14. Interview with No Tea and No Biscuits
I finish my story, and realise I’m shaking. Rainbow Dash drapes a wing over me. A click, a hiss and a clunk as Trixie cracks open a can of beer and drops it in front of me. I down half in a mouthful.
I don’t look up at them. Nothing against them, just...
Half of it’s that if they look at me the wrong way like I’m some sad fuck with one eye, one leg and no wings in a military hospital, or like I’m some loopy veteran who sleeps in a separate bed to her husband so that she won’t strangle him after a nightmare thinking he’s a filthy dog, or even if they just look at me like they’re thinking really hard about what they should or shouldn’t say, I’m gonna tear their fucking faces off.
The rest of it is eye contact. I don’t feel like eye contact right now. I feel like five cans of beer, two slugs of bourbon, and a deep-fried, pancake-wrapped, hamster-on-a-stick.
“Hey.”
It’s the pink asshole. Talking at me. Talking at me, as if that stupid cotton-candy whacked-out mind-warped piece of chewed-up chewing gum would have anything worth saying to me.
I look up.
I see the look she’s giving me. It takes me a second to place it, and then I don’t feel like tearing her face off. In fact, I kinda feel bad for wanting to tear her face off.
It was the same look Cheese gave me when we met for drinks last year.
I take another sip of beer. I’m not shaking so badly now. Thinking about Cheese helps.
Pinkie is still looking at me. I answer her. “Yeah?”
She gives me a hangdog grin that comes all the way up one side of her face and half-way up the other. “Get any cool scars out of it?”
I burst out laughing. I laugh so hard I almost fart. Zephyrous and all his hordes, I just can’t help myself, and as I laugh, I can feel the pressure leave the room and the shakes leave my body.
I’m almost wiping away tears by the time I get myself together to answer. Pinkie is grinning all the way, now. I turn around and spread my wings.
“Nothing great,” I say, “Pussy little keyhole scar where that bolt near crippled me. Top of left wing, and most of it’s from where the barber pulled it out of the other side. See it?”
Pinkie snorts. “It looks like you’ve got a butthole on your back. A backhole.”
“Hah! You should have seen it when it first got patched up and was oozing pus. Not a pretty sight, I tell ya.”
“Any other cool cuts? Or superlative stitches? Or even bizarre bruises?”
“Ehh. Got a few cuts but nothing to write home about.” I turn back around. Everyone at the table seems more relaxed now.
Twilight Sparkle is next to speak. “What happened to Cheese?”
I finish the can before I answer, and Trixie passes me another. I crack it open, and say “Same thing that happened to me. Rescue, evac, three months in an induced coma, three months recovering in a military hospital, psych assessments, drugs to treat battle fatigue, standard stuff. ‘Course, I stayed with Intelligence, but she got a discharge and left the military. She set up some kind of pathfinding company down in Maos, I think. We meet up every year or so for drinks.”
The unicorn nods, and then her expression clouds up. “Trevor is still alive, and in Fillydelphia. What are we going to do about him?”
“I will tell him to mind his own freakin’ business if and when I see him again. If he doesn’t, then we’ll figure something out. I know how he works.”
She and Pinks both nod along, so I figure it either satisfies them or they don’t feel like pushing it right now.
Trixie clears her throat. “We still have the matter of our guest to attend to. He’ll be waking up soon, if he hasn’t already.”
A dark-purple light glows from Twilight’s horn, and the air ripples in a strange, syrupy way. “That’s not a problem,” says Twilight, “He’ll wake up when we want him to wake up.”
I could get used to having an archmage around.
“How well do you guys know this Goodflank dude?” asks Rainbow Dash.
Trixie conjures a notepad and pencil, and flashes a shark-like smile. “Well enough to find his tender spots. Come now, we have an interview to plan...”
* * *
It takes an hour or so to flesh out the details, but soon enough me, Trixie and Goodflank are sitting in a tiny room inside Pinkie’s Mare-Do-Well lair. The room’s completely bare except for a table, three chairs, a light, and our kit, which is as follows: pencil, paper, manilla folder filled with photographs, one jug of chilled water, three plastic cups, and a flask of Saarvik vodka.
