Chapter 1: Irrelevant List
Irrelevant List
A light blue stallion with an unkempt, dark grey-blue mane stretched contently on the large bed, reaching out a wing to stroke the mare laying next to him. The pegasus with rainbow locks lazily opened one dark magenta eye, smiling at her coltfriend as his feathers reached her flank, lightly brushing against the cloud with a rainbow thunderbolt coming out of it. She teasingly batted his wing away, making him chuckle and retreat his wing, showing a winged yellow bolt on his own flank.
A light blue mare with wildly tangled and overgrown rainbow mane and tail sat in an empty train car, slumped over in the early morning light. Her unpreened wings barely shielded her from glancing eyes as she stared blankly at her own muddy back hooves resting against the ground.
"Move it, punk," a grouchy voice snarled from the opening door. The homeless mare slowly lifted her eyes to see two stallions confronting each other in the doorway, one a unicorn and one an earth pony. The one closer moved his mane slightly to show an apparatus with a barrel, a combustion chamber, and a trigger with a rope attached to it. These contraptions had been introduced to Equestria fairly recently, but had already become a common sight.
"You call that a gun?" the unicorn sneered with a cocky grin. "I'll show you a gun. You won't even see it, you'd be dead so fast."
"Chill out," a second unicorn said, shoving the first through the door. "Everyone's packing now, let the punk go."
The earth pony hastily went out the door as two more unicorn stallions came in.
"I told you we should have walked," the third groaned.
"Relax. We're getting a new shipment soon, we'll have firepower to spare." The first spotted the rainbow mare, who looked down and moved one of her forelegs so something at her side was pushed against her fur. He smirked. "Besides, if we walk, we don't get to meet new friends."
The unicorn reached out a hoof and grabbed a bottle of berry-flavored booze from the mare's side. Quickly and forcefully, the mare lashed out her own hoof, twisting it around his and holding it tightly. He looked at her momentarily, before she seemed to shake a little and abruptly let go. Pushing it off as normal for a probably deranged homeless mare, he pulled it away from her and set it down a few seats away.
"What, did your mother never teach you how to share?" the stallion sneered, his friends advancing on her. "Maybe we'll just have to teach you."
The ringleader sparked up his horn, but nearly instantly the mare bolted to her hooves and slammed her forehead against his, hearing a CRACK from the protrusion of bone. She quickly kicked out her two back legs, hitting a second and sending him into a window, making it crack in a spiderweb pattern. The third and fourth both began to use magic against the pegasus, sending her to the floor. However, to their complete surprise, they couldn't hold her there; she used her wings to push herself up a few inches, then shot all four of her legs out at full force, hitting their legs and making them stumble. The mare used her shoulder to ram one into the other, throwing them across the car and hitting their heads on the wooden portion of a chair. The ringleader had at this point struggled to a standing position, and the pegasus lunged forwards, pressing both front hooves against opposite sides of his neck, both strangling him and cutting off circulation at the same time. As the unicorn's eyes went wide and fearful, the blue mare's didn't change in the slightest, remaining cold and emotionless. It was only once his began to become cloudy and lifeless that the mare's hooves shook violently. She abruptly dropped the unicorn on the floor, swaying a bit before falling to it herself, curling into a quaking fetal position.
"Hey, could you get a statement from the homeless one? She's still here, refused to get any treatment."
"Alright."
A light yellow pegasus mare with flowing pastel pink hair trotted into a large room with many desks and seats, three pink butterflies on her flank being her most identifying feature. She passed by four bloody and bruised unicorn stallions, noting one had blood at the base of his horn as well as bruises around fatal regions of the neck.
The mare looked into the windowed-off room to her left, seeing a very unkempt but ultimately unharmed mare with rainbow mane and tail sitting in a chair against the wall, watching the floor intensely. Shaking her head, she pushed the door open and walked inside.
"You know, it would have made me helping you a lot easier to do if you had just a little bruising," the yellow pegasus said, voice surprisingly soft for a police officer. "I mean, I don't want you to be hurt, but it would have made putting them behind bars so they couldn't hurt anypony else less difficult."
The silent mare raised her eyes as the soft-spoken pegasus picked up a plastic cup and filled it with water, offering it to her companion in custody. "My name is Fluttershy. What's yours?"
The rainbow pegasus was silent for a moment. "You know, it seems like the only time you need a name is when you're in trouble." She finally pulled her head up to look full-frontal at the officer. "Guess I'm in trouble?"
"Maybe a little," Fluttershy reluctantly agreed. "You did attack other ponies. I saw the tape, and it looks like you spent some time in the service. But you don't learn how to fight like that as a Royal Guard, or the Wonderbolts, since you're a pegasus. Were you in some kind of special forces?"
The blue mare simply sipped out of the plastic cup, watching Fluttershy. Realizing this wasn't going to get her much, the officer decided to switch to a different tact.
"I realize it might be a little sensitive, but...well, do you need help?" she asked sympathetically. "I mean, you are living on the streets. I know a lot of ex-Guards, and making the transition back to normal life can be really hard." Again, her suspect was silent.
"But then again," she added, going over to an old television and flipping it on, showing security footage of the mare's ruthless attack on the quadruplet of unicorns, "some that I know did so many things they consider evil, they feel like they deserve the punishment. ...Is that how you feel?"
The yellow mare stared at the rainbow-haired suspect, who simply stared back, face carefully blank. It was clear at this point the pegasus in custody was not going to say another word. Still grinning sympathetically, Fluttershy called an intern by the name of Featherweight to take a picture of the mark on the blue mare's flank. She brought the picture back to a computer and scanned it through a database of documented Cutie Marks, trying to see if the homeless mare had been arrested before. Once the file was found and unsealed, she pulled up the arrest record. What turned up shocked her, as well as Featherweight, who was still watching.
"That mare is wanted in four different countries?" the colt asked, gawking. "Fluttershy, is she the angel of death?"
Fluttershy could simply shake her head in response.
Meanwhile, a pony came in, looking around. She spotted the blue pegasus and pointed to her. "I'm here for my client," she said, startling the rainbow-colored mare. She could barely afford her booze, never mind a lawyer of any kind! Still trying to process what was going on, the pegasus was led out of the Canterlot Precinct and into the street outside.
"Thanks for the help," she said, "but who's payin' for it?"
She stopped as two other ponies came up as well, surrounding her on three sides. "Our employer would like to speak to you," the first one simply stated, leading her away. Fluttershy trotted over to the door, but it was too late; her suspect was nowhere to be seen.
The three ponies led the somewhat anxious pegasus to the base of the palace at the heart of the city, cast in shadow even though the sun was high. Another mare was standing at its base, facing away from the approaching group. Usually the first thing to notice about her would be the fact she was a unicorn, but in this case, the homeless mare's eyes were drawn to a strange and intricate brace on the lavender mare's back right leg. It was made of metal, probably stainless steel. There were two thick bands around her hind leg, angled towards the knee with a few thin cross-beams between, preventing said knee from bending. There was another thick band around the unicorn's waist, connected to the others with the same thin beams, but hinges allowed the joint near the hip to move freely. It was also possible to see her Cutie Mark through the strange contraption; a magenta, six-pointed star surrounded by five smaller, white stars with the same number of points.
"Do I owe you money?" the pegasus asked, no longer apprehensive after seeing her host was handicapped. "I'm pretty much out at the moment, in case you didn't notice."
"You don't owe me anything, Ms. Rainbow Dash," the mare said, turning to look past her dark mane with stripes of magenta and violet, revealing purple eyes. The blue mare felt her eyes bulge slightly. How did she – ?
"Yes, I know your name," the unicorn said, turning to face the pegasus full-frontal, the back leg with the brace causing a slightly awkward limp. "Well, I know you've had several, but that's the one you prefer, yes? Don't worry, I won't tell anyone any of what I know about you."
"You don't know anything about me," Rainbow Dash muttered, shaking her head.
"Actually, I know exactly everything about you," the strange mare said. "I know about your time in the Wonderbolts, and the Shadowbolts afterwards. I know you began to have doubts about the work you did with them. I know that everypony who ever cared about you thinks you're dead or is dead themselves."
The unicorn paused, glancing away from the pegasus' eyes and past her head. "I know you've been trying to drink yourself to death for the past six months. I also know you've been unsatisfied with your lack of success and are currently contemplating more efficient methods.
"You can see clearly, knowledge is not my issue," she continued, reverting her gaze to her subject. She took a few limping steps towards the pegasus, who was now scrutinizing the unicorn through more cautious eyes. "My issue is being able to do something with that knowledge. That's why I called you here."
"Before I agree to anything," Rainbow Dash deadpanned, "I want to know your name."
"If you're looking for my actual name, you'll be disappointed," the unicorn honestly replied. "However, you may call me Twilight Sparkle. I've called you here to offer you something that I believe will help you much more than a psychiatrist or pills. I called you here to offer you a job...and perhaps, if you agree, a purpose."
The purple unicorn indicated with her head that Rainbow Dash should walk with her. The two set off towards a road a few paces away, into a throng of other civilians, milling about the large city. The pegasus was pleased to find she didn't have to slow down much for Twilight; she was matching the walk the somewhat impatient mare had set with little difficulty.
"There are upwards of five million ponies living in Canterlot. And none of them know what will happen next. Recent murder rates have put a pony living here dying every twelve hours."
The unicorn looked over the crowd, slowing her steps to a halt. "By the end of the day, one of these ponies will be dead."
"Bad things happen to ponies all the time," Rainbow Dash replied, looking out over the crowd herself. "You can't stop it."
"But what if somepony could?" Twilight asked, turning to look at the mare next to her. "Nearly 90% of all crimes are planned days, weeks, even months before. What if somepony could stop those?"
Rainbow Dash turned to look at the unicorn with half lidded eyes. "And how exactly would anypony do that?" Twilight glanced up at the sun for a moment before lowering her gaze back to her companion.
"I have a highly accurate list," she began, looking back over the crowd, as if scanning for one pony in particular. "A list of ponies about to be involved in horrible situations; murders, kidnappings, any violent crime you can imagine being planned out in advance. Most are simply ordinary ponies, and have no idea what's about to happen. Like her."
Rainbow Dash turned to look at the pony Twilight Sparkle had indicated with a tilt of the head. Standing at a nearby drink stand was an earth pony mare. She had a navy coat, and her mane was greyish-blue and styled with slight poofs. Her tail matched her mane in color, but was straight.
"Her name is Chilly Puddle," Twilight said, as the mare thanked the clerk and walked away. "And this week, she's the first pony on my list. I don't know for sure what is going to happen. She might be a victim, or she could be a perpetrator. Either way, she's going to be involved.
"What I want you to do is follow her, find out what's going to happen...and stop it from happening."
There was silence as the two mares gazed evenly at each other, each trying to gauge the other's response without giving one of their own.
"So what do you think?" Twilight Sparkle asked after a moment.
"Oh, I'll TELL ya what I think," Rainbow Dash growled, glaring at the unicorn. "I think you're a bored rich mare with way too much time on her hooves. I think you met that mare walking the same direction on the street, or she's your ex, or the mare your colt's having on the side, or something. But whatever the case, I think I'm done here!"
The pegasus turned to stomp off, only to be blocked by one of her escorts from earlier. The other pony tried to grab a hold of the rainbow mare, but she smacked a powerful wing across her face and flew off, leaving Twilight Sparkle looking after her.
"Tonight local police are looking for a homeless mare seen last leaving the Canterlot Precinct with a distinctly rainbow-patterned mane. She was originally jumped on the subway by a small gang of unicorn stallions, but she is now being considered a pony of interest in several cases from all across Equestria..."
Rainbow Dash barely listened to the evening news cast, only turning from the motel room's mirror to see a sketch of her on the TV (which was horribly inaccurate; her fur tone was much too dark and her mane spectrum was put in reverse). She awkwardly wielded a pair of scissors in her mouth and one hoof, chopping off extra hair from her tail and mane. By the time she was done, there was enough hair on the floor to make a wig, yet her mane was still neck-length and her tail was only a few inches away from touching the ground. The mare picked up a half-empty bottle of wine from the bedside table as an old movie came on. After taking a few drinks from it, she attempted to put it back on the table. Before she could hear it hit the ground or realize she missed the table, she had fallen asleep.
The pegasus colt next to Rainbow Dash sat up in bed, looking at the muted television intently.
"Soarin? What's up?" she asked, receiving no response. "Something happen, Soarin?"
Br-riiiiing! Br-riiiiing!
The phone abruptly pulled Rainbow Dash out of her dream and into a new day...and the wrong hotel room. She tried to reach over to grab it, only to find her neck had been tied to the headboard with a thick rope.
"What in the – ?"
Br-riiiiing! Br-riiiiing!
With a growl, she pulled the phone over to her ear with a forehoof. The other voice was a bit grainy through the strange contraption, but it was certainly identifiable.
"You need to understand, Ms. Rainbow Dash," Twilight's voice came, low and almost threatening. "I know the information I receive is incomplete at best, but I can assure you, it's never wrong. You need to know what it's like to be forced to listen to someone get murdered and not be able to do anything about it."
There was a sharp click on the other end, making Rainbow Dash throw the phone back down to its base. No more than a few seconds later, sounds of a struggle began to be heard from a door. It sounded like a mare and a stallion, glass was breaking and things were being thrown. Somepony was in trouble! The pegasus reacted quickly, looking around for something to get her off her own bed and into the other room. She grabbed the half empty wine bottle from the floor with her two back legs, flipping it to her mouth and smashing the base against the headboard. As the red liquid splattered everywhere and glass shards fell to the floor, she turned the jagged top half of the bottle on the ropes, sawing at the fabric. The struggles of the mare had begun to become less audible and further apart by the time the bind broke. She wasted no time in breaking down the door, landing in the other room with a thud. When she looked up, she saw a speaker, and from it she heard the dying sigh of a mare.
"12 August, 1508," the speaker gave a monotone date as Rainbow Dash looked past it with wide eyes to where Twilight Sparkle was laying on the bed with a newspaper, the braced leg stuck out to the side. The unicorn looked up as the audio reel next to her clicked to a stop.
"Too late."
Rainbow Dash panted, getting up from the floor and looking from the electronic speaker to the other mare in complete confusion as her adrenaline rush began to wear off. Twilight used her magic to fold the newspaper closed.
"As you can tell from the date, this recording is three years old," the unicorn said, pulling herself off the bed and carefully placing her braced leg on the ground. "A young mare was murdered in this room by her husband...because she was carrying an unwanted foal." The newspaper from before was levitated over to Rainbow Dash's face. The headline read Accidental Foal leads to Planned Murder. The pegasus took a slight step back as it was withdrawn and placed neatly on the bed next to the audio reel.
"You were too late for her," Twilight said, looking at the other mare from across the room. "Just like you were too late for your friend Soarin. You were halfway across Equestria when he was killed."
Rainbow Dash lived up to her name; faster than most mares could manage, she sprung up and exploded towards Twilight, knocking the unicorn against the wall by her neck.
"What the hell do you know about that?!" she growled, using her wings to lift herself and the mysterious mare up a few inches off the ground, putting as much pressure on her throat as she could.
"It's unfortunate, but it's the truth!" Twilight managed to gasp out, struggling for breath but not to free herself. "You left the Shadowbolts because they lied to you, but I promise you I never will! I truly believe all you ever wanted to do was help ponies!"
The pegasus abruptly dropped her captor with a snarl, causing her to land jarringly on her bad leg and fall to the floor with a thunk. Rainbow Dash landed a few moments later, panting angrily as Twilight let out a few pained gasps. Giving her a moment to recover, the tomboyish mare stormed over to the audio recorder, throwing herself on the floor and studying it.
"How the hay did you get your hooves on this?!" she asked, glaring at the tape. "This is special 'magic sonar' stuff they used since Celestia's reign in official government!" She turned to Twilight, who was just now getting up on her own four hooves as the rainbow mare's temper cooled. "But you're not government."
"No I'm not," the unicorn agreed, going back over to the bed and slowly sitting next to the pegasus. "I suppose you could call me...a concerned third party.
"You couldn't have saved that poor mare, or your friend," Twilight continued, looking intensely at Rainbow Dash, causing the mare to look straight back. "But you could have if you had known in time – and that's the other thing I'm offering you, a chance to be there in time!"
Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes, darting them between both of Twilight's, trying to catch a lie in even one. After giving the pegasus a moment to know she was completely serious, the lavender mare used her magic to conjure up a hologram of the grey-blue mare from the day before.
"It's not too late for her," Twilight emphasized as Rainbow Dash studied the mare's form. "You can help me stop whatever's about to happen to her. The question is, will you?"
Rainbow Dash watched the hologram long and hard. Chilly Puddle was walking in place, her real counterpart probably simply making her way to work on the streets of Canterlot, no idea something catastrophic could happen to her life at any moment. As the hologram looked up, seemingly straight at her, she made her choice.
"I'm in."
"What is this place?"
"The decline of Equestrian civilization."
Rainbow Dash turned to look skeptically at Twilight Sparkle in the dark tunnel they were walking through, lit only by the unicorn's magical magenta glow at the tip of her horn.
"The city closed nearly all its libraries," Twilight explained, using her magic to undo a lock and open a door, going inside. "Ponies have slowly begun to use technology like computers and phones brought over from the mirror world. It also brought us guns, unfortunately.
"This particular building was sold to a bank that I control, which promptly went bankrupt. It's been in a bit of a limbo ever since, and probably will be for as long as it stands; according to anypony who cares to look up public records, it doesn't exist."
"Just like you?" Rainbow Dash asked, using her wings to fly over and in front of her unicorn companion as they began to ascend a flight of stairs, flying backwards to face her. "Seriously, I checked everything that could ever exist about a pony and you have none of them."
"Ms. Rainbow Dash, I realize I know much more about you than you know about me," Twilight flatly stated, making her way consistently (if not somewhat awkwardly) up the stairs. "I also know you will be trying to even out the scales as soon as you possibly can. But I must warn you...I'm an extremely private pony."
The pegasus smirked, turning around as they reached a larger area on the top floor of the library, several cases of books lined up neatly from wall to wall. There was a substantial area open, however, almost like a living area. In fact, upon closer inspection, there were some basic food and cooking supplies in one corner, as well as a table set up in the center of the clearing. Twilight made her way over to the table, picking up several small cards in her magic.
"We will most likely be able to create more personas for you as the need arises, but there is one persona that must be 'clean,' per se. It will most closely resemble your actual life, and you cannot use it except for very specific and dire cases," the lavender mare explained, setting one card aside. "Other than that, I have six personas for you at the moment, each completely unique. Any funds you need will come from a proxy corporation. We will have to mask your Cutie Mark quite often, but I can use my magic to assist with that."
