Malignancy

Part 2:
Patterns and Crossed Paths

Manehattan General Hospital, 53 W 23rd Street,
Thursday Afternoon (September 21st, Anno Domina 988):

Over her red tunic, Lyra Heartstrings wore a non-regulation set of police-constable's saddle bags, emblazoned with her Cutie Mark on both sides. They were larger than the standard bags, had far more internal divisions among the pockets and, though the material was painted over in red and gold, was made of a sturdy brown Minoan leather. Most unusual, perhaps, was the fact that the belts on the flaps had cold-forged iron buckles and strap tabs, making it extremely difficult for most unicorns to grasp or undo the belts using their telekinesis.

Lyra undid the belts with her telekinesis and levitated 121 glass marbles from one of the bag's internal pockets. Each marble was held in its own, separate gold aura and flew along it's own intricate pattern around Lyra, gleaming with telekinetic magic. The foals of the pediatric ward squealed in delight as Lyra demonstrated her extreme level of magical dexterity. Lyra grinned as she extended her forelegs up and to the sides, her head turning to watch the streaking paths of the marbles as they buzzed around her faster and faster, blurring as they tore through the air. Her bright red and black shako cap levitated off her head as well and began rotating, earning another titter from the foals.

Without warning, Lyra clapped her forehoove's together at the same time she sent a surge of magic through her horn, crushing all 121 of the marbles into four smooth pieces each – making, in total 484 glass shards, each enclosed in it's own individual tiny aura. Each shard began on its own spinning pattern around Lyra before shooting off toward the foals' beds. The foals cheered and clapped their hooves as the coloured glass spun around their beds, causing prismatic light shows and patterns to whir about them, just out of reach. Lyra still had several of the shards orbiting herself and her hat as she held her forehooves out again and called for the foals' attention. "Okay, how many of you all can do this?" she began patting her head with one forehoof and rubbing her belly with the other as she orchestrated the flight paths of the 484 glass shards.

The foals attempted to mimic the act of patting their heads and rubbing their stomachs, with differing levels of success.

While still controlling the shards and rubbing her stomach and patting her head, Lyra floated a carrot-dog, which she had gotten from the cart out front, into her mouth and took a huge bite. She chewed through her smile and soaked up the laughter and adulation of the young ponies.

"LYRA!"

Lyra nearly choked on her carrot-dog and shot all of the shards straight up into the ceiling, creating 455 holes in the ceiling tiles and taking out several of the lighting fixtures. Four of the shards, out of instinct, shot in the general direction of the voice, impacting the wall inches away from her partner, Sr. Constable Mangalloy Dendrite. Lyra coughed with eyes watering as she pounded on her chest, gasping for breath. "B -kak!- Bloody shit -cof!- Denny! What?"

"Lyra! I've been looking for you for the last quarter hour! And of course I find you stuffing your face and playing! Come on! Swifty's awake."

"Bye, Constable Heartstrings!" one of the colts called from his bed as a nurse brushed bits of broken ceiling tile off of his mane.

"Goodbye, my little Junior Deputies!" Lyra waved as Denny shoved her out of the ward.

"There you are!" Easterly groaned. "Come on!" she hurried the two down the hall to Swifty's room.

"Did you happen to get what Regiment attacked you?" Lyra asked between bites of her carrot-dog.

"I mean..." Easterly considered. "They were wearing gold armour..."

Lyra choked down a large, partially chewed mouthful. "That doesn't help. That only means they're part of the Royalty Service Corps. What colour were their plumes?"

"Uh... blue?"

Lyra made a disgusted noise and let the matter drop as they reached and entered the hospital room.

Easterly hurried into the room and up to the nurse, Lily, by Swifty's bedside. The two embraced and comforted each other with a quick, hushed exchange, and Denny and Lyra took up positions on the other side of Swifty's bed.

"Hello, Rouncy. How are you feeling?" Denny began.

"You look like shit, Swift-butt," Lyra teased.

"Thanks, I feel it," he struggled to sit up higher in his hospital bed. The brown earth-stallion had a bandaged head and a cast around his left fetlock. "When did you two get into town?"

Lyra pulled another carrot-dog, wrapped in wax paper, from her saddle bag. "Wednesday, about dawn. We were expecting to see you waiting for us at the docks - the Gold Armour's met us instead." Lyra leaned against the wall of the small single-bed hospital room and took a bite of her carrot-dog. She was an athletic, aqua-marine unicorn with a sea-foam mane and piercing yellow eyes. Her uniform, that of the Baltimare Royal Constabulary, red and black with gold highlights, was identical to Denny's, aside from the saddle-bags.

"Prisoner transfer went off without a hitch, though," Denny shrugged. Denny was a shorter, thinner unicorn mare with a blue coat, red mane and purple eyes. Her saddle bags were thinner than Lyra's, good for carrying little more than documents and dossiers, and they bore black dendritic crystal cutie-marks, like four-armed black snowflakes. "No offense, but I honestly felt more at ease having the army present for this transfer - there's always so much that can go wrong with a level seven prisoner, even under the best conditions."

