Marewell, My Lovely

by libertydude

The Waking Death

I shouldn’t have been on the beat that night. Moonshine, the newest recruit to Ponyville P.D. with the hangdog face and a sandy mane in eternal disarray, should have been cutting his teeth on the gig, while I put my hooves up in my quiet cottage and let the liquor provide me the closest thing to sleep I ever got. But Moonshine’s back apparently became acquainted with the stairs behind the retirement home, and with the nightly assignments already handed out, the task was passed to me. I could’ve protested, pointing to the silver placard on my desk saying “Lieutenant Marewell”. Maybe I would have gotten out of all this trouble if I had. Maybe I’d even still be alive.

Anyway, the fiasco started two days ago. Night air filled my lungs, cleaner than I’d ever tasted back in Neighami. The street lamps bathed the town in a warm light everypony else called cozy, but I considered tacky and just this side of useless. The clouds had rolled in from the north, part of the weather team’s plans for heavy showers later in the week. The darkness of Ponyville, normally as quaint as the town with its clear skies and flickering stars, thus became amplified, making my job all the more difficult.

My route took me around the business district of Ponyville, a relatively recent addition to the growing town. Consisting of a long row of small shops and specialist artisan stores, the place felt like a ghost town. Only a few windows remained lit past business hours, all of them from the back of the buildings which hosted their nocturnal guests. My eyes wandered over the shadows dancing in the glass. One of them thrust material across a sewing machine, its pat-pat-pat engine raging in the night. Another, its shape undoubtedly that of a stallion, hoisted large bags atop larger piles. Both moved desperately in their own unique ways, but not desperate in the way a burglar sifts through valuables.

It was above the Flash Bulb Photography Shop that my eyes caught the lone irregularity in the cast shadows. Two distinct shapes of a stallion and mare pressed their faces together. The shadows soon coalesced into a singular form of tangled limbs, and I averted my eyes. A romantic tryst in the place where money was regularly exchanged lent an unfortunate implication. I myself was averse to any real amorous interaction, having been through enough relationship rollercoasters to find myself disinterested in finding anypony worth the trouble. As such, I had no particular hankering to break up the encounter above me. In fact, I found myself trotting a little faster down the street.

I turned the corner of Neighson Bros. Pastry Shop and tried to ignore the faint grumble from my stomach. The windows being no longer lined with the treats they offered in the daytime did nothing to hide my body’s instinctive desire for sustenance. My rush to get on the beat caused certain biological niceties to be avoided, a decision one always regrets whenever growling innards are the only respite from duty.

That was when I saw the crowd gathering across the street. It wasn’t huge by big city standards, but for a place still bordering on remote like Ponyville, it might as well have been a city parade. Ponies tried to stare over the makeshift barricade of boxes somepony had thrown up along the sidewalk in a feeble attempt to control their ever encroaching bodies. The building they gathered around looked more like an expanded cottage than a shop, its window lined with music boxes and taking up three-quarters of the storefront. I glanced up at the sign hanging above the door, just visible in the lamp light.

MISS HOOFSON’S ANTIQUES AND CURIOSITIES

I pushed my way through the crowd and hopped up on the center box.

“Manewell?” a rough voice said.

I glanced down to see Sergeant Jay Bird staring up at me. His aqua eyes held a certain relief in them, one I interpreted as being a result of my arrival.

“Yeah,” I grunted, jumping down. “What’s the story here?”

“Not quite sure yet.” Jay sighed, tugging at his cap. “Neighbors in the print shop next door said they heard glass smash. Came outside and saw the glass shattered on the antique shop’s door. Central sent Water Bug and I over to check things out.”

“Find anything juicy?”

“Sure did. The shop clerk was on the floor. Stuck in a weird trance or something. Got some paramedics in there now trying to help him out.”

“Robbery?”

Jay shrugged. “Don’t know. Not out of the question, considering the circumstances. Won’t know until we do an inventory with the store owner. Might take some time though. Old stuff’s stacked all willy-nilly in there.”

“And we won’t know if it was assault until the clerk wakes up.”

“Right.”

“Where’s Bug?”