"Besides that last one and the fact I don't know where the money's coming from, it's just like working with the Shadowbolts," Rainbow snorted, looking around. She stopped, spotting something on the wall. Flying over, she examined it closer; it was a simple cork board, but there were several written notes and photographs stuck on it, tacks being connected with lines of yarn tied to them. "Is this your list?" she asked. "The list?"
"Yep," Twilight responded.
"But you don't get names, do you?" the pegasus asked, looking at a line of written notes down the center. All of them were a sequence of nine numbers, broken up three-two-four. "These are social security numbers! They only started giving these out when ponies started being unable to earn their Cutie Marks because of a lack of opportunities."
"Yes, but they gave them to everypony still alive at the time as well," Twilight explained, making her way over.
"And all of them lead to a violent crime..." the rainbow mare mused, looking down the list. "So what do all these numbers represent?"
"Lost chances," the unicorn beside her answered sadly.
"...You know I could be a whole lot more helpful if you just told me where the hay you get these numbers from."
"It doesn't really matter where I get the numbers, all you need to know is that the next number that's up is hers." The magenta magic of the unicorn encased a photograph of Chilly Puddle, pulling it lightly off the wall and taping it to a cracked Plexiglas board on the other side of the table.
The slate blue mare trotted through the Canterlot streets, going about her lunch break normally. Little did she know, two other ponies were following her.
"Chilly Puddle grew up in Ponyville," the lavender unicorn told Rainbow Dash as they followed their current number. "She learned how to be a law pony there, knowing the crime rate had spiked and the demand for such jobs was going up as well. Unfortunately because of this, she never earned her Cutie Mark. She's currently single, and an assistant director attorney; she has the best conviction rate in her department."
"That'll earn her a few enemies," the pegasus commented, flying slightly above Twilight. "And we don't have the slightest clue as to when this 'bad thing' will happen?"
"It could be a week, it could be five minutes," Twilight nodded. "That's why we need to learn as much about her as possible. Unfortunately, you're going to have to do most of the in the field work."
"Roger."
"How do you intend to begin?"
"Slow way. Meet her, say hi, start a friendship of sorts to earn her trust."
"I'm a bit surprised you'd opt for anything labeled 'slow,'" Twilight commented. "But again, we don't know how long we have. I have to ask you what the fast way is, and if we can do that instead."
"Well, I need a few things for the fast way. Some way to watch her, some way to listen to her, and some way to track her."
"All of which I can provide," the mysterious mare smiled.
Step one: break into the subject's home and go through all their stuff. Rainbow Dash quietly opened the door to Chilly Puddle's home, looking around inside. Chilly had just recently gone off to work in the morning, so there was little to no chance of being spotted. She glanced about, trying to figure out where the most valuable information would be located. The home had things scattered nearly everywhere, but that was alright; if she made a mess, it would be masked by the mess that was already present.
Trotting to the other mare's room, the pegasus began to shuffle things around, looking for a safe or some sort of strong box Chilly might have hidden personal records in. Eventually finding it, Rainbow Dash used a paper clip at hoof to gently pick the lock and get inside. She shuffled through the records, taking pictures of them with a small digital camera Twilight had provided. Once she was done, she carefully put everything back in the box and locked it.
The blue mare began to look around for anything personal; photographs, jewelry or accessories, and most importantly letters. She found a few medicine bottles, but besides that nothing seemed too odd. She checked around briefly for a computer on the off chance the mare owned one, but unsurprisingly she didn't.
"Alright, Twilight," Rainbow Dash muttered to a small Bluetooth headset she had in her ear as she exited the room and closed the door. "Got any software for this cell?"
Step two: get ears and tracking. The rainbow mare stood just behind Chilly Puddle in line to get into the firm. As the slate-colored mare in front of her seemed to be wrapping up a call, Rainbow Dash pulled her own device out of her mane. She tapped on an option called "Bluejack," and looked through the list of names. Finding Chilly Puddle's, she selected it and a loading symbol came up. After a few moments, the message "FORCE PAIRING SUCCESSFUL" was displayed.
"Call you later, Mom!" the mare's chipper voice came from in front, as well as through Rainbow's earpiece. Chilly Puddle put her phone away and walked over to a group of ponies a few paces away.
"How's your case coming along?" her voice came again, even though she wasn't speaking directly into the phone. Rainbow Dash smiled. As long as that phone was charged and had a signal, she'd be able to hear everything the mare said to anypony. It also doubled as a constant tracking device, as long as Twilight could tap into the signal.
"Step three: get eyes. That camera I put in working?"
"Perfectly," Twilight responded, using her magic to type rapidly into a computer in their library headquarters. The camera showed their number walking around her home, talking on her cellphone, an empty plate showing she just finished a quick lunch break.
"Why'd you want us to use technology for all this, anyway?" Rainbow Dash asked, watching as the magenta glow pressed keys in quick succession. "Can't you unicorns do pretty much everything with magic?"
"Most unicorns have only basic levitation, along with magic that relates to their talent," the lavender mare explained, continuing to tweak the camera settings from afar. "And even if that weren't true, everypony's magic has its own distinct wavelength, aura, color, and 'quirks.' It's nearly as identifying as a Cutie Mark. Not to mention me continuously using magic will simply be counterproductive.
"In comparison, even though most technologies are powered by magic since we have a less than adequate electric system in Equestria, its main properties are uniform, no matter who is using it, or for what. Usually any distinguishing factors about it are from the device, not the magic itself. For example, two phones have different numbers, but they use the same magical wavelength to communicate."
"I know it's a big case, but I can take care of myself. I'm not a filly anymore," Chilly Puddle said to her mother, who they couldn't hear. The mare was restlessly pacing around her home, continuing to swing one hoof even if she stopped.
"She's tough, that's for sure," Rainbow Dash said, scrutinizing the picture as Twilight made the camera follow the blue-grey mare. "But she's nervous about something; scared, even. Worst part is with that pony's job, nearly everyone could be holding a grudge!"
"Well, let's cut the list into personal life and professional life," Twilight suggested, getting up and limping over to the plastic pane around the table from where she had been sitting. She used her magic to move a few spare photographs around, dividing the board in two, Chilly Puddle's picture in the center.
"Well, for personal life, I'd say most likely is Klein," Rainbow said, moving a picture of a light blue stallion with a dark blue mane and tail to just below and to the left of Chilly Puddle's photo. "He's her co-counselor. They dated for a couple of months last year, but she broke it off."
"40% of murders do involve a past romantic relationship," Twilight nodded.
"Plus, he's a divorced single dad with partial custody, and his career was out-shined by Chilly Puddle," Rainbow added. "As for the other list..." she pulled off a picture of a white earth pony stallion with a two-tone blue mane and tail. "She's prosecuting Icy Drop right now. He's on trial for shooting his buddies in a sour drug deal, and stealing like half a million bits."
"That trial will be starting in a few minutes, won't it?" Twilight asked, looking at a clock; five minutes to one. "It might be wise to hurry on over."
Rainbow Dash snorted. "Please. I can get there in ten seconds flat."
"I highly doubt – "
The unicorn couldn't even finish her sentence before the blue pegasus flew at top speed down the stairs, out the door, and to the courthouse, leaving a rainbow streak in her wake. When she skidded to a stop on the marble floor, she smirked and drew her wings in.
"See?" she muttered into the Bluetooth. "Ten. Seconds. Flat."
"Now I know how you broke so many timed records at the Wonderbolt Acadamy," Twilight complimented. "Regardless, perhaps save that speed for emergency situations; your tail trail is pretty noticeable."
"Yeah, yeah," she murmured, watching as Chilly Puddle went through her stuff to make a few last second preparations. Klein came up behind her, and Rainbow Dash listened to the conversation through her earpiece so as not to be to close or too suspicious.
"Hey, do you have time to talk? Maybe over dinner or something?" the stallion asked. Chilly Puddle awkwardly shuffled a pace away.
"I've been really busy with this case," she said.
"Hey, are you alright? You've been acting a little – "
"I'm fine, thanks. I gotta get inside for the trial." The mare nodded her head politely and trotted inside the court doors.
"Suspicious, suspicious," Rainbow murmured, watching closely. Klein looked after her and shook his head, departing from the courthouse. Once she knew she wouldn't be recognized by anypony, the pegasus trotted inside the courtroom and leaned against the wall. The court apparently picked up from where it had left off during the last session, Chilly calling a witness to the stand. A pink earth mare with straight magenta mane and tail walked over to the stand, seeming a bit detached. Rainbow Dash couldn't help but notice the trio of balloons on her flank; strange a mare that seemed like her talent was something cheery would be so depressed. The normal witness questions were asked, and it all flowed along normally.
"When we got there, the scene was pretty bad," the mare said, seeming like she'd rather be anywhere else. "Five ponies were just dead on the ground. One managed to crawl ten feet over to a phone and call the police."
"Detective Pinkie Pie, when you spoke to Icy Drop, what did he say in his defense?" Chilly Puddle asked.
"His exact words were 'If I'd 've shot that poor bastard, I would've shot him right in the head, same as I always do. I wouldn't 've left him half dead, crying like a filly for his marefriend.'"
Chilly nodded her head, though she seemed a little irritated. "No more questions, your honor."
"Detective! You went a little off-script with that last bit of your testimony," Chilly irritably whispered as Rainbow Dash sat down outside the courtroom, listening to the small bicker a few steps away.
"No, if I was off-script, the writer would have changed my lines," Pinkie Pie retorted.
"...What?! Whatever, point is, you never told me about that conversation, and it could clear Drop's name!"
"What's it matter? We still got him."
"It matters because my job is to make absolutely sure the wrong ponies don't get locked up for something they didn't do!"
"Well excuse me for thinking we were on the same team," the pink pony sulked as she trotted past Rainbow Dash, head hung low. Chilly Puddle rolled her eyes and exited in the opposite direction.
"Looks like somepony threw a monkey wrench into her case," the blue pegasus remarked.
"Ms. Rainbow Dash?" Twilight's voice anxiously asked. "Are you still following Chilly Puddle?"
"No," she sarcastically replied, seeing the mare a few yards ahead of her, trotting through the light of the white moon. "It's not like I haven't been following her all day, why would I have anything else to do?"
"Then I suppose you've also heard she phoned the Canterlot jail. She's meeting with Drop...alone."
"Because that's a fantastic idea," the pegasus muttered. "Okay okay, just give me a minute to get some kind of weapon in case this goes sour."
"Please do so quickly; she's just entering the building."
It didn't take long for Rainbow to fly off to an area she kept assorted weaponry in. She grabbed a random object and stuck it in her tangled mane, listening as Chilly began to speak to the stallion she was trying to prosecute.
"Isn't my lawyer supposed to be here for this?" Icy Drop's voice came through the earpiece, loud and clear.
"Well, I can call him if you really want," Chilly Puddle replied with soft hoofsteps as Rainbow Dash flew back to the jail and began to pace restlessly outside it. "But I'm not here to try and get you to trip up; I'm here because I don't think you murdered those ponies. I think somepony else was in the house when that emergency call went out. Somepony needed to tell you what was said, and that means you weren't there, right?"
There was a moment of strained silence, as if Chilly were waiting for a response that Icy wouldn't provide.
"Is it somepony you're trying to protect?" Chilly asked.
"And what, you're going to help me?" Icy Drop's voice sarcastically inquired.
"The pony that knows what really happened must be somepony you care about," the earth mare quickly responded, the sound of her sitting down reverberating through the earpiece. "Is it your brother, Blue Bonnet?"
"Drop's got a brother?" Rainbow Dash asked Twilight. "How did we not know about this?"
"Because I didn't check his case file yet," the unicorn replied, sounding a bit sheepish as she shuffled papers. "Got it now, though."
"Did he see the real killers?" Chilly Puddle pressed.
"You should leave this alone, mare," the convict warned in a low voice. Rainbow's ear twitched; she didn't like where this was going at all. "I can do the time, but those ponies are evil. They kill whenever they want because they're protected from on high. If you keep asking questions, they're going to kill me, and my brother, and probably you too!"
"Whoever these ponies are, you can trust me!" Chilly Puddle pleaded as Twilight gave a small whine of foreboding, obviously feeling this was going downhill fast as well. "We'll take care of you and your brother."
There was a pause, followed by Chilly giving a sigh. If Rainbow had to guess, Icy had shaken his head "no."
"If the killers are out there, I'm going to find them, whether you help me or not," she snipped, getting to her hooves. "It's my job to. Now why don't you – !"
The mare was cut off as Icy Drop gave some sort of yell and sounds of a struggle broke out. Rainbow Dash pulled the machete she had stored in her mane earlier out with her mouth and began to gallop towards the entrance. She could make out "Keep your damn mouth shut, or I'll shut it for you!" and Chilly gasping for air. A buzzer sounded and a few stallions grunted on the other end, struggling against each other.
"I'm fine," Chilly managed after a sigh, making the rainbow mare outside screech to a halt. Seemed as if the security guards took care of it. "Okay! She's okay, she's okay," she said, more to herself than Twilight on the other end, though a sigh of relief came through the phone.
"I'll give you one thing, Twilight," Rainbow said as the unicorn back at the library sat down shakily. "Whoever framed Drop is going to be coming after Chilly. And the only pony who knows who they are is Drop's brother."
New asset identified: Rainbow Dash. Reviewing information...
Important life moment identified. Accessing...
September 22, 1501, 07:14
"Yeah Dad, I'm fine."
Rainbow Dash was speaking into a phone, laying on a bed next to a pegasus stallion. "I'm over in Las Pegasus with Surprise. I'll see you soon, kay? Bye."
She hung up, double checking to make sure she operated the strange device correctly. Her companion chuckled.
"Surprise?" he asked.
"I had to say somepony that was a mare. Dad's a little overprotective, still thinks I'm a little kid," she replied, rolling her eyes before closing them. Soarin stretched out slightly, reaching out a wing to stroke his marefriend's side. She lazily opened an eye and batted his wing away, making him chuckle again as she smiled.
"Man, I wish this weekend would be longer," the mare sighed, leaning her head over to Soarin's shoulder.
"Well, it's only Saturday, we've got time," the Wonderbolt pointed out, looking over at the calendar.
"Yeah, two days. That's not a whole lot, since you're going to be going back to the Wonderbolts base on Monday. We're not going to get to see each other for two weeks, at least. And you know how I hate waiting!"
"Then ask me to stay, and I will. I'll quit," Soarin replied, stroking his wing across her side again.
"Alright, then quit."
"I already did."
Rainbow Dash moved her head off his shoulder and turned to look right in the stallion's green eyes, bemused. "What?"
"Yeah," he smiled.
"But...you love the Wonderbolts!" Rainbow Dash retorted. "Why wouldn't you? They're the coolest, most awesome, most talented fliers in all of Equestria! How could you just...give that up?"
"I didn't want to take the chance somepony else would steal your heart away before I could."
Despite herself, the mare smiled at her coltfriend. "Nopony else is fast enough to catch up with it."
Soarin let out a laugh, but it was abruptly cut short when Rainbow Dash pressed her lips against his. Breaking the kiss several seconds later, she turned back to the phone. "This deserves some of Berryshine's wine!"
The ex-Wonderbolt rolled his eyes, glancing at the muted television. Suddenly he sat up in straighter, watching the device intently.
"Soarin? What's up?" she asked, receiving no response. "Something happen, Soarin?"
Rainbow turned her head to the television as Soarin looked around frantically for the remote. Her smile faded as she studied the picture; the camera had been pointed towards the sun, a special lens turning the blazing ball dark green. Darker spots were visible on the sun, forming the rough image of an alicorn with a flowing mane across its surface. The stallion finally found the remote and pressed the "Mute" button again.
" – have overthrown Princess Celestia and trapped her in the sun. The whereabouts of Princess Luna are yet unknown, though many speculate she's also been magically infused with her celestial body, the moon."
Soarin turned to Rainbow Dash, his eyes reflecting the confusion and concern she knew were in her own.
Situation detected. Locating asset...
Current date/time: September 25, 1511, 11:34
Rainbow Dash peered through a set of binoculars from a rooftop, looking into the office building across the alley. Chilly Puddle was sorting through papers of cases, when a knock came at her door. She quickly shoved papers into a folder as Klein stuck his head in the door.
"You went to see Drop alone last night?!" he accused. "Are you insane?!"
"I wanted to give him one last chance to give me an accomplice, cut a deal, you know?" the mare awkwardly defended herself, putting more papers in the folder. Klein seemed still irate, but softened after hearing her justification.
"He give anyone up?"
"Um, no. Figures, right?" Chilly Puddle got up from her sitting position, her folder balanced on her back as she approached the door. Klein didn't move. "Uh, I'm late, do you mind...ya know?"
"Oh, pft, right, sorry," Klein said, stepping out of the way. The mare nodded to him and trotted out.
"Looks like our girl's trying to find Blue," Rainbow commented through the Bluetooth.
"And she's blocking out Klein," Twilight responded, scrutinizing the stallion pasted on the fractured plastic. "Suppose she thinks he's involved? Drop did make a comment about them being 'protected from on high.'"
"I don't doubt it," the rainbow mare deadpanned, looking back through her binoculars as movement in Chilly Puddle's office caught her eye. "Especially since he's nosing around in her stuff."
"Wha- really?!" Twilight asked as Rainbow watched. Klein was shuffling papers around, skipping over some as if he had seen them before. He found one particular paper and picked it up. Squinting through her binoculars, she saw the paper had a picture of a blue stallion, most likely Icy Drop's brother.
"Yeah, and he might be working for the killers," she growled, letting the optical device drop from her face. "He just found a document on Bonnet. We need to get to this guy before somepony else does first."
A school bell rung in the dreary afternoon, followed by the sound of ponies chattering. Not fillies and colts, however, but nearly full-grown stallions and mares. Rainbow Dash was standing impatiently just outside the gates of a new "adult school," founded recently to help ponies learn how to do other jobs if the one their talent specified was hard to obtain or simply unnecessary in the changing Equestria.
The pegasus mare scanned the heads of the exiting students, trying to spot one particular stallion out of a hundred or more. Finally, sauntering towards her, she saw Blue Bonnet, saddlebags full of books. She noted his Cutie Mark was two interlocked horseshoes, one silver and one gold. Trying not to seem suspicious, she wandered over to the threshold of the gate, waiting for the earth pony to approach her.
"Hey, Blue?" she asked. The stallion turned to her, seeming suspicious and confused. "I need to talk to you for a sec."