"Well, they sure haven't made anyone else around here feel more at ease, I'll tell you that," Swifty spat.

"What colour were their plumes?" Lyra asked, ignoring Swifty's comment.

"Um... I don't know, blue?"

"Solid blue or different shades of striped blue?"

"Solid."

"Ah, okay - that's the First Lancer Regiment then. 'Princess's Own Lancers'."

"I don't understand why that matters - the army laid siege to my station, killed my friends and dragged others off to who knows where! What does it matter what unit they're with?"

"Calm down, Swifty," Denny put a hoof on his shoulder. "We're just trying to get all the facts."

"This is like something out of a nightmare," Lilly managed. She was pressing her head against the side of Easterly's, the strain of the last few days showing in her sleep-heavy eyes and wrinkled hospital uniform. "We've been getting police constables and other government employees from all over the city since Monday - everything from bruises and contusions to broken limbs and internal bleeding. It's like we're under siege!"

"Hey, I got you," Easterly crooned, wrapping a wing around her marefriend's body, hugging her tightly.

"The First Lancer's are mostly a frontier Regiment, if they're not guarding Equestria's southern boarder then they're serving as Celestia's personal bodyguards. The only reason they'd be here in an assault role..."

"Is if Celestia's purging the government again. Just like in 825." Denny clucked her tongue in thought. "Unless you have any better ideas? Lyra?"

"No, I think it's pretty obvious, sure. But what's She purging? Another cult? A coup conspiracy?"

"Blazer..." Swifty began. "Uh, a constable at my station, Blazer, he said- I mean, okay, so the soldiers were hauling him away, and he was shouting how Caesar would get them for this."

"Not at all surprising," Denny grumbled. "Caesar is the head of Celestia's Security Directorate, he oversees intelligence and special operations. He has eyes and agents everywhere - there were bound to be some in your station, and every station and government office. We can't jump to conclusions, some of Caesars agents getting swept up in this could be a coincidence. There could be much more at play than we're seeing."

"Who else did they take?" Lyra asked after she finished her carrot dog. She pulled a third from her saddle bag and removed the wax paper.

"They, uh... They took my friend Honey Meadows. They removed a tooth from her first," Swifty winced. "They seemed scared of it, like they expected there to be something dangerous inside the tooth."

Lyra held off biting into her carrot dog. "Poison?" Her face twisted into a frown. She put the carrot dog down on a side-table and took a step toward Swifty's bed.

"Maybe - I think Sergeant Blue had one too. He broke it, or they broke it, and he died. This blue mare, the dentist, she had them put a bag over his head and-"

"Wait!" Lyra interrupted. "A blue dentist? A blue unicorn dentist?"

"It can't be her," Denny said in a low tone, looking to Lyra.

"Did the blue mare have an hourglass cutie-mark?" Lyra leaned in close to Swifty.

"I mean... perhaps? They called her Colgate, I think?"

"Shit!" Denny left the room.

Lyra ran after her. "It could be Minuette?" Lyra offered. "She could be pretending to be Colgate, she's done it before."

Denny was pacing in the hallway. "We are in deep shit, Lyra, deep deep shit!"

"Even if it is Colgate, why would she help the government take out Caesar's agents? She is one of Caesar's agents!"

Denny stopped pacing. "The Colgate we knew was Caesar's creature, but she's also supposed to be dead! What if this one isn't his yet? What if-"

"What are you too freaking out about?" Easterly caught up to them. "Who is the Colgate pony?"

"A mistake," Denny shot an angry look at Lyra as she said this.

"An old friend," Lyra corrected, meeting Denny's eye.

"She's also dead. Crossbow bolt to the temple. Unless it's an earlier version or another pony named Minuette who's pretending to be Colgate for some reason."

"I have no idea what you two are on about, but I need to know I can count on you two. We need your help!"

"I don't see how you expect us to help you." Lyra dismissed. She turned back toward Swifty's room, but Easterly blocked her path. "Get out of my way, I'm going to say goodbye to Swifty and-"

"No! You two owe us for that shit you pulled last year! We want our friends back!"

"I expect," Denny offered. "That they're in Canterlot. If they're still alive, and that they will either be released once the transition is complete, or, if it's not to do with a purge, then whenever their trial and prison sentence is over. We're not a nation of barbarians, we have no death penalty. We're a realm of laws."

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that one, shit-head," Lyra laughed as she pushed past Easterly. "You're friends are dead, mourn them and move on."

"That's an awful thing to say!" Easterly gasped.

"Um, have you even met me, feather-brain?" Lyra called back without turning around. "I'll go talk to Striker, if the First Lancers are here, you can bet, bits to bagels, she's around."

