing that was still bugging him.
“This Sunset Shimmer… she’s more to you than just an adopted family member: I see it in the way you interact with her,” Troubleshoes said. He didn’t say it out loud, but the girl also had a certain… presence to her that made Troubleshoes think she was more than she appeared to be. “Just what is so special about her?”
It was as he was asking the question that Troubleshoes heard a chime from somebody’s phone. Sonata pulled her phone out and looked at it. Her brow furrowed.
“Huh. The Nest app is showing someone at the door,” she said, sounding puzzled.
A bad feeling entered Troubleshoes’s gut as he asked to see Sonata’s phone. A feeling like ice gripped his heart when he saw the dark-dressed figure wearing sunglasses, recorded by their home security system, reached up and rang the doorbell.
“Dammit, just my luck. How the hell did they find us?” Troubleshoes muttered, but it was loud enough for the others to hear.
Aria immediately went to the gun rack on the far end of the room and picked out a scoped rifle, while the other two quickly grabbed a pair of sidearms. Troubleshoes realized with dismay that he’d left his own weapon hidden away in the guest bedroom. Cursing under his breath, Troubleshoes turned and started to make for the elevator, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Why don’t you stay down here?” Sable firmly suggested as the armed triplets rushed past. “Trust me, they can handle it.”
“You sure about that, man?” Troubleshoes asked. “I know these guys. They’re heavy hitters.”
In turn, Sable gestured to a bunch of computer displays; to Troubleshoes, the arrangement was very much like a command center at US Special Operations Command.
“Well, if you’re not sure,” the younger man stated as he brought up the external feed from the Nest, “why don’t you take a peek for yourself?”
With his usual grin on his face, Withers strode up to the front door of the rather impressive mansion. Tracking the place down had been child’s play.
That morning Withers had gone to the local KIA dealership, and posing as a Private Investigator (it was the first time he got to use the phony license he had made!) he had given the pimply-faced young man at the counter the plate number of the car he’d seen in the security footage from the diner. Crater Face had been pretty cooperative, only asking a few questions (to which Withers had given vague, bullshit answers) and before long Withers had a name and address.
The car was apparently registered to a Sonata Dusk, who Withers guessed was either a wife or daughter of the man with Troubleshoes. Even more curious, the address (482 Golden Oaks Drive) was up in San Palomino. Just how the hell does a Sunnytown mechanic know someone who lives here? Withers wondered. It seemed that there was more going on here than he at first suspected, and the prospect excited him.
So, after picking up a sandwich from a nearby chain and parking his car out of sight in the area, Withers found a tree in the public park across the street that still had enough leaves to provide camouflage and nimbly scaled it. With his binoculars he had a good view of the property at 482 Golden Oaks Drive, and he had spent the rest of the day watching. The property had mostly been lifeless through the afternoon, though a few times Withers had seen a teenage girl with blue hair in a ponytail wandering the perimeter.
Things started to pick up when evening came around, and the apparent residents started coming home. Most of them were teenage girls, but there was also a man and a woman—the parents, perhaps? It was around that point that Withers was starting to get restless. In all that time he hadn’t seen any sign of his quarry, or of the other man. He had begun to wonder whether this was a false lead when another car pulled into the property. He saw the Uber logo in the corner of the window, and when the vehicle stopped who should get out but his mysterious Snooper.
The dark green-haired man was greeted at the door by the girl with red and yellow hair, and the two lingered outside for a few minutes to talk about something before both of them headed in. Withers decided to wait another ten minutes, just to see if anyone else showed up. When no one did, Withers had decided he was tired of waiting around and hopped down from the tree (and after nearly six hours what a relief that was).
Now, having rung the doorbell, Withers waited patiently, a content smile on his face. In a few short moments, the door was answered by one of the teenage girls: the one with dark raven hair and purple eyes.
“Hello there,” Withers greeted calmly, leaning forward to be at her eye level. “Are your parents home?”
The girl shrugged noncommittally and said, “They don’t live here.”
“I see, okay,” Withers said, nodding patiently. “Do you think you could find someone who does?”
“I live here.”
“Oh, good. I’m a private investigator, and I’m looking for a very dangerous individual who might be in the area.”
To his surprise, the raven-haired girl smiled. “What a coincidence. I happen to know quite a few dangerous individuals.”
Noting that the strange response had a hint of danger to it, Withers said nothing and merely reached into his pocket, pulling out the picture of Troubleshoes he carried around. “Would one of them happen to look like this?”
The raven-haired girl’s eyes momentarily widened with recognition, and Withers knew he had her even as she answered, “Never seen him before.”
Withers just leaned closer, his predatory smile widening. “Are you suuuuuuuure?”
It was then that another girl suddenly appeared behind the raven-haired one and tapped her shoulder.
“Hey, Tavi? Why don’t you go see if Uncle Night wants help with dinner?” the new girl said in a low, reassuring voice. “We’ll handle this.”
With nothing more than a worried look, the raven-haired girl “Tavi” departed, and the new girl stepped forward to face him. Her demeanor was completely different from Tavi, and something about it made Withers tense up. She wore a purple sweatshirt and pink workout shorts, and had her orange and yellow hair done up in a ponytail. But what Withers noted most was her raspberry eyes. They were scanning him up and down, but it wasn’t in a way a young girl might check out a cute guy. It was more like a fighter sizing up an opponent.