Blue Bonnet didn't stop to question who she was or why she wanted to talk; he just flat out ran in the other direction. Swearing under her breath, the mare gave chase on her own hooves, keeping her pace just slow enough that her rainbow trail wouldn't show. They ran around corners, down sidewalks, and through alleyways, all the time dodging around random civilians; that is, until Blue Bonnet nearly got run over by taxi carriage in the streets. Rainbow came up behind him and tackled him onto the sidewalk, grabbing onto his saddlebag to stop him.
"Would ya jush lishen?!" she growled through her teeth, clenching the strap. "I've got a message from yer broder!"
"You don't know my brother!" Blue protested, yanking his bag free with a sudden turn on his hooves.
"Ack! Well, not exactly, but I know what you saw! And there are other ponies looking for you too!" She trotted around so she was facing him head on. "You need to come with me, or I don't know what the hay'll happen to you!"
Blue Bonnet took a hasty step backwards, looking around wildly for anypony nearby to help him. He spotted a small group of construction workers just over Rainbow Dash's shoulder.
"Hey! Somepony help me!" he called, taking a step past her. "This mare's trying to pull me into a cab with her!" he called. The pegasus rolled her eyes with a disgusted scoff, pulling out her cellphone with her wing and slipping it into Blue's saddlebag. The construction workers advanced towards the pair, prompting Rainbow to lightly shove Blue Bonnet away, making him retreat into a nearby building.
"Hello, boys," she cockily greeted as the construction stallions formed a semicircle in front of her. She watched out of the corner of her eye as the stallion she had been chasing ran down a flight of stairs inside the building to a basement.
"Seems the cell phone loses signal while underground," Twilight noted, her horn fading from glowing as she magically tried to locate the device. "When Bonnet comes out again, we'll be able to find him using it."
Rainbow glanced over at her, eyes half-lidded. "Really?" Twilight turned to her, brow furrowed in confusion.
"What?"
"Look, if Drop's right, I'm going to need a hell of a lot more than just a cell phone to deal with these guys."
The lavender mare swung one of her front hooves in the air awkwardly. "Um...yeah, about that. I don't really like firearms that much."
"Well, neither do I, but if somepony's gotta have 'em, I'm gonna make sure it's me. Now show me how to use that computer to find my friends from the train."
"...It'll be faster if I do it," the unicorn replied, limping over to the keyboard and using her magic to type. "Why them, though?"
The pegasus smirked. "I think they might have just what I need." Her coworker simply gave her a quizzical glance before going back to the computer.
"Alright, found them."
An assault rifle was levitated in the air, inspected by the ringleader unicorn stallion from several days before.
"How's this one, Dad?" he asked. An older unicorn glared at him.
"Are you planning on buying that? Put that down; I'm half tempted to kick your ass for the sellers."
As the stallion hastily put the gun back, the door opened. A blue pegasus mare walked in, rainbow locks getting tossed over her black saddlebags as she turned her head towards the stallions. "Hey boys. Seen the mare's room?" The unicorns flashed confused glances between each other as the mare locked her eyes on one in particular.
"Hey, remember me?" she asked, making the ring leader turn his head to her. "I was on the train, just a couple days ago? I know, I was a wreck."
"You know this mare?" the elder stallion asked. As the unicorn turned to stammer a response, Rainbow looked on the table.
"Holy hayseeds, that's a lot of gu- "
When she took a step forwards, all the unicorns around her drew their guns and pointed them at her. She looked around, spotting the one nearest her holding his gun sideways.
"You ponies took a safety class for those, right?" she asked. "'Cause you're holding that the entirely wrong way. You can't aim it, and the shell casing is going to probably hit you in the eye. See?"
Using her lightning speed, the mare knocked the gun to face upwards, causing the stallion to fire out of shock. The shell casing hit him square in the eye, causing him to lose his concentration and drop the gun. Rainbow caught it in her mouth and spun, using her tongue to pull the trigger and shoot out the kneecaps of two of the unicorns, making them fall to the floor. Her ear swiveled behind her just before she got on her front legs and bucked backwards, hitting the now unarmed stallion behind her. Using the last of her ammo, she shot the knees of the elder unicorn before firing on the horn of the ringleader. His magic fractured with the tip of his horn, and he was left defenseless.
Spitting the empty gun into her saddlebag, she used her wings to scoop other firearms into the pockets, among them the assault rifle, a grenade launcher, shotgun, gas gun, and a few small pistols of different kinds.
"I'll hold onto these until you decide to stop being idiots," she said. Securing the straps, the mare began to walk out the door. "Thanks boys!" she called, rapidly exiting the building. The last stallion standing turned to his father, nearly mortified.
"Who the hell was that?!" the elder unicorn demanded.
"Ms. Rainbow Dash," Twilight's voice came over the Bluetooth as the pegasus trotted down the sidewalk in the soft glow of night, "I've finally received a signal from your phone."
"Good, that means we can find Blue Bonnet and figure out who's going after Chilly?" the mare asked, glad things finally seemed to be looking up for the first time that day.
"Sorry to bring down the optimism I'm hearing, but we have a bit of a situation; somepony else got to him first. Listen."
"Aw, Blue," a new voice spoke, a mare's, but deeper than Twilight. Its cadence sounded vaguely familiar. "You were gonna tell him aaaaaall about us, huh? Shoulda known better."
"Are you hearing this?!" Twilight frantically prompted. "Please, you must act quickly; they're heading towards the unused mountain path to Ponyville, probably to dump his body after they finish!"
"Already there," Rainbow replied, taking off at speeds comparable to a train. Working her wings furiously, she sped towards the area where Canterlot connected to the mountain.
"Hmm, how should we do this, sis?" the deeper mare asked again. "I think we should put two in the back of his head, make it look like a 'gang thang,' as Pinkamena would say."
Oh no you don't! the rainbow mare thought with a snarl, picking up speed. She landed her hooves on the rugged terrain a hundred yards or so ahead of where she would first see Blue and the unidentified mare turn the corner to reach the path, letting friction grind her to a halt. Wings still outspread, she turned and grabbed the grenade launcher in her mouth, turning it towards the path. As a last second thought, she pulled out a ski mask and pulled it over her face before taking up position, using her front hooves to steady the launcher, mouth on the trigger. As soon as the small group came into view, she fired, sending a tear gas grenade right at them. It hit a dark grey mare right in the forehead, knocking her out cold on the ground. One other mare she couldn't see clearly was quickly overcome by the gas, coughing and trying to stumble away. Throwing the launcher back into the open saddlebag, Rainbow charged in and through the cloud, grabbing Blue Bonnet and a dropped wallet on the way. Several hundred yards away, she touched down again, pulling off her mask. The stallion she rescued looked around in a frenzy of horror.
"What the hay did you just do?! You're crazy, you know that?!" he accused, making the pegasus roll her eyes as she turned to examine the wallet. "We're both dead once they get up! Do you know who they are?!"
"Well, I do now," she commented. What she was holding turned out not to be a wallet at all. It was a police badge.
"Cops. Come on, let's get you someplace safe."
Rainbow Dash watched from afar, staring at the group of cops plus one from the night before. They were at Doughnut Joe's on a pre-work stop. From what she could tell, the leader was a mare with dark grey fur and a darker grey mane. According to her badge I.D., her name was Marble Pie, though she heard her friends call her "Inkie." Second in command was the pink detective from a couple of days ago, Pinkie Pie. The third of the triumvirate seemed younger and less experienced; she was dark grey, and her mane was slightly lighter. She'd heard her called "Blinkie," though this could have simply been a nickname. Using a camera, she took several pictures of the flat-haired group of earth ponies, noting a family resemblance and common second half of their name; though not always true, some families kept a common name among its members. Surveillance complete, the pegasus quickly exited the area, making her way to a small park not too far away. She quickly spotted the mare with the leg brace, standing near a food vendor. Trotting over, she caught the unicorn's attention.
"Just what the hoofin' hell have you got me into?" Rainbow asked.
"Quite frankly, I have no idea," Twilight responded, sounding a bit surprised. "I hired you to help me figure that out."
Pulling the camera out with a roll of her eyes, the rainbow mare showed her some of the pictures she took. "I think it's a group of corrupt cops. Looks like Marble's on narcotics. She and 'Blinkie' or whatever her real name is get word of a deal, go in, steal the drugs, bits, and kill any witnesses."
"And then they get Pinkie Pie to frame other ponies like Icy Drop for the murders," Twilight concluded.
"Correctamundo. Seems like Chilly's their next target. Or maybe not, I don't know. Hay, I don't know anything anymore, 'cause you won't tell me where the hay you get these numbers from!"
The unicorn hesitated, catching a sigh in her throat and letting it out reluctantly. She glanced up at the slight clouds covering the sun before bringing her gaze back down, looking first off to the side, then right at Rainbow.
"When Princess Celestia was overthrown, you were in a hotel in Las Pegasus. But I...I was here, studying magic. I didn't even know until the sun was going down... You see, until that day, I'd spent all my life reading about magic and practicing it tirelessly, even using that magic to acquire a large savings. But that day...it seemed I'd never really been doing anything with it at all." She bowed her head slightly and began to walk down the path with her awkward limp, Rainbow following.
"After that day, ponies were scared senseless. If somepony could seal an otherwise immortal alicorn in the sun, who knew what they could do to the commoner. They wanted some way to be protected, some way that would be flawless. The royal guards found that by tapping into the unique magic inside every pony, they could collect information from their sensory experiences without influencing or harming them at all. Not to mention microphones and cameras of all sorts could add to the database. But they couldn't sort through it all by themselves. They needed a source of magic much more powerful, and less...sentient. It was originally intended to pick out terrorist attacks alone, before they could be enacted. When they finally got a spell and system to work, they had to keep it secret from all but a select few, or it might be altered or used incorrectly."
Rainbow Dash turned to her. "So how do you know about it? You hack in with your magic?"
"...I made it." she answered. Though her stride didn't stop, Rainbow's did, halting the same time her brain did. Shaking her head to clear it and resolving to ask questions later, she trotted after the purple mare.
"There was one problem with this spell, though," the unicorn continued, keeping her stare straight ahead. "I designed it to stop the next world-changing event...but it also saw every other planned crime. So I had to teach the source of magic I was using to divide what it saw into two lists. Relevant and irrelevant. Anything that would cause massive loss of life or threaten our way of life were relevant, so those were given to the royal guards."
"And the irrelevant?" the pegasus asked.
Twilight paused, as if ashamed. "Every night at midnight...all memory of that list is erased. It was only after I gave the scrolls to the royal guard that I realized how big a mistake I made. That list chewed at my conscience like nothing you would ever imagine, driving me nearly to madness."
"So where is this power source you tapped into? Can't you go there to get the list?"
The unicorn beside her gave a wry chuckle. "No, Ms. Rainbow Dash. That source of magic is far beyond my reach, or that of anypony else. And don't suggest taking back the scrolls; who knows where they are now. But the magic itself, what truly makes up this...what I call a 'machine,' for lack of a better word, is everywhere. Watching us with every eye, listening with every ear."
"And you gave yourself a way to communicate with it," the pegasus accused, stopping her stride and narrowing her eyes at the unicorn. Her associate turned to her.
"I gave a spell of unimaginable power to royal guards that might not hold to their original intention in a few years; I figured a mild counter-spell could be useful. So I used a sort of 'back door' to reach it."
"To access that irrelevant list," Rainbow concluded.
Twilight nodded. "Just a social security number, but it was enough. Any more and somepony could find out and I'd lose the little ability I have."
"And we don't have any idea why it picked Chilly Puddle?"
"It wouldn't be pointing her out to us if it wasn't seeing something," the unicorn assured her accomplice. Rainbow shook her head.
"I don't know if I can protect this mare," she truthfully said. "I can't see the big picture here."
Twilight nodded, looking down and away for a moment. "I offered you a job, Rainbow Dash," she replied, returning her eyes to the level of the impatient mare beside her. "I never said it would be easy."
The unicorn limped off, Rainbow staring at her retreating form blankly, pondering this new information. And more importantly, what to do next.
Meanwhile, Fluttershy was climbing the steps to the precinct, passing a coworker on his way out.
"Hey, Fluttershy!" he greeted. "You hear about your friends from the train a couple of days ago?"
The pegasus cocked her head. "I don't believe so. Why? Did something happen?" The stallion chuckled.
"Them and the ringleader's father tried to buy some guns. Get this; they were shot with their own merchandise."
The canary mare gawked, amazed at this piece of news. "They're not dead, are they?"
"No, nothing like that. Embarrassed as hay, though. Apparently, they were taken out by one 'rainbow mare.' If that's slang for what I think, I'd be embarrassed too."
Her coworker departed, leaving Fluttershy standing on the steps, confused and brain turning over in high gear. Rainbow mare, hm? Perhaps... shaking her head free of the thought, she decided to focus on the day before her instead of dwelling on that.
"Rainbow Dash?" Twilight's voice came over the phone. "I'm afraid I have some bad news... Icy Drop was stabbed to death in his cell last night."
"What?!"
"They're trying to cover their tracks."
The rainbow mare squinted through her binoculars, watching Chilly Puddle working into the rainy mid-morning without any idea of what had happened to her suspect the night before. "They must be going after Chilly next," she growled.
The earth mare's phone rang, making the pegasus' ear twitch. Chilly picked up, but didn't have a chance to greet the caller.
"You wanted to meet," a gruff voice more stated than asked, sounding familiar but not quite enough to place. "Three blocks north, two east, on the corner. Twenty minutes." A click sounded, followed by the dial tone. Looking around quickly, Chilly threw her phone back into her mane and grabbed a cup of water, downing it and throwing it away before exiting her office. Rainbow's eyes bulged.
"Twilight," she managed, letting her binoculars drop to around her neck as she felt a chill that wasn't rain, "It's happening right now!"
Jumping off the roof and landing softly in the alleyway, the blue mare took off running down the sidewalks, using a different route to get to the same corner without Chilly seeing her. When she was a few hundred yards away, she stopped, taking out an assault rifle and waiting for the mare she was observing to go into the run-down alley. Creeping along the wall, Rainbow poked her head out just enough to see into the area and aim the rifle in one hoof, a rope tied around the trigger for easier aiming and firing.
"Hello?" the slate mare called, looking around uncertainly as water splashed on cobblestones. "Are you here?" She paused and turned full circle, breath coming out in steam in the chilly air. "Hellooo?"
She stopped, facing towards the hiding Rainbow Dash. Behind her, Marble Pie and "Blinkie" dashed out. Rainbow raised her gun to aim as the navy earth pony turned towards them.
The mare loosened up slightly. "You kept me waiting, Marble. We don't have time for this, you know!"
The watching pegasus lowered her gun in complete confusion. She knew these mares?
"What's the problem?" Marble asked with a growl, making Rainbow realize she had slightly lowered her voice for the phone call minutes earlier. "Drop's dead!"
"The problem is Klein, you idiots! He's onto us. He knows about Drop and maybe a few of the others. I can take care of the files at the office, but you need to get rid of him. Tonight."
Rainbow Dash's brain was working overtime. A few of the others? Get rid of Klein? Suddenly she realized Puddle hadn't been a victim at all. Grinding her teeth together, the pegasus reared up –
A barrel of a gun was suddenly pressed to the back of her neck, near the base of her skull. The rainbow mare immediately froze, sighing and dropping to all fours, the firearm splashing in a very shallow puddle. A pink hoof reached around and grabbed the gun, before the pony behind her pushed her forwards.
"Lookit who ey found," the dreary Pinkie Pie managed around the gun in her mouth, catching the attention of the other three mares, leading her hostage over to them. "We got a shpy. Big guns, too. Well, maybe jush the one."
The mare turned and bucked Rainbow, forcing her to the ground in the center of the small circle while throwing the gun on her back over to Marble before resuming pointing her pistol at the hostage. The pegasus glared up at them from the wet ground, but Marble had turned to Chilly.
"You know this mare?" she asked. Chilly shook her head in relative confusion. The grey pony turned her purple gaze to the mare on the ground, looking her up and down. "You're not a police officer. Did the cartel finally grow a pair? Send somepony to try to take us out?"
Growing serious, the mare leaned over threateningly, hissing from behind her teeth; "Who the hell are you?"
That, Rainbow thought, is a very good question. Off the top of her head, she couldn't think of any accurate title for this little crusade job she had. She shrugged and shook her head, saying the first thing that came to mind.
"A concerned third party?" she tried, chuckling awkwardly. Marble smirked and nodded, before turning and bucking her hostage in the jaw. The combination of the muscle needed to be law enforcement and the natural strength of the earth pony race sent Rainbow Dash reeling.
"Take care of her," Chilly coldly ordered. "And get rid of Klein tonight. Make it look clean, of course. Oh, and Marble...don't screw this up if you don't want to get taken care of the same way Drop was. I can look after myself, you know."
The mare's retreating hoofsteps echoed in the wet alley, and Marble squinted after her with a small amount of contempt. Turning back to Rainbow Dash, she grabbed the rifle in her mouth and slammed it down on the pegasus' head, making her instantly black out.
Several hours later, Rainbow Dash slowly awoke to a splitting headache. Shaking her head slightly, she looked around, finding she was hogtied in a police cart. There was a steel cage on all sides of her, and a wooden floor beneath. Sitting up, she realized she wasn't in Canterlot any longer. She was being pulled along the edge of a dark forest, a small town on the other side, where she noticed the sun was setting. Finally turning to her escort, she spotted that she was being pulled by the flat-haired pink mare, wearing her official police vest and belt. She trotted quickly, but looked actually quite depressed.
"Nice place," Rainbow managed, her voice still sounding strained from the blow to the head. Pinkie Pie didn't even turn around.
"It's the Everfree Forest, just outside of Ponyville," she moped. "Good thing you like it; you're going to be here for a long, long time."
The pegasus in the back smirked. Yeah right. Deciding to bide time with conversation, she asked a question that had come to mind when she first saw the sad pink mare.
"I'm curious," she began, "was there a point you knew you'd be a bad guy?"
Pinkie Pie hung her head lower, glaring over her shoulder at Rainbow. She shook her head and turned back to the road. "I woke up one day and realized I was paid to guard a bunch of meanies from the castle who were taking stuff from ponies left and right. So I said 'what the hay.'"
The rainbow mare's smirk widened. "I don't believe it for one second," she replied. "'Cause you know, I've been watching you. And your heart's not really in it. Marble does it for money, but I think you do it because you love your sister. Or sisters, if 'Blinkie' isn't really her name."
