Crossfire

Back in Action

The smell was what really bothered me about the alley off of Colt Street.

It reeked so bad that it made me look forward to inhaling Snorty’s farts every time I went back to the marehouse. Even though I’d been in that alley a million times, I could never get over the smell of rotten wood and apples. Sure, I’d smelled things like that before, worse things, but wood and apples made me think about my friend, a filly I used to know in elementary school, back in Ponyville…

Only it wasn’t Ponyville anymore. After Baltimare fell victim to that freak hurricane accident a few years back, Ponyville saw an influx of newcomers, so much so that I distinctly remember Pinkie Pie losing her voice, having sung her welcome song so many times. Years went by, and even when Baltimare was rebuilt, the ponies kept coming. Eventually, what had been a quaint little pony town had become a dirty, bustling metropolitan area.

But then again, the same thing had happened to all of Equestria. Industry took over. Pretty soon nobody had use for carts and carriages; it was all about cars, sweet cars that stallions could drive down the cobbled streets to pick up a few mares with.

What came after that? Politics, of course. I mean, who can expect a monarchy like that of Princess (sorry, ex-Princess) Celestia’s to sustain itself, given the changing times? Before I knew what was happening, President Titus Freemane was in office at Canterlot, otherwise known as EQC (Equestria City). Celestia and Luna fell from power, and, according to the rumor mill, they were living somewhere in the Everfree Forest.

So much stuff happened. Friends came and went. My idol, Rainbow Dash, the greatest flyer in all of Equestria, eventually joined the Wonderbolts and is still with them today. Apple Bloom, the friend I mentioned earlier, had a more difficult time. With industrialization gripping the nation, the Apple family business collapsed. That, and poor ol’ Granny Smith finally clocking out, split the family. Apple Bloom and her big sister Applejack went to Appleloosa to live with their cousin, and last I heard, Big Macintosh was working right here in Manehattan as a bouncer for the Lucky Loony, one of the biggest watering holes in the city.

I don’t know much about the others. Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie are all still in Ponyville. I know Fluttershy got married a while back to some pegasus named Windstopper. I know Spike, Twilight’s dragon, left a while back to enroll in the University of Draconia. Rarity is some sort of star in Los Pegasus; she and Sweetie Belle moved there a while back, way before I left Ponyville.

That’s right. I left Ponyville nine years ago.

My parents…well, they weren’t around much. Never were. And I never really cared. Not until Flim and Flam, those two charlatans with their super special awesome cider machine, bought out my father of our property so they could build some giant factory. I saw my house get razed by a dozen construction ponies, but I didn’t cry. I packed up what little I had left and hitchhiked across Equestria, but I didn’t cry. I watched my friends disappear, not knowing if I’d ever see them again, not knowing if ever a time would come when I would return…

But I didn’t cry. I never cried.

At least, nopony ever saw me cry. When I did cry, I made sure it was raining out, so that my tears could mix with the rainwater and so that nopony would know that Scootaloo, the Scootaloo, was capable of such an infantile emotional reaction as crying.

People on the streets had other names for me. Scootalooter. Scootaloser. And, my personal favorite, Scoota-what’s-her-face-the-pegasus-in-the-hoodie-that-hangs-by-the-Carrot-Cake-building-every-day. It’s my personal favorite because I made it up. And it was true.

The streets of Manehattan at that time were not safe, nor suitable for an adolescent mare such as myself. But you know what? I didn’t care. My parents had abandoned me. My house was gone. My friends were gone. I had nothing. Nopony.

And yet I lived. I stole from the Cakes, and they never knew it was me. They, too, had been driven out of Ponyville by big business and tough times, and they made the mistake of coming to Manehattan, thinking they had a chance at doing well. They could not have been more wrong. At least they still had a roof over their heads, but with both of their kids in different colleges (Pound Cake at Cloudsdale Flight Academy, Pumpkin Cake at Fillydelphia Ponytechnic University,) they barely scraped by. Many nights saw me crouched in the alleyway, clutching my jacket and sweatshirt to keep my body and wings warm, hearing the muffled bellows of Mr. and Mrs. Cake, arguing about money. I felt that their relationship was going to end in one of two ways, neither of them being particularly pleasant.

And yet I stole from them, I lived off them, and even though I cost them hundreds of bits for every cake I ripped from their shelves, I didn’t care.

