Bug in a Blizzard

by Paracompact

20. Cold Snap

Sometimes, sleep was like a timid alley cat. The cadet had read that in a book at some point, or maybe heard it from a friend. In any case, on nights like these he felt he really understood its meaning: The more you called out to it and the more you chased it, then the more it ran away from you. But if you just lay down and ignore it, made no sudden moves over the course of several hours, then the cat just might work up the courage to approach you.

At around midnight, Bluebird could finally hear the cat approaching. But then, there began this tapping. A gentle but persistent tapping, a scraping sort of sound that made the cat lift its paw in alarm and look from side to side. Silly creature, afraid of the creaks and the cracks of this old house settling…

A piercing SNAP just outside the window sent the cadet bolting upright as the cat hissed and bounded away.

Crack tinkle tinkle.

And then it was quiet.

He didn’t know what he had heard, but it was absolutely not the house settling. He twisted around on his bed to look through the window above his headboard. The storm had died down, but visibility through the (literal) frosted glass wasn’t great. He couldn’t make out anything amiss in the small garden which his room on the second floor overlooked, and the tapping and scraping had ceased following the louder racket. Maybe it had just been icicles snapping off the gutter? Or a mound of snow from the roof piling up and—

Never mind. Amidst the shadows of the garden he could make out what appeared to be a body splayed across a mound of dirt and shattered pottery. His heart began to race, but he held out hope that it was just a trick of the light. Up until the body began to writhe about slightly, ahah…

Dear god. What was going on at this villa?

Bluebird tried the window, but it was sealed at the seams. Flying down was a no-go. He sprang out of bed and made for the door.

There was a body, it was undeniable. But that body was moving, it was still alive. Bluebird knew that he was too optimistic as an investigator, too emotionally invested overall. He knew it clouded his judgment. When push came to shove, though, when a crisis actually emerged, he liked to think he wasn’t such a sorry excuse of a cadet.

He threw the door open and prepared to glide at full speed down the hallway, but turned around when he remembered it: the beacon. It was right there, sitting on his nightstand, completely inert. Despite this shadowy figure (victim? perpetrator?) outside, Pesco’s traps hadn’t been triggered. Who, and how?

Not a further thought to waste on it. He went back to snatch it before doubling back, then took to the air down the corridor as fast as his wings could carry him. But, no sooner did he start than he had to brake to a halt once again. He heard a familiar voice, issuing from further down the hall:

“No. This case is tricky, but it is no false alarm.”

It was Pesco. Bluebird was glad he had stopped when he had.

“We’ve seen the changeling with our own eyes. They attacked my partner. They’re actively engaging in subterfuge against the investigation. They’re real, Commander, and despite what you might think…”

The cadet winced. He knew the choice he would make, no matter how long he thought about it: He wasn’t a useless partner, but he would have to be a faithless one, just this time.

He apologized to Pesco under his breath. If that was the changeling out there, injured and helpless, where would that leave them? What happened then?

He turned around and glided down a detour route as he quietly unzipped his saddlebag. He located the syringe (Pesco had never asked for it back) and held it at the ready. The Pesco in Bluebird’s mind made him promise that he wouldn’t be an idiot about this.

He sailed down a staircase and into some of the lesser-frequented halls of the villa. He knew there was a back door around here, one that led right to that garden—

Pain. Pain, and sparkling lights. For several seconds, that was all there was to experience. A blurry awareness returned to him, an awareness that he had collided headlong with something as he had burned around a corner. Yeah, he really preferred flying outdoors, thanks…

He opened his eyes to learn that something had in fact been Girard, who was already getting up to his feet and stammering his unwarranted apologies for not watching where he was going. That kid’s skull must have been made of something else.

The last stars evaporated from the cadet’s vision to reveal Grid Iron standing behind the griffon. “Yo! We were just looking for you!”