"It's Limestone Pie," Pinkie corrected. "Why's it matter anyway?"
"About the sister thing? Now I know her real name AND that she's your sister."
"Ha ha," Pinkie sarcastically laughed. "I meant about doing it for money or because they're my sisters."
"Oh. See, that's why I'm going to let you live."
Pinkie Pie looked over her shoulder, and actually began to chuckle. Soon she started all out laughing, Rainbow joining in. When they both calmed down, Rainbow thought Pinkie's hair seemed a little less flat, poofing up a bit as if it were repressed cotton candy.
"Oh, that's funny," she said, sounding a little more chipper.
"Glad you thought so," Rainbow said, still grinning widely. "But seriously, I've been thinking of sticking around Canterlot for a while. And if I do, I'm going to need a pony inside the police. You might come in handy."
"Heh, so I'm working for you now?" Pinkie asked with a smirk.
"Yep," the pegasus affirmed. "But I do have two rules. First of all, you hurt anypony at all, and I will kill you. I don't really like to kill ponies, but I found out a few years back that I'm very good at it. And second, you've gotta be more careful. For example, if you're going to put somepony in the back seat of your cart..." the mare turned and pulled a flash grenade out of her mane, "Ya halfta search 'em properly!"
Using her tongue to pull out the pin, she threw the grenade through the bars of the cage and in front of Pinkie's hooves. It exploded with a bright flash, making the mare yelp and stumble. Tripping over a rock and down a slight hill, the mare lost control of the cart, sending it crashing into a tree. The metal cage broken, Rainbow squeezed out, using the bent bars to pull the ropes off her hooves. Once that was straightened out, she went over to the stunned and dizzy Pinkie Pie, detaching her from the cart. Using a wing to remove the officer's gun from its holster, she pulled the earth pony to her hooves.
"That vest the bulletproof version, officer?" she asked.
"Y-yes?" Pinkie Pie groggily replied. Rainbow smirked devilishly.
"Good." Letting go of the mare, she flipped the gun to her mouth and shot several rounds into the back of the pink mare's vest, sending her to the ground, the massive vibrations on her core knocking her out. Satisfied, Rainbow Dash stowed the gun in her mane and took off flying, back towards Canterlot.
A certain lavender unicorn paced back and forth as well as her handicapped leg would let her. She hadn't heard from Rainbow Dash since the confrontation in the alleyway that morning, and it was already almost dark. They had found and destroyed the mare's phone, making tracking her impossible, not that she would have been able to do anything about it. She was just starting to accept the worst –
A phone chirped in the library, catching Twilight's attention. Immediately, she picked it up with her magic and pulled it to her ear, knowing there was only one pony with that number.
"Where the hoof have you – "
"No time, Twilight," Rainbow's voice came, along with the clopping of hooves on stone. "We were wrong. Chilly's not a target, she's a ringleader, and they're going after Klein!"
"I'll get his address right away," Twilight said, sitting down at her computer and rapidly using her magic to pull up the stallion's information.
In the early night's glow of the moon, Limestone Pie stood at the corner of a block, waiting. She didn't have to wait long, as her elder sister galloped over, a cart with a burlap sack in the back attached to her waist.
"Klein's up there," Limestone told her sister. "He usually goes to the gym, so I got a buddy up there watching. The place is a dump, there's no doormare, no cameras, nothing."
"Makes our job easy," Marble commented, pulling a few pistols out of the cart. "Let's take him out in the lobby. And after that, we give the shooter a head shot a block or two away."
"Yes sir, ma'am, sir," the younger said, taking a pistol from the other mare. Marble nodded and pulled the strings of the sack, opening it and revealing a mare inside. "Who's she?"
"I dunno, shome ex-con Klein put behind barsh," Marble shrugged. The two mares lifted the third up, using a rope for reigns to keep her quiet and where they wanted her, with a gun pointed at her as added incentive. All three crept into the building and up the stairs, glancing around to make sure they weren't spotted.
"Get the lightsh," Marble whispered as they neared the elevator. Limestone nodded and trotted to the other side of the hall, hitting the switch and shutting off the lights.
"Talk to me," Marble muttered into her radio to the accomplice upstairs.
"He's coming down now," a stallion replied, watching as the door to an apartment opened. Klein walked out, stopping to look behind him.
"Coming, Shady Daze?" he asked.
"Just a sec, Dad!" a colt called back. Shortly after, a small pony with a light blue coat and dark blue, two-toned mane trotted out. He had a baseball in his mouth, making his father chuckle.
"Damn," the watching stallion breathed into the radio. "He's got his kid with him."
"What a washte," Marble smirked, turning off the radio. She turned to the ex-con she was holding hostage, placing the gun in her mouth. "You're about to kill a stallion...and his son."
Limestone awkwardly shifted from hoof to hoof, watching her sister go into that maniacal mode she hated so much from across the way of the elevator. Over the quiet stammering of the hostage mare, she didn't hear hoofsteps approaching her from behind until a gun was to her head and a hoof was over her mouth, forcing the pistol she had been holding to the ground.
The clatter of metal on tile brought the attention of Marble, who saw her sister held hostage by a blue pegasus mare with a rainbow mane. Rainbow Dash shook her head at the earth pony, who pulled the gun out of her hostage's mouth and pointed it at her head. Both parties backed away from the elevator and behind something to hide themselves. The number above the elevator doors began to slowly count down, Rainbow and Marble holding guns to their hostages and watching with anticipation. After an eternity, they heard a ding, and the doors opened. Klein was offering words of encouragement to his son as he tossed the ball up and down.
Trying to catch the ball in his mouth, he missed and it went bouncing off towards Rainbow Dash and Limestone. The pegasus used a forehoof to stop it, and Shady Daze trotted over. Bending over to pick up the ball, his eye followed the hoof to the face of the pegasus it belonged to. She managed a grin around the firearm in her mouth, and Shady grinned back. Picking up the ball, he galloped after his father and out the door. Once the two males were clear, Rainbow and Marble advanced towards each other, keeping their hostages in front of them as both shields and swords.
"Let her go," the pegasus mumbled around her weapon. Marble simply smirked.
"I can't do that. If I let her go, my friendsh and I'll go to jail."
The stallion that was upstairs burst out of the stairwell, but Rainbow was much faster than him. She spun just her head and shot out one of his front knees, quickly reverting the gun back to Limestone's head before he even hit the ground. Marble snarled, keeping the gun trained on the innocent mare's head.
"Drag your friend outshide, and take him to the hoshpital," Rainbow murmured, "right...now!"
Limestone felt herself shoved out of the way by a front hoof as Rainbow trained her weapon on Marble's head. Limestone obeyed immediately, managing to put the larger stallion on her back and struggle out the door. Marble narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing Rainbow Dash as her sister got out of harm's way.
"I think I'm just gonna kill you and this mare," she growled, starting to press the gun's barrel against the random mare's head harder. "I can make it look like you killed each other. Then, for threatening my little shishter, I'll kill your family, and your friendsh too."
"I don't have any friendsh," Rainbow Dash evenly replied. "I don't have any family left either. And see, to me, thish ish funny. Because I went all around the planet looking for bad guysh...but it turnsh out there were more than enough of you right here all along."
Outside, a mare was walking along the sidewalk. Two flashes inside an apartment building caught her eye, making her stop and scrutinize the door. No more than two seconds later, a mare ran out and nearly crashed into her, stumbling but continuing to run down the sidewalk. Shaking her head, the bystander hurried away, not knowing what took place and not sure she wanted to.
The next morning, Chilly Puddle was in the courtroom, staring at a long sent text to Marble inquiring about where she was.
"Ms. Chilly Puddle?" the judge asked, making her jerk her head up. "Do we need a no-cell phone policy in the courtroom?"
"I'm very sorry, your honor," she awkwardly apologized, standing up and walking over to the evidence table. "But I would like to have the defendant tell the court what happened in her own words. The following tape is the emergency call she made to law enforcement."
An impartial law pony put the tape in play. There was a moment of silence, but when it was broken, it wasn't a frantic plea for help.
"And get rid of Klein tonight," Chilly's voice rang out across the courtroom, her conversation with Marble from the day before playing loud and clear. "Make it look clean, of course. Oh, and Marble...don't screw this up if you don't want to get taken care of the same way Drop was. I can look after myself, you know."
Chilly began to frantically look around the courtroom, confused. Her gaze stopped moving when it locked on a certain blue pegasus, leaning her rainbow hair against the back wall. Rainbow Dash smirked triumphantly as the earth mare's expression changed from confusion to complete horror. When the audio reel stopped, Rainbow turned and exited the courtroom. A police pony walked over to the slate mare to arrest her, reading her rights.
Outside and a block away, Pinkie Pie somewhat nervously glanced around, on edge ever since yesterday afternoon and hair once more flat. She could still feel the several bruises on her back from where the bullets had struck her vest. Stepping into a garage, she attached herself to a police cart lest she need it. After she strapped herself in, she felt a gun pressed to the back of her head; her own gun, ironically enough.
"Hey there, Pinkie Pie," Rainbow's cocky voice came from behind, the rainbow mare having come up while she was occupied. "You ready to get to work?"
The pink mare sighed, dropping her head slightly. "Oh, what's the use? I'm good as dead now anyway. It's just a matter of time until the gangs come after me. Or the police who police the police."
"But nopony knows you're involved," the pegasus replied smartly. "I made sure of that. Beshides, they'll be too busy looking for Marble. The police are going to think she ran, and the gangsh are going to think she went into witnessh protection or whatever we call it."
"Is that where she is?" Pinkie asked hopefully. "Witness protection-or-whatever-we-call-it?"
"Mmm...no," Rainbow replied. "She's in the bag I just put in your cart. She didn't give me a choish but to shoot her with your gun, so that'sh a bit of a problem. Don't know how you could talk your way out of that. Sho you're going to take a day trip, but I'm not along for the ride thish time around."
The earth pony bit the inside of her cheek, tears welling up behind her eyes. She sighed, almost seeming as if her colors were draining. "Where am I going?"
"Hell if I care. Take her shomewhere nice. Maybe Ponyville...where no one'sh going to find her for a long, long time. I'll be in touch."
The pegasus withdrew Pinkie Pie's gun from its owner's head, placing it in the police cart. With a smirk and a nod, she flew off, leaving Pinkie Pie with the cart and badly-hidden body. Screwing her eyes shut, she fought back the tears that threatened to consume her as she started to trot off.
Twilight Sparkle sat at the outer edge of Canterlot, looking out over the ledge to the rivers and forests at the bottom of the mountain, shimmering in the sunlight. Rainbow Dash slowly walked over, ending up standing just behind her. The unicorn turned to her pegasus associate.
"You have a choice to make," Twilight said, looking up at Rainbow.
"Let me guess. Your 'machine' gave you another number?"
"The numbers will never stop coming," the lavender mare emphasized. "You should know that in advance." The blue pegasus nodded, pondering the implications of a never-ending job.
"Why me?" she asked, looking out over Equestria as well. "Why not somepony else?"
"...I've been watching you for a very long time, Rainbow," Twilight explained. "We have more in common than one would think from a glance. For starters, as far as the world's concerned, we're dead." She managed a small and wry grin, causing Rainbow to smirk as well. However, she regained a stone-faced expression as she sat down next to Twilight.
"You programmed the machine to delete that list...and now you're trying to save it. So...what changed your mind?"
Twilight slowly swept her gaze over the landscape below, as if weighing how to answer that question. "Let's just say you're not the only one who's lost somepony."
Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes at the mysterious mare, but didn't pry further. For now, one revelation at a time would do.
"If you want to leave, I can supply you enough money to get as far away as you need," Twilight offered, not meeting the other mare's eyes. "You could disappear."
Disappear. She could go back to living day to day, no one knowing who she was or even caring. Life would certainly be simpler that way.
"...What if I want to stay?" she asked, turning to face the unicorn.
"Sooner or later both of us will probably end up dead," her companion replied. "Actually dead, this time." Rainbow's eyes quickly went from being fully open to half lidded, looking at the other mare with a combination of annoyance and skepticism. Twilight turned to see and rolled her eyes.
"I told you I'd tell the truth. I never said it would be pleasant."
The pegasus smirked, nodding and looking back over the landscape. That certainly was true. She'd been nearly killed more times in the past week than she had been in a long, long time. And even though Twilight seemed unwilling or unable to do much field work, the right enemies could probably find and track her magic and get to her as well.
Sooner or later, both of them probably would wind up dead. But then again, as far as anypony else cared, they already were.
"If you could just start talking to me, I would really appreciate it," a certain, soft-spoken officer said as the sun began to reach its peak.
"I'm not going to snitch on my friends!" Limestone Pie growled, being led into a police cart.
"Oh, no, I guess I wasn't clear. You can tell the D.A. about them," Fluttershy corrected herself, flying beside the earth pony. "But I want to know about the pony that stopped you."
"I don't know anything about her. Just some rainbow mare, alone."
"Well, if you could tell me all about what you don't know about her and where I can find her, that would be really helpful," the canary mare smiled, attaching herself to the cart. Little did she know, mere steps away, a blue pegasus was listening to her conversation. Courtesy of Twilight's magic, her mane was currently blue with red stripes, so as to avoid suspicion from her rather unique hair color.
Looks like Detective Fluttershy's going to be on my tail, she thought, turning and beginning to trot away. That'll make things interesting.
As she walked the city streets by herself, for the first time in a long time, Rainbow Dash felt like she was doing something worthwhile with her life. And even though she didn't have anyone beside her at that moment, she felt as if she was walking with somepony. Somepony she knew by no name.
No name other than "The Machine."
Ghosts
A stallion smiled as he gathered up supplies from his workplace, shoving things haphazardly into his saddlebags as he whistled to himself, the workday quickly drawing to a close. The only object he took care to protect was a bouquet of lilies he had set aside. Picking it up gingerly in his teeth, he set it down on his back and went to the elevator. Two other stallions were waiting inside, whom he greeted with a nod, pressing the button for the ground floor.
"Hold up!" a new voice called, making the male look up. A blue hoof stuck itself in the door as it closed, making them open again. A rainbow pegasus mare smiled, getting in. "Almost missed it."
Once the doors closed and the small metal box began to move, the mare looked at the lilies. "Those for your wife, by any chance?" she asked curiously.
"Uh, yes," he replied, showing a slightly uncomfortable smile. The mare cocked her head, looking at the white flowers.
"That's funny, I thought your wife liked roses."
The stallion stared at her. "Do I know you?" he asked incredulously.
"Pft, no. But I know you. And you don't seem like a bad pony, really. But if I had a spouse and was going to walk out on them, I'd be a hellofa lot more careful about it."
"Do you work here?!" he growled. "Because if you do, you're fired!"
"Actually, a better analogy would be an independent contractor, though that's still not right," Rainbow Dash mused. "But back to my point. Your wife knows. And a lot of mares would just leave you, but you got a real winner here. She actually hired a couple of stallions to take you out." The mare nodded to indicate the silent ponies behind them, who glanced at each other. "They even dismantled the elevator's security cameras to make it look like a botched robbery. Gotta love a girl who's gone completely cupcakes on you."
She flashed a cocky smile at the two stallions behind her, making them glance at each other again. With a sudden and fluid motion, one pulled a gun out of the the other's mane, prompting the rainbow mare to lunge forwards and try to wrestle it out of his mouth with her hooves. Two shots later, the elevator hit the ground floor with a ding. The stallion with the lilies stumbled out of the elevator in a panic, Rainbow Dash casually trotting out after him with a smirk as the two hitponies lay on the ground groaning in pain.
"Might be a good idea to call the cops," she said over her shoulder as she trotted away. "And a good divorce lawyer might be handy too."
Br-riiiiing! Br-riiiiing!
A unicorn stallion wearing a vest stopped as he passed a ringing payphone in the evening hours. Most other ponies walked by, paying it no mind or wondering who the hay would call a payphone in the first place. Looking at it curiously himself, the stallion picked up the phone.
"I've got a new job for you," a mare's voice came across the phone. "Client says triple your asking price."
"Give me a name," the stallion replied.
A lavender unicorn wandered through the morning rush of the Canterlot streets, an intricate metal brace on her back right leg making her limp. Though her leg had to be awkwardly cast out to the side every time she wanted to take a step, it was better than the alternative of damaging her knee further.
A ringing in the small Bluetooth she had been wearing in her ear caught her attention. With a slight transmission from her horn to the foreign device, she switched it on.
"Good morning, Twilight," a smug voice greeted. Across the street, behind the unicorn, a pegasus with rainbow locks watched the handicapped mare make her way slowly down the sidewalk, eyes locked on her.
"Good morning, Ms. Rainbow Dash," Twilight Sparkle spoke into the phone, back to the other mare. "Since you sound so confident, I trust that last night you didn't run into any problems?"
"Easy, peas-y, one two threes-y," the pegasus replied, starting to walk slowly after her from across the street, carefully making her hoofsteps silent.
"Good. You should get some rest, having a late night and then an early morning like that."
"I figured I'd do some...research," she replied, grinning to herself as she continued to paw after the unsuspecting unicorn.
"Well, please be sure to let me know your findings," the purple mare replied, continuing her stride. "And we will have to speak later."
"That fancy machine of yours give us another number?"
"Yes, but this one's a bit...odd," the unicorn affirmed, turning a corner. "And one last thing, Ms. Rainbow Dash?"
"Shoot," Rainbow replied, dashing across the street with a mad grin, a Timberwolf on the hunt, nearing its prey. She skidded to a stop just outside the range of vision of the corner before pouncing into view, sweeping her eyes around to find Twilight again. However, after a confused first sweep and a concerned second, she realized the lavender unicorn was nowhere.
"Not to seem overly domineering or paranoid," Twilight's voice came, "but we will be meeting on MY schedule. Not yours."
A light yellow pegasus with a flowing, pastel pink mane and tail trotted over to the yellow tape marking off a crime scene.
"Detective Fluttershy?" a stallion asked, moving over to meet her. "I thought you worked homicide. Sure, these guys were shot last night, but just in the knees. They're still breathing."
"Actually, I'm here to look into an ongoing case of mine," she softly replied. "But it's good to know they'll be okay."
The stallion nodded and lifted the tape, allowing the canary mare to approach the elevator, two bullet holes evident in the door. "Doesn't seem like there's much of a story behind this one. Two hitponies were sent in to take out some rich stallion, but a third pony 'intervened.'"
"I'm going to take a guess," Fluttershy said, taking a look how clean, almost professional, the shootout had been, "a rainbow mare?"