The alleyway became my home, my dirty, rotten, smelly, gut-wrenching home. It was a place for me to brood, to lament. When I wasn’t busting my wings over at Snorty’s marehouse, letting ugly fat mustangs do…things…to me, just so I could take their bits from their sweaty hooves and buy more sugarcube from the local dealer, Edge Sketch, I was in the alley. Shooting up on sugar, gripping myself in pain after the latest mustang’s wild romp with me, unwittingly, involuntarily reliving those moments in my head; the rhythmic grunts, the sweat, the smoke, my eyes shut tight, their filthy hooves running down my back…

I threw up every night I had to do it. I didn’t want to. I hated it. But Snorty gave me good money, and as long as he got his share, he didn’t care who got their hooves on me.

Every night was the same for me in that alley. The smells became progressively worse with the putrid odor of vomit and salty, tangy scent of tears. I began to cry even when it wasn’t raining. I cried at day. I cried at night. I cried the other day when I held up a unicorn at gunpoint, tears running down my face and staining my jacket as the revolver in my hooves trembled. The unicorn was very kind and got me to give up the gun; I think if I hadn’t cried, she would’ve used her horn and torn me apart with her magic. Now I had no food, no money (at least, none gained the way I wanted it to be gained,) and no gun. I liked that gun. I was one of the first to get a gun, back when they started getting really popular in Appleloosa. A genius by the name of Sharpshooter decided that it was time to put away the spears and swords and break out the heavy power. With the invention of guns, even more changes came. Gone were the armor-wearing, plume-helmeted royal guards; instead bulky bodyguards escorted President Freemane, their muscles bulging out of their bulletproof vests, their manes shaven, and their eyes hardened. I saw a few when Freemane went on his campaign tour in Manehattan. Even I was scared of them.

But I’m getting off track. I had lost my gun, and in Lower Manehattan, especially around Colt Street, not having a gun was a death sentence into itself. The police ponies did what they could, but many of them were too scared to go after the rising number of griffons and wyverns that had taken residence in the Southern Slums, Lower Manehattan’s pet name. Other ponies were in the pockets of crime and drug lords, what with the exponential rise in sugarcube dealing, of which I was sadly engrossed in. Already my teeth were rotting and my orange skin was turning yellow. I felt like I was dying. Then again, when you live on the streets of the Southern Slums, you’re pretty much dead already.

Oh, the tragic irony. How I would love to laugh, if I still could.

It was raining the night he killed her. I was, as usual, sleeping off another horrible night after the marehouse. The customer, a fat pony named Bigbuck, had shown very little restraint. I was still bleeding between my legs by the time I got my pay from Snorty. The alley stank, I stank, my hooves were covered in rainwater and blood, and I felt miserable, not to mention jacked up on sugarcube, which I had tried to give up.

BLAM. BLAM.

I snapped up, the sound of the gunshots ringing in my ears. I’d heard shots before, but never this close. It sounded as if…

As if they were coming from the building right next to me.

I pulled my hoodie and jacket closer into me as I dashed out of the alley and into the decrepit cake store.

There was Mr. Cake, standing over the dead body of his wife, holding a smoking pistol. His face, unshaven and weary, was a mixture of unchecked terror and uncertain satisfaction. The cakes nearby were covered in Mrs. Cake’s blood. Mr. Cake said nothing. He did not blink. He did not breathe. I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I knew it wasn’t the sugar that was making me see these things.

Then he noticed me. His eyes went wide, and for a second I thought he was going to shoot me. But he didn’t. He merely slinked back into the shadows, pathetically…

I had witnessed murder.

I had heard of murders before, and I saw my share of tarp-covered cadavers being hauled away by Manehattan’s Finest. But I had just seen Mr. Carrot Cake, kindly ol’ Mr. Carrot Cake, murder his wife. In cold blood. I don’t think he even said anything. It was as if he walked up to his wife, grabbed her as if they were going to kiss, and put two bullets in her.

I stood there stupidly, hearing the sound of a door slamming and a van screech off into the stormy night. The pool of blood around Mrs. Cake’s head grew wider, and I noticed for the first time the look of surprise on her face, wondering if she had tried to scream, and if that scream was now stuck in her throat, cold and dead as she was…

I had no choice. I called the cops.

Then I threw up.