"Don't expect me to drag your broken body back to the hospital after she KICKS YOUR ASS!" Denny shouted down the increasing distance of the hallway. She got the last bit out just before Lyra made a rude gesture toward her with her hind legs and turned a corner, out of sight. Denny sighed. "I think she actually cares. She's just not good at expressing her feelings," she half-apologized on Lyra's behalf.

"Who... what is Colgate to you?"

Denny shook her head. "A ghost from our past. I'd rather not discuss it." She turned back toward the hospital room. "What's next?"

Lyra fumed in silent panic, pacing past gurneys and medicine cabinets after she was out of Denny and Easterly's sight, thinking. Her horn lit and she fished for another carrot-dog in her bag, but stopped short when she realized she left her last one in Swifty's hospital room. Lyra made an angry noise in the back of her throat and only just stopped herself from spitting in frustration. She instead levitated a match-book and pack of cigarettes out of her bags and lit one up, taking a long, angry drag.

"Hey! What are you doing!" came a husky voice from behind her.

Lyra half turned to see a large Earth-pony orderly stomping toward her. She exhaled two jets of smoke from her nostrils and went back to her thoughts, ignoring the orange stallion.

"You can't burn things in here! What is that?" he shoved his orange and cream coloured face in Lyra's.

"My medication," she said before blowing a puff of the tobacco smoke in his face, causing him to gag and stumble backwards into a gurney, hacking and coughing.

Rather than deal with him further, she turned and began looking for an exit.

He caught up with her just as she was pushing open a back exit toward a loading dock. "And stay out!" he shouted after her. Lyra made the same rude gesture with her back legs as she passed through the door, allowing it to slam shut behind her. She made her way through the loading area and into an alley that would take her to the street. Then she stopped, and cursed.

She hadn't heard their approach, didn't see anything, didn't feel anything, but they were all around her now. She chastised herself with vulgar swearing and lit her horn. Sixteen needle-like stiletto daggers, all cold-forged iron, were levitating around her, a threat and a reflex.

Sweat began seeping into her scalp and neck under her mane. Lyra took a long drag on her cigarette and let it fall to the filthy brickwork, exhaling a wreath of smoke and stepping through it. "We don't need to do this, Creampuff. This doesn't need to get ugly."

Two gold armours blocked her exit from the alley. Their plumes were solid cobalt blue, their halbards glinted with a well polished gleam of deadly sharpness. Lyra threw out her daggers to form a wall of death to block their progress toward her, holding it inches in front of them, and turned to go back the way she had come. Two more gold armours rounded the corner and blocked the other side of the alley.

"No offense, guys," Lyra's horn surged and all her remaining marbles, less than twenty, flew out of her bag. She stomped a hoof and broke them into shards, spinning them around her like enraged glass bees. Brick dust, bits of scrap metal and broken glass bottles from the dirty floor of the alley began floating into the air and formed spiny clumps of garbage. These joined the daggers and glass in formation around Lyra, floating weapons ready to strike out. "But if you don't walk away now, you never will."

A sonic boom exploded the air around her, robbing Lyra of her breath. A gold and tawny meteor colliding with the ground of the alley, sending shards of brickwork flying, embedding themselves into the wall. Wings of astounding length, glinting with deadly golden blades sliced through the near vacuum caused by the explosion and caught Lyra in the horn, shorting out her magic aura even as the shockwave sent her projectiles flying.

Lyra, deafened and dazed, was sent careening into a metal garbage can, crushing it under the impact. The pegasus pulled back its wings and leapt for Lyra, pinning her under armoured chest and shins.

Lyra gasped and choked for air, the wind having gone out of her. The world swam and her ears rung with echos of the explosion of air. With aching neck and unsteady head, she wobbled to gaze toward the face of her attacker. "Oh yeah..." she rasped when she could breathe again. "I've been such a bad girl, Creampuff... hit me again..."

The pegasus smacked Lyra across the face with an armoured forehoof.

Lyra spat blood and laughed. "D'aw! That was adorable, Cream-"

"Call me that again, Lyra, and I'll break your foreleg!"

"Oh come-" Lyra interrupted herself to spit another line of blood. She coughed and cleared her throat. "Come on, Striker, you're not still mad about-"

"My baby sister, Lyra! She was a child!"

"She was nineteen, Strikey, consenting adults can-"

"I don't care! You broke her heart, you little shit!" She slammed a hoof into the crushed garbage can beside Lyra's head.

"Firstly, ow!" Lyra protested the ringing pang that shot through her head at the strike against metal. "Secondly..." she sighed and tried to pop her ears. "I know, I know, taking her to that-"

"She got pregnant, you unconscionable pustule!"

"Well, she should have snuck in contraception like you and I used to-"

Another clang of metal beside her head. "Shit!" Lyra winced.

"MEDIC!" came a cry from the street, just now pushing through the ringing in Lyra's ears. How long had the cry been sounding?