Her peer stared at her, nodding in slight confusion as to how she figured that out so quickly. Fluttershy looked back over the scene, nodding herself. This "rainbow mare" she was chasing was definitely a trained killer. And she was going to find her before she decided to kill anypony.
Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash walked towards the mountain side of the capital city in the afternoon sun, side by side. Although the walking pace of the impatient pegasus wasn't exactly slow, Twilight's limp only impeded her slightly.
"How did your research go?" the unicorn asked.
"Hmm...inconclusive," Rainbow Dash offered. Twilight grinned slightly in her peripheral vision. "So what's our new number?"
"This new number belongs to a filly by the name of Tornado Bolt," she replied. "She's had a bit of disciplinary trouble, but basically well behaved."
"Sounds like she's a victim, then. Where can I find her?"
Twilight glanced over to her associate and continued walking. The pegasus cocked her head, following as she was led to a much more dismal area: a cemetery.
"As I told you, Ms. Rainbow Dash...this situation is somewhat unique. Where Tornado Bolt should be...is right here."
The two mares stopped in front of a large headstone, four names engraved on it. Under all the names was the sentiment "Flying Free Forevermore."
"Tornado Bolt was killed two years ago," the somber voice of Twilight spoke up. "Along with her mother, father, and older brother."
Rainbow Dash blinked, looking the gravestone up and down once more.
"So we're looking for a ghost?"
Admin identified: Twilight Sparkle. Reviewing information...
Important life moment identified. Accessing...
June 10, 1502, 05:37
A white unicorn stallion trotted through a large building, his sapphire mane with both one darker and one lighter stripe laying over his saddlebags, which didn't quite cover his Cutie Mark: a blue shield with a magenta star in the center, and three lighter blue stars over it.
The stallion used his rose-colored magic to open a door and was greeted with a single pile of scrolls about his height, as well as a sound he didn't expect. Closing the door behind him with a bemused smile, he walked around the parchment to see a lavender unicorn mare running in place on a treadmill.
"Are you working out, Twily?" he asked, approaching the mare, making her turn to him. "Training for something? Actually, no, that would be a social event, right?"
The mare playfully stuck her tongue out at him, hopping off the treadmill before using her magic to levitate a towel to her face. "I'll have you know that I do go to social gatherings," she replied lightheartedly. "However, at the moment I simply got restless working in here alone for so long."
"Did you even leave last night?"
"Nope."
The stallion chuckled, shaking his head. "Come on, take a break; I bought us something to commemorate getting another award."
"Oh?" the mare asked, following him over to a table. He levitated a bottle of berry champagne out of his saddlebag, pouring it into two glasses Twilight got from a cabinet they kept in the room's living area in case of Twilight spending too much time at work.
"Look," the white unicorn chuckled, pouring the drink into both glasses, "I know that our deal was that you did the spell-making and I did all the public stuff; get the board to agree, sign off on the pay, get the awards..." He set the glass down and levitated a crystalline sculpt out of the bags on his back.
"But to be completely honest, this is getting exhausting!"
Twilight chuckled, finishing wiping any sweat from running off and neatly hanging the towel over the treadmill. "I'm perfectly happy just doing the work with the magic. Always have been."
Both ponies laughed, lifting their cups in their respective magic hues, clinking them together before each taking a drink. Twilight set hers down in the center of a napkin before looking at the small award.
"What's this one for?" she asked.
"Apparently," he replied, looking at it again, "for 'services to ponykind.' Just don't tell them we had to give half the unicorns in the company the boot."
"Hey, you're the one that wanted to 'give back and make a difference,'" the mare smirked, turning her attention to a magically projected hologram on the other side of the table, showing many squares moving about on a map of Canterlot. Her male counterpart looked back over at the pile of scrolls he had to walk past to get in the room.
"So what was all that voodoo you piled by the door?" he asked.
"It's not voodoo. Voodoo implies intent to harm or scare."
"Alright, so the scrolls?"
"Those," Twilight started proudly, "are the unique characteristics of everypony's individual magic, rewritten in spell format to tap into their sensory experiences."
"Everypony?" her partner asked, looking at the scrolls in bewilderment. "In the kingdom?"
"No, that's just Canterlot!" she giddily explained, trying not to let her pleasure in her latest accomplishments distract her. She cleared her throat. "Anyway, right now I need to work on the basics with the source: identification by Cutie Marks, race, and colors, tracking via several data points, et cetera. I'm just about ready to move onto the next problem."
"And what's that?" the stallion beside her asked.
"Well, sorting everything out, of course!"
"Oh, yeah, right...mind elaborating for the clueless over here?"
Twilight playfully rolled her eyes, knowing that though she hadn't properly explained this to him, he knew the purpose of the complicated spell she was spending all her time weaving. She beckoned him over to the hologram map, pointing at it.
"Okay, so this is obviously Canterlot, right? Well, even though there are many, MANY ponies living here, only a few if any of them are planning to try and completely alter our way of life. And they aren't exactly obvious either; if they were, I wouldn't have to create this spell. What I need to teach the beacon to do is filter out the ponies that are hiding something. Living double lives, if you will."
"Oh, so ponies like you?" he asked. The mare jerked her head up, mouth agape in offense before he smirked and teasingly shoved her shoulder with his own. Twilight shook her head with a smirk and looked back at the hologram. "So how much longer is this all going to take?"
"Oh, geez," the mare sighed, looking at the hologram. "Four to five more years, depending on any new magic that is developed in that time, whether or not the beacon will last as long as I think it will, and all kinds of other variables that I can't even begin to think of off the top of my head."
The white unicorn whistled, watching as the squares moved about on the Canterlot hologram map. "So this is...?" Twilight looked up.
"Everyone."
Reverting to original task...
Current date/time: October 8, 1511, 09:02
Rainbow Dash let her wings beat against the air around her, carrying her rapidly higher and higher, her shadow stretching and contorting as the grey rocks beneath her rushed past and changed its shape. She finally spotted a small ledge near the top of the mountain with a lavender form standing near its edge. Slowing to landing speeds, the pegasus gently hovered herself to stand next to Twilight.
"Did you walk up here?" Rainbow asked.
"Good heavens no, and I couldn't if I tried," the unicorn responded, lightly flexing her braced leg to emphasize the point. "However, we're not here to discuss my means of transportation."
Twilight turned her head around to pull a folder out of her mane. Taking it up in her magic, she pulled out a picture of a young pegasus filly, too young to even earn her Cutie Mark. Her coat was light grey, and her mane and tail were a grey-purple.
"This is what Tornado Bolt looked like the day she and her family were supposedly killed, after taking off from this very spot for a 'sky sail,' as you call it," she continued. Rainbow Dash nodded, looking over the picture.
"How'd that come about?"
Another picture was drawn out, a stallion with similar colors. "Apparently, her father Sightseer flew them into a thundercloud, electrocuting all of them and then himself."
"Now why the hay would anypony do that?" the blue pegasus asked with a bit of a huff.
"I'm not the one to ask," Twilight replied, shaking her head slightly. "But read the file in the folder and see what I'm seeing."
The magenta hue of the unicorn's magic pulled a newspaper report out into the light, and hovered it conveniently in front of Rainbow's face. She skimmed the basics of who was involved, date, and anything she already knew.
"Kay, let's see; bodies of mother, father, and brother found on clouds, burns and trauma typical of lightning strikes found on all regions of the bodies...wait a second..."
Twilight observed as Rainbow re-read the two sentences she had rattled off before the pegasus lifted her head to cast a quizzical glance at the unicorn. "Tornado Bolt's body was never found, assumed to have landed on a cloud that was accidentally moved by air transit.
"But seriously Twilight...this filly's been gone for two years for Faust's sake. I'm sure the police have been out looking for her."
"The police can only see what they look for and then find, Ms. Rainbow Dash," the lavender mare replied, neatly putting everything back into the folder and centering it on her back. "On the other hand, The Machine sees everything. I made absolutely sure of that. If her number came up, then she must be alive."
The rainbow mare snorted. "Yeah, sure. So how come nopony she knew has seen her since?"
Twilight tapped a forehoof lightly on the ground in thought. "...I have absolutely no idea. But one thing's for sure: if her number came up, she's in some kind of danger."
"And if she is still alive," Rainbow Dash darkly concluded, voice lowering with a growl, "she won't be for long."
The pegasus suddenly turned and grabbed the folder in her teeth, earning a startled "Hey!" from Twilight. Rainbow skimmed over the newspaper article again, but didn't see anything else of help.
"Damn, this isn't enough to go on," she muttered, haphazardly throwing everything back together and tossing it over her shoulder. Twilight caught the papers in her magic and straightened them, turning to see her coworker preparing to fly off.
"Where are you going?" she asked curiously.
"To get a police report." With a final stretch of her wings, the pegasus exploded off the ground, a rainbow trail following her as she dived straight back down the mountain.
"I told you to be careful of that tail trail!" the unicorn yelled in vain, huffing and charging her horn to return to the library.
A flat-haired Pinkie Pie trotted nervously through the Ponyville police precinct, checking for any doors as she went. Earlier that morning, she had gotten in quick succession floppy ears, fluttering eyelids, and twitchy knees: an activation of her "Pinkie Sense." Those who wanted a rationale for it never got any; for as long as she could remember, she'd get little twitches and changes throughout her body before some vague and immediate event happened. After several years, she realized many of these correlated to instances that were constant; for example, whenever she got the "combo" she had earlier that day, an opening door would cause some kind of havoc, probably slamming somepony in the face. The issue at the moment, however, was that she had experienced that combo an hour ago, and all the doors had been behaving politely since then. It freaked her out a bit.
Suddenly the pink mare stopped in the middle of a hallway, just outside the restrooms, feeling a sensation coming on somewhere in her body. Specifically, her knee.
"...Pinchy knee?" she asked, confused. She didn't have time to utter anything else before something blue and mare-sized shot out of the mare's room, grabbing her up and throwing her inside it. She managed a scream, though it was quickly muffled by a hoof over her mouth. Once her eyes stopped spinning in opposite directions, she was able to focus on the face of the mare holding her against the wall.
"Well hey there, Pinkie Pie," Rainbow Dash's smug smirk said. Pinkie Pie let out a sigh somewhere between relief and expectation of the worst as the pegasus took her hoof off her mouth.
"Something scary and watch out for doors, makes sense now," she rambled.
"...Eh?"
"Um, nevermind, How'd you get in here anyway?"
The pegasus took a badge out from where it was stowed under a wing. "I took Marble's badge. You know, before you buried her in Ponyville never to be seen again." Pinkie Pie pouted, colors seeming to darken and hair flatten out even more. "Listen, though; I need a file on an old case."
"Okay, but I'd appreciate it if you took out that IAD file that apparently belongs to me I'm supposed to mention. The ponies around here think I'm a dirty cop. Sooo...whatcha say?"
Rainbow Dash blinked. "First of all, what? And secondly, you are dirty, and I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine isn't what I play by."
"But my back doesn't need scratching," Pinkie replied, seeming confused, "and if it did, that would mean it's my lucky day, but I don't feel any luck coming my way whenever you're nearby."
The pegasus blinked, opening her mouth to ask where that latest comment came from before deciding against it with a shake of her own head. "Alright, whatever. Point is, you got yourself in that mess, and I'm not responsible for getting you out of it. Now get me that file; Tornado Bolt, two year old murder-suicide." She didn't wait for a response, exiting the mare's room and leaving Pinkie Pie standing against the wall, confused and more than a bit unnerved.
"It's just...such a tragedy," a stallion choked out, seeming moments away from breaking into tears. He was a pegasus with a light blue coat and somewhat scruffy, dark grey mane. His Cutie Mark was a rainbow consisting of purple, orange, and yellow. The ticker tape at the bottom listed him as Spectrum. "I can't believe he would do this."
"Because he didn't," Rainbow Dash murmured around a pen, watching the archived news video. She had papers scattered all about Twilight's computer, taking various notes on whatever scraps she could get her hooves on. She had decided to keep one page for each reference material she was using, but that was just about the only organization she had.
"I wish he would have reached out," a creamy-orange pegasus mare with wild blue hair and a Cutie Mark of three twisters sobbed. Rainbow checked that particular page of notes and recalled she was Sugar Twist, married to Spectrum and Sightseer's sister. "We knew there was a bit of money trouble, but..."
With a violent tap from the pen in her mouth on the space bar, Rainbow stopped the recording.
"Please don't break my equipment," Twilight pleaded, limping over from where she had been reorganizing the photos on the cracked Plexiglas pane. The pegasus ignored her, instead pushing the notes page of the police report forward for the unicorn to examine.
"This was professional, I'm sure about that," the rainbow mare insisted, putting down the pen as Twilight took up the page in her magic and turned it several directions to read the notes scrawled every which way. "There were bruises specifically on the joint where the wings can bend in the middle. That's a pressure point for us pegasus ponies, stiffens our wings like a wing boner for a good few minutes."
Twilight flinched slightly, putting the paper down. "Well, besides your choice in vulgar slang, that doesn't tell me much. After all, wouldn't the wings be most susceptible to lightning strikes?"
The pegasus rolled her eyes, shuffling through the police report until she found the photographs of all the found bodies' wings. "Look; under the burns from the lightning, you can see horseshoe shaped bruising."
"Teeth marks," the unicorn realized.
"Yep. I'll bet my bottom bit another pegasus was there, a hitpony. Probably grabbed Tornado Bolt like that, threatened to drop her if the parents didn't land on a cloud. Kept the kid on her back while she bit a wing on each family member to prevent them from trying anything funny, then brought over a thundercloud and shocked them all."
"That's extremely complicated. How do you know that's what she or he did?"
"Because that's how I would have done it."
Twilight looked back up with half-lidded eyes. The pegasus gave a defensive huff. "What?! You hired me because I was a Shadowbolt, remember?" The unicorn shook her head.
"Regardless, that doesn't explain why Tornado Bolt wasn't killed, or didn't reach out to a family member," she pointed out.
"Yeah, I got no clue on that one. Hoping you did."
"Not exactly, but I did manage to track down the aunt and uncle in the video you were just reviewing. Perhaps they'll know what was going on with Sightseer."
"Cool. While you're doing that, I'm gonna look up this guy..." Rainbow opened the police file once more to pull out a picture of a colt with a dark green coat and barely two-tone blue mane. "Tornado Bolt was picked up with this kid for a few petty thefts. Name's Green Daze. Maybe if she didn't go to her family, she looked towards a friend."
"Another thing you would have done?" Twilight asked.
"You're forgetting I don't have friends."
"Well, neither do I, but if I had them I'd certainly utilize them. Regardless, we don't know how much time we have until something happens to Tornado Bolt. It might be most effective for you to follow your lead and me to follow mine."
"You got it, boss," Rainbow replied, saluting with her right hoof before taking off out the library's door. Twlight nodded, checking the address she had written down before firing a burst of her magic from her horn into the air around her. Once her eyes adjusted from the flash, she was looking down a neighborhood block, the sun signaling it was just about noon. She walked down the cobblestone road, checking both sides of the street until she found the address she was looking for. The unicorn painstakingly moved up one stair at a time, her braced leg hindering her. Once she finally reached the door, she raised a hoof and knocked thrice.
The top half of the door opened, reveling the magenta eyes of a creamy-orange mare with a wild blue mane. She seemed a bit apprehensive at the sight of a unicorn on her stoop, but when the magenta orbs came to rest on the silver metal of Twilight's leg brace, her expression softened to one of confusion.
"Are you Sugar Twist?" Twilight asked. No need for this mare to know she knew nearly everything about her.
"Yes. Why?"
"Oh, pardon me, I'm Twilight Shimmer. I'm actually here as a cold case investigator. I'm working Sightseer's case. When I checked his records, you and your husband were listed as next of kin."
Sugar twisted her mouth a bit and glanced away. "Ex-husband now."
"O-oh, I'm so sorry," Twilight stammered. Hopefully it was convincing.
"It's alright. Uh, please," the pegasus replied, swinging the bottom door wide, "come on in."
The lavender mare nodded in appreciation, stepping inside. The home was relatively small, decorated with photo frames on bookshelves and tables. Sugar led Twilight over to a kitchen and dining area, offering her a seat. With a grateful nod, the unicorn sat down.
"You said you were investigating the case? I thought for sure it had been closed."
"Well, yes, it was. However, I was reviewing the case and found the notes and details of the previous investigator were less than exemplary. I was actually unable to discern some basic things such as motive and ultimate cause of death."
"Well, I'm sure you found out cause of death from the newspapers," Sugar said with a shudder. "But as for motive, even we don't know for sure. I don't know what would make him do this..."
The pegasus looked down at the table before glancing back up. "Does this mean you're going to keep looking for Tornado's body?"
Twilight was thrown off by the sudden change in topic. It must have shown in her face, because Sugar hastily moved to explain. "It's just, well...we buried an empty coffin where we would have put Tornado. They said her body probably landed on a cloud that was moved accidently. I was hoping that...that she'd be brought back home the same way."
The unicorn's eyes softened in sympathy as the pegasus stood up and retrieved a photo frame from a bookshelf, tears beginning to flow down her face. "I-I'm sorry. This is just...br-bringing back some hard memories."
"I completely understand," Twilight offered, following with her eyes as Sugar came back to the table. The pegasus sniffled, dragging her wrist across her nose.
"Spectrum never got over it...I can only imagine wherever he is he still feels like it was only yesterday."
"Do you mean you don't have any contact with him?" the unicorn asked. The pegasus shook her head.
"No, we haven't spoken since the divorce. I do have an old address, but I don't know if you'll be able to find him."
"If you wouldn't mind, I'll certainly try." Sugar nodded and got up again, finding a slip of paper in her old address book and giving it to Twilight.
"You might want to mention it's about Tornado Bolt," the pegasus offered as her guest put the paper away, turning the photo frame to her. It was a photo of the missing filly and her family, Sugar and Spectrum included. "Even though we didn't have any foals of our own, we loved her like our own little filly. It's just too bad you can't pick your parents."
Twilight glanced up from the photo, weighing the nature of that comment. After a few final formalities and "thank you"s all around, the unicorn departed.
Fluttershy groaned, lightly hitting her head on her desk as the midday sun streamed through her windows. Several police files were scattered across it, softening the already lackluster knock to her cranium. She had pulled literally every file that had the possibility of being her rainbow mare, and of the ones that seemed most promising, more than half of them had long lines of black ink printed over most of the words, making them impossible to read.
"Eight files and still no answers," she muttered as the clip-clop of hooves on floor reached her ears.