Girard reached out a claw to help Bluebird to his hooves. But just as he went to grab it, Girard recoiled with a gasp and withdrew it. His effusive apologies died on his lips, and he stared vacantly at the cadet.

“Woah, watch where you point that thing!” Grid said.

Bluebird looked at his outstretched hoof. Oh—he was still gripping that syringe, business-end forward. Not the politest way to greet someone, admittedly. He stuffed the syringe back in his pocket and righted himself to his four hooves.

He just noticed: The right side of Girard’s face, his whole cheek, glistened with blood. Had he busted his face open when they crashed? A closer inspection revealed this was not the case, for better or for worse. The bleeding stemmed from a slice wound in the form of three horizontal fissures across his cheek—shallow, but sharp.

“The changeling. He’s back at it again,” Grid said. “You just run in with him too, Bluebird?”

The changeling did that to Girard? “No, but something is going on outside in the garden. An emergency. Stay put, you two.”

“Outside?” Grid echoed. He looked to Girard. “Is that where you saw him run?”

“Um, umm…”

By this point, Bluebird had already left the conversation, but he caught sight of Grid immediately defying his command to stay put as he scooped the hapless griffon up by the arm and galloped alongside the cadet.

“Heck no, I’m backing you up on this!” he bellowed. “You’re going to have to hold me back once I get my hooves on the little freak!”

There was no time for this. Bluebird could only grit his teeth and hope that his unsolicited adolescent backup would prove a help and not a hindrance. “I’m not going to hold you back, Grid. You’re going to have to control yourself. You got that?”

Grid shot him a rebellious look. Girard trailed alongside like a kite on a short string.

Soon enough, they reached the back door. It was a delicate and unassuming little exit, made of more glass than wood. Bluebird slowed to a stop and reached out for the knob, but then caught himself—his plan, he realized, it may have had a kink in it. The door alarm, was it still armed?

Grid had no such second thoughts.

“Wait!” Bluebird called. It took too long to reach him; by the time Grid processed the order, he had already thrown his griffon baggage to the wayside and wrenched the door open.

“Yeah?” he hurled in reply, legs spread and ready to sprint out into the snowy night.

The cadet hastened to retrieve his beacon. But still the thing was dark, quiet, inert. Was it broken? Had Pesco forgotten to arm this door? Was the trap discovered somehow and disarmed?

There was far too much going on to speculate. “Never mind. Just play it safe, Grid, and stay in my line of sight. That’s an order.”

Grid nodded his understanding before stepping outside and scouting his surroundings. The cadet had his misgivings about allowing a civilian, a minor no less, to take point in an emergency like this. But truth be told, the earth pony athlete’s steely build and even steelier attitude in this moment led Bluebird to believe he could more than handle his own if it came to blows.

It was doubtless that he could handle Bluebird, if it came to blows.

Meanwhile, Girard was nowhere near as eager to follow along. He shivered slightly at the threshold from the cold outdoor air, and drew a hesitant step back in an effort to slink away.

Bluebird clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry you got dragged along, but you really shouldn’t go off on your own at a time like this.”

It didn’t click for him.

“It’s not safe.”

“… Oh.”

“Just stick with me, all right?”

Escorted by the cadet, Girard stumbled with halting steps through the threshold and outside. Hooves, claws, and paws all crunched through the thick layer of snow on the garden cement.

Grid, in the meantime, was throwing his head left to right, left to right, running forward and back like a dog on a chain to try to get a better view, all the while clearly straining to stick to the cadet’s order. The garden was a labyrinth of shadows, obstructed by the villa from the illumination of the night’s half moon. Only a small amount of light bouncing off the snow helped to distinguish the silhouettes of enormous potted plants and elaborate garden fencing.

The young earth pony took an about-turn too quickly, tripped over an ankle-high trellis, and fell flat onto his face. “Can’t see donkey dick out here,” he said, before immediately returning to his routine.