Lyra struggled to turn her aching head and neck toward that end of the alley. "Sounds like you've got other problems, Cre- Striker," she corrected herself.

With a growl of reluctance, Striker released Lyra, letting her fall to the ground, and made her way to the street, folding her wings and wing blades along her armour. Lyra was picked up right away by two other large Gold Armours.

"Captain Striker! Bullrush's been stabbed! We can't get the blade out it's immune to telekinesis and-"

"Lyra!" Striker interrupted. "Get this stupid blade out of my soldier!"

"What?" Lyra shouted. "I can't hear you! Some idiot hit me with a sonic boom!"

Striker whirled on Lyra and spoke through gritted teeth. "Nopony can get this blade out without just yanking it but you! If he dies, you go to Canterlot's deepest darkest dungeon and NOPONY will ever be able to find you from the hole I throw you into!"

"What?" Lyra said again, feigning deafness.

Striker punched her, knocking her out of the two stallions' grip and back down to the dirty street. Lyra didn't bother spitting and let the blood ooze out of her mouth and nose, gurgling in it on the ground and coughing a bit, but she did not get up, even when Striker stomped on the ground and shouted at her some more. For further dramatics, Lyra rolled her eyes back and began twitching, as though having seizures.

"Lyra...!" Striker leaned down and screamed her name inches from Lyra's ear. "LYRA!"

Lyra flopped around on the ground with her bloody tongue lolling from one side of her mouth, a crude caricature of a dying figure, an overdone death scene for community level theatre.

"You unconscionable parasite!" Strike spat on Lyra and spun around to glare at the medics puzzling over her wounded soldier. "You! Useless and More Useless, come over here and give this addict an injection of something!"

"Ma'am?" One of the military medics ask with extreme hesitance, lowering his head and flattening his ears.

"Just give her something for- I don't know pain or something! Now!"

"Y-yes, Captain Striker!" The medic levitated an ampule of something and prepped a rapid field injection for Lyra, sliding the needle in smoothly as Striker all but stood on Lyra to make her go still and limp.

Lyra cooed in ecstasy as the drug melted through her, all pretense and fight draining out of her as the pure pleasure swept her blood stream. She spit and struggled to her feet as soon as Striker took her hooves off her body. "Mmm, apology accepted, Striker."

Striker slapped Lyra in the back of the head. "Fix him!" she pointed toward Bullrush with a glinting wingtip.

"Yeah, okay, gosh!" Lyra pouted. It took several attempts but she finally was able to light her horn with a shaky gold aura.

"Uh, Ma'am," one of the medics tried to protest. "Does this individual have adequate medical-"

"Shut up!" Striker hissed through her teeth, seething with rage only just contained.

Lyra created two small, overlapping auras, one stationary inside the hole the blade had made in Bullrush's chest and one around the blade itself, and began separating the two. Once the blade was extracted, Lyra caught the eye of the medic and, when she was sure he understood, passed the stationary aura over to his control and left him to finish the job. Lyra vapourized the blood off her dagger even as Striker held a wing blade to her throat, daring her to make any sudden moves. Lyra, slowly, returned it to her saddlebag even as her bags were being taken from her and removed from her line of sight. "You're welcome."

"Just shut up and come with me."

"Oh my! So forward!" Lyra swooned with false adoration. "Just promise me, dear Striker, you won't be gentle! Oooh!"

Striker choked off an angry response and glared at two more of her subordinates. "Chain her and put her with the other one! NOW!"

"Oh! Kinky!" Lyra continued as two Earth-pony constables put shackles on all four of her legs and a ring around her horn. "Oh, and you sprang for the blood-iron too! How thoughtful, you remembered- ow!" she winced at the sharp pang of the blood-iron upon contact. Even through the haze of the drugs she could feel the steady, magic-inhibiting pressure of the blood-iron pulse through her skull and the back of her neck, already smarting from Striker's assault and various abuses.

The constables and two Gold Armours hauled her up and carried her toward a waiting carriage, half pushing and half throwing her into it to fall in a tangled lump of limbs and chains on the floor of the carriage, somepony throwing her discarded red and black shako cap in after her and slamming the door.

"Oh hi, Denny," Lyra called up from the floor of the carriage to her partner, sitting on the seat above her.

"Hello, Lyra." Denny sipped her champagne.

"So, are you the one who's throat I need to slit for this?" Lyra asked in all seriousness as she struggled to untangle herself and sit upright.

"No, I was captured too. Easterly turned me over to the Gold Armours moments after you stormed off in a huff. I'm guessing this was the plan all along."

"Hm..." Lyra grunted and struggled, but finally made it upright, and then up onto the seat opposite Denny. "So, if we get hauled into Canterlot for torture and interrogation, suicide pact?"

Denny snorted and rolled her eyes. "Let's just see what our captor has to say before agreeing to fatalism, shall we?"