Dash and the others agreed to let us carry out the interview as me and Trixie have worked together like this before, but they’re watching the whole thing from the outside. Dash wants to keep an eye in case anything goes wrong. Twilight Sparkle wants to make sure we don’t miss anything. Pinkie probably wants to check we’re not going to kill Goodflank, or bust him out. She’s freaking out over nothing, but I can’t blame her for being careful.
Goodflank’s still out cold. True to Sparkle’s word, he hasn’t stirred, and won’t wake up until Trixie gives him a little jolt.
Trixie gives him a little jolt.
He stirs, and before he even lifts his smooth, smug face off the table, I grab him by the horn, push the neck of the flask between his lips, and pour vodka into his mouth. He chokes and splutters, but I keep holding and pouring until he’s drank at least half of it.
I drop him and he hits the table chin-first, coughing out the vodka that went down the wrong way. His glasses are squiffy on his head, and he looks more confused than a squid orgy. He doesn’t lift his head, he just stays there and groans softly.
I figure I should get things rolling.
“‘Sup, dweeb.”
“Oh,” he says dully. “Oh.” This time there’s recognition. “Gilda. It’s been a while.”
“Not long enough, Dickflank.”
“My apologies. I didn’t expect to run into you so soon, and... The Magnificent Presto, was it?” he says, looking straight at Trixie. Her face sours, but she says nothing.
Goodflank sits up straight, looks around the room, looks at his unbound hooves, looks at the bare table, runs a hoof over his unbound horn, scans the desk for anything that might be a tool or a weapon. “And I’m not even tied up. That’s very trusting of you, Gilda.”
I laugh. “What’s the point? You’re a fuckin’ dork, Goodflank, with half a bottle of vodka in you. You try and wink out of the room, assuming that little choade of a horn could do that in the first place, and Trixie will bounce you off the ceiling. If you try to walk out before we’re done talking, I’ll sit you back down. And if you try fight past me, I’ll tear your freakin’ heart out and eat it in front of you, and don’t think I won’t.”
He sits still in his chair for a moment, then nods. “I see. This is a very civilised interrogation room, Gilda. I expected to see more pliers.”
“Torture? What’s the point? So you’ll cry, you’ll lie, you’ll probably die and I’ll laugh my beak off, but it’s not like I’ll get anything real outta it. ‘Sides, I don’t need torture. I’ve got something better.”
Trixie opens up the manilla folder, and spills half a dozen photographs and documents across the table. Paperwork for deals he wasn’t authorised to make. Pictures of his fun with Trotsky. Fudged expense reports. A few things that fit under Goodflank’s name and will make the Equestrian Intelligence Agency see ‘COMPROMISED AGENT’ in giant neon lettering. The kind of thing that will get him investigated, reassigned well away from Fillydelphia and all the wonderful cookie jars within, and dumped in the ass-end of nowhere.
Goodflank sorts through the papers, and looks up with a grimace. “Blackmail. I assume you’ll hand these over to my superiors if I don’t answer your questions to your satisfaction?”
“No, these are going to your superiors whatever you say,” says Trixie. “You tried to bomb a restaurant, and our partners don’t like that, so you’re going to be quietly moved by your bosses for everyone’s good.” She pulls out a second folder, with more pictures. This time they show Goodflank with his hooves all over a cyoctene bomb, inside Il Pomodoro Dulce. “Now this, this is what we will send to your bosses and to Special Branch, then you’ll spend a very long time in the dungeons, or a longer time in the gardens.”
“Damn straight,” I say, “And this particular sword’s gonna be dangling over your danglies for a long fuckin’ time.”
“...I see.”
“You sure about that, Goodflank? Let me explain it just in case. If you lie to us, you’re fucked. If you mislead us, you’re fucked. If you hide the truth, you’re fucked. If you forget anything, you’re fucked. In fact, you’re gonna have to work fucking hard not to get fucked harder than a minotaur’s call-girl.”