There was a better way to do this, the cadet realized. He looked around the ground, and despite the mess Grid had so far made of the snow, Bluebird managed to find them: hoofprints.

“B-B-Blanche…?” he heard the griffon say through chattering teeth. It seems he had come to the same idea. And Bluebird had to agree, these cue stick-like holes in the snow could be nothing but deer tracks.

“Or Bon,” the cadet added. Suddenly, he had an inkling who could have known to disarm the door alarm before leaving…

He hailed Grid over and told him of their plan to follow the hoofprints.

“Yeah, good idea, Little Guns.” His face was still stinging red from its date with the cement. “Good plan.”

Now, it was no longer a search—it was only a walk and a wait, patiently pursuing these tracks wherever they led, preparing for the worst behind each corner they turned. The prints kept close to the side of the villa, never veering off into the garden but for obstacles in the way.

All the while, there was only the crunching of snow to be heard. The crunching snow as well as the shivering, chattering, and throaty wheezing and coughing from Girard. Something about it was unnerving to the cadet. His shuddering, his quaking and lurching right now, he was handling the cold less like a griffon with plenty of brown fat and winter plumage, and more like a plucked chicken with pneumonia. The bird’s very shoulder felt like it was turning into a slab of cold meat under the cadet’s hoof…

Grid loosed a guttural cry: “Bon!”

There the scene was, the very one he had glimpsed outside his bedroom window. A body—Bon’s body, he could finally say for sure—lay with face and antlers burrowed in the dirt from a shattered potted plant. Bluebird’s stomach churned at the sight, and he could only imagine how much worse it was for the two kids. But he resisted the urge to look away, and he was glad he did: He could see Bon was still breathing.

In fact, he was moving. He seemed to have heard Grid’s cry, and now was attempting to stand. But what the cadet had mistaken for a foreleg was actually a hindleg bent entirely the wrong way, and Bon soon fell back into the dirt with a yelp and a whimper.

“Bon!” Grid began to scoop the deer up with a foreleg.

“Don’t move him!” Bluebird shouted. Didn’t that fancy high school teach anything about first aid?

In the same moment, the cadet scanned the scene for signs of danger. He found none. However, he did glimpse the glimmering metal of something curious, lying just nearby: It was the grappling hook they had confiscated from Grid’s room. Slowly but surely, things were adding up in the cadet’s head.

Grid complied with Bluebird’s order. He lay Bon down gently onto his back, but not without assaulting him with a disorienting string of questions as to his health and the changeling’s whereabouts. Bon ignored these, and preoccupied himself with wiping his nose and eyes with his hooves—an action which he quickly regretted, if the convulsive squinting from the dirt he’d rubbed into his corneas was any indication.

Once his vision returned, Bon sat up. He craned his neck inward, as if to examine himself and the state he was in. As he did so, his whimpering and his sniffling morphed into something else.

“Oh look at me,” he chuckled hoarsely.

His leg was broken, and his smoking jacket soiled and torn beyond recognition. A foundation of dirt and snot caked his face and framed two red, puffy eyes. He reeked of fertilizer and exotic wine.

Put simply, the deer was a mess.

“Fitting, isn’t it?”

And like that, the chuckle vanished. Tears like rivulets now streamed down his face, and his chest heaved as he began to weep.

“The heck do you mean, dude?” Grid’s face was screwed up, mixed with emotions. “Where’s the changeling?”

“Who knows,” Bon choked through the sobs. “You’re not the changeling. That I know. You never were.”

“Uh, yeah! Is that bad news or something?”

“Oh Grid,” he said, his chuckle rekindling. “You’re such a fool. You’re such a tool, and so am I. Can’t you see? We fit like lock and key…”

In the background, the cadet went to recover the grappling hook. Its rope was detached from the head, having cleanly snapped the fragile eyelet it had been fed through.

Bluebird held the broken instrument in his wing as he confronted the drunk, sobbing, jilted young master. “You must’ve taken this from Pesco’s room, huh?”