“Went to get some more help from Central. And alert the owner, Hoofson. Sooner we can get her over here, quicker we can figure out what was or wasn’t stolen.” His shoulders slumped like a weight had fallen from him.

I gave an appreciative nod. Jay was a solid cop, even for a rinky-dink town like this.

“I can help you out for a little bit,” I said. “My beat wasn’t doing much.”

“No need.” Jay pointed out past the crowd. In the cracks I could see five officers making their way towards us. They pushed through the gathered ponies and climbed over the boxes.

“Lieutenant.” A lime-colored officer I recognized as Emerald Splash. “Didn’t think we’d catch you here.”

“Surprise to me, too,” I said. “I’ll get out of your way.”

“Actually, word from Central was they wanted you as lead on the case.”

“What about my beat?” The question came more from formality than any desire to go back trudging through the business sector.

“Put June on it. Upstairs has reassigned you over here. Said you had more experience with, uh… events like this.”

I held back an urge to laugh. For a town so used to chaotic events and destruction, the idea of ponies hurting other ponies still carried a strange unfathomableness. My arrival in town had been met with the usual warmth as well as trepidation. A mare who’d worked in a Violent Crimes Division was almost a novelty around here. In the bouts of paranoia some episodes of inebriation brought within me, I suspected the townsfolk of hating me. Of looking at me with angry faces and silent exclamations violence would come upon them, because I’d touched it before. The blood must still be there, somehow, someway, they’d thought, or at least I thought they thought. Then sense would overtake me, or at least the hangover would, and I’d find myself eased back into reality.

“Alright,” I said, “if Central wants me, they got me. Red and Brush, you work crowd control. I don’t want anypony coming any closer to the scene. The rest of you, canvas the crowd for witnesses, then the neighbors. Somepony heard something, now we need to know if somepony saw something.”

The group nodded and set to their various tasks. I turned back towards Jay and gave a loose smile. “Sorry to hijack your case.”

“You’re better at these things, anyway,” he said with a shrug. “Though if you make it big in this case, I at least want some minor commendation.”

“Whatever you say. Now walk me through.”

He jerked his head to the shop’s ajar front door and glanced at the dark brown mahogany filling the frame. The window near the top displayed little glass, most of the jagged pieces lying on the sidewalk.

“Not much glass on the inside,” I said. “Unlikely to be a break-in, then. Probably got shattered when our Pony of Interest burst out.”

“Right,” Jay said. “The sign says the shop closes an hour after sunset, and the neighbors heard the glass break around sunset.”

“Meaning anypony could’ve walked in.” I ran a hoof through my black mane. “So now we’ve only got the suspect list narrowed down to the whole town.”

“Want to check out the clerk?”

I nodded and followed him inside, careful not to step on the glass. We made our way through the assorted clocks and hoof-carved furniture filling the small shop. At the end of the cramped space, we found two paramedics standing over a pony lying on the ground. His blonde mane sat combed into a strange hairdo that resembled some weird kind of beehive. His light-green fur looked disheveled, as did the thin goatee speckling his chin. He stared up at the ceiling with his eyes half-closed, mumbling something. His wings twitched every few seconds, the left one smacking a small, open box lined with crimson velvet. I noticed the faint impression of a circular object filling the interior.

I turned my eyes back to the quivering stallion. “What’s up with him?” I said.

The paramedic closest to the stallion’s head gave a frustrated sigh. “It’s the strangest thing. His heart rate and other vitals are normal, and he’s fully conscious, but he’s not responding to any of our questions.”

“He say anything?”

“Nothing we can make out. Just moves his mouth in a weird way and says gibberish.”

“We got a name for him?” I sighed.

“Zephyr Breeze,” a voice said behind me.

“How did y--?” I froze when I turned, as did Jay and the paramedics. Standing before us was a pony I’d heard about many times, but only seen in the newspapers. Her purple fur contrasted with the violet-tinged mane flowing in perpetuity and bright enough to light up the darkened store.

I bent down quickly, an act I could hear Jay and the paramedics imitate.

“Princess Twilight,” I said, rising. “What are you doing here?”

Twilight’s eyes gave me a once over. Her face showed nothing, but I could see a distinct nervousness in her eyes. “I… was in town, visiting the Friendship School. I heard some kind of ruckus was going on here, so I came to investigate.”

