Prologue (Chapter: 0.666...)
Prologue
The Summer Sun Celebration 20-6-1004 H.C.M.R 2300 hrs
The Summer Sun Celebration was as usual, chaotic as hell. The DJ was blaring some kind of crazy music ver the sound system, making any attempts of communicating to anypony more than a meter away futile.
But it also had an unexpected advantage: any lovestruck couple looking forward to having fun could discuss their plans in secret, and two ponies were doing exactly that.
"Soo, where shall we go?" The stallion asked, looking at his pretty as hell mare friend, his voice barely audible over the heavy bass.
"I don't know!" she replied, bobbing her to the beat. After a minute or so of thinking, the stallion had an idea.
"Come!" he said, leading her to the portable restrooms. It took some time for them , due to the fact that they were in the centre of the party place meaning they both had to plough through the hundreds of ponies partying. At least the effort was worth it, the Stallion thought to himself. The toilets was located near a lightly forested area, but not too far away. As long as nopony was too curious or had an urgent need to relieve herself, the place offered more than enough privacy.
"Well then, shall we?" The mare asked rhetorically, since the answer was obviously a yes. Throwing the door open, she stepped inside, before realizing what she had just discovered.
"Oh my god." she muttered in native equestrian, before passing out.
Chapter 1
"Oi! Grayscale!" Somepony shouted into my Office a little too loudly. Another dammed cat stuck in a tree I bet. I thought to myself as I made myself wake up.
Grumbling, I forced myself to look at The Calendar perched on my desktop with bleary eyes. June the Twentieth, Year 1004 of Her Celestial Majesty's Reign it read, which was also the day before the annual Summer Sun Celebration, or what I preferred to think as the "We defeated Nightmare Moon with Rainbows!" Celebration.
Frowning, since I had decided to sleep just a few hours earlier, I then directed my gaze towards the office clock on the wall. Unlike the rest of the ageing furniture inside the Department, the Clock was new, made from some kind of stuff painted Red-Black as thin as paper, and obtained from what the humans called a "Shopping Mall"- basically a market place inside a huge building pumped full of air about the same temperature as from Cloudsdale. The Weird material itself was made from what they called "Plastic"-stronger than wood, and presumably lighter than it too, made from some kind of black, gooey stuff that they called "Oil".
Speaking of which, it was barely a year ago since they, the "Humans" showed up from out of nowhere and they were already a major supplier of almost everything. Pens, Clocks, Etc. You name it, they have it, along with some weird stuff that displays moving pictures. One of the more interesting stuff was furniture packed inside boxes like those Legos everypony had as a foal, and you had to build them yourself. I had a field day assembling them for a school once, since the bits and pieces were too small for hooves to properly grab.
Anyway, the only reason why I was still staring at the clock was that the time it displayed in dots of red was "00:01". Which meant two things. Firstly, I had to cross out yesterday's date. Secondly, it was still the Summer Sun Celebration. Unusual for me since everypony was either out partying in the setting sun or trying to get some sleep, with me falling into the latter. I never liked Summer Sun Parties. "Too loud." I had told my Sister and yet she still insists on giving me tickets to them yearly. And yearly, I just give them away to homeless ponies.
"What? You better give me a good reason for waking me up. Otherwise you'll have to suffer my wrath." I replied, with a hint of hostility. I wasn't always like this, but 10 years after I joined the Baltimare Police Department, I found my enthusiasm dropping more each year. I had envisioned the job as an investigator to be full of excitement and adventure like a Daring Do book, but it seems I joined in the wrong state. Almost 25 years old and not a single major or minor crime had happened in this town for me to solve, or anywhere else near here. Excluding Discord and that giant monkey thing that appeared a few years back, since that wasn't considered a crime. More like in the category of "Divine Chaos."
"Well, look alive, Ma'am. Dispatch just came through with a 10-35 Downtown." Now, that caught my attention.
"You sure? Not 10-56 or something?" I asked for confirmation. 35 was the 10-code for homicide the last time I had bothered to check, whereas a 10-56 involved the usual drunk pony.
"Eeyup." The voice replied. Lifting up my head, the source was from a constable, a Stallion named Lawful Hooves. One of the rather okay ponies around. We share the occasional Doughnut or Coffee together on lunch break.
"So Hooves, you're telling me there's a Major Crime?" I asked, suppressing my true emotions from showing up. Although my exterior expression was the usual, trademark bored expression I wore while on duty, in my mind, I was going crazy. Finally something interesting had shown up, after eight years of waiting.
"Eeyup." He said, yet again.