/*/*/*/

Detective Jack Hoover exited the police car with a rookie patrol pony just outside Cake Confectionaries on Colt Street. There had been a shooting. Wife dead, husband gone. It was a clean-cut case.

There were a few black-and-whites outside the shop, coupled with a forensics van, but other than that there was nothing. Some stallion went crazy and blew away his mare. Was that really worth his time?

The rookie, a unicorn that looked no older than eighteen, tried to keep pace with him. Hoover didn’t like rookies as partners, but the sergeant hadn’t given him a lot of choice. Now they sidled up to another officer, a gray pegasus with a lazy eye.

“What’ve we got?” he said, his voice husky from smoking and drinking.

“One dead mare,” said the officer. “Two gunshot wounds to the head. ID’d her as a Mrs. Carrot Cake, who owns the store with her husband.”

“Who is…?”

“Gone, but he left a note. I’ll show you when we get in.”

“Who found the body?” Jack asked, pushing open the door to the cake shop.

“Pegasus by the name of Scootaloo. Says she heard the shots and walked in on Mr. Cake with the gun. She’s over there.”

The officer pointed to the far end of the room, past the tarpaulin-covered corpse, where two other officers were questioning an orange, purple-haired pegasus that wore a blue, stained jacket and thin gray hoodie. There were no tear marks down her cheeks, but Jack could tell by the way she held herself that she had been traumatized by the incident. At least, she had been traumatized by something.

Jack walked over to her, stepping around the tarp-covered body, and once he caught her scent he immediately knew the girl was a hopo, a homeless pony. She had needle marks on her hooves and bruises on her face, and she smelled of sweat, dirt, and unhappiness. Jack sighed. This pegasus was one of the many hundreds of ponies out of work and homeless around Manehattan. Observing the needle marks again, he knew this girl’s testimony would be contested. Who would trust a sugar junkie? Seriously, who?

“Miss Scootaloo?” he said in his calm detective voice. “I’m Detective Jack Hoover, and I was wondering…”

“I told ‘em already,” the pegasus replied in a scratchy, boyish voice, and Jack saw in her eyes a look of utmost hatred. “Cake killed his wife. I saw it. They had tapes, check ‘em, I don’t want any cops…”

“And why is that?” Hoover asked, pulling out his tape recorder.

“Cops around here,” she muttered. “Everypony on the streets…dying, oh no, dying…”

“Miss Scootaloo, are you alright?”

“Yeah,” she said absentmindedly, an obvious lie. “I’ve been off the shug for a while now, and when you’re off the shug, things can happen. Bad things.”

Her eyes rolled and she held herself tightly. Jack smirked. At least this girl was willing to admit she was a sugar addict. However, that meant that whatever she said could be contested in court.

“Miss Scootaloo, run me through exactly what happened,” he said calmly.

“…seeing things…Cake ran in…dictionary…oh, man, I love me some shug…”

“Miss Scootaloo?”

“Once upon a time…OCTAGONS!” she shrieked, startling everypony at the crime scene. Jack rolled his eyes and took the pegasus by the wing, dragging her outside in the rain. The water seemed to quiet the girl, who shook her head and began to cry, trying to mask her face in the shadow of her hoodie. Jack waited several minutes, and Scootaloo finally seemed to calm down.

“Miss Scootaloo,” he shouted over the sound of rain and police activity, “are you alright?”

She nodded wearily.

“Good,” he said patiently, trying to squash the growing feeling of pity for this girl out of his stomach. “Now, come with me and tell me what happened.”

“I was sleeping right there,” she hiccupped, pointing down the alley as they walked underneath an awning. “I got nowhere else to go, man. I hear the shots ‘n run in, and I see Cake standin’ over her, with’a gun.”

“And you say the tapes will prove that? How did you know there was a camera?”

“’Cause I stole from ‘em a lot,” she said, her eyes unfocused, and Hoover was surprised by her blatant honesty. “I got nowhere else to go. I lived offa ‘em. I woulda died if it weren’t for ‘em.”

Observing her closer, Jack Hoover saw that the pegasus was missing several teeth and had a mean, runty look about her. Her hair was dirty and disheveled, and her eyes were bloodshot. Her words were slurred by her lack of teeth and her current state, and Jack felt the pity in his stomach grow tenfold. This girl didn’t deserve to be on the streets. She didn’t deserve any of this…

“I think I know where he going next.”

