Frostbite

It’s so cold. Everything is, I mean. The world, the mob…everything.

The cold world and the cold mob took everything from me.

Maybe I should slow down a bit.

My name is Frostbite. I’m a detective in Manehattan. I was married to the most beautiful mare in the world, Jetset. She was an actress with quite a reputation. We had a colt, who we named Looking Glass. He was great at finding things. Keys, socks, spare ink…anything and everything. Hell, I bet he could have found Celestia’s parents, wherever they ran off to.

But now he can’t find things, and my wife can’t act anymore.

It was about five years ago. I had come home one day from work. We had an ongoing foalnapping investigation into a girl named Curtain Call. Seems she wanted to be an actress, like my wife. Anyways, I had come home. “I’m home!” I called. My wife returned the call. “Hey, honey. How was work?”

I came into the kitchen, where she was cooking some stir-fry for dinner. “It’s going okay. Making good progress in the foalnapping case. How was yours?”

She smiled. “You know I don’t work unless I’m cast in something.”

“Yeah, but I just like to ask you things to hear the sound of your voice.” I put on the smoothest face I could muster.

She laughed. “You can be such a prick sometimes.”

“I know. Isn’t that why you keep me around?”

“I keep you around because I like to hear the sound of your voice,” she giggled. She came over to me and kissed me on the cheek, and I couldn’t help but blush. Always the smallest ones that make you blush the most. She went back to the stir-fry. She always made the best stir-fry. All of her ingredients molded together to make a taste that you wouldn’t forget. I’d be surprised her cutie mark wasn’t about cooking if I hadn’t seen her on the silver screen. Best performance I’d ever seen. She had played the antagonist in the second Daring Do movie, Daring Do and the Crystal Crown, Deep Pockets. Soon after, I had met her in person. It was a homicide investigation. A stallion named Lights had been shot, execution-style, and we needed to find out why. He had worked as a grip on the movie, so we questioned all of the cast and crew. I got Daring Do, her sidekick, and Jetset. I thought that they’d be pricks with inflated egos, but they were pretty nice and down-to-earth. When I met Jetset…I was stricken with how beautiful she was without her make-up on. Her coat was cream, and her long, brown mane flowed down over her face and onto her wings like a river. In other words, she was the most beautiful mare I had ever seen, and ever will see. She cooperated and answered my questions, but something still seemed…off. Like she hadn’t told me something. “Is something wrong, Mrs. Jetset?” I asked her.

“No,” she said, “and it’s Miss Jetset. I don’t even have a special somepony.”

I was genuinely surprised. “Really? I wouldn’t expect that from somepony as…”

She smiled. Her deep green eyes met mine. “Go on.”

I blushed. “…as beautiful as you.”

It was her turn to blush. “Thanks. I’ve had a few stallions before, but nothing lasting more than a few months.”

“Okay. Well, I…uh…guess I’ll be going now. Thanks for your time.”

“Wait,” she asked.

I turned around. “Yes?”

She was furiously blushing now. “Do you maybe want to…get some dinner later? I know a great Neighponese place.”

I blushed. Or was I still blushing from before? It didn’t matter. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Cool. Meet me here at seven?”

“See you then.”

That was the greatest day of my life.

“Dad!”

My son broke me out of my daydreaming.

“Oh. Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”

“I found your car keys. You don’t have to walk to work anymore.”

“It’s only a few blocks away. I could use the exercise.”

Jetset cut in. “Honey, you’re fine. You are perfectly normal for a stallion your age.”

I feigned anger. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that for a twenty-five-year-old stallion, you weigh, what, one-twenty?”

“About, yeah.”

“You are perfectly normal.”

“You know what I noticed? Whenever I talk about exercise, it always turns into a discussion about how I’m insecure about my weight. I’m a cop. It’s my job to make sure I am in top physical condition.”

Jetset sighed. “You win. I’m going to go make sure the stir-fry isn’t as burned as us, Glassy.” She couldn’t contain her soft giggles, and neither could Looking Glass.

“Speaking of,” Glassy spoke, “is that done? I am very hungry. Famished! Starved! Completely empty of food! Emaciated! Extremely-“

Jetset called from the kitchen. “We get it, Glassy. And the stir-fry is done. Come eat!”

We ate the amazing stir-fry and went to bed. It was a normal day. But tomorrow was a different story.

That’s the one where my wife and kid…leave me.

It was the day I had killed the Frog, the serial foalnapper, rapist, and murderer. Good riddance. I had come home. “I’m home!” I called. Nothing. Strange.

“Hello?” No response.

“Jetset? Looking Glass?”

I heard a scream, which became muffled after a second coming from upstairs.

It was Jetset.

I ran as fast as I could up the stairs. “Jetset, what’s-“ I was about to ask her what was wrong, and then I saw it.

A pony in a black suit was standing over her, covering her mouth with a pillow. In his other hoof was a large knife, about five inches long. They both looked at me. Before I could even pull my gun, the pony in the suit had smiled at me and plunged the knife into Jetset’s stomach.

“No!” I shouted. I drew my gun and blew the fucker away with three shots to the head. He fell over, dead before he hit the ground. I ran to Jetset. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…”

“Honey,” she managed to choke out.

I looked up at her, tears already spilling out.

“I’m going to be okay. I love you.”

“I love you too, honey.” I picked up her hoof and kissed it.

She let out a breath.

It was her last.

I heard another scream. Looking Glass came running up the stairs and into the bedroom where his mother and I were. Tears were in his eyes. “Daddy, what happened?”

“She’s gone,” was all I could manage.

Before he could respond, another pony carrying a gun came into the room, took aim at Looking Glass, and fired. Blood matted his grey coat, getting on his wings and his black mane and his magnifying glass cutie mark. His blue eyes stayed open, showing surprise as he fell over without a sound. The pony with the gun looked at me. “This is what happens when you mess with the mob,” he said.

I picked up my gun and taught him how to breathe through the new hole in his forehead.

“No…” I fell over onto my knees, too weak to even stand. “No, no, no, no, no…”

And I wept over my wife and son.

Their deaths would not be in vain.

I was going to murder every single last mobster, no matter what.

I was getting revenge.