“Well, we’re certainly surprised.” I let out a chuckle meant to be playful, but just sounded nervous.

“Word travels fast in a small town, Lieutenant, and I can’t bear to know any of my little ponies have gotten hurt.”

“Rest assured, Princess, we’ll be--“

The princess’s eyes wandered from me to Zephyr. Her face, originally in a state of anxiety, turned fearful.

“Princess, what’s the matter?” I said.

“Oh… nothing. I just think Zephyr’s symptoms are similar to a horrid condition I read about when I was a student. An off-branch of epilepsy that makes a pony faint and spout nonsense. Horrible thing.”

If she saw my arching eyebrow, she didn’t comment on it. She merely swallowed and stood a little straighter.

“Have you started canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses?” Twilight said.

“Yes,” I said, a tint of annoyance in my voice. “We’re also checking the inventory for if anything was stolen.”

“Alright, good.” Her eyes wandered over to the velvet case. “Good.”

I gained a sudden urge to get the princess out of the crime scene. It was a sensation close to sacrilege for many of my colleagues, but any religiosity I’d inherited from my mother had waned over the years. Besides, the princess herself was shiftier than a house of slinkies on a fault line.

“Princess Twilight,” I said, “since you know who Zephyr is, I presume you know his next of kin?”

“Of course,” she said. “His sister Fluttershy is one of my dearest friends.”

“Fluttershy, huh?” Jay shook his head. “I’d hate to have to tell her the news. Poor thing’s high-strung enough to begin with.”

“In that case, it may be best if you deliver the news to her, Princess Twilight. It might be easier to hear it from you than a stranger.” I punctuated each word with an apologetic shrug, each one’s falseness another notch in my ever-increasing blasphemy.

For a moment suspicion filled her eyes. It soon melted into a warmth I’d heard she emanated. “You’re right, Lieutenant,” she said, turning back towards the shop’s front door. “She does need a good friend to help her through this. I’m… I’m sure you can handle things here.”

“As you wish, Princess,” I chirped, trying to mask my relief.

She stopped halfway to the door and turned. “If it’s all the same, Lieutenant, I want to be involved in this investigation from here on out. I don’t want whoever’s responsible for this getting off free. If there’s somepony responsible, of course,” she added quickly.

I was glad she was facing away from me, because my eyes were narrowing faster than I thought possible. “The department is quite thankful for your assistance, Princess.”

She nodded, then made her way out the door. A general hush went out over the crowd, then the unmistakable flapping of wings.

“How long until you can get him to Ponyville General?” I asked the paramedics.

“Soon,” one said. “The wagon will be here any moment.”

“Good. Jay, walk with me.” We made our way down the aisles and stopped in front of the shop window. Along the windowsill sat a plate of cinnamon twists, hidden amongst the keepsakes by its smaller size. A paper placard demanded the reader to “TAKE ONE”. The crowd outside had narrowed somewhat, though more than a few eyes prowled over heads to catch glimpses of the scene.

“First question,” I said. “Did the Princess seem a little off to you too, or am I just suffering from no food?”

“Not just you.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Her timing was what you call ‘too perfect’. She knows something’s going on.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“So what’re you going to do? Run interference so she doesn’t stick her nose in?”

I shook my head. “You think anypony’s going to be able to stop a goddess incarnate from playing detective? No, I just need to know what she knows, and if we’re going to be caught squatting with whatever’s going on here. Can I get a hoof from you in this regard?”

Jay stared out at the crowd, then gave a curt nod. “Anything, as long as I’m not the one you pass the buck to if this thing blows up.”

“Good. Once we’re done here, I want you to go digging at the Friendship School. Ask the staff and students if our dear monarch has been there or was scheduled to be there anytime recently. I want to be sure her arrival isn’t a happy coincidence.”

“Okay. What do we do for now?” For the first time that night, his voice seemed tense.

“Wait for the squad to get back with the witness reports. Wait for the owner to get over here with her inventory list. Wait for Zephyr to wake up or not.” I reached over towards the cinnamon twists and sighed. “It’s going to be a long night,” I said, the sweetness dancing across my tongue.