Of course, it’s not gonna work just like that. It’s still a balance, even with all our leverage. If he thinks we’ll pull the trigger whatever he says, he’ll just lie, and if he thinks we won’t pull the trigger whatever he does, he’ll lie even more. So there’s got to be some level of trust between us. We’ve got to leave him with a reason to get out of this room, but at the same time get all the information we need. That means giving him a bit of wiggle room, which gives him a chance to slip stuff past us. We’ll have to outwit him.
It’s not as entertaining as pulling his teeth out one by one for sure, but it’ll actually get us results. Plus, the clean-up is much easier.
I stretch back in my seat and look right at Goodflank. “So, how’d you end up working under Trotsky?” I ask.
I already know the answer from Pinkie and the book of names, or at least the bits she was willing to share with me. I know the answers to a few questions I’m gonna ask him. I want to check exactly how much he’s lying to me.
Goodflank clears his throat. “Well, I wouldn’t say I was working under—”
I lean across the table and backhand him across the face hard enough to knock him out of his seat. Then, I walk round and press a hindpaw between his hindlegs until he squeaks, grab his face, and slap him again. When his horn lights up, I slap that too, sending a little tingle through my claws and making him shout in pain.
Torturing information out of a prisoner doesn’t work. They’ll say anything to make the pain stop, and since the interrogator is bringing in all their pet theories to the session, they’ll latch onto the first clue about what their torturer wants to hear and then let confirmation bias do the rest.
Still, slapping an interviewee around for getting coy or making a joke has its uses. It keeps them from going off on tangents and stalling for time while they think up a more convincing lie. It keeps them thinking about your question. And it stops Goodflank from getting on my nerves.
He gets the message after a few more slaps and stops resisting. I stick a claw in his mouth and drag him back into his chair by his teeth, letting his head drop straight onto the table surface when I let go. As he groans in pain, I walk round the table and sit back down.
“Goodflank,” I say, “You’re pretty witty. Right now, you’re also pretty pretty. Clam up if you want, you know the consequences for that, but if you freakin’ dare joke or kid or deflect your way out of any of my questions, all that witty will very much be at pretty’s expense, y’dig?”
He looks at me darkly as he nods, and then takes a sip of water.
“Good. Now, I asked you, how did you end up working under Trotsky?”
He clears his throat again, and wipes away a little blood from his lips. Bruises are already starting to show on his cheekbones. “It started as quid pro pro. I got into a spot of trouble with some ponies in Trotholm — Loyalists, some of Solros’s ponies — and they followed me back to Equestria. I evaded them in a few cities until they nearly killed me in Manehattan. The EIS didn’t want to hear it, so I asked around. Trotsky reached out and offered me a job for a job. I helped her keep some friends out of the dungeons. In exchange, she kept away the Loyalist agents she could reason with, and buried the ones she couldn’t.”
I jot a line down in the notepad, and Trixie does the same. So far, so true.
“And why did you keep working with her?”
He thinks for a moment — only a moment — and then replies, “Money. I can provide her with information and services that very few other ponies could and fewer still are willing to do, and she compensates me very generously.”
Ah. The seed of a lie here. “Just money, huh?” I ask, “There’s nothing else between you?”
“Yes, we are physically intimate,” he spits, “It’s a lonely job and she’s rather charming when she wants to be.” The reality of his outburst hits him, and he immediately shrinks back and looks away, eyes downcast, fearing retaliation.
I spare a glance Trixie’s way, and she gives me a subtle nod.
“We’re in the same business,” I say, “I know the drill. Now, the bombing. That little toy you were carting around would have taken out the restaurant, everypony in it, and half the buildings around it. Why use it for a hit?”
“Trotsky...” He spends two seconds dragging a hoof over his forehead as if he’s trying to figure out how to explain something tricky. If he spends a third, he’s getting a slap. “Trotsky has plans. She didn’t just want to do a hit, she wanted to send a message.”