A short carriage ride later, during which Lyra drank all the champagne their unseen host had been gracious enough to give them, they arrived outside of a tall residential high-rise surrounded with police constables, Gold Armours and silver armoured Pegasus soldiers and a multitude of other military representatives Denny was at pains to identify right away. She squared her shoulders as the carriage came to a stop and waited for somepony to open the door for her. When they did so, she stepped out imperiously and turned toward the closest armoured stallion. "Soldier!" she barked. "Have a detail carry the prisoner to the command centre. And don't hesitate to use lethal force if she attempts to flee!"

"Yes, Ma'am!" the soldier responded to Denny's authoritative bluff, and directed his fellows to haul Lyra out of the carriage bodily, her blood iron chains causing the unicorns of the group not a little discomfort to even hold.

"What are you doing!" Striker's shrill voice pierced through the scene as she alighted from the air. "What are you doing with my prisoners, soldier!" she shouted at the unicorn Gold Armour taking charge of the situation.

"Prisoners, captain?" He glared at Denny, who grinned and shrugged.

"Yes!" Striker screamed. "THESE TWO ARE MY PRISONERS!" she swung a hoof between Lyra and Denny. "Don't take orders from any random ponies in uniform who climb out of a government vehicle! Are you insane?"

"All do, respect, Ma'am, taking random orders from bossy mares in uniform is basically my entire job description so I'll thank you to shut the crap up and-"

"Whoa whoa whoa!" Denny said stepping between the two of them. "Stand down!"

"You do not get to give me orders, Dendrite!"

Denny turned to face Striker, putting the stallion Gold Armour with the light and dark blue striped plume fully behind her, effectively taking his side.

"I'm here willingly, it's my partner you had to place in irons. Now how about you let the-" she paused for a moment to turn half around to look at the Gold Armour's chest insignia. "Let the First Lieutenant take us up to his superior so we can all get back to doing the Realm's work and serving our Princess?"

"Lady's got a good point there, Creampuff," the Lieutenant mused. "Now how about you put them shiny wings away and we'll all forget this ever happened?" he made small gestures to the right or left to indicate the dozen Gold Armours of his same unit who had come up behind him levitating heavy crossbows aimed at the pegasus.

Striker fumed, jaw clenched, but folded her wings after several seconds of casting smoldering glares at both Denny and the Lieutenant. She took a step back. "Watch the skies, Lieutenant Globe."

"I always do, Captain Striker," the Lieutenant agreed as the pegasus Captain, flanked by two of her own gold armours, stalked off down the street.

"That mare never ceases to amaze me with how unpleasant she can be," Denny muttered.

"First Lancers are always like that, Ma'am. Having them here and not out south where they belong is a real disgrace if you ask me."

Denny smiled and turned fully around to look up at the towering armoured unicorn stallion. She held out a hoof. "Senior Constabulary Detective Mangalloy Dendrite."

The Lieutenant raised a hoof to meet hers. "Lieutenant Globe Basil, Second Squadron, Third Dragoons."

"A pleasure, I'm sure. I'm afraid the good Captain bears my intransigent friend here," she made a gesture toward Lyra, still being held between four soldiers under the Lieutenant's command, "a bit of a personal grudge. Former lovers." This last bit she said at a lower volume, but not so low as to be unheard by everypony present. There were scoffs and tuts of laughter.

Lieutenant Globe cocked a grin as he looked to Lyra. "You have my condolences, Constable."

"Hey, I've no regrets!" Lyra stated in a jocular tone. "Mare's a freak when she gets some ale in her! Also, who do you think gave her the nickname 'Creampuff'?"

This earned not titters but guffaws and bursts of rolling laughter from the assembled Gold Armour Dragoons. "Come on," Lieutenant Globe said as much to Denny as he did his subordinates. "Let's get you up to see the boss."

They made their way through the doors to the high-rise and straight toward the elevator at the side of the lobby.

"Of course," Denny followed the four soldiers with Lyra following close behind. "And, might I ask, which Knight is it we have the privilege of serving today?"

"Knight Captain Garnet Glitter, Constable."

The elevator doors closed.

"... Oh shit." Denny cursed as the elevator began to rise.

Lyra held an ice pack over her aching head, wincing as the pack touched the base of her horn, which still smarted, though the blood-iron ring had since been removed.

"You're welcome, by the way," Denny said without looking up from her book.

"For what?" Lyra puzzled at her partner from the other side of the luxurious apartment's living room.

"For getting Striker off our backs. A feat which you seem constantly unable to do - which is odd, considering how infrequently she makes her way to this part of Equestria."

"The feather-brain's got a grudge. Also, I wouldn't exactly call it a 'feat', everypony knows about the rivalry between the Dragoons and the Lancers."

"I didn't."

"Like Tartarus you didn't!" Lyra shouted, though she regretted it right away and put a hoof to her aching temple. "Ow ow ow..."