“Yes.”

“My mentor’s not the trusting type. You used a spare key to his room, to get at it while he slept?”

“Nope.”

“Did you pick the lock?”

“Oui, c’est ça.”

“And then, before you snuck out, you made sure to disarm the trap you had helped the detective set up on the door?”

“Why Cadet, they should promote you to detective!”

“And all of this—and please tell me I’m wrong about this part, Bon—all of this, just to test if that grappling hook we found was actually functional? If it could have been anything else but planted evidence?”

Another wistful smile. “What can I say. It couldn’t even support my scrawny body. Like my theory, it was a piece of junk.” He hiccuped, and added, “But I have to admit, it had a comedic sense of timing, didn’t it? Letting me climb for so long, so high, before cluing me in to reality. Mais non, I believe I’ve heard this joke before…”

“Seriously, dude?” Grid said. “You couldn’t have figured out a safer way to test something like that?”

“If the rope snapped, who really cared what happened afterward?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“A rhetorical one.”

“You’re an idiot. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Am I though?”

The two continued to bicker like this.

The cadet no longer had a place in the conversation—their issue was not one to do with the changeling. He looked back at Girard, however, and realized this night’s madness wasn’t over.

“Girard? Everything okay?”

Like Bon’s, Bluebird’s question was rhetorical. The griffon was squatted in the snow, gazing at his navel, claws gripped over his pale face as if to bury his nails into his skull. Strangely, he was no longer shivering, not even a little bit—he was stiff as a statue but for swimming, blinking eyes.

This was the worst timing for a panic attack.

He turned to the other two. “Grid, Bon. Watch over each other for a minute, okay?”

Their bickering had turned into shouting, and it was unclear whether either of them really heard the order. They were, however, watching over each other very closely, and looked to remain that way.

Feeling like the last survivor of a horror flick, the cadet by himself dragged the griffon back along the garden path and toward the door of the villa from which they had exited. Girard stumbled alongside the cadet as if in a trance.

“C’mon, Girard… It’s all right… All right? … Ahah…”

Girard was cold as a stone.

“Bon’s fine, Blanche is fine, you’re fine, it’s all going to be fine…”

“Gloria?” he muttered.

“Gloria’s fine, too. She’s just inside.”

“Are we, are we leaving,” he said to no one. “Already?”

“Huh?”

There was no answer.

“Listen, kid… You’re going to get through this. Everything. I promise.”

Ten minutes ago, the cadet had been asleep. Since then, he had juggled the roles of athlete, detective, and now counselor. The adrenaline coursing through his veins made it hard to sound compassionate. But somehow, through some miracle, his disjointed, vague words of comfort had their effect. By the time they reached the door, the griffon had snapped out of his trance and resumed his “normal” course of shivering.

Once inside, Girard took it upon himself to shake the snow off his feathers and wipe his face dry of his own stream of tears—to his credit over Bon, he didn’t indulge in them. He breathed deeply, in and out, in and out, on a slow and steady rhythm. He looked very familiar with the routine.

He worked up the breath to utter some words of explanation. “… S-sorry, it’s just… seeing them all, my friends, c-c-come undone like this… I-I-I-I—”

“Ahah.” Bluebird raised Girard’s head up by the chin with the tip of a wing. A droplet of blood from Girard’s cheek stained Bluebird’s furthest primary feather. “They’ll be all right. Don’t worry about them. You just look after yourself.”

This provoked no response from Girard.

“Hang in there, kid. Just keep breathing.”

After about a minute of Girard’s self-soothing and relaxation techniques, the color finally returned to his face. He had warmed up by this point, and no longer shivered. Nonetheless, the same ghosts seemed to haunt him. He knew there had to be ghosts haunting him, if that gash on his face was as painful as it looked.

“Girard,” the cadet spoke up, “I’m guessing it wasn’t a changeling that gave you that swipe, was it?”