“To the Macaronis?”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s bigger than that. As Trotsky sees it, the Equestrian government and the EIS are lethally unconcerned about the plight of ponies settled outside of Equestria. Our government seems content to ignore immigration concerns and racial tensions in Trotterdam, Trotholm and Stalliongrad, and the little flare ups on the coast of Tarandroland, and the tensions with both the Diamond Dog Nations and the Provincial Donkey Territories.
“Ponies are already losing their sovereignty, having to bow down to foreign powers, and our government sits on its hooves and sees it as no more between a tussling match between two dogs over a roasting bone. These conflicts will escalate. Trotsky is doing her best to make sure ponies will win these conflicts, but as long as Equestria is content to stick its head in the sand, even our wins will be bloody and drawn-out.”
“And where exactly does a sixty-litre cyoctene bomb come in to play?” I ask.
He replies, “These are the weapons that will be used in the conflicts if the Equestrian government does not stand up for the right to living space for all ponies. These weapons will be used against ponies, to terrorize and subjugate them, and ponies will be forced to adopt them as a defensive measure. A cyoctene bomb in Fillydelphia would show all of Equestria the horrors that come of these conflicts. It will force them to confront the reality of conflict, and they will better be able to imagine the fates of ponies they abandon to our enemies. The Equestrian government would be forced to intervene out of compassion and unwillingness to let ponies suffer. All of this for a restaurant full of mob ponies and a team of second-rate brunch cooks.”
I lean back and openly sneer. “And you believe that horseshit?”
“Trotsky believes it. I’m skeptical, personally, but she was paying me an awful lot of money. I know you’re content to carve a bloody swathe through whoever your bosses pit you against until your dying breath, but I would quite like to retire from this awful business.”
“You’ll bomb restaurants for that?”
He rolls his eyes, “Oh, please—”
As I stand up and raise a claw, he falls out of his chair in fright. When I walk around to pick him up, he’s curled up in the fetal position, tail curled under his dock, one hoof stuck out to keep me away, the other trying to cover as much of his face as possible. He’s looking up at me with sheer terror, so I figure he’s got the message. I’m gentler this time when I sit him back in his chair.
I put my claws under the desk, out of sight. “You were saying?”
Goodflank swallows and suppresses a shudder. “Do the math. I work for Trotsky for three years and then disappear to some far corner of the earth, never to be seen again. You keep working for Griffon Intelligence for thirty years until you retire. Which one of us do you think ends up with a higher body count?”
I smirk at him. “Not judging,” I say, “Just curious. How were you gonna spend all that money, though? The Royal Guard and Special Branch and anyone else who cared to look would have found Trotsky’s big pile of bombs in two days easy, if you had set that thing off. From there, they’d have got to you.”
He smirks right back. “I was lucky they shipped those bombs out at nine pm tonight, then. All they would have found is a burnt-out shell of a factory.”
I do my best not to grin and say exactly how true that second sentence was. Good old Trev.
“Okay, then. Trotsky’s in a gang war with the Wharfies and the Macaronis. What’s that about?”
Goodflank raises an eyebrow like I just asked for pate on my toast. “With the Wharfies? I can’t speak for the rest of the Kurierzy and their petty grudges, but it’s smuggling for the most part, plain and simple. Trotsky relies on smuggling to keep her activities out of the country running smoothly, and the Wharfies want to control as much of it as possible.”
“Right. And the Macaronis?”
He raises his eyebrow like that again, looks at me, and then looks across at Trixie, like he thinks he’s the center of some devious prank. “...You want me to confirm information you’ve already had, I take it? All right, most of it revolves around your boss, Weams—”
Little grey rabbit running across the snow. An opening.
“How the fuck do you know about Weams and me?” I inject.
“I know I’ve done much to indicate otherwise over the past few days, Gilda, but I am not a moron. Weams is the principal agent for Griffon Intelligence in Fillydelphia. You lack the imagination to work for anypony but Griffon Intelligence. Therefore, Weams is almost certainly your boss.”
“What? How do you — How do you even know that Weams is GI?” I’m curious about that, because I fuckin’ didn’t. “That’s more than classified!”