"I found shomthing, Fluttershy!" a mare exclaimed around a file in her mouth. The canary mare looked up, excitedly taking it in her own hooves. "Missing pony in 1507! Seems like that trigger-happy hobo of yours."
"Only now she's a killer," the timid pegasus replied, opening the file. To her dismay, there was only one thing in the file; a white page with a red stamp that said "REDACTED." She sighed.
"They pulled her whole file," she murmured, once more gently attacking the desk with her head.
"Pft, dang Royal Guards," the second mare scoffed, putting a consoling hoof on the pegasus' wing. "Looks like this one's above your head, Fluttershy." The yellow pony gave another sigh, lifting her head. She was going to need to get her hooves on a lot more information if she hoped to get anywhere.
"How'd your angle go, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash asked as she trotted through a city park, looking around in the afternoon light.
"Well, Tornado Bolt's aunt is fine, but her uncle is just gone," Twilight's voice projected through the earpiece, a faint clicking of keys also audible in the background. "Ms. Sugar Twist was right, he's no longer at the address she gave me, and there's no records of him forwarding his address anywhere else. I hope you've been having more success than I have."
"At the moment, not really," the pegasus said, looking around. "I've looked in every park fillies and colts that drop out of class go. Every. Single. One. A whole bunch of punks, and yet no sign of the one punk I actually need to find."
"What makes you so sure Tornado Bolt would be in one of these parks?" Twilight asked as a green adolescent colt coasting on a skateboard caught her eye.
"I wasn't looking for her, remember?" she asked, reaching up a hoof to hang up via the earpiece. Placing something from her mane under her wing, the pegasus trotted over to Green Daze. As they just began to pass each other, Rainbow stuck out her wing, causing him to reach a sudden stop against the feathered appendage.
"Hey!" he growled, resting two of his hooves on the ground to keep from rolling away. Even without the extra height from the board, he only had to look up slightly to meet Rainbow's eyes. "What gives?!"
"You," the pegasus said, lifting her wing to show Marble's badge. "You know it's a 200 bit fine to skate in a park, right?" The young stallion stammered in rage, making Rainbow roll her eyes. "Listen, I'll let you off the hook if you tell me about the last time you saw a filly named Tornado Bolt."
Green Daze scoffed. "What's this, some kind of prank?" he asked. "Newsflash; her dad got knocked off his rocker and blew the whole family to smithereens. She's long dead."
"I'm surprised you know the word 'smithereens,'" Rainbow commented, trying to keep herself from grinning. "But besides that, newsflash; maybe she's not. Maybe you've seen her around." The colt glared up at her.
"I haven't seen her," he growled. "She's gone. Now would you mind getting out of the way?"
The pegasus scanned Green Daze up and down one final time before lowering her wing. He kicked off the ground before putting all four hooves back on the board, skating past her. The rainbow mare kept her eyes locked on the earth pony as he drifted away, waiting for him to do something that would tip her off. Just one glance or one –
His eyes locked on someone across the park before nodding his head at Rainbow Dash. The pegasus turned until she could see who he had signaled in her peripheral vision. She could vaguely see a light grey coat and indigo mane, making her loose her sense of subtlety and stare straight at the subject in question.
Across the park, Tornado Bolt was meddling with something near the street. She had grown out her mane to be scraggly and long, and even earned her Cutie Mark (a single twister), but it was definitely the same filly.
Rainbow Dash started to walk towards her, trying not to spook her. The filly finished messing with the machine and started to trot off, emerald eyes darting every which way in paranoia. Increasing her pace so as not to lose her, the rainbow mare crossed the street and began to follow.
The closer Rainbow came, the faster Tornado Bolt would trot, eventually breaking into a full blown gallop. Swearing under her breath, the blue pegasus began to run, worried the filly would get away from her. The filly rounded a corner, causing the mare following her to panic slightly and dash around the corner, not noticing the pony she was following now held something in her mouth.
"Tornado Bolt!" Rainbow called, reaching out a foreleg as her wings began to carry her weight. "Wait a se- !"
The smaller pegasus whipped her whole body around, violently slicing the box cutter in her mouth across her pursuer's outstretched hoof. The mare gave a hiss of pain as scarlet blood spattered across the area while Tornado Bolt took the opportunity to flee across the street. With a growl, Rainbow attempted to follow, flying into the street just as a taxi carriage nearly ran her over, forcing her to retreat backwards.
After the driver stopped and began to angrily yell at her, the pegasus looked around the back end to glance across the street. Tornado was nowhere to be seen. Snorting in irritation, Rainbow shook out the hoof that had recently had a very angry confrontation with a blade. Blood was flowing steadily from it, forming a small red puddle on the street.
Fantastic, she thought with a snarl.
The next morning, a certain lavender unicorn slowly limped her way up a short flight of stairs to a large building, carrying a saddlebag full of scrolls. Several ponies of all races were milling about inside, writing on parchment, building strange contraptions, and occasionally working with a partner in strange circular runes on the floor.
"Hello, Twilight!" an earth-pony mare greeted with a smile, causing the handicapped unicorn to halt her stride in surprise. "I haven't seen you in a while! Everything alright?"
"Oh, yes, everything's fine," Twilight offered with a hesitant smile.
"Well that's – "
"Twilight!" A pegasus stallion with a plastered-on smile sauntered over, hitting his rump against the mare's to dismiss her. The earth pony scowled slightly before going on her way. "You've been taking your sweet time with that spell, eh?"
The smaller pony lowered her head. "It's a work in progress."
"Well your 'work in progress' should be a 'work out of progress,'" he sneered. "I know you're handicapped, probably in more than one way, but you gotta keep up."
"I will."
With a curt nod, the stallion departed. Twilight sighed and made her way over to her own station, ready to get to work. However, before she could sit down, a spectrum of colors hit the corner of her eye. Turning her head, she saw a certain blue pegasus holding a plaque in her hooves that usually belonged on the nearby wall.
"Nice cubicle, Twilight," Rainbow Dash remarked with a smirk, putting the plaque back with a bandaged hoof. "Magic engineer of the year, I see."
"What can I say?" the unicorn asked, pulling out a piece of parchment and quill and doing her best to ignore the mare who had infiltrated her office. "A lucky break can lead to unexpected roads."
"Interesting place, too, for a company researching magic," the blue mare offered. "Employing not just unicorns, but earth ponies and pegasi too."
"Everypony has magic they can use," the lavender unicorn replied, eyes narrowing at her work. "Earth ponies can tend to plants and animals with great ease, and pegasi can manipulate the weather. It's simply harder for the magic of these races to manifest itself."
"All this info about your work is nice and all, but it still doesn't explain the private security detail you had when you recruited me, or the fact you're a bajillionaire."
"No," Twilight responded. "No, it wouldn't."
After an uncomfortable moment of Twilight writing on the parchment in silence and Rainbow enjoying her leg up, the pegasus spoke up again. "You know, even though you don't exist, you've been working here for eleven years. That's pretty much since you got out of whatever school I haven't found yet! And yet you've only been promoted twice..." The rainbow mare leaned forwards, grin widening.
"So how many of these ponies know you own the entire company?" she asked.
Twilight glanced up from the parchment and back down again. "None of them. The best place to hide, as you very well know, Ms. Rainbow Dash, is in plain sight."
"So then what if I say something a bit too revealing?" the pegasus asked with a devious smile. "Or start to talk too loud?"
"I don't believe you realize how easy it would be to overhaul the entire department," the unicorn replied, very deliberately placing down her parchment and quill with a cold, straight stare at them.
"Oh really? Care to share?"
The lavender mare looked up from the desk, glancing around the business place. "Well, some would be reassigned to different branches. Some would be promoted..." Her gaze rested on the stallion who had so rudely greeted her earlier, eyes hardening to icy spears. "And of course some would be fired."
"Well, then I'll make this quick," Rainbow said, leaning back against the cubicle's wall. "Good news first or bad news?"
"Good news, I suppose."
"Well, good news is our filly's alive and kicking," the pegasus offered, lifting her bandaged hoof to eye level and inspecting it. "Maybe kicking too hard."
"Is that the bad news?" Twilight asked cautiously.
"Mm, well, no, bad news is I lost her. But she did leave this behind."
The pegasus turned, pulling a contraption out of her mane to give to Twilight. "She was putting these on those new ATM things."
"Oh, clever girl," Twilight said, taking it up in her magic and examining it closer to her face. "These take photos of the PINs and account numbers of the cards ponies use to access the ATMs. She's probably selling the accounts somewhere to earn herself a pretty penny." She carefully placed the machine in her saddlebags among the scrolls. "I can look into the memory banks of this and find any accounts it's picked up. I'll be able to track her down if she tries to sell them online, and even if she already has, I'll be able to find out who she sold them to."
"That's great and all for finding her, but we still haven't found out who killed her family or why," Rainbow said, frowning for the first time since she entered the office.
"Well, after much digging on my part, I found the reason we can't locate her uncle," Twilight replied, turning to face her coworker. "It turns out he needed to borrow money, and chose the wrong ponies to ask."
"It's always money, isn't it?" the blue mare asked with an exasperated roll of her eyes.
"Very often, yes," the unicorn replied with a nod. "But hopefully my years working with computers and other magically powered devices will pay off and I'll be able to find him."
"Cool. While you do that, I'm going to track down the hitpony that killed her family."
"And just how are you going to do that?"
The rainbow mare got up with a smirk. "Figure out where to hire one."
Twilight watched as her associate got up and trotted out of the office, injured hoof seeming to have no effect on her stride. The unicorn shook her head, turning back to her work only to see the earth pony mare from before walking over to her working space.
"Sorry to be nosy," she apologized, leaning her head over the short wall, "but I was just wondering who your friend was."
Twilight blinked a few times, brain suddenly grinding to a halt. Oh dear...
"Really really really – "
"Pinkie Pie, you've gone through five 'really' sets already. I'm infinity-plus-one-really sure."
The two mares were standing next to each other on the corner of a city block, the bandaged vigilante rather unamused with the police officer wasting valuable time. The flat haired earth pony seemed to debate if she should attempt to counter that, but ultimately decided against it, pointing to a bar across the road.
"Berryshine is the bartender for every bar in Canterlot, but when she's here she works as a fixer too. She gets some bits for setting up ponies that want to hire a hitpony with a somepony that meets their needs."
"How does Berryshine tend every bar in Canterlot?" Rainbow asked incredulously.
"Animation errors?"
"...What?"
"Oops, that wasn't in the script. Never mind."
The blue pegasus looked at Pinkie before shaking her head, beginning to trot across the road. Quicker than she expected, the earth pony skidded from her position just behind and to the left of her around to the pegasus' right until she stopped in front of her, forelegs spread as a visual barrier.
"Wait! You can't just walk up to her! She's got bodyguards and all that big-wig stuff!"
Rainbow Dash's head moved backwards out of surprise. A wide grin crawled across her lips. "Pinkie Pie, are you worried about me?" The pink mare's silence spoke volumes. "I'm touched."
Without another word, Dash pushed past Pinke and galloped across the street. The earth pony was left on the corner alone, doing a nervous two-step to keep herself from trying to prevent a potential confrontation. She watched anxiously as Rainbow Dash opened the door and went inside. After a few tense seconds, the pegasus was rudely escorted out by two mares and roughly introduced to the trash cans on the curb. A unicorn pulled out a gun, making a not quite audible threat before she and her friend went back inside with a huff.
Pinkie Pie trotted across the street as Rainbow stood back up and used her wings to brush herself off. "I told you you couldn't just walk up to her."
To the police mare's surprise, the pegasus smirked. "That was a drive-by, Pinkie," she said, trotting back into the bar. Once again watching helplessly, Pinkie Pie got herself into fighting position, ready to jump in if necessary. Rainbow spoke to one of the mares that had thrown her out before, words unheard but the angry face of the nameless mare telling all that needed to be known. She lunged at the pegasus, making Rainbow Dash duck and jab her uninjured forehoof into her ribs, sending the other mare staggering backwards as the pink observer began instinctively following the fight's flow with her own body. The unicorn began charging magic in her horn from behind the blue pegasus, but the light alerted her target, allowing Rainbow to scoop up a whiskey bottle in her wing and spin, stopping suddenly and sending the bottle careening into the magical mare's face. With both helpers down for the moment, Rainbow dashed around the bar and out of sight to where Berryshine was inevitably standing. Pinkie Pie tried to move to see better as the bodyguards found their footing again and pursued, but the position relative to the door didn't make it easy. After another couple of tense sounds of fighting reverberating through the glass, two gunshots rang out. The pink mare flinched, her hooves rooting to the ground in dread.
Rainbow Dash walked out from behind the bar no worse for wear, the two ponies that had thrown her out of the building before now stumbling into view with bloody front knees. The pegasus gave a cocky smile as she pushed the door open, coming to stand next to the police mare.
"Thanks Pinkie, got the name I wanted," she said, starting to trot away. "You might wanna get going before somepony asks you any awkward questions."
"Well, I found the name for the hitpony that was hired all those years back to bump off Tornado Bolt's family," Rainbow spoke into the earpiece, trotting in circles to bide time.
"I'm sensing a 'but' coming," Twilight replied.
"But, she's in lockup. So I decided to go visit." The pegasus lifted her hoof to her ear to hang up before Twilight could voice any objection, looking over to the jail cells. All of them were bare and dim, having a single straw bed on the concrete floor in each room. The security guard had finally gestured her to follow, leading her to a particular cell with a pegasus mare inside it. Rainbow's escort gruffly informed the inmate that she had a visitor before exiting. Rainbow approached the bars as the imprisoned mare got up from where she was sitting and stood in front of the free pegasus, eyes narrowing.
"Who the hell are you?" she asked. "Don't tell me my lawyer quit AGAIN."
"Thankfully for you, no," Rainbow answered, face remaining fixed. "I'm here about an entire pegasus family you killed two years back. Well, almost the entire family. You let Tornado Bolt live."
"That's ancient history, what's it matter to you?" the other pegasus responded, scrutinizing Rainbow more closely.
"Don't tell me you don't want to talk about it," the rainbow pony pressed, putting her face closer to the bars and lowering her voice to a whisper. "Would you rather talk about when you killed the sister of the convicted killer two cells down? I'll betcha she'd love to hear the last words in that case of yours."
The second mare stepped back a pace with surprise as Rainbow grinned devilishly. To her surprise, the hitpony grinned back, eyes going up and down the free mare's body and lingering on the bandaged hoof. She stepped back to the bars, matching her volume to her interrogator's.
"So, you're just like me then, huh?" she asked, darting her eyes between both of Dash's to measure her reaction. "You're a killer too, aren't you? So what's your interest then, huh? You already know exactly what happened."
"All but why you let the filly live," the rainbow mare replied, cocking her head slightly.
"You just answered yourself," the hitpony answered, bringing her face slightly away from the bars and voice returning to normal volume. "She was a filly. Her parents and her brother were full grown, so I had no qualms there. But if you're a foal killer, nopony likes you; even if you were paid all the bits in the world, it wouldn't change that fact. So instead I figured I'd scare her. Put her on a thundercloud and told her if anypony found out she was still alive, I'd make sure it wasn't for very long. Only empty threat I've ever made."
"Who hired you?"
"Some mare. Never met her, she dropped off the bits at the mountain after I called her."
The rainbow mare looked over who she was interrogating. Her posture was casual, if a little stiff from sitting on concrete, and the small but confident smirk she wore didn't falter. With a small nod, the blue pegasus turned to walk away.
"Who hired you?" the inmate asked, making Rainbow halt and turn her head. She smirked.
"Tell ya when I find out." Without another word, the rainbow mare trotted out of the prison and into the late afternoon light. She reached up as she exited the building and turned on the earpiece again, calling Twilight.
"Alright, so the hitpony that was sent after her family two years ago was defending what little honor she has by not killing a foal," Rainbow reported, beginning to trot down the street.
"And I always thought there was no honor among thieves," Twilight remarked.
"I'm appalled you'd call me a thief," the pegasus wittily replied.
"Huh? But I didn't...what?"
The pegasus smirked. "It was a joke, Twilight."
"Oh...regardless, do you have any reason why somepony would be so worried about an adolescent filly from that visit?" the lavender mare asked, sobering Rainbow's mood again.
"No. And we need to figure it out fast, or Tornado Bolt might not be a worry to them anymore," she growled.
"Well, I did manage to get a little bit of information from digging. Seems like Mr. Sightseer was trying to remedy his brother-in-law's money troubles by bringing a new weather control idea to the table. I still can't find exactly what his proposal was, but he pitched it to a company known as 'Cloudwind.' It invests in weather making and weather related products."
"Damn, you're good with that computer," Rainbow complimented. "Any chance you'd teach me how to do that?"
"Your skills are more valuable in the field," Twilight replied. "Besides, I'm sure you'd figure it out."
Early the next morning, Rainbow Dash stifled a yawn as she watched a cloud-born building in her binoculars from a neighboring cumulus cloud.
"Seems a mare named Drizzle is the founder of the company," Twilight rallied off. "She's blue with an orange mane. Most photos I found of her have her Cutie Mark covered, but it appears to be three umbrellas."
"Well, I don't see her, but I see a hell of a lot of security for a weather company," Rainbow observed. "And one stallion looks freakishly...like...wait a second." Readjusting her binoculars, Rainbow scrutinized a light blue stallion with a dark mane. His wings were currently folded, blocking his Cutie Mark, but it definitely had purple, orange, and yellow in it.
"Whatever revelation you just had, Ms. Rainbow Dash, it will have to wait until later," Twilight spoke through the earpiece as the clicking of keys accompanied her voice. "It seems Tornado Bolt has found access to a computer and is trying to sell the PIN and account numbers she skimmed over the internet black market."
"The internet has a black market?"
"The internet has just about everything. I've sent the address to your phone; please, go now before somepony else finds her or she gets the chance to move."
"On it!" The pegasus stretched her wings, pulling her phone out for a glance at the address. She leapt off the white cloud in a nose dive, pulling up just as her feathers were ready to skim the building tops and scanning the streets as she approached her destination. Beating the air in front of her forwards, she slowed to landing speeds and gently placed her hooves on the pavement, placing down her injured foreleg last.
"Uh, Twilight, you sure you got the right address?" she asked, looking around.
"Yes, and she should still be there. Try looking into surrounding buildings," the unicorn on the other end suggested. Dash glanced around, looking into store windows and around the passing civilians. As her eyes grazed over a particular café window, she spotted a small row of computers along one wall. And a particular grey filly was sitting at one of them, typing away and glancing up every couple of seconds.