He tensed up. “Who else could it have been?”

“Do you really want me to say it?”

“… It was, it was her. Gloria. The changeling d-disguised as Gloria.”

“That’s what we can tell the others, if that’s what you would like,” Bluebird said. “But, are you so sure the changeling is the one responsible?”

He rubbed his shoulder.

“Because if it is, the cop in me will have to ask you to revisit every last detail of whatever happened. But if it isn’t, well, we can always talk about it later. We can say the changeling got away. We can tend to your and Bon’s injuries, and we can just go back to bed.”

It took a while for Girard to think it over. He looked down at his open palm, as if examining a poker hand. He looked back up, as if realizing he had to fold. He gave a dismal nod.

As far as admissions went, it would have to do. Bluebird felt he had a trash hand, too.

“Every single thing has been my fault, not hers.”

There was more to be said, but neither of them found the words for it.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Oof. I don't know who I feel most sorry for in all of this. On the one hand, the military backup may be just what's needed to force everything into a resolution. On the other, they could end up forcing the issue to the point that multiple people break. We'll have to see what happens.

[Scyphi]

His shuddering, his quaking and lurching right now, he was handling the cold less like a griffon with plenty of brown fat and winter plumage, and more like a plucked chicken with pneumonia. The bird’s very shoulder felt like it was turning into a slab of cold meat under the cadet’s hoof…

So either Girard's that bad with or poorly adapted to the cold, which doesn't seem likely as the Griffon Kingdom is hardly a tropical paradise in of itself, or...

You know, we could throw Gloria out into the snow for a bit, see if she has a similar reaction or not. Even if she doesn't, she'd have still gotten a taste of her own medicine.

It was the grappling hook they had confiscated from Grid’s room. Slowly but surely, things were adding up in the cadet’s head.

Oh, Bon, you doof. That grappling hook was clearly not meant to be actually used. I'm guessing it caved under his weight and he took a tumble.

So that just leaves why Bon was doing this in the first place, but I suspect that was essentially him not dropping a subject when he should've.

Still, I hope he's not too seriously injured.

“Who knows,” Bon choked through the sobs. “You’re not the changeling. That I know. You never were.”

Well, at least you know that now. I mean, I could've told you that some chapters back--oh wait. I already did.

But I get it. In Bon's emotional state, I can see why he felt he needed to learn it for himself, regardless of the consequence.

I'm sorry it had to end up like this, with a pain both physical and emotional.

“Seriously, dude?” Grid said. “You couldn’t have figured out a safer way to test something like that?”

“If the rope snapped, who really cared what happened afterward?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“A rhetorical one.”

“You’re an idiot. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Am I though?”

Oh, get a room you two. Honestly, as much as I sympathize with Bon (idiot though he is at the moment), there's really nothing more to see or learn here.

...Say, how's Girard holding up at the moment?

“Bon’s fine, Blanche is fine, you’re fine, it’s all going to be fine…”

Well, I don't know if "fine" is really the right word for Bon here at the moment, but yes, he is at least alive and, somehow, not in mortal peril at the moment.

That said, it got him and Grid finally talking...sort of...but the point being is that maybe they'll finally get it all off their chests, the both of them, and finally veer towards some sort of resolution on their side of things in the process, so...maybe some good can still come out of that.

“Every single thing has been my fault, not hers.”

Poor Girard. Not for the first time, I really want to reach into the story and give him a big ol' hug.

That said...that gash of his was definitely Gloria's doing--that was how the blood Pesco noticed on the phone got there, wasn't it? It'd also explain why Gloria was up and about to answer the phone in the first place. Probably hadn't even had time to clean herself up afterwards, though it does seem odd she'd do that, like she hadn't even cared, when she's been so meticulous about covering her own butt. I dunno, maybe she thinks it'll mess with Pesco, considering he's liable to assume the worst from that, and that'll amuse her for a bit.