“Okay, have you seen the individual in this photo?” Withers asked, keeping his tone carefully professional. “I’m a private investigator, and—”
“I know who you are.” The tone that this new girl spoke held such a calm finality. Where the raven-haired girl had seemed nervous, this girl had the calm measure of… of what?
Of a soldier.
Her eyes were now focused directly on his, seeming to stare into him even through his sunglasses. Withers had no doubt that she meant exactly what she said. It seemed unlikely, but perhaps Troubleshoes or the Snooper had told them what was going on.
But Withers had come here for a reason, and he wasn’t about to let some unusually perceptive girl impede him. “If that’s really true, then you know I don’t want any trouble,” he said. “Just let me take what I came for, and we won’t have a problem.”
It was a more than reasonable request, Withers thought, but the girl just shook her head. “If you want to avoid a problem, turn around and walk away.”
“I will,” Withers said, opening his jacket just enough to show the girl his .45. “As soon as I have what I came for.”
The girl shifted her body’s position slightly, and Withers thought at first she was going to relent and let him come in. Then he realized that she was only giving him a clear view of her hand—the one that wasn’t currently resting on the door. There was a handgun in it, and Withers watched her thumb calmly, slowly, switch the safety off.
“Last chance,” she said, using her other hand to open the door slightly more to reveal another girl—the one with blue hair he’d seen patrolling the property—also armed, and standing in a ‘ready’ stance. “Turn around….” She then used her eyes to gesture up and to her left, and out of the corner of his eye, Withers spotted movement out of one of the second-story windows. A third girl with purple and aquamarine hair was aiming down the sights of a scoped DMR pointed right at him. “...and walk away.”
All at once it clicked in Withers’s mind exactly what was going on, and more importantly, just who these people were. But… it can’t be! They should all be dead!
Withers didn’t let any of the panic show in his perfectly constructed artificial smile as he closed his jacket and said, “Very well. It seems what I’m looking for isn’t here after all!”
With that, Withers turned and made his way back down the path to the front gate of the property, allowing his carefully constructed smile to wither away. He heard the orange-haired girl close the door behind him, but could still feel the eyes of the girl in the window follow him all the way off of the property. All the while, Withers seethed.
We killed all of those bitches in Colombia! And our friends at ALICORN got the rest of them right here in this town! The Bloodhound even personally made sure there weren’t any survivors afterward!
“FUCK!!!” Withers roared, kicking over one of the trash bins on the side of the road.
He had been so looking forward to capturing Troubleshoes himself; to stripping away his dignity and turning him into his greatest work of art yet. But this new development had changed everything. Los Perros would need to bring in their full might to deal with this, and Withers knew his comrades would be all too eager to do so once they learned that there were still living SIRENs to avenge themselves upon.
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Just had to talk about the bee hives didn't you. Just make me worried about a completely different problem while all of this is going on.
So, going off Spike Troubleshoes looks a lot like Luke Cage, nifty.
Aw hell, why did they have to be good girls this time around and not just shoot the ass? Well, besides the obvious, but things just got very, very complicated.
9994843
Glad someone caught the bit with the beehives. As bad as Los Perros are, there are still much bigger fish out there with their sights set on our favorite alicorn/girl's family, but that's a problem for another day. Maybe.
Fun fact, I ended up casting Mike Colter as human Troubleshoes in my head when I started writing for him, and Spike's moment at breakfast was my little nod to that. I even considered having Troubleshoes say "Sweet Christmas" at one point, but decided that might be too on the nose.
Now, the reason that the triplets let Withers walk away and didn't just off him is actually three-fold. Firstly there's the obvious: they're not killers and they don't want to be killers, and perhaps even more important than that, Sunset doesn't want them to be killers. The second reason is practicality. Although covering up a murder is something Sunset would in theory be capable of (at least on a practical level), there would be too much risk of drawing the attention of the authorities, who are themselves looking for Troubleshoes. Plus, there is a lot of stuff in their secret bunker that wouldn't be fun to explain to the police if they found themselves at the center of a murder investigation. Lastly, the triplets didn't want to start a blood feud with Los Perros. However, as 9995230 pointed out, the triplets aren't aware of the apparent history between Los Perros and SIREN (or at least, this timeline's version of SIREN, of which they were never a part).
9995850
I really want him to pull a Sweet Christmas now, maybe if he really gets pissed but is around Cinnamon?
Do wonder if Withers is going to dig into them. The paper trail that is the girls new life should make what he thinks he knows seem impossible. Granted, he might think they are skilled enough to make such a paper trail, but they do have that TV shout out...
Sure, they might just go in guns blazing, but I can see the shenanigans that changed things driving Withers up the wall.
I still get the feeling that Withers' whole vendetta against Troubleshoes is being acted on without his boss's permission, meaning he's probably gonna end up in hot water, especially if Los Perros ends up in a mess chasing down SIREN remnants that, as 9996044 points out, should be impossible to prove exist as such in this timeline.
If Withers hadn't been such a paranoid psycho, TS would have just fixed the SUV and that might have been the end of it, but now he's probably gonna end up getting his group a bloodied nose that his boss will probably make him pay for.
This is realllllllly good.
All those reactions to the end, but nothing on the fact that Troubleshoes' Ex was literally named Placeholder? Seriously?