Because that's not suspicious at all, the rainbow mare sighed inwardly, trotting across the street and pushing the door open. The filly didn't look up right away, but turned as the older pegasus got closer to her.
"Hi again," Rainbow greeted, giving a slight wave with her bandaged hoof. "Gotta say, you're handy with that blade of yours."
Tornado Bolt jumped to her hooves, pulling the razor out off the table next to the computer with her mouth, clenching it in her teeth. Rainbow privately thanked Faust there wasn't really anypony else in the café.
"Listen kid, I'm not here to hurt you," she tried as the smaller pegasus backed further away from the door and amongst the tables to get away from her slow-moving pursuer. "I know what happened to your family and that you've been running. I'm here to help you."
"G-get away!" Tornado ordered through her clenched teeth, slashing at the air with her blade to prove a point. The mare backed away a pace so as not to be hit, but relentlessly continued her walk towards the little pony.
"I know you're scared, but that hitpony that went after you and your family? She's in jail; I just came from there trying to figure out who hired her. She's not going to hurt you anymore, and nopony else will either, I promise."
"You really shouldn't make promises you can't keep."
Rainbow spun on her hooves, glaring at the door and already in battle stance. A unicorn stallion with a vest was smiling, a gun levitated in his magic. He tried to take aim at Tornado, but much faster than he anticipated Dash rammed her full body into his, rainbows trailing behind her as he was knocked into a table. The filly looked frantically for a way out, but the two were so close to the door that any means of exit was impossible. By now, the unicorn had changed his target to the mare he was trying to fight, trying to aim but always a second behind her movements. Knowing she couldn't keep darting around with her hoof steadily starting to protest, the pegasus turned and gave the stallion a solid buck to the chest, knocking him into a wall and the gun halfway across the floor. He tried to levitate the gun back over, but turned his head too quickly and hit his horn against the edge of a table, startling him and causing the magic to momentarily fizzle out.
Note to self: unicorn horns work like light switches, Dash mused as she ran over and kicked the gun clear into the other room, blocking his line of sight and making precise levitation impossible. She turned back to face him just in time to be jumped on and forced to the floor, the stallion using his extra weight to his advantage against the nimble mare and pinning down all four of her legs with his own. However, pegasi rarely need their other limbs if their wings are mobile. Using the strong, feathered appendages to push herself off the ground, Rainbow managed to quickly draw her legs inwards, making a ball of her body and somersaulting out from under him as his hooves once more found themselves on the ground. The pegasus jumped to her own hooves and tried to turn and buck him again, but the stallion grabbed her in his magic and levitated her up into the air before throwing her through the storefront window, sending glass everywhere and leaving her paralyzed on the sidewalk.
Smirking smugly, the unicorn quickly went to the doorway to the other room, looking inside it. Tornado Bolt finally had a clear window for escape and gladly dashed towards the door. Before she could flee, however, the unicorn picked up his gun in his magic and swung it over, taking aim at the small pegasus just as she stumbled.
BANG!
Tornado screamed in terror, covering her head in her hooves as the shot rang out in front of her. Sitting up with cuts all over and a gun in her mouth, Rainbow panted as she looked through the broken window and the unicorn fell, the shot having hit him square in the chest. Tornado Bolt scrambled to her hooves and dashed down the sidewalk away from her savior, forcing the blue pegasus to pick herself up and pursue, hastily putting her gun back in her mane until later. Had she stayed a moment longer, she would have seen the stallion groggily get to his feet, a bullet embedded in his vest and leaving him with just a bruise.
"Tornado Bolt! Hold on!" Rainbow choked out, still trying to regain her breath from being thrown through a window. She scooped the filly up in one of her wings just long enough to stop her before letting go again. Tornado Bolt looked up at the older pegasus, bleeding from any number of slices from the glass, including a gash on her forehead that still had a bit of the window embedded in it.
"You trust me yet, kid?" she asked, managing a slight but still cocky smile.
"But I don't know you," the filly reasoned, stepping back a pace.
"Well, sooner or later you're going to have to trust someone."
Rainbow poked her head into a dim hotel room, the windows covered by curtains and a small platter on a center table. She was fairly certain nopony would be there, but just to make sure she quickly ducked into the bathroom and closet in case she accidentally caught a maid unawares. Finally quite sure it was empty, she gestured with her wing for Tornado Bolt to follow her inside.
"You'll be safe in here," the older pegasus assured the younger, going over to the platter and taking the lid off with her good hoof. Under the silver dome was silverware and a single sandwich, albeit a somewhat large one. Between the two pieces of bread, various flowers of several different colors and sizes were visible. Rainbow grinned and gestured with her head to it. "That's a 50 bit meadow sandwich," she smirked. "Didn't know what you liked, so I figured a bit of everything would be alright."
The filly remained standing in the center of the room, keeping her relative distance from the mare. Dash sighed and put the dome down to one side of the sandwich.
"Do you know who was after you and your family?" she asked. Tornado Bolt shook her head. "How about the hitpony at the café? Know him?"
"No," the filly muttered, finally beginning to move about the room, looking at the bed and cushions to sit on while at the table.
"Does what's going on have anything to do with your uncle, Spectrum?" Rainbow pressed, remembering seeing a stallion that looked very much like him at Cloudwind. Tornado Bolt turned to her elder, rage flashing in her eyes and crouching slightly.
"I don't trust that rat!" she growled.
Whoa. "Why not?"
The filly snorted, putting on a look of mocking thoughtfulness. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe the fact Dad said it was all his fault right before that mare bucked the thundercloud and sent a billion volts through his body!"
Tornado kicked the ground, trying to vent frustration as Rainbow pondered on that fact. A slight knock on the door disrupted both pegasi's thoughts, causing the filly to freeze while the mare pulled her gun out from under her mane. Cautiously going over to the door, the rainbow pony suddenly opened it as far as the chain lock would let her.
Twilight backed up a half-step, seeing a gun suddenly thrust in her face. Dash let out a slight sigh and put the gun away, taking off the chain lock and allowing the unicorn to enter, a laptop carefully balanced on her back. Tornado Bolt looked curiously at the mare, obviously noting the leg brace as well.
"Hello," the mare greeted with a warm (though slightly strained) smile.
"Tornado Bolt, this is Twilight Sparkle. She'll be hanging out here with you." Rainbow turned back to the unicorn. "Hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of booking the whole floor with your credit card thingamajig."
Twilight gave a deadpan stare before shaking her head with a sigh. "I suppose I can use the travel points for train tickets or something."
"Good. Tornado Bolt can't be left alone right now, too much shit going on," she passed by the table with the untouched sandwich, the silverware glinting in the dim lights. She reached out and picked up the knife with her mouth. After a moment's thought, she grabbed the fork too. She turned to the filly, who looked slightly annoyed at the fact she wasn't trusted with sharp objects.
"Lishten, I need you ta shtay here with Twilight," the pegasus managed around the eating utensils. "She might look harmlesh, but she's got quite a few tricksh she can u-sha."
"Okay, so where are you going?" Tornado asked as Rainbow trotted over to Twilight, who took up the silverware in her magic so Rainbow could speak better.
"Paying somepony a visit," the blue mare answered, turning to her contemporary.
"I managed to find out that Spectrum does work at Cloudwind," the unicorn said in a hushed voice. "I even managed to find his new cell phone and hack it to get his location. Unfortunately he's not answering any calls."
"So Cloudwind's definitely involved, now we just need to find out why they're still after her," Rainbow mused as Twilight began squinting at her. "...What?"
"Do you still have glass in your cuts?!" the lavender mare asked, looking closely at the gash on Rainbow's face. "Didn't you bother to pull any out?!"
"Well, I've been a bit busy," she reasoned as the glow on Twilight's horn intensified. Moments later she could feel slight rips on her skin as the unicorn pulled out bits of glass from all over her body. After the unicorn gave her a quick once-over, she nodded.
"I'll send Spectrum's location to your phone, as I suspect you want to speak with him," she said, now holding not only a knife and fork, but also several shards of glass in the air with her magic.
"Always prepared," Rainbow smirked, exiting the room. Twilight shook her head slightly, depositing the glass shards in a trash bin and placing the silverware on a high shelf. The filly looked up at where the knife and been placed and gave Twilight an unamused stare.
"Really?"
Spectrum,
It's me, Sugar Twist. Somepony came by a few days ago, said she was investigating Tornado's case. She wanted to speak with you, so I gave her your old address. Hopefully she found you, and hopefully this letter's going to reach you. I'd appreciate it if you wrote back. Preferably this year.
Sugar Twist
The vested unicorn stallion smirked, reading the letter after taking it out of the mailbox. All he had to do was find Spectrum, a fairly easy task, and he'd find Tornado Bolt. But before he did that, he had a certain phone wire he wanted to tap.
The sun was beginning to sink in the sky, casting a red glare on everything it touched and leaving the rest in black shadow. A grey-blue pegasus stallion with a scruffy black mane walked down an alley, the purple, orange, and yellow rainbow of his Cutie Mark only accented by the angry color of the sun. The phone in his mane began to ring, inciting a groan. He had half a mind to just not answer, since most of the calls he'd been getting lately were from ponies he didn't know. However, realizing it might be somepony from Cloudwind, he reluctantly pulled the phone out and looked at the screen.
"SIGHTSEER"
The pegasus stared at the capital letters claiming that his dead brother-in-law was calling him. His jaw went slack, sending the phone to the ground.
"What's the matter, Spectrum?" a female voice asked, making the stallion look up. A blue mare with a bandaged hoof and rainbows as her mane and tail walked out from behind a dumpster, eyes narrowed and mouth twisted into a frown. "Don't want to talk to a ghost?"
"Who are – "
The other pegasus exploded towards him, locking her teeth around the middle joint on his left wing and biting down hard, causing the appendage to stiffen and become immobile. He tried to spin and hit her with his forehooves, but she darted around behind him and bit his right wing as well, causing his most valuable escape plan, flight, to no longer be an option. Growing more desperate, he bucked his back legs, sending the mare off to the side and away from him. Growling, she ran towards him and skidded under his legs, standing straight and carrying the stallion off his hooves. Before he could process what was happening, she used her own powerful wings to carry both his weight and her own off the ground and high into the sky. Knowing that if he fought back he would be dropped, Spectrum finally just hung on for dear life as his kidnapper rocketed towards the mountain side of Canterlot, ascending the cliffs and climbing towards the sky. After several long minutes, the mare flew just above a thunder cloud near a ledge on the mountain, bucking Spectrum off her back and onto the unpredictable weather apparatus. His wings were still stiff and immobile, and the stony shelf was too far away to reach by jumping.
"Recognize this place?" Rainbow asked, voice jaded and cold as she continued to glare at the stallion. "This is where they threw Sightseer and his family onto the clouds like garbage and left them there to rot."
"Wait, what are you talking about?" the stallion asked, trying to process the sudden change in tone.
"I'm talking about the fact he said it was your fault that hitpony came after him and his family just before he got shocked to death!" she pressed, getting her face right into his. "Now, you either tell me what you know, or I'll let you pick your manner of death; pushed off this cloud and crash landing into the ground, or I buck the cloud and you die the same way your brother-in-law did. And trust me, neither one is pretty."
Spectrum swallowed, deciding to take the first option. "Look, Sightseer found a way that water could be transported up to Cloudsdale without using a pegasus hurricane. It was something about using cumulus clouds as sponges and flying them up before they began to rain. He was just trying to help me!"
"Yeah, and in return you helped him right into a thundercloud!" Rainbow growled, pulling away slightly and keeping her eyes on his wings to see if they were returning to normal. "That idea of his would be credited first to anyone still alive in his family and then to you if that failed. I bet you set up the hit to get all the rights to it!"
"No no no!" the stallion exclaimed, shaking his head violently. "Sightseer said he'd pitch the idea and give me enough money to get out of debt, and I was more than happy with that! So I...I set him up with Drizzle. I swear, it all seemed real!"
It all seemed real? Dash thought to herself, trying to sort through the maze of information she was getting. Thinking back to spying on the company, she recalled the seemingly excessive security in the building. And then it clicked.
"Cloudwind launders money, doesn't it?" she asked. "Buys up ideas with stolen bits and then gets legitimately earned ones out of the profits."
Spectrum nodded. "They invested, but for the first few times the pegasi weren't fast enough to get the water up to Cloudsdale. They thought it was going to fail, so they ordered the hit to get their money back. Then recently they got faster teams and it's working fine; they'll get back 50 times what they put in. I'm legal heir to the idea, so they've been keeping tabs on me and I'm suppose to sign over all the rights next week!"
"No, you're not the legal heir," Rainbow growled. "Tornado Bolt is. So that's why they're coming after her..." The stallion stared at her, blinking.
"W-what are you talking about? Tornado Bolt was killed."
"No, she wasn't, no thanks to you. If you had told the police, maybe she wouldn't have had to hide for two years!"
With a mighty push, Rainbow shoved the thundercloud over to the mountain ledge, diving out of sight as Spectrum jumped off and his wings began to regain their mobility.
Twilight sat near the table, her braced leg stuck out to the side, awkwardly as ever. Her violet eyes followed Tornado wandering around the room, occupying herself with various items she found. The meadow sandwich had been devoured at some point when the unicorn had been looking elsewhere, probably her laptop. It had taken a while, but the filly seemed to be opening up just the tiniest crack after several hours. Chancing she might actually be able to hold a conversation, Twilight spoke up.
"You know, I spoke to your aunt Sugar Twist two days ago," she cautiously offered, causing the filly to turn around. "I obviously didn't tell her you were alive for both her safety and your own, but she does miss you very much. She even showed me a picture of you all together."
"Yeah?" Tornado snorted, sounding dejected. "So what? Doesn't change anything."
"Well...no, it doesn't," the unicorn agreed. "But it does mean you still have somepony out there who loves you very dearly."
"Oh, what do you know?!" the small pegasus asked, eyes glinting just barely in the artificial lighting. Twilight blinked, eyes drifting down to the filly's hooves.
"I know what it's like to lose someone," she finally responded, eyes lifting again as Tornado turned her full face to the mare. "And to feel the need to disappear. But I can tell you honestly and from personal experience...you don't want to leave ponies behind."
Admin identified: Twilight Sparkle. Reviewing information...
Important life moment identified. Accessing...
December 7, 1507, 21:53
Twilight trotted quickly through the building she called her workplace, anxious to continue writing and formatting her spell, what she had begun calling "The Machine" because of the completely objective way it operated after drawing power from an inexhaustible source. Opening a door, she was greeted by approximately fifty piles of upwards of hundreds of scrolls, all neatly separated from each other and stacked to avoid falling. Maneuvering around the first three or so, the unicorn stopped short when confronted full-frontal by the white stallion she worked with.
"When were you going to tell me?" he asked, struggling to keep his voice level and anger under control. Twilight's ears fell. There were two big secrets of this project she had been keeping from him, and she wasn't keen for him to find out either.
"Um...well..." she hung her head. "I wasn't, I suppose."
"You – !" The stallion muffled a shout of anger by locking his lips together, stomping off towards the living area. She quickly followed, casting a quick glance around to figure out what he had found. Three different photographs of ponies were placed on the table, having been produced from a magic printer she had her spell send its results to.
The irrelevant list, she realized, unsure whether she was scared of his reaction, or glad he had discovered this and not the other secret that gnawed at her heart.
The other unicorn had at this point calmed down slightly from his outburst, turning back to her. "You weren't going to tell me?"
"I'd rather I didn't know myself," the lavender pony admitted, a pit in her stomach slowly growing.
"So you knew this whole time that this damn spell of yours was picking up that somepony's life was in danger...and," he spluttered in anger, "and you just did NOTHING?!"
Twilight winced away from him, feeling as if he was growing in size and she was shrinking. "We...we both knew what we were creating when we first started this. We were creating a spell that could find and discern malicious intent, and then alert us before it happened. But the spell...just like a machine, it only knows what we tell it to know. And it didn't know the difference between a violent act that could change our way of life and something that just involved a few ponies. So I...I had to teach it relevant from irrelevant."
"Irrelevant?!" the stallion asked, seeming as if he was a pressure vessel about to blow. "IRRELEVANT?! Twilight, nopony is irrelevant! What are you doing?! Are you trying to play Faust?!"
"No, and I don't want to, either!" she burst out, feeling tears threatening to climb to her eyes. "But exactly eight ponies know this spell exists, and if anypony else found out, even to help the irrelevant numbers, there would be such an outcry that they'd demand the scrolls be burned! We can't let that happen; it's already stopped six separate plots to take massive amounts of life!"
The second unicorn shook his head, not so much pacing as pounding in circles, shaking his head and forcing deep and angry breaths in and out of his nostrils, refusing to look in Twilight's general direction. "How...how are we supposed to live with this?" he demanded, still circling restlessly. "Knowing there are ponies out there that need help?" The mare followed him with her eyes before swallowing.
"We...we don't have to know," she said, trotting over to the table and picking up the photos in her magic. "Every night at midnight, all memory of the irrelevant list is...erased." She deposited all three photos in the waste paper bin, the top one of a pegasus stallion with a cornflower coat and dark, messy blue mane. His Cutie Mark, barely visible, was a winged lightning bolt.
"This spell was made to save everypony," she explained, voice wavering for a moment, "not somepony."
Reverting to original task...
Current date/time: October 10, 1511, 22:08
Spectrum walked into his cloud-borne home, wings aching from the experience of not more than an hour or two before. They were now mobile, but he had a nasty horse-shoe shaped bruise on each wing. He flicked on the light, entering his living room before stopping short. A vested unicorn was standing in the middle of the room, which was odd because unicorns couldn't normally walk on clouds or even necessarily get up that high. Another odd thing was the unicorn was pointing a gun at him.
"Where's your niece?"
The next morning, Rainbow Dash was looking through her binoculars again, watching a light blue pegasus mare with an orange mane and a flower by her ear talking to another pony.
"Turns out Tornado's worth some ridiculous amount of bits," the rainbow mare explained to her hotel-bound comrade over the phone. "Her dad came up with a way to use clouds instead of tornado power to transport water up to Cloudsdale for rain."
Twilight gasped. "Genius! Fair weather clouds can still hold more water in them! Simple use of certain magical properties such as – "
"Anyway, Cloudwind wants it all," Rainbow cut her off, making the mare startle out of her scientific admiration while at her computer. "I'm watching Drizzle, she's walking."
Twilight's ears turned to the door, hearing it open. She just managed to see the purple-grey tail of a certain pegasus filly disappear. "So's Tornado," she gasped, scrambling to her hooves and staggering out after the younger pony. Limping as quickly as she could, she turned a corner in the hallway, seeing the small weather maker briskly walking about halfway towards the elevators.