Y'know, with that though, maybe it's Gloria who's the changeling...assuming Pesco's right to any degree about how the changeling is playing mind games with them, that would seem to fit with Gloria's character, manipulative as she is.

Either that, or it's Girard, and he's subject to Gloria's abuse because of it...

...yeeeaaaah, that's probably the theory I'm going to have to keep leaning towards for the moment, that Girard's the changeling, because here's what I think happened: Girard, fan of Blanche's work that he is, and having already gotten a sneak peek at Blanche's changeling-related book that we already know Girard took an immediate liking to, couldn't resist waiting to find out more and, in a moment of weakness, snuck into Blanche's room to steal another peek at the manuscript. Unfortunately, he accidentally left behind evidence of his presence there in the form of the wing fragment, and now everything's starting to fly apart.

So now Gloria's been left to try and recover things by, I suspect, trying to shift the blame elsewhere, even if it means framing one of their friends to take the fall for Girard (which is of no concern to Gloria, as it's already been pointed out she's probably not as attached to her "friends" as she'd like to convey). However, she blames Girard for this mess and is furious for the inconvenience this puts on her, trying to save both of their skins, and it's turned abusive (or at least more than it had been before), and it's wearing poor Girard thin. But sadly, if this is all the case, then he fears coming forward to say anything (at least directly, remember the note) much less reveal himself will only cause Gloria's wrath to come down upon him in full, and he fears that far more...at least for now, as it's clear (changeling or not) he hates what all this is doing to his friends.

Girard, assuming I'm right and you are the changeling, this all wasn't your fault. Gloria's the one who's making an utter mess of this and worse for everyone, not you. And that fact absolutely does not make her any sort of hero for it, and I only hope Gloria gets the justice in full that's due to her before this is all over.

In fact, I jokingly commented last chapter that we should volunteer Gloria as the "prankster" to cover for the changeling, but now I'm going to suggest it again only I'm deadly serious about it now. She deserves it, and probably so much more still.

Also, might as well add that as of this chapter I'm pretty much certain, with definiteness this time, that there is only ONE changeling at play here.

According to the author, there's 26 chapters total, so we're only six away from the end--we've gotta be heading towards the endgame now.

[Amos Anon]

Girard and Gloria are either both changelings, or one knows the other is, and has known from the beginning. At this point in the story, that's what all the evidence points to for me. Seeing how Girard acted in the cold, and given the abusive/ protective nature of his relationship with Gloria makes me almost certain of it.

[Comma Typer]

At this point, I'm nearly done with thinking about suspicions. Bon may have fooled himself into thinking that Grid isn't the changeling, but he's already shown a capacity for deceit during the case through this breaking-and-entering business; leaving Grid unsupervised may spell trouble if he's the changeling... or not, because he might be in desperate need of love energy that, for some reason, he's only now recognizing that it could be from Bon; Girard as the tragic changeling may be true, given that Gloria has an alibi against being the changeling during Bluebird's previous rumble-and-tumble... but Girard might be so adamant about it anyway because perhaps Gloria has been the changeling for so long. This is not to mention that Blanche has some momentum because she's apparently studying the parchment and wing right now, and with Zorn getting better from his sickness, what is he doing now? And of course, there's Gloria whose vile revelation of character may be true or simply a diversion.

The truth is, all the suspects might be the changeling if the disguised-for-years theory is true. Conventional cross-examination and the like probably won't work because Scolus might've become the mask; of course he can answer the questions well because he's lived through the memories. The only hitch in this is what the fate of the real creature would be: already dead and Scolus is living up to the mantle? Maybe. Maybe not.

I don't know, and I'm willing to take a backseat and see the whole thing unravel. Grid's fears about the changeling tearing the group apart is slowly becoming true, what with him arguing with Bon, Gloria being nasty... hey, it'd be funny but also rewarding if it's Zorn who ends up getting the gang back together, given Pesco telling him to trust his friends.