"Instead of a beating, you could have been sitting comfortably in the carriage with me, sipping a beverage, if you'd not been so stubborn."

"Yeah, just get into an unmarked government carriage with soldiers - great survival strategy, Denny, why don't I-" Lyra broke off suddenly as the door to the apartment swung open and several gold armoured soldiers, and one silver armoured pegasus soldier, filed in to secure the room.

Denny looked up from her book, closed it, and stood.

Lyra remained where she was, reclined on a divan.

Knight Captain Garnet Glitter strode in through the colonnade of guards and removed her purple helmet. "Heartstrings, Mangalloy, good of you to make it."

Lyra snorted.

"Leave us," Garnet said without turning to look at her guards. They filed out of the room and closed the door behind them. Garnet slumped and trudged over to one of the four divans arranged in a square near the bookshelves, draped herself over the cushions and sighed. "This entire situation is a nightmare, as you can imagine."

"I can," Denny agreed. "Though I hardly find it surprising. It seems like a natural progression from the reforms three years ago. I suspect the Pegasus military will be Her target for the next round of purges, though whether or not it will be in our lifetimes is-"

"You see what I have to deal with, Glitter? You see how she is?" Lyra made an exasperated noise and re-positioned her ice pack.

The front door opened again and Herald Scroll, Garnet's earth-pony personal assistant, carried in a tray of tea and biscuits. Lyra perked up at this and floated herself a biscuit even before Harold had deposited the tray on the low table at the centre of the four divans.

"Regardless, I require your assistance - I'm desperately understaffed at the moment. Most of my reliable constables and detectives are either in the hospital, dead or in Her Majesty's dungeons at the moment."

"Understandable," Denny sighed. "How may we be of assistance?"

Herald poured tea for the three unicorn mares - unsweetened tea for Denny, milky tea for Garnet, and ten cubes of sugar for Lyra.

"Aw! You remembered!" Lyra cooed.

"Of course," Herald winked. He was a light brown Earth-pony with a curly beige mane and brilliant gold eyes. As far as anypony knew, he had been with Garnet Glitter since the very beginning of her career back in Whinnyapolis. Back then, Garnet had been promoted out of nowhere by Princess Celestia, from a low level bureaucrat to being, in no time at all, the Commandant of the Whinnyapolis military police, with the rank of a Knight, and right alongside her, from day one, was Herald Scroll. He followed her to her new position of Knight Commissioner of the Baltimare City guard during its reformation into the Baltimare Royal Constabulary three years ago, and followed her again when she had been promoted to Knight Captain of the Equestrian Royal Constabulary Services. He pulled a packet of papers out of his saddle bag and set them beside the tea tray, close to Garnet.

"Thank you, Herald," the Knight Captain muttered as she blew on her milky tea and took a sip - shuddering with relief as the hot beverage soothed her fatigue.

"Of course, Knight Captain. The forensics team is standing by next door when you are ready. I have informed the guards to leave you undisturbed until then."

"I don't know what I'd do without you, Herald," she praised as she took another sip. "That will be all for now."

"Very good, Knight Captain." He genuflected and departed.

Lyra, chewing a mouthful of biscuit, watched him as he left. The door closed and she shoved another biscuit into her mouth, washed it down with another sip of her sugary tea, and tuned into the conversation Denny and Garnet were still having.

"... And, of course, Fleur - the psycho - is still playing with her... creatures," Garnet shuddered.

"I'm more surprised Folio fled. He fled? Just ran out of the capital? A trained soldier, a veteran combat stallion just turning tail and running?"

Garnet nodded. "And, from what I can tell, he killed at least one Gold Armour and one of his own assassins in the process."

"Which one? Not Flutter Gust, surely?"

"What the crap are you two talking about?" is what Lyra attempted to say, but all that came out of her mouth were crumbs and mumbles as she chewed the remains of two and a half biscuits simultaneously.

Garnet cocked an eyebrow at Lyra while Denny merely ignored her. "I'm sorry, Knight Captain, I changed the subject: you were speaking of the current situation here in Manehattan?"

"Yes." Garnet took another sip of tea and sighed in appreciation of the taste and warmth. "Her Majesty is very actively establishing numerous operations in the city before moving on to Fillydelphia and Baltimare. Caesar just seems to be sitting back and waiting for whatever he's put into motion to take effect, what ever that may be," Garnet shuddered in a dramatic fashion, more for the benefit of description than any actual revulsion on Garnet's part. "The only exception to this is that Knight Captain Fleur seems to be setting up an operation of some kind. My agents lost track of her somewhere in the Lower East Side about 45 minutes ago."

"Why are you telling us this?" Lyra muttered after clearing her mouth somewhat. "Or, you know, more importantly: why do we care?"

"SHUT UP, LYRA!" Denny hissed, clenching her eyes shut in frustration. "I'm sorry, Knight Captain, please continue."