Hoover snapped to attention. “What?!”

“He’s got kids. Two of ‘em. College ponies. But Fillydelphia Tech is out on break, right?”

“How am I supposed to know that?” he began, but the rookie from earlier, who had been listening in, interrupted.

“She’s right. My sis is at FPU and she’s out on break.”

“Well, what does that have to do with anything?” Jack snapped, clearly annoyed.

“His daughter, Cake’s daughter goes there, and they live in Ponyville,” Scootaloo said, and for a moment Jack thought he saw a roguish glint in the pegasus’s purple eyes, but a clap of thunder startled him, so much so that he barely caught the last bit of her sentence.

“…killed her, then he’d kill the whole family.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I know these things,” she said resolutely, and Jack could tell that the sugar was no longer affecting her. “I grew up in Ponyville, and I’ve seen stuff like this happen in Manehattan. I put two and two together.”

“That fast?”

She shrugged, and Jack saw her in a new light. He shouldn’t have been listening to the ramblings of a street junkie, but something about Scootaloo’s words drew him in, made him trust her. A police officer showed him the bloodstained note by the body:

I regret nothing

“Maybe he won’t go back to kill his kids, but where else would he go if he can’t stay here?”

That was it. That was the clicker for Jack Hoover, who smiled. He was going to get this girl off the streets. He was going to put him to work.

\*\*\*\

So that’s how I ended up in Detective Hoover’s car on the way down to Ponyville. In any other situation, I would have found it mortifying, to be seen in the presence of a cop. That, as with so many things, was a death sentence in the Southern Slums.

But you know what? I didn’t care. I felt happier than I had ever felt in my life. When they took me to the station they gave me a warm bed, warm food, and something to help with sugar withdrawal. They even washed my clothes (which I didn’t let them throw away, because they were the only things I managed to save from my old house.) Gone were the days of having to bust my butt (literally) for Snorty; I had told Jack about him and the next day he was in Equestria Ponytentiary.

And I was going home. Back to Ponyville.

Or so I thought.

I’ll get there, don’t worry, but I’ve gotta explain some stuff first. When I finally managed to get away from the alley, they took me downtown to the police station, questioned me some more, and let me sleep off my sugar binge. After that Hoover and his boys got clearance to set up a raid on Ponyville, and that’s how I wound up in the passenger seat of Hoover’s car, followed closely by two police cars and a C.O.L.T. (Counterterrorism Operations, Logistics, & Tactics) team.

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to be said. I had already thanked Hoover profusely, but I could tell he still didn’t trust me. I could tell he was wary of me, and I didn’t blame him. Would you trust a junkie you had met on the street?

Nevertheless, I wanted to engage him in conversation, but a crackle over the radio interrupted me.

“All units, be advised, PVPD is reporting a suspect matching our description in a black 4-door heading northbound on I-10 towards your convoy, over.”

Cake was running. We were gonna meet him halfway. Jack grabbed the radio. “This is Hoover to Herd One, Hoover to Herd One. Solid copy on that report?”

“Roger, Hoover,” came the reply.

“Have the C.O.L.T. truck hang back in case things get ugly. Myers, Hoofman, stay on my tail. We’re on I-10 southbound,” he said, addressing the previous radio caller. “Any idea when we’ll meet?”

“Copy, Herd One, suspect is raging down the road. Expect him within two minutes, over.”

“Two minutes?!” I cried. We were nowhere near Ponyville, and Cake had already fled. “You don’t think…”

“No, I don’t,” he growled, cutting me off. “Cake is paranoid. He knows we’ve got the tapes. He knows we’ve got the note. He knows, that’s why he’s running.”

I slid back in my seat. This was about to get wild.

/*/*/*/

And wild, it did get.

Detective Hoover had barely any time to register what was going on before a flaming hulk of metal and glass careened over the median onto I-10 southbound, clipping his car and sending it into a tailspin. When they got their bearings, Scootaloo looked sick to her stomach, but Hoover, wasting no time, took his Brigadier 9mm pistol from his holster and exited his car, shielding his eyes from the smoke of the wreck.

The car was a fireball. There was no way Cake could have survived. The pursuing units pulled up to the side of I-10 northbound, preparing a roadblock. Smoke filled the air and the nostrils of everypony within a hundred yards. There was no way he could have survived.