"Well then mien freund . Take me with you." I replied, getting up. First things first, I had to find my Badge and ID. Thankfully, they were still sitting in the drawer located underneath my desk, covered by a thin layer of dust. Hurriedly looping the lanyard around my neck, I left my desk, my heart full of excitement.
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I went inside what the Humans had called a "Car", some kind of metal Wagon capable of self-locomotion and weighed 40 tonnes. Surprisingly, the driver wasn't a pony, but was instead a white human, wearing what looked similar to a Police Officer's uniform with what seemed like white stars in a blue rectangle, surrounded by red and white stripes.
Creepily, much of their daily lives seemed to mirror around ours. Like how their music classification system was exactly the same as ours, how our time system was exactly on par with theirs, how both species somehow spoke Equestrian, although they call it English. Something which still confuses me to this day since I've once read in a history book that the English were another merry bunch of Humans from an island called the United Kingdom.
"So white guy with stripes and stars, are you like with the police or something?" I had inquired on the way. The human seemed surprised, probably because I had called him a "White". That same history book had also cautioned ponies from calling humans from their skin colour as it was considered Racist. Another strange thing that I can't understand, since everypony calls each other by either their coat colour or mane colour.
"Yes, I'm with the Police, just assigned to another Unit. I'm Jacob Mark. American. What about you?"
"Greyscale, obviously. You would think there's no other name more fitting than that." I replied sarcastically. Exactly what my parents had replied after I asked them why, with me being grey and all.
After that, we each went back into our own thoughts. Mine were mostly on what would I find there, since 10-35 could be anything from Arson to Crazy-Person/Pony trying to kill someone. In the end, I decided that it was better to just be patient than to let my thoughts run wild.
~ . ~
We arrived at the Crime scene a little earlier than I had expected, since Downtown was more than five Kilometres away. Not exactly the ideal place for the city's central law enforcement station, which I blame the nobles in Canterlot for since the price of land downtown was too expensive. Jacob must have been driving at five times the speed limit, sirens blaring and all.
Looking around, I realized that I was probably the only pony cop inside here. Now that's bad. I thought. If it was brawling or something a couple of our guys could have handled this. Also, there were quite a lot of Black cars. Apparently Humans working for the Government have a rather unhealthy obsession with the colour Black. There was also a white and red and squarish car that they called an "ambulance" too, but the crew was not doing anything. They were just standing around, pale faced.Okay. That's not good.
The exact location of interest was a light blue free-standing portable toilet, larger than the human sized ones in order to accommodate a pony better, cordoned off by police tape placed roughly at the height of my face, obviously to prevent any human or pony to go in. What caught my attention was that there was an unusually large amount of flies surrounding it, buzzing about. An there was this smell. Something in-between sweet and disgusting. Just taking a breath made me feel like throwing up. Maybe hoping for a case wasn't such a good thing after all. I thought as I ducked under the flimsy barrier.
Before they let me in however, I had to wear all sorts of gear. A face mask, some kind of suit that covered my entire body from head to flank and took ten minutes to wear, followed by a plastic bag with an elastic opening to stuff my tail in. I must have looked like some demon by the time I had finished. Probably to prevent my fur or feathers or hooves from contaminating the scene any further I decided, as I headed for the entrance.
I was accompanied by two humans, wearing their equivalent of the plastic suit that I had. "Fun house of horrors eh?" I joked to myself. To my surprise, they actually replied back to me.
"You bet. M.E did a count, and they came up with 21 stab wounds to the body. Vic must have been already dead by the first ten." The one on my left said, looking down at me.
"Heh. With the amount of blood in there? It's a wonder no-one had noticed the smell for three hours. Apparently it wasn't until some love-struck couple had decided to well, go somewhere private found her." The other guy replied. "The Stallion fainted on sight, while his marefriend ran off to get help. Which brings the us here, where you come in. I bet Sam ten bucks that you'll faint."
"Oh shut up man! We're here to do a job, not laugh at some other species' misery." The human named Sam shot back as he opened the door. Wow. Such consideration for my feelings. I thought sarcastically.
Stepping through the gap, the interior was dimly lit by a single economy light bulb about as bright as a candle. Evolution however, made the light seem bright enough for me to clearly see what was inside. There was a pony, slumped against a corner that was covered by what I presumed to be black-red paint. No wait. That's blood. I thought, after realizing that the pattern was weird. A closer look at the pony's snout marked it as a mare.
Other than the face, the mare's body was covered by a white sheet, presumably to cover up the "twenty-one stab wounds" inflicted on her. Human crime scenes lacked the sheet so I guessed correctly that it was to prevent anypony else from fainting at whatever gruesomeness that it hid.
"Very well then Detective Pony. Let's get to work." Sam's buddy said, a bit too cheerily for my liking.