Garnet waved a weary hoof and shook her head. "No, no, she's right. You two aren't my errand fillies anymore, and I know you have your own concerns and tasks to work on, but I'm just, as a courtesy, letting you know that, effective immediately, I'm detaching you from your regular duties and assigning you both to my office directly, with all that entails." She levitated two weatherized trifolds of official looking documents, bedecked with wax sealed and ribbons. Emblazoned at the top of each, in ornate calligraphy, were words "Royal Warrant of Arbitration and Abrogation".

"Letters of A&A?" Lyra scoffed. "Her Majesty signed these for you without even filling in the names at the bottom?" Lyra held up the letters, tapping the blank part for the name of the recipient.

"Her Majesty trusts me to use these letters wisely. I entrust them to you. Don't abuse them."

"It must be pretty important," Lyra muttered, dropping the trifold on the coffee table.

Garnet took up a pen and the documents in her magic and wrote Lyra's name at the bottom of one and Denny's at the bottom of the other.

"Indeed," Denny agreed. "What's the assignment?"

"Come with me, I'll show you."

"Okay, I have two problems with your assessment so far..." Lyra said, more to herself than to Garnet or any of the forensics technicians. She was leaning her head on her folded forelegs on the top of the sofa-back, looking over the living room. The entire apartment, down the hall from Garnet's makeshift command centre, was a crime-scene, complete with little yellow number markers, and magic residue marks illuminated with spells. The magic residue was colour coded so that the apartment's three occupants, the victims, and the half dozen suspected assailants could be distinguished from one another. The marks made glowing hoof-prints all along the apartment's floors, smudges on the sofas and divans and on everything the ponies would have touched or levitated in the last week - the residues of all other ponies, police, soldiers and technicians, were filtered out of the current spell.

"First of all," Lyra said, "There are too many assumptions."

"Oh really?" the lead technician said with a bemused tone. "Such as?"

"Well," Lyra continued, ignoring the sarcasm and the challenge. "For starters, you're assuming Silver Euphony is mixed up in this when, by your own admission, there's no sign of her being here at the same time as the assailants. What if she's just out crashing with friends?"

"Nopony has seen her in days - and her family has no idea where she is."

"According to this, she and her parents are estranged, and have been for years," Denny said without looking up from the case file.

"Exactly," Lyra nodded. "I mean, it's conceivable that she could have been kidnapped elsewhere, or that she led the assailants here, but that assumes she was a target - we don't know what the motive for this invasion is yet: murdering Gold Leaf or kidnapping Summer Breeze. Or neither of the above."

Lyra was in full work mode, her entire focus on the puzzle and the hunt in front of her. She had come late in life to police work, having come over from the Trade Army to the Baltimare Royal Constabulary only within the last few years, but had shown a knack for the rigorous evaluation of facts of a seasoned detective. She likened it to her talents with magical dexterity, able to focus on many small details at once and to coordinate them all in her head. In many ways, orchestrating facts and clues was just like orchestrating hundreds of tiny pebbles in the air - fitting each one into its particular path and seeing where they intersected and how to guide them into the optimal pattern.

"Statistically speaking," Denny quoted, "home invasions are most often to do with only one resident or crimes of necessity. And the combination of murder and kidnapping is usually the result of events getting out of control - either a murder complicating the kidnapping or the kidnapping as a result to secure the evidence of the murderer's identity, or both being methods of salvaging a situation gone completely wrong." Denny was, by her nature, a pony of letters, about finding correlation in already established patterns. Denny preferred documents and forms to Lyra's more hooves on approach, which, perhaps, is why Garnet had seen fit to pairing them together in the first place, despite their apparent enmity for each other.

"Either way, Silver should be detached from the main line of inquiry, as we've no idea how or if she's even involved in any of this nonsense," Lyra sighed, getting up from the back of the couch.

"Fine, noted," the lead technician said, sighing. "And what's your other problem?"

"There's something really off about Gold Leaf's behaviour." Lyra began to wander the living room, following the trails of glowing hoof-prints.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, where are her tracks through the living room?" Lyra waved a hoof. "There aren't any," she answered her own question.

"Magic residue from simple contact dissipates beyond detectable levels after nine days," the technician said as if explaining to a child.

"Exactly! Which means she didn't go into the living room in over a week... although..." she walked over to the front door once more, examining the absolute mess of tracks that led from the front door, along the wall and into the hallway to the kitchen and bedrooms. there were faint traces of gold illuminated hoof-prints beneath the sky blue, silver and red ones. "We know she went up to the front door, at least-"

"Perhaps she let the killers in?" the technician blurted out.

"I mean, sure," Lyra dismissed. "Not the point. Did you find any residue samples for Gold Leaf outside the apartment door?"

The technician checked some documents. "No."