“We were in Highfrench at the same time, and he was not so circumspect those days. I’ve kept an eye out for him since. He didn’t remember me, I’m sure, or he would have tried to knock me off quite some time ago. Anyway, I know you’ve been associating with his little errand boy Puddinghead. Assuming he’s not in a shallow grave already, you could ask him about it. If anyone else has leaked that information, that fat idiot is probably at the root of it.”
I nod. We continue the interview, but I let Trixie lead for the rest of it.
Goodflank had just given us some very interesting information.
And it’s time for another chat with Puddinghead.
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The plot thickens...
Weams didn't sound familiar. Is that someone mentioned earlier, or a new name?
4445906
Mentioned briefly earlier as one of the key players inside the Macaronis power struggle.
Is Gilda gonna have to smack a b
ch?
mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/1241_large.jpg
"her."?
And cool, knowledge on interrogation methods!
... why do I feel so gleeful inside?
I love how, the situation at hand, intimately accurate this chapter has been. When it comes to how the "interview" is playing out that is. Makes me wonder just how many ways you've been around the block to write this all so well.
4446080
Because I just updated Banishment Decree, of course!
(Also, thanks for catching that, just fixed it.)
Why I did not find this earlier is a mystery, but man do I feel tingly.
You're awesome.
4446129
Tricky in Gilda's case, because she's not technically EIS. She's GI, and GI have told EIS to cut ties, so EIS have less wiggle room than they'd like.
They have no excuse for not dealing with Trixie, however...
Holy shit. Another one? Damn, I think I'd almost forgotten just how awesome this is.
4446205
...changed one typo to another typo. Fixed! And, glad you approve!
4446210 lol
Good Chapter
Well written and solidly built from top to bottom.
4446169
Maybe her close proximity to multiple Elements of Harmony is making things tricky for the EIS?
Or whatever force was behind Gilda not dying at the start of the story also dealt with Trixie's assassin?
4446666
The EIS probably wouldn't decommision an asset by sending an assassin, as only one attempt needs to fail before that asset ducks down like an ingrown hair and causes lots of pain for everyone. But, a bunch of hush money, several threats, and support to keep them out of harms way and out of causing trouble would go a long way. They couldn't do that for Gilda, and didn't bother with Trixie. Partly because they didn't really consider her an asset, just a contractor whose services were no longer required.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
This story of yours is one of the best fics on this site, and now you're returning to continuing it. The characterization is incredible, and it makes it utterly believable to have the FiM characters in a ponified version of a modern espionage story.
4446869
Your praise makes me blush! It's really, really nice to see such good feedback for what is basically the first proper story I've ever written.
Brilliantly done, particularly the asides about what works and what doesn't regarding interrogation techniques.
4446909
The story you're telling is worth the praise. Please don't let it slip towards oblivion again.
You know how to tickle my worldbuilding boner.
4454276
A russ is a type of pony IRL. Coalmilk is a made-up word for crude oil.
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No, I freely admit that this was not realism and dipped the tone of the story right into pony hell. Chalk it up to a mixture of authorial inexperience, early-installment weirdness, and reading waaaaaaay too many Garth Ennis Punisher: Max comics at the time.
Great to see this updated so quickly. This is one of my all-time favorites.
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And you've stuck with me all the way! Glad to see you like it!
Still kicking flank and taking names... and the story isn't dead!
I smell something burning... I'm surprised no one noticed it sooner. That will have to be taken care of when I come back.
(Ugh. Bad DDF, no more vague text references.)
4454489
I knew I recognized that speech about Pinkie Pie as Mare Do Well from one Microchip gives about the Punisher. This whole thing has a very Punisher feel to it, the main characters are violent maniacs but the bad guys are slavers and worse so the audience can still root for them. Honestly, it feels more like the Punisher with spy stuff than Burn Notice a lot of the time.
That's not necessarily a criticism. This has a lot more of a unique feel to it than I was expecting originally, though you've overdone the darkness occasionally, perhaps.
OMG Burn Notice crossover