"Tornado Bolt!" Twilight called out, falling against the wall after a misplaced step and causing the small pegasus to stop and turn. She groaned slightly as her injured knee protested more than usual, trying to stand herself upright but legs refusing to respond correctly for the moment.
"Look," she panted, taking as much weight off her braced leg as possible, "you know I can't keep up with you unless I continually teleport, and nopony wants that. But could you at least tell me where you're going?"
The filly shrugged. "I'm just better off on my own."
"I don't see your logic," the unicorn rebutted, finally managing to stand correctly.
"It's safer."
"I highly doubt it. Not because you're incapable of taking care of yourself but because there are some things you can't do alone." Twilight cautiously took a few steps towards Tornado, glad both that the filly didn't turn to flee and her knee seemed once more to be relatively cooperating. "Please, Tornado Bolt; sooner or later you're going to have to trust someone."
Just great, Spectrum thought to himself, all six of his limbs bound as he lay on the floor, window shutters closed so he couldn't tell what time of day it was. He was bloody and sweating, and had shed more tears than he could ever remember doing before. I get away from one pony trying to kill me just to find another in my house.
"I must say, you've got more endurance than I expected," the vested unicorn smirked, twirling his gun in midair. "But you will eventually tell me where she is."
"Or what, you're going to shoot me?" Spectrum coughed, looking up. "I thought they needed me to sign over the rights."
"Then you have been misinformed, or vastly overestimate your importance," the hitpony replied, smirking. "They'll just hire a good lawyer. So, last chance; where is the filly?"
The pegasus looked up, seeing he was completely serious. With dread in his chest, he struggled to a more or less upright position, causing the invader to smirk and crouch down to his level. Spectrum lowered his eyes for a moment before locking them with the unicorn's.
"Kiss my ass."
The hitpony cocked his head slightly, before standing up and leveling the gun at his captor's forehead.
BANG!
Rainbow Dash clamped her teeth together to stop a yawn, lightly shaking out her bandaged hoof after it fell asleep holding up her binoculars. She had been watching Drizzle talk to another pegasus for the last several hours, and it was boring. All they had spoken about was business, mostly Sightseer's moving-water-by-clouds idea.
"I'm impressed with your patience," the second pegasus' voice reached Rainbow's straining ears. "I certainly wouldn't have waited two years for an idea many claimed to be insane come to fruition."
"Well, it's only insane if it doesn't work," Drizzle giggled. "If it does, it's genius. I hope it'll be the latter, however. And now that we've found a team of pegasi that are both fast and strong enough to maneuver water-soaked clouds, we might be able to begin using the idea as quickly as next month!"
Dear Faust, this is like watching paint dry! the rainbow mare thought with a groan. I hope somepony is doing something interesting right now...
A yellow-coated mare stretched her largely unused wings slightly in the afternoon hours, squinting up at her destination. Jumping up slightly, she began to use her wings to beat against the air, carrying her up to a cloud-borne home with crime scene tape strung around it. Landing on the doorstep, she entered the house and looked around. The moment she saw a pool of blood on the floor, she squeaked and stepped back, flinching away from the sight.
"Oh!" another pegasus realized, jumping in front of her to block her view of the body. "Sorry Fluttershy, I should have warned you."
"Th-that's alright," the canary mare choked out. She had never had a stomach for blood; it was really a miracle she could hold her job as well as she did. Shaking her head slightly, she looked at her coworker. "So who is it and what happened?"
"His name is Spectrum," the other pegasus recounted. "His neighbors called us in after hearing a 'dispute.' Obviously that was an understatement."
"Oh, that poor stallion," Fluttershy sympathized.
"Yeah, and that's not all. Killer shoved this in his mouth."
The other investigator held up a red-stained paper in his hoof. Swallowing, the timid mare looked closer at it. It was a photograph of a school-aged filly with a light grey coat and a purple-grey mane. "Do you know who it is?"
"Working on it now."
"We need to find her quickly," she voiced, going over possibilities in her head. "Whoever she is, she must need help."
Tornado Bolt watched quietly and in deep thought as Twilight read a book on the other side of the room. She wasn't sure what time it was, but since the sun was just starting to set it probably was around six or seven p.m. It seemed her watcher had become absorbed in a novel from the bookshelf.
"You still have somepony out there who loves you very dearly." The unicorn's words echoed in Tornado's mind, causing her stomach to tighten with a terrible case of homesickness. She wanted to see her aunt again, or at least speak to her. She wanted to tell her about everything that had happened over those two years of hiding, about the strange mares that came to her rescue, about –
The quiet squeak of door hinges reached the filly's ear, making her look up. Twilight had left her book on the ground, and the bathroom door was closed. Tornado's eyes wandered to the table where the unicorn had placed her laptop. It was closed, but next to it was the hotel phone. Quietly creeping over, the filly took the phone before dialing a number she remembered from what seemed like lifetimes ago.
Br-riiiiing. Br-riiiiing.
"Hello?"
Tornado's breath caught in her throat. So many things she wanted to just say, and suddenly she had no words to say any of them!
"Is anypony there?"
The filly's mouth was moving, but no sounds came out. Something in the back of her mind was screaming at her to hang up, it was a bad idea, it was pointless.
"Hello?"
The small pegasus pulled the phone away from her ear and hung up. Vaguely she remembered Twilight saying it was for both her aunt's and her own safety that Sugar Twist didn't know she was still alive. Besides, she had just listened to the phone like a dumb animal, unable to respond. Sighing, she placed the phone back in its original spot before going back over to where she had been before, seconds later hearing the bathroom door re-open.
Elsewhere, a certain vested unicorn smiled to himself as he heard the mute caller hang up. Tapping into Sugar Twist's phone had proven useful. He drew up his cellphone, looking at the number displayed on the screen. Pressing "redial," he put the phone to his ear.
"Hotel Cantercastle, how may I help you?"
Drizzle sat in the back of a taxi carriage, nervously tapping her forehooves on the wood as the red sun slanted from its position rapidly falling below the horizon. She hoped the little situation she was dealing with would be resolved soon; if only that first hitpony had done her job right!
A buzz from her cellphone's position in her mane startled her, and she quickly whipped her head around to pull it out. The text was on screen already, and upon reading it she sighed in relief. Hopefully this was all going to work out after all –
CRASH!
Drizzle screamed as the taxi was thrown sideways, wood splintering in all different directions and tearing at her coat and flesh. She was thrown onto the cobblestones with wood falling over top of her as the rattling slowly stopped. Chancing a peek, she managed to see through the broken carriage to a bright red, steel one that had slammed backwards into the side of the taxi. A blue pegasus with a rainbow mane wriggled her way out of the harness before flying over, a smug smirk on her face.
"Sorry," she sarcastically apologized, reaching into the wreckage and pulling the bloody corporate head out into the street. "I'm only going to say this once; call off the hitpony!"
"What – "
"Do you want me to hurt you?" Rainbow growled, glaring at the pegasus at her mercy. Drizzle swallowed.
"I-I can't. It's already done...j-just look at my phone."
The pegasus tossed Drizzle to the ground, jumping over to the wrecked carriage to search for the phone. It had bounced a few feet away, but it was remarkably still operational. She looked at the screen.
"Package Lost and Found"
Growling, the rainbow mare pulled out her own phone and dialed her coworker's number as fast as she could.
Twilight reached up to her earpiece with her hoof as the phone chirped, opening her mouth to answer.
"Twilight, the hitpony's on the way!" Rainbow's voice broke in, a sense of urgency present that made the unicorn bolt straight up and eyes widen. "You and Tornado Bolt need to get out of there now!"
The lavender mare jumped to her hooves as quickly as her impaired leg would allow, startling Tornado Bolt from her position near the bookshelf. "What's – ?!"
"No time, we have to move!" Twilight interrupted, panic starting to gnaw at her senses. In the growing darkness, her transportation spell would be useless, the flashes of light drawing attention quicker than without it. She threw open the door with her magic, Tornado bolting out of the room and Twilight following as best she could behind her. If we can get to the elevator – !
Several feet ahead of her, she saw the filly skid to a stop, looking up at the elevator numbers in horror as they climbed towards their floor. Briefly casting out her magic, Twilight used her horn to feel who was in that car, closing her eyes and forcing panic out of her mind to concentrate. It was definitely a unicorn, levitating something in their magic. And it seemed too large to be a mare, so it was probably a stallion. Finally, he was definitely wearing a vest of some kind.
The lavender mare's eyes bolted open, frantically gesturing Tornado back towards her. Both ponies rushed back to the room they had just been in, Twilight quickly locking the door behind her just as the elevator's ping reached their ears.
"What do we do, what do we do?!" the filly whispered, breathing panicked and eyes wide open. Twilight gestured for quiet, trying to keep her composure. First and foremost she had to make sure the hitpony didn't find them. Once more charging up her horn and closing her eyes, she preformed a less rushed internal vision spell, allowing her to see out into the hallway. The stallion had just gotten off the elevator, a gun at the ready and wearing some sort of vest. He glanced around briefly, and seeing nopony he took up a fire extinguisher in his magic. Going over to the first door near the elevator, he slammed the heavy object down on the doorknob, breaking it clean off.
Thank Faust we used the room furthest away, Twilight thought, daring to let out a shuttering breath. Refocusing, she watched as the other unicorn looked around, eyes landing on the fuse box. Her own eyes popped open as her magic faded in a panic.
"He's going to cut the lights in the hallway!" she frantically whispered to Tornado Bolt. "He'll spot the lights in our room! Hurry, help me turn them all off!" The filly nodded and dashed around the immediate area, turning off three lamps and light switches while Twilight use her horn to shut off two more further away. From under the door the lavender mare saw the lights in the hallway go out. With a painful jolt in her chest, she saw the adjacent room, which she had been using to sleep in, still had lights on. She couldn't turn them off now; the sudden change in light would surely draw his attention. Quickly using her magic to shut the door between the two rooms, she hobbled over to a couch, frantically motioning for Tornado Bolt to hide behind it. The filly darted over, curling into a ball as Twilight joined her, both parties breathing heavily in fear for their lives.
"I told you I should have left!" Tornado Bolt angrily breathed, quaking as her wide eyes darted around.
"You did, I'm sorry," Twilight replied, her own eyes darting about, but in thought rather than panic. He'd surely see the light and probably infer they were in the neighboring room. Theoretically they could get away while he was in the next room, but he'd hear them, surely! What they needed was a distraction...
THUNK!
The stallion let the fire extinguisher crash down on the doorknob of the room he spotted with lights, making sure the internal lock would be no problem. He quickly kicked in the door, shattering the chain lock and sending the links in all directions. He swept the room with his eyes, gun following his gaze. Two lights were on, but nopony was inside.
"What're you doing? I don't – " a young voice asked with a panicked squeak. The stallion perked his ears, swiveling them to locate the noise.
"Shh! Just- just trust me!" a mare's equally fearful whisper followed. The hitpony turned his head towards the door that connected to the next room. Of course. Smirking, he screwed a silencer onto the barrel. The two girls continued arguing quietly as he kicked the door in, pointing the gun around.
"This isn't going to work!"
"Shh!"
Perplexed, the stallion followed the voices to the table in the center of the room. The hotel phone was laying on the table, and the voices were spouting forth from it.
"He's right outside the door!"
"I know! I know he is!" Twilight spoke into the cell phone she was levitating with her magic, following Tornado Bolt as she ran towards the elevator on the other side of the floor. She hung up, fairly certain the ruse had ample time to draw his attention by now. The filly in front of her was pounding her hoof on the down button of the elevator, looking up at Twilight with wide eyes. Realizing the elevator would never make it in time, she used her magic to throw open the doors to the stairs, both ponies quickly running inside the doors before Twilight closed it behind her. Tornado Bolt grabbed a maid's cart that had been left there, rolling it in front of the doors and shoving a broom in the handles as a meager means of barricade.
"Come on, come on!" Twilight pleaded from around the bend as the filly turned to follow her, though movement at the door froze her in her spot. "He'll be here any second!"
"H-he already is," Tornado Bolt stammered, eyes wide as the stallion kicked at the door, cracking the broom but not breaking it yet. Twilight swept the filly up in her magic and dragged her further down the hallway, struggling with her hooves to open a window. Pausing just long enough to pound both hooves on the frame to loosen it, she dropped Tornado on the ground and shoved open the window with her magic as another kick was heard from the doors.
"Quick, fly out here and find somewhere safe!" the lavender mare said, staggering backwards enough for the filly to jump on the window sill.
"But what about you?!" Tornado asked, another kick accompanying her voice.
"I can't get out that way. You have to go without me."
The filly was panting, struggling between her primal instinct to flee and gratitude for the protection the unicorn and her friend had provided for the past few days. Swallowing, she jumped off the sill and back into the hallway, pulling her box cutter out from her mane.
"I'm shtaying with you," she firmly said, taking up a battle stance next to the unicorn. Twilight attempted to argue, but a final kick followed by the sound of hoofsteps proved any rationale she had planed to use had just become irrelevant. The stallion appeared from around the bend, smirking as he levitated the gun, pointing it at the two ponies. Twilight placed her body as much in front of Tornado's as her current position would allow; they hadn't yet found a spell that could repel a bullet, but as Faust was her witness, she was going to try! The stallion leveled his gun at the two, smirking.
BANG! BANG!
A shot from around the bend echoed out, hitting the brawny unicorn in the knee and sending him to the floor, his own shot sent astray from the sudden interruption. Growling, he tried to lift the gun again, only to get another shot fired into his horn, fracturing the bone and inciting a scream of agony, the gun clanking to the floor. The slow sound of hoofsteps reached the two ponies still standing as a certain rainbow pegasus came into view, gun in her mouth and pointing down at the unicorn stallion at her hooves. She glanced up and caught eyes with Twilight, who sighed in relief, her pounding heart finally beginning to calm.
Fluttershy held a pen in her mouth, catching up on her paperwork. Even though it was only afternoon, she hadn't had any new cases yet today, which was unusual in recent days.
Br-riiiiing! Br-riiiiing!
The sudden interruption of the phone made the canary mare jump. Sighing, she put down the pen and picked up the phone.
"Detective Fluttershy."
"Well hey there, Detective," a cocky voice chirped across the phone. "Heard you've been asking some questions about me. I think it might be best to answer a few of them face-to-face, don't you?"
"I'm sorry, who is this?" the quiet pegasus asked, feeling as if she knew but asking all the same.
"You know who," the voice replied. "You want to meet me or not?"
"Of course."
Fluttershy glanced around the park, searching the faces she saw. Several familiar faces were milling about, walkie-talkies at the ready.
"We're all in position, Fluttershy," a coworker spoke into her radio, voice coming out on Fluttershy's end.
"Okay. Wait for my signal; this mare could be very, very dangerous." Swallowing, the canary mare looked around, trying to see if her eye would be caught by the rainbow mane she was fairly certain she'd find. The turquoise orbs stopped, focusing on a form with the bright mane color. But...that wasn't right.
Trotting over, Fluttershy approached a sitting grey pegasus filly with a twister for her Cutie Mark. The rainbow colored hair she had seen was a magic illusion of distance, and when she drew closer, it faded to purple grey. The same filly that had been in the photo at Spectrum's crime scene.
"Sweetheart?" she asked, making the filly turn. "What're you doing out here all alone?"
"Are you Detective Fluttershy?" the smaller pegasus asked, standing up and looking at the officer.
"Yes. Why?"
"My friend said I could trust you."
Did she really...? Fluttershy glanced around, positive the real rainbow mare was somewhere nearby watching, probably with some assistance from whatever unicorn made the illusion to catch her eye. Shaking her head slightly, she ushered the filly towards her police cart. Across the street, Twilight fired up her horn long enough to remove the distance illusion spell from Tornado Bolt's mane and tail, Rainbow Dash standing next to her with her usual blue and red disguise. Glancing at each other and sharing a smile, they turned and departed.
"We'll make sure Drizzle gets put away for a long time," Fluttershy promised, laying her pen down from taking notes. "I do have a few more questions I'd like to ask you, though. The hotel staff said they saw two mares coming and going with you, but couldn't describe them. Do you remember if anypony else was helping you?"
The filly smiled to herself, shaking her head. "It was really scary...I don't remember all that much."
The officer continued to gently press the smaller pegasus for information as an orange mare with wild blue locks entered the precinct, looking around frantically. The bright colors caught Tornado Bolt's eye, making her turn to the mare. Her heart leapt to her throat, her hooves slowly standing up on their own account and drifting towards the other pegasus. Sugar Twist caught sight of the filly, eyes widening to twice their normal size.
"Tornado Bolt..." she murmured, feeling frozen for just a moment. The next the filly had charged towards her, tears streaming down her face. Her aunt swept Tornado Bolt into her wings, embracing her tightly for the first time in two years. Fluttershy smiled slightly as she watched. For now, she could let the rainbow mare's case rest.
Rainbow Dash trotted through Twilight's place of work the next morning, looking for the unicorn's cubicle, her leg finally starting to heal. Spotting her destination, she smirked and turned into the cubicle, only to stop.
The space was completely empty. No personal belongings, no work scattered about the desk, nothing.
"Oh, were you looking for Twilight?" an earth pony asked, wandering up besides her.
"Oh, uh, yeah. She take a sick day or something?"
"Actually, I was hoping you'd be able to tell me," the other mare responded. "My friend said she was transferred, but my boss said she was fired. She didn't even say good-bye."
"Fancy that," Dash muttered. The sudden ringing of her cell caught her attention, making her reach up and turn on the earpiece.
"And here I thought we were getting a little closer, Twi," the pegasus' voice commented as Twilight slowly limped through the lobby, a box of items that had been in her office balanced on her back.
"I told you, I'm a very private pony," the unicorn replied, watching through the windows as rain pattered the pavement.
"Well, sooner or later you're going to have to trust someone."
Twilight snorted. "Trust? That's not something I come by very easily."
"Ever going to tell me your reasoning?"
The unicorn took up the box in her magic, tossing it in the trash can by the door.
"Don't call me, Ms. Rainbow Dash," she not so much stated as demanded. "I'll call you."
The lavender mare began to walk to the door, pausing briefly by a brass bust of a unicorn stallion. Even though it was solid bronze, she could picture the white of his coat, and the various tones of sapphire in his mane. Her eyes drifted downwards slightly, resting on the engraving underneath.
In Loving Memory,
Founder,
Shining Armor.
1496-1510
After lingering for only a moment longer, Twilight pushed open the doors, walking out into the rain.