"A-hah. Which means she only came in this way to answer the door or to collect mail and deliveries. We should ask the apartment's doorman about Miss Gold's habits and visitors."

"So what are you getting at? She didn't leave her home very often - she's rich," the technician shrugged.

"Look at these tracks," Lyra glared at the technician and pointed to the mess of hoof-prints. "Most of these are all over the place, like you'd expect, but Gold Leaf's are always in straight lines, and practically on top of each other every time she passed this way - she has the exact same number of steps both leaving the kitchen to come to the door as she does going back to the kitchen from the door, and they're always the same number, nearly identically placed. And you see how she turns. She never turns while she's walking. She walks in straight lines, stops, then turns, then continues walking."

"Obsessive compulsive disorder," Denny contributed, holding up a document from the dossier. "Pretty severe, it seems. Also agoraphobia. Which explains why she seems to have rarely left her apartment, or vary from her usual routine." Denny closed the dossier and went into the kitchen. The lead technician, Lyra and Garnet Glitter followed her. "Look at this, from the marks in here you can see... she spent most of her time going from this spot by the table, to the autoclave and back. There are traces of her telekinesis on the fridge, cabinets and these fruit crates in the corner, but she spent most of her time sitting here... What was she doing in here?" Denny returned to her paperwork.

"She was always tinkering with something," Lyra muttered as she inspected the open case discarded on the floor with yellow evidence marker next to it - it was bound with cold-iron straps and a cold-iron padlock.

"You sound like you knew her." Denny looked up.

"I did, in a way," Lyra shrugged.

"Did you now?" Garnet Glitter said, breaking her silence for the first time in several minutes.

"In passing. We were debutantes together in Canterlot, a long time ago. Our families knew each other, but I wouldn't say we were friends."

"I somehow cannot imagine you as an aristocrat, Heartstrings," Garnet Glitter scoffed. "If I hadn't read your intelligence file I would have never believed it."

Lyra huffed. "Doesn't matter now. The point is, was she an inventor of some kind? Could this be an attempt to steal one of her inventions? She seems to have been taking some serious security precautions with whatever she was keeping in this case... Do we know what she was keeping on this easel?"

"No, and we didn't find any large pads of paper or chalk boards or anything," the technician assured them.

"So, I mean..." Lyra trailed off and left the kitchen, following Gold Leaf's tracks. The tracks went straight out the kitchen door into the hall, and then there was a spot where she would either turn right, toward the living room and front door, or to the left, toward her bedroom or the bathroom. Lyra followed to the left, to the spot where she either turned right, into the bathroom, or to the left, into her bedroom directly across from the bathroom. She turned left again.

Denny didn't follow Lyra out of the kitchen, engrossed in the papers from the dossier. The technician and Garnet Glitter followed Lyra after a moment.

"For somepony who never left their apartment, she certainly seems to have worn clothing a lot."

"Like I said, she was rich, she could afford nice clothes."

Lyra shook her head. "I don't know about you, but most ponies I know don't were clothes on days when they're staying indoors - clothes are usually only worn in four circumstances - uniforms, artistic expression, extreme weather or special occasions."

"So what?"

Lyra opened the closet. "Ah-hah! Look!" She pointed to the clothes hanging in the closet. Each one had a little bag of ceder chips hanging from the hanger. "These are all literally mothballed." She sniffed a sleeve at random, then a skirt hem. "These haven't been worn in months, perhaps years." Lyra pushed through the clothes to the back of the closet.

"So what?" the technician said again. "If she was really that OCD then going up to her closet and looking at her clothes could have just been part of her daily routine."

"Found it!" Lyra did something in the back of the closet that resulted in a loud click and the sound of pneumatic pistons moving the back wall and the clothes wrack off to one side, exposing a shallow room with a floor safe and a stack of more padlocked cases. "I think," Lyra postulated, pointing to the one empty space where there was a case missing. "The one in the kitchen would fit here. And I think she was definitely killed over not showing them where the rest of these were. We should try to reassemble the mechanical bits they left in the kitchen to see if it fits into the case in the kitchen and determine if they took something from it. And I think it is also safe to assume they either took some sort of diagrams or designs from that easel in the kitchen, or that Gold Leaf managed to either hide or destroy them ahead of time. At least, this is one likely train of inquiry."

"Excellent!" Knight Captain Garnet Glitter stomped her hoof in appreciation. "I'll expect daily updates, of course. House Silver and the Night Warden's family are both raising bloody Tartarus about their missing daughters, and House Gold is baying for revenge at their daughter's murder. And, given the political importance of all three families, this is the perfectly wrong time for any of this."

"Well, I don't know if I've found anything of relevance to either the murder or Summer Breeze's kidnapping, but I think I know where to find Silver Euphony." Denny walked into the bedroom holding up a selection of papers from the police dossier. "Or, more accurately, where we can find Miss Vinyl Scratch, as she prefers to be called these days."