Hoover addressed one of the pursuing officers, who was wiping his brow free of sweat.

“What happened?”

“Lost control,” he gasped. “Went crazy. Flipped a coupla times, then he…”

“GUN! GUN!”

Hoover was firing before he knew what he was firing at, and he wasn’t the only one. The air filled with bullets, and the wreck scene became a battleground. Hoover finally saw the shooter, none other than Mr. Carrot Cake himself, covered in blood and ash, carrying a powerful-looking pistol. The officers opened fire, and Scootaloo hit the deck, nearly breaking her nose on the asphalt. Jack fired and fired, trying to reach his radio. He saw one of the officers go down, a flower of blood blossoming from his flank. Another had taken a bullet to the knee.

It was a war zone.

\*\*\*\

Had I known Mr. Cake was as crazy as he turned out to be, I would have spat in Jack Hoover’s face and gone back to my alley.

Instead, I went along with him and found myself underneath a squad car, my eyes wet from crying, my ears ringing from the gunshots, caught in the crossfire.

An officer fell next to me. He was boyish, a young unicorn with a badge-shaped cutie mark that was now red with blood. His pistol slid over to me, a black metal death-bringer. I risked a look over the squad car.

The first thing I saw were his eyes, full of hatred, brimming with fury, as if everypony in the world had wronged him and he had set out to punish them. He fired carelessly, aimlessly, not caring who he hit, not caring for his own safety. I saw no pony in those eyes: I saw only demon, devil spawn, the wrath of a loathsome creature that thrived on hatred and gave not a single care for the lives it took in spreading scorn.

It was the look of a murderous creature, the eyes of a horrid beast. He was no longer he, but it. It had clenched teeth like fangs, scruffy features like a mongrel, and a horrid complexion.

It was a monster.

I reached for the fallen pony’s pistol. There was a single bullet left. As shots erupted around me, as the world blew up around my ears, I took aim.

I squeezed the trigger and watched as the flash of light lined itself up perfectly with the space between Mr. Cake’s eyes.

/*/*/*/

“Cease fire! Cease fire!”

Cake had fallen. Somepony had gotten a lucky shot off. Moving swiftly, checking on injured officers as he went, Hoover made his way to the gunman, his Brigadier still drawn.

As the smoke from the wreck began to clear, he caught sight of Cake, lying spread-eagled on the ground, a perfectly round hole smack-dab between his wide eyes. Blood leaked from the hole and pooled in the whites of his eyes, turning them red. His mouth was open, as if he were screaming, and Hoover shuddered with the thought that this pony had died with a scream trapped in his throat, never to be released.

Cake was dead. Feeling no remorse, Hoover slapped the nearest officer on the back.

“Nice shot, officer.”

“Uh, detective, I didn’t…”

“It was her.”

He turned around and saw Scootaloo standing stock-still, the pistol still in her shaking hooves, tears in her eyes. Slowly she lowered the pistol and collapsed to her knees. Hoover abandoned his ambivalence of the girl and ran to her side.

“Scootaloo? You alright?”

She looked at him with tear-stained eyes and began to sob. They stayed like that for what seemed like hours, only moving when the paramedics and firefighters arrived and when the lifeless body of Mr. Carrot Cake was zipped up in a body bag and taken away.

She threw up as the sun went down, but Jack was always by here side. Traffic had begun to flow again, slowly, as police, firefighters, paramedics, and reporters flooded that stretch of highway. Jack knew he would have to answer for what she did, but at the moment he could care less. He comforted the pegasus, trying his best to soothe her.

“That was one heck of a shot,” he said, not sure if it was the right thing to say. “Where’d you learn?”

Wiping away her tears, she lifted the top of her pants away from her skin, exposing her flank: her cutie mark was a pair of crossed pistols, old-fashioned six-shooters. She smiled grimly.

“We need good shots, Scootaloo, and I know you don’t like where you are now,” Hoover said, choosing his words carefully. “I can make it up to you. How would you like to work for me, as a junior detective?”

He had expected her to say no, to walk away and never talk to him again. He had not expected her to hug him tightly and say, with the sincerest of voices, “I would love to.”

The evening became night, and the number of police and reporters dwindled, but, sitting on the side of the highway, two ponies began new lives. This would not be the last time they would find themselves in the crossfire, but whatever came next, they would be ready for.

They would be ready for the end.